Wonderful! - Wonderful! 227: Soup in a McElroy Hat

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

Rachel’s favorite meta-joke sitcom! Griffin’s favorite genre-twisting game creator!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaNARAL Pro-Choice America: https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

🎵 Hello, this is Rachel McElroy. Hello, Rachel McElroy. My name is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Nice to meet you. Nice to treat you with another episode of our podcast called Wonderful is the name of it. And it's a show we do every week. And we go, I like to think, pretty freaking hard during the Maximum Fun Drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we go pretty hard in the paint, I would say, every episode. We leave it all out there. When we finish, we are dripping with sweat.

We've got water bottles and towels right next to us. And we have trainers that spray us with the bottles. We open our mouths like, ah, and they spray it in our mouths. And they say things like, happier, more joyous. Yeah, watch those plosives and um we could not afford those trainers because they're very expensive without the support we receive during the max fun drive which there's like two days left in for this year's thing so you are officially out of time if you have been thinking about supporting our show and the other shows on the maximum fun network which you can do by going to maximumfund.org join choosing the support level that works with you that fits into your life and

your budget uh you can check out all the the sweet gifts that you get for uh joining at those different levels and uh just think about how much you are helping us out and how you are supporting the uh the the work that you, I'm assuming, enjoy, because you're listening to it right now. That was really well done. Thank you. It felt a little dispassionate,

so let me try again. We really do rely on your support. It has allowed us to sort of have the lives and career that we have now. And making this show is a genuine delight. And we know that it means a lot to a lot of people who listen to it. And so if you are one of those people and you have the means and you have never supported the MaxFun Network or supported our shows during the drive, please think about doing it. Because it is huge for us.

It means everything to us. And also you get cool stuff. Like at $5 a month, you get all this bonus content. I think it's over 350 hours of bonus content. And there's so much. This year we talked, Rachel and I watched a couple episodes

of Dharma and Greg and talked about it. And it was a fun, it was a fun experience, I think for everyone. It really was. A lot of you know us from our early days of talking about television. Yes.

Which is something that Griffin and I spend a lot of time doing on our own. Yeah. Just, you know, in the evening time. Yeah. And so it was fun to break out. Expose the world to that. Yeah, and break out the old chops. And especially for a completely unproblematic show like dharma and her good beau greg yeah

oh maximumfund.org join is the link we're going to talk a little bit more about it as we go on through this episode but again this is the last week for the max fund drive so if it's something you have been thinking about please consider supporting us at maximumfund.org join small small one days i'm gonna say like uh chill airplane seat neighbors oh yeah we are now of the community of parents that fly with children and it takes a village on an airplane it takes a village to at least like not be shitheads about it yeah We definitely had our first, like, we were not seated together, which we kind of have to be to make it through this thing, because Gus is at an age where he just wants to party all the time. Henry is chill.

We could put Henry anywhere on the plane now. He could be co-piloting the thing. He does not care. He could sit in an exit row, I'm just gonna say it. Wow. Yeah, I think he could save a plane. He could save a plane. I think he could save a plane. You know that's not what they do in the exit row right i know but they're not like i'm gonna exit the plane and fix up whatever is happening out there um there was one dude who

like i was like i'm so sorry would you mind scooting up a row where he was trading an aisle seat for a window seat which in in my mind is a pretty equivalent exchange right yeah although you're not on the aisle anymore are you no but you're not in the middle are you that's true it wasn't like i was asking this dude and he gave me the most vicious it was difficult to tell because you know how older men like to do this like oh i'm surly but kind of in a winky way i wanted to interpret his surliness as winky but he did not give us a face that suggested that's what was happening. No, it's 2022. Like you can't faux surly.

Everyone's surly. You can't be fake surly. You're just surly. Anyway, that's not wonderful. Anyway, he did switch and he became fast friends with our front seat neighbor. Yeah. Who looked at me and said, got to keep the family together, man. He said, you got to keep the family together, man.

