Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to episode 27 of from 8bit to 4k. I'm your host this week. I'm Jack Zoman and I've got with me my usual crew of Mike and many names.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: How'd it goes?
[00:00:22] Speaker A: And Pillow Pat.
[00:00:23] Speaker C: Hello.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: And then we've got a special guest joining us tonight. We've got Witch at Black Mass from the Four Wards podcast.
[00:00:30] Speaker D: Hello.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: So guys, we are part of the Four Wards podcast community. We are in that podcast network. We have a Discord. The link is in the episode description. Come join the Discord. Come hang out, talk to us about what we talked about on the episode. Play games with us. Play league with us. If you're a League of Legends person, Discord's a great time. Link is in the episode description. I also do want to give a shout out to our patrons who support us on Patreon which are Codex Ninja, Pillow Pet, Labana, Uncle ChrisCo and Skippius Esquire. Thank you guys for supporting the podcast at the Shoutout tier. If you want to support the podcast, we are part of the Four Words Network, so it is patreon.com the Fourwards 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 same exclusive feed. And we'll shout your name out during the intro to every episode. And all of those benefits do extend to the League of Legends podcast, the Four Wards podcast, as well as this one. So guys, we decided tonight we're gonna redo something we did about six months ago, but it's a good topic and we've picked different games for it. We're gonna pitch you some hidden gems. These are games generally not current generation games, although some of them are currently available that we think get overlooked or we just want to highlight because we think they're really good and didn't get enough attention when they were new. And since you're the guest witch, let's, let's set the stage. These guys don't know your gaming tastes.
What's your, your first hidden gem you want to pitch to us? Explain it.
[00:02:01] Speaker D: Well, mine's one that I don't think anyone's gonna really know.
It is an OG Xbox game called Whacked. It's basically this party game.
Back whenever things weren't like so streamlined, party games were like dime a dozen. There was a lot of party games out there. A lot of them were not particularly good and this one was actually really good. It's actually more organ, like what's it called?
Push towards like a adult audience, I would say, with the characters and the jokes that are actually in the game. Because there's a streamlined storyline for each character that's in the game.
So there's an individual mode and then there's also like a party mode. And the party mode is like this kind of like mini game where you have to collect 200 stars that are on the map that's there. And for you to collect the stars, you have to fight your opponents that are around. There's a different assortment of items and then there's like an ultimate power that each character gets. And they're all relatively funny.
They're kind of quippy for the time.
So yeah, that's. That's. That's my game. If you have the time, like look it up. Like. Like, I think it's aged pretty well for the. For the game itself. And it's also fun to play with, with people. So if you have like your original Xbox, it's like I enjoyed it really well.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Out of curiosity, I know some original Xbox games have backwards compatibility up to current generation. Do you know what it's backwards compatibility status is?
[00:03:35] Speaker D: I mean, last time I was able to play it on my Xbox 360 whenever like I played. I don't have any newer Xboxes, unfortunately, so I don't know if it would be playable on the newer ones. I'm not sure. But it can be played on the
[00:03:49] Speaker A: 360, so I will look it up on their list. It is not compatible with Xbox One or Series X. That's tragic. 365, only one generation true.
See, I've never even heard of this game. I'm familiar with Fusion Frenzy, which I think is one is the more famous Xbox attempt to make Mario Party.
[00:04:11] Speaker D: Yeah, it got like shipped with like Xboxes at a certain point, I'm pretty sure as well with the like in a bundle.
But yeah, I have Fusion Frenzy too. That one's pretty well known, I would say. But yeah, I think wack is better than that.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: So.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough.
All right, Pillow, I'm gonna make you go next. Cause your first game you've picked is one of my favorite hidden gem games made by one of my favorite hidden gem developers.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: Yeah, so we've talked about it briefly in the past, but we're gonna give a little bit more attention to mischief makers. It was a game on Nintendo 64 where you follow a robotic maid, Marina, just to read off the information of it online. It came out in 1997.
It was by Square Enix.
