Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to from 8bit to 4k.
This is the general gaming podcast where myself, Pillow and Jax just talk about games that we love, why we love games, and sometimes just a little bit of that's going on in our lives.
As I mentioned before, my name is Micah. Many names. I'm co hosted by Jack Sohman. Hello, I'm Jack Sohman and Pillow Pet who's finally awake.
[00:00:35] Speaker C: Yes, I am sleep deprived right now, but I'm here.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Hashtag new dad things.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And we're happy to have you for a little bit of time.
So we are part of the four Words podcast network and you can support that network by going to our Patreon. And, and in that Patreon we have a shout out tier. And so we're going to do a shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius Esquire, Labana and Uncle Chrisco. Thank you guys very much.
You guys help keep us going. We've got a couple of tiers there. You can just a dollar a month tells us you love us. You get $5 a month and we get some like early exclusive pre show work that gives you an idea on what we make each time when we prep our episodes. And then $10 a month gets you everything else. And then exclusive feed. And we also have like a little hidden Patreon section of the Discord for you guys. So anyone who's part of that Patreon also gets a little bit access into that.
If you're part of the Patreon, tell.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Them where to find the Patreon.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Oh, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. Patreon.com the Four Words Podcast. That's, that's true.
And then, you know, we, we have a Discord. Just join us on Discord. It'll be in the description below.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Come, come tell us what games you, you like to play. Suggest games for us to try based on what we talked about or just play games with us. Just because we're league players doesn't mean we don't play everything else under the sun, including other multiplayer games.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Oh God, yeah. There's plenty of other multiplayer games that we are waiting on to have other people play with them. And we're gonna start off by talking a little bit about what we've been doing this past couple weeks. So Pillow, you probably have the least of us because of being a new dad. Why don't you start us off with what's been going on?
[00:02:15] Speaker C: So as he said, I just had a new baby. Well, not me, my wife just had a new baby.
And we had a tough time. He's not been sleeping the greatest the first week. It's starting to settle down now, so I haven't been getting a whole lot of sleep. But I did order a Steam deck because I was thinking, huh, I'm gonna need something that's maybe I can occupy my time where I can stay close by, not have to worry about.
So I went and invested in a Steam deck. The oled really enjoying it. I wanted it so I could dock it to my TV and I could sit down and play my games on it and mess around with it. But I haven't found a whole lot of games other than like, I've been playing Baldur's Gate with it. That's very easy to play on a controller setup. And then thinking about getting into, excuse me, like Claire Obscure playing that on there.
I also thought about just investing in a decent keyless or Bluetooth keyboard or wireless keyboard so I can just play my games like normal while sitting on the couch. So I don't necessarily have to be back at my computer area in my office.
Yeah, that's it. We're playing some Baldur's Gate, my original, like, revisit game that I think we brought up in episode one.
So I'm finally getting some time to sit down and play it. I think I got like three hours into it the other night in a car ride, enjoying it. Other than that, I just been playing like, wow, classic TBC Pre patch just came out. So I got a shaman up to level 60 because I boosted and working on a rogue now. So I've just kind of been filling my time and leveling characters.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: All right, Jax, what's been going on with you?
[00:04:03] Speaker A: All right, so I mentioned playing it a couple episodes ago. I finished metroid prime 4.
My opinion on it has not changed. It is the worst Metroid prime game and probably the second worst Metroid game behind Other M. Cause Other M is truly atrocious. Metroid Prime 4, to be clear, is not actually a bad game. But when you're comparing it to like metroid prime 1 and 2 or metroid dread or fusion or zero mission or super Metroid, it falls way, way short in many different categories.
This is not a game you should be buying at full price. If it ever gets down to like 30 bucks maybe so. Because I finished that and it's been so disappointing. I started playing Metroid Prime Remastered because I wanted to play a good Metroid prime. And this is the first time I've played Metroid Prime Remastered. So it's my first time playing the original Metroid prime with dual stick controls. Haven't decided yet if I like it more or less than the Wii control scheme for the game, but it's good. Metroid Prime Remastered is a lot of fun. It's nice to be able to play the same type of game, but with good level design and interesting enemy encounters.
And also it runs buttery smooth on the original switch and looks fantastic.
Other than that, I'm still working through Cyberpunk 2077. I'm so close to just being like, fuck it, let's go beat the game. I've at least finally done the Carry Eurodyne Quest stuff, which he's the last like romanceable character, so that was.
I'm glad to be done with that. I just have a couple more loose threads I want to tie up. That game has such good character writing. And then last but not least is not a game.
AMC Theaters in America recently ran a event where they played the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in theaters for the 25th anniversary of fellowship of the Ring. So my wife and I and some other friends went and watched them all three and I want to set the stage. Prior to this, I had seen Fellowship and Two Towers once, 24 years ago on a CRT. Like a 32 inch CRT. I've never seen the extended versions and I had never seen Return of the King.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Oh, oh, you missed a hell of a scene.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: I did not like Lord of the Rings because those movies were boring as fuck and disjointed because the theatrical versions, frankly kind of suck. They cut so many things.
I realize they're wildly successful, but like a lot of the stuff just kind of happens and you have to just assume you understand what happened off camera, having watched it now A on the big screen. These movies need a big good screen experience. Like you need a good TV or you need to be in the theaters. This is. I did myself a disservice.
I did myself a disservice watching these on a 32 inch CRT in 2003 or whatever.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Uh huh.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: So a much better experience because of that.
B I don't understand why they ever had these theatrical versions like I do. I realize the realities of like movie marketing and everything. In the early 2000s they would not have been successful if they were three and a half, three and a half, and four and a half hours long.
But all of the extra context, the extra scenes giving nuance to things and detail and meaning that a much smaller percentage of the Movie was just sweeping camera shots of characters running along the countryside, because those scenes existing is fine, but they are way too much of the runtime of the theatrical version.
So the extended versions was just a much better. Much better experience.
I had fun. They're not my favorite movies in the world now, but I enjoyed them, which is more than I can say for the first time. There's a reason I never watched Return of the King. I didn't enjoy the other two at all the first time around.
[00:08:21] Speaker C: I have a question.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah, what's up?