You made the right call and i was like i i didn't need confirmation on that but i appreciate it well his his comments suggested like a larger you know like psychological belief that i felt like well we're just i mean we're on a plane we're on an airplane now but wow that is that is special yeah no i was speaking more towards the people who were super chill when we thought maybe there's too much light. Let's ask these people around us to close their window shades. That'll make our baby sleep. Then clearly that did not work.

No, but they were still very nice about it. But they were very nice about it. What's your small lizards? Oh, okay. When we were in Huntington for my nani's 90th birthday and griffin's very good commencement speech and my commencement speech thank you honey uh which i think is still i think it's available still find the stream of the 2022 commencement for marshall if that's something that you all want to seek out uh and we were just like me and justin drove the

kids to dairy queen to get blizzards like the first day we got there and I have not had a blizzard in 25 years it's been a super duper duper long time and I got like a cheesecake one Henry and the rest of the kids got a cotton candy one and they were both scrumdiddlyumptious for oreo all the way yeah i mean i could create that at home you know what i mean but i'm not gonna get a cheesecake and chop it up and then put it into a ice cream treat um but i do enjoy i do enjoy an oreo they had i think like a mud mud slide one with the with gummy worms and oreo yeah that's not like there's a lot of things that when they reach cold temperatures they become become unpleasantly

to some. Who goes first this week? I did not. I'm usually pretty good about looking it up, but I did not. Entirely dependent upon... It is me! Okay! What do you got? So, in honor of the Max Fun Drive, I always feel this

dedication to our listeners and figuring out kind of what is going to be the content that's going to feel special okay uh and i decided to go to a um a piece of property that our show is dependent on as you just witnessed which is small wonder the television show oh my goodness i will say we're not dependent on it but when we talk about small wonders at the beginning of the show we are referencing the original television show i remember the small wonder the first time we did that bit we called it something else like little wonder and then like somebody in the facebook group was like y'all realize you missed a trick here in a pretty major

way right we're like oh yeah there was a tv show called small wonder yeah so i i actually really did like this i mean i never watched it once in my life oh really it's one of those many things like turbo teen that we reference or dharma and greg that we reference all the time that i am not actually that familiar you haven't seen turbo teen no i've never seen turbo teen wow i just know it's about a teen that when he eats spicy food he turns into a car. That's fucking funny. Yeah.

There is nothing not funny about that. So Small Wonder was of this time period. And I wanted to list some of the other shows to kind of give an example. But Small Wonder 1985 to 1989 was a show about a secret robot who was made to look like a human girl. All I remember is I've seen the intro sequence to the show. Yeah. And there's a part where her face opens up and it reveals the robot face underneath. And I remember thinking, that's just about the scariest thing I ever did see. Yeah, I debated whether or not we needed to include the song as part of the episode.

I don't think we do. but you know the song, right? I don't think I do. It's very, like, snappy. It's like a, it's a, she's a small wonder. Wow, that really sent me, honey. That really soothed me and relaxed me. So in that time period uh you also had alf which we've referenced before alien uh living with a family kept secret yes uh also out of this world which

people often confuse with small wonder because it is also about a girl but it is an alien girl uh that was 1987 to 1991 mark and mindy of course kind of started everybody i was older though right yeah 78 to 82 i watched me a lot inexplicably i watched a lot of morgan mindy it was i mean it was on all the time it was on nick at night all the time but also it was great like robin williams was fucking great another another secret alien yeah but he wasn't like he came the people who came over to morgan mindy's house and weren't like did he just climb out of a egg is that a is that a real person and then of course uh quantum leap which isn't really related but you just wanted to mention that yeah sure 89 to 93 uh

secret time traveler okay secret time travel okay so it's like secret just the idea like yeah you have a secret person in your house that has some kind of power that most people don't know about okay that was like a thing and i will grant the conceit that yes there were three makes a pattern i would say uh yeah so this show lasted four seasons which is kind. How do you get four seasons worth of like, my batteries? Well, and this was kind of true of Alf, too. Like, so Vicky is just one member of the family. A lot of episodes weren't even really about the fact that Vicky was a robot. A lot of them were like, oh, no, her human brother cheated on a test. And now we have to address it.

