Triple Click - Why Is It So Hard To Play Old Games?

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Maddy, Jason, and Kirk take a trip down memory lane, crossing nostalgia with frustration as they try to figure out why so many old games are so hard to play (legally). What do you do with your old consoles? Why do Nintendo and Sony make it so difficult to buy their old games? What's the deal with video game preservation??? Plus: Kirk got a PS5!One More Thing:Kirk: Got a PS5!!!Maddy: Hunt a Killer: Death at the Dive BarJason: WandavisionLinks:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin 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

Some video games really do age like fine wine. You just have to bury them in your cellar and then never, ever play them. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week on the show, we're talking about retro games and game preservation, mostly because it's been so difficult for us to access the best versions of Final Fantasy 6. So dust off your old controllers and fire up your emulators, let's do it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers.

And I'm Jason Shrier, and we are back. Hello. We sure are. share our back for another episode of Triple Click, the Video Game Podcast. And you know what? Triple Click is a listener-supported podcast. Like so many podcasts these days, I know we're just conformists. We're trying to be like everybody else.

And one of the ways that we do that is that we talk about video games, which everyone's talking about these days. And another way we do that is that we are totally listeners supported. So we love our listeners, all of the Maxphone members out there, who support our show. thank you so much to all of you. And if you would like to become such a member and help us keep making this show, go to maximum fun.org slash join. And if you do that, you will help us make triple click, as I said, but you'll also get access to a whole bunch of maximum fun bonus content, including bonus episodes of triple click, which we're going to be recording another one of those

next week about Star Wars, the Mandalorian. But we've done all kinds of things, spoiler casts. We call them Beans cast on lots of different games and movies. And last time we actually talked, a little bit about our own lives. So there's just a little bonus episodes we do for fun, for members. And if you can't support the show, that's also totally fine. You know, just listen. It's just enough that you're here hanging out with us to hear us talk about video games. So thanks to everybody listening. If you want to just leave right now and stop listening, that's fine too. Really be your own person. Do your own thing.

Wait. This month our bonus episode will also be about our lives, except it'll be about our lives parenting baby Yoda's and traveling out like to see with them. Yes, as flinty bounty hunters in the Star Wars galaxy. We're so badass, all three of us. One more thing before we get started. So as many of you know, we've been playing Final Fantasy 6 as part of the predictions bet, which Kirk and I both won.

We're playing Final Fantasy 6 first, followed by Half Life 2, Kirk's pick. In two weeks on February 25th, the episode that airs February 25th, we will be doing a triple play on Final Fantasy 6. And today we can announce that the cutoff point for that episode will be the opera house, the kind of iconic, one of the most famous scenes of Final Fantasy. We're going to play through till the end of that, and that's where we're going to cut off. So in the triple play in two weeks, we're going to be talking about our progress through the game and spoiling it up to that point and talking about all sorts of things leading up to that. Then following that, we'll be doing a beans cast where we talk about the whole episode, but that'll be down the road. couple months.

Talk about the whole game. Talk about the game. So you too have time to play at all. All the beans. Every last bean. Spilling every one of those Final Fantasy Six Bades. Lining them up, spilling them out. Okay, cool.

So all that said, Maddie, what are we talking about today? We are talking about retro games, classic games, ancient video games, hewn and stone, low these many years. We're putting on our fedoras, getting our board hooks and our leather jackets. I was thinking way. older than that. I was thinking like... These games belong in a museum. Do some horrible colonialist pillaging of the video game archives. And like, you know, you're, you're playing D&D, but it's ancient grace or something. That's, I'm going way, way back. But not, not really. I'm,

really, this topic is inspired by my personal quest to play Final Fantasy 6 for this show. And the journey that I went on. Tell us about it. The unpleasant journey that I went on in order to play Final Fantasy 6. So, Final Fantasy 6, it is available. on smartphones. However, Jason Schreyer informed me that this is not a good version of this video game. Jason, do you want to explain why that is? It's a bad translation, right? It's not the original version. No, the translation is fine. It's just that, although there was a weird typo in it at first. I think it's mostly all the GBA translation, which is a good one. No, the problem with this game, the version they put on iOS and smartphones and also on PC

is that it's kind of ugly and it uses these kind of these, I guess they call them refined versions of all the sprites of all the characters. And I just happen to think they look atrocious. Like they're just super blurry and Vaseliney and they just do not look good, especially on a PC. And if you're playing on PC, you get the mobile interface, which looks even uglier. And it's just like it's not a very well done port, I would say.

And sadly, there's no way to play the original, to like play these games of the original graphics. And like Square has not ported over the original versions of the game to PC or phones. So I told you both not to play that version. And so try to find the one of the originals. Try to find another version. Yeah. So there is a version on the Vita. It's not the Vita.

It's not the GBA version. It's the other later version. It's the PlayStation one version of the game that's been ported to the PlayStation Vita. Here's where we get into super convoluted territory. Yeah, so I was like, okay, you know, I read some reviews of it. Apparently it's not an ideal way to play. It loads really, really slowly. It's a bad port, but it's not the end of the world.

And I'm a patient person, so I figured I'd buy it on the Vita. Here's the thing. PlayStation Vita store pretty screwed up at this point. It is technically still live, but I could not get it to let me purchase this game. I tried hard restarting, rebooting, deleting everything on the Vita, reinstalling everything. It did not matter. It would not let me purchase the game.

Or actually, it did let me purchase the game. I have paid $10 for that game. It did not let me install the game on my Vita. I think that's because at Sony headquarters, the Vita store is just running tethered to somebody's phone because they don't want to pay for more bandwidth. It really feels that way. It's technically there, but, you know.

I mean, the Vita is dead. We've all played the last most part two. We know it is dead. We watched Ellie stab it. It's gone. It's over. So I was like, you know, I'm also going through this process right now where Dean and I are probably going to move in together in a couple of months. And so I'm going through all my old consoles.

And I'm thinking about what I want to keep and what I want to give away. And since I was already doing that anyway, I had all these old consoles lying around my apartment. And I was like, well, there was a port of Final Fantasy Six on the Wii and also the Wii, same port, I believe. And I've still got my Wii and my Wii. I haven't plugged those babies in in a while. Does those still work? I plugged in my Wii. It doesn't work anymore.

Oh, that's so sad. The video cable for it, just doesn't even work. But also, it wouldn't matter if it did work because the Wii store is no longer functional. It's no longer live. Oh, God. So I can't buy Final Fantasy 6 on it anymore. I plug in my Wii U. I believe the Wii store shut down like a few months ago.

