Wonderful! - Wonderful! 261: Squidgerton

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

Rachel's favorite guilt-inducing young person music! Griffin's favorite extended length video games!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaRAICES: https://www.raicestexas.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, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. We've been getting a lot of feedback that it's too, the pace of the podcast is too feverish. It's too, people are like, where's the fire? People always say to me, they say, Rachel, your voice is filled with rage and an energy that is upsetting.

We got big personalities. Yeah, you and me. We're like creatures in the wild that have evolved these bright yellow face-shaped spots. Okay. Meant to scare predators. But that's not like, I don't subscribe to that. I feel like you just described the Emoji movie. Did I? these bright yellow faces you're just okay but okay i was i wasn't talking about the emoji can we though but if you want to

talk about yeah like what's some of your favorite stuff about the emoji i feel like we've only watched the first 20 minutes i've watched 20 minutes of it in different different 20 minute chunks of it yeah not a great flick i know people come here for like recommendations for like what's hot what's new that's like the tagline wonderful what's hot what's new um emoji movie not either of those things no bad old i would call it yeah um and we have a pretty forgiving uh review system for children's programming absolutely i cried at boss baby i'm broken inside and what was the other one that was recent was it dc super pets dc super pets didn't get a tears a tears response from me okay but i was moved deeply yeah by Hart's performance. This is wonderful.

What's hot? What's now? And we're going to talk about some great stuff this week. I'm really excited. I don't know what you're actually going to talk about, but do you want to do a small wonder to start us off to begin the program? Yeah, I actually have a prepared small wonder. Oh my God. It was maybe going to be a topic, and then I just realized there's just not enough there, because this small wonder is a man of mystery, and that is St. Louis legend, Beetle Bob. Don't know who that is or what that is. That is a man who, for 27 years, attended a live concert every day in St. Louis.

For 27 years? Yes. He went to a live concert every day? Yeah. It ends up totaling over 9,439 days, which is minus the days during the pandemic when there were no in-person live performances. Oh, well, yeah. You can't hold that against Robert. But he was a man that would wear like a 60s style suit and like a beetle wig.

Although some reports say it was just his hair. Oh, the beetle. Oh, like, okay. When you said a beetle wig, I was assuming a sort of chitinous. Oh, baby. But I know now, because you laughed at me, that I was wrong. And then I thought about it for more than a second. I got to see Beedle Bob once and it was very thrilling.

I was at, for whatever reason, I was at a live music performance at the St. Louis Art Museum. It was outside and he was there and I was so starstruck. I bet. I mean, it seems like the odds are pretty good considering he went to a live show every day. Yeah. But it was exciting for me. Yeah. Anyway, he sadly has been recently diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.

And so the whole reason that I even saw this news bulletin was that today, I believe, for the first time in 27 years, he will not be attending a show. Oh, that sucks. But that even though he has recently like his mobility has decreased he has still been going to shows he just sits instead of dances that's the thing i love that he he dances yes he becomes a very standout performer in that moment so yeah i just wanted to get a little little shout out to beetle bob our uh our thoughts are with you sir yes um i i'm going to say my thing but i reserve the right to make it a big wonder later. Okay.

I, The Traders on the Peacock Network. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Show called The Traders. It's on Peacock now. I think this is just the first sort of American release. I think it was a show that existed in the UK. We had a few fans tell us about it.

Uh, Justin talked about it, I think a little bit on the besties. This is a competition reality show so already we're did you say it was on peacock i did a couple times it is it is on the peacock network which peacock you're fucking crushing it i'm saying we subscribe to a lot of shit and when we first subscribed to peacock i you know i'm saying this as someone who's developing a television show for Peacock. I didn't think it was going to be the kind of like powerhouse. Yeah. Damn.

No, at first it was like this is where we watch old episodes of The Office. This is where American Ninja Warrior lives. No, there's so much more to it than that. Anyway, it's a competition reality show. A bunch of people go into a Scottish castle that is in fiction owned by actor Alan Cumming. Who is himself. Who is himself. Well, I mean.