So it's got that young Sheldon problem where it's like we watch. Again, a show we've never seen. But we watch shows on, I mean, we watch Survivor on the CBS network and we'll get served young Sheldon papers. Yeah, don't even include Sheldon. And it's just not even about Sheldon. It's like, oh, his dad's out there dating again, I guess. And it's like, where's Sheldon? Yeah, I came for Sheldon. And it's just not even about Sheldon. It's like, oh, his dad's out there dating again, I guess. And it's like, where's Sheldon? Yeah, I came for Sheldon. I came here for Sheldon because it says his name right on the tin.

So I'm going to teach you a lot about this show because you didn't watch it. Okay, fun. Vicki is, of course, an acronym for Voice Input Child Identicant. So it's V-I-C-I? Yeah. Okay. V-I-C-I. It should be.

It was actually broadcast around the world, so maybe. Maybe in Italy. Ten-year-old girl was invented by her dad on the show, Ted Lawson, an engineer slash inventor for United Robotronics. Okay. He takes his robot that he created home so it can mature within a family environment. That's interesting. I bet there's a lot of sort of intrigue there where it's like, you got to bring her back

to the lab. She belongs to the government. Yeah, no, there's definitely like a lot of competitors. There's an episode where Russia creates their own robot. Okay. It's very much of the government. Yeah, no, there's definitely like a lot of competitors. There's an episode where Russia creates their own robot. Okay. It's very much of the time. She also has powers like superhuman strength and speed.

Like robots, like the current robots. You've seen the current sort of Boston Dynamics. Is that the name of the... All their new robots have super strength and speed. Okay.

It's pretty great. Move stuff with their mind. And then as Griffin mentioned, there's a lot of features. She's got an AC outlet under her right arm, a data port under her left arm, an access panel in the back. But when the family is asked about her, they say that she is an orphan that they adopted. What else do you what else do you need to know that's that's a thing that we're all doing all the time just scooping up orphans off the streets where'd she come from oh we adopted her no big deal we haven't been

talking about it for months we wanted to surprise you why is there cappuccino coming out of her elbow um it's an orphan thing you would not get get it. Um, also much like Alf. See, I wanted to blame. She eats a cat. In one episode. It was. It is not addressed again. Very special episode. Uh, I was, so I wanted to blame, uh, Small Wonder for ripping off Alf, but Small Wonder

in fact came out a year before Alf. Okay. Um, but the Lawson family, uh, has a bunch of nosy neighbors. Uh, so they have to kind of keep her secret. The neighbors are always like, oh, what's going on? In Alf, this was, of course, the Akmonics. In Small Wonder, it is the Brindles. But Alf didn't have a boy suit, did he?

No. He did not have a boy. You know what I mean? No. You walk into Alf's house at the the wrong time and that's the ball game at least vici had you know girls girl skin that she had stretched over her sort of cybernetic form yes i'm just saying the stakes are quite are much lower for her true true yeah i mean that's the thing like if you found out a neighborhood family,

their adopted daughter was actually a robot, like, what would you... I keep my fucking mouth shut. Like, what would you do, really? Because you don't know the story there, right? Like, if they've got a robot daughter, that's got to make you think that maybe at some point they had a flesh daughter,

and there's a story there that maybe you don't want to dive into. Yeah, right? It's none of your business. And maybe an elf, when they found Alf, he was replacing a boy that they somehow lost whose name was Ralph. But then it turns out reincarnation. Are you writing the reboot right now? Yes. It's called Ralph.

R-A-L-F. What does the R stand for? Really. Really Yale-y in life form. Yeah. Vicki can also shrink. Like a robot. She can channel electricity through her hands.

