From 8-Bit to 4K Episode 1: The Pilot Episode

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the pilot episode of the From 8 Bit to 4K podcast. I'm your host Jack Sohman and I've got with me two co hosts and we're gonna talk about video games. I've got Mike of many names. [00:00:17] Speaker B: Hey, what's up? I'm Mike. I am very deep into video games. A very deep backlog of what I love to play and a very broad genre of what I love to play. So like this is a little bit of an introduction into. I think we're going to have a lot to discuss for a long time. [00:00:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. We've also got Pillow Pet with us. [00:00:42] Speaker C: Hi. I pretty much have the exact same thing to say. We all play different games, so it's going to be a lot to talk about. [00:00:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean I've been playing video games for 35 years and that's not hyperbole. I literally started playing video games when I was four years old. [00:01:01] Speaker B: Same, but I am younger. [00:01:04] Speaker A: Yeah, fun story. My parents did not want me to play video games. I got exposed to Super Mario Bros. At my uncle's house and decided I wanted one. And my parents didn't want to deal with a four year old throwing a tantrum. So they said if I saved up my money I could buy myself a Nintendo. They were $100 in 1990 by the way. I had a $2 a week allowance. So I saved up for a year as a 4 year old and by the time I was 5, I had enough and I bought myself a Nintendo because by the time I had enough, they realized they couldn't say no. Now. [00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah, relatively similar. My parents were not exactly fans of course as a system, but like they were really big fans of educational games or like handheld stuff because they could take that away easily. [00:01:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:59] Speaker B: So I, my, my main thing, like if any of you know old educational games, old floppy disk like Putt Putt Goes to the Moon, Math Blasters, these are games that I grew up on. I grew up on Myst as well. [00:02:12] Speaker A: I literally have like all of the Freddy Fish games on Steam because there was a humble bundle and my wife was like, O my God, we need those. [00:02:23] Speaker C: You saying Mist just brought up so much nostalgia. [00:02:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Like I, I remember running through this floppy disks and absolutely not knowing what the hell I was doing. [00:02:39] Speaker C: Wasn't that like a puzzle game? [00:02:41] Speaker B: It was a puzzle, yeah. [00:02:42] Speaker C: Okay. And like it was corridor based, right? Like it was corridor based. Like you were going down corridors, going left, right. Like pick it. Okay. Yeah. Like wow. I haven't thought about that. Game in Forever. [00:02:55] Speaker B: It was a surprisingly beautiful game for the era it came out in, which was barely color screen crts. Visually it was amazing. [00:03:08] Speaker C: Wow. So like I would say my introduction to PC games, I never had a computer, like really growing up I had a, you know, we, we finally did get a computer. My first game on that was Asteroids, I think where you're the little triangle and you're shooting white balls coming at you. Like I remember that one. I think it was just a flash game maybe when I was playing it. But my first real game on PC was starcraft. I remember playing starcraft because my stepmom had it and she was a huge Blizzard fan. She had. She loved starcraft and then she also had Diablo. So I started playing Diablo and that was my introduction to like real PC games. And that's what started my like my love for fantasy genre. [00:04:05] Speaker A: Oh God, sometimes I forget how much younger you are than I am. I started playing PC games with Commander Keen, which I'm assuming neither of you knows what the fuck Commander Keen is. [00:04:17] Speaker B: I have heard of it. I have never played it. [00:04:20] Speaker C: I can't even say I've heard of. [00:04:23] Speaker A: Was made by ID Software and it was a side scrolling platformer that was basically John Carmack saying like hey, I know Mario type side scrollers don't really work on PC because PCs of that era did not do tile scrolling the way the NES did. He figured out algorithms to make platformers anyway. And Commander Keen was basically his proof of concept for that. And its success is literally what resulted in him being able to then make Wolfenstein 3D and eventually the game we're going to talk about later. Doom. Yeah, we would not have those without Commander Keane. [00:05:05] Speaker C: That reminds me of what Street Fighter. Is that the name of it? [00:05:08] Speaker B: Street Fighters? [00:05:09] Speaker C: Like, like the. What's the other one? [00:05:12] Speaker B: Are you thinking of Streets of Rage? [00:05:15] Speaker C: Maybe. Maybe Streets of phrase. X Men. The X Men one that I used to play that one on the. In the arcade all the time. [00:05:22] Speaker A: The Beat up arcade is literally one of the most classic iconic beat em ups ever. [00:05:28] Speaker B: That and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. [00:05:31] Speaker C: Oh yeah, can't forget that one. I think that was what NES lost in time. [00:05:36] Speaker A: Oh, there's. There's a whole bunch of them. NES and super nes. The arcade versions are distinct, different games. They're not the same as the console versions. Even the ones that share a title, because that was a thing back then. So. Yep, let's actually like talk about our discussion topics now that we've dated ourselves a little bit since we're titling this podcast from 8bit to 4k, we decided for our first episode we want each of us to highlight a classic game that we are fond of, something from our childhood, something that is memorable to us, that hopefully still holds up and is fun today, or at least we have a lot of nostalgia for. And I'm gonna make Mike kick it off because he gave the old title for this game and it has changed titles since he was a kid. And I think that's funny. So I'm gonna make Mike go first. [00:06:37] Speaker B: So my first real, like continuous gaming experience was on a Game Boy. And Mike, obviously, because your parents could. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Take it away easier. [00:06:50] Speaker B: They could take it away easier. And they had Macintoshes, so they didn't really play games really well. They had the educational games and that was it for a very long time. But like, as a great way to, to keep, you know, if we're going on a road trip, get, get the kid a thing if the batteries run out. Oh well, we can get batteries later. Have the Game Boy. And one of my favorite games from the genre way back when is a. Was called at the time Dragon Warrior Monsters because there was a. An IP problem with Japan and its actual title. Dragon Quest Monsters. [00:07:37] Speaker A: Yep. Specifically, I think in the US Dragon Quest was owned by like a. A D and D competitor in the pen and paper space that had failed, but they still held the trademark for the name and they never expanded to Japan. So when Enix made the Dragon Quest series, they just called it Dragon Quest because there was nothing preventing them. [00:08:00] Speaker B: And this is, this is like the classic Enix. If you've ever heard of Dragon Quest or Dragon warriors as it was called here, same exact universe, sort of. They use all the same kind of monsters. They use all the same. So slimes are a thing. The slime, the little ooey goo dude with the smiley face that is the prime. Like, like it. It is the Pikachu of Dragon. Dragon Warrior. The slime. It is, it is the, the icon. So this is a game that, like a lot of the concept art initial things are drawn by Akira Toriyama, if you know who that is. He's the guy who created Dragon Ball. And yup, this, this art style carried through into the Game Boy games and the Nintendo games. And it's. It is a game that is a similar style to Pokemon in that you gather a team of monsters that you go out and you face in the world and fight into this long quest line to go and you get more things as you go on. But it has a Lot of very distinctly different things about it that made. Felt more mature than Pokemon because Pokemon, you're. You're a child and you're just sort of on a one way strip. It didn't really have too much of a story to it outside of the team Rocket. [00:09:26] Speaker A: And specifically Pokemon, like you can't avoid the. Like this game is for children in like the motif of it because like your Pokemon faint instead of die, for example. [00:09:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And so when, when I got a chance to play Dragon Quest, it, it felt like a more advanced. Because I'd played Pokemon. Pokemon was the game that I got me into gaming. But when I played Dragon Quest it felt like it, it treated it more and it really sucked me in because it had this story of it was the first isekai I'd ever heard of. You got pulled into this world and you had to compete along this line to get a wish to send yourself home. Because this was not your world and you needed to win this tournament in order to grant yourself the wish to go home. You sort of were in this little nexus world that had little portals that would send you out into different zones. And each one of them had completely unique, but sometimes like different versions of. I keep calling them Pokemon. They're monsters. They're just monsters. And each zone would end up with a boss. And for the first couple of them, you could face the boss. And instead of like catching them with a thing, you would throw meat at them. And if they liked you at the end of it, a fight, you had to beat them, you had to kill them, faint them, and if they liked you enough, they would follow you. Afterwards, they would get back up and follow you. But you could only have three with you at a time total. And you had to release a thing. So it felt much more purposeful with how you were doing things. And then this opened up this long breeding chain. So there was a way to combine monsters, to breed them, to have another kid that would chain into a new one, that would chain into a new one so that you could end up with these absolutely legendary things. So like the legendary slime is this Golden King slime which has unbelievable defenses and some decent health and like wish and heal and all these other things. And it was such a fun game. I still have that Game Boy game in my backpack at all times, even though I can't play it because I don't have a Game Boy to play it with because it has that kind of nostalgia beat to it. [00:11:58] Speaker A: I love that the. I've played a lot of Dragon Quest Games