Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to from 8bit to 4k. I'm your host this week, Mike of many names. Joining me, my other two co hosts, we've got Jack Zoman.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Hello, it's me. I'm Jack Someone.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: And we've got Pillow Pet.
[00:00:23] Speaker C: I'm still Pillow Pet.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And we are part of the three four words. Three words Fuck me Forwards network.
This means that you can find our Discord link in the description below and we are part of the same.
Oh Patreon. You can find that patreon.com theforwards podcast you can support us. $1 a month tells us that you love us. $5 a month gives you some exclusive behind the scenes footage and our intro to work with audios. $10 a month. You get that exclusive feed and we'll do your shout out much like this shout out to Codex, Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skibius, Esqu, Labana, Uncle Chrisco and Yeet the Dab. Thank you guys very much for supporting us. These benefits work on both of our podcasts here at 8bit to 4k and the 4words podcast. And I believe, I believe we are ready to go into our intro topic today, which is not a full topic,
[00:01:21] Speaker A: so it's more like a news that we want to commentate on because this was announced today as we're.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: This was announced today and this has been something that has been highly anticipated and also a little bit dreaded for this very reason. So the Steam machine finally got its pricing announced today. And what the fuck it is, it is expensive.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: So the Steam machine starts at $1,049. That gives you 512 gigabytes of storage. If you want 2 terabytes of storage, that's $1,349.
Now for the tier of performance Valve has targeted. That sounds exorbitant.
However, if you look at the PC hardware market in 2026, if you wanted to DIY a comparable performance machine using off the shelf parts, A you're going to have much higher power draw and a bigger computer. There is no way around that 100%. But B you're still gonna be spending almost $1,000 just piecing out a comparable set of RAM and storage and graphics card to the Steam machine is gonna set you back about 700 and then you still need a motherboard, a power supply, a cpu, a case and all the other accoutrements.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: But also that version does not come with a controller.
Yes, which that's where I'm sitting there going, really?
[00:02:56] Speaker C: How can you release your console without a Controller, you know, I get it, but I don't at the same time.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Okay, to be fair, they are offering it bundled with this controller for $80 more, whereas the steam controller alone is 100. So you do get a discount on the controller compared to buying it separately. But also you don't need a Steam controller for this thing. There are really good $30 controllers for PC gaming that I would highly recommend if you're just trying to keep costs down. Equivalent controller, 60 plus dollar controller.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Equivalent controllers for PlayStation and Microsoft are $70. They're 69.99.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: For their flagship.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: The Steam controller, to be fair, is significantly better than either the PlayStation or Xbox stock controllers in several key ways. It's not gonna be better for everyone, but like it has Hall Effects joysticks, it has other features that just do not exist on the base tier.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, there are, there are reasons that a Steam controller is expensive, but.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: But to put in context, $35 gets you an 8bitdo Ultimate C, which is a wired controller. That's the downside. But is otherwise fully featured, has hall effect joysticks, has fantastic feeling buttons and D pad. Like I use an 8Bitdo ultimate, the wireless version myself. It's glorious. This is the same controller, but wired. 35 bucks. So you don't need an $80 steam controller to be able to enjoy a Steam machine.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: I find it a problem to sell a system with no way to use the system inherently with the system. Yeah, it should come with some kind of a controller or at minimum, because it is a Steam machine and a lot of Steam games use keyboard and mouse.
The shitty keyboard and mouse you get with other computers. Give me a $10 keyboard and a $10 mouse. You need to come with something because if I buy a box and I can't use it, you didn't sell it for me for that price, you sold me a box.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Yep. To be fair, this is the other part of what I want to talk about on this. Valve is doing work to make sure that this is sold in the most fair way possible so that scalpers can't buy all of these and resell them on eBay for $2,000.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: There are good things Valve is doing. Yes.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: So if you go to the Steam Machine pre order page right now on Steam, first of all, it lists the versions separately as with controller and just the base storage model. So it is very clearly delineated that it does not come with a controller unless you buy the with controller version. No one is going to buy a Steam machine and go I don't have a controller. I didn't know it didn't come with one. Because you literally see right there with controller.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Some people will be stupid enough. These people deserve to not pay attention. Yes, but.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: And then here is the best part. To purchase a Steve machine at launch, you must have a Steam account in good standing that bought something on Steam. It can be a $1 game, it doesn't matter prior to the Steam machine being announced before today.
I think it's before sometime in April. Yeah, actually.
So you cannot make a new account to get extra shots to try to get this.
And on top of that, you can join the wait list anytime before June 25th at 10am, which unfortunately is going to be about 12 hours after this podcast drops.
And everyone who joins the waitlist by that time, that list will then be closed and randomized and that will determine the order of who can purchase one. So it's, it's not a lottery like we've had with other shortages where oh cool, you won, you can buy one. Oh, you didn't win, you can't buy one. It's a wait list. You'll get on the list, they will ship it to you as they get stock, and then when the waitlist runs out, it'll go into more general availability, supply allowing of course.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: So which one did you sign up for?
[00:07:23] Speaker B: I didn't.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: I'm not interested.
[00:07:25] Speaker C: I signed up for the controller versions just in case.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: I know for a fact I will not need this, so I have no reason to buy it.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: For my personal setup, I have a Nvidia Shield TV that I can use the Steam Link app to play games from my PC on my tv. Already I mentioned I have a wireless controller, so convenient and my PC is like two orders of magnitude more powerful than the Steam Machine's specs are. So for me this is a non starter product. Is the Steam Machine too expensive?