It's a so labeled as a importantly.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: It was published by Square Enix. It was developed by Treasure who are known for Gunstar Heroes. And I Talked about Gradius 5. The last time we did this they made that. They made Radiant Silvergun like they are legendary shoot em up developers. And then they made this amazing platformer.
[00:05:29] Speaker C: So like its control scheme is.
It would do better. Like it was designed for like the older Nintendo. You just use a D pad and your C buttons in the whole thing there's 50, there's 52 levels across five worlds.
But it was a relatively short game. You just grab stuff, throw stuff, shake stuff.
And that was the whole game. Like that's. That was the. Your controls as you moved, you grabbed, you shaked and you threw. And it was just such a fun like I don't, I don't know which would you even call it? Cozy. I don't, I wouldn't even know what you would like call it. But I mean it was just.
It was just a platforming game with just awesome level design that I can
[00:06:14] Speaker A: remember by the standards of the time I probably would call it cozy. Mischief Makers. One of the main criticisms it received in 1997 was it's really easy.
It's on par with like Kirby games in that like yeah, they'll kill you if you're screwing around or completely clueless. But if you actually are trying to win the game you will not face any major difficulty doing so.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Gave me another idea for a game with that one.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: The memories I have with this game, the ones that stand out the most are the Olympics level in the Snow World.
That one stands out. The boss fight with the bowser looking dude where you had to catch his fists as they were coming down.
And every time you shaked something Marina would go shake, shake, shake, shake and just throwing things and you could terrorize people or the, the creatures that were in the world.
And she is rescuing her creator.
His name was Professor Theo. And you had to from the evil emperor of planet Clancer. Clancer? I think so, yeah. I'm just reading off of the gameplay because I'm not going to be able to remember all this from back when I was playing this.
Uh, it's one of those games that nobody really played. But this is also at a time when people weren't buying a whole lot of games. They were mostly renting. And this isn't one of the games that you were going to pick up from Your. Your video game store or your rental store.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: It had a bit of a, like, presentation problem of, like, it looks too cutesy and girly for the teenage and younger boys that were the main gaming audience in 1997.
[00:07:58] Speaker C: Yeah, more people were more interested in, you know, Star Fox and fighting games. You had like, Mortal Kombat 007. Yeah. Double seven, the shooting games.
And this one here, Like, I would go back and play it if I had access to it other than just like a ramen. Like, if I had it sitting in a. Like, if I still had my Nintendo 64 in the games that, you know, they all got lost.
I would just play this game because it's just. It's a short game, it's fun and that's.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: I think the biggest tragedy is this game is not available on Nintendo Switch Online. There is no legal way to play it other than a physical cartridge from 30 years ago.
So morally, just pirate the damn thing. It's a good game. You should play it.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: And the music from what I remember, was great.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Absolute banger.
All right, Mike, I have not played the first game you have on your list and I am very familiar with it. Tell us about ico.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: So the general, like, the developers of this game are known as being basically hidden gem games. Shadow of the Colossus is considered a hidden gem, one of the best it's ever been made. The next one, something Guardian, Last Guardian, most people never played or heard of. But it's a fantastic game. I think I talked about that a couple episodes ago. Several episodes ago, their first game, before they were their own development team was ico. And then the people who finished Echo became Team Iko and made the other games. This game was good enough to make their own team from Sony and break off ico.
[00:09:30] Speaker D: That's really cool.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: It's really cool. Is the, like, inspiration for a lot of what would come later. And they really, like, hit the nail on the head with what they wanted to do with games. They didn't want to do something hyper violent here. There's very little combat, if at all. Pretty much you're just whacking away at a shadow, trying to steal the girl from you. The main premise of the game, you are Eiko. You're a kid with some horns and everyone in the village hates you because you have horns, because you're supposedly an evil omen. So you get locked away in this castle and then you meet the queen's daughter, Yorda, and she does not like being locked away in the castle. So you're gonna free her and you just go together trying to leave the castle.