And she can also download information super fast. For example, there's an episode where she extends the gas mileage on cars just all cars yeah she's thanks vicky she could be if vicky hadn't been scrapped by darpa she would be out here like you know figuring out climate change and everything damn it uh the actress uh tiffany brissett who was um cast as Vicky, was also like a pageant person who had all these special talents. But her whole job was to appear robotic and speak in a robotic voice. So it was very frustrating for her as an actress. Was one of her talents charging appliances with the AC port under her left arm?

No, it was more like horseback riding drinking um they so there here's the thing that happens with all child actors you know after four years like vicky vicky's grown up and how do they explain that wonder how do they explain that because it's a robot robots don't typically age uh in the third season they give vicky an upgrade where they age her face dress her in modern clothes and allow her to eat drink dress her in modern clothes yeah see i couldn't i i didn't see any footage of this in the first episode she's wearing like a red and white dress with a little red bow in her hair like very much like a like a doll but hey that's not fucking creepy the most

that's not the most creepy she wore that every episode like that was her like robot uniform wow guys you're doing a great job fucking cloaking your replacement daughter your cyber replacement daughter dum-dums in addition to the actress's special talents, her daughter said that she did a good John Wayne. Oh. Okay. Did that ever come up in the show? No. Okay.

No. She never had like a blaster that came out of her hand? And she did the whole, are you lucky today? Hey, man, are you lucky today? I think you're thinking of Clint Eastwood. Who did I say? Yeah, that's a different guy. No, sorry. Clint Eastwood had

Do You Feel Lucky Punk? John Wayne had Hey Man. Do you feel lucky today? Hey man, are you a lucky man today? Let's find out with my bullet gun. I don't have a whole lot more to say but i wanted to talk about some themes um a lot of child services themes so as i mentioned right like the stakes with the neighbors not super high so they would often bring in child services

specifically like every season of like oh well why isn't she in school you have to hire a tutor or like oh it's her birthday are in school you have to hire a tutor or like oh it's her birthday are you not doing anything to celebrate her birthday so there was a lot of that of like oh no they're here let's make her seem like a real girl okay um there was also a lot of typical 80s things like somebody like oh no vicky's gonna try drugs oh really how would that even what would that do to her i don't know there was an episode about smoking there was an episode about drugs or wouldn't do anything to her she's made of metal well smoking might like get in her like ventilate her ventilators or whatever vaping vaping would destroy vici would absolutely the the the little metal flex in there

would absolutely shred her bionics yeah yeah i mean i i imagine it's equivalent to like when your car catches on fire right like she could maybe explode that's the thing they never really talk about in that show either is that at any moment some malfunction could cause her to absolutely detonate i remember so i remember there being tons of episodes of like oh no that show either is that at any moment some malfunction could cause her to absolutely detonate i remember so i remember there being tons of episodes of like oh no vicky's gonna get wet yeah but the only one i could find was season three episode two vicky jumps in a pool to save the neighbor how'd you google this uh episode of little where a girl gets wet and explodes? There's an episode, Guy. Okay. And I just read the synopsis of every episode like you do.

I think a better show would have been if they did not reveal to the household viewer that she was a robot until maybe like the series finale. And you're like, what's the deal with this weird girl? to deal with this weird girl. I'm saying in Growing Pains, when Leonardo DiCaprio just like joins the squad for some reason, if at the last episode, you know, a car is about to hit one of them and he like stops it with his body.

Oh, by the way. And like it destroys his hand, but it's just like the cyber frame is underneath it. And you're like, oh shit, this makes sense. A lot of stuff makes sense now well no small wonder episode one you know they pretty much reveal that she's a robot okay um yeah i don't know i really enjoyed the show i think this was the time period like i mentioned out of this world also like punky brewster there were a lot of like shows not

an alien though no but a lot of sh's, a lot of shows with girls. Sheryl. We call them Sheryls. A lot of Sheryl shows. And that was cool to see, like, as a little girl. Like, oh, hey, look. There's somebody, you know, like me. And they get their own television show.