I just haven't played this specific one. I love the. The degree that the Dragon Quest stories can get wild and out there. [00:12:11] Speaker B: Like, oh, you still face like the demon king. Yeah, yeah, you are. You, like, wake up and this little imp dude like, helps pull you into this other world and you're stuck there. And then the. The lord of this one island is just like, well, there's this thing we're doing, and if you complete the end of it, you get a wish and you can go home. And the very end of the game is sort of, you do the wish and then there's a little portal inside that allows you to go back and forth, because once you've played long enough, it's like a. Well, yeah, but now I also like the new world. And so your wish is I want to be able to go back and forth. Essentially, you can go home, but you can still go back. [00:12:52] Speaker A: I love that because, like, I've played other Dragon Quest games. One of them, literally, after you've beaten Satan to win the game, you then can go to a bonus dungeon where you go through the bonus dungeon and you beat the shit out of literal. The Christian God. He's called the Almighty in the game. And then after you beat the shit out of him, you could just invite him to join your town that you've built up over the course of the game. And then he's just there, just God hanging out in your town. Dragon Quest is wild. [00:13:25] Speaker B: Dragon Quest. Dragon Warrior. I will always keep calling a Dragon Warrior because that's what I bought it as. That's what I loved it as. The original three games, 1, 2 and 3, 1 and 2, I got on. On a disc combo thing. And then three was its own one later. [00:13:44] Speaker A: So I have a story about 1. [00:13:46] Speaker B: And 3, 1 and 3, not 1 and 2. Interesting. [00:13:49] Speaker A: I never played two. I've never played Dragon Quest 2. Dragon Quest 3. I had on Game Boy color because that was the first time it was released in the US Was the Game Boy color version. [00:14:00] Speaker B: Yep, the color version. [00:14:01] Speaker A: And I played maybe halfway ish through that game on my Game Boy advance because I had a pink Game Boy advance at this point. And then my Game Boy advance was stolen at high school. [00:14:14] Speaker B: I've had that happen. [00:14:15] Speaker A: And I have never actually finished Dragon Quest 3. It's a good game. [00:14:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:19] Speaker A: So I think. I think Dragon Quest 1 and 2 arguably are kind of worse than Final Fantasy 1, 2 and 3. [00:14:28] Speaker B: They are seminal for different points. I think 2 is better than. Than the Final Fantasies. And then 3 is where it really kicked off. [00:14:37] Speaker A: Dragon Quest 3 is like an order of magnitude better than the NES final fantasies. It is legitimately a good game, but. [00:14:45] Speaker B: Like 1, 1 and 2 are. They're the classics, much like Final Fantasy so. But the fun part of this is that this memory is I had gotten this combo thing and I had gotten to the final boss on both one and two, and then my dog ate it. Oh. So I didn't ever beat those games, but I was stuck at the final boss. And the best part about the games was this living world. So in one, there's this timely. There's this world you walk around and obviously and you beat the game thing there. And in two, you find out that's like this small little continent in the corner that you have this access to this world. And so you walk around the world and then you go back and you go, oh, my God, I found the old world. And we go in here. And then three, that's just a tiny little section of the world. And you're building and building and building this greater and greater legend. [00:15:37] Speaker A: So I wanted to tell my Dragon Quest one story because this is literally one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced in my life. So I played Dragon Quest 1 on the NES. Like I owned Dragon Warrior. And Dragon Quest 1 is a really obtuse game. You literally start in a castle and you're told that the castle across the lake from where you are, like you can literally see it on the screen when you exit. The initial castle is the castle of the Dragon Lord. And he's evil and you have to defeat him to save the world. And then you go around the world trying to figure out how to get to the point where you can do that. It's a very simple game. And at one point, five year old me was stuck. I had no idea where the fuck to go or what to do. I kept dying. There was this weird town that was all of a swamp and I kept taking damage as I walked through the enemies. In here, there was dungeons I couldn't figure out how to get through. And then one day I had a dream. Literally like in my dream, I went to a specific place and in that specific place I got a musical instrument. And then I went to the bottom left corner of the map and then to the right. And from there I progressed until I found a town that was guarded by a golem. And to defeat this golem, I had to play music for him so that he would fall asleep so that I could defeat him because he was too powerful. Otherwise. And then once you get inside the town, the shop there sells the silver shield and the flame sword, which are like the second best weapons in the game. The only better ones are literally from the final dungeon. [00:17:29] Speaker B: They're called the hero weapons. Yep. [00:17:31] Speaker A: Yes. And that would let me then go to the Dragon Master's island and be able to actually defeat the things there so I could progress the game and go beat the game. Then I woke up and everything I just described is actually the progression path of Dragon Warrior 1. I have no idea how the fuck 5 year old me knew all this in a dream and figured it all out. Not a fucking clue. It's one of the. Like I had a fucking psychic vision. I could not tell you. But sure enough, yes, you go get a flute. You go through a cave at the bottom of the map that leads to a town that is guarded by a golem that you put to sleep with the flute. And then they sell the flame sword and silver shield in the original NES translation. I think it's been translated as something else in more recent releases. I could not fucking tell you how five year old me knew all that. I did not have Nintendo Power at the time. I no fucking clue. But I beaten Dragon Quest 1 without using a game genie back in the day, 34 years ago. [00:18:45] Speaker C: I mean, how any of us, how any of us beat any of these games without Internet and guides? Like I have never beyond meat. [00:18:53] Speaker B: Some of those games. Like I, I have, I have no idea how I got as far as I did in Dragon Warrior 3. There are so many weird little puzzles and obtuse things that like I was 10, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. Yeah, somehow I was kicking ass. [00:19:13] Speaker A: I think when we were little, we were much more willing to just throw hours at just beating our heads against the wall of a game than most of us are nowadays. [00:19:21] Speaker B: Very true. [00:19:23] Speaker A: All right, well, okay, I think that's enough Dragon Quest. [00:19:27] Speaker B: That might not be changed, but I'll talk about a different game. [00:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll get there. Let's change gears completely. Pillow, you picked a game that I don't think me or Mike has ever played and I have barely heard of. What the fuck is Space Station? Silicon Valley. [00:19:43] Speaker C: So. So I had a Nintendo 64. Grow it up. And like my first game I'd ever played wasn't Space Station. It was like Mario 64 and StarCraft 64, you know, the mainstream ones. But those ones don't leave an impression on me like this game did. This was a game that I never actually Owned. But we repeatedly rented because it was easier to go rent a game. Yeah, it was easier to go rent the game than it was to go buy it. Because these games were what, 60, $70 back then and those were still expensive. [00:20:19] Speaker A: $60 or so in 1995ish. Yeah, I would say bucks now or more. [00:20:28] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And like my parents weren't gonna go. My parents weren't gonna go buy me that, but it was easier to go spend $2 a week to rent it. So. And these were never like, I never went to Blockbuster or anything like this. This was just like some mom and pop rental places, you know that it was awesome. So anyways, I would rent this game over and over and over again. And it's called Space Station Silicon Valley. And all it is, and this is just going straight from the back of my mind and memories is you were like this robotic tick and you were on this ship and you crash landed in this space station or something like that. And you had to, when you were outside as a tick, you would like die. Like you would lose health. And you were very timed and your goal was to jump from these robot animals to different robot animals in each stage and use certain abilities that these animals had to traverse and platform through the stage with a specific goal to get to the end. And then you go to the next stage and so on, so forth. And it just repeated. So like the one that like sticks out in my head is there's a. There's like, I'm trying to think of the right term for it. It's drawing a blank. It's late hierarchy on these animals. You know, a food chain. There it is, there's a food chain and almost all these stages. So like the first thing I can think of is if I remember in the first stage it's like you get a sheep and then also in this stage there's a fox or something. The fox tries to kill the sheep. So you have to figure out as a sheep to knock out the fox. Because you couldn't take over the animal unless it was like knocked out or dead. They were all robots. So you had to figure out how to knock out the fox as a sheep to take over the fox to go do other things and just progress through the whole stage. That's the whole game. It was just figuring out puzzles and obstacles and it was amazing. Like, it just always sticks in my head and I couldn't tell you if I beat it or not. But I just, it was just one of those games where I could Just play as a kid one stage over and over and over and over again and enjoy it. Because my imagination as a kid was just that, that I would just play out several times the same stage and enjoy it. Just go back to it because I had fun. So, yeah, I don't. I don't know what it is about it. I'm sure it's not a very popular game that not a lot of people heard of, and that's the magic of it. [00:23:07] Speaker A: I looked up, like, what? More information about this game. It launched at the same time as the Legend of Ocarina of Time. No wonder no one ever played this game. [00:23:19] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a bad game