Triple Click - Is Nostalgia A Good Thing?

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Jason's been playing Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a game that feels a lot like Suikoden, which made the Triple Click gang wonder: how does nostalgia impact our enjoyment of video games? Can it make games better? Worse? Both at once? Let's discuss!One More Thing:Kirk: Fiasco (Jason Morningstar)Maddy: Hades 2 technical testJason: Girls5evaLINKS:Triple Click LIVE in LA! Saturday, June 8, 6:30PM at the Teragram Ballroom: https://teragramballroom.com/tm-event/triple-click-podcast/Preorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

The great Tony Soprano one said, Remember When is the lowest form of conversation. Ah, I remember that. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we are talking about nostalgia. When can it make games better? And when can it make them worse? And are we all just looking at things through rose-colored glasses?

I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello. Made it back again. My friends. Yep, we did.

We made it. We all got here. We all got here. Yeah, it's kind of, this is, this month has been such a weird schedule. We've been, like, recording episodes early and stuff. So there's something a little surreal about being back. But we're back together. We're back together.

It's invisible to the listener, but we aren't always recording at the same times that we usually do. And for us, that's different. Nor are we always recording at the same time. Sometimes we each record our separate conversation. And then we just, the other two of us just try to improvise accordingly. And if you think it sounds good, well, maybe consider supporting the show. That's all I'm saying about that. We should make an episode that way sometime.

That would be a weird, surreal. We should totally do that sometimes. What would it even be? I'm putting that in the show doc as an idea for the future. If you want to get bonus episodes, it's kind of like that surreal, weird idea that Kirk just proposed. All you have to do is become a maximum fun member and help us make the show possible. We do not have any ads. We are supported by listeners on Maximum Fun. So go to maximumfund.org slash join and support us. And you will also get access to our monthly bonus episodes,

including the one we are about to run, our April bonus episode, which will be a little bit into May, but whatever, which is a deep dive into the Fallout TV show, which we've all watched and enjoyed quite a bit. So we're very excited to talk about that. But there's a whole backlog full of stuff and soon we're going to be doing triple cook. Much awaited. The fans are clamoring for it. The fans are very excited. We will not be doing triple cook, but triple cook we will be doing. Not this year. And also one more thing is that if you will be in Los Angeles on Saturday, June 8th, you should come to the Terragam Ballroom and see us perform live. We will be doing live recording

in the podcast in Los Angeles, June 8th, 630 p.m. Terragam ballroom. Tickets are in in the show notes. Come check it out. It will be fun. We will even be hanging out with people after the show. So come get a chance to say hi, meet us, do you ask some questions, participate in a live show. We're going to think up some fun ideas for that one. Should be really cool. That's part of the summer games fest weekend, aka fake E3. Yes, that'll be fun. All right, on with the show. Today, this week, we are talking about nostalgia. So, As you guys may know, I've been playing, or I spent a great deal of time playing a game called Audin Chronicle Hundred Heroes. And that game is a spiritual successor to a series that you both know and love called Swaykoden.

Sikodin is a series that's near and dear to my heart ever since 1996 or so when I saw the box for the first game and bought it and like fell in love with it. a good way to describe the series would be Game of Thrones meets Pokemon because it's kind of like a medieval war story mixed with recruiting characters up to more than 100 characters all throughout the world and building an army and it's got a deep story with politics

and a heartbreak and betrayal and all that good stuff. But that series died. Konami just kind of unceremoniously killed it and what happened was the original series creators including Yoshitaka Muriama is the creator of the series who passed away in February.

they united in 2020 to do a Kickstarter for a spiritual successor, which came out just about a week ago as of when this episode will air. And so I've been playing it, and playing it was kind of a weird experience for me, because so much of it is so much like Sweet Kodin and just kind of pulled in my nostalgia in a lot of different ways. But at the same time, I kept getting these kind of like creeping, like feelings,

that kind of heart-sinking feeling of like, oh my god this game isn't very good and i wasn't try i was i had a hard time kind of reconciling with that feeling and and reconciling that feeling with the fact that i was just enjoying the experience of playing what felt like a brand new sweetcoating game for the first time in like a decade and a half and it was kind of a weird kind of tug-a-war um you guys haven't played it right or have you dabbled a little bit yeah i played it up through what i think is the first boss or the first enemy that you got to really think about what you're going to do. Okay.

So you played like the first little tiny bit. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's really, it's just like, it recreates secret in every possible way. From the big ways, like you go around, you create your, your recruiting characters, you have a castle, you have an army, to the small ways. There's like the little banter that it pops up when you talk to a shopkeeper or like towns, random townspeople giving you recipes and books to collect at your castle.

All that sort of kind of nostalgia. pulling stuff if you enjoyed the series. But at the same time, it really doesn't capture what actually made the series. Great. That kind of emotional core. I talk a little bit about this when it was my one more thing, but also just like now that I've really finished it and sunk into it, it's just really lacking. And it caught me thinking a lot about nostalgia. How does nostalgia affect our enjoyment of games? Does it kind of, can nostalgia make a game better? Can I make a game worse? Is it kind of something we just have to kind of grapple with? And when we're looking at a game critically, how does that kind of affect that,

especially when we're looking at older games or newer games that aim to recreate the feeling of older games. And there have been a lot of games in this boat. I mean, games, especially on Kickstarter, that aim to recreate the feelings that we all felt when we were like at our grandmother's house in the attic

when nothing else to do but play this game that would shape our childhood for 10 hours straight. So let's talk about nostalgia, shall we? Let me open it up to you guys for a second. Has nutshell, do you feel like nostalgia in general has kind of like impacted your experience playing a modern game in some way? And do you think it was in a good way or a bad way? Kirk, why don't you start?

Have you had a recent experience with nostalgia? Sure. I mean, I have experiences with nostalgia all the time. I'm over 40. Half my life is just spent feeling nostalgic, right? The older you get, the more things there are to feel nostalgic about. The more BuzzFeed lists resonate with that. It's an interesting thing to think about.

And to think about nostalgia as a feeling, right? To understand it as something that we feel and that then can be sort of conjured forth by different things. It's not just like an object. It's actually a feeling that people have and that these games, many of these games, seek to inspire in us. And yeah, I mean, I've felt a lot of different kinds of nostalgia while playing a lot of different games. I wrote down a few examples. But, taxonomy alerts. No, I don't have any kind of a detailed breakdown.

