Triple Click - Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, And Other 'Edutainment'

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

(Rockapella voice) Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? This week, the Triple Click gang straps on their magnifying glasses and tries to track down the infamous criminal as well as other "edutainment" games, from Oregon Trail to Number Munchers. What made those old games so special? Can "educational" games ever really work? And what's up with all that dysentery?One More Thing: Kirk: Social MediaMaddy: Dante’s Inferno (2010)Jason: The West WingLinks:Excerpts From: “Isle Thing” by Weird Al Yankovich from UHF, 1989; “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” by Rockapella, 1991; “Theme from The West Wing” by W.G. Snuffy Walden, 1999Box Art for Where In The World, Where in the USA, and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?The LGR Retrospective review of Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego (1989) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ln64lo9l5gJason on the Get Played podcast talking about Mario is Missing: https://www.earwolf.com/episode/super-mayrio-mario-is-missing-with-jason-schreier/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin 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

Video games have taught me so many things like history, music, math. But more than anything else, they've taught me not to turn my device off while the game is saving. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the learning to you. That's right. This week we're talking about edutainment games from the boom times of the 1990s to the more complex, but arguably even more educational games of today. Classes in session, and there will be a test. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shire.

Hello. Hello. Hey. It's us again. It's the three of us again. Wow. Deja vu. Yeah, this feels like we've done this before.

Really making a habit out of this thing. It does a time loop where we have to record a podcast every single week. Every single week. But it's always a little different. Just a little bit. It's a little different. Yeah, we keep changing it around. Seeing if people notice or not, if what we change this time, it's kind of like a spot the differences game.

Right. One of these days we'll escape the loop. Seeing if people notice that we make the same jokes. every week. They haven't yet, so far. I guess. Nobody's pointed out that we made the same jokes every week. That's true.

Though we do, so we do the same thing every week at the beginning here, where we say that we are a listener-supported podcast. And if you like Triple Click, you can support our show. And you can also support our lovely network maximum fun, which we're very proud to be a part of. We're in our third year now on Maximum Fun. and also the third year since we started our show. Maybe that's a coincidence.

Maybe that. There's no way to know. We love being a Maximum Fun podcast, and we love all of the members who support our show. And if you want to count your name among them, go to Maximumfund.org slash join. And if you become a member, you will get access to bonus episodes that we record.

We do one every month. We have done one every month since we started our show. So we're in the 20s now. There are dozens, literal dozens of bonus episodes that you could listen to. And the one that we're recording for this month, we're going to be doing it right at the end of the month. And it's going to be a check-in on Marvel,

on Marvel TV shows and movies, the Marvel Expanded Universe. I suppose it's still the cinematic universe, even though a lot of it's happening on TV. And there's going to be a big Comic-Con announcement, so we'll probably talk some about that. So we're kind of taking the temperature of Marvel. It'll just be an hour of us,

just live recapping whatever Kevin Feigy has to say on the stage. We're not even really going to get to Moon Night, I don't think. We're just going to be talking outfits, talking red carpet. No. What kind of hat he wore? We'll talk about Miss Marvel. It'll be good. It'll be good.

That'll be a lot of fun. And we are also, this is also a little bit of a scheduling announcement. We're going to be off next week. And instead of a regular episode, we're going to run an older bonus episode. So if you're not a member, you're going to get a taste of what those bonus episodes can be like in the feed next week. So again, that's maximum fund.org slash join. Become a member. support our show, get free podcast episodes.

Now, I hear that Jason has a correction or clarification he would like to make. Jason, what are we talking about here? Yeah, so at the beginning of last week's episode, we were talking about Gilligan's Island. I don't remember why. I have no idea how that came up. But we were surprised that it ended after only three seasons, and we were talking about how, like, they should do a serenity style thing. Turns out, as a few listeners have wondered out, they did a serenity style, like,

Way before Serenity, right? It's called, oh yeah, of course. So really, we shouldn't be calling it a Serenity-style thing. Just we ripped off Gilligan's Island. Yes, I'm only bringing that up because that's the point that you guys brought up. I also mentioned the Deadwood movie. Maybe a more successful example. Rescue from Gilligan's Island is a 1978 comedy film that continues the adventures of the shipwrecked race castaways.

Kind of a spoiler in the title there. Yeah. Well, I guess they're trying to. or just make everybody feel better? Like that would be why you even go. What if you went to the movie and they didn't make it off? That would be wild. They all die.

Wow. So yes, so they do, and then there's a flash forward episode where Gilligan is like, we have to go back. We have to go back. It's an important correction. So, you know, I mentioned that I've never really watched Gilligan's Island, but I was aware of the plot and the story of Gilligan's Island. And the reason for that is because of the Weird Al-Yankovic parody song,

Isle Thing, which was sung to the melody of Tone Lokes Wild Thing. And it was about how he was dating a woman and she loved that Gilligan's Isle thing. And then he recaps the plot of the whole show while kind of rapping. And that's how I knew about Gilligan's Island when I was a kid.

I liked the professor. He always saved their butts. He could build a nuclear reactor from a couple of coconuts. She said that guy's a genius. I shook my head and laughed. I said if he's so fly, then tell me why he I watched episodes of it.

That was how I went about it at my grandma's house, because as everyone knows, no TV at my house. And we're going to get into that this week because it's related to this week's topic, which is something that was allowed in my household, edutainment games. Can I just say, I love the word enjutainment? It's great. It's a pretty good word. It's a pretty good word. It has stood the test of time.

Is that a neologism, a portmanteau? I think it's a portmanteau. It's a portmanteau. It's a portmanteau. A combination of education and entertainment, which I think I only ever here applied to the word games. But I guess there's also edutainment television shows, movies, etc. Anyway, I had many experiences with edutainment games. As a kid, I talked about Amazon Trail pretty recently on this show,

as part of what inspired this hot topic. But that wasn't my favorite edutainment game. I'll get to that in a minute. First, I want to hear from you, too, about what your favorite was. Jason, why don't you go first? Oh, man, I'm so excited. I loved edutainment games back in the day, even though I didn't, part of the fun of them is you don't really realize their edutainment games. If they're fun, then yes. I have a very quick story before I talk about my favorite. So I used to love this game called Sid Meyers Colonization, which was this kind of, of like Revolutionary War, U.S. expansion, settlers, a spinoff of civilization.

And that is absolutely not an entertainment game. But at some point in second grade, I have this very strong memory. It was either second or third grade of we had to like bring in something, some sort of like media that taught us something about history. My assignment was to find something about Thomas Jefferson. And in colonization, you get to kind of like randomly recruit the founding fathers, like this group of like 50 luminaries to your cause. Wow.