to try to go up against, but I played this game and fell in love with it before I became a Zelda nerd. [00:23:27] Speaker B: Well, you have to also remember about this one. Ocarina of Time is the game that royally blew up Zelda. [00:23:37] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:23:38] Speaker B: There were some good Zelda games beforehand. All of them were good. None of them blew up the world like Ocarina of Time did. [00:23:46] Speaker A: No, I mean, same reason, like, Final Fantasy 7 blew up that franchise. It's not that previous final fantasies were bad. It's that seven went viral. Ocarina of Time went viral. [00:23:58] Speaker B: Although I think I prefer other. Other fun or other Zelda games before this. I think there are better ones. [00:24:04] Speaker C: But, like, I mean, I still play. [00:24:08] Speaker A: Seven is my comparison, because I prefer Link to the Past and Link's Awakening. Same at a time. [00:24:14] Speaker C: Like, I still play Ocarina of Time in a different capacity, like, with randomizers. But, like, I. [00:24:20] Speaker A: That's. [00:24:21] Speaker C: I love that game so much because it made such an impression on my childhood that, like, I get. I don't want to, like, get off topic, but that was another one of those games that I just dived deep into. [00:24:33] Speaker B: I think this is a. This is a. This is a place we're gonna get off topic a lot because we're gonna have memory quotas and pops where suddenly things are gonna spring to mind. We don't think about for 20 years or 30 years that someone's gonna pop up and go, oh, my God. Yeah, this. [00:24:53] Speaker C: I could probably fill out a year's worth of topics and podcasts just talking about Zelda. [00:25:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I think we could literally do an entire episode where we just talk about Zelda, and we would barely scratch the surface of what the three of us would want to talk about. I know. All of us love that franchise. [00:25:15] Speaker C: I mean, I got a tattoo. [00:25:17] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:25:19] Speaker B: That's on my list of things If I was ever going to get a tattoo, it's on my list of things I would want. But I'm scared of needles. [00:25:24] Speaker A: Fair. Since you mentioned randomizers, I'm going to use that as a way to jump off to my old game that I want to talk about now. This game is 31 years old now and I think it is one of the most influential video games of all time. [00:25:39] Speaker B: It is. I agree. [00:25:41] Speaker A: I fucking love Super Metroid. I've mentioned it on four awards before. Like I play this game regularly to this day through the randomizer. But also like I literally have played the original Super Metroid in its original version at least once a year for the last 30 years. I love Super Metroid. Like this game. I was eight when Super Metroid came out and Super Metroid blew my fucking mind of just wait. It doesn't tell me what to do. It doesn't prevent me from going places. I just have to figure it out. This is like playing like Dragon Quest or something. Except it's a side scrolling action game and I had never experienced that before. Like Zelda II is the only other game I had ever played that is even vaguely similar. I never played the original Metroid when I had played Super Metroid. Like I went and played the original later and I think the original Metroid sucks. I think Metro 2 sucks. [00:26:51] Speaker B: If you're going to play any of the old Metroid games, play Zero Mission and play Samus Returns. They have the same, the same story, the same, same structure, but wildly better gameplay. [00:27:07] Speaker A: They have all of the gameplay improvements that Super Metroid laid the foundation for. Super Metroid is so influential that it directly is the primary inspiration for the shift that the Castlevania franchise made on the PlayStation with Symphony of the Night to where the entire genre of games that Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid spawned are referred to as Metroidvanias to this day. We would not have games like Hollow Knight without Super Metroid. We would not have Ori and the Blind Forest without Super Metroid. So this, that's the level of like influence I'm talking about when I say like Super Metroid. It's one of the most influential games of all time. But I remember as a kid being freaked out in the wrecked ship because when you enter the wrecked ship, you go from this like living planet that you've been into, just this fucking wreck with no power. Nothing's working. Most of the doors can't even open. The save station doesn't work and you go. The only path you can go and you get to the boss room and the boss room door is like any other boss room door and you go inside and you get attacked by a fucking ghost. I didn't even know ghosts could be in a sci fi game when I was eight years old. [00:28:29] Speaker B: So, like, my experience is similar to you with my Metroid, except my first Metroid was Metroid Fusion. [00:28:35] Speaker A: Yep. And Metroid Fusion is great and freaky, but it lacks the. [00:28:41] Speaker B: It doesn't like, it didn't have the openness which when Zero Mission came out, you got. And Zero Mission truly is a phenomenal game. But nothing sells atmosphere like Metroid does. The SA X showing up and seeing those eyes horrifying when you're tapping. [00:29:04] Speaker A: Absolutely. And also, like even Super Metroid, like Samus has different animations for how she breathes based on what your health is at. The. The walking animation is super detailed. Like Samus's sprite is insanely detailed to a degree that almost nothing else of that era is. Which is part of why Super Metroid holds up so well today is how good it looks for a game from 1994. [00:29:33] Speaker B: It looks good. I think we will eventually be doing a longer conversation on Metroid as a whole. Prime, super, etc. [00:29:43] Speaker A: Definitely. So I'll keep it short of. I remember as a kid being lost for a long time after defeating Kraid in Super Metroid because I didn't understand that once I had gotten the Ice Beam after Speed Booster backtracking, I could use that to freeze the guys to climb back up the what we now call Red Tower in the Super Metroid speedrunning community. Because I had never played a game where the idea of freeze enemies and turn them into platforms and jump on them could be used for progress. That was new to me. [00:30:25] Speaker C: So this sounds like a game that I need to try because this is gonna be blasphemy. I've never played a Metroid game. [00:30:31] Speaker B: Well, Blasphemy 2 Super Metroid is one of the most well thought out games ever made. It is so incredibly purposeful. Its tile layout, its exact positioning, a lot of the secret works on this. It is one of the best designed games ever made. [00:30:55] Speaker C: Yes, I know. Like, I've been wanting to pick it up because there's archipelago randomizers that you combine it with, like Ocarina of Time with it or Link to the past. [00:31:06] Speaker A: There absolutely is. And in the near future there will be. The other thing I wanted to talk about with Super Metroid is Super Metroid has, in my opinion, the best randomizer of any Game because there is a project for Super Metroid called Super Metroid Map Randomizer. And what this project does is it takes every individual room that makes up the world of Super Metroid and shuffles them into a new map and then places all the items in such a way that there is a logical progression of, oh, I got this item that lets me get here now so that I can now get this item. It makes Super Metroid. Unlike other randomizers, most randomizers are a scavenger hunt. Super Metroid Map Randomizer still has the feel of original Super Metroid of it is a puzzle to solve. You are exploring the world to solve a puzzle of how do I get to the next place where I got this new item? Where does it let me go? And Map Randomizer keeps that. And Map Randomizer has difficulty selection. So if you are not an experienced, practiced, skilled Super Metroid player, you can go in there and choose Basic, which turns off all the Speedrunner tech. And you're just playing basically like a casual playthrough of Super Metroid, but in Map Randomizer with its rules. And then if you're good at the game and you can do Speedrunner tech, like, okay, I'm not going to go too far into the weeds, but Super Metroid has like a gazillion different ways to, like, map hack. [00:32:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Essentially bounce your way around the world without actually breaking. [00:32:51] Speaker A: I want to say, right, I want to say, like, glitch the game. But not all of them are glitches. Some of them are actually intentional, and some of them are like happy accidents of other systems in the game. But there's a lot of tech you can do in Super Metroid to allow you to, like, retain speedrunning form while in Morph Ball or do crazy fucking, like, double jumps that you're not supposed to be able to do to get up places and on the harder difficulties. The Map Randomizer has a list of all of the different techniques that are required in each difficulty, and you can toggle each individual one off. So if you go, you know what, I want to play on medium difficulty, but there's these three things that I know how to do that Map Randomizer puts in hard, and I want to include those in my game. You can. You can just play a totally custom difficulty like, it is the greatest randomizer. I have played multiple hundreds of hours of Super Metroid in 2025 because of the Map Randomizer. I stream it twice a week on Twitch tv. Jacksoman. I love Super Metroid Map Rando. And I just love Super Metroid. Like it is one of. It is my number one game of all time, period. No qualifiers. And I play a shitload of Metroidvanias because of the influence Super Metroid had on me. I fucking love this genre of games. I'm just looking through my list. Like I've played like Axiom, Verge 1 and 2, Hollow Knight, Ori 1 and 2, Bloodstained Frickin Gato. Roboto is a Metroidvania that I've played. [00:34:46] Speaker B: Not to mention all of the Castlevania games. [00:34:50] Speaker A: Yes, the entire Castlevania franchise, starting with Symphony of the Night. Everything before that is more of a traditional arcade side scroller. After Symphony of the Night are almost all Metroid games. Basically, I cannot state enough how much Super Metroid has fundamentally impacted my gaming life. I love Super Metroid. Please do yourself a favor, play Super Metroid. It's on Switch SNES online. You can play it legally that way. It's on the SNES mini. If you have that, you can play it legally that way. Frankly, you can just download the ROM from all sorts of ROM