Video Gamers Podcast - [Holiday Rewind] The Games That Shaped Us - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

As we break for the holidays, we're re-releasing some of our favorite episodes for you In this one, gaming hosts Josh and Paul and returning guest host Ryan are back with an incredible gaming bonus round. In this fantastic nostalgia fueled episode we go over some of the more memorable and important video games that shaped us, and our love of gaming. We all have those core gaming memories, or moments that stand out above the rest, and in this episode, we each discuss some of our favorites, or most important video games that shaped who we are as gamers. This episode is sure to bring back some awesome memories! Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hey guys, it's Paul here. This is one of our Holiday Rewind episodes because we are in the month of December and every year we like to take a two-week break to spend a little bit of extra time with our families around the Christmas season. This episode that we chose to re-release is a bonus round episode called The Games That Shaped Us. It was recorded by Josh, Ryan, and me.

Ryan was actually coming back for only his second guest host appearance. So this is actually before he even permanently joined the show. He also called in from San Diego while on vacation with his family, which is pretty hilarious. The whole idea behind this episode was just to talk about flagship games from our past that kind of formed us into the gamers we are now. What are the major games that drew us to gaming to begin with? What games formed our opinion and made us realize just how great gaming could be? Things of that nature. I will also point out that this episode does also address the stupid Beatles debate, which went on for way too long. That has been laid to rest. There is no need to dig that one back up from the grave. Besides, I think Josh Otto conceded by default when he said

that Wham is the greatest band of all time because of their hit song, Take On Me, which was not released or written by Wham, has nothing to do with them whatsoever. So that's just a funny little tidbit here that you'll hear in the episode. Anyway, hopefully this episode will give you guys a bit more insight into the gamers that Josh Ryan and I became over time. Enjoy. Hello, squad mates, and welcome back to another episode of the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Today we have a very special bonus round where we are going to be talking about the video games that shaped us as gamers.

I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he's primarily a mobile gamer, so I'm sure he'll be talking to us about all the mobile games that shaped him, like Angry Birds and Doodle Jump. It's Josh. There's times I really like you, Paul. And then there's times I really don't like you. I'm not going to say which one this is. I'm guessing you have no mobile games on this list, Josh. I don't have a single mobile game on my phone for that matter

that's such a shame you're missing out buddy all right and then joining me and josh he's back again as a guest host for the second time and talk about commitment because we offered to have him back on and he said yes even though he's on vacation with his family coming in live from san diego california it's ryan hey coming live from san diego here i am ryan you told us that you were just surfing 20 minutes ago is is that is that correct yes i literally walked in uh got all the sand off me took a quick shower and walked over to the computer. That's awesome. I'm so glad that you're here with us, Ryan. We're not getting you in trouble with the family, right?

They're cool with you recording? Nope. They're good to go. I set it up way ahead of time and did all my husbandly and fatherly duties, so we're good to go. What people don't know is he's sitting on the toilet right now holding a microphone. All right. Before we start our regular content here for this bonus round,

Josh, you've got a review to read. Someone left the show. I do have a review. We've got a couple, but we've got a couple of really good ones, but they're a little longer. So I'm only going to read one this time. But if you haven't left the show a review yet, please take just a few seconds to help us out and leave us a review. If you're on Apple, if you are on Spotify, you can click the stars and rate us five stars. That helps the show immensely. This one comes in from the co-op company and it's titled For a Better Life. And it says this will be the greatest gaming podcast to ever grace your ear holes.

I have been listening to these guys for more than a year and a half and feel great shame for not writing a review earlier because they deserve it. I rarely ever plan on playing any of the games they talk about, but I love listening to them anyway. They're excellent storytellers and are great at articulating their thoughts and opinions. Except for Michael, because words are hard. He will be missed. I may not always agree with them, and neither will you, but that is part of the beauty of this podcast. I love getting to hear their differing opinions on all of the games they deep dive and all

of the crazy gaming news in each week's Twig episode. Heck, I even love hearing about their fast food preferences in a short, quick take episode. If you want to greatly improve your mediocre life then this podcast is the way to do it if you don't listen to the podcast after reading this review i am afraid you will be doomed to a life of disappointing mediocre podcasts and miss out on the majesty that is paul and josh p.s waffles are better than pancakes and the beatles are overrated okay so i was really excited about this review all the way through waffles beating out pancakes uh not not to get sidetracked too much can can i just do 30 seconds on the

beatles no no no all right no too bad josh called for our audience to come out in droves and tell me that the beatles are overrated and a lot of people followed through on this. And I asked, I asked every single one, give me one solid actual fact of why you think they're overrated other than personal preference. And I still haven't been given one response. I was even joking,

calling people cowards. I'm like, come on, cowards. Give me one reason. Tell me who you think is the goat, if not beatles and uh no one's given me any answers so i can only assume that you're all trolling me and don't actually believe it paul since i'm the one that created this chaos i'll i'll speak to the listeners and i'll say please keep going guys just keep coming in and

telling paul that the beatles are overrated it is great i will second said motion yeah and and then josh said that the goat is wham because of the song take on me which is by aha and not by wham i mean wham's really good too though paul oh my goodness tomato tomato well thank you the co-op company excellent review just just strike strike the last sentence, and then we're good. All right. So the idea behind this episode, we were kicking around a few bonus round ideas. And since Ryan's a guest host, we wanted him to feel comfortable. We wanted it to be something fun that we could all enjoy recording. And we're all dedicated gamers. We've all been gaming for a really long time. We have specific genres that we love, types of games that

we love. We love connecting through other people, socializing through games. So we thought it would be fun. Let's just set back the clock. Let's look back at our history. What are the pillars? What games, what moments made us the gamers that we are today? So we get to do a little bit of a trip down nostalgic lane. And that's really all we're doing. Maybe we get to do a little bit of a trip down nostalgic lane. And that's really all we're doing. Maybe games we played as kids or teenagers, maybe even as young adults, games that meant a lot to us and shaped us into who we are today. Does that sound about right to you guys? Did we all plan for the same show? I may have snuck in a couple experiences. Maybe they're not a specific game, but it is a gaming moment or a gaming experience that helped to shape a little bit of who I am as well.