I think simultaneously absolutely. And no. It's priced appropriately for 2026 PC hardware, which sucks.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: This, this is why it is a problem is because this has not come until now when most of us have been able to buy other things cheaper because they have already been essentially grandfathered in at previous prices.
Nintendo waited a long time for tariffs before they announced a price and they are already doing a price increase.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the key is all three of the competing consoles, the Nintendo Switch 2, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X either have had or are about to get price increases because of parts availability regardless of tariffs. We're not even getting into politics.
Just the PC market in 2026 is that fucked. And components are impossible for anyone to
[00:08:55] Speaker B: source and the Steam machine is technically superior to the other competitors and what it can put out in certain cases.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: It's pretty comparable to a base PS5
[00:09:07] Speaker B: in most regards, but also has a Steam library which yes, is a big fucking deal.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Yes. And that is the thing to keep in mind is if you're looking at this as a console, yeah, it's a thousand dollar console but also the games on it are frequently $32 for a pair of AAA titles or $10 or less for really good indie games.
So there's a lot of, a lot of value in the Steam store and an existing library if you're an existing gamer.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah, if each game because it runs
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Steam os, you will not be able to play certain multiplayer online games that have anti cheats that do not work in Linux.
Most games work, but some don't.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: Okay, completely forgot that Steam Link was a thing. So I don't even think I need one of these because again, my computer is like you said, stronger. Yeah, I can just hook it up like a PC.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: I literally have used the Steam Link app on my Nvidia Shield for over 20 hours this past weekend.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: If you are someone who likes gaming, has not had a chance to buy a PC and has been wanting to do some PC gaming and has the income for this startup now, start working on things that you can get working on it. You're not likely to get into that first line because obviously you can't get into that first line if you didn't already have a Steam library. But like if you're someone who had
[00:10:30] Speaker A: a Steam deck, maybe Speaking of price increases, the steam deck's like $200 more expensive than it used to be because of component costs.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: Sounds like a line at the right time.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: That was 600, 800. Now it's 800,800 950.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I really hope that AI goes and fucks itself so the rest of us can have affordable computing again.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: God, that'd be lovely.
Anyway, we were briefly talking about it. I think now since we've already hit on it, we'll do a quick point on it. There are some really insane game sales that have been going on. We put our, we put game sales that we think are amazing in our discord. There's a deal highlight thing. So if you want really good game sales that we find on Steam or elsewhere, we pop links into them. You can take them out right now. One we're talking about Cyberpunk 2077 is under 20 bucks.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Yep. Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the twin pack is $32.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Horizon, Forbidden west is 30 bucks.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Now, some of those deals will expire the morning after this podcast drops, but Steam has really good deals. Really often they'll be replaced by something.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: And we.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: There's always games that are on sale for holy shit prices.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: And if we find one that we like, we've talked about a lot, we will be talking about it. We'll be putting them in there. Take a look. It's one of the other benefits of joining the discord.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: All right, we're going to get into our meat and potatoes of the topic today. And this is more of a downer for us than the usual ones, because we are talking about games that have either been fully canceled on us or games that, after a long period of time, they were released to massively disappointing reception. Essentially, they either had a very, very good reputation and they killed it, or there were game dev errors around the way, or a studio closed them out of nowhere there. The entire thing is across the board here. And we're going to start with the games that came out and then just didn't have it and disappeared very quickly. The game that most of you, if you are on the older side, will remember, Duke Nukem Forever, which aptly took forever to come out.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Yeah. To put into context, Duke Nukem 3D, which. Duke Nukem 3D is one of the greatest video games ever made. Just period. Duke Nukem 3D is amazing. Came out in 1996.
Duke Nukem Forever, when it finally found some version of it as an actual release version, came out in summer of 2011, a full 15 years later.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: That's a. That's a. That's a hit to the gut. In a situation where those games two, three years, usually between cycles, the most you'd see for a long Dev time was 5, 15. We expected that game to be dead.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Yeah. This game. Most people thought Duke Nukem Forever was never actually gonna come out. It was memed on.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: It was. It was a literal joke.
And then unfortunately, it became a literal joke.
Yeah.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: So, all right. I have. I have a little bit of history with this game. So I mentioned Duke Nukem for 3D is genuinely an amazing title. Duke Nukem 3D is genuinely a better game than Doom. It doesn't have the music that makes Doom so iconic.
And Doom came first, so Doom gets huge credit for that. Duke Nukem 3D has great level design, often better than Doom more interesting enemies.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: It's K Minor. It was able to benefit from the success of the previous.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Exactly. And just like doom, Duke Nukem 3D has source ports. You can play like the game in 4k on modern hardware easily because of the source ports.
One of the things that always set Duke Nukem apart from Doom or other games of its era is that Duke Nukem was naughty. Duke Nukem literally walks up to strippers and has them flash their titties at him. In Duke Nukem 3D, it is an over the top satire of like 80s action heroes.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: That is the best description I've ever heard of Duke Nukem.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: That is what Duke Nukem 3D is. That's why it's such a good game, because it is satire. The version of Duke Nukem Forever that finally released does not seem to understand that concept. Duke Nukem Forever is not satire. Duke Nukem Forever thinks it's genuinely funny to slap the tits of girls that were abducted by aliens and turned into monsters.
