Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to episode 15 of from 8bit to 4k. I'm your host this week. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me two buddies to help you talk about games. We've got Mike of many names.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: How's it going everyone?
[00:00:24] Speaker A: And we've got Pillow Pet.
[00:00:26] Speaker C: Hello there.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Can you tell I was still in 4 wards host mode when I intro'd this one?
[00:00:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: That's okay guys, we have a Discord. Come join. The Discord link is in the episode description. Come talk to us about games. Tell us your thoughts on the things we're gonna talk about on this episode. We also want to give a shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippius, Esquire, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Yeet the Dab for supporting the podcast network at the Shoutout tier. Thank you guys so much for paying to keep us going on the Internet. If you want to support the podcast, we're part of the Forwards Podcast network. Head on over to patreon.com theforwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show. And $10 a month gets you that exclusive feed and we'll shout you out at the top of every episode. And all of those perks apply not only to this podcast, but also to the four Wards podcast where we help you move forward in League of Legends and we all stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch TV jacksonman, where right now it's a mixture of Path of Exile and Super Metroid and Terraria. Mike can be found at Twitch TV mikeofmanynames, where he has streamed some Terraria with us recently.
And Pillow Pet can be found at Twitch TV Pillowpet, where he has streamed some Terraria with us recently. And guys, we will be playing Terraria again this coming weekend. So make sure you follow us so you see when we go live and can come join and tell us everything we're doing wrong. Because I'm sure it's a lot.
No, but seriously, it's, it's been a lot of fun.
[00:01:57] Speaker C: I am getting the hang of it so I'm starting to figure it out and it's been going pretty good. I'm enjoying like knowing what I'm doing.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Yeah, once you hit the learning curve, the game starts becoming so much more fun.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: So I'll give a quick like momentary update of where we're at on that. We tried fighting the wall of flesh several Times we got the logic for the direction he spawns wrong and fucked up our arena. But now we know what we're doing. We're going to fix the arena this weekend when we play again and we're going to beat the wall of flesh and start hard mode. And that's going to be fun.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yeah, we got him to less than a thousand health.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: So like this was with a scuffed arena.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: This was a close, close miss. We'll.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: We'll get him. So let's start with what's going on in our lives. What do we feel like talking about this week? And pillow, I'm going to put you on the spot because your answer and my answer are both pretty open ended. What have you been doing on the Switch 2?
[00:02:52] Speaker C: So I bought the Switch 2 because I was watching some let's plays of the Pope Topia that came out. It's like the. The world building Stardew Valley. What's the other. What's the Animal Crossing version of Pokemon? So you build like these habitats which attract Pokemon. They come and live. And you start your own little villages. You got multiple different maps that are themed. And then I don't want to get into any spoilers. And then you open another map and I'm not gonna get anything into that because that will be a spoiler. But it's really fun. I'm really enjoying.
Felt like a huge tutorial at first, but it was a fun one and I really enjoyed the world building on it and it was great.
So I was watching him. Let's play. And I was getting very frustrated watching him play it because he was missing like very obvious things and I was like, all right, that's it. I got to get the Switch 2 because this is too frustrating. So I went out the next day, bought the Switch 2, bought this game just so I could be like, get the satisfaction. Be like, ah, okay, there we go. And then I'm in love with this game. I'm really enjoying it.
That's all I've really gotten into game wise. On Switch 2. I did buy the expansion pass and I have been playing Yoshi Story. I played that for a few minutes. Getting back into that and I am going to go through and play like I can play all the Marios. I started a little playthrough on Ocarina of Time and then realized that I hate the cutscenes and how slow the dialogue is. So I quit playing that because it's just not the randomizer quality of life that I'm used to now.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Did you do the transfer over of your old content to your new switch.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: Yes. It makes you like. It makes you do it.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Did that happen?
[00:04:42] Speaker C: Like five minutes.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: Oh, fantastic.
[00:04:44] Speaker C: It was real quick. You just put them right next to each other and it's just like, no Internet, nothing required. It just transfers it.
So I brought it, I got it out ready for this podcast to like show you guys how you have the regular switch. Right. Like I do. So the new switch pads or whatever they are joy cons. The joy cons are magnetic.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: So they're not. They're like. So there's. I don't know if you'll be able to see. So there's like the inside of it now and then. So this is how this looks. And it literally just goes up.