And so every so often, you basically you fill up a bar of Liberty Bells and you fill that bar over time like in the way it's a turn-based strategy game, right? So you fill it up over time. And so it could take like 20 turns, but you fill one up. And then you get to recruit from one of five random founding fathers,

they're called. And it's just a bunch of historical figures and one of those Thomas Jefferson. So I brought this in and I'm playing the game in front of our entire class being like, oh, we're going to get to Thomas Jefferson soon. Except because it's random. you might not get to Thomas Jefferson for like hours and hours of playing.

So I was just sitting there playing this game. I managed to waste the entire class period just playing this game without ever getting to Thomas Jefferson. The teacher was like, wow, okay, that was really important to listen to that. I'm just sitting there playing this game in front of the entire class. I'm picturing you, you're kind of sweating. You're like, I mean, he's going to turn up. He's going to be here any second, guys. It was so funny in retrospect.

I think I was a little embarrassed at the time. Did you get like a check minus on that assignment? because Thomas Jefferson wasn't featured in the game? I'm sure I did. I'm sure I did. But anyway, to actually answer your question, my favorite entertainment game as a child was, I had a few Treasure Mountain was one of them,

Mathlusters was one of them, but my favorite was definitely Oregon Trail. And in fact, which is obviously the classic. And in fact, I actually replayed a little bit of the original Oregon Trail this week to prepare for this episode. And it's quite a game. It's quite a fascinating game. For those people who are not familiar,

It is this kind of, so there was actually a text-based version of Oregon Trail in 1971, but the one that we all think about that most people grew up with was 1985, which was introduced graphics to the equation. It wasn't just text. But basically the concept is you are a settler heading west to go and find gold in the great gold rush of the, what was it, the 17th century? Yeah, 17th century. And no, 19th century. 19th century. Wow, you learned nothing from Oregon. This is the first of, I think, many, many times we'll demonstrate how little we learn from these things.

I did the thing where I reversed the numbers. I was like, I know 1800s are either 17th or 19th century, and I reversed it. But anyway, 19th century, you're heading west. You're on this precarious trail full of rivers and deer and dysentery. On a wagon train. You're on a covered wagon. You're on the wagon train with your family, and you have to survive and collect as many points as possible at the end by hopefully surviving the journey. And you have to hunt for food and you have to cock your wagon.

to cross rivers. Oh my God, there's so many rivers. Well, you know, fording the wagon always screws you while cocking the wagon always is always the way to go. Anyway, it wasn't really, there was absolutely nothing educational about the game, but for some reason it was entertaining. I don't know. I guess there was some historical facts in there. You could like, when you got to landmark, so you could like click the option to like read about what the landmark was, but you didn't even have to. It was all optional. It sort of raises the question of what you're supposed to be learning. Like in terms of raw history facts, bolded words from the history textbook, it probably didn't do a great job of teaching those. But it's certainly taught a lot

of logistics and travel and sort of realities of that time period and travel in that time period. And that, I mean, that sticks with you. You know, you could die of dysentery. Yeah, you could die of any number of diseases. Yeah, it allowed you to feel the precarity. It allowed you to feel how danger it was to actually go on the Oregon Trail. So that, that, I guess, is a useful lesson. Although it also taught me that if you just rest for a few days, you can cure actually any disease. That's true. And I think that's true. Yeah. And I refuse to hear otherwise. Kirk, what was your favorite edutainment game? My favorite edutainment game is a very famous one that a lot of listeners will know. And it's, well, it's a series that's now called Carmen San Diego. And the

original game in this series was where in the world is Carmen San Diego. Can you play the music? Can you play the Rockefeller? Well, so that's from the TV show. I should be clear. That that is... Every time I hear the name, you've got to think of the music. One, two, three. Who thinks about the world?

So the music you're hearing right now is Rockapella. Wonderful theme song from The Where in the World is Carmen Sien Diego television show, which was made after the games became popular. But my favorite of all of the games, games was the 1989 game. I believe this was the fifth game in the series. Where in time is Carmen San Diego? Oh yeah. Classic. This is a classic and I believe the most successful one. And I liked a lot of things about it. I actually watched this wonderful video from a YouTube channel called LGR. That was sort of a review retrospective on this game just to take myself back to playing it.

And there are a lot of things that I loved about it that I'll get into. But the first thing I want to talk about is the cover art for these early games, for these early games. So I'm going to send you to an image. Great. Love this. We're going to do a series of images. And I'll link these in the show notes. So Jason, your first. Can you describe the image that I just set you in G-chat? Yeah, there's like a big magnifying glass that is on top of what appears to be like a picture, a postcard. And then the postcard is on top of a passport, hinting that you have to go through the world to different countries. And the magnifying glass has a big picture, zoomed-in picture of Carmen San Diego on this picture. So you're like looking for her across the world.

Yeah. And it's crucially, I think crucially, it's real objects. And it's the kind of the desk of intrigue, which was something that I was really into as a kid. I almost wanted to make desks of intrigue where there's like a passport and a magnifying glass and like a hunting knife and, you know, like stuff that like the indicates. It's like a map with circles drawn on it. There's like a folded newspaper of some sort with Sri Lanka highlighted. Right, and Sri Lanka is highlighted. There's a key of like rusty key.

Got to have a key on your desk of injury. Is that a gun at the bottom? What is that? Or some type of metal. Handcuffs. Oh, handcuffs. Of course. Handcuffs.

You're chasing Carmen San Diego. And it's a real woman, a photo of a real woman. And it's, I think that these covers are so cool because of what they imply about the world of Carmen Siena. okay so here's another one. Maddie, you can describe this one. All right. Great. Okay. So this is the cover of Where in the USA is Carmen San Diego.

This is also a photograph. Don't know if they got the same actress back. We get a full body shot of her this time. She does look the same. So you are opening the door. I'm interpreting this hand on the door handle as you, the player. It's the shadow. The trench code.

Opening the door. to reveal that you've finally found Carmen San Diego in a dingy hotel room somewhere. A seedy motel. Yeah. In San Francisco it looks like. I see the Transamerica building out there. It does. It's a San Francisco motel.

And she has kind of an old-timey suitcase with like socks and a slip spilling out. And she's wearing her red dress and her big coat with I think a fur lining. I mean, it's not, this was not the red coat that we're all familiar with from the animated version. But the red dress, though, she is wearing a red dress. She's always stolen some precious artifacts if she has to hide it in that coat, right? Right, obviously. It's funny that she's stealing things while wearing a dress in high heels as opposed to like sort of a cat suit situation. But she's really just going around wearing a dress.