And it's 90% puzzle solving and 10% dragging Yorda along, making sure she doesn't get stolen from you. You can. You can go through this game basically doing no combat. Essentially.
It's. It's so noticeable that this is the origin point of all of their ideas. With Shadow of the Colossus and with the the Last Guardian, I. I want
[00:10:35] Speaker A: to drive home some of the names that are listed on the Wikipedia as people who have cited ICO as an influence on their own titles that they've made. Eiji Aonuma, also known as the guy who took over Zelda from Miyamoto, and Hideo Kojima, have both cited ICO as having significant influence on their visual design in their games. Specifically for Legend of Twilight Princess and metal gear solid three.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah, Ico is beautiful. For PlayStation 2 game. It is. The. The visuals on it are hauntingly good.
The music is phenomenal and the sound
[00:11:16] Speaker A: design, yes, being phenomenal.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: There's almost no, like. Essentially the dialogue is just them talking to each other, which is not really true talking. There's occasional like, hey. So there's. There's pretty much no dialogue throughout the entire game and you have just the music and the environment sound and this all.
It is an adventure that is charming.
It's so charming and heartwarming to see these two go at it. And unlike Shadow of the Colossus, which is a gut punch to the face, this is not that depressing sort of ending to it.
There's hope, there's love. There's a lot more positive emotions in ICO than there are in Shadow of the Colossus. This is really like. You can see where ICO split out and became Shadow of the Colossus and the Last Guardian as their next couple games.
I think if you have a chance, if you have any of the PlayStations that can reverse play into ICO.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: So specifically, ICO was a PS2 game and it got a remaster on the PlayStation 3. That's it. You can't play it on PS4 or 5 if you have Sony's streaming service that you can stream the PS3 remaster on a PS4 or PS5, but it's another hidden gem that's kind of just been lost time.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: ICO is also one of the weirdest games in that as a Japanese game developed by Japanese producers and Japanese publishers. It was released in NA first.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's weird.
[00:12:50] Speaker D: It's interesting. I find games like that really cool where like now like doing a game like that is like a stylistic choice, you know what I mean? Where like you're actively making that decision to kind of like streamline your game in that direction whenever like a game like that is so unique at, in that time space because like there was nothing to kind like very little games at least in comparison to like compare it to, you know what I mean? So it's really cool.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. So my choice for my first one I want to highlight is a Super Nintendo game that if you're familiar with Super Nintendo games, you probably have at least heard of, but not very many people actually played it.
So this game is called Actraiser and the title doesn't tell you anything because Actraiser is two different games mashed together. The the game flow of Actraiser, you are literally God. They call you Master in the Amer in the English translation because Nintendo was kind of against religious symbolism in the Super Nintendo days.
A lot of games removed references to religious stuff.
But you are, you are God.
And you start each each of the six regions by sending your essence down into this warrior statue and taking it over and bringing it to life and playing a side scrolling slashing action level. After you defeat that boss, you free this region of the world from the demon's influence and spawn a couple of humans and tell them to repopulate this region. And then you help them do so in a top down city building segment where you control an angel that is your like emissary and slay monsters for them until they're able to seal the monster lair, call down thunder or earthquakes or whatever it might be to clear the land so that they can build there, tell them where to build their settlement. It is a for the time surprisingly robust city builder simulation. It's simplistic, but this was 1990 guys.
And then once that city has been built up, some sort of other threat will be discovered in that region to where you have to send your soul down into the statue again and do another side scrolling level to defeat the evil monster that is threatening your settlement. That settlement is now safe and you can move on to the next one. And there's six of these in total before you go fight the final boss.
It's great. I love Actraiser. The music is amazing. The gameplay is a little stiff, but it was 1990 but it's solid and the story is schlock. But it's a lot of fun. It's so much fun having the, the variety of different gameplay styles and having the choices you make in like the city builder part, like, you destroyed this rock and your citizens found a scroll there and that gives you a new magic spell that you can use to go and slay the monsters during the side scrolling segment. Or they give you offerings which are then items you can use like it. It's very cool. I love Actraiser.