It snaps right in. No more sliding, no more nothing. It's so much better. The screen is huge. The buttons are just so much more.
You could tell, like with the flick of these.
The drifting is non existent.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: I have a question for you. How does the D Pad feel in handheld mode on the Switch 2 for playing retro games? Because that was a common complaint of the original Switch.
[00:05:50] Speaker C: I'll be honest, I really didn't notice any problems with the D Pad, which what I'm having, like, what I miss, like, it doesn't have like your typical, you know, omnidirectional feel to it, which it's kind of frustrating, but I didn't notice any.
Yeah, it's four buttons, so you don't get the omnidirection.
The only retro game that I played is Ocarina of Time so far. So I can't really get into. Because there's no use of the D Pad Ocarina of Time, like at all, maybe other than camera.
And I have. I'm gonna have to get like.
Like plug my Nintendo 64 controller or find a compatible one because not having C buttons is just miserable.
And of course they market their own Nintendo 64 like Switch for Switch 2, but I'm sure there's brands that I can get that are just as compatible and half the price.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: May I recommend the 8bit Do3D controller?
[00:06:49] Speaker C: 8bitDo3D controller.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: It's. It's so good. I have one. It's a Nintendo or 8bitdo 64 controller is what it's called.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: It is a modern controller form factor, but with the N64 face button layout and octagonal gate analog stick instead of the smooth circle gate that modern controllers use.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: It's so good for playing N64 games.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm definitely going to have to look into something. Do they have a wireless version?
[00:07:20] Speaker A: It is wireless. It is also only $40.
[00:07:23] Speaker C: Okay, yeah, I'm going to definitely check that out because it's so hard playing these games where I'm so used to, like, the C buttons and the C buttons are garbage anyway. Like, GameCube made those better in all ways with a C button stick.
So one more thing, a couple more things I wanted to highlight on this before I moved on to your guys's topic is what I really enjoyed about it is you have a top charging C port and you also have the bottom, which makes the handheld mode awesome when you're charging. No, more like, I always had the problem with the old Switch where, like, it had to sit in your lap, but, like the cord was there so you couldn't like rest it in your lap. And I didn't enjoy that much. So I'm really enjoying the design itself of the handheld piece.
I don't think it's worth the price for what it offers. A little bit more ram, more memory, you know, your typical upgrade. But I don't think they added enough to make this console worth the. What, what is it, $500, 450 without the. With the combo game.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: So, like, part of. Part of that problem is we were kind of screwed at its inception with how prices on computer parts were happening. We were screwed.
[00:08:42] Speaker C: So they haven't upped their prices since release?
[00:08:44] Speaker B: No, they haven't. They. They guaranteed that was going to be the price and they weren't going to change it. They knew that going in.
They are like guaranteeing to make money off of other things. And it's Nintendo. They will.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Yeah. The key here is, unlike other console manufacturers, Nintendo has never sold their hardware at a loss intentionally.
So they price that with the intention of they would turn a profit on every Switch 2 sold. And then when tariffs. And now the RAM shortage hit, it's cutting into their margins. They're basically selling at cost is my understanding right now. But they're still not losing money on it. Whereas, like every PS5 sold, every Xbox Series X sold costs them more than what they're selling it for. And they expect to make it back on software.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:29] Speaker C: Give me one second. And I have my Pro controller. I mean, while you guys go on and I'll show you that, because I just remembered that's what I was actually playing with. So, yeah, I got the Switch 2 Pro. So I just like, I'm going to go show you guys that so we can look at the D pad. For some reason I was looking at this for the D pad and I
[00:09:47] Speaker A: was specifically asking about.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: Yeah, give me like 15 seconds.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: That's fine. Okay, while he's doing that, about the.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: While he's doing that. Mike, tell us about Slay the Spire two.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: Okay, I will.
So out of fucking nowhere, right after, right after we recorded our last 8bit to 4k, I was told, hey, Sinus part 2 is going in early access. Oh cool. One week later it was in early access.