Well, that's what games are supposed to be, right? It's an experience. Yeah, but I'm just saying there's a couple where it's not a specific game, but it's more the people will see. That was a little teaser. Oh, yeah. There you go like a ddr tournament that you won in an arcade or something maybe paul oh my word all right so i don't know

exactly how many times we'll be able to each go around but we're just going to go round robin until we run out of time so who wants the honors who who wants to go first i'll go first how about that all right age before beauty go ahead oh man paul's on point today i like it beer before mustache for me and i've talked about this a wee lad street fighter 2 the arcade machine was at my local 7-eleven in a back dark corner of the 7-eleven how many times did you get stabbed uh just a couple but it was worth it but okay i used used to walk there. Anytime I would have like 50 cents. If I found two quarters on the ground, dude, I knew where I was going, and that was to go play Street Fighter 2. Now, Street Fighter 2 at the time was absolutely exploding in all of the arcades and everything.

But the reason that I bring up Street Fighter 2 is, number one, I just absolutely love the game. But number two, it's the game that made me realize that I can actually be really, really good at certain video games. And it awoke the competitive nature for me that I absolutely love in video games. There was nothing like being at a big arcade and playing Street Fighter 2 and having just another dude come up, stick the quarter in the machine, and you're waiting to see what character he picks. You're like, is this guy going to be any good? And then just wrecking that fool while you have an audience of people around you. Because when arcades existed, people would watch you play and they would cheer and they

would just, you'd hear them talking. It was like having an audience anytime you played video games. Absolutely loved it. I've got a little snippet here too, to just try to communicate like how big an important Street Fighter 2 was at the time. So I'm going to read this. It's not very long, but this comes from an article and it says, it's hard to overstate how massive a hit Street Fighter 2 was when it first hit arcades. By 1991, I know that's a long time ago.

I was there, Gandalf. I was there 3,000 years ago. Coin-operated arcades were starting to dim, falling short of the heyday of the golden age of arcades in the 1980s, which was my prime childhood the arrival of street fighter 2 heralded a revitalization of the arcade industry driving foot traffic to arcades and attracting countless imitators mortal combat it's quickly it quickly created a burgeoning competitive scene with each arcade community knowing its own top players and others placing their quarters on the edge of the arcade machine to challenge the champs it It also, not surprisingly, dominated the cash flowing into the arcade business. David Snook, the editor of the arcade trade magazine Coinslot, estimated that Street Fighter II accounted for around 60%

of the total coin op market in 1993. Street Fighter II was one of the biggest games ever made in a genre with few rivals. So here's the thing about playing Street Fighter 2 in arcades. And I know a very long time ago, Josh, we recorded a whole episode on arcades. I don't even know if it's still available. We might have scrubbed it because we got rid of a lot of old episodes. But everyone used to have an arcade. You would go to the movie theater. They had an arcade. You would go out to a restaurant. They had an arcade. And they all had Street Fighter 2.

Every single one of them. And I was terrible at Street Fighter 2 because I was born in the mid-80s. So I was probably like six or seven trying to play Street Fighter with other kids. Always got my butt whipped. But it's just hard to overstate how how ever present street fighter 2 was it was everywhere everyone you knew was always playing it all the time it was just it was really cool to see it everywhere and then the reason i brought this up was personally i was really good at street fighter 2 man and so it's just that it was that game where it was like, I'll take on

anybody. And I'm not saying I always won. There's definitely people that were better than me. But it was just that I love this competition. And that has carried through with me my entire life. Everybody knows I absolutely love Rocket League because of the competition of it. What about you, Ryan? Did you play much Street Fighter 2? I know you're a little younger than me. So you're the youngest one here. Yeah, no, I definitely played it. Not as much arcade style as you guys did, but you go to these places and it wasn't as prevalent as in the 80s or early 90s, like you guys said. But I definitely got some Street Fighter in for sure. Like we said, I was more of the imitator guy with the mortal combat but i i definitely hit some madukans in my day so it's interesting how many fighting games there were just a couple years later so you only had street fighter for a little while yeah then you

had mortal combat and next thing you knew you had um what was the primal fear no is that what it was called primal rage primal rage yeah where you had like fighting gorillas and dinosaurs you had um what was the primal fear no is that what it was called primal rage primal rage yeah where you had like fighting gorillas and dinosaurs you had like killer instinct there were just so many competitors that came around and it's all because street fighter 2 had 60 of the market share so you're gonna get a lot of imitators later on oh for sure it was it was such an easy platform too to to copy you know you just get whatever characters you want and you set them up in that platform and then boom just have them battle so it was something that you know anyone could make anything i like it josh that's a good

pick all right what about you ryan what's the first game that you have on your list uh my first one is definitely um it's definitely going way back for me you know being the youngest one here it may not be as as way back for some of us but um uh and i had so much fun making this list too this this was a blast when you guys came up with this topic i was like oh yeah heck yeah and once i got started i was like every time i come up with a game i had to like take games off of this list because i had too many but for me it is a beautiful year 1997 and uh golden eye on nintendo 64 i knew this would come up oh absolutely so so here's a backstory for me anyways i was i was born in 88 so i was 9 10 years old when this came out and i was able to get it at least so my

friend got this game for his N64 I didn't have one we played it all weekend when I went over to his house and it was I had so much fun we played you know the little co-op game and we just played single player and everything and so the next weekend I was able to convince

my mom to rent a Nintendo 64 and GoldEye from Blockbuster. For you little ones out there that don't know what Blockbuster is, it's a place you could go. And you could rent games and movies and all that stuff. And consoles. And consoles, apparently. Yeah. So I was able to get a console and the game.

And I don't even know how many hours i played i was going to get my money's worth or at least my mom's money's worth out of that game but it was just one that that just sticks with me because i i just put so much time into that after i got that then i ended up getting nintendo 64 and i just played and played for for a hours, millions and zillions of hours. It was so much fun. And it was honestly like for, you know, first person shooters, it was so revolutionary that, you know, and being able to go through these different areas and, you know, the little quirks within the game. It was one that stuck with me forever. Isn't it hilarious that we used to play on like 28 or 32 inch TVs split into four players?

