Triple Click - Super Mario Bros. Wonder Is Sheer Delight

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is joy bottled up into a video game. Jason, Maddy, and Kirk break down the ubiquitous plumber's latest adventure to save the... err, to stop Bowser from being a castle. They talk about what makes Wonder so special, 2D vs. 3D Mario games, and how this is basically just one big music game.One More Thing:Kirk: Deadloch (Amazon)Maddy: If Books Could Kill (podcast)Jason: The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix)LINKS: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

If you're making a game and you want to make reviewers lives a lot easier, you've got to do two things. First, you have to make the game completely amazing and then put wonder in the title. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the wonder to you. Today we're talking about Super Mario Wonder, a wonderful new 2D Mario game for the Nintendo Switch. That's so good, we can't wait to tell you all about it. So grab a hallucinogenic flower, and let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers.

And I'm Jason Shrier. Hello. Hello. Hello. It's us. Hello. Once again. So wonderful to see you. We are back. The band is back together. That's right. Have you guys listened to the new Blink 182 album? Speaking of bands getting right to them? I know you keep pre-oping it. It's so good. So many bangers. I bet it is. I mean, I'm a bigger pop punk fans than YouTube. But like, I'm down for some Blink 182 now and again, though. Well, so this, just like this is the first album with Tom DeLong who left the band for a while.

in like a decade. And that was like, they announced last year Tom Long is coming back as like the biggest news for millennials since they shut down AOL instant messenger.

It's just like acts coming back to billions exactly the same. Similar, except more nostalgia. No, I'm talking about something important to me,

but yeah. That's true. Tom DeLong has some pretty cool guitar parts. My guitar teacher were showing me some of their parts and they,

you know, Blink 122 kind of gets a bad rap from our musicians. I'm fairly so. He writes some pretty cool stuff. Like there's a lot of, you know, it's pretty simple, a lot of power chord stuff. But he moves some of those harmonies around and does these like low voice things that are actually pretty cool in some of their songs.

So respect to Blink 180s. And writing a catchy pop song is so difficult to do that I feel like no one should ever judge it. Like if a song's ever gotten cut in your head, you got to just pay a compliment because it's incredible. He's a master at like these very simple riffs that are just really catchy and fun to listen to. That's what I'm saying. kind of like more interesting than you would think just hearing them. Like learning them on guitar, it's like, oh, this is cool. He's kind of a technician in his way of the instrument.

Well, there's this song. There's this one song called Turpentine that is friggin' fantastic. You guys should listen to it. Great. It's a good name for a song. We're a music podcast now. Welcome to Strong Songs. Yeah.

So if you want to support our digressions about pop punk bands and guitar technique, well, you can become a member of Maximum Fun. And you'll support. our show if you do that as well. You'll support the Maximum Fun Network, which is always a cool thing to do. We love the Maximum Fun Network. And it's a co-op now. Worker-owned co-op network that have a ton of different shows. All the shows are owned by the creators. And it's really just a kind of fantastic model and a good vision for a better future. So Maximum Fund rules and you can become a member at maximumfund.org slash join. And of course that also is the only way that any of us make money off of

the show, so you are directly supporting the creation of Triple Click, and if you become a member, you will get access to monthly bonus episodes, beans casts, as we usually call them, at least when there's spoilers, and we're spilling the beans, but all kinds of different things. We recently did a really fun episode about The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. We've been watching some movies. We talked about AI recently. Talked about a bunch of games, and this month we're going to be talking about the hunt for best October, which is going to remain a mystery, I think, to end.

Anyone who is not a member. If you want to know what it is, you're just going to have to listen. It's going to be out. It's going to be good. It's going to be good. We haven't recorded it yet, but it's going to be really good. We can guarantee it's going to be good. We are.

We are excited. The hunt for best October coming up. So that's maximum fun.org slash join. Become a member. Support independent media. Support triple click. We love you all. And we appreciate your support.

All right. We're talking about a video game today that I'm very excited to talk about. Jason, why don't you take a away. Yeah, well, it's actually fitting that I started this show by talking about music, because today we're talking about a music game called Super Mario Wonder. A hot new rhythm game. Kind of. I mean, it is a rhythm game, essentially.

I mean, Super Mario Wonder is, of course, the newest Mario game from Nintendo. It's a 2D Mario game, the first one of those in a long time. Really, more than a decade. And the last one, I believe, was New Super Mario Brothers You on And the Wii U, I believe that was 2012. And yeah, that whole, there was Nintendo, just a little bit of history here. Of course, Super Mario started as a 2D platforming series. There's some really, really good ones.

Three of them on the NES and then Super Mario World on the S-NES was really just the culmination of all that and all the cool ideas for 2D Mario. But in recent years, they've been going with the new Super Mario Brothers series, which is a little bit controversial. I mean, I think they're still good platformers, but they're kind of generic. the visuals aren't everybody's favorites. Some issues there. But now we're coming back with a vengeance.

Super Mario Brothers Wonder. New 2D Mario game feels different than anything they've done before. It looks different than anything they've done before. Still got that Mario feel that has a bit of a brighter, more cartoony, more heavily animated aesthetic. And we're going to break it down. We're going to talk about this game. We've all been playing it. We've all been playing it on codes from Nintendo.

I think we all spent the whole weekend playing it. But yeah, let's go around. Let's start off just by talking about some initial impressions. Maddie, you want to go first? How much have you played? And what are your quick initial thoughts? My quick initial thoughts are, it's amazing. I love it.

It is so cute. It fills me with warm, fuzzy feelings. I don't think I've played as much as you two. Had a busy weekend, which is a real tragedy because this game is so joyful. It just makes you feel amazing every time you play it. There's just nothing like the movement patterns of a Mario game. But the actual part of the game that struck me most is just the little bespoke animations for each character and the facial expressions and how much detail there is. I mean, all of us obviously grew up playing 2D Mario.

I remember thinking how cute Mario was when he would crouch down or whatever and go into a pipe and make himself small or big. Like those things were so exciting. But now having so much more. detail in the visuals for little Princess Peach and there's the elephant power up that we're going to get to and she's so freaking adorable as a little elephant and her little walk animation is so cute. You just, I don't know, it just really adds something to the game. I know we're going to talk about all the other like, you know, gameplay aspects here, but this game looks so good. It just looks so, so good. And I think that's something that really helps you want to stick with a game.

It starts out pretty easy, but I know it gets difficult at the end. I guess it's a to-d-Mario. Mario, it's going to start getting harder. And you want to actually spend more time, like, playing and replaying these levels over and over again. And the way to do that is to have it look freaking amazing. So those are my first impressions of Mario Wonder is Wonderment. Wonderment. Correct about you. So yeah, I'm up to, I think, world five. I can't remember which world I am.