So for the past week, week and a half, I have been playing slay the spire 2.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: So explain what Split Inspire is.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: So Slither Spire is a. It is technically speaking a deck building game. If you know what a deck building game is, they are not like trading card games. They are RPGs where instead of having abilities, you build your power around the randomization of a deck of cards and you get powers that are cards and you play the cards. That is a deck builder. Slay the Spire 2 is very similar to Slay the Spire, but it is nice and like deviated by having just enough familiarity in what the game is and how it plays versus new features, new additions, new other things.
So the original game had four classes that fundamentally played a little bit different from each other, but could also have like a shared pool of things.
So this bar two already has two previous.
Sorry, three previous. They have five classes now. Three of the previous classes are the same.
They have two new ones and there's potential for more because we don't know what else is coming. Early access has been incredibly, incredibly effective. Like this is a game that if I did not know it was early access, outside of one or two things in the like background story, because there's technically a story of the game, I would not notice if I didn't care about the story at all. I only cared about playing the game. I would never notice. This game was an early access game. This is though.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Even over Hades 2, this is the single most polished early access game I've ever seen. Hades 2 still had things that were noticeably missing. This is every bit as much content as the original Slay the Spire. And I know there's more coming.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Okay, so is this. You've played it in early access. Now you're just going to set it aside until full release? Or do you feel like this is an early access game that you're going to play and be excited about every update as it more gets added to it leading up to the full release?
[00:12:24] Speaker B: So I, I like deck builders. They're Kind of just a fun way of time wasting. And especially with this, I can go in, start three turns. Oh, something's happened. Pause quick game, join something else. So this is a great time waster game for me. So it's, it's one of the games that I get to just have and play and I will continue to play throughout the time. But also one of the new features is one of the most fun things about it. It is a four player multiplayer.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Everyone has a simultaneous turn in which you do your entire turn to the enemy and the enemy does everything it does to all of you. And then there are some specific secret multiplayer cards that you don't get in normal that some of them are class specific, some of them are generic ones. They're really, really fun. I have done, let's see, let's see. This game came out, what did I say, a week and a half ago. I already have, let's see, 24 hours in the game. I have a full day of playtime. Of that 24 hours, probably 15 of them are multiplayer. And it scales from two to four incredibly well. It's really fun. It doesn't lock you out from playing one of the classes if someone else wants to play it, you can do kind of silly things. If all of you decide to do one of the same thing, it can be incredibly like tactical on who does what, what goes where. It's, it's. So if you enjoy the feel of Slay the Spire, slay the Spire 2 captures all of that, gives you more and gives you multiplayer. I'm having so much fun with this game. I'm likely to play it again on Thursday with a bunch of buddies.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Nice. All right, pillow, you got your controller. What do you want to show us?
[00:14:12] Speaker C: So I'll just show you.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: This is a podcast. It's not a visual medium.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Yes, just.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Well, this.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Yeah, this is just for you guys. You're asking about the D pad. So it's, it's, it's a little bit smaller. The controller feels a lot less clunkier. Fingers are close together and they added two buttons on the back of the, I guess whatever you would call these, the handlebars. Handlebars.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Grip triggers, I think is the term that people are using as a generic term for those.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Oh yeah, that is probably it.
[00:14:42] Speaker C: So the texture feels a lot better. It's more of a soft matted texture compared to like just a hard, cold plastic.
So it's got, it's grippier.
The buttons feel better.
So it's a, it's A good controller.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: I'm.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: I have no complaints. Felt really good in my hands when I was using it.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Fair enough. I think the barrier for me would be that I already have eight bitdo controllers that are really, really nice.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: So if I were to get a Switch 2, I probably would not get a pro controller. I would just continue using what I already have.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: I don't think there's anything wrong.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Kudos to Nintendo.
Stuff that works on the Switch 1 just continues to work on the Switch 2. With the exception of maybe waking the console depending on the specific controller in question. Which is a lot better than how they used to do it. Where they sold pro controllers for the Wii U that didn't work with the Switch or the Wii and Wii controllers weren't compatible as pro controllers on the Wii U. And it was horrible.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: But then again, you have the N64 into or not N64. GameCube into.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: That was a different time.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Which GameCube into Wii was fully compatible? Plug and go.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Yes. But GameCube into Wii was the exception rather than the rule. It's the only time Nintendo has been that cross compatible.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: They're fully reverse compatible with that.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Wii games could use the GameCube controllers if the developer was inclined. It was great.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: But also like, if we're talking controllers real quick, I have never felt a better fucking controller than a PS5 controller. It is my favorite thing. If I could pair it up with everything, I would pair it up with everything. I don't have a PS5 and I have a PS5 controller. It feels that good. I'd love this.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: Fair enough.