He's like if someone took the Alan Cumming knob and turned it all the way until it snapped off. Just to say like everybody is themselves. It is not like a character. Yes, everybody is is themselves it is not like a character yes everybody else is themselves it's mostly reality competition stars except for a few people mixed in who are not which is kind of a strange the ratio is confusing to me because it's a lot of people from like bravo series there's the woman from below deck which we watched a couple episodes of there's a real housewife housewife and there's sari from survivor ari from the bachelor yeah uh fan fan rose buddies fans may recognize that that that

name uh it's it's a lot of people anyway it's a hidden role game where at the beginning in the first episode three people are uh secretly chosen to be the the titular traders uh and then it's up to the rest of the group to suss out who they are yeah and unlike the mole we as the viewer get to know who these traders are we get to know who there's a there's a few things that sort of set this apart from from the mole which we adore old mole we did finish new mole which is one of the most frustrating agonizing i would say tv watching again i don't want to be super negative here on our super posi show but i cannot remember being more disappointed by a television program than i was by new mole uh this this one though the oh god what are the non what are the villagers called i always the faithful faithful yeah

the traders are because if it reaches the end of the game and there's any traitors left in the mix, they will get the money, not the faithful, right? Every night, the traitors choose someone to kill or eliminate from the game just based on what the three of them decide. And then in the daytime, there's a popular vote among the rest of the,

I mean, amongst everybody where they will banish one player player from from yeah they're trying to get they're trying to suss out the uh the the imposters in that case uh what's fucking great is that the traders unlike the mole are trying to get money in the pot they're not sabotaging the games right that one change alone fixes what was really annoying about this last season the mole which is like everybody was fucking up on purpose all the time so everybody would think they were the mole and mess up the quiz that element's not there right it one of the things that the traders keep in mind is like let's get rid of somebody who's dead weight who's not going to win us any money but then there's

like a million other strategic things to think about like who can we pin the next popular vote on and so like let's make our murder based on that decision to protect ourselves. It has unfolded even in the two episodes we've watched to reveal all of these layers of strategy that are right up my wheelhouse. And then every 90 seconds, Alan Cumming appears on screen and it's like, nothing bad.

I can't do it. I cannot do his accent because nobody can. But he just said he's just quoting Othello constantly. And he's just he's just it's so good. The costuming. I mean, the costumery is on point. It's potential that these are his actual personal outfits. But I hope so.

But it's just there's so much majesty to it yeah um and i thought i thought it was interesting that we get to know like who the traitors are because at first i was like oh i wonder i wonder if that's gonna ruin anything um but actually it like adds this new level where you watch these people who were chosen seemingly randomly. Yeah. Who don't know each other and have differing levels of skill. Yeah. Kind of like come together and try and do this and not get caught. I do feel bad for the not celebrities who are in the house.

One of whom was just like playing way too loud in the first episode and essentially had kind of a breakdown in the first jury vote because he was like the he was being bullied by the well real housewife the problem was and this is what's interesting is that the person that was like quote-unquote like murdered in the game everybody tried to trace back okay well who is the contestant that had the biggest beef with that person and that's how they picked this guy. He was just a random guy. Just a random dude. Who like said a couple things about him. And everybody was like, this guy.

Anyway, that was practically a big wonder on Traders. We're only two episodes in and I'm already head over heels. So catch the wave. Catch the wave. What are you talking about this week, my love? Okay, so this is, this I feel like requires some couching. Okay.

You know when you have children and it's not about you? No. Tell me more. Part of your job as a parent is to identify things that your children like and- And then ignore those things so they can play sports because you never did. Right? I've read all the books. And one of those things that our youngest child likes that I have a fondness for just because he does is Cocomelon.

Okay. And so I wanted to talk about Cocomelon. Are you about to talk about Cocomelon, honey? Yes. You're about to bring Cocomelon okay and so i wanted to talk about are you about to talk about cocomelon honey yes you're about to bring cocomelon into the room yes this is a if you'll look around i work very hard to make this space i know a adult grown-up space if you look around you'll notice there are no toys. There are no fun blocks. I mean, one might say there are toys. Okay, that's a fine little dig and a fair one.