I think it's world four or five. Somewhere around halfway through the game, maybe a little past the halfway point. Yeah, I'm in love with this game. It's like someone walks up to you with a magic hat and they're smiling and they just sit you down and they just start pulling incredible things out of their hat. And then 30 minutes later, they just keep pulling more and more amazing things out of their hat. And it never ends. And you're like, how much stuff can be in the hat? and they just keep going and going and going.

That's sort of what it feels like to play this game. It's just this incredibly joyful, incredibly creative, endlessly interesting experience where no five minutes, no five minute chunk of playing the game is the same as the last five minutes that you had. So you can just play for 45 minutes, which is kind of how I've been playing it, and you're going to have a bunch of really amazing experiences. I laugh so much at this game. There are so many sequences, especially. the wonder seed, wonder flower, I should say, sequences where I'm just cracking up because

something's so outlandish and creative and funny is happening. And yeah, I mean, I just, I love this game. Everything about it is so joyful. I've primarily been playing as Mario. You can play, of course, as the whole cast of Mario characters. Yes. And they all have their own, you know, different animations and look slightly different as they move through the game. But I've been playing as Mario. and what I notice about it is he's always laughing. There are so many new lines, I believe, by the new Mario voice actor. And even when he dies, he'll be like, oh, no. And he kind of laughs.

Like, when he dies, he's, like, falling to his death and he's laughing, which I think gives a good sense of just how ebullient and joyful this game is. So, yeah, I'm over the moon about it. I love it so much. It's funny you say that because, like, I feel like when someone is falling to their death and laughing, they're usually a James Bond villain. They're like,

there's still a bomb that you have to disarm. Yeah, you'll never escape Mr. Bond. It's the laugh of the immortal being that is Mario. Yeah, I guess that's true. Mario knows he'll be back. And death is comedy to him. It's slumpster. Yeah, okay.

So I am on, I think, we're all three. It's kind of, it's hard to, this isn't really a linear game because there's like a big kind of hub world and then there's spokes on it. And I guess I'm up to the third. Third's book, so a little bit, not quite as far as you, Kirk, but I feel the same way as you. It's a pure joy to play. I think that the Wonderseeds to kind of explain, or the

Wonderful hours, to kind of explain a little bit about what you're talking about. So every platforming level has kind of its own traditional platforming, and then there's some gimmicks involved, like in one level, for example, when you jump, a bunch of creatures jump with you and you have to kind of figure out and navigate that. So maybe you jump, and then you duck under them as they're jumping in the air, or maybe you use, you manipulate their jumps to break blocks above them and so on and so forth. And then there's the twist of the Wonderflower, and when you get the Wonderflower,

which is this kind of like trippy-looking flower object that you can find hidden in a bunch of the levels, when you get that, the music goes crazy and everything gets trippy and the world transforms in some way, usually related to the gimmick that's involved there. And so I absolutely lost it in the second level of this game. So about 10 minutes into the game, you are playing in the second level. It's called Piranha Plants on Parade. And just to give you everybody out there who hasn't played this yet, an example of what the Wonderflowers do.

When you get to this level, it's just kind of like basic jumping piranha plants everywhere, kind of platformer level. You've seen them before in previous Mario games. Then you get to the Wonderflower and you jump on it. And then it just kind of explodes into song. and the piranha plants start singing. And then you notice the trees in the background are singing too. And it becomes this whole musical section. And I just lost it.

I was just cracking up at my switch for a solid five minutes at this portion of the game. I was just like, wow, this is going to be delightful. And so, yeah, those are really excellent. And yeah, I mean, I just really love it. And it's surprisingly challenging, not just as it gets further into this. the game. In fact, I would argue that it doesn't really get challenging based on how far you go, but kind of off to the sides, you'll find these like super tough challenge levels. There's an entire special world that has its own big challenges that are really, really tough

to do. And then also being a completionist and collecting all the coins in each game, you have these big purple coins that you can collect each level, or most of the levels have three of them. That's a whole challenge. And then these little optional kind of badge challenge. is, just a whole badge system in this game that we'll get to in a little bit. But yeah, I just love it as a package, as a 2D Mario game. And I think I've been thinking a lot about how it kind of works in conversation with 3D Mario games with Super Mario Odyssey specifically, because they're so different, despite just being both Mario games. One of them feels like more of an adventure and the other one feels like more of a rhythm game. Kirk, you've played the furthest. What has been kind of your thought of the moment-to-moment gameplay of this game and kind of whether how it compares to 3D marios or how it compares to your own 2D platform experience? What's your take? I think that the 2D Mario games feel more like a laboratory of design ideas to me because there's a little bit less in between me as a player and whatever idea is being explored in the level where in a 3D

Mario there's this big world to move through, especially in Odyssey, the most recent one, where there's a lot of just space to move through and kind of messing around to do. And then you'll find a little challenge with a discreet idea. But there's just a little bit more, it's a little more diffuse. Where in these games, you start the level, boom, here's the idea, you know? Like you said, you jump, the enemies jump. Okay, that's the idea for this level. And then because of the Wonderflowers, they always remix the idea into a whole new idea

that's at times so outlandish. I mean, they play with scale. Like it really goes beyond just, oh, here's a funny. twist and like here is a full wild set piece with huge things crashing through the level and the laws of physics being rewritten in hilarious ways all based around this like a hundred X version of the core idea. So you're always engaged with those ideas and each level kind of feels that way. So I just feel like I'm in a really direct loop with the game and its constant ideas.

And if you go back to the idea of this guy pulling stuff out of a hat, it's like just me and him. Like he's like right in my face making direct eye contact. Like there's no getting away from it. Which I guess that sounds kind of like a, that would be stressful. But this is not. This is wonderful. No, it's good. I'm actually, you know, I've always liked the 3D games better.

I think or found myself drawn to them more just because I like that more relaxed, diffuse experience. And I've never found a 2D game that I've liked as much as this one. This is the most fun I've ever had with 2D Mario. I'm not great at 2D Mario. I didn't grow up playing these games, so I find that the float and the bounce of Mario's movement eludes me somewhat. And there's also a fairly complex move set at this point, both in the 3D and in the 2D games, where like wall jumping and ducking and kind of these different maneuvers that experienced players can pull off,

they kind of elude me. Jason, I'll never forget watching you play Super Mario World and realizing what someone who's extremely well-versed in that game can do compared to the way I play it, which is like, jump. Jump. It's a little like watching you play StarCraft 2 and watching myself just move the mouse slowly around on the screen and realize that we're playing very different games. So anyways, I really am finding this game.