That is a thing that happens in that game, by the way. And then they die like it is. It is bad.
Duke Nukem Forever will offend no matter what your sensibilities are. It'll offend because the gunplay sucks, the level design is terrible. It'll offend because the content is incredibly offensive and unfunny.
It's such a disappointment.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: There are.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: I've played through the entire game. I have 6.4 hours of playtime on Duke Nukem Forever on Steam.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: It's.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: I beat the game.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: I'm quoting that there. 6.5 hours to beat a game. That is a. That was when it was released. It was a full cost game. So what? 50 bucks at the time. 60.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: 50 bucks.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: That's an inexcusable amount of content, which is what it came with. It came as a broken half game. The writing was poor. Without realizing how bad it was. This is the way that the modern like audience discovered what development hell was. Yes, because this is the classic title of development hell. Duke Nukem Forever bounced from studio to studio to studio as they closed trying to make this game over and over again. And whoever got it last slapped what they could on it and forgot what they were trying to make. It was just a real shame.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Gearbox is who got it last.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Gearbox makes good shit.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: But sometimes Gearbox has made good shit. I think that's an important.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Rephrase the statement. Gearbox can make good shit.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Borderlands 2 was made by Gearbox. Borderlands 2 is amazing.
They also made Battleborn, which is a game that we considered putting on this list.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: True.
However, Borderlands 4 is also a great game, but they have. They have it in them to still do good things. But they've also, as we talked about, had a game that disappeared on us.
So.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I think my first Duke Nukem and last Duke Nukem was Time to Kill.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: That's the. The 2D platformer that was released like, well after, isn't it?
[00:17:55] Speaker C: I think it was. I think it was more.
It was like a 3D roaming.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: I'm looking it up. Duke Nukem time to kill, 1998. Third person shooter for the PlayStation, apparently.
[00:18:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: So it's not the game I was thinking of.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: This one was like open level 3D.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. I don't know that one. I can't comment on that one.
[00:18:17] Speaker C: It was funny, you know, it was Duke Nukem funny. You know, satire.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: It realized satire. Horror.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: Horror.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Horror humor.
There. There are ways to make offensive jokes that aren't offensive to everyone. People can build careers around it. People like George Carlin make offensive jokes that are not offensive.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Yeah. If you're offended by George Carlin, you're the problem. Duke Nukem 3D was close to that. It was definitely. It crossed the line sometimes. It was not perfect, But Duke Nukem 3D was still. It was satire. It was making fun of Edgelord bullshit. It was making fun of 80s action movies.
It was making fun of all of it. It was making fun of fucking chauvinism. Duke Nukem is a chauvinist pig. And Duke Nukem3d is pointing out how shitty he is for it. And then Duke Nukem Forever is celebrating his chauvinist bullshit. There's literally a scene where twins are giving him a blowjob.
That's the beginning of Duke Nukem Forever. The punchline there is that he's getting a blowjob.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Yeah, there was. There was a reason for every joke in 3D. Even when the joke was, huh, tits Funny.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. It was thoughtful and not mean spirited in its intent, which is not the same for Duke Nukem Forever.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: An offensively hilarious game. That did it right. Conker's Bad Fur Day.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
So, like, it can be done, right? Duke Nukem Forever, the version that finally came out, definitely wasn't it? And like, I don't know how much of this to literally just put on Georges Broussard's head, but a lot of it is his Fault.
He's. He's one of the creators of Duke Nukem. And by all accounts, the part of the reason that the development of Duke Nukem Forever was such a shit show was him constantly making them redo work because they wanted to make changes that forced redoing work.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
So that's Duke Nukem Forever for you. The other game that we want to talk about that came out to massive disappointment, which was more expected this time. However, you've probably heard of it. It's Anthem.
Anthem was designed to be the direct
[00:20:48] Speaker A: competitor for Destiny, and the promise of Anthem was Destiny. But your Iron man pretty much.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: And you for being brief seconds. Brief seconds. It felt good. And then they realized that they couldn't give you that power all the time.
And so Anthem became a joke that lasted basically six months and then was pulled. You cannot play Anthem anymore.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: So I think that this is one of the few examples of a game getting a demo, and that demo being the, like, Nuke that killed the game.
Anthem had a demo before it came out, which meant everyone, for free had an opportunity to play this piece of shit and realize how bad it was and know that it was not worth paying full price for.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: So Destiny has many problems.
The thing with Destiny is it is still made by the guys who made Halo, so they know how to make gunplay like crazy.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Destiny, minute to minute, second to second.
Feels good to play at at all times. When you're doing the thing that you want to be doing, it feels good. Anthem got none of that right.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: And so the basic gameplay and the whole loop around it was uninspired. It felt bad.
The thing that you really wanted to be able to do, you were not allowed to do most of the time, be Iron Man.
And frankly, it just killed it. It's dead. And I don't think we're at a loss for it. This was what I fully believe to be people throwing money to try and get a cash grab. Not realizing that the market was already gone.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: EA nearly killed BioWare with how bad this game was.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: BioWare's reputation has never fully recovered from this.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Even though I don't think. Does EA even own them still?
[00:22:58] Speaker B: I'm not 100% sure.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: It looks like EA does still own them, unfortunately.