[00:08:24] Speaker C: About.
So this was what, like, 1112 hours of being in a movie theater?
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Yeah, like 11 hours.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: So did they.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: I mean, it was.
[00:08:32] Speaker C: I'm just.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: This was over three days.
[00:08:35] Speaker C: Okay. Okay. I thought you were gonna say, like, they played it all in a row. And I was gonna be like, I got a question. Did you at least get the unlimited refill bucket?
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Fellowship was only on Friday.
Two Towers was only on Saturday. Return of the King was only on Sunday.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: I was just thinking, like, you sat down, and it was just like, boom, all the way through. And I was just like, holy cow.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: And they opened up.
They opened up each of the movies with, like, a.
The easiest word I can think to say is interview. But it wasn't really an interview. It was just Peter Jackson talking into his iPhone about his memories of making these movies for, like, 15 minutes. And if you've ever heard Peter Jackson talk about something that makes him happy, he just kind of rambles, and it's very fun.
And these were not, like, cut down and edited to be concise. It's literally just him rambling about the shit. He remembers making these movies for, like, 15 minutes at the start of each one, including multiple times where he will mention something that he remembers doing and then be like, oh, spoiler alert. Sorry.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: I.
I have such a different experience with these movies in that they're. The Fellowship of the Ring movie is the reason that I got into Lord of the Rings and love it so much.
And I was 11 when I saw it and did not understand why the movie cut off when it did, because I didn't know it was a three parter, so, like, that makes sense. But it was three and a half hours, so I went. I don't know why it's ending, but I need to pee really badly. So. Fuck, yeah.
I. I wanted to go see this so badly, but my car fucked up and I had to get multiple days worth of repairs on it, so I was unable to go see any of them. And that's a Fucking tragedy for me because I saw the first one in theaters, I saw the second one twice in theaters. I saw the third one three times in theaters. I love these movies and I watch them multiple times across the years. There was a tradition for a while where I would watch them the extended Editions, once per year. My family, when we got them, we would all go together to see it and then we would get the first dvd, we'd all sit down and we'd rewatch it, and then we'd get the extended edition and we'd all sit down and watch that. And within that extended edition, there is a alternate cut that is just the movie playing whilst the actors talk about the scenes that are going on there.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Okay, so it has a commentary track.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: A full commentary track. And it's fantastic. And so we did that too. Like the, the accelerated edition DVDs have four CDs in them. Yep. I love these movies and I'm so sad they did. I didn't have a chance to see them. I hope they do this again next year and the Next as a 25th anniversary for each of them.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: I mean, if they. The. The theater I was at was at least half full for each of the showings and it was not a small theater, which is pretty good to get a theater at least half full for a 25 year old movie that everyone has seen before.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: And now that I point this out, this a 25 year old movie. You saw the Fellowship one recently. Does not the Balrog scene go, wow, that's fucking 25 year old CGI. That holds the fuck up.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: It does. But at the same time, a lot of the other CG does not hold up. The green screen effects don't hold up well. They're very, very, oh, this is a green screen, obviously kind of effects a lot of the time.
And the only other CG that really did hold up is Gollum because it's motion capture. It's Andy Serkis doing all that shit.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: It's the advent of motion capture. Right.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: It's specifically, it holds up well. A, because they put a shit ton of work into making sure it's a really high fidelity CG for the time and B, because Andy Serkis was physically there doing the thing. So there's the physicality of Gollum interacting with the environment that sells it so much better than most CG ever does.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Oh, God, yeah, yeah. He was in the, like the, the scene with the fish. He was in the water doing that.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah, like the whole thing. Every scene with Gollum is Andy Serkis doing that. And you can tell it was obvious that it was an actual performance being motion captured and not a CG being added after the fact. And it did make a big, big difference.
Having seen all three, I definitely think Two Towers is the best of the three.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: It has the single greatest siege. Like the combat of any movie I have ever seen.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: The Helm's Deep siege is much better than the Minas Tirith siege. And not just because Minas Tirith is the second time in these three movies that you're like, oh, time for a big siege of a human city by the Orcs. Which. That's not the filmmaker's fault. That's just. The fucking books are like that. But the siege of Helm's Deep is just so well done. It's such a believable depiction of medieval military tactics and how they would actually siege a fortified city like that. It's great. The special effects hold up because most of them are practical effects.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: 99% of things are practical effects. And then the other.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: These movies are old enough that everything that could be done practical was.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: They invented camera techniques to make things work. How the force perspective works for the Hobbits is wholly invented by them for this.
Pure genius for a lot of the stuff.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: So here's my other thought, though. And the other reason besides just Helm's Deep is amazing that I say that Two Towers is the best. Return of the King ends, like, six times on the extended edition.
I don't understand why there's, like, six endings. What was the theatrical ending? How did it actually end on the theatrical version? Do you remember?
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: The exact same way with Frodo getting onto the ship and whatnot.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Yep. And then Sam coming back and going, well, I'm back. That's it.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: That's.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: That's the same ending. Because it ends the same amount of times, by the way.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Because that was my biggest complaint about Return of the King. Return of the King should have ended either with them dying on the mountain, like, no eagles coming in and saving them, nothing. That would have been a powerful ending. Or it should have ended with Frodo writing the Lord of the Rings. We cut to There and Back Again by Bilbo Baggins. The Lord of the Rings by Frodo Baggins. He closes the book, tells Sam about it, and end the damn movie.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: They didn't want to do that because they kept having to cut out other things, like the entirety of the Scouring of the Shire.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: I get that. But that would have been the way to end the movie. Like that is a fucking amazing way to wrap it up. Even though you shuffle the order of the scene so that's the last one. And then he goes to the ship. That's at least better. Yeah, but no, that was the second of the endings.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: I know way too much about these fucking movies because I've seen them so many times.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: But yeah, I had fun. I do not dislike Lord of the Rings anymore.
[00:15:54] Speaker C: One more follow up question.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: You got to say one of Bernard Hill's greatest scenes of all time.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: What's that pillow?
[00:15:59] Speaker C: Are there any recent Good Lord of the Ring games? Because this is gonna be itching to play one. All right, so I have a complaint. Warner Brothers. I just want to say fuck you.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, and you're fucking hostage situation. Yep.