It's letting me in in a way. I think that 2D Mario hasn't in the past. That's for a variety of reasons. The difficulty modifiers that you can add, we can talk about that maybe in detail in a minute. And the fact that there's no timer, which is something I've talked about before. But that has always kind of stressed me out a little bit

in the older 2D games. And something I really like about the 3D games is you can just walk around and see the sites and do what you want. And there's no timer in this game as well, except in some sections when they want to put a time crunch on you. But you can just walk around the level and experiment. And I really like that too.

Yeah. It actually kind of reminds me of what I like about Kirby games. I realized that as you were talking, Kirk, that some of the best of this game. It reminds me of Planet Robobot. Yeah. And some of the other Kirby games, that I won't make you guys play, but Planet Robotbot, I did make you play. That one time I

want to bet three years ago, two years ago, something like that. And part of that is because of the badge system, which we haven't really gotten into yet, but I guess I may as well here. So at the outset of each level, you can select a badge. You're earning badges throughout. And by the point I'm at, I guess I'm in World Two, I don't know. I'm at the mountain. I have several badges. And so there's some stiff competition. I think there's 24 in total, a couple dozen in total. And I have like 10 or so that I can choose between. And some of them, they affect the whole level. You can change out your badge if you die or if you quit the level. But it's kind of like choosing your Kirby power up for the whole level. Like in certain levels of Kirby, it prioritizes a specific power. And this game

is similar. Like in some levels of Kirby, you really want to have the fire sword. It's going to be useful to have that or it's going to be useful to have like rock powers. This is the same way. Like there's certain levels where having this badge where you have a big floaty hat that you're like holding over your head and it's kind of like a parachute and you can float around or other levels where there's there's a badge that really makes your wall jump clingier and and makes it easier to do the kind of skidding off of a wall and jumping up on top of something. It makes it much easier to do. and there are several other movement ones that alter your jump slightly that I'm sure are beneficial to other levels too. But much like Kirk, I guess I'm probably between Kirk and Jason here.

I'm not like a Mario supernova. I'm okay at a 2D Mario. And I'm sure that was just years and years of only having 2D Mario games in elementary school and just trying to get good at them. So I'm okay at them. But I do appreciate some of these badges. And sometimes I'll be playing a level. I'll be like, oh, no, I know the badge I need for this one. Let me restart this with a different badge and then I'm slaying.

But some of the badges are just pure fun. Like the one that adds different question mark blocks or exclamation mark blocks, where it's just like, all right, let me just see what you want to throw at me. It's just a bunch of different stuff you can get in the level. And it's just for fun. I mean, I don't know what else that would be for. And that's delightful to have a gimmick in a game that's like, and this is just going to make the level fun in a different way.

That owns. Yeah, there's one. There's one that turns you into a spring and you just bounce and you can't control where you're bouncing or when you're bouncing. You can just move and you bounce and it seems like a fun little challenge modifier. And then, yeah, I mean, the badges... You can right lead to sort of player directed challenges. Of course, yeah. One of the things that's brilliant about the badge system is that there are all these different levels throughout the game that are these badge challenges that like require you to use that badge and then you have to do a level that is designed around that badge.

My favorite so far have been like the wall climbing one where you have to do these really cool maneuvers. There's one that's like super, super tough in the special area that is really, really fun. And yeah, I mean, just like a whole bunch of like really fun, interesting challenges. I think, Kirk, your point about it being a grab bag is a salient one because it does feel like they're just pulling constant crazy ideas out at you and just throwing them and saying enjoy. We had a blast making this game, so you're going to have a blast playing it. I think that the difference between 2D and 3D Mario games for me is kind of related to the timer in that I think 3D Mario games feel more like, hey, you're going on this adventure, you're off in this world. We want you to explore and find all these nicks and crannies and secrets. And Odyssey was the purest expression of that with the moons where there were like 900-something moons.

and it was just very delightful to figure out how they were hidden, where they were hidden, just kind of take advantage of all this world's kind of like secrets and figure out what you can find in all these different stages. Whereas Mario Wonder and 2D Mario Games in general feel a little bit more like you're playing a song. And here's this two-minute song, you are going to make your way through this thing. There's a rhythm to it. You jump and you dash it, you hit the button to the beat. And sometimes it's literally a song when like,

the blocks are disappearing in tune to the music or appearing in tune to the music. But in general, it just feels more like you're playing this elaborate musical instrument and just kind of getting lost in the joy of it all. Kirk once wrote for Kuchaku an article about how games are just like, are essentially music. Playing a game is essentially playing music. And there's nothing that's more of a pure distillation of that than a game like Super Mario Wonder. And 2D Mario generally.

Yeah, I mean, this is a game where when you, do the ground pound in this game, it plays a drum roll followed by a simple crash when Mario's butt hits the ground and the drum roll goes on longer the farther he falls. And it's delightful every single time that it happens. Yeah, man, it changes like the music is a little bit different, I believe, if you're elephant Mario or like if you're, it's just totally wild. By the way, if you guys, Maddie, to your point about the animations and the aesthetics earlier, one of my favorite animations in the game so far, and this is a game with just the most incredible animations, you will ever see.

One of my favorites is if you're crouching as an elephant at Mario, Mario, and then you swing and you swing your trunk, he's just like, boop, boop, it's just this fantastic. The crawling elephant animation where his little mustache sticks out and his hat covers his eyes and his butt is up in the air. It's so cute. There are levels where you go through doors, you know, the sort of doors in the back of the level that then you'll come out another door. And when you go through his elephant, he gets stuck and has to like wiggle his butt through.

There are all these little unique, unique animations like that. Yeah, Peach always has to wiggle through the pipe and you get to see her little elephant bloomers wiggling. And it's just the most adorable thing I've ever seen. I love how when she's crouching, she looks almost like frustrated or like she's concentrating really hard in elephant form. I mean, I think she does a version of that in human form too. She's so expressive.

I mean, Princess Peach is such a hilarious slapstick character to me, like the frying pan of Super Smash Brothers, like her energy. I love it. And I feel like they've really just embodied that in her facial expressions here where she's just like has the biggest eyes of surprise. And then the like little tiny scrunch. I mean, I would have loved this as a kid. Like that's the other thing about it is that I'm like, oh, I brought so much animation to Mario games as a kid that wasn't present. But like now as a kid, I would just be like, oh my God.

Like it's all here. I feel like these are real characters that are like on a TV show or something for me. you know? Yeah, I played it with my four-year-old a little bit. I think she's still a little too young because she's not quite figuring out. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, she doesn't really know how to use the controller. But yes, it's adorable.