All right. What I feel like talking about this week is I want to talk about my experience going to an Arcade in 2026 because I turned 40 on Saturday and I got some friends and we went to the arcade because that's a thing you can still do in 2026.
I love this arcade.
I live near Olympia, Washington and a new arcade opened up there a couple years ago called Insert Coin and they had a branch in Centralia, which is a city further south that I've been to before. And it was a neat little like arcade restaurant type vibe.
This is a full on Arcade, like 20,000 square foot game floor arcade. And it's kind of surreal going into an Arcade in 2026 because a lot of the games are exactly the same arcade games that I remember. They're old arcade games.
They had the 1992 X Men arcade beat em up game. You know the one with two CRT TVs and a mirror to make it so that it's super widescreen and six player simultaneous play. That game's awesome, by the way, even though it is very spammy.
They had that and they had that set to free play. So me and my friends just played through the entire game because it was on free play and we just could. Which was awesome.
They have some 80s arcade games. They had the Tron arcade game and the original Super Mario Brothers arcade game. Not Super Mario Bros. But Mario Brothers Arcade.
They had a Metal Slug game. They had Mortal Kombat, like all of the old classics. So it was very heartwarming to see that. But what I want to talk about here is they also have a smattering. Apparently there has been a revival of modern arcade machines in recent years.
There's a lot of newer ones. There were arcade games based on phone game properties like Angry Birds.
There are newer rail shooters that I had never heard of. There's a Halo rail shooter in arcades.
Yeah, it wasn't great, but it exists. There's a Luigi's Mansion rail shooter.
Yeah, Luigi's Mansion.
There's a couple of newer zombie ones that I didn't recognize. They have a Godzilla VR rail shooter where you literally wear what more or less looked like a quest headset and Machine Gun Godzilla.
A ton of various like ticket games, all mostly based on phone game properties like Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja and that kind of stuff.
So I was genuinely surprised at the sheer volume and breadth of newer arcade games that they had. And possibly the coolest to me was they had a two versus two air hockey game that was Pac man themed where it dumps a ton of pucks onto the table at once.
And the big puck is worth more points than all the little pucks that it dumps out. And so it's just pure chaos as two players are trying to hit this swarm of pucks into the opposing goal. Two players goal, it's great. And then this is something a lot of people don't know about me because I don't talk about my younger years a lot. In my twenties I was an avid Dance Dance Revolution player. I'm talking like would go to an arcade and spend $10, $15 at least once a week. Own a $600 at the time in 2005 metal dance mat that I still have somewhere in my house. For the PS2, I played a lot of DDR.
One thing that DDR arcade machines were always notorious for was they were impossible to maintain.
The step sensors were always going to fail because it's a high wear component. And they haven't made those things in over a decade at this point. So those machines all eventually failed.
There's apparently a new dancing arcade machine called Step Maniacs, spelled Step Mania X but pronounced Step Maniacs, which uses redesigned sensors for easy maintenance so that arcade operators can keep the damn things working.
And they have one of those at my local arcade.
So I gave it a play and it's kind of weird for me because much like Pump it up, it has a middle panel in addition to then the four directions that DDR uses. So it's up, down, left, right and middle.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: Which is weird. But that's fine. I got used to it literally halfway through the first song. But also because this is a more modern game, it has a tremendous set list of songs.
And when I say tremendous, I mean there's like 500 songs on this machine. If the operator has connected it to the Internet to download all of the song updates, these range from. There's actually some songs that are just straight up songs from old dancing games.
I know there's Speed Over Beethoven and Cartoon Heroes, which were popular DDR songs back in the day. There's a bunch of these.
According to the wiki, there's a total of like 50 some odd songs that a version of them was in a DDR game, another 50 that were in an in the Groove game, and another 50 that were in pump it up. And then another 50 of that were in something called Rerave. I don't know what Rerave is, but so like out of their 500 songs, like 200 of them, a version of that song was featured in a previous dancing game.