I feel like they kind of changed that for some of the animated versions later. They try to give her some more practical outfits. She's a much more of a cat burglar. But she looks much more like a film noir femme fatale here rather than a cat burglar. Kind of, yeah, more of a mastermind than a cat burglary. Okay, and here's the last one, and this is my favorite game. This is the one that I played a whole bunch of. And I'll describe this one because it's the best ever, but I send it to both the music and they got it.

This is where there is a sort of collection of Renaissance era or like, I guess kind of Renaissance era people with their frilly coats and their hats. And there's like a guy who looks like he's maybe associated with the church. There's another night with like a rapier. They're all with the mustaches and the hats and the big poofy dresses. They all look completely shocked. And the object of their fascination is Carmen San Diego in her red jacket. Now she's in a red coat sitting on a floating time machine that is labeled the Vile 2000.

I believe it says time transporter. And she's like floating in the air. And they're all like chasing her as she makes off with what looks like some sort of crown. So she is fully pulling off a heist in a time machine on this one. And then I am actually going to send one more thing because I want to talk about it as well. And I think you will enjoy it. This is the entire rest of the show, by the way. It's just talking about.

It's just different covers. And it is, Jason, what is this image? Where in North Dakota is Carmen San Diego? That is so funny. I didn't realize they got this granular. So they did once. So, okay. This wasn't successful enough to justify all nifty 50-50 United States.

At some point, by the last. way you have to explain how this game actually plays. I will. Now we've talked about it. Well, this is the magic of this game, I think, is in the cover art and in all of the cool stuff that came with it and the way that it made you feel like you were an investigator. So these are largely geography and then in the time series historical learning games where you learn different facts about different places around the world or the USA or in time

or North Dakota, you know, depending on what the game is trying to teach you. Carmen Sien Diego is a master thief. She has a team of bandits. So you start with the low-level crooks who work for her and her organization VIL-V-I-L-E. They all have amazing names. I was looking at the names in Weren Time. There are names like Lynn Guini or Sharon Share-A-like or mini-series. And on and on and on.

There are so many. Mini-series. Yes. And don't forget, no-smo King. Wow. Which is really Nazmo King, I guess, and I don't know if Nasmo's name. Anyhow, you're always chasing one of these people, and you have to, at least in time, you have to kind of figure out through clues that you get at a location where the person

you're chasing has gone next and also who they are, because each member of the Rokes Gallery has a unique, like, you know, male likes French authors, a fan of this type of cinema. So there will be other types of learning as well. Like, they'll be like, they like this author, and it's a French author. and you just have to know who that is. Though they also always come with some sort of attached, like, book or guide. The first one came with a World Almanac. I'll never forget that Wherein Time came with a desk encyclopedia,

which was this full book that comes out of the box. And you have to use that. It has all the information that you're going to need to play the game. And there's also some copy protection. At one point, you have to, like, look up, you know, on page 450, what's the third word from the top of the page, just to make sure you're not stealing the game. So these games are great.

I played Ware in Time most of all And that's probably the most famous one It was remade as a point and click adventure game This became like a whole huge franchise And it's emblematic of the peak of the edutainment era They were made by Broder Bund Which was then bought by what's the name of the learning company Who bought Broder Bund, the makers of this game

Very successful games Of course culturally impactful Like we made a TV show There's a board game There were multiple TV shows There was a Where in Time TV show this whole era, like all through the 90s. Carmen San Diego was very hot.

And there's even like a Netflix animated series now. This is still sort of the thing. It's pretty good. And just to say where that North Dakota came from, there was a aborted initiative to do one for every state. So basically, before Sifjan Stevens tried to do this, Broderbunt

tried to do this. And they found the same thing where they did one state. And then they were like, I don't know, this is maybe a little too granular. And I'm going to read a funny sentence from the Wikipedia summary about that game, and it is, the game sold around 5,000 copies, but its popularity was contained within North Dakota. Okay, that's interesting. Wouldn't I guess that would have happened.

So I loved these games. I've played a lot of We're in Time, and yeah, it's definitely my favorite. Are you familiar with the Nintendo version of this, aka Mario is Missing? Well, I know there is also a Super Nintendo version of We're in Time, but... But Mario is missing is the kind of... I've never played it, no. It is one of the worst games of all time. I actually played it.

We did it. I did it with, for the podcast formerly known as how did this get played. Now they're just called Get Played. And it was atrocious. I made him play the game. But I remember it as a kid too. But anyway,

it's basically you go around and find historical artifacts by like jumping on Kupas. And instead of actually learning things, you just have to kind of jump on Kupas in like a terrible version of Super Mario World. It's pretty silly. As opposed to Carmen San Diego, where they have these, like, really interesting riddles that you'd have to solve and you'd have to piece together puzzles to try to get to each place. Like, you'd have to find the clues. And I remember it being enjoyable. I don't know how well it's aged, but I remember at the time when I was a kid, it was enjoyable.

Yeah. I remember thinking the TV show was also really cool, like all the clues and everything, plus the fact that there were kid contestants. Yeah, they had this amazing chief played by an actress named Lynn Figpen who was like, who always had these. ridiculous things to say. She's hilarious. Just like deadpan constantly incredible. Yeah. The magnifying glass over her. The magnifying glass. Yeah, hey gum shoes. Yeah, talking to the group of kids. Which is a word I never heard in my life before that show. And then was like, okay,

gum shoe means detective, I guess. And then rockapella, that rockabella song had no right to be as hard. Yeah. And they did all the sound effects. They were great. That was like the whole era of Carmen San Diego. there was, this is related to my pick. There was actually like a legit edutainment boom in the 90s and the learning company acquired a lot of these companies. Like they acquired the Carmen San Diego company like Kirk said, but they also required this other company MECC that made Oregon Trail, which Jason mentioned. And MECC also made number munchers, which is my pick.

And learning company was like buying up all these companies in the mid-90s and became more powerful than ever. like harmonics in the era of rock band and then had a mighty fall that I read a couple articles about, but apparently a Mattel acquired it and just completely squandered the acquisition and lost a boatload of money. And I don't fully get why, but apparently it was such a poorly done acquisition that it's like used in business classes as examples of what not to do when you have an acquisition of a company that's like wildly overperforming and you're not sure how to invest next. So if people are economists, they can understand. understand how badly Mattel screwed this up, which is part of why now, even today when I was like looking up, what are the best edutainment games? You will still find Oregon Trail, Carmen

San Diego, and like endless remakes and ports. And even number munchers and math blaster, like all these games are still popular now because this was the time period when people were innovating in this area. It's not to say there's no new edutainment games, but a lot of these classics are still considered really cool. So number munchers, best game of all time. I, played this game endlessly at the computer lab in my elementary school and I was not good at math and I didn't like math.