Which is part of why their reputation hasn't recovered.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Using the other part of it is
[00:23:08] Speaker A: that after they made Anthem, they then went on to make the worst Dragon Age game.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
Okay.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Oh, BioWare, how far you've fallen.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: All right. So now that we've Gotten this game style out of our way. There are already released games. We're going to start getting into the actually cancelled games and this one was something that it was a niche and personally I was part of the niche that really was interested in this. I think Jax also was. I think actually you were two pillar. Right, Right. Scale.
[00:23:43] Speaker C: I got interested when I started actually learning about it and reading about it. But I mean this was long after it got canceled. So when I learned that it was canceled, I was like, oh man, that game would have been awesome.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: So let me just, let me just give you the pitch for what Scalebound was going to be. Scalebound was going to be a third person action game directed by Hideki Kamiyah, who you should know as the creator of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta and Viewtiful Joe and Okami. Like the dude is a fucking legend. Developed by platform, specifically action games developed by his team. And it was going to be like a Swords and Dragons type game. It looked awesome. The like preview materials they show definitely had some early jank but it was a game in alpha state.
So that could have been polished out, but then Microsoft just said, nah, you know what, we're just gonna cancel this instead. The game was cancelled in 2017.
Here's the worst.
Scalebound as an IP is still owned by Microsoft. Platinum can't even go crowdsource it and try to make the game themselves.
It's just dead and gone.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: There is still a trailer that you can go back and get from the E3 2016, back when E3 was still a production. It looks so fun just from the trailer. It's very noticeably a Platinum game. You can see the design that they put a Devil May Cry in there.
Now the good part about this, when they cancelled this, thankfully the developers did not go under because Platinum is strong
[00:25:30] Speaker A: and they were able, they built several notable titles. Astral Chain, Bayonetta 3, Ninja Gaiden 4 was co developed by them and they
[00:25:39] Speaker B: were able to take bits and pieces that they used in development from this game and put them into the others. Bayonetta 3 notoriously has sequences that should have been in Scalebound.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Yep.
So hello, yours is the next one on the list. I don't know shit about Battlefield 3. So tell us about it. What was Battlefield 3 going to be?
[00:26:00] Speaker C: So we've talked about the beloved Battlefield 1 and 2 on this podcast multiple times.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Battlefront, Battlefront.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: Yeah, Battlefront. Sorry, play on words.
We've talked about our beloved Battlefront 1 and 2, the originals on this before back on PlayStation 2, I think is when it came out.
And they were the, you know, the shooting games where you go and capture points. And we talked about like the freighter combat, all the different things on that. There was supposed to be a Battlefront 3 of the. The sequel to Battlefront 2 and it just got canceled. I. It's just sad. I mean, there's not much to say about it. Battlefront 1 and 2 were great games, amazing. And they still have a following and they canceled it and they came out with that new Battlefront was just Battlefield skinned with Star wars and it was not as good and it was not what everybody was excited about. So it's sad that the key here
[00:27:10] Speaker A: is the old Battlefront games were definitely inspired by Battlefield, but they weren't actually just Battlefield with Star wars skin.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:20] Speaker C: No, like it was. It was just so much better where you could pick like your engineering class or your snipers and things like that, you know, go capture a point, your team builds up enough points that you could summon a hero.
And I mean, that continued in the new Battlefront game, but it didn't have that feel, you know what I mean? It just felt like, yeah, so the didn't have that fantasy.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: This noticeably became the new release version of Battlefront that they tried to do. That became notorious for being one of the cash grabbiest loot box systems. There were, if you remember that one pillow.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: Oh yeah. I played it for like couple days and I was like, no, I'm not. This isn't it.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: This game.
What we were promised with Battlefront 3 could have been so much more. And when it died for years. To eventually be resurfaced and then killed again is just heartbreaking because we've now had two Battlefront games, both of which are worse in every way than the games that came over a decade before them. And they were working on a third one.
This one's a heartbreak.
[00:28:41] Speaker C: Now a lot of that comes down to who.
Battlefront 3, I'm trying to remember the. The one that got canceled. It was being developed by. I forget who. And then it got picked up and that's where battlefront for the PlayStation, like the modern one, it was still with
[00:29:01] Speaker B: the original developers in B3.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It just swapped developers and it kind of killed. It took away from our fantasy and love of the game and turned it into a cash grab.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Yup.
You know, it wasn't a cash grab though.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: No, the exact opposite, actually.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: A huge cash sink. So this is the oldest game in our list that we want to talk about. Starcraft Ghost was originally going to be a GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox title. StarCraft Ghost was announced in 2002.
It was going to be a stealth action game where you play as a character who is a Ghost, one of the Terran, like stealth spy sniper type units.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: We know who this character is.
This is Nova.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: Yes, Nova. I think it was in Heroes of the Storm and I Hears the storm.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: She's in Starcraft 2. She's in Starcraft 2.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: This is in Starcraft 2. Okay. I only played the first campaign of Starcraft II and it was well over a decade ago.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: Another game that took forever but was actually good.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
So this was going to be like a stealth action game. You had a cloaking device, you'd have thermal imaging, so you'd kind of have like almost predator type abilities, along with like shotguns, grenades, flamethrowers, sniper rifles, all sorts of stuff. It looked like it could have been awesome. It was very ambitious.