Yeah, it's definitely a kid-friendly game. One more thing on the music metaphor, I think that like the typical platforming structure is like the Nintendo kind of ethos is. Here's a concept. We're going to introduce it to you in a friendly way. And then we're going to make it more elaborate over time. it really feels like you're starting with a verse and then you get to the chorus and then a verse and then the chorus and then you have the Wonderflower, which is kind of like the bridge and

the key changes and you got a whole different, a whole different thing going on for a short amount of time, and then you go back to the maybe another chorus to figure it out, to finalize it all. And none of the stages ever wear out they're welcome. None of the stages are longer to finish than like five minutes max. Like any good, any good song, any, and I guess there's some good long songs, any good punk rock song. I got a DeVita here. Yeah, that's true. It's more pop punk, really.

Any good Blink 182 song, we can just say it. Exactly. It's a blink 182 album, yes. I mean, these two coming out at the same time. Yeah, there's a lot of good variety to the levels as well, I find. Like, there are just most, you know, a lot of straightforward platforming levels where you go to the end and then you jump up the flagpole and you beat the level. But there are a lot of other cool types of levels as well. There are battle levels that are really. where you have to clear rooms of enemies.

The first one that I did, I think it's the first one that you come across, was called Fluff Puff, Curfuff. And I think that speaks to the names of the levels in general, which are great. And I love kerfuff as a shortening for Curfuff. Yeah, of course. What's the kerfuff in here? So the Fluff Puff Puff, where you have to fight a bunch of enemies.

Impressed to the Nintendo Treehouse, as always. Perfect. Over a, yes, they're so good at their jobs. Over a series of rooms, you have to clear the rooms out. there's a cool new ability. There are a couple of abilities that I think are new in this game. I'm no Mario expert,

but I'll save them and you can tell me if they are not new. Bubble Mario is that new? So Bubble Mario is like Fireball Mario, but he throws bubbles that kill enemies, but also if you're skilled, you throw them out, and then you can get one jump off of them

so you can use them to reach inaccessible places, which is very cool. You can get more than one jump. You can shoot a bunch and get several. Oh, well, yes, I mean one jump and jump and jump. One jump per bubble, but yes, you can shoot multiple.

If you're Kirkman, you can only do one jump, but. Right. Well, I'm not very good at Mario, as I've said. How many times have you died in this game, Kirk? Oh, only seven. Seven thousand. So many times.

Well, I tried to, man. So it depends on the level, right? So you get a star rating. It doesn't matter in Mario. It's fine. Yeah. You get a difficulty star rating for each level. One or two, generally pretty doable.

Oh, no, I mean one or two stars means it's pretty doable. Yes. Three is going to be a little more challenging. more like boss levels than four is quite difficult, and I've done a few fours where I'm like, okay, now I'm getting into the hollow night part of my brain, and I have to really learn how to play this game. I have found that by doing those, I have improved significantly and am able to access that part of my brain that got good at other platformers and have figured out those specific rhythms. So maybe I'll get there. The one that you, the level that you referenced, Jason,

where the blocks build according to the beat, this level, I have not been in the It is. Oh, well, the first one of those that's in the first world. My God. So there are four active at any time. Like there are four platforms active. So you have to keep moving with the rhythm. Yep.

And you can't fall behind and you can't get too far ahead. And the tempo increases as you move through the level as the platform shrink. So, oh my gosh, it really is exacting and difficult. I don't want to alarm you, but that's not the tough one. Oh, no, I mean, I'm not surprised. It was the first one that I did. one you come across. So the really tough one is and they actually get easier. It's really

anti- Mario. They get easier as it goes. It's so weird. Like by the end it's just one block. So you can access this special world which is kind of like this super challenging like we're going to throw the gauntlet at you worlds. And in the special world there's one of

those that takes the same concept and is super super super tough. It's like guitar hero like level bagillion or whatever the heck people do. I appreciate how they let like the pacing of the game is kind of dictated by me. So it's not exactly, it's that video game pacing thing where like I'm in control of it, but they are putting things in front of me in such an order that like I'm always able to pick something different.

They even have levels called break time. And it'll be, there are some levels where you just have to find all of the hidden. Coins or whatever. Yeah, the like wonder coins or something. The wonder seeds. The wonder seeds, right? No, no. They're coins that lead to a seed.

Yeah. A coin leads to a seed. We all know this. Yes, obvious, clear logic. So you have to get them all. But when you walk into the room, there is nothing sometimes visible at all. And so you have to start jumping and figure out where the hidden blocks are. And those are just, there's no way to die, really.

No, you just have to keep looking. And if hypothetically it's too hard and you leave the level, you'll get a helpful little tool tip that's like, try playing it with a friend, which is so adorable. It's like the classic Mario style of like, you didn't fail at this. You just need to try playing the game in a different way and like keep having fun in a different way. It's endlessly cute to me. Yeah, I should mention the multiplayer as well, which I haven't messed around too much with, but it's really incredible. It allows you to play simultaneous with a bunch of other players. You can see how the players who are playing at the same time as you are solving the puzzles and challenges that you're up against.

So you can see maybe someone jumping to a hidden area of the level. that you didn't know was there. Also, you can leave those little standies that you collect, which are these cardboard figures. You can leave those around levels for other people to find, much like say. Darkseals. To be clear, you're talking about the online multiplayer, not the couch co-op. There's also local co-op, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm talking about the online multiplayer. So you can leave these standies laying around, and those can work just like in a Dark Souls game where you'll see that someone has written a note on some area that you thought was inaccessible. And that just tells you, oh, so I can get there. And that's really all you need to know sometimes in this game to start trying, your gears start turning as you think, okay, well, they put their standing up there. So how the hell did they get up there? And that alone is a really, really cool avenue for multiplayer to explore in this game. That's something I've barely

done, but is another whole element of this game and another kind of variable area of difficulty attenuation, I guess, that you can do for yourself. And I really appreciate that about this game. You can make it as hard or as easy. I wouldn't say easy, but you can really reduce the challenge. A couple other badges I should mention. There's one that just spits you out of pits. Like if you fall into a pit, it just knocks you back out and you don't die. Yeah, I think one time, right?

Only once. Yeah, it's like a free save if you're playing a hard level. The one that I use a lot gives me just like an extra high jump with a little float, kind of like peach hat and dokey dokey panic. Like that kind of you can kind of hang in the air for a minute, which is just helpful almost all the time. And like I said, I'm not that great at Mario games, so I really like that one.