So I really can't explain why I thought number munchers was the coolest thing ever. But it's entirely, it's kind of like Pac-Man, but instead of eating power pellets, you have to eat certain numbers. Math Blaster sort of operates in a similar way where you have to shoot at certain numbers,

as I recall. But in number munchers, you're just sort of walking around this grid as the number muncher, the green guy who eats numbers, and you're avoiding trolls, sort of like the Pac-Man ghosts, that move at different speeds and can kill you on contact. But there's no power pellet. All you can ever do is avoid the trolls and eat the correct numbers as fast as possible. And I played it this week just for fun and it still owns. And the best part of it is that every few levels, there are these little cutscenes where the number muncher will be playing pranks on the trolls.

and they have nothing to do with anything, but they just sort of suppose this reality where in the number buncher monster just creates elaborate Rube Goldberg machines that trap trolls, and I don't really know why that's a thing. But my elementary school, and I don't know why, they were all obsessed with the primes level, where you had to memorize every prime number

and only eat prime numbers. And if you ate a non-prime, game over. So you just had to know all the prime numbers. I don't know why we thought that was the coolest thing ever, but everybody thought that was the best and that all the other levels were boring. And I tweeted about this and people were suggesting that perhaps it's because the other levels require knowing actual math, whereas Primes is merely memorization. But knowing factors of 16, for example, or knowing, you know, multipliers of five and you just eat 25, you eat. 20, et cetera, et cetera. You do have to actually know your time tables

in order to defeat those levels. But for primes, you just got to memorize all the primes. And prime numbers are cool. Kids love primes. Maddie, do you think that this game helps prepare you for your future career by teaching you how to avoid trolls? Yeah, it did.

It definitely did. Maybe that's why I liked it so much. I don't know if I can explain why. I think it was the same sensation that Pac-Man also provides, because I did later like Pac-Man on the Game Boy a lot, which is just you try to do the correct thing as fast as possible while avoiding little sprites that appear in certain places on the screen.

Again, no math was learned. And I guess we can get into that next, which is just kind of, have you ever had an experience where you felt like you actually learned something for one of these games? And I don't know if I ever have other than typing games. It's interesting because I feel like the best learning happens at least for me, speaking personally, I guess,

the best learning has happened when I didn't think that I was learning or like when I wasn't playing a game to learn. So like whether it was like learning how to read from like playing text-based games and RPGs and stuff or learning how to type from playing online muds as a kid, which really taught me how to type fast. Or like, I don't know, learning history from like an Assassin's Green game or something. Like I think that the best education and maybe this is, is part of the downfall of entertainment and why, as you pointed out, Oregon Trail and all these other games are still considered the height of the form, I think the best education comes when you're not even realizing that you're learning because you don't have to actively think and be like, oh, I'm learning, I'm doing homework now.

I think that's true, though. I'm not sure if I totally frame it that way only because I don't think you have to trick kids into learning. I think you can learn just like it's all on how the information is presented to you I think that actually Hamilton is a great example of edutainment because Hamilton actually teaches a lot obviously it's a musical it changes some things about history but I didn't know anything about Alexander Hamilton and now I really do know a lot about him and it's not just because I went and learned about him after watching that musical you you kind of watch that show and if you get into it or you learn it or you see it you get a sense of like who he was and you see all these people and it's a story that you're kind of involved in,

that you're watching. Obviously, it's not a game, but it's not that different from Assassin's Creed. Assassin's Creed Origins is a great example of a game where you're interacting with, you know, these different famous figures from that period of time. Or Assassin's Creed 3. Kirk, I just want to point out that in Hamilton, there's a line that says Martha Washington named her Tomcat after Hamilton, and then Hamilton, Lynn Manuel, chimes in to say that's true.

And it turns out that it's not true. So actually, Hamilton does that teach you true facts. Thanks, Cinemasons. Also, it turns out that none of them were actually people of color. It turns out they were all white and owned slaves. I don't know. Just learn this. That's true.

Some significant distortions, I suppose. But you will learn the names of these people, which is more than I think a lot of people can do. If you play a game like Crusader Kings, you'll learn the locations of nations. in Europe. You'll learn some things about European history, even though that is a video game that's distorting things. If you play Assassin's Creed 3, you'll be present at major moments in American history,

and you'll see us at times very interesting perspective on those moments. And again, because you're walking around and talking to George Washington and doing quests for him, and he's like an actual part of the story that you're playing, I think that that gives it a little more stickiness than something like Carmen San Diego, as much as I love it, a lot of the history and the, I guess, geography and whatever that's taught in Carmen San Diego, it's sort of held in the compartment of what's compelling about the game.

It's just like you open up your cool time travel thing and you travel to, you know, wherever Brazil, and you're in Brazil and it starts telling you some Brazilian history. And it just sort of says it on the screen. And at least when I was a kid, I would be like, okay, I don't know. I would kind of skim over it and go learn things if I needed to like catch the crook. but it wasn't like an integral part of the experience or of what made it fun. What made it fun was the feeling of, you know, being a gum shoe on an international manhunt and, you know, chasing down clues and all the little animations.

And the things they used to kind of trick me into learning, that was actually the main reason I was there, where if it had been like an integrated part of the story, I would have learned more. And I think that's true also like modern games like Minecraft is a good example, where you learn a lot of stuff playing Minecraft. It's just not setting out to teach it to you. It's just in the experience of playing it. Also learn what a gum shoe is.

Yeah. That's what's really important. That's the main thing I learned as a kid. Most people learned that from Phoenix, right? Yeah. To the Assassin's Creed tip, I also feel like I've learned a lot because as an adult playing Assassin's Creed, it is easy for me to Google everything that's happening in there and be like, what really happened in this scenario?

And as a kid, that was not an option for me. So if I was playing something that was showing me history like Oregon Trail or Amazon Trail, I had an encyclopedia Britannica and I even had one on CD-ROM, but that was about as far as that went. And that information was sadly limited. So I do feel like the times have changed aspect of it. Like to me, Googling something and going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole is almost like a game in and of itself or like a rewarding additional game on top of Assassin's Creed where I remember when I was playing the Vikings game, I talked about how one of the most fun parts of it. of it was looking up how accurate a lot of the depictions of the Vikings getting to England were and like how fun that was for me. But as a kid, I didn't necessarily have that. The example I included here was typing games because for me, that's just like learning the buttons of a fighting game or anything else. Like that's a form of learning that I actually think is perfectly suited for a game format. I can't think of a better way to learn how to type, honestly. than, you know, typing of the dead or maybe speak in if you're too young for a zombie game.