But this is apparently made by the people who made in the Groove and other dancing games.
They. They formed a new company and made a new arcade machine in 2017 that's actually available. And operators can get parts to replace things as they fail and is maintained and updated. And that's fucking cool. If you've never played these games. If you're not old like me and don't remember DDR, these games are just genuinely fun rhythm games.
So I'm. I'm really excited that exists. And as I'm continuing on my weight loss journey, I hope to get in good enough shape that I can actually play the game properly. Because I. I managed to play two songs on EZ plus and I was dead tired.
I had to tag out and have my friend play the third song on the set. Because just like those old games, you get three songs per play.
But it's a Lot of fun. I, I, I had a blast going to the arcade in 2026. And that's wild to me because if 10 years ago you told me that arcades would be thriving in a decade, I would have laughed at you. Ten years ago, arcades were basically dead in the U.S.
they were even on the decline in Japan.
[00:23:29] Speaker C: Do you guys have like Dave and Buster's around your area?
[00:23:33] Speaker A: I think there's one up in Seattle,
[00:23:35] Speaker C: but I'm not sure they, we have one that we go to that's like an hour two away from us. My son loves it because obviously the bright lights and the noises. Right. And it's, it's really fun because it's got, it, it's got that air hockey game that you were talking about and it's got a lot of the, the Mario Kart arcade games. You sit down. It's got a lot of those rail shooters, basketball, like your typical arcade style.
So that's really fun to go to. It does the card tokens. It's got a, it's not fun anymore because they put your tickets on the card. Like you don't get to carry around a cup full of tickets, which, that's a bummer.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: But also it makes it easier to save up your tickets between visits and potentially actually use them ever. Oh yeah, because I remember as a kid we'd go to the arcade, I'd have all these tickets and you'd know that they'd get lost or destroyed before your next visit. So you'd wind up getting five super balls because that's all. You had enough tickets for it. It's like, what the fuck am I gonna do with five super balls? But it's better than nothing.
[00:24:38] Speaker C: I've always used all mine. Always on candy. Like always. I did the math.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Too many, like full arcades. We, we have a ton. Like, I think I have five or six barcades.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: I was gonna talk about barcades too. Yeah.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: And we have like, of the ones that I know of in the area, three of them are like classic coin operated. One of them is like every game is free. Most of them are retro. But it's also like only half of the area and the other half is like, hey, they do trivia night. They do other things going on there. So it's like a big, like just meeting place. That place is called Ignite. It's awesome.
[00:25:18] Speaker C: Me and, but sorry, go ahead.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: I don't know if we have an actual arcade. I know there's a, there's a David Busters arcade Somewhere. But like, I haven't seen an arcade.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: So I do want to clarify that this particular place, in addition to their gigantic arcade floor, they have a proper restaurant that has SNES or Genesis mini consoles at each table for you to play while you wait for your food.
They have a bar, they have an ice cream parlor, and they have an axe throwing area where you can order food from the restaurant and they'll bring it out and you can do ax throwing, which we also did while we were there. Axe throwing was pretty fun.
[00:25:52] Speaker C: Sounds awesome. I love that.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: It was a great time. And we were there on a random Saturday. This was March 14th. They were immediately very crowded. There was a lot of people there.
So apparently even in 2026, arcades are a thing. And like, this one's thriving. Obviously. I know not all of them are, but that makes me happy. I like arcades.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: Have you went to a barcade before?
[00:26:20] Speaker A: The nearest ones are in.
I think there's one in Tacoma. But we went there once and the smell was so strong, we immediately left. We could not handle the odor coming in that entering that building. It smelled very strongly of weed.
[00:26:36] Speaker C: Oh. See, I've been to a couple and they were always like, good environments, like, you know, the type of people that you want to be around. And I've always went, like, it was good for me to go to with my buddies. Like, we always sat down and played drunk driving Mario Kart and it was always so much fun.