And because it was ambitious, its development ran so long that in 2006, Blizzard announced that they were investigating the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii as possibilities for it instead. And then they went silent on it until 2014 when they finally confirmed, yeah, we killed that game. It's actually dead. Not just in vaporware hell, so much Ghost could have been good.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: StarCraft Ghost is one of the many things that. This is the most prominent of what, like original Blizzard games were one of those gold mines where it doesn't matter. They're releasing a game, it's going to be good.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: This was one of the most promising new things they were developing. Continuing an IP in a different direction and then seeing it disappear.
Hurt so badly now knowing one of the reasons it was just killed was the acquisition by Activision and them going, no, don't work on that.
Hurts so much.
Well, continuing on with our pain, this next game is the most recent between when it was announced and canceled. I think it has the shortest distance between them, except for maybe our final game. That one's hard to say.
This is a game that Pillow and I both, the original game, phenomenal, loved it. And then when we heard Prey was getting a sequel, Prey 2, if you've ever heard of Prey, this is the game where you are on a space station and anything in the environment might become the enemy to come kill you. That is what Prey was. And it left room for a sequel at the very end of it.
And we were gonna get a prey 2. And then it was unceremoniously just destroyed. Gone. I don't Know why it was canceled.
[00:32:33] Speaker C: I actually like within the last year have done a replay of this game. And it's still worth it today because the game presents so many different ways to play it and beat it. As far as the puzzles in the game, which are just part of the world. And the world just develops around you as you play the game. Like it gets progressively harder, stronger. Aliens start showing up as you do get different abilities or powers or whatever. You decide route. You go different ways to defeat these said enemies. It was so good.
Like, I think originally. I think there was another prey before this prey.
An older prey. I don't know if it was just this was a remake or something. I don't remember exactly. But they also released a DLC Moon Crash, which was a roguelike. And it was fun.
And this game, like, it's just so good. The story in it is awesome. It's eerie. It's. It's kind of scary.
It was just so good. And I wish we could have gotten a prey to.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Benedict Wong was one of the main characters in this. It had a great voice acting cast.
[00:33:51] Speaker C: This.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: This game special.
Yeah, but.
But we lost it.
The last one of our games. However, this is probably the most high profile game. This game.
This game may. Its cancellation may have. Essentially, it did destroy the reputation of the company and almost destroyed their ability to produce games. Essentially. I haven't seen them as a developer in a while. Silent Hills pt.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Absolutely. So let's set the stage. This was a demo. There was a released demo for Silent Hills pt. PT stands for playable Teaser. It is a demo. This was a new Silent Hills that was being worked on by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro.
[00:34:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. Yes. That combo insane. But also the acting of it was the. I do not remember his name.
[00:34:49] Speaker C: Norman.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Norman Reedus. Yeah, that's it.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: Norman Reedus who was doing that baby
[00:34:55] Speaker B: game and the Walking Dead.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: That's kind of where like him being cast in Death Stranding came from. Is because of pt.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: Death Stranding is because of this.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: And like Kojima used elements from PT in both the last Metal Gear Solid game he was involved with Metal Gear Solid V and in Death Stranding. There's an Easter egg in Death Stranding that is a direct reference to pt. But pt, even though it's just a demo by accounts of people who have played it, is one of the best horror games they've ever experienced.
That's why PT hurts the most. Out of all of these cancelled games is Silent Hill's PT was genuinely good.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: The most recent, like Resident Evil, the actual horror Resident Evil game that came out, I think it was like eight Village. I believe Village might have been the one that actually like scored the highest. This is one of the ones where like they went Silent Hill is better. For the first time in ages, Silent Hill took its reputation back, had a great cast and the horror was there.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the fact that we will never see a full Silent Hills game made by these people is a crime against gaming.
If you can't think of any other reason to hate Konami A you're not paying attention. Konami is fucking terrible. They are the worst major Japanese developer, period or publisher period by a mile. Like Konami sucks.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: To give you a hint, Konami's priority is no longer video games as we know them. They are gambling video games.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: That is pachinko.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: They make pachinko and other things. That is what they call their video game division. That's where they care a lot more.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Yeah, but this was the game that led to Konami because of their decisions that led to this cancellation, stopping being a high profile game publisher in out of Japan. Like no one cares about Konami games anymore. And if you're an old head like me, Konami used to be the company. It was Konami and Capcom that made the best third party games of anyone.
Of anyone.
[00:37:27] Speaker B: It had the literal most famous thing we can talk about the Konami code.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Yeah, they also literally made Castlevania. They made Dance Dance Revolution.
Is Konami by the way.
And somehow that company treated Guillermo del Toro, famous, well loved movie creator and Hideo Kojima one of the most celebrated respected game developers of all time.
And they treated them so poorly that Kojima left the fucking company.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Yeah, he refused.
[00:38:07] Speaker A: He refused to his own company. And he will never work with them again. And Guillermo del Toro will never work with them again.
They still will happily work together, just not for Konami. Because Konami fucked it so hard with how they handled P.T. by the way, because this had an actual demo released for a short period of time. PlayStation 4's with the PT demo installed on them. Because once it was cancelled you could not download this demo anymore and you couldn't redownload it even if you had it before. Were selling on ebay for well over $1,000 for at the time $300 console.
[00:38:47] Speaker C: It's like Flappy Bird.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Literally the same thing. Yes.