And that game would drop to like 18 frames a second. And we didn't care back then. It was just so much fun. Absolutely. It's funny because GoldenEye is on my list. I literally have GoldenEye with the boys. And the one thing I said is it's hard to explain how big this game was with friends four player split screen on a sick 19 inch tv yeah it's probably the reason that most

of us need glasses and contacts now not because of aging just like i mean imagine trying to play a four player split screen co-op on a 20-inch TV, man. Oh, yeah. Imagine kids these days trying to do that. Don't look at my screen. Don't look at my screen. Screen peaking was the best. You had people who used to tape a bed sheet to the TV, and you'd have the one person underneath looking at the bottom and someone on top.

Exactly. Plus, it's got the all-time best pause music ever oh absolutely dude i i know there's so many people out there because they've heard us mention goldeneye before. It's on a lot of our personal top 10 lists and things like that. It's just really hard to quantify why Goldeneye was so incredible with friends. The game itself, the campaign was top notch. The shooting was really good.

And I'll be honest, I don't know what the magic is with Goldeneye like the coat like the the four player split screen but there was just something about it because you could ryan you said it you could play for hours and hours and hours with your buddies and you would people would never get tired of it yeah doing the same stuff over and over again and you just you just keep it for whatever reason it just felt fresh every single time and and your buddy would win and then you would win and you just you just keep it for whatever reason it just felt fresh every single time and and your buddy would win and then you would win and you win a couple and he'd win a couple and it was just back and forth non-stop over and over yeah it's it's just yeah it was it was revolutionary to me yeah so here's one crazy thing because josh played so much goldeneye

but he never played Perfect Dark. Oh, my God. So, obviously, Goldeneye did it first. But for me, Perfect Dark was just far superior. But what do you think, Ryan? I was going to say the same thing, because I know we played a mountain of Perfect Dark. And I know I said I played a lot of Goldeneye. Triple that for Perfect Dark, because we played so much of perfect dark well you know and i like i know i said i played a lot of gold and i triple that for perfect dark because we we played so much of that you know at our aunt's house or my aunt's house and see but that's the kicker right is everybody would generally agree that perfect dark was a better shooter yeah in general right but ryan brought up golden eye and

golden eye is on my list so what made it better than perfect dark it was it was that first one just first and that's what i'm saying like ask a hundred different people and they'll all say like oh yeah i remember the heyday of golden eye but nobody's like able to say it's this specific thing that made that game what it was but it was magic at the time oh yeah and i mean perfect uh perfect dark even had the same level. Like the complex level was the same level and it was just, you know, it was just perfect dark,

but you had the laptop guns and you, it was the end bombs and it was just, you know, to me, yeah, to me, I, I liked perfect dark more and I would say that it was better just like Paul

did. But golden eye was was what started it and made such an impact and so i mean like i said i convinced my mom to rent a nintendo 64 so i could play it for the weekend you know you knew that was going to be a great weekend oh man yeah i just i just i went and i put she had a tv in her room and i went and i hooked it up in there and i closed the door and I was just gone for the weekend that was where I was yeah I think perfect

dark came out like three years later it's a pretty long gap but I did look on Metacritic not long ago and perfect dark is a 97 and golden eye is a 96 so I mean they're both up there for the best game of all time yeah all right well we're gonna take our first break and then we'll come back and I'll share my first game.

All right. We are back. I wanted to bring up something that we don't often talk about. We never talk about sports games on this podcast. And I want to talk a little bit about NBAba jam nba hang time and nba show time all right now i don't know if you guys ever played the basketball games but i know for me i did not care about sports growing up because my parents didn't like sports. But growing up in the Phoenix area, something happened in 1992. And that's that the Phoenix Suns traded for Charles Barkley.

Oh, yeah. At that point, every single person at my school had Suns fever. And you were not cool if you weren't following the Suns. So I ended up getting 100% all in on basketball. And for like the next 15 years, that's pretty much all I did. All day, every day was playing basketball with my friends. I would watch the Suns during timeouts and halftime. I was out front playing basketball. Well, I didn't play a whole lot of games growing up because I was not allowed to own any video game systems. But if we ever went to the

arcade, my mom would always give me and my sister $1. So we had four quarters. I always spent all four quarters either on Turtles in Time when I was a little bit younger. And then when I was a little bit older, it all went to NBA Jam. And so I absolutely loved playing NBA Jam with friends. And then later, the later iterations, you could play with four people. And there were a lot of times I would go to the arcade with friends. And instead of playing the fighting games, we would all jump on Showtime, NBA on NBC. And I think a lot of people forget certain words and phrases were invented by NBA Jam. So saying things like, he's's heating up he's on fire

boom shakalaka like all those things were invented by nba jam and for me those are some of my very earliest arcade memories and i feel like we don't give a whole lot of love to nba jam so i thought i'd bring that up here did you guys ever really play it? I played Double Dribble. So Double Dribble was on the NES. Yeah, it was on the NES. But there was a time where I really loved sports games.

I was playing a lot of hockey games, basketball games. But there was something about nba jam and honestly i think it might have been like the inclusion of the announcer and the fact that like you could get that he's heating up he's on fire and then the basketball would literally be on fire would singe the net you know and it was just it was those little things that really helped kind of make that game the iconic game that it is i mean mean, you know, a lot of our friends absolutely love NBA Jam. They have the little arcade one-up cabinets with NBA Jam on it and stuff like that. It's just a lot of fun. It's a great game. But, you know, there was

a phase where I played a lot of sports games. And then I don't know what happened, man. I don't know if it's like I just discovered like RPGs and FPSs and stuff like that. And it started to kind of fall away from me or what. But NBA Jam is the jam. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. I still... You're walking somewhere and if you see an old NBA Jam arcade game, you're like, oh, man, do I got a couple quarters? Can I go play a quick game real quick? Yeah, it was Yeah, go play us Barkley and KJ. Exactly, yeah. KJ and Barkley, for sure. It was definitely, growing up in Phoenix as well, the Suns fever was just wild.

I was only six or seven when it was hitting hard. But that game still holds up to me. It's crazy. Like you said, the announcer, he's hyping you up. So you're getting hyped about your play. You're like, yeah, oh man, I'm on fire. And you just keep going. And yeah, that's a great choice for me because it definitely holds up.