sites and play it in any emulator. Like I don't, I don't really want to like encourage piracy, but this is a 31 year old video game that Nintendo does not sell anymore. You have to subscribe to access it, so fuck it. [00:35:48] Speaker C: Well, if we're talking about the legality of ROMs, if you've bought the game before downloading, it's not technically stealing. [00:35:55] Speaker A: Yes, it's technically illegal, but it's not morally wrong. [00:36:00] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:36:01] Speaker A: I do own a physical copy on the Super Nintendo. Somewhere in my house I use a ROM that I downloaded because I'm not gonna buy the hardware to rip the ROM myself from my physical copy. I'm way too lazy to do that. That I'm. I'm fine with that moral gray area. But just do yourself a favor, play Super Metroid. [00:36:27] Speaker C: One day in another episode I'll talk about the randomizers that I dip my finger in. But I don't think we got enough time for that. So we'll. Because there's a lot. [00:36:38] Speaker A: So let's move on a bit. I want to keep these a little shorter than our trips down memory lane because we're going to briefly cover, since we're calling the show from 8bit to 4k, want to briefly cover relatively new video games like last 10 years that we think are notable for one reason or another. And in Mike's case, I think it's just notable due to the sheer Volume of how much you have played it and how much you love this game. [00:37:05] Speaker B: I. I think this might be my favorite game of all time. Fluctuates frequently. This might be my favorite game of all time. And it came out two years ago. I adore Elden Ring. I adore everything about it. I adore its looks, I adore its gameplay. I adore the story. I adore everything. This game put out so much that a lot of people who, if you don't know what Elden Ring is, what but it is, it is FromSoftware is pretty much magnum opus game. And they took everything they learned from. From the Dark Souls franchise and they created a new world in a new lore section with. [00:38:02] Speaker A: With George. George R.R. martin's help. [00:38:04] Speaker B: Right. George R.R. martin wrote the backstory. So the like 5,000 plus year backstory history, which is hard to find. If you know any Dark Souls game you don't know, you know that the lore isn't shoved in your face. You have to look for it. [00:38:18] Speaker A: Yep. [00:38:19] Speaker B: So he, he wrote the, the backward story and then Miyazaki completed it and extrapolated it and made the game what it is. It is so fucking fun. This, this game essentially turned the Dark Souls franchise into something magical. It's an open world game. It is one of the most beautiful games I have ever seen. The intro right after the like little hidden tutorial zone. When you open that door and see the world for the first time, my jaw dropped. It was unbelievably beautiful. And then the gameplay, it's crisp, it's cleaned. It's the best version of anything this genre has ever done. The design in the progression is really well thought out. There are still things that I have not found. I have played over 400 hours of this game and there are still things I have not seen. And that is one of those things where I have six or seven characters who have beaten the game. And each time I have played, I have found something new. It's. It's one of the best modern releases of all time. It has done what modern games should do with this kind of a genre, especially open world games, which a lot of people are use open world as the gimmick to try and artificially extend the game. No, this is the world is the story and this is the canvas that you walk through. And the gameplay supports everything perfectly. And the story that you find as you go along really just sells it. I love this game. [00:40:23] Speaker C: I've played a little bit of eldering. Nowhere near the amount of time that you've put in it. And I got to say, yeah, I had the same, like, reaction when you first get out of that, like, sewer area or whatever it is when you walk out for the first time. And I was just like, whoa. You just see? What is it? The air tree? [00:40:42] Speaker B: Is that what, the earth tree? Yeah. [00:40:43] Speaker C: Erdtree in the backdrop, like, you're just like, wow, what is going on here? And, like, for it's. It was intimidating when I picked it up because I. A Souls, like, game to me was just always like, okay, this game's gonna be incredibly hard. I'm not gonna have fun. I'm gonna rage. No, it was the exact opposite. Like, yeah, it was tough, but there wasn't such a curve that you couldn't figure it out pretty quick on how to. The tutorial does a great job of teaching you how to survive in the world. And then, like, it kind of breadcrumbs you through, like, the first kind of area without giving you too much of giving away or making you feel linear. Like, it's like, hey, you could follow this path, and it'll kind of take you to where you got to go. And it. I didn't feel overwhelmed. A lot of times with open world games, I get to a point where I'm, like, overwhelmed, and I'll get distracted and being like, ooh, shiny. And I'll end up going over here. But, like, it always make got me got to a point where it always, like, felt like I was getting directed back to the area where I gotta go. Even though you don't have to, it just kind of, like, influenced me. I don't know if that makes sense, but it was like a beautifully, like you said, constructed game. [00:42:05] Speaker A: Fair enough. I've only ever played Bloodborne of the, like, fromsoft, like, Souls franchise as a whole. That Elden Ring is kind of a. [00:42:17] Speaker B: Part of one of my other favorite games of all time. [00:42:20] Speaker A: And then I've played, like, some of the old PS1 Armored Core games that, frankly, suck. They're not good video games. I'm sorry if I've offended some friendsoft fans by saying that. Deal with it. Like, those games control like, shit. [00:42:35] Speaker B: Armored Core 6 is amazing. [00:42:38] Speaker A: I'm not judging Armored Core 6. I haven't played it. I'm talking specifically the PS1 and the first PS2 Armored Cores, because those are the only ones I've played. Those games are terrible. [00:42:48] Speaker B: They're janky. [00:42:50] Speaker A: But I bought Bloodborne. When I bought my PS4, it was like, 10 bucks, and I was like, this is the one that people say if I'm gonna like a soulslike, it'll be this one. And it has the same problem that I expected to dislike Dark Souls games with. I do not enjoy character action games that do not have any way to cancel animations and everything is a weighty slow animation. I like my character action games to be like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry that are fast and loose and everything cancels into everything. And because of that it feels like whenever you press a button your actions are instantly reflected on screen because everything carries weight and you are committing to things in from games. It feels unresponsive to my brain. So I've never given Elden Ring a chance. I wasn't gonna drop the money on Elden Ring because of my experience with Bloodborne. [00:44:02] Speaker B: If you know you're not gonna like the gameplay, then you're never going to get through the game because you're never going to progress anywhere. It is the sleekest of them all. It has the most variety of try. You probably still won't like the gameplay because of how you. You say things. There are a couple of weapon types that are like close but there's not as much canceling of animations. You, you have more responsive actions but animation canceling is still almost not a thing. In Elden Ring there's a couple which is fine. [00:44:45] Speaker A: I'm not saying that they're bad games for that. They're just not for me and that's fine. I've watched Free Shooter play some Elden Ring and God, I wish I enjoyed the combat. I really wish I enjoyed the combat. That game looks fucking cool. I've seen like some of the character art and like the. What's the name of the like mushroom looking witch person? Rani or whatever. [00:45:10] Speaker B: Oh yeah, right. [00:45:11] Speaker A: Character looks fucking cool. I just, I know I won't like gameplay and it makes me sad. [00:45:21] Speaker B: This, this is gonna be like a little promotion for things. If you are a person who knows like, like Jax, who knows you aren't going to like the gameplay, this is the perfect thing to watch a stream of. [00:45:34] Speaker A: Yes. [00:45:36] Speaker B: This is where you're going to follow along. Learn some story, learn some gameplay, find maybe it's us, maybe it's someone else. You seen a YouTube video clip of that? You really enjoy watch them do it. It's one of the things I think everyone should experience the game even if you don't play the game. [00:46:01] Speaker A: That's fair. Like I said, I've watched Free Shooter play it some. It definitely seems interesting. I will happily enjoy the art from the game without frustrating myself with the gameplay. And to be clear, it's not about the difficulty. I like some brutally hard games. I have beaten Ghosts n Goblins Resurrected on the hardest difficulty, which I think when I finally beat it, said I had died over 2000 times. That game is fucking insane on the hardest difficulty, by the way. So, like, I love hard games. It's purely about, like, I need my button presses to instantly be reflected on screen. And souls games are not that. And that's okay, Pillow. You've picked a game that I think a lot of people have never heard of, but I think it's a really important game. Tell us about the Outer Wilds. [00:46:57] Speaker C: Seems to be a trend, playing games that nobody's really hears of. So Outer Wilds came out in 2019. It's an adventure game, but it's got a fun little quirk to it. It's. It's like a Groundhog Day game. You have 22 minutes from the time you wake up till the sun explodes and kills everybody. And the game starts with you waking up. And you go around the tutorial area. You learn what you're doing. You have this tool, it's a translator, and you point it at text on the wall, alien text. You can read the whole story and the lore and everything that's going on. And then you get some launch codes, and then you're just sent off into space. It's your first day as an astronaut and you're off to explore the world and they tell you, hey, you should go find these other four astronauts. And they're on this place, this place, this place and this place. So you go and you're looking, and I don't want to ruin anything or spoil it for anybody, so I'm going to be very vague. But while you're exploring, you come across ancient alien text and you find things and you get this rumor tree, basically. And you're following