So anyways, a lot of variability and customizability in this game, which I think is really, really awesome. Yeah, the badges are really interesting and make me want to replay some levels. It's just to like experiment with different badges and see how that changes things, which is a cool, just another cool element to this game. Also, you can play as Yoshi,

or what are the, there's like another Yoshi type. Nabat. And if you're playing local multiplayer, the other players can ride on you. And Yoshi, I believe, like, can't take damage, right? Or I think can't die. So you could team up with, say, like, a child or, like, a friend or someone. And, like, you could be the one to take on the platforming challenges. And they could just ride on your back while you jump through the hard parts.

So there's also, like, that element to it as well. It's a very modular game. Like, it's very flexible in a lot of cool ways that sort of enticing. your creativity with how you want to play it. Yeah, and it's something, so it's interesting. So, like, the way that it works for people who haven't played it yet is it's not a super linear progression or you have to go from level one to two to three to four, the way that the old school Mario games used to work up until three, I believe.

It's more of like a nonlinear world map type thing where you're walking on this big kind of 3D world map and you can go in any direction and then you can pick levels from there. And because some of them, like you might get to a new little hub and they're like four new levels that you can explore. And some of them are going to be easier than others. And to the only gates are kind of like a wonder seed requirement that is pretty low. Like you might only need four wonder seeds to get to the next area and then eight after that or something like that.

So you can get wonder seeds from only the easy levels if you want and not even bother with a really hard one. So it is really, I mean, an approachable game, I think, for players even like Kirk Hamilton, who might be able to beat Returnal with only dying seven times, but 2D platformers, they just cannot compete. It's a very different instrument, you know. I can play guitar, but I can't play the oboe. It's true.

We have so few opportunities to drag Kirk for being bad at anything, you know. It's true. Let us have this. You know, it's funny. This is another thing where I'm like, is that different? But it doesn't feel that way to me because Kirby games have been doing this exact format for years and years and years of like this semi-open world. map where you can choose anything and kind of play stages in different orders if you so choose.

Robobot wasn't that way, but I can't remember the name of the most recent Kirby game. They all have functionally the same name. They're all like Kirby and the Sparkly Teapot. It's like, who knows? But they've been doing things like that. No, Mario Games have been having world maps since before Kirby existed. It's a Nintendoism, right? It's amazing.

I love it. The world map is very similar to 3D world, the Wii U, 3D world. Yeah. And like having the chance to choose not only difficulty, but like which power up makes the game easier for you is like another layer of modularity that Kirby kind of does and that this game does that I think is really great. Like Kirby games also have often the opportunity of like go into this one room and choose between these powerups and then you'll go into this level already having one. And whenever Mario games do that, I'm like, yes, finally, this is all I want. I just want firepower or whatever it is for this one level that I don't normally have that in. But it's just going to make it easier for me personally.

That's how I would like to be this level. The battle arenas do that. And it's great. It's great. They give you options. You can be elephant. You can be fire or Mario. Or you can be like, I want two fires.

Like when I lose my fire, I want a backup fire or two elephants or one or the other, which is great. Yeah, it does. This game is very much, like it's very referential to old Mario game. I mean, even that having kind of like a backup storage of that, that's a very, that's like all the way back to Super Mario World was the game that originated in that concept of like, I'm going to press a button and then get access to the backup power up. Yeah, and there's a lot of musical motifs that are references to old Mario games, which is super fun to listen to Kirk, I imagine. You would have a blast doing a strong songs on this and like going back to previous Koji Kondo works. Koji Kondo, of course. I mean, he's the original composer, Mario and Zelda, and is back once again for this game, has been added for 30 plus years.

There are a lot. It's worth noting. I mean, one of the reasons that this game is so delightful and masterfully made is that it's made by some of the same people that have been in Nintendo for 30 years and worked on the original Mario Brothers. I was going through the Moby Games credits list for Mario Wonder and just like was randomly clicking on names. And it's like, oh, yes, this person is credited on games and Nintendo going back to the 90s. Oh, yes, this person going to the 2000s. Like, everybody who's worked on this game is just like decades of experience making Nintendo games. And it very much shows. Yeah, there is a, I did a strong songs on the original Mario theme. And it's always fun to hear when echoes of that come out.

And they do the calypso thing really well still, I think, like those kinds of grooves. But yeah, there's a lot of a lot of very fun music. And I'm sure some references that I don't totally. get. There's also a kind of novelty to the world and to the way that it feels to move through it. I mean, the narrative setup of this game is that Bowser turns up and steals a wonder seed and transforms into a castle, I think. The wonder seeds are basically the infinite improbability drive from Douglas Adams universe. Which, by the way, I mean, props to Nintendo for not having him steal Princess Peach and having him just turned into a castle. Not only that strange setup,

up, like, he's sitting there, this Bowser Castle in the middle of the map the whole time while you're playing. There is a level that you play through where you don't have to beat a boss to get the, whatever it's called, the great seed at the end. It's just like, you know, this guy just lives there and he's like, oh, this is just a trial to see if you can achieve enlightenment like I have. So you have to get through the trials and then you'll get you the seed. And at the end, I kept expecting Bowser Jr. to turn up and be like, ha, ha, here I am, boss fight time. And then he did it. And the guy was like, good job. You did it. Here's the seed. And I was like, I don't think I've ever had that happen in a Mario game before. Yeah, it's great.

It kind of breaks the formula at times, which for this series that's so known for being formulaic, even while, of course, it's always experimenting. I think that's kind of remarkable and sort of in line with how it feels to play the game in general, this sense of just like the developers are in on the joke. Like they're willing to just break the game open and just totally turn it into this freak out experience. We're like, who cares what happens? There's one WonderCe level where it just, starts raining invincibility stars.

And so it's like a star, you know, like basically shooting stars falling from the sky. And you just run through the level. And there's like infinite invincibility everywhere. And it's just you're grabbing it and like killing everything because like whatever. And the whole world is like blowing up around you. It's like it's the kind of thing that you would see in some weird modded, you know, version of Mario that you can really only watch on YouTube. And instead it's actually happening in the game.

And they're doing that over and over again. So I'm very willing to like break their own formulas and experiment with their own. in such playful ways. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, that that's been, like, the idea of gimmicky stages and breaking the rules and, like, being able to separate expectations, that's been at Mario since the very beginning. I mean, since, like, the original Super Mario Brothers, like, you see these, you're kind of, you're in this underground, labyrinthian area, and you see these roofs, and you think, well, okay, it's the roof. I shouldn't be able to get above there, but if you take the time to experiment and jump above the roof,

you'll be rewarded with a secret Passage, a warp whistle. No, you'll be rewarded with a warp whistle that lets you skip ahead to a new world, which has always been a thing. Yeah, I mean, I have kind of two more questions for you guys. There are two more topics I want to bring up? One is, is there anything you guys don't like in this game?