I mean, not as many as have come to have been shown in the other McElroy offices. I think I'm, yes. I appreciate that. I am surprised of all of the things that we watch with our youngest our our youngest that coca melon i mean it's not gonna be blippy

oh drag him to hell all right i here's here's the thing big mika stand though like we stand we stand for we love mika yeah i know she's the best um the thing that's interesting for me so and this is common with all very young children uh gus likes music yes uh he likes you know bright colors yes um and so i am consistently looking for something to put on the television that has music and bright colors okay uh and i don't know 90 times out of 100 cocomelon does the trick yeah um he is we we aren't huge on the merch he has received some merch he doesn't give a shit no he likes the merch that plays music but it really could be anything you know he has no attachment to JJ, who is the star baby. Yes.

And in fact, I theorize that the reason babies love Cocomelon is because of how prominently featured the baby JJ is. And then, can you name the other two kids? I didn't know their names until I did the research. Exactly. It's because they don't get any fucking screen time. Every song is about JJ. Well, he has a I did the research. Exactly. It's because they don't get any fucking screen time. Every song is about JJ. Well, he has a friend named Cody now.

Okay. Is the friend named Cody also a baby? Yes. So there you go. This is a show that teaches babies you're the only thing that matters in the whole wide world. So, yes. All that to say, as soon as Small Son goes to bed,'s not like we're watching coca melon this isn't like god no this isn't like bluey where like it's it's not at all for us but god bluey's so good i know

i know we i know that's like the thing where like it's all parents talk about is how good bluey is i mean we've talked about it on the show the stump the episode where they're having the dads are having a stump chopping party but then bluey and bingo and their friends want to use one of the stumps for a nail salon and don't let them chop down that stump and it makes all the dads get sad and frustrated and the mom has to explain that they're chopping up the stumps is how the dads play and then she looks and sees the dads playing and having fun chopping down the stump oh my god anyway anyway um gosh i can't think of anything else right now uh cocomelon i want to talk a little bit about it because there's uh it's a surprising pick i understand that i'm very i'm

deeply curious but yeah there's a lot that goes into it sure uh okay so for those of you that don't know which has got to be a very small percentage but i imagine if you have never come within five feet of children's programming you wouldn't know cocomelon uh it started as a youtube channel uh and now it is also on Netflix. And in YouTube realm, it is incredibly popular. It far exceeds any other YouTube channel. It has earned 507.5 million weekly views in January. And will surpass 150 billion lifetime views sometime in february it's anticipated that's such a big number it's a big number that number has so many digits in it i think 12 that's so much um now that it is on Netflix, I was reading this article that came out in March 2022.

They said it was watched for 33 billion minutes last year, more than Squid Game and Bridgerton combined. I love that. I would love, love it if we finally combined Squid Game and Bridgerton into just a bunch of sort of fancy debutantes competing in a series of deadly games. This is good. This is good. Is someone writing this down? Yeah, I hope so. It's also the music for Cocomelon is streamed 1.3 million times a day on Spotify.

That doesn't surprise me. I didn't realize. So its parent company is Moonbug Entertainment. Right. Who also does Blippi. Is that an American company? I thought Cocomelon started in like France, but that might just be because of the name Coco. No, that's just the name.

No. Cocomelon was actually started by a couple in california okay uh they're the mom and dad from coco melon it was created in 2005 uh by a father of two in southern california um he was trying to teach his kids the abcs uh and his wife was a children's book author and the two of them kind of came together and made a YouTube channel. And then once they started getting enough revenue, they shifted from 2D to 3D animation

and then Moonbug offered them just a whole lot of money. I imagine, yeah. Moonbug's whole thing is scouring YouTube to buy out incredibly popular children's channels. Do they do the Ryan's World stuff, I wonder? Not that I saw, but they did do Little Baby Bum and Blippi, as I mentioned. as I mentioned, basically because YouTube is such a kind of a challenging place for people to actually earn money. Like you have to know all these things. That hasn't been my experience. All the monster factories that we've made have made me about 13 American dollars. Moonbug has kind of come in and offered people like we'll give you this incredibly lucrative deal

to like take over your property and you don't have to worry about like chasing youtube money right sure uh and and i'm i'm presenting them as if they're these heroes that's probably not the case but but it's business is business and business must grow um but yeah so so now coco melon is um is incredible like it's it's everywhere it's every like walmart target every store you go to yeah it's it's and there are apparently tons and you've mentioned this to me of like tiktok videos of people hearing the coco melonelon song and like their children come running into the room. Yeah.