these rumors, trying to figure out, like, why do you. Why are you stuck in this time loop? And you're the only one that seems to know that you're in this time loop because you just keep waking up at the same exact spot, but with all your memories. So your ship has this computer in it where it keeps all these rumors, and you follow the rumors all the way through till you get to the point where you figure it out and you. You end the time loop. And I mean, I'm not going to spoil the game, but, like, what happens? But I mean, it's just. It's just one of those it's cozy. It's a cozy sit down. The soundtrack is amazing. The worlds are beautiful that you get to visit the planets. It's just a fun, cozy sit around spend a few hours and playing this game because like I said, Every 22 minutes you got to restart the game. So you get 22 minutes to get as much done as you can. And then when that 22 minutes is up, you hear this, you hear the sun go to supernova. And it's beautiful to watch as you perish to wake up again. [00:49:24] Speaker A: So the way I've heard this game described is that it's a not a roguelike roguelike because it's not randomized in the way that most roguelikes are, but it has the whole like looping and your. Some bits of your progression carry over and other bits don't that roguelikes have. [00:49:45] Speaker C: So yeah, that's as close of a. [00:49:47] Speaker B: Way to describe it as possible without. It's really. It's really not. No, it's really just not like many other games. It is pretty much thing. It is an adventure game. [00:50:00] Speaker C: I would say. The progression that stays with you is the rumors and your knowledge. You as a person have learned like how to solve these puzzles in the game that you can go back and now you can do this one quicker because you know exactly what you got to do and you just got to keep doing like, okay, I got this puzzle and now I can do these five puzzles in the 22 minutes that I'm required to do to solve this trick and get this learn this tool. But you don't unlock powers, you don't unlock any kind of upgrades. You are exactly how you start the whole time through. There is no power progression to it. [00:50:41] Speaker A: Right. [00:50:41] Speaker C: Other than you as a knowledge that you gain to solve the. Solve the puzzle. [00:50:49] Speaker A: It's a beautiful game. On my backlog of I really want to play this game at some point. [00:50:57] Speaker B: This is one of those. It's a mildly cartoony game in visual aesthetic that still feels kind of epic to to watch because of the very carefully constructed worlds. It's not like one of the beautiful 4K Elden ring or with Jax's game in the visual clarity, but the way that its charm looks, it just has this feel to it that's so good. And there are certain points where even in this style the visuals make you go whoa. [00:51:38] Speaker C: I mean like it is a six year old game. So I mean it's not like a young game by any means. They did come out with a DLC for it. I have yet to get the DLC myself. From my understanding, it doesn't. It's not like it's not a prequel. It's not a sequel. It literally just adds a planet to give more story and more stuff to do. Like, it doesn't ruin how the game goes. It just gives you more to do and they keep the whole identity of the game intact exactly as it is. [00:52:15] Speaker A: I was certain that I owned this game on some platform. I definitely don't own it on Steam. Now it turns out I own the other game without her in the title on. Oh, Outer World, which I've heard is a fairly good game, but it's not Outer Wilds. [00:52:35] Speaker C: It is a good game. [00:52:39] Speaker A: So that's. That's disappointing. I'm. I need to get this game and play it at some point. [00:52:44] Speaker B: If you have Amazon prime, you might own it because prime has given away a lot of weird stuff over the years. [00:52:51] Speaker A: True. I'll have to see what I own in my. I checked gog. I also own the Outer Worlds on gog because I'm. [00:53:03] Speaker B: So. [00:53:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely want to play the Outer Wilds at some point. Like, it is absolutely a game that you should not spoil. [00:53:14] Speaker B: This is a game where either you are watching it because you don't want to buy it and you want to just experience it through someone else's play, or you will play it and you don't want spoilers. Those are your options there. [00:53:26] Speaker C: I highly recommend watching or playing it because it is a cozy game that scratches your brain. Like, it's. It makes you think, but it doesn't. It's not impossible. It's fun to figure it out. And it's. It's the fun game to perish. [00:53:40] Speaker A: Challenging. [00:53:42] Speaker C: There are some comedic ways to die early in the game, which are hilarious. Like, you know, gravity can kill you. Flying your ship. Wrong. Can kill you. There are comedic ways. Flying into the sunship. [00:53:58] Speaker B: Wrong can definitely kill you. [00:54:02] Speaker C: Like, it's not forgiving in flight, I can tell you that. [00:54:09] Speaker A: Fair enough. All right, let's talk about something that's unforgiving in a very different way. I decided to take our. Our title of this podcast very literally. I did not give a shit about Cyberpunk 2077. When it first came out at the end of 2020, I was like, I haven't even played Witcher 3 very much. I played like five hours of it or something like that. I had played some of the original Witcher. I was like, it's cool. It's fine. It's. I'm sure it's a good game. And then in 2022, cyberpunk edgerunners came to Netflix. And if you have never watched the anime Cyberpunk Edgerunners, it was the best anime in 2022. Just period, no qualifiers. It is incredibly good. It is eight episodes of some of the best action animation you've ever seen, some amazing world building and characters that you will get attached to. And I'm not going to spoil anything about Cyberpunk Edgerunners. You should go watch it. If you haven't. It's on Netflix. Go watch Cyberpunk Edgerunners. It's that good. And that made me really interested in Cyberpunk 2077 because Cyberpunk Edgerunners is set in the Cyberpunk 2077 video game universe. Not necessarily the same as the Cyberpunk pen and paper role playing universe, which is a little different. And so I wanted to play Cyberpunk 2077, but this game is also like one of the most technically demanding and also technically impressive if you have the hardware to do it. Games on the market like this game is visually stunning if you can crank the graphics up. So I waited because I didn't have a monitor at the time capable of doing this game justice. And at the end of 2024 I splurged. My gift to myself in 2024 was I bought a 4K OLED gaming monitor that I had been using for the last eight months, seven months, something like that. So I finally decided to start playing Cyberpunk 2077. And at a surface level, it's an open world RPG. If you've played any modern Assassin's Creed, Horizon Zero Dawn, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, you know the basic structure of the game format, you have a map, there's a bunch of shit to do, you go to places, people give you quests, you go do whatever they want you to do. Very, very standard in terms of the actual how the game is structured. The moment to moment gameplay varies a lot depending on how you decided to build your character. You can go full oblivion, stealth archer and just hack every enemy to death and never actually engage in combat. You can be a melee swordsmaniac, you can go in guns blazing. The game has a lot of freedom in that regard and I think that's something the game succeeds at really well. All of those various things are extremely viable if you are built for them. But what I think Cyberpunk 2077 does best and the reason everyone should play this game, I'm not going to spoil Anything. But if you play Cyberpunk 2077, you should do the main quest until you get to Act 2. Don't bother doing side quests until the game opens up. After the end of Act 1, you will know when this is. I do not need to spoil anything. You will know when you are in Act 2. This game made me cry. It has some of the best character writing I've ever heard in any video game, just period. It's amazing. And once you get to Act 2, then you can access more side quests. And as you do side quests, it'll open up interactions where you get introduced to new characters and then they have side quests. And it builds on itself in a more organic way than a lot of other games in this genre, where it's go find the radio tower and then here's all the quests in this area. No, Cyberpunk is more like, oh, you did this mission, and that introduced you to this character. This character now wants you to do shit for them. Which I think is a much better, more organic way to do it. I fucking love this game. I haven't finished it yet because I want to do everything. And I have a specific goal that is tied to the anime that I don't want to spoil why I want to do this, but I've played this game for 70 hours and I'm not done yet. Cyberpunk 2077 is fucking good, y'. [00:59:14] Speaker C: All. [00:59:14] Speaker A: This. [00:59:15] Speaker B: This is the. The modern version of Deus Ex. Yes, it is. It's very much similar to. You have your own styles, you have your own gameplay. You can go through this in so many different ways, and pretty much all of them are viable. Like in Deus Ex, this is a game that I was waiting for with. [00:59:38] Speaker A: Bated breath and released in such a star sorry state. Like, if I followed Cyberpunk 2077 at the end of 2020 when it came out, it was a disaster. [00:59:50] Speaker B: Yes. So this is a game that I. [00:59:51] Speaker A: Never played that version. [00:59:52] Speaker B: It's very first cutscene intro, like, describing the game. I knew I wanted it from that visual alone. The woman with the mantis sights and the gunfire shots. Beautiful. Gorgeous. I knew I was gonna do it. I knew I was gonna love to play it. But also my computer was not technically good enough to play the game. So when it very first came out, like I had a computer and it released better on computer than anywhere else. But when I very first tried to play it, the world broke and I could see the trees through the city and it ruined everything. And I could not play it and so I had to put it away until I got my new computer, which I got a couple years ago. Unfortunately, other things started appearing. Every time I've brought myself to try and play Cyberpunk, I'd get back to try and play it, something else would come out that I'd been waiting for. I'd shift over to that. So this is a game that I will be doing a future version on. At some point in time. I will be digging into Cyberpunk