Because I was struggling to think of anything I dislike about it. But curious to hear if there's anything you guys don't like. Too good? There's too many games this year. I don't have time for this. I, this wasn't on my personal to do list and now it has to be

like, I don't know, but Kirk, you were talking, go ahead. I struggle a little bit with some of the just physical controls. This is something I was talking about recently, just with like thumb pain or whatever. It's kind of stretched out more. I'm actually feeling better this week, just playing the game. But a lot of the game, I'm sure I could

remap some things, but I don't get the sense that it's possible to remap others. For example, swimming requires just constant button tapping, which is sort of hard on my thumb. And also, just because you spend so much of the game running and jumping, I like do a kind of lateral thing. I'm sure everyone does this, where you lay your thumb across the inside face button and then jump with the inside of your thumb because you have to be pressing two face buttons at once, essentially. And I think you can remap some of those.

I'm sure at least I think you can on a system level, but I haven't. I've just been playing it that way. And that's a little bit of a struggle just because, like, anytime I'm sort of, especially swimming, kind of mashing the button, I have that feeling of like, you know, I wish there was a way to just turn that off. and just hold down the button to swim because, like, I don't want to be doing this. But that's a, I guess, a minor gripe, but a gripe nonetheless. No, it's legit. You can't remap the face buttons very easily. It's kind of a classic Nintendo thing where you can change them to be A and B,

which is the way I prefer it for jump and run fast. Or, what, A and X, I guess, for whatever way of weirdos do. It's not a, no one knows what the face buttons are on the, at the Nintendo controller. It's not a known fact. There are other buttons besides A and B, but who knows what they are? It's just like, it's crazy. It's like just like with Tears of the Kingdom, where it's like this doesn't have button remapping,

just start everything. You can just switch two pairs of buttons or whatever it is. That's it. And it's worth saying that that is reflective, I think, of a broader accessibility failing that Nintendo still has, especially compared to what Sony is doing and what we were just talking about with Spider-Man. Sony is going out of their way to add all this accessibility stuff. And it's just totally absent from this game, like from most Nintendo games. And I think that is a problem.

Like for all of the accessibility within the game and the ways that it's so modular, I wish Nintendo would finally decide to prioritize that. Because I'm, you know, I have my thumb hurts and whatever. Like it's a fairly small thing I can work around it. But there are all kinds of other things that I think people with more serious disabilities would really struggle with. Yeah. Like this just locks somebody out. if they have a more significant hand pain.

You know, it keeps the game from being enjoyable for as many people as it could be. It is too bad. One more final thought before we take a break and come back. So in 2017, Nintendo's first year of the Switch started off with Zelda in March and ended with Mario in October. Now, 2023, what is likely the last full year of just the Switch, before we get to the Switch's successor, we have Zelda in March and Mario in October. Quite a full circle moment.

Interesting. It's incredible. It's incredible that Nintendo has pulled off this one-two punch again. And made two, like, Bonafide Game of the Year candidate level, just like incredible games. I just don't know how they do it. Yeah. I don't know.

Yeah. Not letting people go every six months? Yes, that's right. I'm sure that helps. It's just, there is an amount of creativity happening there and that's being rewarded there that's just so unusual. I mean, this is just how you do it. Playing this game, I just continually find myself thinking. Like, my God, how are they on this level?

How do other people making video games just, I mean, fall so short, I guess. But that feels critical of ordinary mortals. But it is that feeling like, why isn't every video game like this? Why isn't every video game just like immediately delightful and constantly reinventing itself and so exciting? And of course, we know the answer to that is that it's really, really hard to do that. But playing the game, it feels so effortless that it's easy to just sit there and think, I wish all video games were like this. And Tears of the Kingdom feels the same way where it's like, oh, right, you can make a game like this too. So it's incredible.

I mean, no one does it like Nintendo does it. They just are still the masters of this. And both games are really all four games are evidence of that. Super Mario Wonder, why can't all video games be like this? That's a good way to put a pin on this conversation. So why don't we take a break and then come back with one more thing. People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Which is why here on just a zoo of us, we judge them by so much more.

We rate animals out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics, taking into consideration each animal's true strengths, like a pigeon's ability to tell a Monet from a Picasso or a polar bear's ability to play basketball. Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, and more join us to share their unique insight into the animal's world. Listen with friends and family of all ages on maximum fun.org or wherever you get podcasts. It's the final week of Co-October.

I'm Kira Gowan, at Operation Specialist, and I'm here with Daniel Barwella, Technology and Data Specialist. To cap off National Co-Op Month, we're sharing how worker-owned co-ops can benefit their communities. Read about it in our newsletter or on social media at MaxFundHQ. We're also trying to do our part. We're volunteering at our local food bank this week, and we encourage you to volunteer in your area, too. On Friday, we're announcing the donation that you helped raise in the post MaxFund Drive sticker sale, going to five food banks across the U.S.

And we want to make sure you know that this is your last chance to get our limited edition. co-op launch crew merch. Grab a pin, hat, shirt, or hoodie before they disappear at the end of the month. Details on merch, resources for volunteering, and all things co-optober can be found at maximum fun.org slash co-op-o-op-o-tober. That's C-O-O-P-T-O-B-E-R. Thank you so much for your support and have a great co-op-O-O-P-O-P-O-B-E. And we are back. Kirk, Maddie, and it's time for one more thing.

Maddie, kick us off. What's your one more thing? My one more thing is a podcast. I've been listening to. I'm almost completely done with the archives. And then what shall I do? It's called If Books Could Kill. And it's hosted by two guys, one of whom is Michael Hobbs, used to be one of the co-hosts on.

You're Wrong about another podcast I've listened to all the archives of and really enjoy it. Basically the godfather of indie podcasting, I would say. Yeah. Like also kind of the godfather of explaining complex sociopolitical. nuanced issues in a way that makes me rethink everything about my entire life. Michael Hobbs, he's done it again, folks, and his co-host, Peter Shamsheri, I don't know him at all. Apparently he co-hosts a show about how the Supreme Court sucks. I'd kind of like to listen to it, maybe when I run out of this podcast. So it's called if books could kill.

Of course, it's a bad book. Yeah, it's called the 5-4 podcast. But forget that. We're talking about if books could kill. The only show I have listened. too. And so I heard this title. Don't think I knew Michael Hobbs was hosting it at the time. And I was just like, oh, great. Another thing where they read something terrible or watch something terrible. And they lampoon it. You know, there's a billion podcasts like this. Some of them are excellent, but it's very hard to kind of like, you know, make your way in that arena. So I just kind of moved on. And then eventually, I saw something about how it's, it's not just like a books podcast or like a sort of comedy lampooning of bad art

podcast. It's specifically about kind of debunking fad books, like pop culture books that were everywhere. Like the secret or like Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours book that I can't remember what it's called, but it may as well be called what I just said

because that's how everybody remembers it. And books of that nature where you just hear about them a lot. Yes, of course. And you're like, is that really true? Or is that just something people say at cocktail party? and everybody nods to each other. No.