Like, I really missed the timing on that one. So I couldn't. But my Wii U still works. But also, is it useful if I can't buy anything new on the Wii? Who can say? So, ultimately, I will. leave it to the listener to imagine how I may or may not have obtained a copy of Final Fantasy 6. And the way in which I am now playing it, it is not through any of the methods that I just listed.

But in the process of all of this, I was just kind of looking at all my old consoles and thinking, like, why do I still own all of these if they don't really work and the stores aren't live and I'm never digging them out of these boxes? And what's the purpose of this? And also, what should I be doing about these old video games that I want to play, but I don't have a good way to play. So I wanted to ask you to both of those questions. I guess we don't have to talk about the way that we're playing Final Fantasy Six. But I am curious about your experiences with old consoles and if you still own any. So Jason, why don't we start with you?

Because I feel like you're a guy who might have some old consoles lying around. What have you got on deck over there? Yeah, I do. So unfortunately, like around the time I left for college, my parents saw on downsizing and moving from their house into an apartment. And so we had to get rid of all of our shit. And so there's some stuff that, like, is in boxes, maybe that I still have to sort through. And I'm not sure how many of my old games or consoles are in there.

I'm, like, actually excited to go through and, like, discover if I have this treasure trove of, like, NES and Super Nintendo games. I know we gave away all my old Legos, which is sad now that I have a kid, so I can't go and take them all from my kid. But I think I still have some good stuff back there. And by the way, technically, it is legal to emulate games if you own them. So, like, if you own the cartridge, you can technically... So I own it on the Vita digitally.

They just won't let me play it. More of an inch case. I mean, that's when you get into... We won't super hard get into emulation. But, like, if you buy the game, like, ethically, it's like, you're bought the game. I mean, if you can't actually can't play it on your Vita, like, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is what it is.

Make your own. ethical decisions there, but like, I think we all, we all kind of, I think most reasonable people would agree on the same course of action. But anyway, so yeah, so it is a great question because it's like, do you, if I find my Super Nintendo, and let's say by some chance it actually still works, like I plug it in and it still works, is this something that I like want to save for my kids one day for them to check out? Is this something I want to just stick in a closet just for nostalgia purposes, just to have it just because I can't bear the thought to throw it out? And that's when you get into like hoarder territory and worry if you're becoming a hoarder.

an interesting question. It's something I've thought about. It's something that I don't know exactly where I land on. It's something that I just moved. So I'm in the process of like going through all that stuff and figuring out what I'm going to do with it all. And yeah, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that stuff. But I like the idea of just like having all of your consoles just in case because the industry is so bad at video game preservation that like it's sometimes the only way to actually access those games as to own the original cartridges. unfortunately. Yeah, I mean, that was why I was holding on to my old Nintendo consoles was because I was like, well, of course I'm going to keep my Wii and my Wii U because that's going to be

the only way I can play these old games. And then I plugged them in and I was like, this might have been stupid. Anyway, Kirk, what's your situation? How many old consoles do you still have? So I didn't have a lot of game consoles growing up. And as a result, I don't have a lot of really genuinely old consoles sitting around. I have a DS, I think is the oldest thing that I own. I wish I still had my Game Boy. That thing is durable, by the way. That thing's still going to work if you Oh, I know. Yeah, it's a ton of, built like a ton of bricks. I had a game gear that I, I guess I don't have any more, but I wish I still had it. I wish that I had all of the old stuff that I had as a kid. And I feel like, as long as you can afford the space for a box to put this stuff in, it's generally worth keeping it.

because it's so hard to know whether the modern versions or the modern consoles are going to be the same. And I think the way that these things change is actually kind of noteworthy. It's probably that I'm going older, I guess, but I care more about the way that things are kind of ruined or changed over time. Yeah, same. Like I think a lot about, well, Final Fantasy 6 is a great example, actually. Yeah, that's a perfect example. So there's like the new version of it that you can play, but it doesn't look at the, same as the old version. And that gets into pretty arcane territory where it's like, well,

that translation is better on the GBA version, but the original S&S version, which I have on the S&ES classic, well, that has like the music is less compressed. You can get into weird finer points where there's no one definitive version, and that's kind of unique to some games, but not all games. But the idea that you can continue to access the story and experience of Final Fantasy 6, but the better version that you're getting might not be true to the original thing. It's not, it's frustrating and it's not unique to games. I recently, so I recently did a strong songs episode about David Bowie, and I talked about Space Oddity, his very famous song, Ground Control to Major Tom. And that album has been remastered. That's from a self-titled album,

and it's been remastered a bunch of times. And I was listening to this 2015 remaster of it, thinking like, okay, whatever, this one's just on Apple Music. I'll just listen to this as my reference point. and I started noticing this kind of sounds bad. And then I was like, it really started sounding bad. And I even heard some digital distortion, like that horrible like kind of digital sound. And I was like, what the hell? Like this is so weird. What is going on?

Then I started looking around and it turns out the 2015 remaster of that album is like notoriously fucked up. And someone put it out for other reasons. It was like, you know, who knows why they put it out to try to make money. And there are all these other remasters of the song. It turns out it was the version they downloaded. it on Casa and honestly it sounds like they remastered it yeah based off of some

like some Lime wire Napster MP3 and it's really weird and like when you would download a song and it would be like it would turn into something else Yeah yeah

You were tricked into downloading like a bad version of space audity To teach you a lesson Right like some weird scream In the middle it turns into Land Down Under Right right right Some of our listeners

Are too young to even get this joke And they should learn history about the dance for us. Right, it's up to them to learn what we're talking about. So anyways, this is like, this keeps coming up to on that show. I did, like, I'll do a Beatles track. I did Day in the Life. And someone wrote in to say, you know, you use the remixed version of that album. And actually, I don't like the remix. It's weird because I grew up listening to the original. And I think the remix of those Beatles albums, they're actually really good and they sound good, but they are different. And it's that same thing where it's like, oh, it's cleaned up. You can hear everything. There's

actually a remix of space out of anywhere. You can really, it sounds like a modern recording. And it's kind of weird. It's like, well, but the original has this weird panning and it sounds different, but that's the original. And the same thing is true of these games. And even it goes to like playing it on a CRT, like playing it on a TV instead of on a flat screen TV where the colors are just different and it looks different, which is similar to, you know, watching a real to real movie or, you know, watching it in one format or another or listening to an album on vinyl. And there's something to be said. I think it's the older you get, the more you care because the more things you've actually been alive for to watch them become. obsolete. And so yeah, I'm increasingly aware now of the things that I have and how in 20 years I'll probably wish that I still had them. So I'm hanging under more things now than I would have

10 or 15 years ago. Well, now, I mean, nowadays because everything is just only living on streaming services that really won't be available anywhere. And like, all the Netflix shows you love might be gone in 15, 20 years. And you might never ever be like the video game systems too, right? Like the Wii store, you were just like you were just saying, Mandy, the Wii store is now no longer online. So that's not true of the S&ES. But I do still have several old physical games. And I guess I should note, I'm holding onto my Wii,

even though I think there's something wrong with the cables, but I'm like, well, I could probably buy new cables. And like, I've already internally justified that it makes sense to hold onto the Wii. I don't ask me to explain that justification here because I don't know that I could. Well, it doesn't take up much space. Exactly. There's no harm in it. It's fine.