I mean, no, not at all. But it was a small person that that kind of looked like me yeah and it was cool to see that yeah well you you i you did there was that one time it was actually our wedding night when you were like let me slip into something a little more comfortable and you took off your face and then you had sort of like a terminator and then i put on my romance face you put on on your, yeah. It's really nice. Hey, can I tell you all about the Max Fund Drive? Yes.

I was about to steal you away. I guess I still can. Come with me. So Max Fund Drive is going on right now. And it's just going on for a few more days. This is the second and last week of the 2022 Max Fund Drive. Let's talk about some of those gifties yeah five dollars a month you get bonus content for all the shows on the network for the whole fullness of time since we've been doing the max

yeah i would encourage those of you who think it's just like bonus episodes there's also some video content on there videos there's uh I mean, for just our stuff, we're releasing, I believe, the custom ship worksheet stuff that I made for Ethersea this season. It's a bevy of multimedia content. I'm in the middle of listening to the episode where you and your brothers are putting together

a hot new television property to pitch to your agent. Yeah, that one, that's a still evolving story. Yeah. I don't know that I've talked to you about sort of recent developments. No, I mean, you told me that there was actual interest, but I have not heard anything since then. No spoilies. Okay.

But yeah, I mean, there's a ton of great stuff. A lot of people we hear sometimes from folks folks who are like hey sorry i can only do the bottom level uh to to to support us in a material way like that uh it it means the absolute world and uh it's you know that support is really the the most important thing uh if you do want to you know up it a little bit more uh or if you already have a membership and you want to boost it up to the next level at $10 a month, you get the bonus content. You get a MaxFun membership card, but you also get to choose a patch modeled after each of the shows on the Maximum Fun Network. Yeah, I'm looking at these patches right now. You know, you'd think we would be like, you have to get the wonderful patch.

I am all for you getting the patch that you love the most. Express yourself. And there's a lot of really good ones on here. Yeah. $20 a month. You get all the stuff in the previous levels. And then you can choose between a MaxFun Rocket logo hat, which is very sleek and stylish, or a creativity kit that comes with a bunch of sort of arts and crafts supplies and a

deck of cards that provides sort of creative springboards for different projects. Yeah, maybe you're not a hat person. Yeah. You know, like for a long time I thought I wasn't a hat person, but it's just because I've got a big head. Did I leave my new hat on the airplane? Did it end up in your purse? I'm just now thinking about it.

I took it off to entertain the baby on the airplane. Now I am terrified that i did not get my hat off the plane i don't know it was my new special hat we i mean we can get another one not like this um there's there's other levels but really you know just go to maximumfund.org join and check out the levels and see what you can uh see what you you know what makes sense for your budget and you know think about helping us out i will i will say that uh it has been slow this year which makes sense we are in the middle of a uh you know ongoing pandemic and we're always in the middle of it

once in a generation sort of uh uh inflation situation get it totally. Totally. But I will also say that this past year has been challenging and stressful for us with a newborn and trying to navigate

the waters of having a newborn in the midst of a pandemic. And trying to make any kind of future plans to come out and see you all has been difficult.

That is another major thing. We've had child care that has fallen through a lot. Daycares have closed and nannies have left or gotten sick or any number of things have happened. And it is only because of the support that we have received from you all that we have been able to mostly stay on schedule and not make ourselves completely fucking miserable while doing so. That is one is one-to-one when you

when you when you give to the max fund network that is i am describing to you what happens with that with that money uh it lets us make the stuff you like without uh making us miserable in the process so uh maximumfund.org join just a few days left we're not going to be talking about this anymore after this week. So, I mean, until next year. So please think about going there. Do it right now.