and going very heavy into it because it's on my very short list of games I will be playing. [01:01:08] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. The nice thing is like cyberpunk in 2025 is a complete, relatively bug free. [01:01:19] Speaker B: Experience with apparently like I have not done it at all. I have heard wonderful things about the DLC that came out as well. So there's more to play if you love it. [01:01:33] Speaker A: Yes, Phantom Liberty. [01:01:35] Speaker B: Same thing is very true with Elden Ring. The DLC in that game is phenomenal. And the Night Ray, the spin off game is not the same game, but it's also phenomenal. [01:01:44] Speaker A: Yep. [01:01:45] Speaker C: But yeah, I'm in the same boat with Cyberpunk is I got it when it came out and I got it because this type of game, like the. The trope that we're talking about, you know, I call them my couch comfort games. So I got it on PlayStation 5 because it's a game that I enjoy sitting on the couch, being lounged and just enjoying Unplayable. And I haven't picked it up since, but I completely forgot I owned it until we just started talking about it. So it is definitely a game that I'll be installing and going back. [01:02:20] Speaker A: You should definitely play it. Like I said, just literally just mainline main quest until you reach Act 2. You will know when you reach Act 2. You're not able to do most side quests before then anyway. But just the character writing is so good. And this game is so good at just making you attached to the various NPCs in this world for better and for worse. And it's amazing. I am not kidding when I said Cyberpunk has made me cry. [01:02:57] Speaker B: This. This is a game where you. You are immediately attached to the other character that is introduced to you instantly. It doesn't seem like he's going to be an interesting character. And then it's just suddenly somehow he's endearing. [01:03:13] Speaker A: Your. Your introduction to him is literally you're trying to steal a car and he opens the door and points a gun at your head. [01:03:20] Speaker B: It's Slightly different depending on which. Which intro you do. [01:03:25] Speaker A: Fair. Depending on which life path you chose. But that was my intro to him. [01:03:28] Speaker B: Yeah. He is. He is not an immediately likable character. That very quickly becomes a likable character. And that is how good the writing is in this. There are very few writing games who immediately grab you this way. [01:03:42] Speaker A: Yeah, the. The character writing is peak. The voice acting is mostly incredible. I am not a fan of Keanu Reeves performance specifically. That apparently is a hot take, I have been told, but that's how I feel about it. I think he's the flattest, most like, underwhelming voice in the entire cast. [01:04:06] Speaker B: Well, that is Keanu Reeves. As a note, he is a flat. He is a flat actor. [01:04:11] Speaker A: Yes. But that can be used to do the character justice. And in this character it doesn't work in my opinion. But like Sheremi Lee who voices female V is incredible. I've heard the male voice. He does a great job. I'm just playing as female V because I wanted to date the hacker chick and she's a lesbian. [01:04:38] Speaker B: If you like this, this game is. Voice acting is on the same sort of par as Mass Effect. Mass Effect is one of the games. [01:04:45] Speaker A: Where definitely it's here above that. [01:04:48] Speaker B: If as. As. As a like baseline for understanding where it is. Mass Effect is one of the games that you're going to be talking about when you talk about voice acting in games. Yeah, there are. Cyberpunk puts this in context a better one. [01:05:02] Speaker A: She was nominated for a BAFTA award for her voice as female V. Like, it's good. The voice acting in this game is really good. And that's part of what makes the character writing stand out so much is all of the various NPCs you meet and talk to feel like real people because they're acted well. It's. This is a world that is believable. Like this is a plausible fictional world where I'm like. I almost could see like the, like they do. Even just like the slang of the world feels so natural in this game. And usually when fictional worlds try to implement their own slang, it always feels very forced. It doesn't feel forced in Cyberpunk 2077. [01:05:54] Speaker B: It feels like this would be the natural progression and it's one of the things cyberpunk as a genre is done so well. If they had missed anything off about this, the game would fall apart. They. [01:06:09] Speaker A: And to be clear, I don't even necessarily think this is the best cyberpunk genre game, but it's definitely one of the Best games last like 5 to 10 years despite how it launched and you should play it. Okay, we have one more discussion topic. We were going through all of our game libraries trying to figure out what we have in common. And we landed on a game that we have all played some version of over the years. We're gonna have a little discussion about one of the most influential video games of all time. Doom. [01:06:52] Speaker B: I, I, I am going to call Doom the most influential game because of the impact that it has made on the world of gaming. Every time it has been transitioned forward. There are other games that are like Monumental. But Doom is what made games games. [01:07:14] Speaker A: I, I would argue Super Mario Brothers is probably the most influential video game of all time. But Doom is definitely up there. And any of you out there listening, Doom has had an influence on your favorite video game. If your favorite video game came out after 1993 period, I don't care what game it is the original Doom and Doom 2, because I'm going to lump those together since Doom 2 is essentially just a level pack for Doom. Are these games are ancient. Like Doom came out in 1993. It's still fun as shit to play today. Like you can get original Doom on sale for five bucks or less. I think it drops down to. Let's check, let's check the Steam sale right now. How much is the original sale? [01:08:06] Speaker B: You can get Doom to play on anything. It plays on calculators, it plays on fridges, it plays on. [01:08:13] Speaker A: Yes, you can get doom and doom 2 because again doom 2 is basically just a level pack for Original Doom for $4 right now on the Steam sale. And it drops down to that price pretty much every time there is a Steam sale. It's on the switch, it's on every modern gaming console. Doom is everywhere. Doom holds up shockingly well for a game that is basically go through a maze, shoot the monsters, grab the keys. It doesn't even have. You can't even look up and down in the original Doom. That wasn't a thing yet in video games in first person shooters you're just moving side to side. It auto aims up and down to adjust for height based on what height the enemy is at. [01:09:06] Speaker C: Doesn't I say it's definitely was like the first game I ever had to put cheat codes in to have like infinite ammo and just survive. Like it was just a fun like so Doom has like a super fun history and I did a little bit of looking while we were looking at it. It was originally released on dos. That's what it was originally released on and then like I think two years later or maybe a year later came out on Windows. [01:09:36] Speaker A: Yep. [01:09:38] Speaker C: Became available for Windows. But yeah, it was DOS originally. And it's just, it's just such a fun game regardless, like all the secrets that you could find in it and different corridors. Scary. Definitely scary for, you know, the environment that it put you in and created. [01:09:59] Speaker A: Oh yeah. And like Doom Jump scares you. Like there are multiple spots throughout the original Doom where you're not ready for what's about to happen. You walk through a door, you go around a corner, you step into a room and suddenly you're locked in and monsters start coming out of the walls and it's fucking freaky. [01:10:19] Speaker C: I'm trying to think like the most like most memorable point of that game that I can think of as you come out and it's just kind of like this open arena area and you get like waves or different kind of bunch of different of the demons come out. And the one that always scared me the most and it would always come out the most was the eyeball. [01:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah, Cacodemons or something like that. Whatever they are, they're not just an eyeball. They're a fucking sphere with a giant eye and a giant mouth. [01:10:54] Speaker C: Those and they literally just the death. [01:10:56] Speaker A: Out of me fly at you and bite your face off. [01:10:59] Speaker B: Uh huh. [01:11:00] Speaker A: They're freaky as fuck. Especially since up to that point in this game you had fought zombies with pistols. Zombies, well, rifles, zombies with shotguns and imps which are just little demon dudes who shoot fireballs at you. And then all of a sudden this floating mouth eye monster is flying at you and trying to eat your face. [01:11:22] Speaker B: Yes. I think they came before pinkies did Cacao demons. The second big demon. [01:11:26] Speaker A: I think so. [01:11:28] Speaker B: Because the game doesn't start off with demons. It doesn't show its hand immediately. [01:11:33] Speaker A: Yep, it starts out with a bunch of zombies. And here's the other thing that's iconic about doom. The soundtrack E1M1 is so good. Get into the first level. E1M1 Episode 1 Mission 1. Literally one of the greatest songs in all of video games. Just go on YouTube after you listen to this and just put in doom E1M1 and listen to that shit. The original version, not one of the million different like hard metal or whatever other versions people have made because oh my God, this is a song that people have made so many of their own versions of. It goes so hard. It's so good. It's such a jam. And the rest of the soundtrack Is good. Doom music is good. [01:12:28] Speaker B: Yes it is. But even one is just memorable. [01:12:32] Speaker A: It's so good. And it sets the mood for this fast paced game. And you don't have to play Doom fast at first. You can play the first level very slow and methodical and it's fine. By the time you're on like level five or six, you are going fast because you don't have a choice. Because the game throws so many fucking monsters at you. [01:12:57] Speaker B: Mm. Which. [01:12:59] Speaker A: And you're running through this maze trying to figure out where the fuck to go. And an experience everyone has with classic Doom is. I'm lost. Let me just run against every wall and mash the use key in the hopes of finding a secret door. [01:13:13] Speaker B: Pretty much. Yeah. And then. And then as we were talking about. Doom 2 progresses into