And it's built around this whole kind of like fascinating focus on what is going to be appealing to kids ages one to three. There's this whole like platform at Moonbug where they bring in children and kind of test different oh god different things with them when i read that is the most dystopian shit i i can imagine of just like putting a bunch of babies in a big white room and then projecting images of like a mom on one wall and a ball on the other and see which way they crawl towards so there's this article in the new york times that came out in may 2022 uh for anyone older than two uh the team at moonbug deploys something they call the

distractotron holy shit it's a small tv screen placed a few feet from the larger one that plays a continuous loop of real world scenes, like a guy pouring coffee, someone getting a haircut. Whenever the youngster looks away from the moon bug show to glimpse the detract-a-tron, a note is jotted down. Holy shit.

And so they see like what, what was what was you know became less interesting to them and like what were they more interested in it sounds wild i guess it is probably the only way to focus group of babies exactly which is inherently not the most noble endeavor but i suppose there are way gnarlier ways to go about it in this new york times article the chief content officer said uh quote kids love yellow buses around the world in some countries yellow buses are actually used to transport prisoners but still kids around the world love to see yellow buses and kids on yellow buses and then it goes on to say infants are also enamored with objects covered in a little dirt like they've been rolling around on the ground.

Yeah. And they're fascinated by minor injuries. That's true too. Not broken legs or gruesome wounds. More like small cuts that require band-aids. Yeah. And then this guy says the trifecta for a kid would be a dirty yellow bus that has a boo-boo. All of this is disturbing i mean granted all this is disturbing um and there's obviously a lot of research still being done as to what the effect of screen time

has on young kids uh intuitively it doesn't seem great but then there's also research to say like as long as your child is still active as long as they're still engaging in play you know as long as it's not being used primarily as a babysitting tool uh there's an opportunity for them to like you know benefit from this in some way of course i'm saying all that to make myself feel a little less guilty um but well there's a difference between plonking your kid down in front of Cocomelon for eight hours. Yeah. Which like, we are very, very, very far from the parents who would, I think fault somebody

for screen time and, and like putting it on to engage them in, in play. Like we'll put Cocomelon on the, you know, music device that if you say the name of it, it listens to your activities and gus will just like freaking party to it for quite quite a while yeah he is still and may always be at that age where he can't really stay in one place for very long yes uh so it is not a big concern of ours that he will zone out for hours at a time. Yeah. Uh,

but he really enjoys it. Yeah, sure. And I don't know, man, like the songs, there's some pretty good ones. They get stuck in my head.

The one I think about a lot is the beach song. That's like, let's take it slow. Today is hot. So like that, they kind of listen and have some fun you know that one you know what i am talking about then there's a there's a song they do about pasta that is yes uh really really something, too. They kept saying familia over and over again. Yeah.

They rhyme, I think, familia with the word pizza, which is so dope. Oh, maybe we're thinking about two different songs. We might be thinking about two different songs. Anyway, Cocomelon. Cocomelon. I'm not really encouraging our listeners to go check it out. No. I just recognize that as a parent of young children and many of our listeners

who may also be parents of young children, there is something interesting about the kind of love-hate relationship you have with the programs your children watch. Absolutely. And we can say all the shit we want about Cocomelon or Mr. Blippi, but when we have to go on a very long road trip

and our baby who won't sit still for 10 seconds has to be in a car seat for six and a half hours. I'm just saying it's good to have those arrows in the old quiver. That is true. Can I steal you away? Yes. Dear reading glasses, it's been years since I've been able to read. I missed it so much, but I had no idea where to start. I felt so overwhelmed. But thanks to your show, now I'm back to enjoying books again and feeling like a reader.