And I also, I did sell my GameCube at one time, and I still regret having done that because, I don't know. I don't even know why. I just feel like I shouldn't have sold it. What you need to do is cut open your Wii and then cut it in half and you'll have two game cubes. Exactly. Yeah. Now we're really dating ourselves. That's a deep cut. That's a deep cut. And then I just put a little cute handle on each of them. You just have to cut the duct tape, right? Right, right. That's the game. Yeah. So what about games though? Do you guys still purchase physical games or no, not so much anymore?

Do you trust the process? You trust, you trust the digitization of. Of it all? Yeah. I, well, so, you know, none of us, we don't buy games that much because we get a lot of free games and it's so much easier to get codes when they're free. But when I buy them, no, I totally buy them digitally. Though when I buy music, I buy it on vinyl. Like I do buy physical music. I don't buy MP3s, no way.

Like, that's never something I do. So maybe it depends, but no with games, digital all the way. Are you too, Jason? Yeah, I think the convenience of digital, yeah, especially on like the switch where you really don't want to have to be like, pop in and looking for cartridges. Can I tell you, I have the Breath of the Wild cartridge that Nintendo sent me. That has been in my Switch this entire time. Yep, yep.

I have the Ringfit Adventure cartridge. I stopped it out for RingFit Adventure. Yeah, RingFit Adventure is one that's physical. Because you have to buy that game. Yeah, you have to buy the prop that goes with it. So you may as well also buy the physical game. Although I wish I didn't because it's annoying that it's in there. Like, why can't it just already be on my Switch?

It's too bad that's not an option that comes with a physical game. that's like, okay, can I also take it out sometimes? And you know that I still have it? Yeah, it would be like buy an album on vinyl and they give you a little MP3 code. Like, why can't games do that? Come on. Come on, why can I have that? So I play most of my games on PC where I think everybody has pretty much buys only digital these days.

Some people buy physical, but yeah. That's true, I guess. My computer doesn't even have a CD drive. I didn't bother building one in to my PC. Because what would be the point? I knew I was going to just buy everything on C. You never know. You never know.

Download everything on guys. I like, speaking of being dated, I would call it an optical drive because they're probably not on CD-ROMs these days. That's true. Yeah, see that. Well, the last time I had a PC with the drive, it was a CD-R-G. You were putting in your Encyclopedia Britannica discs, you were waiting for it to load on. Can I just say that something I do all the time when I'm talking about music, I talk about, oh, you won't hear this on the radio. And then I'll be like, no one listens to the radio anymore, old man.

You won't hear this in your Spotify for you selections? I will say that. I'll be like, this might be in a playlist you're listening to or something. and I probably sound like an old person. I occasionally put on the radio. Since I moved to the suburbs and I've been driving to the store, I will occasionally put on the radio. I've got to say once in a while. Me too.

KMHD, a great Portland Jazz radio station, listen to them all for. But yeah, no. So, but on PC, I feel like I trust these games to be here. Like, I still have games that I bought 10 years ago, 15 years ago that I can still get in the same way. And also, I can go on Gog.com and, like, buy, like, perfectly preserved versions of pretty much every old PC game I can think of. Except no one lives forever. Except for no one lives forever. Except for a rare few. I think that like the PC and PC games and PC game makers and just the, the computer ecosystem and better in general has gotten a lot, is a lot better than like the console

makers at preserving their old stuff. If you want to find an old PS1 game, you either have to hope that it's like on the PS classics, which you can't even get on PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 4, or that's it. I mean, or track down a desk or emulate it. But like for a PC game, chances are, if you want to play an old PC game, chances are you can find it somewhere. Yeah. Except with a few rare exceptions.

Although I feel like Xbox is the counterpoint to that. So this was a decision that I did make. I got rid of my Xbox 360 and a lot of Xbox 360 video games. I put them all in a box. I packed them up. I'm donating them to a friend who works at a college who's going to have his students play it as part of their program. And so I got to feel like I was giving away my 360 and like so many video games to a good cause.

You can play all those old games. I can play them. Yeah, I could play them, but I don't actually have a, I have a baby Xbox. Oh, right. That doesn't have a disc drive. But I looked at them all and I was like, would I want to play any of these again? And first of all, so many of them are on game pass. Like just a lot of the ones I'm actually interested in are either on Game Pass or like

they're wildly on sale, so it wouldn't be that difficult for me to play them, like, on my PC, which is so much better than the 360 or even the baby Xbox. It's better than the 360. It's going to look better if I bought it on there. And a lot of them are games that I would never play a second time. So I just was like, well, why am I holding on to these? And I sort of realized that it was pretty emotional because I remember getting the 360 and how important that was to me at the time, because it was also the time period where I was starting to be a games journalist. And, like, I so associate that purchase and all those games. Like many of those games were games I got for free at the Phoenix offices and like...

Your first review copies. You know, my first embargoes, my first free video games because I was working for the industry. So like, I have such a positive memory of those physical games. Because of course, I was getting the physical games in the mail at the office, which like, again, they just email us the codes now, folks. But like that isn't, that wasn't standard back then. So I just, I, it was weird to let go of it. but also looking at them, I was like, I don't really need this anymore.

And maybe some 19-year-old college student could get something out of playing Killzone or not. Or they could be like, why is this a game that I am being given suddenly? But yeah, I also might get rid of my dreamcast. I don't know. Guys, tell me I need to get rid of these things. No, keep your dream cast. I wish I had a dream cast. Well, so, okay, so, but here's the thing.

The 360, it sounds like you found a really valuable. place for the 360 where it's actually going to use and appreciate it. And that's like a really cool thing. But like who's going to take your broken we or like even your dream cast? Like are there really, unless you just donated to a video game preservation society or something like that. But even then I'm sure they have plenty of dream cast. Like there aren't a lot of places and like even giving it away to charity or something like what kid wants a dream cast in 2021? Like give them, they want your PS4. Give them that. Yeah. So like I think that there are actually there are very few reasons. not to keep your old stuff unless you really just have no space.