It's probably the shoes. That's like another one. All right. Coming back around to you, Josh, what you got? All right. I know I've talked about this game a lot, but I mean, this is games that shaped us. So I have to. It's required that I mention this, but I remember a friend of mine telling me about this game and saying, you got to play this game with me. And I said, okay, what is it? And he said, it's a game called EverQuest. And I had never heard of it before. Logging into EverQuest for the first time ever was a moment in gaming history for me. It is

a moment that I will honestly never forget because it blew my mind where gaming was going at that point. And I know that there had been mmos previously like ultima online and stuff like that but dude the first time and i'm not talking about the thousands of hours that i put into everquest you know what i mean but it's like the first time logging in and realizing that other other like characters that i saw were real live people at their computers running around controlling their characters and they were looking at me and I was looking at them and then we could run off together and do a quest together or they could heal me while I was getting my butt kicked by a little goblin in the starting area you know and that you could actually interact with other people

was such a game-changing moment dude. And I know that everybody that's younger and has had the internet since they were born are like, I don't get it. Like, why is that anything special? But this was one of the largest leaps in gaming to go from like mostly single player or couch co-op games to a game like EverQuest where you were literally playing with everybody around the world. And it's hard to quantify just how crazy that was. And it's hard to explain, but it was the most living world that existed in a game because of the people that were in there. You had to not only account for the game itself and the mechanics of the game and the difficulty and the raids and stuff like that, but you had to deal with other people and this was the wild west man like they didn't know how to make a game where somebody

couldn't just run up and loot the corpse of the monster that you just killed yeah so you're raiding a dragon that drops mega loot and some random dude would run up and they called it ninja looting because he would just stand in the crowd of characters and try to be the first person to interact with the corpse. And if he was, he could steal all the loot from people. You had things like people training just 100 monsters to an area, and then those monsters would wipe out everybody. And so it was just – even though a lot of that stuff sounds bad, it just created this living world that nobody had really experienced before, or at least I hadn't. And the magic behind that was indescribable, dude. And I don't want to gush on EverQuest forever because I know a lot of people have heard me talk about it, but that moment

will be with me until I die. Well, here's the thing. Like for most of us growing up, the most you ever played would be a group of four because you would play with your buddies or you would play at the arcade. And yeah, there were a couple of games like Team Fortress Classic or like Battlefield 1942, which seemed enormous. I don't remember if 1942 had a max of 32 or 64. I think it was 64.

But that seemed like you could never play with more people than that and then hopping into whether it was everquest or world of warcraft being able to play with hundreds of people simultaneously it was like going from dial-up internet to high-speed internet like it's hard to describe for anyone who grew up with it i don't think we've had a leap in gaming that is the equivalent of going into the age of mmos and that was 20 years ago i don't think we've had anything quite like that since no totally i haven't no no it's it's yeah i agree for sure um i'm glad you brought that one up too because i i i remember as a kid i was in elementary school and uh i had a friend and i went to stay at his house, and his parents actually were gamers.

And they had kind of a split-level home, and downstairs they had a gaming room, a computer room. And I think they had a high-speed internet at the time. I can't quite remember, but they had EverQuest. And I sat, and I watched them play this, and I i'm like what the heck is this game and they're running around and there's all these other people i'd never seen anything like it and that's probably what drew me so much to to world of warcraft when i you know i got on that with paul and we we played forever when that first came out but um i i i was i was just blown away you see these people i'm like so that's that's other people there there you know you're playing with other people online and i was like and then i went home like mom we got to get this

game we got we got to get this internet like and i and i i went off on it but it was it was definitely super impactful and and it made you know with what josh said it made such an impact on gaming in general and in the advancements it was it's wild and first time paying monthly for games exactly yeah exactly which was a downer that was a lot of money back then too man it was 15 bucks a month back that was a lot of money back then i remember a few times like my wife and i having the conversation like can we afford this i was like yes i'll sell my blood if I have to. I got plenty of plasma for sale. Yeah. Oh, I like that pick.

All right, Ryan, coming back to you. What you got? Well, I'm going to keep in the 90s here as a 90s kid. Whoa! Tell them that we do it for the 90s, kids. Good year for games, by the way. Late 90s, for sure. But I got one good old game in 1998 called Metal Gear Solid. Nice.

I love it. We need the box sound. Favorite. Yep. Yeah. One of my favorite all-time games. I couldn't even tell you how many times i played this game let alone the demo um so so basically the long and short is they used to have these you know

discs that you could get at at blockbuster again or gamers or any of these places where you could have demo discs i was there 3 000 years ago they had multiple games on them you could you could play and try them out. And then if you wanted it, you know, you go to the store and you could buy the game. I got one and it had Metal Gear Solid on it. I played that first level. It's like this kind of you come out of the water. You're in this little teeny warehouse.

It's not very long at all. I probably played through that first level 30 times. And I was hooked super hooked i i convinced my grandma to get me no you're solid for christmas i know it's a mature game and i was probably like 11 or 12 years old but i convinced her to get it they they didn't the the adults don't know too much about games or didn't know too much about games back then as we do now my son tries to pull fast ones on me. And I'm like, dude, I've been playing games since I was a kid.

You're not going to pull that one on me. But they didn't know back then. So I was able to get it. And I just fell in love with that game. I played it so many times. I found every little nook and cranny, every little secret, going in and out of the vents eight times this way, and then you see something else. There's a million different little...

I had the strategy guides that you could look through. And it was such a cool, immersive game. And I'm a big guy with cinematics. To me, a game that's half cinematic, half gameplay, that's my type of game I just I love to just get just dive into that game and just get you know just have it surround me

and just be one with that game so that's one that really did it to me especially at a young age it meant so much to me and I still you know I played through all of them and I used to speed run on Metal Gear Solid 2 and you know it just carried on and and uh hopefully we can get josh to play metal gear solid 5 eventually but i've looked at it many a time man the two dollar price tag

yeah exactly that's that's a bargain man but yeah no it was it was one that one that just has to be on my list for sure. Do you have a favorite of the Metal Gear solids? For me, it's 2. 2 is the one that really drew me in. 2 is awesome. I definitely, I mean, Snake's obviously my favorite, but you don't get to play him that much in 2. You get a lot of Jack.