Love, Sarah. Yeah, that's an email we actually answered. Okay, maybe not that email specifically, but one just like it because most of our listeners are named Sarah. We're Reading Glasses and we're here to solve all your reader problems. We give advice, help you find books you love, and discuss reading without making you feel pressured. No matter what you read or how you read it, we'll help you do it better. Reading Glasses, every week on Maxim fun are elephants right-handed what's the middle-est size in the universe what is the history of fan fiction let's find out together on our show let's learn everything where we learn anything and

everything interesting my name is caroline and i studied biodiversity and conservation my name is tom and i studied computer science and cognitive... Did you? And my name's Ella and I studied stem cells and regenerative medicine. On our show, we do as much research as you would for a class, but we don't get in trouble for making each other laugh. And we get to say f***. Maybe not in the trailer.

Subscribe to Let's Learn Everything every other Thursday on Maximum Fun. I regret to inform you, my thing is a video game thing. And so I want to talk to you about it, even though it's not something that you have any familiarity with. Honey, you've done this so many times on the show. And I feel guilty every time I do it.

Because I can't tell if you are interested in learning about these these video game topics that you have not sought out on your own every time i mean what do you think i feel when i bring poetry to the table you know this is not something you've ever personally pursued i'm going to talk about a genre of video games very near and dear to my heart the jrpg otherwise known as the Japanese role-playing game. This is a – So you have kind of tangentially talked about this before in the form of other games, right?

Or no? Somewhat, maybe. Have you brought any games to Wonderful? Oh, God. That fit in this category? Maybe. I may have brought Final Fantasy as like sort of one of the big, probably one of the two biggest sort of JRPG franchises. If I brought one, it would probably be that one.

Is that Academy, Hero Academy? What is the game? Hero Academy. It's not Hero Academy. There's an anime called My Hero Academia. Oh, maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Is that a game too? It's an anime.

They may have made a video game out of it. What is the game that you play where the kids are in school and they've got little blazers and they run around? Persona. Oh, okay. That's what I'm thinking of. That is a JRPG though. That is a very, I would say, classical style JRPG.

Honestly, I'm going to get in the weeds a little bit because it's a uh a genre that is a little bit nebulous which doesn't happen a lot in video games like it's usually pretty easy to look at a game and be like that's a that's a you know strategy game that's a uh 4x turn-based strategy game jrbgs get a little bit weird because like inherently in the name uh it's it's got to be both Japanese from a Japanese developer and a role playing game, right? Which is kind of defined by adhering to this sort of traditions that D&D established when it was first published back in the early 70s. But then also there's some stuff that maybe it's a game that was developed in japan that doesn't necessarily match what other rpgs kind of do or it's a game that is exactly like final fantasy and you know other franchises that are kind of the identikit for this but not made in japan so like it's kind of a weird

sort of uh nebulous genre that is hard to nail down but i want to try to talk about it because i love this this genre and some of my favorite games ever are are from it so um what you need to know uh the two big sort of names in uh role-playing games are final fantasy and dragon quest those are both like early nintendo late 80s games that came out in Japan and made such a huge splash and then came over to the States in various shapes and sizes. I have heard of Final Fantasy. Not Dragon Quest. I'm not familiar with it. That one's a little bit more, I think, esoteric in the States. It's not quite as big as Final Fantasy is here. JRPGs traditionally have pretty linear plot lines, pretty linear, pretty gigantic, grandiose plot lines.

Typically, whenever you're talking about a JRPG, you're talking about a game that you're going to be playing for, I would say, 40 to 100 hours to like really get through the whole thing. They don't have like a bunch of branching narrative. There's not much opportunity for like player authorship as there is one of the big sort of things that sets it apart from Western RPGs like Skyrim and other sort of stuff like that, which are a little bit more open-ended. There's turn-based battles, which is just like fights where each character takes a turn choosing what their action is going to be for that round. And then there's like less mechanical qualifiers, like anime inspired character designs, which has its roots in Dragon Quest, one of the first, arguably the first JRPG. All the character designs for that were commissioned by Akira Toriyama, who made Dragon Ball, like the whole Dragon Ball series. He made the character designs for Dragon Quest, which like persist today and are these huge like iconic things in Japan. Wait, I noticed you said just Dragon Ball.