The types of nostalgia. Oh, no. So I think that it's interesting that a game can tap into nostalgia that you may have for an older era, right? This like longing that we feel for when we were kids and when life was simple and when we could place we could into it. And it was new and exciting. That's very much what Aydon Chronicles is doing. You go to Toys R Us. You see the box covers on the wall and you pull out a little.

price tag. Right. Yeah. And I think that that is like probably the type of nostalgia that comes to mind for a lot of people when they hear this, when they hear the start of this conversation, they think, okay, they think of a game like, to the moon always comes to mind for me, which is a game that's, like, styled in that kind of 16-bit RPG style. The music is using those sort of chip-tune synths.

And I've long felt that music is the closest thing that video games have to smell. like smell, you know, like your olfactory part of your brain, like, connects directly to your memory part of your brain, right? This is, or at least there are studies that have shown this and that's why you smell something, you know, the scent of like, like, cut grass from a certain part of the world where you grew up and you're like, oh my God, like your memory, just all these memories flood back in. I'm a child again. I'm at home again. Right. And why scent is just like such a powerful sense, right? It can really trigger your memories and your nostalgia. It's funny you say to the moon because so many games have done.

done that since, but I guess that was one of the first to try to do. I remember it as, yeah, and it was kind of when I was first starting to write about games as well and just being very interested in that game and thinking what it was doing, aesthetically was interesting. So anyways, video games don't have a smell, right? At least not yet. There's a

really not where I thought this conversation was going to go. But you're right. Video games should have a smell. Well, if they did, I think they would use that very, there would be a very powerful thing they could use to conjure our memory. But because they don't, I would say that music is the closest thing that video games have to that same feeling. Like when you hear a classic piece of video game music, your nostalgia just gets kind of triggered in that same way. You can get cast back to where you were when you first heard it.

And I think that modern games can use those sounds, you know, the sounds of the old, the synthesizers and the sound modules on those old consoles to, like, conjure sound. And that's something that I think a game like To the Moon does really well. I think Stardue Valley kind of does that as well. We were recently playing that and thinking about it. So that's one type of nostalgia. It is like conjuring your nostalgia for when you're young. The other type that I've also encountered in, say, Stardue Valley is nostalgia for my own experience within the game.

Where when I play a lot of Stardue Valley, you know, one or two years into that game, you actually reach a new spring and the spring music begins playing. It's that, you know, that nostalgic feeling. but I feel nostalgic for the first spring that I had in the game. Like I'm nostalgic for my own experience within the game, not nostalgic for like an older experience in my life. So I've experienced both, and I think they're both interesting types of video game nostalgia. That's interesting.

Well, I guess what I'm curious about, and Maddie, maybe you can chime in too, have you felt like when you're playing your game and you feel that sense of nostalgia for your child or for whatever reason? and specifically the former in your two categories there. How does it impact your enjoyment of the game? Do you feel like it always enhances it? Can it detract from your enjoyment?

Is there a game you've played, Maddie, where you felt nostalgic in either a good or a bad way? Yeah, for sure. And I also think, Kirk, there's a third example that I was going to mention, which is nostalgic for a specific emotion that you had when you first played a type of game, which is maybe kind of in the first category, but it's not just, oh, this game is evoking some other memory that I have

where it's like, oh, it's another Mario platformer. I remember growing up on those. I have a sort of inherent soft spot for Mario now. I think we all do on some level. It feels comforting and like a childhood thing. I always feel that way. But I also remember, and this isn't my childhood, but when I was playing all the Metroid games,

it was like this time in my life when I was depressed and didn't have a lot going. on, frankly, but that was something I've really loved to do. And so now, whenever I play a new Metroid game, I almost have to kind of divorce my feelings of softness towards it to be a critic, which I think is what you're getting at, Jason, and be like, is this game actually good? Or am I just associating being Sammas Aaron and her power armor with how I felt during a time when I really needed to feel that power fantasy? And so I have an inherent soft, positive feeling towards any time, I to do it. And I remember kind of going through that with Metroid OtherM because I didn't really

like that game. And I was like, why isn't this? Like, I guess it was my Auden Chronicle moment where I was like, this doesn't feel right. This isn't what I want it to be. But I feel even more heartbroken that it's not what I want it to be because I have these very fond memories of what I believe Metroid should be. But also, I think that that type of nostalgia can be a real problem when games want to change. And when franchises want to change and kind of step outside the box in some way and maybe not be exactly the same every single time, even if players are expecting that and they have certain feelings about what a game should or shouldn't be. And that's tough. Yeah. Well, so Metride, I think, is a really good example because that was a game. Putting Other M aside from OtherM to Dread was a very long absence in the same way as Sikod and Auden. So it's more, I think let's, let's, uh, when we talk about, nostalgia. I think I think of that as a little bit different than kind of that, that desire for routine and formula in the same way that like when I'm playing a new call a duty game, I might

want the same formula as before our new Zelda game. Maybe Zelda's the best example. As opposed to nostalgia for something that I haven't played in 20 years. Right. This is really bringing me back because it's something I haven't experienced in a very long time. Two kind of like similar branches of the same tree. But I think let's focus on the nostalgia part of it. So that Metro Comparison is really interesting. With Dread, fortunately, it was a good game. But yeah, with other M, I imagine that it's kind of like, yeah, similar feelings that I had where it's like, okay, this is dressed up as the game that I loved.

And it's kind of inspiring those same sorts of feelings. And with Metroid, just like with Suikodin, there aren't really a ton of games exactly like it. They're games that might try to emulate it in certain ways, but there aren't games that do that same exact thing. And, yeah, I mean, I wonder, so for you, So for me when I was playing Auden, I was trying to decide, like, is this, is my nostalgia for those older games? Is that kind of raising my expectations or is it lowering my expectations?

Because I can look past. And I really, I still don't even know the answer to that. Like, I was like, am I expecting higher from this because I love those old games so much and they meant so much to me and I expect this to mean a lot to me too? Or are my expectations lower because I'm just wrapping myself in the comforting blanket of this game and the feelings I feel in the past? And therefore I'm just like playing 40 plus hours of this game because it makes me feel good again. It makes me feel like a kid again. And I still don't know the answer. Maybe it's both for me. Did you have a specific way when you were playing Metroid, OtherM, which you recognize is bad?

Do you feel like your expectations and your nostalgia kind of raise the bar for you or lower the bar for you? I think in the case of that game, because it's so different from the way that in my head, Metroid feels like it's supposed to be. It's much more like your other non-nistalking example. other M is pretty linear, which is sort of inherently anti-Metroid in my mind. It has like moments where you need to walk to a certain place and then watch a cutscene unfold before you can progress. That just as a stylistic choice to me is like anathema to what I expect for Metroid.