[00:16:16] Speaker C: That's all I could think about is fuck you. Warner Brothers.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: No, they. They absolutely suck. But the, the recent one, Tales of the Shire, that came out literally last year.
Sucks. Do not buy it.
Shadow of War, Shadow of Mordor are good.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Shadow of Mordor is better than Shadow of War Fair.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: And then that's it. Other than everything prior to that, like, they're okay games. They're not bad, but they're not amazing.
[00:16:43] Speaker C: We need a good Lord of the Rings open world game.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: The MMO was fun.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: There was one a couple years ago about Gollum, but I haven't heard good things about.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Was a game that was made with heart that was bad.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
So yeah, if you want to play a good Lord of the Rings game, Shadow of Ward or Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War, those are good games. That's it. Those are the ones. Only ones I could actually recommend anyone.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: All right. And then I'll take over here with what I've been doing and I've got some. Some new games that I've been messing around with. I started playing Slay the Spire finally.
That is a fun deck builder. That is a great like, man, I need to do something for 10 minutes, 5 minutes while I'm doing something else. Boom. So the Spire play this. Have a good time. Absolutely fantastic. I understand why it was so heavy. I grabbed it on sale when it was in the Steam sale and finally got to play it. Feels great to play.
Started playing 40K Mechanicus, which is.
It's a similar style of game to Fire Emblem.
[00:17:49] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: And it very, very well captures the Mechanicus of 40k and. And what Necron tech is like. And it does a great job with the license, which a lot of Warhammer games don't do. So it handles the license well and it plays well on that style of game. The tutorial is well thought out and well done and it broadens you and brings you in very quickly. And you may not understand a lot of what's going on if you're not entrenched in 40k, but it isn't like a complete mystery. It sells it pretty well. And then I started playing Golf with Friends last week where a bunch of my D and D group, well, I was sick for a while and a couple of them have respiratory challenged significant others, so we weren't gonna risk anything. We did some online stuff and Golf with Friends was on sale for 2 bucks.
That's what, 12 worth way more than 2 bucks.
It's, it's really fun in a stupid sort of way. You can, you can sync four or five hours in a game with that and it, it just, it's mini golf on the computer. Everyone has fun with mini golf. When you do mini golf stuff, it's just a blast.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Golf with your friends is awesome. I haven't played it in forever, but it's a great game.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: And that's really like I've been playing, obviously I've been doing a lot more wow stuff because the new expansion is the pre patch just released and I've been messing with that and that's fun, but that'll end up being talked about more later when other things happen.
So since Pillow just got a Steam deck, we should give him some recommendations for things he should get. Not only we'll give him a couple of them, but if anyone pop in a comment and give him some recommendations, some game recommendations.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to discord go in other games and tell Pillow what he should play on his Steam deck.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: If you've never played it, Pillow, I want you to try Bastion.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:50] Speaker C: Let me write these down.
Have you played need to look them up.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: I forget, have you played the Hades games?
[00:19:56] Speaker C: Well, see, I was just sitting here thinking. I was like, man, I really should get a roguelike. I was like, I should get the Hades games.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: Hades is the roguelike.
[00:20:02] Speaker C: It's because you were just sitting there talking about Slay the Spire and it got me thinking of like Balatro and all those games.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: I would say both Hades games are fantastic Steam deck titles. Bastion is the first game by the same developers. It is not a roguelike. It's an rpg.
Light on the RPG elements, but you.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Can finish it easy pretty quick. It's seven, eight hours easy.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: And it's a great game.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: It's great game. It's the game company whom I Explicitly Trust. I love super giant games. Yep.
[00:20:34] Speaker C: I thought about getting Chrono Trigger. The Steam one. The definitive, I think version on Steam nowadays.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: If you've never played Chrono Trigger, you should get Chrono Trigger and play it. It is a phenomenal game.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: But yeah, like I'm gonna give my old one. I love Bastion. I think you should try it. So I'm gonna have you do that one. Obviously Hades is great for your roguelike.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: And then I forget, are you. Do you play Metroidvanias at all?
[00:21:02] Speaker C: No, but I've wanted to like try them, see if I get into them.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Okay. If you want one that's less combat centric. Ori and the Blind Forest.
[00:21:11] Speaker C: I have heard of that one.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Ori and the Blind Forest has one of the best soundtracks of all time.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: It's gorgeous. The music is amazing. The gameplay is tight. It's a great platformer.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: It's emotional, the story is great.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: It is. That is something most Metroidvanias kind of suck at. Ori and the Blind Forest does not at all. And the definitive edition is regularly on sale for five bucks.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: The other game, I don't know if you've played it, but if you haven't, this is a title for you. Control.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: I have no idea how well control runs on the Steam deck. That's the only.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: You love horror and control is quasi horror.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: Control is fantastic. Highly recommend.
[00:21:53] Speaker C: They got the control ultimate edition.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Worth getting bucks if you can. If it's four bucks, get it. It's.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Well, yeah, just buy that at that price.
Like that's insane. That game is so good.
[00:22:06] Speaker C: Buying it right now.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: I paid full price for that game and I do not regret it one bit. That's how good it is.
I have one other recommendation, and this is specifically if you want to play something that is retro style but not actually an old game.
[00:22:21] Speaker C: All right, what do you got?
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Oh, what the fuck is this game called? Hang on, I need to grab my switch to look it up. Mike, give him something while I think of this shovel.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: No, no, it's not that.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Did you. Do you like Dark Souls style games?
[00:22:38] Speaker C: The only one that I really got into was Elden Ring.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: You might really like Lies of P.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Lies of P. I've heard good things. Infernax. Infernax is the game I was trying to find. Infernax is a 8 bit styled, side scrolling platformer that is hard in a way that is reminiscent of how unfair NES games were, but in a much more fair way and is metal as fuck.
It's great. I love this game. I wish it got more attention. I feel like it really flew under most people's radars when it came out, quite literally. This is how the developers describe Infernax's content. Warning. This game contains mature themes that may not be suitable for everyone. Ranging from saucy language, acts of violence in the name of justice, copious amounts of gore and half clothed demon cleave. People of varying degrees of attractiveness. By installing this game, you hereby agree that you are cool with this.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Cool. Cool.