Yeah. And not Dragon Ball Z. So Dragon Ball Z is a sub-series. Were there 25 other Dragon Balls? This was the 26th Dragon Ball series. other dragon balls this was the 26th dragon ball series now dragon ball z is like the one that uh made such a huge splash in america in the you know yeah okay when it first came here but there are other dragon ball things that have but all of them were designed by this dude akira toriyama who did the designs for for uh dragon quest uh and so like that sort of inspired a lot of manga and anime creators to collaborate on

on early games in the in the genre. The plot lines also like have certain tropes that the games lean on, like pretty much every other JRPG you play, like the main character has amnesia, and you're trying to figure out why you're the forgotten prince of this ancient kingdom like it's it's something that people sort of uh give the genre a hard time for in that like there are these or also like sometimes you have to kill god like you start out like hey can you go and uh stop avenge your village and then by the end of it like you're in heaven killing killing god because of x y or z the the plot lines are just like outrageous most of the time um so like that that those two sort of qualifiers describe the genre but again like you get outside of of what that specifically means

and then you get into the weeds of things like pokemon which i would say is a j JRPG. There's turn-based battles, there's like character advancement and all this stuff, but like nobody has ever really given a shit about any story beat that has ever happened in a Pokemon game before. What I really like about the genre is how sort of humble its beginnings were. Now it's this huge multi-billion dollar sort of thing with annual releases and all these gigantic franchises. But really it just started with like a handful of game developers who were RPG enthusiasts who wanted to bring that sort of interest to Japan.

So you've heard me talk about Richard Garriott before. He made Ultima in, I think, 1981, and it was a very early computer role-playing game. There was another one called Wizardry that came out around that same time. Those were Western computer-based role-playing games. There's this guy named Yuji Horii, who was a magazine writer. He was an editor for a magazine that's still in publication now, a manga magazine called Shonen Jump. He won a contest designing a game for a publisher called Enix. And that's how he got into the industry. His first game was a tennis game called, I think, Love Match Tennis, which is a very good name. But it was a computer game, right? So then when he wanted to make something else, he was really into these old Western RPGs. He was really into Dungeons and Dragons.

And he wanted to make a Nintendo game. And so trying to figure out a way to make those, make the RPG genre more sort of accessible to crazy hardware constraints that weren't present on the home computer, led him to kind of condense down what he liked about role playing games all the way down into this one little nugget. And that one little nugget was Dragon Quest, which was fucking huge when it first released. You talk about somebody threading the needle of what their ambitious project design was. I don't think you can do it much better than he did it because he created this gigantic franchise just as a uh a point of describing uh how big dragon quest was there's this urban legend that dragon quest games

have to be released on saturdays because truancy was so bad on the days that Dragon Quest games came out that the government passed a law that Dragon Quest games had to be – it's urban legend because the government didn't actually make a law, but Square Enix, which is now sort of the super publisher of almost all the big releases in the JRPG landscape, has an internal law that they have to release dragon quest games on saturdays the most recent one was dragon quest 11 which came out i don't know a few years ago uh came out on a saturday because they don't want people shirking their their work duties because people go fucking bananas do you have do you have any stories about games that you stayed home from school yes when halo 2 came out me and all my friends were like really into Halo. We played like LAN parties

and stuff like that. And I remember when Halo 2 came out, I had planned on playing it online all day with my buddy Tanner. And I asked my mom, I was like, can I,

this is the only time this ever happened. I was like, this is a huge game. Me and Tanner want to play it. Can I stay home from school today to play it she said yes wow very cool of her uh that was one of the most exciting sort of days in my in my teen years to be given clemency like that but i have infinite stories about playing

role-playing games jrpgs with my family, right? Are most of them, a lot of times I'll like kind of look over your shoulder while you're playing these games. And most of them seem like you are interacting with other characters and choosing from a set list of things to say to the other character, which I'm not sure whether or not

those things are really consequential. Sometimes it is. Like I said, like in traditionally in JRPGs, the story's gonna go where it's gonna go and it's up to you to kind of like make your character strong enough to to advance that right yeah rarely will there be a jrpg where it's like do you kill this guy or not this guy and then the ending's gonna be completely different but in a bethesda game like skyrim or or Fallout or one of those like that is more the order of the day I'd say that's one of the bigger sort of differentiators between eastern and western RPGs um but like you go back to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and that's not really so much