Or Mario teaches typing. Yeah, Mario teaches typing. We had that at my school. And you could play as Princess Peach and Mario teaches typing, which was a huge deal to me as a kid, the fact that you could play as a female character. So that almost like number munchers, I guess, was also teaching me wrote memorization, which I think may or may not have worked. Typing games did work because it's just, it's from A to B. You're learning the thing you're doing. And that works.

Right. You're learning a technical skill, which is also why I think music games like Guitar Smith and Rock Band. Yeah, Guitar Hero. I was thinking of the same thing. Yeah. Because Guitar Hero and Rock Band are great for teaching music appreciation. Like if you play Paul McCartney's bass lines in the Beatles Rock Band, you'll really hear his bass lines more and get a sense of them. But you're not really learning bass.

But then, of course, eventually Rock Band 3 was trying to really teach guitar. You could learn piano. And then Guitar Smith, a game that I've many times copped to the fact that I kind of maligned it when it first came out because I didn't like it. And I've now really come around on it and I've talked to a lot of people who've learned guitar from that game. It's a great way to learn just the basics of just having it. You know, it gives you a simplified version of whatever part you're trying to learn. Then you get a more complicated one. It can slow things down and speed things up.

It's just basic technical practice. The thing that doesn't teach you is how to play good music, like how to be musical. but that's kind of okay because typing of the dead doesn't teach you how to write well. It just teaches you how to type fast. It's good at the really direct technical skill, if not the sort of abstract, creative application of that technical skill. So, yeah, I think there's that kind of key difference between setting out to learn something and using the game for that versus playing entertainment as a kid.

I don't think a lot of kids are setting out to learn things. But yeah, but gamifying this education, I mean, I've been thinking about Wanikani, which is this great website that you can learn to use Japanese kanji that essentially gamifies it by turning it into this like flashcardi system where you have, you go on these hot streaks. And if you, to like pass new levels and unlock new kanji to learn, you have to get enough right in a row and they're spaced out. And it's a very smart, very smart gameified system.

And you even go through levels. level 20 in Wadi Kani. And that sort of thing I think is gamifying education, I think, can be really effective. It can. I was surprised, although maybe shouldn't have been how many times Duo Lingo appeared as a game suggestion

for edutainment. That's an interesting one. Although that is so, it's become so infested in microtransactions that it's hard to use. It's a real game now. It is a real game now. It is a game for learning languages. And I also think that it

doesn't work as well as speaking a language aloud, which is a whole other conversation we could have that's not entirely dissimilar to Kirk's point about music, but is also related to the technical skill of learning and how brains work and how memory works, especially conversation skills. That aspect of learning a language is very hard to put into a game. But it was interesting to me that so many people see Duolingo as an edutainment game, which might actually be a better way to think about what Duolingo is really providing you than to think of it as a language learning app that is definitely teaching you the language because there's so much gamification in it. And of course, also now microtransactions that is designed to keep you studying, but may or may not be helping

you learn or remember anything any better than you would if you studied in some other way. Right. I mean, games and video games in particular, they share so much in common with teaching that it's just such a natural fit for people to start thinking, well, how can we use these to actually teach something that's curriculum at our school? Because every game any of us has ever played has taught us,

and it's taught us in this like systematized way where they scaffold the amount of information you get and there are periodic tests, call them boss fights. And you know, it's like you can gauge how you're doing. Sometimes you're literally graded, you know, you play bayonetta and you're, You get a, well, I get an S rank. Yeah, you definitely get an S rank.

Sometimes the boss fights are literally quizzes, like when you fight a sphinx in a game called Monster Boy in Wonderland. Sure. Sorry, Wonderboy and Monsor. Or persona. In persona, you have to actually take quizzes at school. And you have to actually answer test questions. It's hard. I just had to bring up a random Sega Genesis game.

So every game is structured in this way. And as a result, it makes sense that you would just like think, oh, well, I can just apply this to a curriculum, and it'll work the same way. And I think as we're talking about, that does work well with really technical stuff, wrote memorization, and even more just technical skills like typing. And it's harder with stuff like the humanities, with history, or with communication skills. And like language is a great example where you can learn a lot of the practical stuff, but there needs to be some extra step where you learn how to have a conversation and how to actually do it just because your brain will kind of, it kind of needs that context as well to really

solidify what you've learned, which is certainly true of music, right? I mean, you can memorize scales all day, but if you sit down and actually play with people, that hour that you spent will be worth as much as like 10 hours of memorizing scales just because it'll lock all this stuff into place. And so it's kind of, it's interesting the way that, it's interesting how we learn, I guess, and how that's changed, especially with the internet. Jason and I was thinking about what you said, about how when these games came out, they were kind of self-contained. It's the reason that Carmen San Diego shipped with an encyclopedia, you would learn the thing and you'd learn it all right there. And now, because that's not necessary, because there are like literal

articles that are just, here's the true history behind Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and it's some person, like a historian, has written a whole thing explaining everything, and you can play the game and then go read that. You kind of don't need to play, you know, the Viking history edutainment game. You can just play the action-adventure game that sort of shows you a bunch of stuff. and gets you interested in the setting, and then go read the article and then read a book and maybe learn some other things. Like that seems like actually kind of a good way that video games help bolster learning, even if they're not like full-on curriculum, you know, classroom tools. Bing! Kirk here, as I edit the episode, I just wanted to mention something that we didn't get into in the episode,

but that some of you are probably scratching your heads wondering when we're going to talk about. And that is the Assassin's Creed educational versions, which they release these, you know, combat-free educational history tours where you could go through Assassin's Creed Valhalla or Assassin's Creed Origins, and you can learn more about the setting and the actual history. Those are really cool in theory. None of us have really played them, I don't think. So I've seen some criticism of them. I've seen some people saying they're cool.

We don't really know. But I want to at least mention them because they're relevant in this context. And we know about them. We just don't have a lot of experience with them. And I think that's why we didn't get into it. So if you were wondering about it, yeah, that's why we didn't mention it. Okay, back to the conversation. Bing!