[00:23:47] Speaker C: This game looks familiar.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: It's so good it will scratch your retro itch while being an actually new game and a new experience. It has two player simultaneous co op for people who do have an interest in that but you do not need to play co op. It is a fully single player, self contained experience.
It has multiple playthroughs. There are multiple endings that are actually different experiences through the game and not just checking a box and getting a different cutscene at the end. Like this game is great.
I love Infernax.
[00:24:24] Speaker C: I am going to check these games out. I'll probably definitely get the Hades games.
Just got the control game because I mean that's can't beat that deal.
So I'll definitely be Ori in a Blind Forest.
Bastion looks good.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: There is a second Ori game. It's much more combat heavy. It's better than Ori and the Blind Forest. Play Ori and the Blind Forest first. You won't be able to enjoy Blind Forest if you jump straight into Will o' the wisps.
[00:24:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I remember Mike, you talking about Bastion a few episodes ago.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I. It's. It's one of the games that like I learned game development while playing and I learned so much about game development through that game.
It's. It's so unique. I love it.
[00:25:11] Speaker C: I look forward to it. Thanks for the advice on games.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And let's hope we get a couple people who give you some more tips. So now we're gonna transition over into the. The main topic that we got and that I think we should start talking because we talked a lot about exclusively combat games for a long time.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Most of the games we talk about, most of the games that interest all three of us are combat oriented.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: And this is like true across the board in which a lot of people define games as combat. And I think it's time we shine some light on some non combat games. And I'm going to start off with one of the most beautiful games I have ever played.
And I'm going to talk about Journey for a moment. If you've never heard of Journey, I'm sorry, It's very cheap. It's on Steam and you walk and it's a pilgrimage. It's a pilgrimage. It's a journey. There's no real combat at all. There's no real multiplayer, but there's tiny things that sort of extend into multiple people. The atmosphere in this game is phenomenal. The music is gorgeous. And it. It seems like it would be tedious being a sort of a walking simulator, but there's a little bit of movement to it. You can. You can jump and you can bounce and then you hit this certain point in the game and suddenly it's. It's fulfilling in a way I can't describe.
It's one of the most soothing games I've ever played. And I just walked. It's beautiful. Who wants to go next?
[00:26:45] Speaker C: It does look really pretty. Yeah.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: All right.
[00:26:47] Speaker C: Looking at it right now, it looks really pretty.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: I'm gonna go. For those who don't know my gaming interests, obviously Metroidvanias are a big part of it, but those are all combat games.
I also really love puzzle games.
Specifically, I love Tetris, like puzzle games that are designed around a Versus mode. So this means things like Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo, if you've ever played it, or Puyo Puyo. I love those games. But my favorite, the king of the genre, in my opinion, is a game that's gone by a lot of names. Its original title on the Super Nintendo and how you can find and play it on the Nintendo Switch. Right now, if you have Switch online for the Super Nint is Panel Day Pon.
It was released in the US as Tetris Attack. It was then re released on the Nintendo 64 with a Pokemon skin as Pokemon Puzzle Collection.
Pokemon Puzzle League.
It was released on the DS as Planet Puzzle League. I own a GameCube 4 player version of it called Nintendo Puzzle Collection that also has Dr. Mario and Tetris. But it doesn't matter which version you play. The basic gameplay is it's your typical match colors to clear the blocks type game. But whereas most games in the genre, you're bringing blocks in from above. The conceit of this game is that the blocks are rising from below whether you like it or not. But also you can intentionally make them rise if you want. And you're flipping them. All you have is a cursor with two blocks and if you press the A button, it swaps those two blocks and you move your cursor around and swap blocks. And that's the entire gameplay. And when you get a clear, if you clear three in a row, they delete them. If you clear four or more in a row, you send garbage blocks over to your opponent which then they have to clear the garbage by clearing a three or more combo next to the garbage. You can flip blocks while you are clearing.
And that's what makes this game glorious, is when you get good at the game and you're playing at a higher level, you are setting up chains where when this thing clears, the thing above it will fall, which will create a new clear. And then while that's going on, you're moving blocks around it. So now there's blocks on top of it that weren't there before that. Then when the second thing clears, those will fall down and create another clear. And you can chain this together and get like a seven chain and drop a gigantic garbage block on your opponent.
And it's so satisfying when you nail those chains and combos. It's so much fun. There's so much skill, expression. I love Penal de Pawn, Tetris Attack, Puzzle League, whatever you want to call it. I wish Nintendo would release a new version of it. So yeah, that's my favorite non combat video game, period.
[00:29:51] Speaker C: Always love Dr. Mario's kit.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: So this is much better than Dr. Mario in my opinion.
[00:29:56] Speaker C: Oh, I guarantee it.
Well, mine, you're gonna notice a theme with all of mine.
My first one I'm talking about is House Flipper. So it's very easy. It's just a simulation game, just a chill. And you start off by getting like, people send you jobs like hey, come renovate my house. And you do it. You get money and you save up enough money, you buy your own house and you renovate that house and you flip it and make money and keep doing that. It's just an endless cycle of flipping houses. And I think I started really liking this game when I first bought it and playing it because it has the Breaking Bad house in it that you can fix and renovate with the pizza and all on top. So I really enjoyed it. It's a nice little sit down, no rush to do anything and play it however you want at whatever speed you want. You can do as little or as much as you want. It's just a fun little busy, stay busy game. All right. You don't have to fight nothing but a wall.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah, but you got to fight that wall.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Beat up the walls, punch holes in them. Okay, I've. I Have mentioned my next game on this channel before, but I want to bring it back up again because it is. It is an art piece.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Gris, the other walking simulator on your.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: List, it's a bit of a walking simulator. It's more of a platformer. It is a watercolor art painting with music.
It's gorgeous, it does not take long to beat. It's emotional and it's beautiful.