But like if you have enough space to have it, there's no reason not to keep it in a closet somewhere. That's kind of, in general, I'm kind of anti-hoarding and like have to have to yell at my wife to like throw stuff out because she loves collective things. But when it comes to game consoles, like I just don't see the reason not to keep it. You never know. Yeah. I'm normally the same way.

Although in the case of the Dreamcast, I have not played any of those games for very long time. I am also anti-horting, and I'm also like, I can't really justify this. The reason why I can justify the Nintendo consoles is because, in contrast to something like Xbox, I feel like Nintendo is actually quite bad at this. Like, there was a period of time where Super Metroid was just, I had like a shitty copy of it on multiple consoles and it was like very inaccessible. Like, I think it's on the new 3DS now and that's cool. But like, it's not on the Switch, I don't think.

I think they may have added it into that Nintendo online service where they're slowly putting old Nintendo games in there. But like they're taking their sweet time adding old Nintendo games to that service. And a lot of those games were not available before that point and we're just sort of miscellaneously scattered on the 2DS, 3DS store, the Wii

and you would just have to remember which ports were on which platforms for a while. And that's stupid to me. So that was part of how I justified. Like, oh, I may as well keep the Nintendo consoles because they're so bad at preserving games and making it possible for me to play old Nintendo games that I mean like I still don't have that Metroid Prime remastered collection that we keep acting like it's going to come out on

the Switch any day now I just have to hold on to my old like Wii U ports of those that are good but they're not that great and that's a shame you know like come on. Super Metroid is on the Switch by the way on the Switch online service. It must be noted that like Nintendo used to have a service called the Virtual Console that was really good and they would add things to it all the time. And then they just got rid of it for the Switcher and turned it into this subscription service where basically if you pay for Nintendo online

you can download a few Super Nintendo games and regular Nintendo games. But the library is way worse than the virtual consoles was and it doesn't seem like they care enough to add to it consistently. And it's just such a shame the way that they've treated their retro library.

It's weird because they're sitting on the best library of games more than any other like backlog of games. the Nintendo library. Those games are still really fun, so many of them. And they're the ones that are the hardest to play. That sort of disconnect drives me nuts. Yeah. It is unfortunate. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, I mean, I recognize that it takes a lot of resources that maybe Nintendo doesn't want to spend on old games. Maybe old games don't actually sell that well. Maybe not that people are interested. Although their mini NES and S-NES sure seem to sell out everywhere when those came out. Yeah, that's probably different though, right? Because those things are really. are so cute and you have a little controllers and stuff like that's a very different thing. It's a physical thing. Yeah and they're novelty objects. Yeah yeah yeah so maybe maybe it's literally maybe they're looking at a balance sheet somewhere and saying hey it's not worth us worth us

putting the the 10 people on our on our retro games committee to actually working on this but then again I actually would argue that that these companies and especially Nintendo and Sony have an obligation to preserve these games for like the sake of video game history and the video game industry as a whole And like at a certain point, they have to look at themselves and be like, is this, maybe we're taking a loss on this, but like it's our obligation as like the titan of the video game industry to be making these games available so people can play them. Like it just doesn't feel like, it feels like something that they should have to do. And it's a shame that they don't feel that obligation. Yeah, I totally agree.

And I also think that it's too bad that emulation has to take the place of that because it's not legal and it's not the way that these games. games in theory should be preserved and instead they should be available in a way that isn't considered seedy and like a thing that we're not supposed to acknowledge anybody does. Like it's, I don't know. I think that's kind of silly. Although I guess it is more of an open secret in games for emulators to exist and be kosher to use as compared to like drama about the internet archive with other forms of media where people feel like have a lot of mixed feelings about it existing. I'm, I'm pro archiving of all forms. But I know that's like, a more open-minded attitude to have about media than some people have.

But I don't know. It's just kind of interesting that at least in my perception, video games, it's like more socially acceptable to be like, yeah, I'm playing it on an emulator. Well, when you can't get it somewhere else legally. Because it's so common to not be able to get it somewhere else legally. Right. But I think you get into thorny territory when you talk about, I mean, plenty of people are pirating games that you can just buy today, like modern games,

like whatever just came out. Yeah. And that's kind of a different thing. yeah, very much murkier, like much less ethical. It's much harder to justify pirating the newest game that just came out than it is pirating. An old Super Nintendo game you love that you can't buy anywhere and don't know how to. And the developers have all split up so they're not seeing the money anyway. So like who knows.

When we all have, we have different words even. One is pirating and one is emulating. Right. Emulation. Yeah, that's true. It feels to me like the people who own this stuff often care the least about preserving it sometimes. I think about the universal fire, not to always be bringing this back to music, but there was this horrible fire in Universal where a ton of master recordings burned. I'm sure you've heard about this.

This is like this colossal tragedy where they lost so much music. And it was partly just because of neglect and because they were just kind of not taking care of. And it was kind of like, oh, no one cares. There were artists who found out about it through the media or way later. And I get this sense from games, too, that it's just never going to be the publishers, the people who paid for the games or who own the IP. they're not going to be the ones who take responsibility for, you know, shining it up and making it, you know, ready to do.

I recently worked on a sort of classic game project. That's exciting. Well, yeah, it'll be cool. And it's like it was part of it. Part of the whole process is like explaining the game and presenting all the different versions of it and kind of doing what we've done here for Final Fantasy 6. Like someone has to actually do that work. And that's the work of preservation.

It isn't just getting it running on a modern system. It's like you need someone to explain what it is, present the different versions, and, like, help people see the differences between them if they've never used, you know, some of these old game systems and, like, bring people in who can kind of walk you through what's going on. And that's, like, a whole labor-intensive process, that there are whole companies that do that and release games like that. But it's definitely a kind of work that requires money and resources and time. And I don't get the sense that most video game publishers have any interest in doing that at all, because, like you said, Jason, I don't think it makes a lot of. money. It's kind of a niche thing. Yeah, it's almost like capitalism is the problem here. And if the artists owned what they had created, then maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation because it would be a lot more. Like if you, if you could go back and put together all of the people who made Final Fantasy

6, maybe they were, I guess some of them are still at Squarianix. Some of the top ones are still at Squarionics. But I'm guessing that a lot of them would get together and say, hey, like, let's make our game available for whoever wants to buy, the original version. Let's make it as available as possible instead of having to worry about what's coming next, what's a big new hit, what's hitting our profit sheets this quarter, like what's going to make the difference to our P&Ls, blah, blah, blah. All right, so I've got one more question for you too, and I think I know the answer, but do you two have any type of emotional attachment when you're playing an old game

to playing it with its original controller or original CRT setup or whatever way you remembered playing it when you were young and you played it, like, does that mean anything to you? I feel like most of us would say no. If there's a great switchport, we'd much rather play it that way. Or even if it's a historical reason, if you're like, I feel like I should be playing Final Fantasy 6 on a Game Boy Advance for real, because isn't that the way it's meant to be played?