Yeah, while you're thinking about it. It's very quick and easy. It doesn't take very long at all and then you can feel good every time you listen to the show because you are helping

to put good stuff out into the world. At least I think our show is good stuff. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Steve and Jeremy and Melissa. And Julie. And Jasmine. good stuff out in into the world at least i think our show is good thanks steve thanks steve and jeremy and melissa and julie and uh jasmine and uh bertrand sue hey do you want to know my thing yes uh i wanted to talk about uh i was going to talk about a game and then i realized that i should just talk about the person who makes uh this game because he has a career that is truly buck wild his name is zach gage uh and he is a sort of

conceptual artist and game developer who is in in my humble opinion one of the most sort of like consistently like brilliant game designers currently in the biz uh and if you play a lot of mobile games but you don't recognize his name immediately uh i can pretty much guarantee you've played one of his his his mobile titles uh his biggest ones are spell tower which came out 11 years ago more recently uh he's released flip-flop solitaire and really bad chess uh i'll talk about his catalog and what i really like about it in a second but his history and the route that he took to game development is really fascinating to me uh he was like real as a kid he was really into like these nascent programming

languages like apple coco which was like a super rudimentary programming language uh that you could use to make like super simple games um so he like learned all these programming languages and went to college for a computer science degree but he got bored with it and got into photography so he like pursued an art degree instead uh and then he followed that up with uh getting an mfa at the parsons School of Design. And I actually first heard about Zach Gage because of a piece that he included in his like thesis show that he did for his MFA program, where he made like a bunch of different, you know, art projects. And one of them was a game that was called Lose Lose. And it was sort of a retro space shooter looking thing

where you had like a little ship that you could shoot lasers out of while other alien ships came at you from the top of the screen, right? But every time that you destroyed an enemy ship, it would delete a random file off of your computer. Oh God. And if you get destroyed,

if your ship touches an enemy ship uh the game deletes itself off off the computer uh and you could really fuck up your computer right like if you delete like registry files off of your off of your computer like it will become inoperable and it carried like numerous warnings sort of stating that. But it made headlines, right? Because it's such a bonkers idea. Yeah. I remember writing, I think, for Joystick about how all of these different antivirus software companies had to list it as malware. Because you could download the game and like really mess up your stuff but what was really interesting about the game is that it never provides like um like instructions or directions

telling you to destroy the enemy ships it just puts you into what seems like a pretty familiar looking thing and like if you press the button it shoots a laser but it doesn't say like hey destroy all this stuff so like it's kind of like got a lot to say about like the it's called lose lose a game about consequences and so it's all about like a lot to say about, it's called Lose, Lose, a game about consequences. And so it's all about real life consequences for the actions that you somewhat arbitrarily choose, that you were kind of programmed to choose because of how you have played similar games in the past.

And I think objectively speaking, that's really cool and very fascinating. And it absolutely makes sense why that's really cool and very fascinating. And it absolutely makes sense like why that was. That's really clever. A big thing that kind of helped him become a name. And then like he started to just like release some real jams. In 2011, like I said, he released Spell Tower on iOS, which was kind of a, you played a lot of this game. I was trying to think of a good way to describe it.

which was kind of a, you played a lot of this game. I was trying to think of a good way to describe it. It's like a word search kinda where you have like a big stack of letters and you can like sort of connect the letters to spell words and you can make it go sideways and backwards and diagonal in all directions. But you're trying to like get all the blocks. You're trying to clear the tiles off of this tower.

And like, if the word is a certain length, it'll like explode the letters near it. And if you use like Q or X or Z, it would like have some sort of special effect where it would clear it. But it's basically like trying to clear out this whole tower, which means you have to be kind of thoughtful as you near the end that you are leaving yourself enough letter to make enough words. Yeah, but it's set up kind of like Tetris. make enough words yeah but it's set up kind of like tetris like it's got like a real like simple interface where you're just kind of like you're you're playing it like an arcade game but there's actually letters inside the blocks and like a lot of zach gage games like it had like a really compelling like leaderboard sort of thing going for it and so if your other friends were