And I think everyone should try it. It's relatively cheap and it. It's something beautiful. This is my. Like I now have. I've switched my name. One of the other games that I will talk about is the. The definition of games are art. I have, I have given dissertations about this. I'm switching them to this game now. Gris is a piece of art given form that you can play in. And I'll end it there because I've talked at length about that game before. Hey Jax, head out. Next one you have.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: All right, I'm gonna switch gears completely. I do have one that I think is a little bit of a piece of art, but in a less visual sense. But when I think of non combat games other than puzzle games, I think of rhythm games.
And my favorite rhythm games are Dance Dance Revolution and Beat Saber.
These are basically the same concept because every rhythm game is basically the same concept. Gameplay's music notes come at you and you hit the notes. Whether you're playing with a guitar controller or a drum set or singing along with the song or in these case dancing on a dance pad or slashing notes out of the air with a lightsaber in VR, which is what you do in Beat Saber. The thing rhythm games have in common is they are very momentum based. When you make a mistake, you tend to make more mistakes immediately following it.
And the ones I've picked are really good exercise games.
Once upon a time when DDR was new, I played DDR and got super addicted. I played this game for like an hour a day, every day for a year and lost 80 pounds in that year with no changes to my diet.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: My first year in college, the floor that I was on when I was in my dorm room, we had four separate people who had DDR pads.
And so like that was the year Rock Band came out. So we played Rock Band A fuckton. We played DDR A fuckton. Yep. I love these games. These are great games.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: It is unfortunately nowadays basically impossible to get working DDR mats unless you're willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money. But if you happen to have a local arcade that still exists. They probably have a DDR machine.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: Those things are tanks.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: They do eventually fail.
What I've seen in recent arcades is they have Stepmania X or something like that. Stepmaniacs, however you want to pronounce that instead. Which has a different selection of music. I don't like the music quite as much, but it's a new arcade machine that you can still get parts for that they redesigned the dance pads to be much more repairable as opposed to old DDR machines which will eventually fail and be unrepairable. But yeah, highly recommend. And then Beat Saber, like any VR headset works. You can do it with a quest, you can do it on a PlayStation VR. Beat Saber is great. I highly recommend if you have a gaming PC getting a PC compatible headset so you can play with custom songs because holy shit, there's so many custom songs out there, guys. But even without, it's a great time. It's very fun. You're moving, you're, you're smoothing, you're slashing notes to the beat of the music. It's a good time.
[00:34:58] Speaker C: I did always love Guitar Hero. I enjoyed it quite a bit through the fire and flames. Still never beat it on Expert, but one of these days. All right, my next game, it's called Schedule One. I don't know if you've heard of it, if you have or if you have not. It is a drug dealer simulator game. And I mean, that's, that's exactly. Me and my wife have been playing it off and on since we both been on leave because we can just pick it up, put it down whenever.
You start off by growing weed and then you sell the weed and then you get dealers and then eventually move to like meth and then like crack and then shrooms they just added and you just, you start your own little drug empire getting your own dealers. And it's just been kind of fun because it's just the characters that they put in the game are just comically, like, funny. And you get to know them and you're just like, oh, this is. There's a character in there, Jesse, and she's just funny and you just know what they like and it's just fun to learn all the different characters they add in it.
There was a time where Queso was playing this game quite a bit. And so he's got a mural on the wall that the developers put in on him. So this is just another little sit. Not really sit down and casually play because, I mean, it is a.
What is the word. I'm looking for a not safe for work kind of game.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: But not in the porn, but in the.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: Like, it's very. Like, there's.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: I can imagine that'd be hard to explain to your boss.
[00:36:44] Speaker C: That's what it is.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: No, no, no.
[00:36:45] Speaker C: I'm sorry. Yeah, I gotta. Hold on. Let me. Let me harvest my weed real quick. It's. It's fun. Little. Fun little game that me and my wife like to play together.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: All right, I'm gonna talk about another game, my original game that I made a dissertation about.
The game is called the Last Guardian. And it is. It is hard to describe the game only in that you are a young child who befriends a giant monster dog bird and you go on an adventure together and people are hunting the giant monster dog bird.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: This is a game made by the same people who made ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. To give you some context.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: It's beautiful.
It's emotional and there's no real dialogue. Like, there's a little bit.
[00:37:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: These guys are masters of environmental storytelling.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: These are exactly as he's masters of environmental storytelling. And a completely made up digital creature has so much emotion to it. You can see it in its face as it's moving. The animation work that they did on this thing is phenomenal. It is not an easy to find game. It is not an easy to play game. As far as I'm aware. It's a PS4 exclusive game. I would spend the effort if you want to try and find something that is not a combat game. So it's a great game to play with young kids that have a wonderful emotional. Emotional core to it, really. And it's. It's something special in that. Like this. This game teaches empathy in a way I don't think I've found in many other games. And the dog bird thing will just become a child's favorite image. It's adorable.
And it is. It is the game. I gave a dissertation on games are art, on why you don't need combat in a game to make a great game.
It's been 15 years since I did that dissertation, so I don't remember a lot of it, but it is.
It is something special by a team of people who have made phenomenal games.
[00:38:58] Speaker C: I completely forgot about this game. It's.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: It did not sell well.
[00:39:01] Speaker C: I remember watching this.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it did not sell well.
Partially because, like, a lot of people don't think of it when they think of Team Micro Games, they think of Shadow of the Colossus. And Shadow of the Colossus is still kind of a niche game. Not a lot of people have played.
[00:39:16] Speaker C: On sale right now for $10 and get the game PlayStation.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: So, yeah, if you have a chance to get the Last Guardian, I would heavily, heavily recommend it. Especially if you've got, like, a young kid you want to try and bring into gaming and not have a violent game. This is the perfect game.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: I've got a different game that I think is kind of a perfect game for that.
This is a whole series of games. I don't care which one you pick. They're all roughly the same.
The Katamari series.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: Katamari Damacy.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Yep. So all of these games basically amount to, you're a weird little alien dude. You roll a ball around an environment, starting out like you are literally tiny, rolling up paper clips and erasers and stuff like that. And as you roll up more and more things, you get bigger and bigger and can therefore roll up more things because you have to be bigger than the thing you're rolling up to. Roll it up.
And this game, at its best, when you're playing the late levels that are the most satisfying, you will literally, over the progress of a single level, go from rolling around paperclips on a table in someone's house to rolling up islands as you roll around the planet.