Do you feel that way at all? Jason, what do you think? Strong no. The one place where games have advanced and should never, look back is like controllers and hardware and like trying to play i mean even with the s nes classic like you play you pick up the controller and you're like oh man like how did we love this thing for so long as a great controller it's it's a great controller for its time but like comparing that to your modern day Xbox or PlayStation controllers that you can just plug into a pc and play anything

on it's just like a world of difference like it's so much more comfortable to play stuff on on modern controllers and that's the case for everything. Switch is a little different because the switch has its like moments of discomfort too depending what you're playing, how you're playing it, if you're playing it with joycons in or out or with pro controller or whatever. But yeah, I'm very much in favor of like making everything playable on newer systems, newer controllers. And I'm not, I've never been someone who like even notices the difference between like, oh, this doesn't look the same because it's not on the CRT so you don't get the exact like graphical quality differences and blah blah blah blah blah blah like the stuff that preservationists care a lot more about I don't

quite care as much about so no I'm not a peerist when it comes to that stuff what about you kirk you care about it I'm mostly the same I think that it's kind of interesting the way that controllers have all like they're all still able to play those old games there's a D pad on every controller even though if you were making a brand new controller just in a world where those games hadn't existed and it was just making games, designing controllers for modern games, would you necessarily have a four-way D-pad that would go on every controller?

Interesting. That's a good question. So it's like that controller, like the original controllers do still exist on the modern controllers, which is one reason that we can feel that way. And I mostly agree. I think there are some specific controllers that I at least understand,

like the GameCube controller, I understand why people get attached to that because that's so distinct and has such a distinct feel. But yeah. Yeah, I know that's a whole smash thing and I'm not really a big smash player. And then I think that when it comes to weird like peripherals, like the rock band instruments, the drum set,

some of that, like that kind of thing, I would think you would need to play that on the original thing. Like getting together with people and playing rock band. I don't think you can play a rock band on a PlayStation 5 controller now. Well, right. that you could kind of hack together a way to play it using MIDI or something. I don't know, maybe, maybe not. If someone could do that, it just wouldn't be the same. Like, you need, with stuff like that, with the big weird controls, you kind of need to be using the original thing.

And then you might as well kind of bust out the whole original setup. Yeah. Yeah, I don't disagree. But I was still surprised as I was going through my old consoles about the emotional attachment that I had to certain old controllers or setups. And I was just like, wow, like, remember this? Remember we sports? That was crazy. Remember the GameCube controller? What a controller. This would be a good podcast. I would listen to a podcast that was just Maddie remembering controllers.

Man, remember the Super Nintendo controller? Man, those shoulder buttons. Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. I think there's a school of thought out there that it doesn't really matter. Like the retro game preservation doesn't really matter because it's not even worth going back and playing them because so many, like, new games have just evolved and raise the bar in so many ways.

I remember I've had this conversation. with our former boss, Stephen Totillo, a bunch of times, who just left Kotaku. So farewells, bon voyage to Stephen. And he is, like, very anti-retro games, like, to the point where it's a goof. And we would go back and forth, and he would be like, I don't understand why you would want to play an old game. Like, why would you want to play a game again? Like, he could never understand why someone would play a game a second time and, like,

want to experience it again, which I think is really interesting. Well, not, and not to argue against Stephen, who isn't here to argue back. But like, I get what he's saying. Like, video games do become more user-friendly and everything over times, and it's much more pleasant in a lot of ways to play modern games. But if you view games as art and you're interested in them as an art form, like, art does not move along a trajectory that only gets better. Like, that's not how it works.

Like, there's a reason that people still listen to recordings from the 1970s and the 1920s. There's a reason that people still watch old movies. There's a reason people read books from hundreds of years ago. Like, art is just art. Like, it has... aspects to it that you can appreciate and that are interesting and beautiful no matter when it was made. So, like, of course it's worth going back and playing old games, even if it's a weird experience and it's not fun in that way that playing a modern game is. It's ill. It can be a

totally rewarding and worthwhile experience. Yeah, that's when you get into the whole technology part of the video game cocktail that is like the art technology hybrid, because the technology has improved so drastically that it's like, you look at an NES game and sometimes it's like really unplayable because it's so tough or it's so clunky or it's so hard to even control anything. But yeah, I mean, I think that, like, fundamentally, there are some games that have aged really well, and I think that's an important part of the video game experience.

Like, we'll see when we talk about Final Fantasy 6, how you guys feel about how well it's aged, and even how I feel as someone who's played it two dozen times, how well it's age. But I think that, like, it can be actually really fun and gratifying to go back and play something like Link to the Past or Super Metroid, because those games have actually aged incredible.

well. You play Super Mario World today and it feels like you're playing like any Super Mario game. Like it's just as fun and satisfying and feels just as good as like any new, any modern Super Mario game in some ways it's better than like the new Super Mario games, I think.

So really your mileage may vary depending what you actually go back and try to play. Yeah. Although there is also an art to making a really good port that maintains all of that same spirit while making the game easier to play in a way that feels invisible but is also extremely appreciated.

And there's something to be said for that. And I do really wish there were a current port of Final Fantasy 6 that did that exact thing. And sadly, there isn't. So I guess we'll leave it there. We'll take a little break and then we'll be back with one more thing. I can't hear myself. But I'm assuming. These are real podcast listeners, not actors. Hey, thanks for coming. Here's a list of descriptors. What would you choose to describe the perfect podcast? I mean, vulgarity.

Dumb. Definitely dumb. And like, right here, this one. Meritless. What if I told you there was a podcast that did have all of that? No. Jordan Jesse Go. And it's free.

Jordan Jesse Go. Jordan Jesse Go. Jordan Jesse Go, a real podcast. Schmanors. Noun. Definition. Rules of etiquette designed not to judge others, but rather to guide ourselves through everyday social situations. Hello, Internet.

I'm your husband host, Travis McElroy. And I'm your wife host, Teresa McElroy. Every week on Schmaners, we take a look at a topic that has to do with society or manners. We talk about the history of it. We take a look at how it applies to everyday life. And we take some of your questions. And sometimes we do a biography about a really cool person that had an impact on how we view etiquette. So join us every Friday and listen to Schmanters on Maximumfund.org or wherever podcasts are found.

Manners Schmanners. Get it. And we are back for one more thing. And I already know what Kirk's is and it's an extremely exciting announcement. And there's no need to delay. We're going to kick it over to Kirk Hamilton to tell us about his week. My one more thing is that I finally bought a PlayStation 5 successfully. The amazing thing is that this is a feat that merits applause when you pull it up. I have successfully given Sony money in exchange for a concert.