So in some ways it's an unfair example. But maybe a better example would actually be Samus Returns, which is made by the same studio, Mercury Steam that made Metroid Dread and came out around the time that Zelda came out on Switch, but it was like a DS game. so like only I was playing Samus Returns on my DS. And I was like, this one's actually really good. It's a 2D Metroid, but it's really good. And like, I remember other people in my life being like, is it actually?

Like, do I need to care about this? Or is Maddie just saying this because it's like a Metro game and she just wants to play another 2D Metroid. And I had that question myself, I actually do still think Sammis Returns is a really good Metroid game. And since you two have played Metroid Dred, which is made by the same team and has a lot of similar elements. you get where I'm going with this. Hold on. Samis Returns is a remake, so it's literally like a nostalgic.

But it's very, very different from Metroid 2. But you're not wrong. It also has, it is also capitalizing on my own good feelings about a very old gameboy game. So there's a lot of interlocking feelings there. And I know exactly what you mean, Jason, in the sense that I both was judging it more harshly and yet also judging it less harshly because I was like so relieved to, be playing this 2D Metroid game that was like tapping into all the things that I feel like a Metroid game is supposed to be and my personal emotions about it playing Metroid's for the first

time. But then also I was judging it more harshly because I was like, okay Maddie, like get in your critic brain here. Like is this really good or are you just taking your own emotions here? And it's really hard to do that. I mean, obviously I'm a perfect critic. So I did it perfectly and I was right. Yeah. I mean, even putting aside the fact that we're like professional, like, like video game talker abouters. Yeah. I think that like sometimes even just as a player who is turning off the critical part of their brain, I think it can still be kind of like you can have, you can, you can leave a

game feeling like, oh man, that was like a kind of a hollow experience. I kind of like feel like that. I don't know. It was like eating junk food or something. I don't really feel so great after playing that. And that's kind of how I felt with Aidan where I was like, man, I really, I spent a lot a time with that game and I don't know if I got a lot out of it. Kirk, have you had this feeling with any games where you like grew up with something and now and you had some kind of more modern

game that tried to tap into that nostalgia for better or for worse? Yeah, I think this, I think this all kind of relates to how nostalgia can be aesthetic more than substantive. I don't know if that, if splitting those two things apart quite works, but there can be like you can have an aesthetic nostalgia attached to something where it looks a certain way and sounds a certain way, but then it doesn't really have the goods under the hood, which is kind of what it sounds like the case is with Aydin Chronicles, where it just doesn't quite have some of the things that made Sway Kodin 2 special, despite the fact that, yeah, I mean, I only played a little bit of it, but it felt like playing Swaykoden 2. Like, I saw no substantive difference from the amount that I

played, but I can imagine that over the course of 40 hours or something. Well, yeah, well, so looks and feels, let's take that a little further. I think, beyond aesthetics when you're talking about a video game, you can have looks and sounds and also feels mechanically. But something can feel mechanically like an older game and still really not capture what made it great for various reasons. And in fact, it can feel like an older game and illustrate how the older game doesn't hold up. I mean, that's kind of the interesting thing with some of these remakes and something we talked about back when we talked about remakes on this show is that you can create a remake of something Resident Evil 4 and Dead

Space both come to mind from last year where it feels like you remember the game feeling, right? This is how people very commonly describe these remakes, despite the fact that's actually quite different. And if you go back and play the original, you're like, oh, wow, this was kind of crusty by today's standards. So I think that is like, like remakes complicate things quite a bit because they're actually remaking something. But just to answer your question about nostalgia not living up to, you know, reality. I always think about the adventure game resurgence and the Double Fine Adventure.

And just that whole, I feel like that was a really interesting exercise in nostalgia for everyone. It was sort of the beginning of, we're going to get the gang back together and we're going to make the thing that you love and it's going to be just like it was. And in this case, this was getting Ron Gilbert and Tim Schaefer together with Double Fine

to make an adventure game like, They used to make in the 90s. And then what wound up happening was they made this game Broken Age that was very different. Ron wasn't even involved. No, Ron wasn't involved, right? Much more happened than that. But actually, I'm going to get to him in a second because, right, Ron worked on it a little bit and then took off. And Tim and Double Fine made Broken Age, which is an interesting game, but, you know, kind of has its flaws, was released in two parts.

There's a whole documentary about it. I won't summarize it. But it wasn't an adventure game like we've remembered. It was different. It was just like a new Tim Schaefer game, which was cool and interesting that they did that, but that wasn't really the nostalgia trip. Meanwhile, Ron Gilbert left and went and eventually released Thimbleweed Park, which is also kind of modern in some ways.

I didn't finish that game, but I know that it does some kind of interesting new things narratively, but it looks like a LucasArts game, and it feels like a LucasArts game. And at least in that moment, I think that was what people wanted. Like, I do think that having played enough of Thimbleweed Park to have gotten the gist, that game triggered my nostalgia in a way that I found very pleasurable. It just really did feel like I was playing Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island and it was the 90s and I was young and my life was rolled out in front of me. So at least in that way, that was a moment where those were two examples,

one of the sort of the game not living up to the nostalgia promise, that it may be kind of that some people really wanted it to. And the other game very much delivering on that promise. And I think people were pretty happy about that. Well, return to Monkey Island is another good example, because that's a game that was on all three of our game of the year lists. And, yeah, I mean, I think that you kind of, you have to walk a fine line when you're looking to revive an old genre or an old series or an old classic, because you have to really recreate what made that series great and also, like, bring enough new modern flourishes to the table. And, yeah, I mean, I feel for the Aeodin developers, especially, I mean, given the tragedy they just had to face, but also some of the issues. to face along the way.

And the game is also, it's super busted and there are a ton of major bugs. Some of them have been fixed, but some of them haven't. Like, the cooking competition, which was this, like, heralded mini game from Secoated 2 that you guys might remember. Oh, yeah. How can I forget?