playing it it became very easy to kind of like track and compete with them in this game that zach cage actually did a a few interviews when this game like became really popular because it did where he was talking about like he doesn't he didn't really like word games really like scrabble or words of friends or anything like that so but he like was fascinated by them and so he made this game to help like understand why people like games like this and in doing so made like one of the best ones of them that i think even still has like his game scratch such an itch for people that like word games that i just assumed like he was like a real like a like a will will shores he he he's gone on to like collaborate with uh other

developers and like make other stuff after Spell Tower came out in 2011. He helped finish up this game called Ridiculous Fishing by a studio called Vlambeer, which made a bunch of like big iOS games. And this game Ridiculous Fishing was in like development hell. And while they were like struggling to finish it, it got basically cloned by another developer. There was this whole like speech they gave at gdc about like how shitty that that felt but anyway zach gage was one of the people to help sort of finish development on that but like the thing that i always found interesting about zach gage is how he would go on to sort of um iterate on classic sort of games just adding the simplest little tweaks and refinements to make them like really really clever

and and super slick uh in 2015 he released a game called sage solitaire which i don't know if you ever played but it kind of combined the rules of solitaire and poker where you had like stacks of cards and you would take the top cards off each stack to create poker hands and you would get points for like the better poker hands that you could get it was a very simple game but also like one that you could just like pick up while you're waiting in line for something and it would just like carry you through and you would just completely lose track of time um in 2016 he released really bad chess which i have a very soft spot in my heart for. And literally, the premise of really bad chess is it's chess, but all of the pieces are kind of randomized. They start on the two back

ranks like in normal chess, but you could have like three knights in the front row and then a couple of queens and then maybe a pawn and then like four rooks in the back row. But you have the same pieces as the other player does. So like all chess strategy goes out the window and it's just a question of like improvising with this really bad chess board that you are given and it was hysterical but also like i don't know chess gets kind of like formulaic inherently and that there are like here are the best openings and you got to do those if you want to have the best chance at whatever but playing a game where it's like okay you have nothing but bishops it's like okay this is uh this now we're in untread territory um he made

flip-flop solitaire which was just solitaire except that cards could uh stack in ascending or descending order uh and uh they could be the same suit. Like sometimes you could play like a one suit game. And so like you didn't have to worry about putting red cards on black cards, et cetera. And so like it was just solitaire, but with these like small tweaks, it made it so that you could pretty much clear it every time.

So then it was like a timed thing or like there were all kinds of different modes. There was Pocket Run Pool, which was just like a top-down pool game that they've made a million of at this point but it had all these clever mechanics about like targeting uh specific pockets with each shot and you could get multipliers that would like times the number on the ball and so you had to like figure out the best way to route it so that you get the most points and uh there was my favorite game that he has made it's called good sudoku it's literally just sudoku i think i've talked about it on this show before because it came out in 2019 i think it's just sudoku but it provides like tips and lessons and all of these like quality of life shortcuts that make it possible to tackle like really hard Sudoku problems. Yeah, that's so clever.

And that's all it is, right? It's literally just Sudoku that is kind to the player and like wants the player to like get invested. And it taught me about the beauty of Sudoku in a way that like i never would have done if it was just like me in a book that like didn't tell me how to do this shit yeah uh and his most recent game that i just hooked up rachel on i think it just came out last week is called not words with a k uh and it's just like a super dense very small crossword puzzle uh and when i say dense i mean like all the words are kind of stacked up so you have to like form the words so they make words both vertically and horizontally

and uh just like there it would be impossible if it weren't for the fact that there was also like some sudoku style uh like segments of the puzzle that tell you the letters that go in those segments so you kind of have to piece it together both ways. And it's really hard, but also I cannot put it down. Yeah, yeah. So the idea is that like there's different sections of the board and they give you the potential letters for that sections. And so you have to kind of build out like,

okay, well, there's only two letters that could go here. So what two letters would work? And then that helps you figure out the next section. And it's, I don't know, it's really fun. It's really fun and it's super compelling. And figuring out how to make it either, like, new and fresh or, at the very least, like, approachable to people who have never really gotten into the thing before. Like, good Sudoku, like, I love Sudoku now. And I didn't before. Yeah.