How many months has it been since you started trying to get one? Like two months? Yeah, I guess I started trying in December and it is now February. So it's been like a month and change, a month and a half. And yeah, it was a whole process to try to get it. And then I finally made it happen at Walmart. And I actually recorded myself. I was in the middle of working on strong songs when I got it.

So I just had a session open. And I was like, I'm just going to record myself right now. I'm going to tell the story. So I am now going to throw it to my past self explaining how I got a PlayStation 5. And this will actually maybe be helpful for any of you listening who are still trying to get one. So I'm going to play this recording that I made last week. And you two are going to listen along. So listeners are going to hear Jason and Maddie hearing this story alongside

the rest of you for the first time, even though I have already heard it because I told it. Okay, so take it away past Kirk. Hey, everybody, it's Kirk, and I'm recording into the middle of a strong song session because I was sitting here working on my other podcast, Strong Songs, when I got a text from our friend Jason Shrier that Warrior 64 had tweeted that Walmart was going to get PS5s in stock. And so I have been playing this game for a long time for more than a month. I've been trying to get a PS5 and I've been trying to go the legit route.

I'm not bugging anybody that I know in PR at Sony, not trying to work any angles. I just want to try to buy one like a normal person. And it's been really difficult, huge pain in the ass you could even say. And I had basically given up. And then I kind of decided, okay, I'm going to try it. I put some notifications on my phone, some Twitter notifications from like the in-stock Twitter accounts, which was a massive pain. And I was kind of increasingly aware of when the thing was in-south.

stock, but you keep trying and it just doesn't work. But I finally just got one, and I wanted to record this moment for posterity. It is so hard to get a PlayStation 5. I got one from Walmart, and the way it works at Walmart is they release these things

in waves, and they always kind of announced this is actually, there was a Verge article reporting that Walmart was going to have PS5s in stock. So that's how it started. And then, let's see, let me see if I actually have this email. I've got my email here from Walmart.

That is exciting. They've got my order confirmed. It comes on March 3rd, so it comes in like three weeks. Whatever, and I don't have to worry about it. So the Verge reports that they have them. That's where it starts. And then that's on Mario 64's Twitter feed. Oh, the Verge reports that Walmart says they will have PS5 in stock.

That's what we've been reduced to. So then you go to the Walmart website with a billion other people and you wait. And then write it new. Pacific, boom, they go up. So I've got it set at this point. I've been doing this long enough you kind of learn to refine your technique. And I have a link that just adds it to your cart, adds a PlayStation 5 to your cart, rather than going to the store page and refreshing and hitting the button.

So I'm ready with that link. I've got my cart open in one tab, you know, in one tab, and I've got that other tab ready to press that button. So I just start pressing it. Press, press, press, press. The thing is sold out within a second. Less than a second. Gone at noon. Okay, holy shit.

So it sold out so fast. It's got to be all bots or something, I guess. Scalpers. And I'm like, oh, my God, what am I doing? What am I doing with my life? I should go have lunch. And instead, you know, they do this thing where it sells out at noon and they're like, okay, we'll be back at 1210. We're going to have more. So I'm like, okay, I'll wait until 1210. I'll try this again. So I've got the thing loaded up. I got my cart there. I'm ready to go. I check my account. Looks right. Everything looks good. And then I'm like, okay, here we go. Kind of wait, do a little bit of work. 12-10 rolls around. Start hitting the button. Just hitting it, hitting it, hitting it, hitting it. Nothing's happening. Sold out, sold out, sold out. And then suddenly, boom, it's in my cart.

I'm like, oh shit, it's in my cart. Okay, time to check out. Go to the checkout thing. Press checkout. It says, review your order. Review my order. Check your address. Looks good.

Check your card. Looks good. What's your CVV on the back of your card? I'm like, wait, what? I don't remember I thought this was saved. And so that I don't remember what it is. And I'm looking, I have it like saved in last pass. And I'm looking.

I'm trying to remember what it is. It's taken a little bit. I'm trying to get it to show me the number. Oh, my God. It shows me the number. Okay, there's the number. I'm not going to tell you all the number because you can't steal my credit card. Come on.

Don't do that. That's not cool. So then I put the number in. Boom, go to buy it. It's sold out. Okay. All right. Well, we got it into our cart, so that feels like progress.

And now Walmart, of course, is saying 1220. We'll have another wave of these things. Come back at 1220. Okay, so I'm going to come back at 1220. That seemed to work. I got it into my cart. It's actually now saved in my cart. And it says like, saved for later.

And I can actually keep going through the checkout process. It just says that it's sold out when I hit the final place your order button. So I'm like, hmm, maybe this will save me some time. So I do some more work, kind of puts around, you know, wait until 1220. 1220 happens. And I'm doing it again. I'm ready to check out. And actually, it goes out of my cart.

So now my cart is empty. So I'm back to the original process. Pressing the ad the cart shortcut. So press that thing. Press it press the other button press that shortcut press it so much and then boom it's back in my card again Okay here we go again go review the order review the address review the credit card number Enter the thing go and it says your credit card information could not be verified I'm like what does that mean that's that's my credit card number and then I look and oh my god it isn't it's an old credit card

With the my old address it's like one that I put in the last time I ordered something from Walmart which was forever ago Who even knows what it was and I'm like why didn't I check this? Why didn't I check my credit card information? I And I didn't, so I'm like frantically trying to add the new credit card number and I've got it there and I'm adding it. And I'm like, you know, knowing that I'm screwed at this point. I'm adding it and it's, you know, adding the number. And then it asked me the CVV code and I know that. And I press place the odor and it's sold out. So, oh my God.

Amateur hour. Totally screwed it up. So waiting, waiting. They say they're going to have another round of these at 1230. And I'm like, okay, here we go. 1230. We're going to make this happen. I've got it in the saved for later.

so I get it all ready to hit the place order button. And I don't do that because I know it currently thinks it's sold out, so it won't work. So waiting, doing a little bit more work, kind of like, all right, if this doesn't work, I'm going to bail. But I think maybe this is the closest I've ever been. So we're going to see if we can make this work. So waiting, waiting, waiting. I've got the time.js, you know, the nuclear clock up, waiting for that to just kick over. And right when it kicks over, I'm going to hit the place order button.

So right when it kicks over, I hit the place order button. and this capture thing comes up. Prove you're not a robot. I'm like, I'm not a robot. I'm clicking the thing and waiting. Then it says, prove you not a robot again. I'm like, I'm really not a robot. Pressing it, press in it.

It takes me back a step. Confirm your address. Okay, whatever. Confirm the address. I know the credit card is right now. Go, go, go, go, go. Press place order. Sold out.