[00:38:51] Speaker C: Now just to retouch again, this was going to have Norman Reedus in it. And like Mike said, that is from the Walking Dead. That is Daryl, I believe. Right? Daryl yeah, the crossbow.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:04] Speaker C: Yeah. He is an awesome, amazing actor. I mean, you've seen him in Death Stranding. It's just he's so good. And it's so sad that this didn't get to go through and never will. It's just one of the arts lost to time.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: To be clear, we're talking about PT because that's the version that actually came out. The game was just going to be called Silent Hills.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Yes.
PT is why we say it, because it had its own little title to it, things like Project Titan, etc.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: But again, the demo of PT was widely considered to be one of the best horror game experiences anyone has ever played. Like, it was so good. Whereas everything else on this list, we're talking about what it could have been PT we know what it was and we wanted more. And we will never get more.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: That's the most painful part of Silent Hills is we will never get that amazing full game that was teased by pt.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: I'm trying to think what is outside of this game? What is the last Konami game that you know of that they released that turned out well?
[00:40:25] Speaker A: I'm trying to think of something that isn't just a collection of older games.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: No, I do know what it is. We talked about it last year.
[00:40:31] Speaker A: What is it?
[00:40:32] Speaker B: It's Silent Hill F. I was gonna
[00:40:34] Speaker C: say it wasn't Silent Hill F they recently released.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
And that that was actually okay. So unfortunately they didn't have the same problem. Fortunately, they gave that to someone who could do some real fucking work with it. Neobards did a damn good job with Silent Hill.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: How about later this year they're publishing a game that I'm really, really goddamn excited for.
[00:40:59] Speaker C: E Football.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Is it Belmont's Curse?
[00:41:01] Speaker A: It's Castlevania. Belmont's Curse, which is literally Konami's publishing it. But it's a Castlevania game being made by the people who made dead cells.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Oh, that's gonna be good.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: I really hope it's good.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: Like, let's hope they didn't interfere too much.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: It should be amazing. The stuff they've shown looks amazing. I'm not giving Konami any credit for this. This is 100%.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Konami has not been a developer for a while, and their publishing decisions have been pretty iffy right up until very recently.
I was going to say the last major name that they'd released that went well was. Well, actually it was Metal Gear Solid V. But then they actually threw out some really good games very recently.
So let's Hope. This is a hope for the future. At least they did not kill the franchise.
So now that we've. We've finished with our main topic, let's do a quick recap without everyone what they've been doing. Hey, Pillow, let's start with you. What. What you got going on?
[00:42:10] Speaker C: So last time I talked about Nintendo Direct and figured that there was going to be a big announcement and I was hoping that it was going to be a Ocarina of Time remake that. That got announced. That is happening and it is happening later this year, probably November if I was to guess, because that is usually. Which everyone is assuming that's usually when their Zelda games come out.
And it's going to come out right around Grand Theft Auto 6. But Nintendo doesn't care because they're not going to be competing with that because all those old heads, all us old heads are going to be like, yeah, Ocarina of Time, sign me up. Let me give me that Ocarina. Let me play some Zelda's lullaby.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: I don't want to put a damper on the hype. If this Ocarina of Time remake is in the same vein as the Link's Awakening remake of. It's the same goddamn game but with a graphical overhaul and the engine is updated, I think people are gonna be disappointed.
[00:43:08] Speaker C: We're gonna be very disappointed.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: Ocarina Time needs more than a visual overhaul and some mechanical clunk removed to Ocarina of time in 2026.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: Yeah. What it needs is the demon Souls treatment.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: So it needs the game completely. They've and updated.
[00:43:29] Speaker C: They've already said keywords when they're. When this announcement reimagined all of these, you know, hype words. You pay attention to the logo. It's their. Their modern logo now with the Breath of the Wild.
And it's got the new Hylian Shield and the new Master Sword on it. All of it's new. You know, it's not the old Hylian Shield and the old Master Sword. They got so much content. I'm hoping that they add like the.
The.
The what. What temple? The Light Temple. Temple of Light Dungeon. I'm hoping that's right. I'm hoping. I'm hoping that they dive more into the lore. Like, tell us what happened to these. The little boy from the graveyard.
Tell us what happened exactly to the guard that you find in the alley. Make the market big. Put settlements in Hyrule Field. Like, let me explore this world that you wanted to build but you ran
[00:44:29] Speaker B: out of Time open world zone as opposed to the instanced zones we had. So like you had a very limited field because that's what it was.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Make it seamless. It doesn't need to be open world, but one of the things that I hope the remake does is making it seamless so you don't have to go to a load screen when you enter.
[00:44:49] Speaker C: The only problem that I've seen with Seamless in this in Ocarina of Time is the day and night cycle.
Because that was a huge thing going in in town and freezing it time during the day.
And now you can continue doing all the daytime stuff. That's where I've seen like it might be hard to do something seamless, but hear me out.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Majora's Mask has a permanent clock. It was also an N64 Zelda title. And the world happening around you regardless of what you were doing made Majora's Mask a much more immersive game, A much better game. I fully state Majora's Mask is a better game than Ocarina of Time. It has less of the frustrating bullshit that Ocarina of Time does have. And that level of immersion from just the world happening around you regardless of your actions, but also because of your actions is incredible. I magic in an Ocarina of Time
[00:45:45] Speaker B: remake, I think they're writing is bad. Winter's Mask. I agree.
[00:45:48] Speaker C: Majora's Mask is like a better game for what. For what they. The timeline they had. I think it was like one year to get that game out and produced. So that is another game that I'm hoping, if this does and it's successful, that they're going to revisit that because there's so much more they wanted to add to that game, you know.