Yeah, you get a lot of jack yeah you get a lot of yeah yeah exactly um but uh three i mean yeah that's man that's just like choosing between kids for me that's that's really hard for for me but three snake eater is great but i don't know maybe for the nostalgia it's it's one or two for See, I played one for sure because that came out on what? SNES or NES even? See, I think you're thinking of the original Metal Gear. Metal Gear Solid is a little later. Yeah. Metal Gear was on NES.

Metal Gear was on NES. Okay, that's what I'm thinking of. Metal Gear Solid came out in 98 on PlayStation 1. Yeah, that's why I had the demo disc. And so it was still crazy. I mean, triangles everywhere. I was thinking of the original. That was just Metal Gear, right?

Exactly. That was just Metal Gear. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. I mean, I still to this day, I just walk around, Metal Gear, you know? Now that you guys say that, I don't know that I have ever played a metal gear solid game because I did play metal gear. You're breaking my heart. I'm saying like I played metal gear and I'm pretty sure there was a metal

gear too. And I don't remember what it was called, but like I remember those games on NES and they were revolutionary too. Like they're the ones that started this franchise. Yeah. But then I don't know what happened. I just kind of tapered off or something. So I, yeah, I don't know that I i just kind of tapered off or something so i yeah

i don't know that i've ever played a metal gear solid when metal gear solid 2 came out i remember at fry's electronics they had a demo and there were 50 people in line and everyone was standing around watching this demo and it was mind-blowing because that game opens with like a 12 minute cinematic like when ryan is saying that they had a lot of cinematics like he's not joking these games have very long cut scenes very creative in a lot of different ways i mean the metal gear solid series has stuff where you had to like unplug your controller and put it in the second port or change your time change your time on the console and a character would die of old age like it had neat stuff like that that no one ever really did before the only

downside are the underwater portions yeah even when it released i hated that so much that was on that was on never saw it too i remember that yeah no, last question about it, Ryan, were you always running around guns blazing or would you actually go stealth? Oh, um, well, depending on the playthrough, cause I'm, I'm a type of guy that I'll,

if I love a game, I'll play through it. Usually I'll, I'll blast through it to get the story. Um, and then I'll come through and I'll just, I'll just keep playing through. I'll do two or three extra playthroughs just to find every little nook and cranny that that i can with it um so it kind of depends on

the playthrough but i i love to see how long it could go without being discovered you know cruise through with a little box and everything you know like that in the box yeah exactly so no i yeah it was it was um gosh that was such a good game. I'm going to go play it later today. One of my all-time favorite death scenes. What's wrong? Snake! Snake! Snake?

Snake! Oh, that's the same. You always, like, get those lines. Every time I hear snake, I'm going to go, snake? Yeah. Snake! Yeah. So funny. I love it all right i think the next one that i'm gonna bring up is a game that you and i played together ryan which is always fun to talk about so like i shared before i i didn't play a lot of games

growing up and the few games that i did play tended to be either mario kart or nba jam or mortal combat it was just simply like simple pvp with your friends all right that's all i ever played and i loved movies but my parents were also very strict about movies even when i was like 16 i couldn't see a whole lot of pg-13 movies stuff like that um And even my friends that had video games, it tended to just be a lot of Mario Kart and just that kind of stuff. Mario Brothers way back in the day, and that's about it. I know that this is going to sound absolutely crazy. I did not know that video games could have compelling storylines until October 22 22nd 2001 when grand theft auto 3 released yes all right i was 17 years old guys and did not know that video games i had never played like an

rpg ever i didn't know that they could have really interesting storylines. And my wife, who at the time was still my girlfriend, Ryan's cousin, we would go and hang out at Nikki's house. And Nikki's older brother, Timmy, had a PS2 and he bought GTA 3 right when it came out. And me and Ryan and Ryan's other cousin, Anthony, we would play GTA 3 and just pass the controller like every 20 minutes. And we just played through that game, I swear, 20 times from beginning to end. Oh, yeah. And it's just hard to describe how much fun it was to discover that video games were actually art. They could tell stories. It was immersive. I had not experienced that prior to GTA 3, so I know I was very late to find games.

But, I mean, this is a game where you're, like, placing car bombs in your boss's enemy's car so when they start the engine they blow up. You're assassinating people left and right. You're driving girls between clubs and doing all these crazy things, which was also very adult. So for 17-year-old Paul, who had very tight controlling parents as far as content, playing a very adult video game for the very first time and experiencing all of that, absolutely a complete blast. And then, of course, a year later, you get Vice City, and then down the road. I mean, I played every single GTA game. I played all the clones.

I played the true crime games. I played Saints Row. I mean, anything that was like GTA. I loved sandbox, story forward games. And I always say that is the game that actually made me a gamer. Before that, I had games that I only played with other friends. I never played games by myself. But after GTA 3, that's when I actually became a gamer.

There's those games that just change you, man. You know? And it's like, it's just, I don't know if it's the time of life, the experience. You know, I mean, that's what this episode is about, right? Like, everybody has that game. You know, or games even and it's like you know everybody that's listening right now can think of like oh i remember the first time i played this game or i remember when i was in college and i was hanging out with my buddies and we were cracking out on this game all the time or whatever

and it's just it's a really neat experience to encounter something like GTA 3, where it just really kind of opens up the world to you. Yeah. And shows you that, like, you know, I mean, let's be honest, technologically speaking, you know, as it allows you to have more control over the game as well. Right. And so where, like you were saying, a lot of games are in this small little box and you play within these game mechanics, whether it's a fighting game or a platformer or something like that. You started to get into these more open world games where you could do what you wanted. Like you said, plant the car bomb, right? Or take these people from one place to another and you could kind of approach these things in various ways.