So yeah, if you guys, like live in a bigger area or near, like a big city, see if you got a barcade near you and go check it out. It's fun to go. It's usually. It's all on like Raspberry PI's big arcade near me. So they're usually on like the raspberry PI Chicago.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: There's gotta be arcades near you.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: We have mostly arcades. Like, the bar is half of the thing, the arcade. We have a bunch of things like there's a couple Dave and Busters around. There's a bowling alley that has some arcade games. There's a putting zone that has some arcade stuff. There's one place way out north that's like a nickel place.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Mike. I googled Chicago arcades and I get results for a place called Logan Arcade that has apparently has the 10 Player Killer Queen arcade machine. I got a place called Replay Arcade.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: All of those are barcades.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: There's. Okay, you and I have a different standard for barcade then. To me, a barcade is a bar with an arcade attached okay. Some of these look more like arcades with bar attached, which is what the place I went to is.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: The thing that I will distinct them with is a lot of the barcades that we have are like there is a distinct massive bar which is about a third of the building and then maybe two thirds of it is arcade.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:08] Speaker C: The ones that I've been to, I
[00:28:10] Speaker B: would call those 75% arcade. And then like a little bit of a bar. We don't have a lot of those.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, we have two of those. Because there's another arcade in Olympia as well that I've been to that is they have a bar, mostly arcade.
[00:28:24] Speaker C: About the barcades that I go to are ones that are just strictly set up like with Raspberry PIs everywhere.
All their setups, it's just rabbit's berry pies. Like it doesn't have. They don't have a whole lot of like retro arcade games. It's mostly just retro games set up on their emulator. Raspberry PI's that you can sit down and like they have made up fake old style living rooms where you sit down and play.
And it's, it's always been fun to go to those.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: So yeah, go to an arcade. They're genuinely just fun. Just they're not cheap. You're gonna spend some money, but it's a fun time, especially bring your friends. Like I was in a group of four people. Alright, so we have one other topic we want to talk about this week which is kind of appropriate for me. Talking about my 40th birthday and going to arcades, which is for us older gamers, gamers over 30. What is a game that instantly takes you back to being alone in your room, undistracted by the outside world?
[00:29:25] Speaker C: Well, I'll kick it off.
So for me, everybody has this sense that hits them back with nostalgia. You know, sounds, smells, anything that just puts you back in a spot. You know, if I hear a, a specific bird, a morning dove in my area, like that sends me back to like when I was a child.
But the thing that does it the most is Pokemon games.
Like up to Generation three. When you get to Sapphire and Ruby, Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, that's where like all the games up to that just put me in straight pure nostalgia of playing games way too late. Going to school, exhausted, just to wake up and play. Play this again on the bus ride to school, playing it at recess like this was what everybody was doing when I was going to school. That's all we talked about. Carrying around your. Your trading cords with you so you could go to school and get different Pokemon. And it's amazing. I would say of these three generations, Generation three is the one that sticks in my mind the most because it's got one of my favorite Pokemon in it and which is Poochyena.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:46] Speaker C: But I mean, everyone loves this. It's just this, these three games themselves. Like, I just, I have like a small emulator that I bought that's a handheld Game Boy looking color. It looks like a Game Boy color. And I'll just sit down sometimes and just play. Play like old the Pokemon games and just enjoy it. I. I don't get into them too long because it takes a lot of time to invest into these games because they're not fast paced games by any means.
That's it.
Pokemons. One, two, three.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: All right, Mike, what about you?
[00:31:18] Speaker B: There's two different ones that really pop into my head immediately. And both of them could not be more different from each other. I'm gonna start with the one that is a stronger memory because I have the soundtrack and I play the soundtrack because it is so well done. The people that they did making the music for Halo Combat Evolved were just brilliant. The orchestral work that they did, outstanding. I. I do not remember his name. The. It's like Martin something.
Phenomenal. Phenomenal work. Every single time I hear that intro, I'm taken back immediately to a basement in my friend's house where we're sitting there doing this for the first time. I'm just. Or, or like there's a slight variation. Even the fucking Halo 2 and 3. I'll get like, man, doing this in a dorm room with some friends, playing in a six man fucking arena, going in and doing other things. There's so many nostalgic memories that hit based on what song is playing. And it's almost always songs that get me really heavily on this one because the music is so heavily tied with that game and that memory that like, it's just this instant trigger that makes me feel 25 years younger.
[00:32:44] Speaker C: I mean, Halo itself has soundtracks that'll bring a whole generation to tears. Like when they hear it and like quiet a whole room and everybody would sing along.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:57] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: So what's the other one?
[00:33:00] Speaker B: The other one?