And now it's out of my car. I'm like, oh my God, I'm back to square one. Over there, pressing the shortcut, pressing the shortcut, trying to get it in there. And then it adds to my car. One more time. Go through. Review the order.

Review the address. review the credit card number, hit place order, and it just sits there spinning, and then, boom. I ordered a PlayStation 5, and this is how excited I am that I got to spend $500 on something that I probably should have been a little bit easier to buy, but you know, we live in COVID times, and some things are very hard to come by. And now I have a PlayStation 5 coming in a matter of, well, many weeks, assuming that my order doesn't get canceled or anything else. And I'm excited. This was fun. It was a fun moment of retail shenanigans. I kind of can't believe I got one, given how bad the purchasing process is at Walmart, just like it is everywhere.

But I did manage to pull it off. So if you've been trying to get a PlayStation 5 and you're like me and you kind of are sort of over it and frustrated, hey, you can get one. You just kind of got to stick with it. And yeah, use that ad-de-card shortcut at Walmart. So this is me in the moment, having just ordered one. and I'm assuming that I'm going to edit this into the show at some point when we record next week. But anyways, good times.

I finally paid a lot of money for a video game device. Hooray. Wow. Well done. That story was so many more ups and downs than I thought it was going to have. Yeah, tell me about it. So, yeah, I successfully ordered a PlayStation 5, and actually I have some updates after that story. The first one is that it actually came. today. So it didn't take until March 3rd. It came a lot faster than I thought, which is cool. I

set it up and I have not done anything with it yet, but I'm sure I'll be talking about it on the show next week. And the other thing I will say is that if you are trying to buy one of these, I've heard from a number of people who've used the technique that I use that shortcut to add to the cart at Walmart. It really does work. I mean, I got it into my cart three times, which is impressive. I had a lot of room to fuck up. And so I actually posted a little guide to how to do it in the triple click Discord in the video game. chat that's sort of pinned there. And there's a lot of guides for how to do this, but that method does work. So that is the end of my story. Thank you everyone for indulging me in my, in my epic

saga. And now I can finally play Demon Souls. That is very exciting. I can't help but notice that Kirk did get a PS5 before any of us got a vaccine, which is just interesting to me personally. That is a factoid, isn't it? No real reason. But that is something. that I've noticed about that story. That's all I'll say. Anyway, I'll go next, I guess. So this week, I played a board game that is called Hunt a Killer Death Hit, a Dive Bar.

Have you two ever played? Maddie Hamilton over here to talk about it. No, I've heard of it. I remember it being advertised somewhere, like hearing podcast ads for it, but no, I've never played it. Yeah, so this game is, it's part of a series of games that are just a box of props, basically. It's a box of evidence, fake evidence for a fake murder that you have to solve.

And this isn't like a linear game in any way. It's just you open the box and you have all of the evidence that you need from a case and you just look at it all and you try to figure out who did the murder. And when you're pretty sure you know who did the murder, you open an envelope that tells you whether or not you got it right. and there are codes that you have to crack. So it's just one murderer in the game? In this game, yes.

There's a whole bunch of different games that you can buy. You can only play this once, yes. And so the way that me and Dina and her sole remaining roommate, the other one moved back in with her parents. So we're down to a COVID party of three these days. Three of us played the sport game together. We borrowed it from some other friends who borrowed it from some other. friends, it's been like going around. Because you can only play it once and then we're going to give it to

somebody else because we've already, we've beaten the mystery. And I really recommend this, even though these games are like, they're expensive. They're like over $100 because it's like these really realistic props where it's like a menu and like a bottle opener and like all this stuff that you look at and you're like, oh, why is there a bottle opener in this box? Okay. And like eventually figure out why it's there. And like, I don't know. It's just, it's really cool. Like you're looking at these real objects and these actual cases and you're, well, it's not, it's not real, but I'm so into this. This sounds amazing. I'm going to go buy this like immediately. I loved it so much. I recommend it so strongly. We felt so stupid and then also like geniuses by the end. There were a lot of moments

where we were cracking the code. So there's two characters in this game. I will not reveal how to crack the code. But there are two characters in the game who are using a secret code to communicate with one another and you find some letters from them where they're using it. And you're, you're pretty sure you know what kind of code it is, but you don't know how to crack it. And they really don't tell you. Like eventually you just have to figure out how to crack the code. And it took us hours. And we tried so many methods for cracking the code that were just total dead ends, but really fun. Like we were just walking around the apartment like, okay, what if it's this? And then like running into the other room being like, I've got it. I've got it. And then like it wouldn't, it wouldn't

work at all. This just sounds great. It's kind of like an escape room. It's like, or those other like with the physical feely stuff. Oh man. That sounds great. It was so satisfying. And there were all these like little side plots that we figured out that weren't even in the solution at the end where we were just like reading about each person involved in the mystery and being like, clearly this person is actually doing this. Like they didn't kill this person, but they're doing this other scheme. And like we figured that out and we're like then opening the thing at the end and it just tells you the killer. And we were like, well, what about can we get all this other stuff confirmed? But like it doesn't even matter. It's just like fun little side plots that you can discover in the course of learning who the killer is. That's just like added texture. So anyway, I really recommend this whole series. You don't have to get that specific one. They have a ton and there's like a subscription box you can subscribe to, I guess, where you can just get these all the time if you want to solve mysteries with your roommates.

And it's called Hunt a Killer. Yeah, it ruled so hard. It's all I want to do. It sounds great. Yeah. So Jason, what about you? I have been watching Wanda Vision, which I know both of you have also been watching. That's right.

It's true. I have, yeah, I have thoughts on this. So first of all, I want to tell you guys, so I put on the first episode of Wanda Vision like a couple of weeks ago because I saw people talking about on Twitter and I think I lasted 30 seconds and I was like, nope, this isn't for me.

I'm not like a huge MCU buff. I've seen most of the movies but like haven't seen them multiple times the way that like I know both of you are way more into like Marvel stuff than I am. But I'm into it. I know the character. I like them.

I'm just not like super into the... You're just not like a huge stinky nerd. No, we got it. You're cool. You like football. Yeah. I like Final Fantasy. I was speaking of football.

Speaking of football, I was originally planning on making my one more thing this week, an NFL story about the Super Bowl. Oh my God. I regret everything. Right, but you probably lost a lot of money on your bets, right? And you're really salty about it. But the Super Bowl was so boring that there isn't even a story to talk about.

It was like one of the worst Super Bowels I've ever seen. Interesting. If you're a Tom Brady fan, you probably didn't think it was boring, which I, I can't tell you how I would know that. I'm definitely not related to any. Anyway, so Wanda Vision. So yeah, so I was like, this is not for me, like this sitcom shit. Like I've seen enough I love Lucy in my life.