And it just expanded that world immensely. Well, and half the fun was just driving around messing around in the open world it's still half the fun in the gta games yeah no yeah l1 l2 r1 r2 you know you're getting all the guns and then you go around and and you know just just wreak havoc yeah i still i still like have visions you know when you brought that up, just that level, you start out and it's rainy. You got to go down there. Because we replayed it so many times. We're always starting back there. Good old Claude.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, gosh, man. We put so many hours on that game. When Timmy bought that, I was so happy. I was so happy. Because we didn't have the money to buy those games but having like an older family member who had a job and bought that stuff was incredible and here's the best part he he had the money because but then he was always working so

then he was gone and we would just sit and we would play we played it 10 times more than he ever touched it and sometimes he would lock it in his room yeah and we would go crawl in through his outdoor window we would always make sure that it was unlocked and so timmy would lock his door break it in we would climb in through the window and take the ps2 and then put it back and oh yeah you wouldn't believe the antics we got too oh man that's awesome oh yeah good old gta3 all right well we're gonna go ahead and take one last break and we'll be right back with more multiplayer gaming podcast all right josh i don't know how many we're each gonna be able to do you might only have

one left maybe two at the most what do you want to bring up next all right um i'm gonna bring up this is only in case this is the last one for me, but this is going to sound goofy because this is actually not just a game. So I'm going to mention The Witcher 3, God of War, Mass Effect, I'm an older gamer. I, you know, I had a guy the other day tell me I was playing rocket league with a random guy. We hit it off, dude. This guy made me laugh so hard because we were just chatting and chat and, you know, we're actually being cool with each other, which is rare. And then he said, your username makes me think you're old. And I said, well, I am. And he said, how old are you old are you and i said i'm 45 and his instant response was oh snap and then he wrote good on you for still playing games and i've never had anybody make me feel so old but like he meant it like a hundred percent like dude i'm not dead i can like i've been gaming for 40 years. Your hands still work. Congratulations.

Yeah. Despite being geriatric. Good for you. I just laughed so hard. He's actually a great dude. Like we really, you know, we got along great. But here's the thing with these games, dude. So I've been gaming for 40 years.

Right. And it's like, as we get older and the technology gets better, I'm blown away, dude. I am absolutely blown away by how far we've come in gaming. Yeah. Like, I mean, this is why I bring up this list of these just all-time games like Witcher 3, God of War, Mass Effect, Red Dead 2, Elden Ring. I mean, I could name probably five more right away, but it's just like, it's this thing where not every game can be a masterpiece. Like, I get that, dude. Like, this is what makes these games special is that they figured it out, they put it all together,

you know, and they're not normal, right? If every game was a masterpiece, then they wouldn't seem that way because it would just be like the norm at that point. But what I love is that even at my ripe old age, I get to go like this game is what I imagine like a perfect video game to be. So after like 40 years of gaming, and I'm not saying that this hasn't happened through the decades where I go, this is the best game ever, you know, as far as that goes but like i'm still wowed by this like medium like video gaming it's like it's you know obviously the three of us absolutely love it but i love the fact that we are still just sometimes blown away i have tears of the kingdom right like downloaded we can't play it yet so we're recording this a little bit before this episode will air. But it's like the hype for Tears of the Kingdom right now is through the roof.

I'm excited at the thought that this might be one of the best video games I've ever played. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so that idea of just even as we get older, as time progresses, that we are still able to experience those wow moments is just incredible to me. Well, and especially with all those RPGs that you mentioned, minus God of War, still able to experience those wow moments is just incredible to me. Well, and especially with all those RPGs that you mentioned, minus God of War, those are all games that are very much shaped around decisions that you make. And this is what we're able to do because of modern tech. Back in the day, when you only had a few bytes or a couple megabytes of storage, you had limited graphics, limited things that you could do for

mechanics. The NES only had four buttons, right? But nowadays, the fact that you can have these wide, sprawling games where you get to make decisions and it completely changes dialogue options, it changes the world that you're in, nothing gets me more excited than seeing that in games. It just makes them more immersive and so much of a better experience overall. Everything that you described is fantastic. And the way they've developed and evolved over time. I saw a video the other day where this guy, you know, in the beginning of Red Dead, he's like, man, this is so slow. Look at all this snow.

And it's like, yeah, is this game going to be this way the whole time? And then it goes to the end with Arthur, and the guy's just sitting there crying. It just takes you through this. You get emotionally evolved in these games now. You become part of these games and part of these characters, and you're attached to them, and you just want to see them thrive and survive and live on.

And so it's, yeah, it's definitely a far cry from what it used to be. Not to take away from those old games because those revolutionized and brought what we have today. But yeah, man, the gaming that we have today and these games that have given us these choices in the game. It's just awesome. And, and I know it sounds crazy, but it's like, I can't wait to see where we're at in 20 years. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like, honestly, like where, but this is the beauty of it is we always, you know, we, we have a lot of nostalgia and we say at the time, golden,

I, at the time, golden, I was phenomenal. Oh yeah. Now, now people look at gold nine go, that's garbage.

I remember, I remember on a metal gear solid two going back. was phenomenal oh yeah now now people look at gold nine go that's garbage oh i remember i remember on uh metal gear solid 2 going back i remember and that intro scene with the cut scene i was like these the best graphics of my life oh my gosh what can get better than this and i'm watching snake and then i look at it now and i'm like oh my gosh that looks horrible you can barely tell what's going on yeah you're like it's all grainy yeah yeah oh yeah i i'm so excited for the future gaming it's it's gonna be incredible all right ryan swinging back to you what you got buddy oh man just like joss there's so many to go to um i'm gonna i'm gonna do a little bit of a more recent one, and one that is more, I think, based on the experience of it for me. I mean, the gameplay was amazing. A little frustrating at times, but I'm going to go with Destiny 1.