This is, this is my personal one of this. This is a rarity. I don't think any of you have ever played this one. It's Dragon Warrior monsters. And it is, it is just this, this hit of nostalgia of me.
And I had one other friend who had it. And so we would do battles together. But there's this, it has this just homey feeling from when I was like 12.
And it's, it's got this very specific. Like, if you've ever played any of the Dragon Warrior or Dragon Quest games, the soundtrack is very familiar. The, the feeling is very familiar. But there's this little twist to Dragon Warrior monsters and how its soundtrack makes me feel. It's always the soundtrack because it's, it's what gets me most. But if it's not the, the soundtrack, like I could, if I had my Game Boy working, I could open this game up and instantly feel like I'm 12 again because I still have my disc over there. It's. It's still there, it still works. And I can pop that open and just feel like I'm 12 again because it's, it's this core memory for me of one of the games that I truly put in unbelievable amounts of time in my room alone. I have this, this core memory of being unable to beat a boss. And then getting so frustrated, I tore the game out and threw the cartridge. And I couldn't find it for a month and a half. And it flew under my bed. Of course, didn't bother looking there. Went digging, found the cartridge, put the thing in immediately. One shot the boss afterwards. So it's like just, just these little itty bitty things that make me feel young again. And that's, that's really like this, this wonderful thing from your childhood. Like if you have a game that you, you never. I thought of another one right here on the spot. And this brings me back to when I was five. Putt Putt.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: That's my wife's answer to this, actually.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Putt Putt goes to the moon. Putt Putt saves the zoo. If you ever like just seeing that. Talking about things that bring me nostalgia again. I had a fleeting image of this car from Putt Putt and this is Tink. And now I suddenly feel like I'm playing on this ancient TV with CRT on floppy disks. It's like it's such a memory.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
I am not exaggerating. She owns all of the Putt Putt games on Steam for this very reason she has. Let's see, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 putt putt games.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: I need to look at Steve to figure out how many Putt Putt.
Jesus Christ.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: I think she got them in a humble bundle at some point.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Yeah. No, Putt Putt is absolutely my one of My wife's comfort games. That and Freddy Fish and Pajama Sam.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Which are all basically the same general idea of a game.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: Yeah, Pajama Sam, which.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: She has all of those too, by the way.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:35:59] Speaker A: They're all. They're kids. Edutainment games. They're very simple.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: My brain did not see this, how this actually looks, because my brain still thinks of this from 95.
So, like, I'm looking at this and going. I don't remember looking this pixelated, because it did in my memory. It looks perfect. But I heard the. Like, I just opened it up to look at the. And hit the soundtrack, and suddenly it's like this little bead of happiness.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: So my answer to this is pretty broad, and you may have guessed it already if you've paid attention to the kinds of games I talk about. When I talk about retro games, I'm a little bit older than these two.
For me, basically everything on the Super Nintendo that I have nostalgia for does this to me. I pulled up my Super Nintendo folder for my emulator. I'm talking games like Actraiser. I'm talking games like Un Squadron, games like Mega Man X.
I love Mega Man X or Contra 3, or Link to the Past. Donkey Kong Country 1, 2, and 3. Super Metroid I talk about all the time because it's my favorite game of all time. Absolutely fits the bill here. But I'm also talking the more obscure Super Nintendo games you may not be familiar with, like Soul Blazer or Illusion of Gaia. That one's real good. And the people who played it know. But a lot of people have just never heard of it because it's old.
And maybe I'll talk about that franchise on next week's topic.
But Also things like Lufia 2.
There's so many games. There's. I love Zombies Ate My Neighbors. I love Pocky and Rocky. I love Legend of the Mystical Ninja, which is the first Goemon game on the Super Nintendo. Like, there are so many Super Nintendo games that just. They just bring a smile to my face and I can just lose myself for an hour or two and feel better, no matter how shit my day was.
I fucking love the Super Nintendo library. There are so many Super Nintendo games that, I mean, obviously they're old, they're dated, but they're still fun today. And that's something that I feel like a lot of older retro has a hard time doing. If you didn't grow up on NES games, there are very few NES games that you will enjoy now because Most of them are frustrating in weird ways that you're not used to as a modern gamer. Some of that's still true on the Super Nintendo, but a lot of them are games you can go back and play. Like I've shown my wife Super Nintendo games. She did not grow up on Super Nintendo. The first console she ever had access to was an N64 and she had a blast. She loved Final Fantasy 6. She loved Chrono Trigger, but also she loved Legend of the Mystical Ninja. She didn't like Zombies Ate My Neighbors so much. And I was sad about that fact.