It's brought back for this, but it's, like, a lamer version, and it's totally busted. So, like, you can only, you just have to use, like, these two different menu items to just win, and it's very tedious and awful. Just a lot of just kind of, just kind of struggles that they went through along the way. But I empathize with them having to

tackle this problem of like, okay, you've promised this spiritual successor to this beloved old series. How much are you going to do that recreates one to one what was done back then and how much are you going to do that is kind of like the modern touch? And I think to go back to your kind of analogy, your example, Kirk, broken age is very much of an example of we're going to push this to like to make it essentially feel like a brand new game. Like we're not even going to look back at the nostalgic stuff. We're just going to make something that feels totally new and different. Whereas Simmel We Park was very much like,

we're going to recreate the everything that you love from Lucas Arts. Like old Lucas Adventures all the way down to the pixel hunting and the verb like screen and the bottom left, like the selection of verbs you have to pick from and the aesthetics and all. And yeah, two very different ways of going about it. I don't really think there's an easy answer when your goal is recreate, like, do a spiritual successor to something that people loved. I do think that conjuring nostalgia for an experience that you had within the game is an

important and very powerful part of this conversation and that it can actually dovetail with the type of nostalgia that we're talking about. Okay. So, okay, so Journey, great video game, right? Yeah. The thing that really moved me about Journey is when I realize that it's kind of a metaphor for life, right? And so you play through the beautiful opening parts of this game when the sun is out and you're riding high along the sand. There are these gorgeous sequences where the music is

like soaring and it's so beautiful and you're just like leaping and bounding. And then later in the game, it's like old age and you've become old and you're you're kind of damaged and you're limping through the snow and it's so hard and you can't like you can barely go on. And in that moment, I realize it's a fairly obvious metaphor. I'm like, oh my God, like thinking back to my childhood when I was young and when I could just leap across the sand and everything was so easy. And it really was very moving for me, like that moment of realization and that moment of nostalgia for the experience that I had just had a couple hours ago in the same game. Yeah.

So I think that's really potent. Another example that I think compounds this on top of the kind of nostalgia, the aesthetic nostalgia that we're talking about, is Undertale, because that's another game that builds nostalgia into its story by telling this kind of cyclical story. where, you know, despite everything, it's still you, right? At the end, you kind of have this moment where you look at yourself in the mirror and you reflect literally on like everything that you've gone through. And it's this really powerful moment in the game.

But also, Undertale is channeling the aesthetics, you know, the music, the visuals of an older 16-bit RPG. It looks like Earthbound. So you're in that kind of aesthetic headspace without the game needing to actually make you feel the way that you felt when you played Earthbound. it just kind of primed me to have that sort of a feeling. And then when it delivers within its own narrative, self-contained kind of nostalgia, it just hit like a ton of bricks.

I mean, I found that very, very powerful. And I think that's partly because of that broader stylistic nostalgia that it's evoking. Like I think the two really work well together. When a game can pull it off. Now, undertail, you know, it's kind of a one-of-a-kind game. There aren't that many games that pull it off that well, but it's really cool. It's true. It's really difficult.

You're also reminding me. I mean, we haven't really talked that much about games that evoke nostalgia and don't succeed. I mean, we talked about Aoudin, but I wanted to mention Tunic, which we did a triple play on a while back, as an example that I just thought of when you were describing Undertale, because it's trying to evoke the sensation of playing a game, not understanding the instruction manual. Maybe it's in a language you don't understand. Like, it's very intentionally trying to evoke a sort of childlike experience of trying to figure something out. And it's exploration-based, sort of like an old Zelda game where you just have to, like, figure everything out and explore and explore until you are like, okay, now I understand where all the major areas are.

But in that game, mostly it was just that the combat just didn't really work for me. I think it just felt like a little bad. And so, like, the fact that it had all these other elements that were intended to tap into a sense of nostalgia for games that, unfortunately, I think, are better games, ended up hurting Tunic more for me because I was like, you're evoking, you're like reminding me that I really like a link to the past. And I'm not sure you want me to be thinking about a link to the past right now because I could actually close this game and go play that and have a pretty good time. And so like in that way, I'm almost like invoking nostalgia or even like revisiting these places over and over again in a game

can actually feel pretty bad if it's not working. That's interesting. You can just be like, I'm sick of this. or you're trying to evoke a feeling in me, but I'm seeing the manipulations and they are not landing. So, you know, and I think that's something that people really love about Tunic that I gather Tunic does brilliantly well is the density and complexity of its world puzzles and the way that it's put together is really brilliant. And I think all three of us never really quite got past that initial bump, which is the part of the game where you're looking at that manual and it feels the most like a nostalgia play, even though there is this, I think, pretty, pretty brilliantly designed. game underneath it. And I guess we'll have to talk about this in a couple of weeks because there's a

game that's, there are other games that are following the same sort of, that can follow that same sort of design without doing the direct nostalgia play and just lean into the puzzles. And that can maybe turn out to be really great. But I will say no more. Yeah, but it's also a pretty common design decision. I mean, it's always wonderful when a game just has its own idea of like how to do environmental storytelling and puzzles. That's great. But there are many games that are just that are made by people who grew up playing the games we're talking about and are like, I want to evoke what it felt like to solve a puzzle or collect these things in Metroid 2 for the Game Boy or whatever we want to say and linked to the past. And that can also be maybe damaging in terms of creativity because it's like

you need to actually iterate on that concept. You need to have something new to bring to the table that isn't just recreating the old thing because it was cool then. So, okay. So this leads into something really interesting. So another game came out this year that we all love. It's called Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which is part of the Final Fantasy 7 remake. And the reason I bring this up is because it makes for a really stark comparison to Aoden Chronicle, not in the sense of a one-to-one comparison because one game was made on millions and millions of dollars by hundreds of people. And another game is this tiny Kickstarter thing that raised three million dollars and was made by a small team. But Aiodin Chronicle was made largely by veterans. Japanese.

game development veterans who had been working in games for 20, 25 years, whereas Final Fantasy 7 rebirth was made by a combination of veterans like Yoshinari Kitase, who was the director of the original Final Fantasy 7 and has been a Squarionics forever, and Naoki Hamaguchi, those are the two co-director, or one was producer, one of the just director of the game, and Hamaguchi grew up playing Final Fantasy 7, so he came in as a fan. And what was interesting was the kind of the tension between the two, which I think played a lot into that game. And I think the fact that it had a mix of veterans who had worked on Final Fantasy 7 and also people who had played it and grew up playing it made for a really interesting experience because you could have that push and pull of maybe

the original series creators want to push things like really far and go all out and try new things, whereas the newer folks are trying to rein them back and be like, no, we got to stick with some of this stuff because we're fans. We know what fans are going to want from this. And they created something awesome as a result, I think maybe when you have just series veterans or just kind of just newcomers, you can kind of get yourself into trouble without having that kind of that balance of people attached to it. But yeah, it all plays into what your goals are with trying to evoke nostalgia. You're trying to evoke nostalgia in kind of like the easy way by just recreating things on a surface level, or do you really understand? And sometimes the

creators of a thing don't understand what makes it great and just kind of fail to capture their old glory because they don't get it and they don't get maybe they accidentally like captured lightning in a bottle and they don't know how to do it again. We've seen that happen so many times in the video game industry and other creative field. So yeah, it's a really interesting tension there. Final Fantasy 7 rebirth I think has an interesting similarity with the recent Zelda games in that both games have what you're describing, that mix of, of, same sort of thing. You know, like old hands and new talent. Both actually are using themes composed by the original composer, but are being reworked by new composers. And both games do, like, have incredible

soundtracks that are these really beautiful mixes of new and old that do all kinds of things. And really, you know, they're using the music in that same way to kind of ping your nostalgia. When you hear Ereth's theme, I know, you just can't not. feel something. That was what I was thinking about when you were talking about video game smells. I was thinking about

Final Fantasy 7 that whole time. It's a very potent a potent aroma. Yeah. Well, Red 13 just smells like wet dog. We're nostalgic for him and so we love him and so we love that smell.