No. But it's amazing to hear these. And it's also delightful to hear Michael and Peter just be so exhausted and angry, but in a fun way at whatever 500-page crap they read where they're like, I just need to read you this paragraph. It makes no sense. Or it will make sense. And they'll be like, didn't that sound really smart and good?

Well, every fact in it is wrong. And here's why. And there's just something about debunking podcasts that just makes you feel extra double smart, kind of like how all these books are supposed to make you feel. But then you get to listen to a podcast where you get to say, well, actually, at cocktail parties, which I would never do. That's the other thing the co-hosts do a lot is talk about how at cocktail parties they now refuse to engage with people because they're like, we're insufferable now.

We now know why all of these fun facts are wrong and we can't have conversations anymore. But yeah, it's great. It's a great show. I love this show. I love Peter Shimshiri. I think he's so hilarious. 5-4 is a great podcast, but I just think he is hysterical. I hadn't really listened to that show.

He's very funny. And I love his, he has a very New York accent that comes out when he's mad. When he's impersonating someone, his Brooklyn accent comes out. And it's his real accent, but it's so funny because just ordinarily he's not speaking with an accent. And then you hear him get more and more frustrated with like Neil Strauss is the game. or whatever and he starts going full New York and it's so that's how you know Peter's on one. Yeah. There are episodes on dating on dating advice like the game are really good.

They did one on Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which is a book that I had never even heard of. And there are a lot of times they'll be doing some book from yeah, the 80s or that I just don't know like that. And that's a really, really funny one. You never heard of Rich Dad Poor Dad. No. And I guess it's really famous. I had heard of it, but I didn't know the deal with it. I mean, this is a great podcast for that too where you're like, I've heard this book title a lot.

What was that claiming? It's been interesting, too. I'm caught up on it. I've been listening since the start. I think my sister told me about it. And I, you know, Michael Hobbs is great. I'll listen to any podcast that guy makes. And they have a kind of unified theory coming together.

You know how on Just King things? They're kind of getting a unified theory of Stephen King. It's sort of similar with these guys. Only it's like a unified theory of the kind of Grifter. Yeah, like, hack books. Yeah. And they're all kind of the same. And they start to reference one another.

And also they have a very unified. theory of David Brooks that will make it very hard to bite your tongue the next time a relative of yours is like, I write this David Brooks column. And he said, and I just have to be like, nope, I'm not going to remember the episode well enough to get into this effectively. So I'm just going to like nod and move along. But anyways, I co-sign your recommendation. It's a great podcast. Yeah, it's called if books could kill and it's a podcast. Check it out. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a show that Emily and I watched that I had not even heard of until last week.

And we started it. And then we kind of devoured the whole thing. It's called Deadlock. And it's on Amazon Prime. This is an Australian... With an H. Yes, with an H. This is an Australian comedy murder mystery show.

Australian ambassador, Kirk Hamilton. Yes, it is extremely Australian. And having recently been there and gotten to know many more Australians, I think I have a better appreciation now for the Australianness of this show, which is, I think, a very enjoyable thing about it. I would describe it a little bit as. Like a largely female cast version of Hot Fuzz, but Australian, with slightly more serious murder, but just as many jokes. This show is hilariously funny, but also has a pretty high body count.

It's pretty bloody. There's a lot of actual murder. And it has a pretty great mystery. We were guessing until the very end about who did it. We had no idea who it was. And it's a very complex sort of small town mystery with a million. red herrings and possible culprits. It's very, very good. So this show is set in, I think it's a fictional town, but it's in the town of Deadlock in Tasmania, which is a remote, a pretty

rural area on island to the south of Australia, kind of south of Sydney and Melbourne. And it typically thought of as like a very rural area, but I think it's like being gradually gentrified. And the town of Deadlock, the sort of central cultural conflict there is there's like the old boys of the town who were kind of, you know, the working class, guys. And then there are a bunch of new people from the city. A whole bunch of queer people have come down from Sydney. So it's like at this burgeoning arts, very queer-friendly town, a lot of lesbians, as they say, over and over and over again. So the main character is Dulcy Collins, who is a cop who with her wife has moved from Sydney to deadlock and it's kind of been a

sleepy town. And then, of course, there's a murder. And she has to kind of become a murder investigator again. And then she's joined by a detective from up north, from a Darwin up in, up in northern Australia, named Eddie Redcliffe, who's also a woman, but is playing the role of the, like, dick swinging, like, detective who's, like, totally out of control. Who is questioning the newcomer city type. And I'll say to anyone watching this, when Eddie shows up at first, it'll be like, oh, my God, this person is completely out of control. Like, I can't stand to her. What is her problem? Like, that's the early dynamic is very much like Dulcy is in control trying to solve this murder, and Eddie is just totally out of control.

And then they start, of course, to slowly work together. And it's very much like an odd couple cop mystery. And it's so funny. It's written and created by two women who are known as the Cates in Australia, and I gather are kind of well-known. Their names are Kate McCartney and Kate McLennon. And I think those are their real names, McCartney and McLennon. Amazing. Like, Lennon and McCartney.

Wow. I almost can't believe that. The Kate mix. The Kate's. And they've made some comedy projects. I think this is their biggest like sort of dramatic murder mystery series. It's so great.

There's this really just this disconnect between the way it looks. It's like that really gray color grading. It looks like the killing that shift. Oh, I've seen that show. It looks like it's going to be really serious. But then it's just constantly hilarious. I'm going to watch that.

Everyone just so vulgar and funny. It's absolutely terrific. I think you would both love it. Do you need subtitles? The accent's pretty thick? Some people have watched it with subtitles. We didn't, and it was fine. There's a lot of slang.

You'll kind of pick it up. I think with subtitles, you'd pick up more. And it would probably be easier to keep track of everything, because it is a very complex narrative. You get to know everyone in the town and all of their pasts and their relationships, and that's a fun part of the kind of figuring it out. Right.

There's a really mysterious constellation of people to keep straight. But it's really, really good. I really recommend it. It's very silly. It's very funny. It's sometimes very serious. serious and we were totally sucked in. So that's called Deadlock. It's on Amazon Prime. Great show. Sounds good. One more thing is also a show. It's a show on Netflix called The Fall of the House of Usher.