It's great. Katamari is so satisfying. And it does all of this with an extremely Japanese sense of humor and aesthetic. That is just charming.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: It's. It's absolutely charming. It's the hello Kitty kind of charming.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it is non sequiturs for no reason that just make you go, what in the world did I just roll up? And then you look and it was a dude in Hakama who was doing a performance in a school yard. For some reason, it's. It's just goofy. It's fun. You will literally roll up Godzilla and other Kaiju when you're gigantic.
It's very satisfying to be able to get big enough to roll up that cow that kept punting you away earlier because you were too small and he kept knocking you around and now you can roll him up.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: It's.
[00:41:32] Speaker A: I love the Katamari series. They are fantastic.
[00:41:35] Speaker C: I've always loved games like that where you start small and get big. The one that, like, always comes to my mind and I think about these games often are like, the fish one. We start off little fish and you just keep growing and growing into big fish.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Yep. Same basic idea. I think Katamari is the best.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:41:53] Speaker C: Oh, yes. Four.
[00:41:54] Speaker B: Gosh.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: Force.
[00:41:55] Speaker C: That's.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: But I just. I just know as a kid, like I was always imagining like, oh, what if my toys came to life? What if I shrunk down to toy size a la like army man or Toy Story type stuff? And then Katamari just kind of lets you live both that fantasy and the giant fantasies at the same time.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
[00:42:18] Speaker A: Yeah, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was a foundational movie for me. I remember the ending in the cupboard and Katamari just scratches the itch that child me had for the bar. I want to be small.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Yes, the nostalgia hits real hard now. Cobbled same.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: I'm going to have to tell my wife that you mentioned that movie though, because she loves that movie.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: It's a great movie. All right, Pillow, Let's. Let's pull me. Pull me away from nostalgia with something else that's incredibly nostalgic.
[00:42:46] Speaker C: So my last set of non combat games is more of a genre and we've kind of been covering a little bit in my, my group, but it's just like city builders and simulation games in general.
So like, I'm thinking, you know, SimCity, city skyline, I mean, you name it, any city builder I've probably played it, probably own it because I love it. And simulator games, I mean that just. There's a bazillion of them out there. It's a saturated market.
Some of them are really good, some of them are really bad. I have played both ends of those.
One that comes to like head, you know, that's a real popular one, is Crime Scene Cleaner and Car and Power Wash. Clean Power Wash Simulator. I enjoy these games where I just sit down and I just. Just the itch of power washing every square inch of a building is just something that I love doing. I love doing it at home. So why wouldn't I love doing it on a game?
And the city builders, like just being able to design my own city and mess up and break a dam and now my city's flooded and now I got people tweeting at me because if you're playing City Skyline and they're like, what's going on with this? Or the tornadoes coming through and wiping your city out. And it was just all those games are really good. You don't have to worry about combat, no PvP, anything like that. You're just living and playing God or mayor or however you want to look at it.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That hit another beat of nostalgia. Me thinking about roller toilet or tycoon. Oh, man, I. I love Roller Coaster.
[00:44:29] Speaker C: Tycoon, but I am wanting to say to the admit I was a sadist when I came to Roller Coaster Tycoon and I would purposely let my people fly off of the roller coaster and crash land on the ground.
[00:44:43] Speaker B: Sometimes you just need to do that. By the way, if you ever want to have a ton of fun and a great deal of laughs, take a look at SimCity. Three patch notes. some point in time, they are some of the funniest fucking things ever.
[00:44:58] Speaker C: Okay, those up right now.
[00:44:59] Speaker B: Let's. Let's pop up. I'm going to keep going here and I have one last one that it's a nostalgia beat, but there's a newer version of it that they made that is really good.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: Part of this is famous for a reason.
[00:45:12] Speaker B: Part of this is the soundtrack and part of this is it's just a fun fucking game. Tony Hawk, Pro Skater. I'm specifically talking about two because it's my favorite, but Tony Hawk, Pro Skater, that entire thing quite literally.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Take your pick. One through four, they all fit.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: They're all great. Tony hikersco2 had my favorite soundtrack of them. Fucking fun as hell. Learning the moves, getting the beat, it just. I could never do skateboarding. My parents were very, very against it and so I got to just live out the fantasy through Pro Skater 2 and had a fucking awesome soundtrack going at the same time.
I heard one song from them this recently and suddenly I'm back into ska music on my fucking playlists. Because God damn, does it hit and it feels great. And it's just, just so fun. Even if there's like three of you on a. On a couch, bounce back and forth between the three of you, one, one and one, you can. I think you can do co op. I don't remember. It's been so long.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: It's not exactly co op. It's more like score attack against each other.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: Yeah, you can play simultaneously and it's not a combat thing, but there's that. There's just the. The stunt moves. The. The to try and get the highest score possible with kickflip.
How long can you grind for? Oh, man. Some of these things were just fun as fuck.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: Wait for a sale. You can frequently pick up Tony hawk's Pro Skater 12 for 20 bucks on sale. That's what I did on Switch. It's well worth it. It's available on basically every platform. 3 and 4 is almost as good of original games, but I don't know how good the new HD version is. It apparently has mixed reviews on Steam and I'm not sure why.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: I know the remakes of 1 and 2 are very good, but yeah, 1.
[00:47:03] Speaker A: And 2 is extremely good.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: And to end off this section, Jax, you have a genre that both of us love dearly.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: Okay, so part of our thought process for favorite non combat games was to talk about games that are less violent, maybe more kid friendly. This is not that these games are violent, but they also are thought provoking and they're not combat. I'm talking about the hardcore precision platformer genre. So games like Super Meat Boy, which is super gory by the way, literally every time you die it sprays blood across the level. And these are games that you will literally die thousands of times in before you clear them. But these kinds of precision platformers are extremely satisfying to play.
Every game in the genre has in common that you have instant retries and frequent checkpoints. Checkpoints. Maybe you clear a level, it's a couple screens and then you go to the next level. Or it may be a physical checkpoint throughout a world, like in VVVVVV, which has a like Atari style retro aesthetic to it. VVVVVV has an incredible soundtrack and its whole shtick is just that you reverse gravity instead of jumping. Every time you press the gravity flip button, you'll start flying towards the ceiling instead of the floor. And you can't stop until you reach what was the ceiling and is now your new floor.