Oh, wait, I'm still here. That was a pretty bad. being, okay, let's try this again. Back to the conversation. Bing! Yeah, as soon as I played God of War 2018, I bought a Norse mythology book and was like, man, this is so cool. I want to immerse myself in the setting for a while. Awesome book, by the way, Neil Gaiman's North Mythology. I think I talked about it on split screen back in the day. Yeah, I remember that. I do wonder, though, like, if it, just to circle back to a point that you made, Kirk, about the interactivity aspect and how you were like if I'm talking to George Washington that makes me more

interested in learning about George Washington outside of the game. I feel like that actually is also related to the point that you were making about interactivity with language as well and with music as well. Like all of that seems related to me in terms of how somebody would learn in the sense that you that that extra layer of interactivity does help the humanities. But I don't. I don't. don't think it helps with math. And I don't know how to fix that one because I remember as a kid, because I didn't like math, I notably wasn't bad at math. I simply didn't enjoy it. My parents kept trying to get me to like math. And they gave me this math game called Super Solvers outnumbered, which I wrote about for Kataku actually, because it's like a horror math

game where you like are attacked and then you have to do math problems. And it's like the most stressful experience I ever had as a child was getting attacked and then ordered to do math problems by robots. It's kind of like a nightmare. It's the worst thing ever. But it's also kind of a cool idea because I can tell what it's trying to do. It's trying to take you out of the experience of just the rope memorization of the math problems. And it's trying to give you something that feels a little bit more like meeting George Washington or meeting Cleopatra and being like, oh, it'd be so cool to look up Cleopatra in my encyclopedia or whatever or Google. If you have Google, then learn more about her.

And that's what's exciting about it and stimulating about it. But there's not quite a way to do that with the more technical-based skills that takes them out of their element and also makes you curious about learning more and a robot attacking you and ordering you to do math doesn't quite nail that. That's true. I would want to hear from current math teachers because I believe, and this is I'm a little out of my element here because. I haven't talked to any math teachers since I was teaching more than 10 years ago. But I believe that math has changed. The way that math has taught has changed maybe more than some other disciplines and that math is taught very differently now. And I'd be curious to know how it's changed and how they approach it differently.

How has it changed? Do you know how it's changed or not? All the numbers are backwards. Yeah, everything's they switched minus and plus. I think the way that teachers contextualize math. it's different at different schools, but a lot of parents that I know who have kids who are older and are learning math have just kind of relayed to me in casual conversation, you know, wow, they're really teaching math pretty differently now and it's really cool. Like it's,

they've gotten a lot better at teaching math over the last 20 years. Got it. I think that with math, it's not, since it's more of like, I don't know, it's more of formulas and systems than it is like information, I think games that teach you to like systems and appreciate systems that are kind of math-like might help. So like if you get into a JRP where you have to figure out the best possible equipment for your character and you're like thinking in that logical sense, that maybe can kind of translate to math a little bit. Or like a Zachtronics game is a great example. Yeah, or a puzzle game.

I think some of the Professor Layton games might be good ways to kind of teach that love of math. Anything that like encourages you. Or logic at least because they're basically logic puzzles. Yeah. I mean, that's essentially, when you get into higher level of math, that's essentially what you're talking about is like solve for X and use your foil equations to find the variables here. So yeah, I think that maybe that's the solution to all of our edgatainment was. Maybe it's an explanation for why I don't like JRPGs and why I should never have even tried to tell myself that I could like JRPGs. Well, so just one more question.

Did you guys have any games at school that you weren't allowed to play, but you did anyway? Like, I know graphing calculator games at my school were a huge deal. They were a sensation sweeping the nation. And they were extremely banned and extremely not cool to play. What about you, Kirk? So when I was in grade school, so I'm a little bit older than you guys. And as a result, there wasn't quite the same level of knowledge about Doom or Wolfenstein. And so for me, I think it was, I think Wolfenstein was out when I was in fifth grade or fourth grade.

I remember we had a computer in school and that someone had brought in Wolfenstein. And I have a very vivid memory of playing Wolfenstein and shooting Nazis in 3D on the computer there. That's educational. That's educational. Sure. I learned how to shoot Nazis. And, you know, so at that time, it was not banned. And then by the time, even by the time Doom was out, it was just a little later into the 90s. And I don't think at my high school, it was just really a thing or at least not that I was aware of.

What about you, Jason? Yeah, I don't remember any band games at my school. I'm trying to remember. I don't think that anyone was even that, like, hooked up to the internet or interested in downloading. Like, do you remember what I think part of it is because there weren't that many people who were into video games at my school. I do remember when we got into high school, when we were in ninth grade, our freshman computer class was full of us all just like looking at new grounds and, like, ridiculous video. online because that was the very beginning of streaming video and that was really, they had to really crack down because all we did was just like watching highly inappropriate videos all the

time. Sure. Like this, there's this website called sickanimation.com that's just full of ridiculous stuff that we would all pass around. But yeah, but aside from that, I don't think we banned any games or anything like that. What about you, Mandy? I mean, other than graph and calculator games, Newgrounds is really sparking some memories. I do remember just, downloading like red versus blue episodes and stuff like that at school and just the stupidest stuff to spend any time on when you're at school and you're supposed to be doing something else. But you know what? That was also educational in its own way. I learned an important lesson about logging out of my live journal at school so that other people couldn't see my private live journal

entries. And that's important. You got to, you got a really important lesson. You got to learn that one the hard way. All right. You do. Well, we've learned a lot. I think so. I think it's time for us to take a break. And we'll be back with one more thing. In the briefest time, I feel like we got to know each other.

Bro, I appreciate you so much for that. Do you read minds or what? It's really a very sacred space you've created here. Bozai, you've hit the bozai, baby. Bullseye. with creators you love and creators you need to know from maximum fun.org and NPR.

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We know you have a lot of, but most importantly, we'll help you fall back in love with reading. Reading glasses every Thursday on maximum fun. We are back. I'm the only one who played a video game, so I guess I'll go last. Kirk, why don't you tell me about your One More Thing? My One More Thing is Social Media, or more specifically a social media check-in slash social media audit, which I kind of recently did. How many times has this been your One More Thing? It's been a couple times, right?

like you're not not well i think when you quit twitter you did a notable check-in on that and sort of your decision to leave yeah i mean yes this is something that i am yeah this is sort of an update on this thing it's interesting i'm not i want to hear the check-in just curious it sounded like you were saying what you're always talking about this i don't think i am no no no no no i just find it very interesting me too um so i've this is something that i pay a lot of attention to and have taken a lot of conscious steps around around social media. I guess people listening for a long time will know that. But if this is the first time you've ever heard me talk about it,

yeah, I don't really tweet anymore. I still have a Twitter account. I just moved Instagram off my phone, though I do have an Instagram account, and I just put it on my iPad, where it's like you have to use the phone app, so it's all terrible looking, that I just decided to take it off.