So, you know, like that, I think that that is an interesting similarity between those two games and yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, another series I'll throw out there that's a little different, but also plays with nostalgia in a lot of different ways,

is Fallout. And then we're about to talk about the Fallout show, which we've all watched. And then I think has gotten a lot of people to go play, I think, especially New Vegas and Fallout 4,

because it's the most recent and just got a patch that apparently is kind of disastrous. Well, especially 76 in Fallout 4, I think. Oh, yeah, and 76, a lot of people are playing. And then New Vegas, because,

well, for narrative reasons related to the show that will spoil out on the beans cast, and also because it's the best one and it's kind of the one that is, everyone kind of agreed. at this point is narratively the best.

I've actually been playing both, and I'm struck by... So there's that nostalgia, right? There's the nostalgia for wanting to go back and play New Vegas for the first time or, you know, really mod the hell out of it and play the best version of it and have that experience again. Because New Vegas is itself made by

more of the people who are involved with the earlier Fallout games then Fallout 3, and as a result, was its own kind of nostalgia play at the time. Like, it feels a lot more like playing one of the first two games, just in everything, every mechanic, everything about the story, everything about the way it's designed. So for a lot of people, that was a really positive thing and is a big part of its enduring

legacy is that people say, well, that's the one. If you actually want to play one that's true to the originals, rather than Fallout 4 or Fallout 3 made by Bethesda's the game studios and are quite a bit different. And then there's just the aesthetic of Fallout, which is a bizarre mix of nostalgia and I don't even know what. I mean, the whole fallout thing is this classic music. which evokes this nostalgia for the 1950s, but this deeply ironic nostalgia of like,

I don't want to set the world on fire while the world has clearly burned and also weird retrofuturism, which is its own kind of ironic play with nostalgia, like the nostalgia for this Jetsons technology that they use. So I think that nostalgia is like a really crucial ingredient in fallout overall and then has manifested in all kinds of interesting ways over the course of that series.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like also, when it's done well, including in Fallout, but also rebirth, as we talked about. It's also by people who understand how powerful nostalgia actually is and almost respect it, as opposed to, like I was

saying before, like we all kind of understand when it feels cheap or feels like it's just something that is a gloss and surface level, and it's just a veneer of something that looks comfortable or looks familiar or fun or exciting or whatever you want to say you're hearkening back

to. But then there's not no they're there. But Fallout does it really cleverly by having sort of the ironic nostalgia of like this weird 50s vibes that feel bad. Like why would we ever want to be nostalgic for the Cold War?

It's like a really terrible time when everyone was afraid constantly. But like it is purposefully hearkening back to that level of fear. And the show does this too very effectively. Like now people who haven't even played the games can understand that from the show. And I think just understanding how powerful that is

and not kind of overusing it. and taking advantage of it is really important. And that's why it works. That's why it's bearable, because it's not just like constantly soaking you in it and being like, remember this. Like, if Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was doing that, we would not like it.

We would just be like, well, this is just playing with our emotions in a way that's annoying. But instead, it's very careful about when it invokes Eris theme and all the other examples. Yeah, the big difference between the two to me is that Fallout uses nostalgia very ironically. and very effectively. It really like, it tempers the nostalgia with irony just across the board where Final Fantasy

7 is not really interested in ironic nostalgia. There's a little bit maybe. No, it's pure. And it's like we know you love this. But we're also not going to give you too much sugar on your cereal. We're going to give you just a little bit and you're going to enjoy it. Yeah. And I think that lies into the problem with Aedon Chronicle, which is it is like trying to,

it is throwing too much of that stuff at you without really understanding. I think with Fallout on Final Fantasy 7 and a lot of these games that do nostalgia right, it really comes down to its creators just understanding what people enjoyed about the original stuff. And I think Rebirth is a good example of that

where I think it's the people who made Final Fantasy 7 remake and Final Fantasy 7 rebirth understood that like the characters were what people really loved about those games. And like nobody, was in it to just like spam like the button to watch

turn-based combat since. People are totally fine with a brand new combat system. Nobody was in it because they really like navigating these confusing 2D-like environments that like you couldn't understand what was going on. Like totally great to have like expand the 3D world and stuff.

But you keep the characters intact if suddenly these characters were drastically different like acting in totally different ways. That would be a little bit like why? Or if they had total redesigns that didn't feel like what was being recreated. And I think just grasping that. And I think with Aoden Chronicle, unfortunately, the people who made this game just did not really grasp that, like, what people loved about the Suikotun games wasn't just going around and buying armor and collecting

characters, but also just having this kind of this deep story that really has this emotional hook to it and kind of captures the ugliness of war and the brutality of it all that is just completely missing from this game, among other issues, of course. But really, just failing to understand your series and what makes it great and what makes people love about it. I mean, we've seen, we've seen this before and we've seen this a few times over the course of recent years where like someone comes out with a new game and just shows that they just like didn't really understand the essence of what people loved about the previous game. And it's always sad to see. It's always a bummer.

The lesson there may just be that it is easier to evoke the aesthetics of something on a surface level than it is to write a really good story. Yeah. That's a big part of it. So sure. Make a great game. Yeah. You know, because I mean, in the end, like, Undertale amazingly conjures the aesthetics of Earthbound,

but Undertale is an incredible story, an incredible game on its own. And like, really, it's the second thing is far more important and much more difficult than the first. True. Yeah. That is true. So the solution here is just make a great game. Yeah. Come on.

Just write it really good story and put it out there. I don't know. Make a good piece of art. How hard is that? Just to make a great game. Do you guys feel like one more thing before we take a break is old games, retro games. You guys have had to play because of me a couple of classic games over the years. But really everyone, I think, has had the experience of revisiting an old game and trying to grapple with it in some way or another.

Do you guys think, how do you think nostalgia kind of, like, like, like interferes or doesn't interfere with our ability to go and revisit games from 20, 30 years ago these days. I mean, I feel like it happened on this show when I made you two play Perfect Dark. And then like, even on that episode, I was like, this is too hard to play. It's repetitive. Like, I had such fond memories of it. I was like, it's going to be so fun when I make them play Perfect Dark.