Oh, you were huge. Yeah, so I played hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours on Destiny, mainly because I had a full squad. We had a full fire team, and we would meet up every Tuesday, and we would raid when the raid released, and we could redo it. We'd run all three of our characters through, get all the loot that we could, and then run all of our strikes and do everything else and and then just kind of play the rest of the week until we could re-rate again and that game i mean this was before i had you know my little guy and so i had an office at the time so i could just kind of lock myself away and just play and it was it was fantastic the game itself has you know its flaws of course just like any any game but it was more is more the group experience for me even though it was online

being able to just meet up with your friends and just play and play the new strikes and the new raids and all the updates, farming for materials. All that stuff was awesome to me, and it meant so much. Did you play a lot of Destiny 2? I did, not as much as Destiny 1. I got a good buddy, Sean, that just continuously... I give him a hard time. I tell him the only reason he still plays

is because he's got so many hours in the game. But he continuously keeps trying to get me back.'s like oh this is really oh it's going to be like this oh it's going to do that and he keeps trying to bring me back on but um i definitely didn't play as much as we did in destiny one but but uh i i for sure played through destiny too i remember barely playing destiny one uh-huh and i remember thinking it was cool but i don't remember why i didn't keep playing it was that a playstation exclusive i was i was gonna say it was an exclusive i think yeah ps3 yeah see i think i played it at my buddy curtis's house and so i didn't really play a lot of destiny one but when destiny 2 came out i had a lot of fun

with destiny 2 well it was it was great. In the Crucible, it was a great kind of just fire team FPS match you could run through. The Ultimates were awesome. I was always a Titan going through with a Titan Slam. I would save it up, try to wait until they'd go and capture the flag and see if I

could just go ruin everybody's day and just smash them all. That was my favorite thing to do but yeah it was it was it was fantastic i i enjoyed it a lot yeah very few games have better gunplay than destiny yeah all right well i'll share one last game and then we'll leave some time for some honorable mentions uh do you guys want to talk more about elder scrolls or something more recent like the battle royale genre let's let's go more modern yeah let's go more more modern new stuff all right so this is a little bit of a two for one kind of like how josh listed 12 games um these these

released the same summer of 2016 overwatch and pub g i think they released like six weeks apart crazy to think we got both these at the same time um these games completely changed our gaming circles um prior to this you would try to convince your friends to buy the same game and maybe you would shoot them a text or send like a group email and say hey let's all try to play world of Warcraft tonight or, you know, whatever, something like that. After overwatch and pub G came out, everybody we knew played at least one of those games. If not both,

this is when we started using discord for the very first time. And we would ping the whole chat. Hey, we're getting on overwatch who wants to come play. And there were times when we would have 12 people on and we would have team captains go into a custom match, draft our teams and go 6v6, hop into different channels and Discord. Like that was a ton of fun. And then also having PUBG available. I remember after World of Warcraft released and I remember thinking, okay, now we can play with hundreds of people.

And I remember telling some of my friends, you know what kind of game I would love is if it were like a realistic war simulator. Let's say it's like 200 against 200. And if you get shot once, you're dead. You can't play in the rest of that game. Maybe you can spectate or you can just quit and join another battle. And I always thought that the idea of something like that would be so much fun and then lo and behold all these years later you get pub g which is kind of in that realm i i have fallen out of love with the battlefield formula

where you just or call of duty you die you respawn, and you die within a minute, and you just kill as many people as you can, and you're going to die 15 times in a match. The idea of having higher stakes for something like PUBG was just so incredibly intense to play, and when you would get to those final circles, and you were still in with your buddies, and you'd be cheering each other on, and everyone would go nuts and yell when you would win or if you would win going into overtime and overwatch like to me that is what ushered in what our gaming group is today i mean that extended to other games like hearthstone and even a little bit of destiny and some other stuff like that but for me it was it was the summer of 2016 i feel like that's what started our modern gaming group, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. The days of PUBG and Overwatch when they came out, it was – and honestly, it's a little sad because I feel like we haven't had multiplayer games like that in a while. Yeah. And we had that for a while yeah you know and and and like we we had that for a a good bit and then we even tried to branch out like you know rainbow six siege and you know some other games where it's like but then you kind of see the interest starting to taper off war zone apex like those helped bring it back for a little while and then it kind of started tapering off again yeah fortnight

um yeah we tried we tried fortnight like Fortnite. Honestly, we gave it a shot. You know, but it is it is a such a like they were so popular that we would actually have to, like you said, divide people into two teams or PUBG where it's like, OK, well, we have seven guys. So we're going to have to like the three of you, let's try to sync up, like, on the map and see if we get the same map, you know? And then we would just instantly try to kill each other. This was no, like, teamwork, man. This was like, nah, man, we're taking your squad down. And I miss that to a degree because there just hasn't been a game that's gripped people in that regard. I think Valheim, and that's one of the reasons that I think we remember Valheim so fondly, was because Valheim was that game where people kind of jumped back in and really kind of got committed to it for a while.

And it also kind of hit out of nowhere. And Overwatch was kind of like that, too, where I think we were very much aware of Overwatch. But when it released, it was just such a mega hit that it just everybody joined in yeah took over everything yeah all right well you guys want to do a couple honorable mentions here before we wrap up the show i have a lot um i was gonna say yeah i'll try to quick fire a couple here i do have the invention or the uh prevalence of like r Ryan touched on it, Blockbuster, where I lived, we had something called West Coast Video, even though we lived on the East Coast, figure that one out. But, you know, at the time, the only games that you got to play were games that you owned or your friends owned, you know, and so you had this like very limited gaming world for a while. And then all of a sudden, these rental places start opening up and your world is just expanded to every game that exists at that point. But it was competition. You had to get that

game before somebody else did. And so we would call around to all these different stores and say, hey, do you have Contra? Or do you have whatever game was hot at the time? And they'd be like, we got one copy. And then you'd sit there and try to beg the dude to hold it for you. Or you'd hop on your bikes and you'd just run up there as fast as you possibly could. You had to make sure you returned it on time because if you didn't, your parents would get a late fee on the card. And then you were grounded, man.