So what I'm hoping with Ocarina of Time is they. They make the world like you said, if it's seamless, I hope they make it feel alive. I hope these NPCs have schedules. I hope there's. There's different things that you can visit to open. Explain the lore of the game that decided the timeline break.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Like, yes, this is the reason that. That a lot of people know the shattered timeline.
[00:46:31] Speaker C: Like this game is what started. You know, you got the downfall timeline. You have the hero successful and stays adult timeline.
The hero is successful and goes back to kid, which creates Majora's Mask. And that's. That's. That's where it goes. And then that's. You get Twilight Princess from this and you get Wind Waker from this.
Like all of this, like give me the world and explain it to me and talk to me about it. Like I want to learn. I don't. They're going back to the traditional, which I'm excited for. Temples and dungeons and all that good things. Like the good stuff.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: And because those are instanced zones, you have a place to have your loading screen. You can have your big world and then your instance zone inside a temple. Yeah, you don't need that to be.
You don't need that to be Elden Ring.
[00:47:23] Speaker C: I really feel like they'll as far as like loading screens and being seamless, I think they'll go the Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild route, you know, it's just the time is constantly going and when you go into a house or a dungeon or a shrine or whatever they implement, if there's shrines, I'm going to be so mad. But whatever their implementation of going into a new zone that you know, like a grotto for instance, it's going to have a loading screen in it because that's just. I think that's just how like that will make the game feel like Ocarina of Time still. But if I go into the marketplace, like just let me go in it, that should just be seamless.
But yeah, I'm excited. I'm hyped.
I expect there'll be more announcements on it soon. Hopefully more of a trailer than just seeing a kid link sleeping in a bed. There's banisters. Go watch the trailer. I know when all of us heard that three notes at the beginning, a whole generation woke up from asleep. So yeah, it is.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: It is by far the most famous of them.
And yeah, it will always. Even if this game does not have the full remake, there will be people who want it to be exactly the same as it was and will be mad if it's not a remake version. So there will still be an audience for it for being a remade version.
[00:48:43] Speaker C: I got chills when the trailer started. That trailer was so good. The teaser trailer even. It's not even really. I would even call it a trailer teaser trailer. It just gave me chills. I could gush about it all night. But we better move on.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: Alright Dax, you got something else old to talk about. Sort of.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: So my game came out six years ago, but you're talking about Ocarina of Time, generally considered the best video game of 1998. Getting a remake. This year I've been playing a remake of 1997's best video game. I've been playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake I mentioned earlier in the pod, it's on sale on steam until 12 hours after this podcast drops. But I picked up Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth in a tool pack for $32 on Steam and I have been playing it.
I don't know how to tell you guys this, but the bar has been raised.
If a remake doesn't live up to the level of remake that Final Fantasy VII is. I don't know that I want to call it a remake anymore.
This is such a We took the original game and we fleshed everything out and built so much more around it, and it is just so much more everything than the original game. There's so much to do, so many NPCs. The world feels so much more real and alive than the original, while still following generally the same story beats as the original. There's some deviation as well, and that's part of what's cool, is that this remake exists not in a vacuum, but in a world where Final Fantasy VII came out 23 years prior.
Which means that the developers of Final Fantasy 7 Remake are making a modern game for modern audiences.
They are not just doing a graphical update.
[00:50:51] Speaker B: So here's an interesting point about this when we talk about it in that there are now what we will consider to be three types of remakes. You have your straight graphical update. That's all they do.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: Those are remasters.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Remasters. You have the version that takes the mechanics, keeps everything else about the game the same, but updates them into a modern feel.
So these are things like Demon's Souls, called a remake sometimes, but actually gets better.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: These are remakes. I would say things like Metroid Samus Returns, falls into this boat.
[00:51:25] Speaker B: Yes. And now we have.
These are recreations.
These are things, reimaginings that might actually be one of the keywords for more Final Fantasy. Because Final Fantasy viii, this game knows its original content and if you have played this game and you have played the original, you know there are straight story differences.
They know what would have happened and they went, let's not make the same game. But we're starting from the same point and we're making something following the beats without being a direct copy.
This is something that is new and from I am a person who has not played the whole thing. My roommate has.
And so from his tone telling to me, the farther you get into the games, the more the story splits from where it was.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Yep. So to put into context, I started playing this on Friday and by the time we're recording this on Monday, I have 27 hours in this game. It's really good. Is the other aspect here, like, I've replayed Final Fantasy 7, the original, not very long ago. I want to say less than two years ago. So the original is fairly fresh in my mind. Considering Final Fantasy 7 was probably the best game of 1997.
It's not the best Final Fantasy game. It never was. Final Fantasy 6 has always been better. I don't care what you say, you'll never convince me otherwise.
So I'm not going into this remake treating Final Fantasy 7 as this like, God entity game. It's a good RPG and this remake is phenomenal. Now, it's not to say it's without criticism. They made some weird choices about a few of the things.