of a concern but I love I I love this genre so much I think because it was kind of born around the same time as me right Dragon Quest came out in 86 Final Fantasy I think came it was kind of born around the same time as me, right? Dragon Quest came out in 86. Final Fantasy, I think, came out in 87. They didn't come stateside until a little bit later. But we always had them in the house from the point where we had an NES onward. I credit Final Fantasy IV on the Super Nintendo with teaching me how to read. I so badly wanted to play that game that I learned to read so that I could do that. And then moving on,

like every other Final Fantasy that came out, like we got it day one, had to be there for it. We bought a PlayStation, we got a PlayStation for Christmas because we just had to play Final Fantasy VII on it. We would have sort of impromptu races when because it would it would be rare that only one of us would be playing a video game that was in our house like we didn't get video games all the time and so if we got a new video game all of us would want to play it but jrpgs aren't

multiplayer and so it would be like where did you get to on wild arms today and i'd be like oh i'm on disc two god damn further ahead than me uh i have like all these really fond memories of uh jrbg specifically i think from that era in in my childhood which is i think natural when you're talking about nostalgia uh of like that super nintendo playstation one era and if i do ever like have a hankering to go back and play some classic game? Usually that that is the order of the day. But then like you brought up Persona, which is arguably my favorite game franchise of all time. Those are much newer games and keep me hankering for new stuff. It's interesting for somebody like me who has very limited contact because like I only recently very like very recently understood what RPG means.

recently very like very recently understood what rpg means and in my head the like whole concept of rpg is that you have control over like the character you design and the choices that are made as that character yeah but then in these video games it kind of i mean it seems like a lot of times maybe you get to design your character, but like the game is set, you know, you're just walking from place to place trying to figure out where the game wants you to go. Right. there is a story, there is what's called a scenario in sort of traditional Japanese game design. That may not actually just be exclusively a Japanese thing now that I say that. That is like the script, right? And we've moved away from that. I say we, game developers have moved away from that since technology has evolved and now games can be much, much bigger and you can have open world games where you don't have to necessarily do every single thing. And in fact, there's going to be a lot of stuff

that you don't do based on the choices that you make. And I love games like that, right? Like I've played Skyrim more times than I can count. But there is something I think appealing about having a story that is being told to you, which is more of what a JRPG is going for. And when it's not successful, when the story being told sucks, like that's going to be a painful experience.

But when I look back on sort of the games that define my childhood, a lot of them are those more sort of straightforward JRPGs, which not only i think uh were like a big activity a big shared love in our household like i think it probably went on to define my like storytelling uh like ideas like i think if i you go back and listen to tas balance like there is a lot of sort of jrpg stuff in there it's a little bit more straightforward that i would say later seasons of adventure zone were um and that was i think inspired sort of by that um i don't think this is anything you would i can't think of a jrpg i would ever recommend to you yeah you know it's interesting because you talk about the number of hours and for me i'm always like oh that seems

like a lot of hours. But then you point out like I've been playing Words with Friends for decades. I think that if you could reveal your playtime of Words with Friends, it may be bigger than any video game I've ever played. That's possible. But even like when I was deep into World of Warcraft, I still think you've played more Words with Friends. Here's the thing, though. When I play Words with Friends, I play it for like 19 seconds at a time. Yeah.

You know, so it's. Well, brag, brag much. Well. You are Words with Friends. It's just, it's difficult, I think, to like, to feel like it's the same thing. Yeah. Because it's very easy for me to like, you know, eat a sandwich and be done playing Words of Friends. You know, I mean, to that point, like I don't play a lot of modern JRPGs that come out now.