And we talk about how cool Joanna Dark is. And then instead, we were like, why is this game so janky and weird? And, like, there's so many. I was nauseous the whole time I was playing. And, like, the voice acting's really goofy. It's mostly funny. But, like, it just really, I don't want to say it didn't hold up, but it didn't hold up. I'm willing to admit it.

Yeah, you can say it. It's fine. And that was, like, a situation that unfolded live on the air. I really thought that would be a different experience. But I also hadn't played the game in, like, 15 years or whatever it had been. And, yeah, it didn't hold up. It happens. I think that was an interesting experience.

But, yeah, I mean, I think that necessarily. Just sets you up for disappointment often with all the games. And that's the primary feeling of... Especially when you share them with your friends. Yeah, when you're like, this one's going to be great. And then you're like playing it and you're like, why did I make them do this? Which, you know, I'm sure we've all had with movies and TV shows as well. There are plenty of times where you're like, oh, man, I love this movie from the 90s when I was a kid and you put it out and you're like, oh God.

What was I imbibing back then? Like, what's all these soft-color jokes? So it's really that, I think. It's that nostalgia can kind of set you up for. Yeah, I mean also, which can be sad. A big part of the perfect dark thing is that, well, I don't know. I mean, you guys struggled, I think, in many ways with Final Fantasy 6 and Sukoden 2 also. But I do think that, and I've talked about this before, but I'll repeat it, I think that

the 2D games have aged a lot better in general aesthetically than the 3D games. And mechanically for that matter. And mechanically. We remember playing games like Perfect Dark and thinking back in the 90s. Holy crap. these graphics are incredible, but now it's a joke, whereas the 2D games, the 2D games still look beautiful because they're just the highest art of, like, pixelized games. So very different world.

And I think the PS1 N64 era is the absolutely the toughest to play today, to revisit today. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, that aesthetic is challenging. Well, and like that early 2000s cinema aesthetic too with the bad CG. It's like what Vaporwave is kind of all about. Like, Vaporwave is a nostalgia for bad-looking computer graphics. But usually they feel better to play. Like, that's the thing about those indie Vaporave games

is that they'll, like, take the aesthetic of the PS1 or PS2 graphics, but then not the aesthetic of how hard it was to literally move your character around the room. Because that's the part that you don't actually want to evoke. It's like, why does it feel bad for Joetta to walk around the room or do anything? Yeah. It's funny you were thinking that we would all be like, man, Joanna's so badass when I left that. Like, I still don't know who. I feel like I've barely heard Joina talk.

I feel like I didn't know anything about her. She was a competent lady. That's how I would describe to her lady. She's a little competent gender swabbed, double-07. A lady who talks about sneaking around and then just shoots things instead of sneaking around. Yeah, pretty nice. Let's put on our rose-colored glasses and take a break, and then we'll be back with one more thing. Hi, this is Biz, and this is the final season of One Bad Mother, a comedy podcast about parenting.

This is going to be a year of celebrating all that makes this podcast and this community magical. I'm so glad that I've found your podcast. I just cannot thank you enough for just being the voice of reason as I'm trying to figure all of this out. Thank you and cheers to your incredible show and the vision you had to provide this space for all of us. This is still a show about life after giving life. And yes, there will be swears. You can find us on maximum fun.org. And as always, you are doing a great job.

All right, class, tomorrow's exam will cover the science of perfect pitch, the history of pride flags and speed running video games. Any questions? Ah, yes, you in the back. Uh, what is this? It's the podcast, let's learn everything. Where we learn about science and a bit of everything else. My name's Tom. I studied cognitive and computer science, but I'll also be your teacher for intermediate emojis.

My name's Caroline and I did my master's in biodiversity conservation, and I'll be teaching you intro to things the British Museum stole. My name's Ella. I did a PhD in stem cell biology, so obviously I'll be teaching you the history of fan fiction. Class meets every other Thursday on maximum fun. So do I still get credit for this? No. Obviously not. No. It's a podcast. And we are back.

All right. It's time for one more thing. Maddie, take us away. All right. So I got to play the Hades 2 technical test. This was an interesting thing that Super Giant Games decided to do this time around. As listeners may know, when Hades 1 launched, it launched in Early Access. It was in Early Access for two years. And then it had a big, splashy actual launch. Two years really, wow. It was in early access for so long.

And then it became mega popular. We talked about it a ton on this show. So, Hades 2, much anticipated, continuing story in the same world of Greek mythology and beautiful characters who all flirt with each other. You're playing as the protagonist from the previous game, his sister, Melanue. But there's so much more scrutiny on this game. So I was really curious, like, how is this going to go? And I'm pleased to say I really enjoyed the heck out of this technical test.

And I'm so pumped for Hades 2. Awesome. I also have kind of like weird feelings about the fact that I'm going to play it in early access. And I'm like, but I just want to play like the finished game. Like at what point am I going to hit the end? And I did run into that with this technical test, which was really short. Like it was really just like up to the first boss. And then the test itself would end by being like, you cannot continue for this is only a test,

which was really cute way that they did it. And it would kick me back. And I was like, I just want more. I want more. So just in a grand way, I'm very curious how this is going to go for Hades 2 with the player base and their expectations. But I really, really love this game. And I'll say just kind of a big thing that's different is that Melanoe is a witch. She has magic powers.

So she has this whole different set of abilities that her brother didn't have. And she also gets to communicate with these sort of witchy characters like the moon goddess, who isn't part of the Greek pantheon, but can also kind of secretly give Melanoe these other powers that the gods don't necessarily have access to. So you're kind of playing as this, like, sort of different sneaky character who is doing things that the pantheon of gods

isn't always aware of. Now, I don't know what the plot of this game is in full, but I really like this premise of you kind of having this other pantheon that you're seemingly communicating with and, like, this other situation in terms of your ability, that Zagrius didn't have.

And you also don't really see Zagrius and Persephone and Hades in this game. They're just not there. Like the game isn't really about them. I won't spoil the premise or why that is. I'll just let people enjoy it when they play it. But I thought that was really interesting too. Like it's really a game about this other character and her different situation. She's not battling through the underworld.

She's battling through this other different scenario. and I thought that was really cool. I was curious how they were going to change it, but I really, really love it so far, and I'm so freaking excited and I love all the character designs and I'm just like, I'm back in it now. I'm like, yes, yes, one more run,

not going to bet on time. It was all back for me. Oh, that's exciting. That is exciting. I feel like even if I don't play that much early access, I'll probably just go back and play more Hades because there's still a lot of stuff in Hades that I haven't done.