Because there wasn't, like, a well-packaged sort of, you know, user-friendly Sudoku experience. And that is, like, the exact type of thing that that he is he is able to make like how do you it's obviously like sort of the most um embellished and most preposterous of his games but really bad chess is like you can't iterate on chess because it's chess like it's chess it's been chess for the last thousand years or whatever. But he just by saying like, well, what if all the pieces were randomized and it was inherently kind of stupid? Like that's fun and that's really clever. And that is like the exact type of thing that I like in games.

And so, yeah, I want to talk about Zach Age because his games are like consistently good. And so, yeah, I wanted to talk about Zach Age because his games are like consistently good. Like anytime I hear about, oh, I don't play a lot of iOS games anymore because I think that the market got like crazy oversaturated with garbage. Well, and everything is like pay focused. Yeah. I like I've enjoyed Apple Arcade, which is the new sort of like subscribe. I say new. I think it came out like three years ago. It's a subscription based thing where the games are not like filled with in-app purchases and

all this stuff and so like if a good game hits that like i will dip into it but if i hear there's a new zach gage game out like i run not walk to to go and download it because uh it's it's just always gonna always gonna hit the spot you know uh so, if you've never played any of his games, I highly recommend it. I highly recommend Good Sudoku to everyone. I think it's so good. And we'll teach you. It is educational almost more than anything else in that it shows you why this game is really, really good in a way that maybe has never been revealed to you. And that's it. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you want to give the last sort of impassioned plea here for the Max Fund Drive? Our last one for wonderful for this year. So no pressure. Yeah. I mean, something I say every year, and I believe your brother Justin has said too, is that like, you know, we make a lot of impulse purchases and put money towards things that aren't lasting and that don't necessarily matter to us past the day that we consume them. But I think this is a real opportunity to give to something that is important to you and that you feel like you will continue to use and has made a real difference. And so we

like to give that opportunity and say, hey, you know, we're going to do this, you know, and we want it to be important to you. And if it is, it would be great if you could give to it. Yeah, it's maxfilmfund.org slash join. Please think about joining. We could use the help. Honestly, we have a goal to hit 20,000 new and upgrading members that we are well shy of. Which again, those goals we try to be ambitious with. And last year was the first year that we've ever missed that goal. And if we don't get a sort of grounds swell i would say in the next few days it it may happen again this year yeah and if and if you're not able to give at this time we totally

understand uh we appreciate that it is not an easy time for a lot of people yeah uh but if if that's the case we encourage you to at least share share the max fun drive with somebody who you think might be interested. Yeah, with like a rich uncle. Go to your wrench uncle. Not your wrench uncle, the one who works at the auto body shop and both of his arms are just big wrenches. I mean your rich uncle who

owns the auto body shop. These both sound like 80s television shows. Wrench uncle sounds like an 80s television show? I like it. All right. Yeah, we could make something happen there. Maximumfun.org slash join. Thank you all so much. Thanks to the Maximum Fun Network.

Thanks to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. Find a link to that in the episode description. And just keep it, please keep it, keep it moving, you know? Yeah. Keep those gears, you know? Yeah. Keep those gears. We both have our heads cocked at like a,

I would say an 80 degree angle looking at each other. Is it just because the microphones got in the way? Sometimes I like to rest my big head on my shoulder. Yeah. All of our children do that a lot too. Sometimes Henry's ear will just be bright red. I'll be like, what's going on? And then I'll realize he was just kind of like, just kind of taking a breather of holding the tremendous

weight that we have sort of bestowed upon him. I got to see your dad's hat collection, by the way. And more than the sheer volume of hats, I was impressed by the fact that he had that many hats that fit him. Yeah, it's the sheer volume of the hats, but also the sheer volume of each hat is truly tremendous. You could mix salad in our hats. You could make a soup in a McElroy hat.

Let's leave them with that mental image. Goodbye. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.