So I really wanted to mention it because I think it's a good idea to just do periodic check-ins, and I wanted to say that I just did one in the interest of, you know, giving someone else the idea if they had been maybe feeling a little stressed out online or, you know, thinking that maybe it was time to just go through their social media life and give everything a second look that that might be good. I was talking to a friend of mine about Twitter, who's a heavy Twitter user, and giving the advice of, you know, you don't have to be on Twitter as much as you are. And, you know, getting some of the usual responses that I get from a lot of people who use Twitter, well, I have to use it. You know, I got to keep up on what's going on. That's kind of where everything's happening.

I'm like, you know, you can keep up on what's going on and not be on it as much. So that's the thing basically that I did is auditing your social media doesn't have to mean going cold turkey. I think people tend to think in those dramatic terms. Like, I'm going to delete all my accounts and go for a month with no social media and see what it's like. I guess you could do that. But you can also just like look at who you follow. That's a good thing to do an audit of. So just go through the list of all the people you've.

follow and do that kind of Marie Kondo social media thing, does this person bring me joy? Or do they stress me out? Was the last thing I saw from this person cool or was it just maybe not that necessary in my life? You can audit where you keep your social media. This is something I tell people all the time. Like I just said, I took Instagram off my phone. So they just changed Instagram or maybe not just, but they've changed it so that you can't just scroll through the people you follow and just see what they're all up to.

It now inserts a bunch of recommended stuff. and ads and whatever into that feed. It used to be you could go through all your friends and then there'd be a little, you're all done. And if you made the mistake of going on past that, it'd be like, here's what the algorithm wants you to see. So for me, it's like a bunch of amazing guitar players and super cute dogs and like people living their most amazing lives.

And I find that stuff pretty stressful overall. Like there just comes a point where I'm like, oh my God, like everyone's so amazing at music and all these people are so successful. And their dogs are so much cuter than mine. Right. And their dogs will have like millions of, of Instagram followers. And you kind of just get that feeling that Instagram tends to give people,

which is like you're not good enough, you're not cool enough stuff, you don't have enough followers. And I think everyone feels that way. And it's because of the way they've changed it, it makes me feel even more that way. So I kind of was like, I'm going to take this off my phone. I still use it. It's cool. I post strong song stuff there. I'm just going to put it on my iPad. I can check occasionally and use that to post. So that was the decision there. So like, do you need to have Twitter on your phone? For example, is a question I ask people very often. So that's one question. And then the last question is really just like which of these services do you even want to use?

And the more I use Discord in particular, the less I feel like I even want to be on any other social media platform, because that's a really nice place to be. So that's another good question. So anyways, just wanted to give a little check-in and I don't know, something I was thinking about this week, and that it might inspire other people to think about it as well. Good stuff. I actually took Twitter off my phone a few weeks ago. And I thought about making it a topic on here, or my one-

more thing because it was precipitated by getting harassed on Twitter over nothing, really. I mean, I would describe the tweet that led to it and what the situation was, but it's so boring. It's like literally why did it even happen? And it was one of those weeks where I was like, wow, looking at Twitter is making me feel terrible. It's a bad place. So I'm just going to create a browser redirect so I can't look at it for several days and take it off my phone. And that was really nice because it then meant that when I went back to it, I was very intentionally reintroducing it and being like, do I want to go to it today? And I'm still mostly in that place. Not having it on my phone is good because it means I have to actually walk over to a computer or like annoyingly open the browser on my phone and bother to log in because I don't leave it logged in. And also using the browser version of Twitter on a phone is terrible. So it's like you really need to send a tweet.

which, you know, I still technically have the ability to do that if I had to for work. But almost never is that the case. So I do kind of recommend it in general, but I don't know. It's tough. It's tough to get away from it. I don't know if I'm really done. But I tried. It's worth trying. It's always a process.

Yeah. Jason, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a TV show that you guys might have heard of. It's called The West Wing. Over the past few months, over the past like year or so, I've slowly gradually, watch, re-watch the entirety of the West Wing. Wow. Which was interesting, an interesting

exercise. A time capsule. Yeah, I don't know why I did it. I think sometimes you just have a craving for like that quick wit Aaron Sorkin dialogue and I'm just like, yeah, I mean, I just want something to entertain me. It's a very watchable show. It's very much. Everything Aaron Sorkin is extremely watchable.

There's a lot to unpack with it that I won't get into. I won't get into every single detail or anything like that. Just a couple of quick thoughts on rewatch. One is that the centrism and the annoying aspects of like this show wanting everybody to

like creating a political atmosphere that doesn't actually exist is even more apparent today and even more egregious today when they're talking about like getting these Republican senators to vote on a bill that they're doing. It's just like it's hilariously like awful.

In retrospect. Two is that season five, so Iron Sorkin leaves after season four, season five is truly horrible and what a mess. And what a mess. Real lows. But then it actually gets really good. Season six and seven are about this election campaign between Jimmy Smiths and Alan Alda. And they're both incredible actors, incredibly charismatic.

And the writing gets way better and they go on these campaigns, which are fascinating. And there's some really good episodes. In fact, I would encourage anyone out there to like, if you've watched the West Wing in the past, if you watch it all and are thinking about rewatching it, like go rewatch season six and seven, because there's a lot of good stuff on the campaign trail, a lot of just like interesting strategy and political debates and like going to different states.

And obviously Jimmy Smiths and Alan Alda are always very fun to watch. But it's cool to see how they approach to different campaigns. And again, some weirdness in terms of like this moderate Republican who is like very likable in all these different ways that you would never actually see today. but there's a lot of good stuff in there. Yeah, man, I don't know. I don't know what to make of this show today.

It's extremely watchable, extremely brilliant in many ways, extremely horrible in many ways. It's just the Sorkin experience. A real time capsule of 90s liberalism? Yeah. It is, yeah. Early 2000s. I think it's a good cultural artifact for that reason,

even though I find it to be too smarmy to watch now or almost like too self-congratulatory. Even though when I first watched it, I liked it because I guess I was feeling myself congratulated as a Smarmy Liberal at the time. But now watching it as just a wacky-eyed socialist, I can't deal with it anymore. There are moments that are like that for sure, but there are also moments that are just amazing television. There's this episode, the finale of season two called Two Cathedral's is just like a top tier, all-time piece of television. There's some good stuff in there.

You just, yeah, you have to wade through a lot of Smarm if you're going to re-watch it. to get to the good mean of it. So I also engaged with a pop culture artifact, which is a video game that's currently on Xbox Game Pass. It's called Dante's Inferno. It came out in 2010. And I had a roommate who played this game and I watched it for a little bit way back in 2010.

I feel like the important context is that this person was unemployed at the time and playing a lot of video games. And that's really the only reason to play Dante's Inferno. Or if you're me and you think it's really funny to play it in 2022, because you kind of remember seeing it back then and being like, they made a video game version of Dante's Inferno, the poem that I read in college and wrote multiple papers about. Sounds like some edutainment to me.