So that just opened up a world. nobody and i think to this day that's still why i like playing such a variety of games like i want to experience all these different games well and that was also fantastic because they introduced the whole concept of a game pass yeah i remember spending 20 a month and it just let you have one game out at a time and i remember like the godfather was a video game and it was terrible but i remember renting it and i beat it in like one day and then i would just return it and then go rent something else and it let you play all these different games because you could just go rent them because you couldn't afford buying every single game for 50 or 60 i mean blockbuster was fantastic for that and redbox game rentals was

also great because you would hear oh yeah that's a six hour game well why on earth would i buy it i'll just go rent it from redbox for one or two days beat it and return it so it was so much fun to be able to dabble into everything yeah oh for sure you guys remember that just that sound when they like open that container and then they put that game in and they snap it in a little holder and then you they close it and you're like yes that's my game now and then you're just you're oh gosh you were you were just ready to play it right in the the studio there and then you you grab it and you take it home oh that was that was the best feeling by far. It'd be all scratched up

and you'd have to buff it on your shirt to get it to load. Yeah. And I know Josh and I have joked about it, but you would stand inside Blockbuster and if someone would return something, we would pester the employee and be like, can you check and see if that's Lost Odyssey on 360

or whatever and then they would go and look. Yeah. You'd always wait a few minutes, see if you could get the game you were hoping for. Yeah, like I said, I can still hear that sound, just that clicking sound of them putting the game back into the case when they handed it to you when you rented it. Oh, that was so great.

Best sound ever. Oh, yeah. Any other honorable mentions you guys want to bring up? Oh, I definitely have a couple real quick um for me uh halo one uh yes i almost brought up halo so i'm glad you mentioned it quick story we actually had a og lan experience we had two xboxes at paul's house and and we had eight guys there it was it was the coolest thing ever. It was one of the first like, I'm looking around.

I'm like, man, we're all going to play this game together? No way. All of my parents downstairs. This is crazy. And I remember your dad was like super stoked to have the sound set up. I know he's a sound guy. He was like, oh, yeah, we're going to get this audio like dialed in. And it was so cool that we brought in a TV and we got the two Xboxes set up.

And we played... Oh, that was a really good one for me. Time Splitters 2. Heck yes. We played... One of the best shooters. Yeah. We played a million hours of that on GameCube just forever.

And then Half-Life and half-life 2 for me i would sit as a kid in school and i would draw maps to go home and try to build i would go get on the computer and i try to build them in the little editor map editor i would draw maps and try to put secret like vent ways and different things like oh man people guys could come through here obviously i never did anything with them but i was like oh man if i publish these you know then people could use them and uh but yeah i would i would sit in school and draw maps for those games that those you know which obviously led to you know counter-strike and all those other ones that were huge team fortress classic and but yeah Half-Life and Half-Life 2 were obviously huge impacts

on anyone from the 90s as far as games go. They were revolutionary, man. Absolutely. I still remember watching when they were coming out with Half-Life 2. You could watch kind of what the graphics the engine was going to do. And it took you through that boat or whatever. I'm trying to remember. But you take you through the boat and you kind of see the water effects.

Obviously, now it's much different than what they can do, but I was, you know, same as Metal Gear Solid. I was like, whoa, look at those graphics. It looks so amazing. I remember learning a harsh lesson with Half-Life 1. I didn't play it at release, but when I built my first PC, I bought it a couple years late late and i only had one save file and it had like quick save you know like f5 was quick save and f7 was quick load or whatever

oh no all i had was one save right before i died or maybe i was stuck in the map or whatever and i was like two-thirds of the way through the game and there was no way around it and i never finished half-life one i quit i was like i'm not redoing the whole game but i did play half-life 2 at release and you would just you would just have fun with the physics because that game would just throw in here's like stacked pallets and you would just start shooting the bottom pallet and watch them like fall and tumble over because you had never seen that in games before but yeah the half-lives are incredible dude that grab that gravity gun i i would just walk around with the gravity weapon ever yeah and i just i just smash stuff and bring it to me and smash stuff and yeah that you can

spend hours just with the gravity gun walking around shoot saw blades everywhere oh yes in the little zombie land area i think the only honorable mention I'll bring up is elder scrolls. Three Morrowind. Yes. Depending on your age, everyone probably has a different elder scrolls that they played first. For me, I had no real exposure to fantasy at all until the Lord of the Rings movies.

And so those came out, I think like, Oh one Oh two Oh three. And I loved the Lord of the Rings movies. I so those came out, I think like 01, 02, 03. And I loved the Lord of the Rings movies. I was working at a movie theater. And then when I built my first PC, my graphics card came with a free copy of Morrowind. And I remember playing it. And that's the first time I ever played a fantasy game. And I remember, and I've told this on the pod before, but I remember taking my bow and arrow and aiming it at a guard and thinking in my head, well, obviously you can't shoot a guard.

And I shot the guard, and they all bum-brushed me and killed me. And I was like, oh, wait. It felt to me like this is a game where you can do anything. And I had never felt that way about a game. So Morrowind for me was like that, and I loved it so much that I made sure to buy Oblivion on the day it came out. Nice. Yeah. All right.

Well, I think that wraps up this episode. We do want to say a huge thank you to Ryan for joining us again. It's always such a blast to have you here, especially since we did a lot of gaming as teens. I feel like as time goes on, as we have you on more, we're going to have a lot of stories to tell. feel like as time goes on as we have you on more we're gonna have a lot of stories to tell oh my gosh i got so many and we do want to say a huge thank you to all of our patreon supporters if you want to uh we would like to ask everyone to go check out our patreon page at multiplayer squad.com you can get bonus episodes you'll get all our episodes a day early, and they're also ad-free.

So once again, that's at MultiplayerSquad.com. You can also hit us up on socials everywhere at MultiplayerPod. And make sure to check out all of our episodes. We have new ones drop every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. So depending on which one you decide to check in on, make sure to do that. Mondays are hour-long episodes. Thursdays are 30 minutes covering gaming news. depending on which one you decide to check in on, you know, make sure to do that. Mondays are hour long episodes. Thursdays are 30 minutes covering gaming news.

Saturdays are short seven to 12 minute quick takes. And, uh, I think that wraps everything up. Any closing words guys, or is that about it? You guys got me all nostalgic, man. Ready to go play some more video games now.

I know I'm stuck out here in this beautiful, uh, beautiful weather. I just want to play video games now. Go bring a Game Boy with you out on the water while you're surfing. You know, I have my laptop and it can run some stuff. And I have a controller. I brought one with me because I'm addicted.

Very nice. All right. Well, thank you once again to everyone out there for listening. And until next time, happy gaming. All right. See you once again to everyone out there for listening and until next time happy gaming all right see everybody adios