There is a lot of missables, which is something that generally people don't like in RPGs. There's a lot more than the original, which is saying something. And if you're playing it in English. Some of the voice casting is really weird. The voice actors are fine. Like there's no bad voice acting. But the voice actors for B, for Cloud and Tifa, and Aerith, which, by the way, it is actually canonically Aerith. Now, I'm not happy about that because there's no fucking th sound in Japanese, goddammit. But she is canonically Aerith. I'll live with it. Their voice actors basically have no credits to their name other than these roles. Which is weird because if you look at the supporting cast, side characters, or more minor characters are voiced by people like John DiMaggio, Barbara Goodson, Alejandro Saab.
These are names that are like prolific voice actors. Barbara Goodson is Rita Repulsa in Power Rangers. She's Laharl in Disgaea. She's in everything. There's a character voiced by fucking Yuri Lowenthal.
[00:54:35] Speaker B: Pretty big.
[00:54:36] Speaker A: By the way, voice of Dub Sasuke in Naruto.
Yeah, that guy is in this game. But they all voice side characters, minor characters, which is really weird.
It's really weird. I don't know why this is the decision they made. I don't think it detracts from the game, but it confuses the shit out of me to have all of these big names and have them just play minor characters.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: I have to make a refute now that I've let you do the rant. 1997 had some bangers I think are way better than Final Fantasy VII. Goldeneye 007 was then. Symphony of the Night is 97. The original.
[00:55:16] Speaker A: Symphony of the Night is my personal
[00:55:18] Speaker B: 1997, the original Diablo. You have Diddy Kong Racing for those who Love that. Star Fox 64 was 97.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: Yes, it was.
I personally like Star Fox 64 and Symphony of the Night more than Final Fantasy VII and Curse of Monkey Island.
[00:55:37] Speaker B: For anyone who's one of those old
[00:55:39] Speaker A: heads, yeah, I'm not going to argue Curse of Monkey Island. It's its own thing. But Final Fantasy VII was generally considered one of the best games of the year.
[00:55:49] Speaker B: Oh God. And abe's Oddysee. God, that game was good, if not
[00:55:52] Speaker A: the best game of the year by many people.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: Yeah, many people will say Final Fantasy vii. A lot of people will say goldeneye. I think you and I both agree it's Castlevania. Symphony of Night.
Yeah, and I Love Diablo. But Diablo 2 was the one that made that game.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: I'm gonna keep playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I'm having a fucking blast.
I'm in chapter 14. I think there's 18 chapters in the first remake. And then I get to move on to Intermission because by the way, the PC version of Remake includes the intermission chapter that was added for the PS5 release. And then I'm gonna move on to Rebirth. And by the time I'm done with that, then I'll have to wait until the final part comes out in 2027 because unfortunately Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is coming out sometime in the first half of 2027.
It is what it is.
I will say. Okay, minor nitpick. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth fixes this. But Final Fantasy VII Remake commits a PC gaming sin.
The icons that the game uses for button prompts are auto detected based on what kind of controller the game thinks you're using. If it thinks you're using a PlayStation controller, it will show you PlayStation button prompts. If it thinks you are not, it will show you Xbox button prompts.
Yes, Xbox button prompts. No matter what else the controller might be, you can't change this in options for some fucking reason you can in Rebirth. But I'm not to Rebirth yet. So I had to install a fucking mod to force PlayStation buttons because my brain can't translate the Xbox layout to the buttons without having to physically look down at my fucking buttons when I see abxy. I think Nintendo layout. So by making it forced into the PlayStation emblems, okay, I know what square is. I can push square even though my controller doesn't physically say square on it. That should be a fucking option in your game. I should not have to install a mod for this. Also, it's an unreal Engine game. I had to install a mod to fix the Unreal Engine stutter. Shame on you, Epic, for having the most successful biggest game engine and having Shader stutter be a perennial issue for the last fucking decade. But it's fixed. I don't have any stutter anymore because I installed the mod that fixes the fucking engine issue. All right, I'm off my soapbox. That's enough Final Fantasy VII talk for now.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: Okay? I don't have something I can talk about as a previous because I've been playing a lot of something we're gonna be talking about next time with more than just these guys. So I don't want to give too many spoilers away to what we've been doing with that. Well, you already know we've been doing some, some multi gameplays. You already know we've been doing some Vermintide. I've been playing a lot of Vermintide and Darktide. Can't wanna talk about that right now because we're gonna, we're gonna save that talk for next time.
So I'm going to talk about something I will be watching because I found out about this two days ago and now that I know it exists, I need to see it and I will be discussing what I've seen. Afterwards.
I just discovered that they took. If any of you have actually ever want. If you haven't, you need to go see into the Spider Verse. That movie is amazing.
Once you have seen that, you will know there is spider Noir voiced by Nicolas Cage. They took that and they made an actual live action show.
It's on Amazon Prime. I need to see this. There are two versions of it. There is a color and an actual like classic style black and white version. If you want to get the noir classic feel. It's eight episodes. I'm going to be watching it. I need, I need to see this.
How can everything that I remember about into the Spider Verse, I've seen it very recently, so I remember quite a bit. Nicolas Cage was fantastic in the little bit that he was in. It felt authentic. It felt genuine. Nicolas Cage, when he's given access to be a little bit quirky without allowing to go all the way out can be so good.
And now give me a noir with him and Spider Man. Yeah, I need this.
So I'm going to be watching Spider Noir and I'll be talking about Spider Noir next time.
And that really sort of wraps us up.
And with that, thank you for listening to from 8bit to 4k. I am Mike of many names for Pillow pet for Jack Zoman. Good night, everybody.
[01:00:30] Speaker C: Good night.