It made me want to do that too. Because I was like, I feel like I didn't see everything. There's a bunch of weapons I never beat it with. Yeah. I can still go. I would just go play it again, honestly, because it's been a while. That's very exciting.

I'm sure. So the three of us will probably, we'll probably play it when it's in early access and talk about it in depth of the show. It'll be hard to resist. Of course, when it comes out for real, we'll be doing a full deep dive. Yeah. And I'm curious how long it'll be before it comes out, quote unquote, for real. I guess we'll find out. Yeah.

Hopefully not two years. But early access is going to launch real soon, right? That's the plan. Supposedly. that like they said that after the technical test. Yeah, after they're done with the technical test. So hopefully things are going great over there. Awesome, very exciting.

Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a tabletop game I played called Fiasco. That was a whole lot of fun. And I wanted to tell listeners about it. So you're saying it wasn't. The game itself is not a fiasco, but it does allow you to create and role play fiascos. That is the whole premise. Okay.

So a little while back I talked about a game called Our Last Best Time. Hope, which was a tabletop game, a one-shot GM-less tabletop role-playing game that I played with some friends. And this Fiasco is kind of similar. Another friend of mine recommended it after hearing me talk about Our Last Best Hope and was like, well, you know, Fiasco is kind of the er one of those, the best known one. And my friend Sam, who's usually our GM in Dungeons and Dragons, was like, oh, yeah, I know Fiasco, I've been meaning to buy it.

So he just went and bought it and we played it. So Fiasco is played with cards now. It was originally released in 2009, and it used index cards and dice very similar to our last best hope, which was a fairly complicated game, and I would say that's my biggest criticism of that one, of our last best hope, was that there were enough dice and enough rules that it kind of slowed us down in our storytelling. And there were just a lot of times where we were like, wait a minute, are we supposed to be moving this dice here, or here, or like, what just happened, which part of the story are we in? And that kind of, you know, made it harder to just tell a fun story together.

The new version of fiasco, which was released in 2019, just uses cards. and it's very easy to play and incredibly fun. So this game is designed primarily by a guy named Jason Morningstar, who also wrote a number of the campaigns. And each campaign is a little deck of cards, and then there's kind of a master deck that you use for the mechanics of it. So it comes with three different settings and campaigns, and that's kind of a deck,

and then you can buy a whole bunch more if you like it. You play with up to, I think, five people, though I could see it working with a lot more than that if everyone was just kind of playing minor characters and just goofing around. It's really like a very open, open-ended storytelling game, and it's really fun if the people you're playing with are kind of down to role-play and just be really loose with it.

We played in a couple hours. I played with two of my friends, and the whole thing took a few hours. It was no huge commitment, which makes it a lot more fun, at least, in some ways, to role-play, because you can just have horrible things happen. It doesn't really matter because you're going to end the story. And the idea is that each story is supposed to be a, kind of Cohen Brothers disaster, like a heist or an attempted crime or, I don't know, just anything, like just some sort of scenario that just goes totally wrong and falls apart. And it's kind of

built around two acts and then an epilogue. So each of you is a character. You draw cards to define the relationships between your characters and then, you know, some like items and other things that are in the world. And you kind of come up with a premise among yourselves. And then you just play out scenes with one or more characters where you kind of decide, does this scene have a positive outcome or a negative outcome? So it's just like a bunch of cards that are kind of frameworking you as you tell a story. Our setting was at a mall, so it wound up being at a mall in the 90s. And my friend Will and I both worked at the security station together, and I was his boss, and we were in love with the same girl. But then my friend Sam, he and I were older friends,

and he worked somewhere else, like at the Jamba Juice or whatever, and we had just stolen a bike and had been, we're trying to sell it because, like, it's worth a lot of money. So it's stranger things in the 90s. Well, there was no supernatural element and there was no drama, really. It was much more of a kind of Cohen Brothers crime farce where we're trying to get away with selling this bike while the head of the mall is, like, trying to hunt us down. And we wound up totally, like, it turns into this sting operation that goes horribly wrong, and we wound up burning the mall down. And it's all built to kind of just give you these great suggestions. Like each card just says something along the lines of, you know, even if it just gives you a name, like Big Dan, like you can just all the cards have names on the other side. So you just use those to come up with NPC names. And it's like, all right, well, here's like Big Dan. He's the actual like out of the mall and he's here to, you know, check in. And here's this lady and that person. And, you know, so we just kind of made up a story. It was a collaborative storytelling experience. It was extremely fun. I really like, I want to play it again. I want to get expansion cards. We want to kind of bring our spouses, even though that would be six. I think we could just.

you know, people who maybe don't want to play a character could still be an NPC sometimes. And be like riffing with the group at least. Yeah, I guess not an NPC but a minor character. Yeah, and like riff or you can just, there's a lot of sort of, you know, one person will decide the setting for the scene and will begin playing it out

and the other two people have to decide how it resolves. And then I could just see a big group having fun where like everyone's like, no, here's what should happen. And then you're like, okay, that's what happens. And then you kind of go from there. So it's called fiasco. It's super, super fun. I'm sure a lot of folks there know it

because I think it's pretty well known, but I had never played it, and I loved it, and I really recommend it. That sounds good to you. It does. Cool. Sounds fun. All right. Rapping things up, I watched the show called Girls Five Eva, with my wife, who, my wife was

really into it before. I didn't know what you were waiting five. I'm glad you finally went. Yeah, I was waiting five. That line makes me laugh every single time they sing it. It's so funny. What are you waiting? Yeah, the intro song is really good.

So Amanda had been really into it, and then Kirk, you recommended it on the show. So I was like, right, I'll watch it all. And she wanted to rewatch it. So it was very enjoyable. We just finished the second season, so we haven't watched the new one. That's where we are, too, actually. Wow, I've finished. Yeah, really enjoyable show.

A couple of thoughts. A couple of thoughts. One is that you mentioned last time, Kirk, that Renee, Elise Goldberry, like, steals a show. And that's true in some ways. But I was actually surprised at how much I've enjoyed Sarah Borella's character. Yeah, she's great. Because her voice is just ridiculous. I know, it's amazing.

Really, I had no idea that she was so good. Oh, yeah, man. She's amazing. In the past. There's, like, the line in the show where she's like, I'm not going to write you a love song. Yeah, that's her famous song. I think Wiki says that.

But, yeah. The thing that really surprised me the most, I suppose, and that I'm surprised is not used as more of a selling point for the show, is that it's 30 rock. It is like 100% the new, like, talk about nostalgia. That's how I described it. Jeff Richmond and like, yeah, everything about it. Yeah, it's a lot of the same creative team.