Right. Like I play any time a Final Fantasy or a Dragon Quest comes out, like I'm down. I've played all of those and I think completed all of them. And I'm a huge, huge fan of that stuff. and I think completed all of them. And I'm a huge, huge fan of that stuff. But like, there's a lot of other ones by more independent developers and other sort of, you know,

franchises that are huge in Japan, not quite as big in America. And I don't go seek that stuff out anymore because like, frankly, I don't have the time to play a lot of video games these days. It makes me wonder what our golden years are going to be like. Probably catching up on my backlog a lot. I'm just picturing like entering my house and it's totally silent and

all three of these boys are in different rooms playing different games silently. Am I one of the three boys? Yes. Oh, okay. I got really confused. I thought this was like your totally busted like way of announcing. No. No. No more boys. No more boys. Oops, all done.

Oops, done forever. Anyway, that's JRPGs. Thank you for joining me for my lecture. You always say that. When I talk about video games, Rachel, don't fall asleep. And I promise you. I don't think you're going to fall asleep. You're not rude. But also, like, I know I would rather be talking to you about something that you care about and are enthusiastic about already. Like American Ninja Warrior.

Like American Ninja Warrior. Which, where are you at, American Ninja Warrior? I feel like it's been off the air for like a year and a half. The Papal Ninja's only getting older. His body's not getting more flat. Like that dude injures himself every time he hits the fucking spider climb. He's not getting any younger.

Give him his last chance. Oh my gosh. I have to think this- Joe Moravsky the Wedding Man's 100 years old. He's not gonna last much longer. I have to think this would be interesting to people. I don't know. At a recent live show, I mentioned American Ninja Warrior and the crowd fucking went wild. last much longer. I have to think this would be interesting to people. I don't know.

At a recent live show, I mentioned American Ninja Warrior and the crowd fucking went wild. So like, I don't know. I don't know what's hot anymore, what's new. That's the whole point of this podcast,

but I'm slipping. I just, if I were an outsider and I heard somebody talking about the PayPal Ninja, my interest would be so peaked. I know. I have to imagine.

Anyway. Anyway. Thank you for listening. Thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. my interest would be so peaked I know I have to imagine anyway anyway thank you for listening thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the user theme song Money Won't Pay you'll find a link to that in the episode description

and thank you to I'm playing with my socks I'm sorry I'm a cat thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network it's a great great network

proud to be part of the family and thank you to to you for listening. We have a bunch of merch over at McElroyMerch.com that you should go and check out. We have the album with music for the whole first season of Ethersea, which here for, what, the next six days

while we're recording this? Until the end of the month, all proceeds for all album sales on my band camp will be donated to Earth Justice, a great climate nonprofit. So go check that out. And anything else? What am I forgetting?

Got a graphic novel coming out in like two weeks. You can go to theadventurezonecomic.com to pre-order, which would mean the world to me. It's Taz's 11th Hour. It's really good. It's our best book yet.

I hope you like it. Anything else? No, I don't think so. I just talked a whole lot. I feel like it's all in your hands. You want me to say some stuff? You always end the show so good. Oh, wow. Anytime I end the show, I'm like, bazinga!

But you come out and say some really cool shit. Is this like when you tell somebody that they're better at washing the dishes than you are? It's like when I mow the lawn bad on purpose so that dad doesn't make me do it anymore. You know dad still makes me mow his lawn, right? That's why I fly to Ironton every month or so. Okay. Well, here we go.

um okay well uh here we go um i mean i really enjoyed the week where i just read some lyrics uh from mc scat cat maybe you can make your own sort of mc scat oh god that's the worst thing you could have said to me sure just do a little cat rap for me now do that for me now a little cat rap little cat rap now please just a couplet it doesn't? A little cat rap. A little cat rap now, please? Just a couplet. It doesn't have to be a rap. Just a sort of cat-based rhyming couplet would be fine. You've trained for this. Your whole slumdog millionaire style, your whole life has been building to this moment, Rachel. Hold on. I'm trying to think of a rhyming word here. A rhyming word here. Catnip.

Fish. Fancy feast. Whiskers. Litter box. Meow. Okay, okay, okay. I got one. I got one.

I got one. I got one. I got one. I got one. I got one. I knew I could fit through the door because of my whisker. I also knew that I stole your girlfriend when I kissed her. I'm a cat meow, meow, meow. That was worth the wait right there. Money won't pay. Work can't all pay. I'm a cat meow meow meow. That was worth the wait right there. My mom My mom My mom