I don't need more of this stuff. And then I saw people talking about like some big, big twist at the end of episode five that changes everything in the MCU. And I was like, all right, I should just give us another chance to just watch through it all. So I started watching through it. I was like, okay, this is pretty good. I really like the guy who plays. vision. He's a great actor. Peter

Paul Bettney. Paul Bettney. He's fantastic. Recently watched a knight's tale. He is red hot in a night's tail. Good Lord. Paul Bettany. Remember a knight's tale? Kirk does. He's Jeffrey Chaucer. I saw someone saying on Twitter this hilarious thing, I wish I remembered too, but I saw someone saying that like

Paul Bettany like has gone from like someone who was like a single voice in Iron Man for a check to like this is this monster character and like suddenly he's tied into all these things. He's like contractually obligated to do all these things. Anyway, and then I think it takes like three episodes or four episodes before I really got into it. Basically when you're out of the TV and like into the real world.

Yeah, it takes three episodes to reveal what's going on. It's a big mystery. Yeah, to reveal what the show is actually about. Yeah, because the show is one big mystery, which is interesting. And yeah, I started getting really into it by like the third or fourth episode once you meet Monica Rambo and Jimmy Wu, especially and Kat Tenning's character and you start really like getting into the thick of it. And now I'm super invested. Now I'm like, I can't wait for each new episode. I want to see what's going to happen next. I'm so hooked on this mystery and like what's really going on.

And I feel like the mystery pretty much has got to be way deeper than people than like originally seems. Like the most obvious thing. And this isn't even really a spoiler. But the most obvious like kind of assumption is like, oh, Wanda misses vision so much that she's created this world where she can live with him. But I feel like it's going to be something more than that. Like, I feel like there's going to be some bigger twist upon a twist. But here's a funny story.

The end of episode five, the cameo that I mentioned before, like the big twist that changes everything in the MCU, I watched it and I was like, what? Who? Who is that? Because it turns out you have to see some movies that I haven't actually seen to actually appreciate this. So I didn't really know it was going on. I think this is classic Marvel stuff, right? Like the end credit stuff where the person next to you in the theater says, oh, well, I'll tell you who that.

is, you know, that's, uh, that's Adam Warlock. Like, he's gonna be in the next one, you know, or whatever. Exactly. Yeah, and like, usually that's me saying that to you. I wasn't there, Jason, to explain to you what that character is from and, like, the bit that they were doing with all of it. Yeah, I'm very sorry that I couldn't be there at that moment. No, but it's okay because I still, and I'm enjoying the show beyond, like, the twist stuff, which is important. Like, you have to really be into a show beyond that. And I actually really like it. I think that the, the acting is good, um, especially for Mark.

Marvel stuff and yeah, I'm really into it. So I will say that if you, like me, bounced off of it at first or if you, like, didn't think it would be into you, give it a chance. If you're at least semi-into Marvel stuff, because I don't think you can really watch this unless you know the MCU. This is not a show for people who have never watched a Marvel.

Probably not. Probably not. I like it. It's a mystery. I like when a show, it's fun to watch a mystery. Like, it's fun to watch a thing that's mysterious and you're trying to figure out what's going on and there's little clues, you know?

This makes for a fun experience. experience. Yeah, I feel like I'm having a completely different experience with the show, having read so many comics about Scarlet Witch In The Vision. Aren't there actual comic runs that this is kind of based on? Oh, yeah. So when I watch it, I'm not like, oh, this is a big mystery. I'm like, oh, these are all the comic book storylines they're pulling from, which is a very cool artistic pursuit for them to be doing. And I'm really enjoying the artistry of it in a different type of way, where I'm like, oh, okay, here's what, here's what they're combining in order to summarize Scarlet which is very lengthy complex history and make it palatable to audiences who need to understand it in nine apps.

Let me ask you, just like spoiler phrase, as a person who knows all the comic arcs, is there a chance that they're using those arcs and now they're going to fold something bigger on top of them? Because it feels a little like that's what they're about to do. Yeah, they pretty much have to. So like Monica Rambo is not a character who's normally associated with Wanda at all. So like even that combination is kind of wacky for them. Like she's an old, old guard Avengers character. And she and Scarlet Witch were on the team at the same time.

But like that's not the era of Avengers that was being adapted by these movies. So they're already displacing multiple storylines into one here anyway. And I think they're going to do Monica Rambo's origin story, which would have already happened. It already did happen in the comics by the time she became an Avengers. So I mean, they're taking multiple things out of time. So in that way, I like the two of you, I'm like, oh, I don't know what they're going to do next. I don't know how they're going to reveal Monica's powers. I mean, I guess spoilers.

She's going to have superpowers. But like, does that have a spoiler? Come on. She's been around since the 70s. Does anyone not have superpowers? Come on. Randall Park. I hope Randall Park never gets superpowers.

It's just his amazing face. Randall Park is awesome. And he's great in VEP. He's really great in this. And I just saw a video of him rapping that is incredible. He does. I think he wraps in Always Be My Maybe. I feel like he does some rapping.

that movie. He's great, man. I love that guy. Yes. And Kat Jennings is also awesome. Well, of course. Yes. Nice to see her again. One of the, like, deep-cut talents from the Thor movies people didn't like. It's really nice to see her have her come around and get to be in something that's actually kind of good. All of the Thor movies were okay. They're fine, but like, Wanda Vision's actually pretty good, and she gets to ham it up. Yes, yes. Yeah, I'm enjoying it. And actually really excited to see like more Marvel shows, although the promo for the Falcon and, um, and, what's his face? Winter Soldier. Winter Soldier didn't look great, but willing to give it a chance. Yeah, I think that Hawkeye show might be

good. I don't think there's a promo for that yet, but it's, it's going to have Kate Bishop in it, and I would like to watch that. It's going to have Pizza Dog in it. That's why I'm going to want to. Wait, is it, is it Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye? Yeah, but it's also like young teenage girl Hawkeye and she's cool, so whatever. And pizza dog. It's got pizza dog. I'm going to watch it just because there's a dog that likes pizza. One more quick thing, by the way, I really like the Wanda Vision is one episode per week as opposed to letting you out binge it once because it really feels like there's like an ongoing conversation around it, which is really cool.

The Mandalorian was that way too, as you'll learn when we get to decision three. This is all spoken like a man who's being forced to watch two seasons of the Mandalorian novel week, unlike me and Kirk for a certain beans cast that's going to come out. Anyway, that's for next week. This is it for this week. We'll see ya sometime. Yeah, I'll see you both next week. See you guys. 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.

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