And this is getting some buzz. It just came out a couple of weeks ago. So I'm sure most people have heard about it in some way or another. But this is a show. It's an eight episode miniseries created by Mike Flanagan, who also did in the past. He's like a big time horror film. TV maker. He did Midnight Mass. He did the haunting of Hill House. He's adapted some Stephen King stuff. He was born hilariously in Salem, Massachusetts, of all places.

There's only one job you can get, and it's horror, movie, and TV director. Exactly. Your feature is true. Exactly. That's it. You're set in stone, your life. So this show, it's really interesting. It's basically, it's inspired by all these different

Edgar Allan Poe stories and poems, and it's basically like an anthology of Edgar Allan Poe stuff from the Raven, the obvious to like, and like the telltale heart to like more obscure stuff, like the black cat or whatever it is. I'm not a Poe expert, so I don't actually know what's obscure and what's not, but it's all Edgar Allen Poe. And the premise is that it's about this billionaire family called the ushers, who are the magnates of this pharmaceutical company that sells pills that, um, that. kill that are pain killers that are highly addictive.

It's like the Sacklers mixed with the Kardashians. The Sacklers mix with the Kardashians is a good way to describe it. Great. Also very heavily inspired by succession. Yes. The best way to describe the show is really succession but horror because there's this gothic undertone and supernatural elements and horror elements to it all because the premise is that it's kind of set on these on three different parallel timelines.

And the one that you're first introduced to is kind of let's call it the future. where this FBI agent slash investigator is interviewing the patron saint of the Usher family, Roderick, who's played... A district attorney, played phenomenally by Bruce Greenwood. And he is telling the interrogator about how all of his children died. And then we go back in time and we see how all that unfolded in kind of the, let's call it the present. And then we also see the past where we see Roderick, as a young boy, kind of first as a kid and then eventually as a young adult played by Mike

Sarison himself, or Matt Sarison himself, Zach Guilford from Friday Night Lights. And he, we kind of, we learn how he wound up in charge of this pharmaceutical company and what he did to get there. And so it's really interesting watching all these tracks, because the bulk of the series, the kind of middle six episodes, each of those follows a different kid of his, and we know that they're going to die at the end. And so it's interesting following that track and seeing how they're going to die. But then in the past track, we also have this big overarching mystery of, like, how did he wind up in charge of this company? And from the beginning, he kind of alludes to doing this really horrible thing, but we don't find out what that is for a while. I'm actually,

I'm not done with the end. I'm only six episodes in out of eight, so I don't actually know what happens there. You're right in the climactic, but not quite there yet. And so, we kind of, you watch all these things, get, all these stories are told in parallel in really interesting and compelling ways. And then there is the big X factor. And that is a woman, a mysterious woman, played by Carla Gugino. I hope I'm pronouncing that right, who is a phenomenal actor. And she appears, I won't say exactly, I won't say what her deal is or, or how she appears, or anything like that. But she appears throughout. She haunts this show and appears quite a few times in quite a few different situations, and I'll just leave it at that.

But she is connected to Roderick Usher and clearly has an impact on his fate in one way or another. So yeah, I mean, succession, but horror, I think it's the best way to describe it. And if you're not sold by that, you might not care about the show. But if you are and you want to see a phenomenal piece of work that is just like incredibly well-acted and well-written and well-performed, there's this amazing monologue that Roger Cushar gives about lemons and if life gives you lemons that that is worth watching, even if you're not interested in this show, Google that because it's truly an incredible, an incredible thing. And yeah, I mean, this show, I don't think it's going to win any awards or anything.

It's not like super subtle storytelling. It's very in your face and blunt about a lot of its themes, especially it's kind of like anti-capitalist, anti-sacclature, anti-Qaeda change, whatever. themes, and it's a lot more blunt in its ways than even something like succession, but it's still just very compelling and entertaining and well done. And the acting, I think, really brings it to a new level, just like the performances, especially by Bruce Greenwood, the, uh, Roger Gusher and Carla Juggino, but really everybody is just, is just great. And then one more thing real quick, just to introduce you to the six, the six children of Roger Gersher, because

they're all such, yeah, well, they're all such like, they're, they're, they're, they're all by different mothers, right? So they're all very different, looking very different types of people. Not all. The first two are the same mother. The rest are different mothers. But yeah, there's six of them. They're all kind of, if we're playing on succession, they're all kind of Roman. They're all different types of Roman.

Different types of Roman. So we all have different peccadillos. Okay, just to go through them real quick. One is a, the youngest of them all is this kind of 20-something, lethario, like hedonistic drugs. sex addict. One is a professional gamer. One is a PR flack who has no soul and just exists to spin things and has this great silver hair. One is a black lesbian scientist who has her own kind of inner demons.

I'm sure a wonderful person. A wonderful person. The fifth is this lady who wants to be the Gwenith Palchow and is building a health brand and can only get off by watching her husband recreate with sex workers like scenes of like family dinners and like other wholesome happy household acts. I haven't gotten to that yet. And the six, and the six, the six child is kind of, kind of actually the Kendall of the family. He's the fail son.

He's very, he's a total fail son. He's the eldest boy. He's the eldest boy. Gets a little bit more Roman-e as time goes on for reasons that I won't spoil and has his own twisted depravity and dissent and stuff. Anyway, just a phenomenal show. I've really, really enjoyed it so far. Once again, it's called The Fall of the House of Usher, a little bit of a clunker title, but fantastic show. Yeah, named after the Poe story of the same name.

So they were kind of stuck with that one, I guess. Everything. Oh, man, I haven't even mentioned. There's a friggin' lawyer played by Mark Hamill who just is like... Oh, of course. Yes, I've seen Mark Hamble in the promo shots. He is incredible. Hamiling it up.

Well, he's like, he's channeling his inner like Joker from Markham, like going full. Except he's, he's, you really see the range of his acting in a way. He's like frighteningly quiet, at least in the first episode, which I've only seen, which is very fun. You're waiting for him to unleash it because you know he can. No, no, no, no. I should say, Joker, it's just the voice of the joke, like the Joker, like the Joker voice. But like when he's being scary, just like that. Yeah, that kind of the intonations. He's not at all like the Joker as a character. He's very quiet. He stays quiet.

Unless in the final two episodes, he becomes the Joker? Unless he becomes, well, that's how it ends. He's Pim, right? The Pim Reaper, they call him. Arthur Pim. Another, just another Poe reference to like some novel he wrote. Everything, literally everything you see in the show is just a Poe reference. That girl, I'm a Poe reference. So if you're like, and a girl, Alan Poe fit and you will love this thing. All right. That is it for this week's episode. We will be back. Well, if you're a max fun member, you will get a bonus episode early next week. And then we will be back for another standard episode. As always, next Thursday. 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 problems. 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 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. Directly by you.