She adored Lufia too. Like, Super Nintendo just is good. And it's good even for like co op games like the Magical Circus with Mickey Mouse.
It's a fucking Mickey Mouse game, but it's genuinely good and fun and has two player co op. Like the Super Nintendo ruled. I could literally talk for multiple podcasts in a row just about Super Nintendo games that I love. That's how much joy the Super Nintendo brings me.
[00:39:34] Speaker C: Super Nintendo's got so many great games.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it's because it's older.
It still cost a meaningful amount of money to put out a game, period.
So like, I think every older console has a better ratio of good to slop shit than modern consoles do for that reason, because the barrier to entry is just much lower now. But I feel like relative to its peers, the Super Nintendo had more amazing games as a percentage of its total library than anything else.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: There is still a reason we all gave Nintendo so much credit. And a part of that is like they are the reason why we have so much of these things. We've been talking about Nintendo having these things. They're still a proprietary company that makes great fucking games.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Now that being said, Nintendo, stop being cowards. Add more of the amazing Super Nintendo games to your Switch Online Super Nintendo library. There are so many glaring omissions despite there being like 50 games on that thing.
[00:40:37] Speaker C: Mm.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: It's wild how many glaring omissions there still are on that.
Yeah, hell, literally half the games I've mentioned aren't on there. It would be a perfect opportunity for them to have, you know, Soul Blazer Illusion of Gaia Terranigma. Just saying, put those games on there.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Nintendo proprietary, like actual retro gaming thing. There's a. There's a reason I'm heavily considering buying some of the advertised retro things because their libraries extend significantly farther than what Nintendo is willing to put on their E stores.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: I mean, that's why the unfortunate real answer is that piracy is the best.
It's the best way to maintain these things because these games are tiny. My entire Super Nintendo folder of games I have is 64 gigs, most of which is the music files I use when I'm streaming Super Metroid.
Literally most of that.
They're like CD quality music files. If I remove my map rando folder one gig, one gig for 800 files, there's no reason these things shouldn't be more readily available. The reasoning is companies are cheap and don't want to pay a license for an emulator and put the game up. And Nintendo doesn't want to make their games too available because then people won't buy new ones.
That's why they trickle feed the Switch online system. It's very annoying because there are genuinely like there's a ton of crap out of those 800 games. I'd say probably 700 of them are bad or are irrelevant. I guess would be a better way to say that like a lot of them aren't genuinely bad, but they just haven't aged well and they're not culturally important.
So who gives a shit.
But that still leaves like a hundred titles that fucking rule. And many of them hold up. Like a shocking percentage of them hold up and are still fun. Most of them are not Super Metroid caliber, let's be real or linked to the past caliber where like very few. Those games are just genuinely timeless. They're some of the best video games ever made, but a lot of them are still genuinely fun good games. Today at least some of them have been made available outside of Nintendo, like Mega Man X. You can buy the Mega Man X Legacy Collection on Switch, on Eshop. Capcom makes it available and you can go play classic Mega Man X. They're good, well emulated versions of the games. There's a handful of games in those kinds of boats, but a lot of the rest of these are just kind of lost to time. And it makes me sad. But that's my answer is just basically everything good on the Super Nintendo Library gives me that warm fuzzy feeling. And that's gonna be it this week. So guys, I have a mission for you. Listeners, listeners, I want you to join the discord if you haven't already and post in other games and tell us what your game that brings you back to your warm fuzzy childhood vibes is. Doesn't matter how long ago that was. You can be a 20 year old answering this, you could be 15 right now and answering this. I don't care.
What's the game that gives you the warm fuzzies what is your comfort, Nostalgia Game listeners? I want to see answers in the discord. That's my mission for you. That's your homework. Other than that, that's been episode 15 of from 8bit to 4k. I've been Jack Zoman for my command names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night.
[00:44:03] Speaker C: Good night.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: Good night, everybody.