pretty much more of Doom. Which is level back. Doom 3 really sort of dropped the ball. [01:13:26] Speaker A: All right. [01:13:27] Speaker B: It became a statement. Became a different game. [01:13:31] Speaker A: Doom 3 is a good game. It is a bad Doom game. [01:13:35] Speaker B: It is a horror game. When you wanted an action game. [01:13:39] Speaker A: Yes. And that is something that they learned after that. There was a long gap. There was 12 years between Doom 3 and the next Doom and the next. [01:13:50] Speaker B: Doom is possibly one of the best games of all time. Again. Because doom 2016 is so good. This is a game where it's introduction to you. You start getting a story. You wake up. You get to beat a. Beat the crap out of a zombie coming at you. And then the story tries to assert itself and makes you think. Time to do the thing. And then you break the camera thing and throw it to the side and you proceed to just be a badass. Because this is not the game for story time. Although there is a good story going on there. It's time to be awesome and to let Doom guy do Doom thing. [01:14:33] Speaker A: Yup. [01:14:34] Speaker B: And they have a phenomenal modern metal version of E1M1. The soundtrack for Doom 2016 is incredible. It's more than just an homage. But there is homage to it. There is more unique things to go there. And it is. It is a modern version of the classic game. Somehow they took the 2D sprite world game and made doom 2016 out of it. [01:15:10] Speaker A: Yep. [01:15:11] Speaker B: And that game is incredible. It is the most cathartic game I have ever played. If you are having a bad day and you just need to just wreck something. Pop up doom 2016. Open up a level and run. Rampage. You are a monster. Let yourself go. It's so good. And then I don't. I don't know if They've. Either of you have continued on with the series. Did either of you play Eternal? [01:15:43] Speaker A: I did not. [01:15:45] Speaker C: I'm not sure if I did or not, to be honest. I gotta look it up. [01:15:49] Speaker B: Eternal is each of the two sequels that have come out since Doom Eternal and Doom the Dark Ages have done something different with the formula of the game and they've progressed or tried to work through the story. So Doom Eternal is a direct sequel to doom 2016 and doom the Dark Ages is a direct prequel to Doom. And by direct, I mean it is a long prequel to Doom because it is an old one. Each of them does something to the genre, to the game that. That really impacts it. But I think doom 2016 is the best of them. And I will Keep calling it 2016 because doom is the original game, even though it's just called Doom. Doom is the 92 version. We will call it Doom 2016. That is probably the best of them gameplay wise, overall. The weapon they added, Doom Eternal, the dual shotgun is one of the most fun things I have ever played with in my life. It is so fun. [01:16:56] Speaker C: Oh, okay. So, yeah, I guess I have played Doom Eternal. It didn't they release a VR version? [01:17:01] Speaker B: I think so. [01:17:03] Speaker C: That's what I played. That's the one I played. That's the one I played. I think it was on PlayStation VR. [01:17:09] Speaker A: I cannot imagine trying to play Doom in VR. That sounds. It was fun, nauseating, and I am prone to motions. [01:17:15] Speaker B: It's so fast that it's. It's got to be really weird to do. And then the Dark Ages came out this year and I have played 1012 ish hours of doing the Dark Ages. Its core mechanic, that shield that is. It is the new core mechanic of the game is also one of the most fun things they have ever added. But it changes the game. So it is not the same game as Doom 2016 because this changes everything. And the only. I know the reason why Dune 2016 isn't better is because one enemy, the marauders, that thing. That's. That's the reason that Doom Eternal did not surpass the original. [01:18:03] Speaker C: Okay, I lied. So the Doom VR was Doom 3 VR Edition. So they stand alone. It was a standalone game. I do remember I played a lot of this in VR because I don't remember where I was, but they had it and it was awesome. [01:18:25] Speaker A: See that, that's. That's interesting to me because Doom 3 is the one Doom game that I think would actually be good in VR. I'm assuming. I'm hoping that in VR, they let you hold the flashlight with one hand and your gun with the other hand. [01:18:41] Speaker C: I do not remember that part. [01:18:43] Speaker A: One of the big Criticisms of Doom 3 is that it is extremely dark and you have a flashlight and you have to switch off of your flashlight to pull out your guns to fight things. To the point where the current like modern console version of Doom 3 that is now available, like the Remastered version, include something that was a common mod. People used of just letting you always have the flashlight on. [01:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:11] Speaker A: Because it's such an aggravation point in the original game. But if you put it in VR where you can have independent control of the flashlight and your gun, that could be so good. So now I want to check that out. I want to see if that's how they did it. That's interesting. I wanted to briefly touch on first person shooters. Doom is not the original first person shooter. Wolfenstein 3D, the precursor to Doom made by id Software, is not the original first person shooter. The oldest first person shooter I have ever played is a game called Mini Maze. The version I played was on the Super Nintendo known as Faceball 2000. It is extremely rudimentary compared to stuff like Doom, but it is a first person shooter. It's not the first one either. The first first person shooter was a mainframe game in the 70s called Maze War. But here's the thing. None of that history matters. Because Doom was so widespread and influential and groundbreaking in everything. It did that for years and years, like up until almost until Halo came out. Definitely. At least until goldeneye came out, we didn't call the genre first person shooters. They were Doom clones. People called games like Dark Forces, which is a Star wars first person shooter, and Duke Nukem 3D, which is a great game by the way. They called them Doom clones. We didn't have the genre name first person shooter yet. We didn't call them that. They were Doom clones because Doom was that influential and important. It is the father of all first person shooters, even if it's not the original one, because it's the one that influenced everything after. [01:21:20] Speaker B: It took what was an idea and transcended it into something that became a genre. [01:21:28] Speaker A: Yup. And the other thing that was so important about the original Doom is it was moddable. This is the early 90s. Game mods were not really a concept in the early 90s. But doom, its levels were just in a file format called WAD. And anyone could make a WAD. By 1994, there were tools to make your own Doom levels. There Was thousands of Doom levels available on usenet and on IRC servers and stuff like that in the 90s. Early Internet, back when everyone who was on the Internet was on dial up. Thousands of levels for Doom that you could just download and play. That had never happened before. That is one of the biggest reasons that Doom is so influential. I mentioned Dark Forces. I don't think it was ever officially confirmed, but a lot of people assumed that Dark Forces reverse engineered a lot of the Doom engine for its own engine, which is extreme. Extremely similar in a lot of ways. There's a game called Heretic and Hexen, which are both literally based on the Doom engine released by ID Software. There is a game, and I am not making this up, called Chex Quest that was released by the company that makes Chex cereal, which is literally Doom, but with a Chex themed serial aesthetic. And instead of having like the machine gun, you have like a spork. I am not kidding. It's actually kind of awesome. And they released this as a CD ROM in cereal boxes that you could get as a prize and then you could put on your computer and you could play Chex Quest. And it's just fucking Doom. It's literally just Doom. And it's fucking crazy. It's like a five level pack for Doom. The levels are distinct. Like they are. It has its own levels. And that's just a thing that happened in 1996. Like doom literally influenced serial games. [01:24:04] Speaker C: You just opened up a core memory of games that came with cereal. I don't know. Did you guys ever play the Captain Crunch game that came with the serial. [01:24:14] Speaker A: But I don't remember it. [01:24:16] Speaker B: No. Because it didn't work on Mac. [01:24:20] Speaker C: But do you remember it? [01:24:22] Speaker B: I could never play it. [01:24:24] Speaker C: Oh, man, that was fun. Those are good times. It reminded me of a lot of those. Jump start. [01:24:30] Speaker B: I remember the 7up game for Saga. [01:24:35] Speaker A: Yep, cool spot. [01:24:38] Speaker C: Ooh, how about the Hot Wheels game? [01:24:40] Speaker B: I do remember that too. [01:24:42] Speaker C: But that was an online game. [01:24:46] Speaker B: Which. [01:24:46] Speaker A: Is just wild to me. But yeah, like that's. That's how influential Doom is. [01:24:54] Speaker B: So I'm going to. I'm going to be a little bit of a change of a topic real quick. And this is going to be a point of order for like some of the theories we're going to talk about in the future episodes. If Doom had decided to copyright the systems for FPS, we would not have the genre. We do. [01:25:18] Speaker A: Yes. [01:25:22] Speaker B: The games would not have evolved. Things would have changed in a completely separate way. So companies copyrighting these systems has Stifled a lot of things. We were talking earlier about a specific one, the Nemesis System for a game called Shadow of Mordor. And it has never been allowed out since because of the copyright on it. Imagine a world without the influence of. Because Doom decided to copyright it. [01:25:57] Speaker A: I think it's a patent, but yes, patent. [01:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:26:01] Speaker A: And to put in context by comparison to Shadow of Mordor having a patent on the Nemesis System. So no one else can make a video game where you have antagonists that grow and evolve based on how you fight them and everything the way that Shadow of Mordor did. There have been other games that have similar ideas, but they have to do it differently in specific key ways to avoid that patent. Doom In 1994, id Software CEO posted legal terms to the id Software website, allowing mod authors for Doom to charge money without any fees to ID Software and resolving ID Software of any responsibility or support for whatever mods people made in 