Super Meat Boy is your typical like you're just going through the levels to try to save your girlfriend from a bad guy and you do it via platforming instead of fighting. VVVVVV is you're the captain of a spaceship crew and you found an anomaly in space that scattered your crew across a sector and you are now trying to find them all and get them back. And it has very, very, very light Metroidvania type elements of there's no progression, but you can go to the different regions in whatever order. So the game lets you just kind of free roam and wander and explore and there's things you can find if you want to have like a completionist sense to it, but you can also just ignore them. And it's fine, it's great. Highly recommend both those games, but the big, most well known entry in this genre, by far, and deservedly so, is Celeste. Celeste is an emotional rollercoaster. I highly recommend Celeste on a purely emotional level.
And also it is an incredibly difficult, incredibly satisfying precision platformer. If you've ever watched a good Speedrunner play Celeste, it literally looks like they are just flying through the levels like magic. No, that's all platforming. It's double jumping and dashing at the right times and other craziness. It's an awesome game. Celeste is regularly $5.
Give Matty Thorson your $5.
[00:50:02] Speaker B: Sh.
[00:50:03] Speaker A: She fucking deserves it for this incredible title.
[00:50:06] Speaker B: Yeah, we've. We've talked about how good Celeste is before and I. Yeah, I think I'd argue Secret Repo is still a better known name. But Celeste is probably the better game in the genre.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Celeste is the best game in the genre, period. VVVVVV is my personal favorite of the genre. But Celeste is the best. Celeste is the best one in the genre.
[00:50:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Celeste has a lot for you. And I think we're gonna come to our final topic here when we talk about this in that it's been bouncing around in my head that we've never truly like given the. How did we fall into becoming gamers? What is the. The catalyst that made you become a die hard fan of games? What is the game that brought you into this?
And I think I'll give the first example on this one.
I did not have any form of system. My parents were not a big fan of them. I got a Game Boy and I really didn't like play a ton of the Game Boy until the most well known game anyone has ever fucking heard of dropped. And I didn't start with it because I didn't know it existed until I went to a winter camp, a summer camp and saw someone play it and I fell deep. It's Pokemon. Pokemon is the game that brought me into gaming. It is the game that pulled me in. Now there are games that actively like made me more of a gamer, but this is the game that made me truly play games as opposed to just oh yeah, it was the thing I use when we're on road trips or when I'm in a car. Now Pokemon is the game that caught me and it's everyone knows Pokemon Red. If you. If you don't, you should just go back and play the original Pokemon. There's a million ROM hacks. You can find it somewhere. Firered and Leafgreen, the remake versions are good.
Hell if you're a Switch player. Apparently the let's Go are pretty fun.
Not my genre of style, but like I'm a classic Pokemon hat. I fell so hard for Pokemon. I still play them 20, almost 20 years later. It's been actually more than 20. I'm sorry, almost 30 years later. It's 28 years since I played this game the first time.
[00:52:25] Speaker C: But have you done a randomizer?
[00:52:27] Speaker B: Yes. Fuck. We've done Poke Rose.
[00:52:30] Speaker C: The Pokemon randomizers are so fun. Yeah, Nuzlocke.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Pokemon Nuzlockes. The amount of. The amount of time and space that I've gotten out of this genre alone is uncountable. And then there's just the nostalgic hit.
This game became the phenomenon. But it started with the game and the game is what truly like. I played countless hours. I had both a red and a blue version. Even though I didn't have two game boys.
I stole my sisters for a little while to do trading. It was something beyond a fad that truly became a classic. And it is the reason I am a gamer.
[00:53:14] Speaker C: I also started with Pokemon. Not as like the game that started my gaming.
[00:53:18] Speaker B: No, I played other games.
[00:53:20] Speaker C: Yeah, like.
Like Red was my first game. I remember when I got it, my mom went to town, picked up the cartridge for me.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: I remember the price.
[00:53:30] Speaker C: Stop playing it. They weren't that bad, were they?
[00:53:32] Speaker B: 32.5 forty bucks. It was 29.99 and with tax it was 32.54.
[00:53:37] Speaker C: That's cheap.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: I. I remembered because even when it would be three months of. I think it was three months of allowance that allowed me to get a new game and I saved up for this game. I needed to know my exact price that I could buy other things like a lunch when I went down.
[00:53:53] Speaker C: I think my favorite generation though was 2.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:53:57] Speaker C: Like Crystal, Silver, Gold.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I agree. I. I love Dreary and Sapphire a lot. There's a lot of nostalgic in that one with has some of my favorite Pokemon. But I think Gold and Silver are the best games. The Remix Heart Gold and Soul Silver specifically.
[00:54:13] Speaker C: I think it was honestly the Day of Night cycle. That is so rememberable. Like so much like why I remember Gen2 so much on the Game Boy.
[00:54:21] Speaker B: Being able to go back and play the original region was just a foundational thing on that game. But yeah, true. Is that. Is that also your starter? Do you have another one you want to talk about?
[00:54:32] Speaker C: No, no, I have a different one. Like so I was. When we were talking about this, the pre show, I was trying to think back like in a. First thing that popped in my mind was like, oh yeah, it was Ocarina of Time. That's the one that I remember the most. But I remember then I started thinking like I remember I got a Nintendo 64 one year for Christmas and I don't think it was intended for me.
I think it was intended for my parents. But I took it over and we had Mario 64.
Still plays great to this day, by the way. It's awesome.
The camera, the camera controls are. They'll upset you. But I remember playing this game and my parents told me, he's like, all right, when you beat this game, we'll get you another one.
And like, I think I had Mario 64 beat like within a week and like all the stars, everything, because I just love that game.
And then after that, my next game was Starcraft or not. Starcraft was Star Fox 64.
And that's just with those two games, that's where it took off. And from there on, I mean, you know the story. Here I am, and that's a key part of my life is video games.
[00:55:45] Speaker B: Jax, you probably have a different one. You're a little bit of a different age than we are.