Doesn't it sound like some edutainment? It's really nothing like the poem at all. And the ways in which it is nothing like the poem. poem are hilarious and feel like it is a fake video game that was created in a sitcom to make fun of something that a video game would do. Yes. But it is instead a real game that was made by visceral games as in like makers of Dead Space, although as near as I can tell from Wikipedia searching, none of the same people ever

worked on Dead Space, but that at least kind of contextualizes when it came out and the era. This is made by Visceral Montreal, which is a different studio that was absorbed into Visceral. That makes sense. I wrote a book that talks about Vicerol a lot, so you can go check it out. It's called Press or Sat. Never, never heard of that. So back to me. So Dante's Inferno depicts Dante as the main character.

He is not the poet. He is instead a soldier who takes part in the Crusades and his wife Beatrice is also in the game. And she has been kidnapped by Lucifer himself to become his bride. because, unbeknownst to you, Beatrice has made a deal with the devil that when you go off on the Crusades and fight your holy war, you will not cheat on her while you're out there. But unfortunately, you did cheat on her. Well, none of this sounds problematic at all. No.

It's perfect. The portrayal of women, the portrayal of the Arab characters in the Crusades. It's all great. Ten out of ten. Great representation. it's honestly it's part of my playing the game is kind of incredible now like I don't recommend it but it's also incredible because it's like it's doing everything wrong but to a level where it feels almost like it's in on its own joke because you're like this is the stupidest thing I've ever

seen but the people who made this must have also known that and at some point must have just started leaning into it and being like whatever man like this is going to be nothing like the poem. Like why other than just the most base comparisons? Like every level you meet up with Virgil, the poet, the ghost of Virgil, and he tells you some more information. Like he's still in there. He's still guiding you through all seven circles of hell.

But you also have a massive axe and you have to like fight fully naked demons constantly. There's a lot of boobs in this game. There's a lot of like massive fallacies in the lust circle of. of hell. There's a lot of extremely gory and like outright sexual content that I just don't see games do anymore in this like exploited exploitation film kind of a way. Like it's just the pure id of gaming in 2010 to such an extent that I feel like even in 2010 people were like, this isn't okay. Like I don't know what this is. Like even then. Yeah. Well, something something that's important to mention here is the game became infamous for its marks.

marketing campaign. Yes. Do you want to talk about that a little? Because you remember it better than I do. Yeah. There were a couple of ridiculous things. They sent out checks to reviewers for $200. And they're like, if you if you like don't cash this, it will be sinful like squandering wealth. If you do cash it, you will succumb to your greed. And yeah, ridiculous. During E3 2009, there were these, there was a group of protesters who like claim they were like religious Christian people protesting the game. And then word came out later that these weren't actually protesters. They were hired

actors from EA that EA hired to pretend to protest Dante's Inferno. Like as if anyone would actually protest or care enough about Dante's Inferno, the video game to protest it. That's the type of marketing campaign this was. I'm sure there is a lot more crazy stuff on social media. It was mass we pray, right?

They made a fake video game that they were... Yes, the game they made a fake game where you can pray in protest of Dante's Inferno. It was like a motion capture game where you would like do praying motions. But it was like a joke. It was sort of like even this marketing campaign was itself a joke about the idea of doing Adante's Inferno video game.

But perhaps the weirdest and funniest part of all is that the combat is actually pretty good. Like it's pretty fun. There are terrible puzzles that are inscrutable. The game gives you no hints. There's none of the like little fairy on your shoulder telling you where to go. There's no like arrows everywhere directing you. All those modern ways that games help you out are not present at all.

You simply have to muddle your way through hell and push boxes all by your lonesome. But actually slapping around some naked demons with axes feels pretty fun and good. So there is a weirdly vocal contingent of, I want to say, it seems like almost entirely dudes on game facts forums who claim that this is the best game ever and that it actually owns because the axe fighting feels so good. However, they could just play God of War, of course. I'm going to blow your mind right now. Oh, yeah? The lead combat designer of Dante Zerberto is Vincent Napoli, who went on to design the combat for God of War, the most recent reboot.

I am not surprised by that at all. And then went to Crystal Dynamics to work on the Avengers and did come out for that. I'm sure Thor's Hammer feels good in that game because of that, honestly. There's a lot of similarities there. Yeah, that is definitely relevant contexts, is that God of War III. also came out in 2010, and this is very much a god of war clone. Oh, it is. It's a lot like, which, and I would think, especially God of War, too, that you would enjoy that

game if you're enjoying Dante's Inferno. It's a better version in a lot of ways. If it were on Game Pass, I might check it out. I don't know that anyone should play Dante's Inferno. I'm having a great time, but it's also the most disgusting video game of all time. Like, I will just say one more example, which is, at one point you fight. an extremely tall version of Cleopatra. Yes, Cleopatra, who you might know from Assassin's Creed Origins.

She is fully naked and her boobs. So her nipples open up and tongues come out, which is disgusting. But there's another part where her nipples open up and little tiny, angry babies come out. And that moment genuinely made me feel like I was going to throw up. Like watching that happen, I was like, I kind of feel like I might throw up right now. Like, I can't watch this unfold. What, you've never seen a nipple shoot out babies? No, I've never seen it.

And I was also like, who came up with this? And like, are they okay? I have a lot of questions. But hey, I'm still playing it. So I'll probably beat it. I'm like six and a half hours in and it's only like eight hours long. So at this point, you know, I've gotten to the sixth circle of hell out of seven. May as well rescue my wife from Lucifer, even though frankly I don't deserve her.

And I know this game is going to end with us. ending up together and I don't think it's Maddie. I don't want to crush your dreams or anything, but aren't there nine circles? Oh, you're right. There are nine circles of hell, aren't there? Yeah, I'm only on the sixth one, I think. So I've got a long way to go. Yeah, you've got to descend.

Got to fight a lot more nipple demons. I hope not. That was just the lust level. I think I'm done with that. So yeah, that's me. Edutainment, you know? Edutainment. I'm learning a lot. Yeah, you're learning a lot. I'm remembering what it was like to read Dantus Inferno and college and I'm remembering the combos, just the endless combos that I had to memorize back

then and they're all paying off now. So that's that's another episode, folks. We did it again. We did. We did. We learned so much. Just a reminder, we'll be off next week, but we'll stick in a little bonus episode for as a treat while we're gone and then and then we'll be back as normal in two weeks. That's right. All right. Cool. All right. See you both in a couple of weeks. Yep. See you soon. 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 Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpods and 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. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience, audience supported.