1994. They said, yeah, go and make commercial mods if you want to do whatever. We're not involved. We're not going to stop you, we're not going to fight you, but we're also not responsible for it. [01:27:02] Speaker C: I would say that was a good. Like, that's, that's good, good, good people, like there is no corporate greed there. [01:27:11] Speaker B: These are things we're going to be talking about on future episodes. [01:27:14] Speaker A: We would not have like the RPG environment we have today if not for Doom's hacking scene being so prolific and so free to do whatever they want. Because there would have never been a hacking scene for Morrowind in Oblivion, for example. [01:27:34] Speaker B: Deus Exit would have never had their hack. [01:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it just wouldn't. We literally would not have Half Life if not for Doom. We would not have Steam if not for Doom. It is one of the most influential video games of all time, period. For those who don't know, Half Life was based on a heavily modified version of the Quake 2 engine and Quake is what they made after Doom. [01:28:07] Speaker B: Mm. Also a great game series. You should play that too. [01:28:11] Speaker A: Yes, also a great game series. Definitely not nearly as iconic like Quake is good for its time. [01:28:19] Speaker B: Quake may have been the start of what would become the esports scene. [01:28:27] Speaker A: Yes. Quake's contribution to video gaming history is it was the first like genuinely good first person shooter multiplayer. Cause like Doom had multiplayer. It's not very good. Doom is about the single player experience. Quake's multiplayer kicked ass. Like just it kicked ass. And the reason I mentioned Half Life is they literally licensed the Quake engine and then heavily modified it for the Original Half Life. We would not have Steam if not for Doom because of the influence that it led to. Quake to lead to Half Life, to lead to Half Life 2, which is when they made Steam. It's incredible how much influence Doom had. Doom is one of the most important video games ever. And unlike other important video games, Doom is fun as shit to play today. Go play original Doom. It is genuinely fun. At least play a few levels. Like you'll have a blast. It's totally fine if you're not amazing at video games to just play on. [01:29:35] Speaker B: Like don't hurt or if you liked it and you haven't done it, try Doom 2016. It's also frequently on sale. It's usually like 15 bucks. [01:29:46] Speaker A: Oh, it's, it's much cheaper than that on Steam sales. [01:29:49] Speaker B: Oh, is it on cheaper now? [01:29:50] Speaker A: Doom 2016 right now on Steam sale as we are recording. This is $4 and that is usually what it drops. [01:29:57] Speaker B: Go get doom 2016. Oh my God. [01:30:00] Speaker A: It is 20 bucks full price. But just, just wait for a Steam sale. Pick up Doom 2016. It's like four or five bucks. It's great. I've played it for 11 hours. It's great. It's a fun game. That's a lot of Doom talk. Let's actually wrap this up. We decided for our pilot episode, for the very first episode of From 8 Bit to 4K, we're gonna pick a game from our backlogs each that we are going to play before the next episode. We record at least a little bit. Cause all of us picked big ass games that there's no way in hell we're gonna finish in two, four weeks. But we're gonna play these games so that next episode we can talk about our experiences playing these games. We all picked RPGs. I picked new Vegas because despite the number of different RPGs and immersive sim games I've played, such as Cyberpunk, I've played Fallout 3, but I've somehow never played New Vegas. I own it. I've owned it for 10 years or so. Just never played it. So I'm going to. There'll be a stream on Twitch TV Jacksoman in the near future where I'm playing New Vegas. It will happen. Mike, you picked the most recent PC release of these. Yeah, by far. You just picked this game up on Steam. So I don't know that this counts as a backlog, but we're gonna let, let it slide for this. [01:31:45] Speaker B: So it's a backlog because it is a game that I intended to get when it released. The only thing that stopped me was I could not afford a PS5 or actually at the time I could not find a PS5. And then by the time I could find them, I didn't have the money to get it because I started to get my own place and money became cheaper. And then very recently it came out on Steam and I went I need to get this game and play it. And so with the Steam sale I picked up Ghosts of Tsushima which is a game that I have been meaning to play since it came out. [01:32:31] Speaker A: Fair enough. And for those who aren't super familiar with that title, this is the Sony like samurai game from a couple years ago that has like a, an Akira Kurosawa filter if you want to have. [01:32:42] Speaker B: It be a black. Yeah, it's, it's based on like the Mongolian invasion of Japan. [01:32:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I've heard nothing but good things. My wife wants to play it so she might be also picking it up on the Steam sale and playing it. [01:33:00] Speaker B: It's 40 bucks. It's expensive but it's. It's like 90 plus hours from what I've heard and gorgeous. [01:33:14] Speaker C: The story is really good too. You'll love the story. [01:33:17] Speaker B: I can't wait for it. [01:33:20] Speaker A: And then Pillow, you've picked another game with a really good story. [01:33:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm pretty excited to pick this up. I've played a few hours of it but with most like with most these games I get it a little late and everybody's already the hype of it's already over. So you know Baldur's Gate 3, a lot of people love it. I've never played a boulders gate game. I do like Dungeons and Dragons so I picked it up, I played it a little bit. I forgot everything that I did. The last time I played it was like two years ago. Exactly. So I'm going to be picking this up, I'm going to be streaming it Twitch tv, Pillow Pet. So you go check it out and I'll be doing a blind playthrough. I'm going to call it blind because I don't remember it and I don't think eight hours is highly qualified enough to say I've even scratched the surface. [01:34:14] Speaker B: Of the game considering I have 150 hours in that game and it it's like 120 of them ish are on one playthrough. [01:34:29] Speaker C: I think it'll work out pretty good because I'm re watching Stranger Things right now so I can't wait to make out with A mind flayer. [01:34:38] Speaker B: This is. This is one of my, again, one of my best games of all time. Much like Jax was talking about with Cyberpunk, this game made me cry. There are points in it with our Absolutely beautiful. There are points in it that are heartbreaking. Really well done voice acting. This. This is the pinnacle of its genre. I'm glad you bought it. [01:34:58] Speaker A: This is a game that I have not bought yet, but I definitely intend to at some point buy this game and play it like Baldur's Gate 3 is amazing. I know it's amazing. [01:35:09] Speaker C: I know it has like a party system to it. Would you recommend like sit down with someone to play it or is a solo play probably the better route? [01:35:18] Speaker B: I would say start with a solo play and then if you can have another one that is your for fun, let's do some fun stuff together. Party Crib I have done multiple sets of multiplayer with them. It's really hard to get a group consistently playing for more than Act 1. [01:35:39] Speaker A: It's literally the same problem actual D and D has. Unless you are literally going to be playing like with your significant other who lives with you. Do a solo playthrough for your like, I want to experience this game and then party play for let's play a game together as far as we want. [01:35:56] Speaker B: Let's do fun. That looked really fun. Let's do Shenanigans with that one. [01:36:00] Speaker A: Yes. [01:36:00] Speaker C: Okay, fair enough. [01:36:03] Speaker A: Which, to be fair, I think is also true for the Divinity 1 and 2 that are the previous games by Larian. [01:36:10] Speaker B: Yes. [01:36:10] Speaker A: They also have the same kind of like multiplayer capabilities, but if you want to play them for the story, you should just play them single player because it's really hard to keep a group going long enough to experience the story as a group. [01:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah, the story is so long it is really hard to get a lot of people consistently around to play 100 plus hours of a video game together. [01:36:33] Speaker A: Yup. Same problem as playing actual Dungeons and Dragons. It's hard to keep a group consistent that long. And it's hard to wrap up a podcast that we don't know how to wrap up yet because we're new at this one. So we're going to just plug our Twitches and call it an episode. I can be found at Twitch TV Jacksoman where I play Super Metroid Map Randomizer twice a week. I play a lot of League of Legends and a lot of Path of Exile and I will be playing Fallout New Vegas in the next few weeks. Mike can be found at Twitch tv. Mikeofmanynames where he will be playing Ghosts of Tsushima in the next couple weeks. And Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet, where he will be playing Baldur's Gate 3 in the next couple of weeks. And yeah, that's the first episode of this podcast. If you liked it, please let us know. Join the Discord. We are part of the Four Wards Podcast Network and the Four Wards Podcast Discord link is in the episode description. Come join. We have a whole channel dedicated just to non League of Legends video games, which is the main focus of this podcast. Not every episode is just gonna be about video games. If one of us has a movie we really want to talk about or a book we really liked or I'm probably gonna talk about anime like once a quarter or whatever else. Like we, we want to talk about things that are not League of Legends. That's why we are making this podcast. So yeah, let us know in the Discord if you think there's a game we really should play. Cause like, we've talked about other games like it and you're like, oh man, have you played this one? Tell us. Maybe we have, maybe we haven't. And we're just missing out on a gem that is a hundred percent up our alley. Which I'll give you a hint. If it's Metroidvania, I either have played it or know about it, most likely. It's very hard to surprise me with a Metroidvania, but I love the genre. Please try to me, please try. I would love to find out about a Metroidvania I haven't played and or am aware of. Yeah, that's it. We'll see you guys next time. [01:38:56] Speaker B: Good night everybody. [01:38:57] Speaker C: Good night.