[00:55:48] Speaker A: I am slightly older than you guys. And I also got into gaming much younger than you guys because, oh, I.
[00:55:54] Speaker B: Was, I was playing games before that. But like the game that became my foundation to becoming a gamer. I was playing things when I was 4 or 5, but right, not the.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: So when I was 4 years old, my uncle, who my parents correctly identified as a loser, came over one time and brought with him an NES with Super Mario Brothers. And I was enthralled. That was the coolest thing that four year old me had ever seen. And to give you a context of how enthralled I was, my allowance, I did have an allowance at 4 years old was $2 a week. I saved that up as a 4 year old for over a year. And then 5 year old me got to the point where I had $150, which was how much an NES cost at the time in 1990.
And I convinced my parents to let me go out and buy an nes.
Specifically when I started saving was because I asked them, can I have a Nintendo? And they said, we're not buying you one, but if you save up your money, you can have one. Because in their minds they were like, there's no way a 5 year old is gonna have saved up for a year to buy a thing. That's not something that happens. So that was their way of saying no without getting into a fight. But then when I did it, they realized they had given me permission. They couldn't say no anymore.
So I got a Nintendo and I played the shit out of Super Mario Bros. And then that from there I played tons of other games. I got other Nintendo games. I got games presence from then on. I have fond memories of a lot of original Nintendo games. I eventually bought a Super Nintendo and many of my favorite games of all time are on the Super Nintendo. But Super Mario Bros. Was absolutely what changed the trajectory of my life and made me into a gamer. My parents have told me to my face that they regret ever telling me that they wish they had chosen to pick a fight and say no instead because they hate that I became a gamer. I literally for most of my childhood was convinced that I was gonna make video games when I grew up. And literally I took classes in high school for learning how to make games. And that was when I realized that I'm not the person to actually do that.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: It is very hard to make games.
[00:58:23] Speaker A: I do not have a good sense for like level design or even like game design.
I'm not the person to do those things. But that's okay. I literally. It took me until senior year of high school to realize that my dream as a five year old to make video games. I probably shouldn't actually try to make video games. I should do something else with my life.
That's how much Super Mario Brothers influenced me.
[00:58:50] Speaker C: All this talk of nostalgic games. I have one more I want to mention that's like.
It's relevant to what I'm gonna bring up afterwards. Did you guys ever play Yoshi's Story?
[00:59:01] Speaker B: Yes, I did. I love that game.
[00:59:03] Speaker A: It's not as good as Yoshi's island, but it's good.
[00:59:06] Speaker C: So me and my mom, yeah, we would always play Yoshi's Story. And like to this day I even think of the music. Like you said, the soundtrack's great. Nintendo announced a new Yoshi game coming out this spring. Yoshi and a Mysterious Book. And it's supposed to be a like the Yoshi Story hanger on graphics, all that fun stuff.
[00:59:29] Speaker A: So.
[00:59:30] Speaker C: So I'm pretty excited.
[00:59:31] Speaker A: I have a question for you. Do you know how many games are in this franchise? There's a whole Yoshi spin off series. Yoshi Story was the second one.
[00:59:40] Speaker C: I do not. Because I didn't get into a whole lot of Yoshi games. I just remember the Yoshi Story because of. Mainly because of me and my mom playing it. Okay.
[00:59:49] Speaker A: You should actually go play Yoshi's island, the Super Nintendo one. It's so good.
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is going to be the ninth Yoshi game.
[00:59:59] Speaker B: I was saying it was top six. Okay, that's way more ninth.
[01:00:04] Speaker A: Before that they Had Yoshi's Crafted World and Yoshi's Woolly World, which are both pretty much what you remember from Yoshi's story, but with like a yarn aesthetic or with like a. I was talking earlier about Katamari and how it's satisfying to be like, oh, I'm in the. I'm tiny and I'm in this world where everything is huge because I'm tiny and you get to run around like on a table and stuff. Yoshi's Crafted World is that but a Yoshi game.
[01:00:30] Speaker C: I need to check it out. I've heard of it. I can't believe I've never played it. Because I love Yoshi's Story so much.
[01:00:36] Speaker A: If you love Yoshi's Story, the best one in the entire series is the first one. It's Yoshi's island for the Super Nintendo.
Gorgeous game that to this day is still looks good. It is the best looking Super Nintendo game. Like, you cannot convince me otherwise. Yoshi's island is incredible. So, yeah, if Yoshi's Story is a big like nostalgia influence for you, go play Yoshi's Island. You'll love it.
[01:00:59] Speaker B: This. Yeah, we were talking nostalgia. Like, I remember I first got a SEGA Game Gear. Well, before I got a Game Boy. We were five. We had to share, me and my sister. But this was like we played this when we went to go visit Grandma or when we went to go do something else. This wasn't my things. But I remember. I remember a couple of the games. We had the 7Up game because there was the 7Up mascot game thing and there was.
Oh, there was a really bad Sonic game that we played. And then there was like Ring Star or something. There's a star that had stretchy arms.
[01:01:36] Speaker A: Ristar.
[01:01:37] Speaker B: Ristar.
[01:01:38] Speaker A: Yeah. It's one of the many attempts at making another mascot that SEGA did.
[01:01:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So like I had a game gear was ahead of its time and it failed because of it.
And it took until Pokemon came out three, almost four years later before I actively fell into gaming. But yeah, that's.
[01:02:00] Speaker C: I do remember playing Yoshi's Island. Sorry. I do remember playing Yoshi's Island.
[01:02:04] Speaker B: I never got to play.
[01:02:05] Speaker C: I thought it was just like a Mario game, but I guess it's not.
[01:02:08] Speaker A: I mean, it was marketed as Super Mario World 2. I don't know how accurate that actually really should be considered, but that's how they marketed it at the time. But it's very much its own thing and it's glorious. Absolutely phenomenal game.
[01:02:25] Speaker B: All right. Yeah, that's that's our stories and I think that's our episode as well.
Thank you all for listening. We have been from 8bit to 4k.
I'm lucky. Many names for Jack's Oven for Pillow Pet. Good night everybody.
[01:02:41] Speaker A: Bye bye.
[01:02:42] Speaker C: Good night.