Yes, and it's, the feeling is exactly, I mean, uh, uh, Sarah Borellis is Liz Lemon. She's so similar to Liz Lemon. It's actually a little like uncanny almost. It is uncanny. Well, it's not uncanny when you realize it's the same creative team. Well, the people who wrote Liz Lemon are writing. Right.

It's the same. It's just the same archetype for the character. But also the cutaways and the, um, with more. music. It's 30 Rock with more music. But I hadn't realized going into it how similar it was going to be to 30 Rock. And I feel like they should have used that. If Netflix wants more people to watch this thing, they should use that as a selling point because it's like this essentially is similar to Kimmy Schmidt too. I mean, Jeff Richman's music is a huge part of that. Like he really just, he is the aesthetic of those shows in a lot of ways. But yeah, I mean, uh, great. I mean, really enjoying

it, except for Busy Phillips, who every time she talks in that accent, just like grates on me so much. Her dynamic, I mean, Andrew Reynolds, who plays her boyfriend, is phenomenal. And in Book of Mormon, he, like, he blew me away. He's the one who I'm like, I can't stand the same. But it's his character. He's phenomenal as an actor. In the show, I can't stand him. And the two of them together are just the worst.

Like, I can't watch them. And it's kind of like a blemish on an otherwise incredible show. But no, Andrew Reynolds, what I was saying is that as an actor and a singer, like, in Book of Mormon, he was just, like, blew this, like, my sots off. amazing singer on this show. I believe, man. His performance of I believe. And Bissy Phillips, I mean, I always remember Bizzy Phillips being kind of grading and freaks of geeks and stuff. So it's not like she's my favorite actress, but in this, her voice is just, and I know she's supposed to be ditsy and dumb or whatever, but like the character, I think, is just not good. She's kind of

a weak point on an otherwise incredible ensemble because the other three girls and even Ashley, the dead one, they're all great in so many ways. The dead one played by Ashley Park. I was really sad that she didn't. I just want her to come back. I'm like, I want Ashley Park to go back. I don't see how they could bring her back. I thought she was going to.

I know. They really make you think she might. And I'm still holding out hope. Like an AI hologram of her or whatever. The joke that I love from the show, probably the running joke that I love the most is that Don, Sarah Barales's character, is their songwriter. And so she writes all the songs.

And of course, Sarah Barallis is herself a great song. writer, but it's so funny how every single song that Dawn writes is whatever she's feeling right now. And every song is always just like whatever is currently her issue. Yeah, it's hilarious. It's so funny. I love that joke in particular. Very good music.

There are so many bad songs that then when there's an occasional, like intentionally hilariously bad songs, and then when there's a good song, like Dean and I would turn to get each other and be like, oh, this one's actually really, really good. And then like the characters on the show will be like, that's actually good. It's great. They really like reinforce how you, the listener, are feeling about how silly the songs are. It really works. The one thing, one last thought is that the one thing that this show and also 30 Rock just did incredibly well is that they were both kind of like workplace comedies, so to speak, where the workplace itself was really effective.

So in 30 Rock, they wrote a comedy show that was actually really funny. And in this, they're writing this girl group that is actually really like fun to listen to in a lot of different ways. And I think that like, I was thinking about that. because there was always that comparison between 30 Rock and Aaron Sorkin's late night show, Studio 60, and how the reason of that kind of flopped and failed was because he couldn't write a comedy show. And so the comedy show was just bad. You don't think like a Peritz of Penzance parody would have killed on Late Night? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, he always has his musical theater nerd stuff. And then similarly with Sorkin's like the newsroom, one of the problems with that show is that it was like, especially in the first season of that show, the office drama story was we're going to make this amazing news show. But then when you watch it, it's just him doing a daily show impression where he's like, look, this guy in the tea party said this awful thing. And it's just kind of like a stupid actual news show. So it's cool to see shows that actually get the kind of the workplace part of the workplace comedy.

They do it right as opposed to just having the office drama be good, which the newsroom for all of its flaws was good at having the banter of the office and the relationships and stuff, except for those two, like, what are the names, Maggie and Jim? You definitely watch more of the newsroom than I did. I can't help you there. Oh, yeah. I've always teased out on that show on the episodes. I only know it from the memes. The newsroom, the second season, I will defend that second season, like 100%. The second season in the newsroom is good television.

Except for there's one episode where Maggie goes to Africa and that one you have to skip, but the rest of it is really. Jason's going to issue his newsroom skip list later. So watch out for that. Well, I really like the West Wing. So like the newsroom, I just kind of, I enjoy Sorkin banter. I just enjoy watching his stuff in general, even when it's like a hate watch. You see the trial of the Chicago? Yeah, yeah, I love that movie.

And Molly's game was really good. I liked Molly's game. Not to go to super digress, but the newsroom would be a fun show for us to watch and talk about. Oh, my God. Why would we do that? It actually would be. It would be. It's so fun.

Okay, Maddie, I will say, so the second season, the reason it's good is because it's all about them fucking up a story. And so it's really fun to watch it unfold. So like the beginning of it, it's all, it's in media res, in media's res with them talking to lawyers. And the lawyers are like, how did you screw this up? Right. And then they walk through how they screwed it up. And it's very fun to watch it unfold. There are a few kind of like plot holes here and there.

But I think you guys would enjoy. watching that second season. I would probably enjoy it if it's like semi-accurate to that experience. Yeah, yeah, it is. Well, you can watch it. You actually, the takeaway at the end of it is like, wow, I can see why they ran this story. Like, it was kind of this confluence of like bad information that led to them running this,

this crazy story that accused the U.S. government of war crimes totally, um, erroneously. Yeah. Was totally wrong. Yeah. Interesting. Anyway, I digress. All right.

Girls 5 have a cool show. That is it for this week's episode. Kirk, Mani, I'll see you both next week. Yep, see you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ.

Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly. By you. But bum, bum. Test, test, test. Okay. Recording. Are we ready to clap? We do it?

Jason seems busy. Jason's got stuff going on. It's funny you say Jason seems busy because what I was doing was Googling busy Phillips. Ah, Jason seems. Jason seems busy coded right now. Googling busy Phillips annoying? Question mark. Hold on.

Kirk check Discord before we get started. This is your Google page. It says busy Phillips annoying. Oh, you literally Googled that? that's what I was Googling when you said I look busy. That's really funny. So you actually, I predicted your exact Google. On the nose.

All right, shall we? Nailed it. And you know you've been making a podcast with someone for a long time when you can guess their exact Google. But you can guess at Google habits. Yeah, okay. Let's clap. Are ready to clap?

Yep.