This game is also not available on modern platforms in its original form. Unfortunately, however, it has a remake. And the remake is.
It lacks some of the charm of the original, but it is a competent, well made remake. It's called Act Renaissance and that is available on modern platforms. It was a PS4 Switch PC actor raised. Renaissance is fine. I've played it. I enjoyed it. It's a good game. I don't think it's as good as the original.
[00:16:48] Speaker D: There's always that charm of like. It's like playing like a.
Like a Pokemon game that's like remastered, for example. Like Pokemon Silver. I'll use an example is like, I would rather play the Game Boy color game than the remaster.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Because the one I disagree with you are.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: You are just wrong. Heartgold, Soul, Silver are straight up the best Pokemon games.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Every other remake I'd agree with you on, except Silver and Gold.
[00:17:15] Speaker D: There is like. I mean, this is a long tangent. I think there's some beneficial things. Like, I don't know why they removed this in a Pokemon game. It's so ridiculous. In the game, there was like a button on the bottom screen of the remake that allowed you to run without holding the button. And I'm like, why is this not in every single Pokemon game ever?
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:37] Speaker D: Like, they removed that so you have to hold. I mean, I don't really care, but like, I'm just like, why would they just. Why. Why would they remove. That doesn't make any sense anyways.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Yeah. But yeah, the remake is good. And if you're just looking for a legal way to play Actraiser, it's the only one you have available. And it's not bad. And it regularly goes on sale. It's like 10 bucks when it goes on sale.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Sale.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: But also just download the ROM and play the original. It's. It's so good. It's charming.
[00:18:05] Speaker C: All right, I got a question for which before we move on.
[00:18:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:18:08] Speaker C: What is your opinion of the let's go of Pokemon?
[00:18:12] Speaker D: Oh, I. I don't. I think. I don't like it.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: He's with us at all. We're good.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: I'm sorry, Pillow. You're outnumbered on this one.
[00:18:20] Speaker D: You like it?
[00:18:21] Speaker C: I mean, I like. I Like Pokemon Go. I. I mean I played it.
[00:18:24] Speaker D: Oh, well, I. Yeah, I mean that's. I don't like Pokemon Go, so.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: And I just like the shiny hunting. It was fun and let's Go.
[00:18:34] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: All right. Which I had never heard of the last game on your list, but I just looked it up and I apparently really like a game made by these developers. So tell us about Scrapland.
[00:18:46] Speaker D: So Scrapland was made on the original Xbox. It didn't receive like the greatest reviews, but it's basically the single player story where you are this robot that got shipped out and you kind of fly into like at this planet called Chimera and you have to find a job when you land on the planet because it's like mandatory for you to have a job. So you take this like kind of shitty job of being a photographer for a news station and you have to figure out like different. Like it's a weird mystery, like sort of like game.
I don't know else to describe it, but you have to kind of like play along with the story. But in the game itself there's lots of like side things that you can do. And one of the things that is in it, like you.
It has like a really good like vehicle builder for its time and it was really fun to actually build the vehicles and drive around in the like open world like that it built. And there's like different weapons that you can attach that you get throughout the game to your vehicle to make the game easier.
This and that.
I mean it's not like if you play it, I would say that the like voice acting in the game is like pretty rough, but the game play itself and the puzzle solving for at least the first time that you play it is like pretty fun.
So. And they also have like a remastered that's actually on Steam as well and
[00:20:15] Speaker A: also looks like is published by the developers.
Not whoever like would have owned the rights. It's actually rights owned by the people who made it. Which is awesome because this game is made by Mercury Steam, who. This was their first game. They went on from here to make Lords of Shadow, Metroid Samus Return, Metroid Dread. It's those people.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: You're kidding me.
[00:20:39] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: No, it's those people.
[00:20:42] Speaker D: Yeah. So I personally really enjoyed the game when I was a kid and I've played it since then as well.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Oh, I recognize that robot dude. Oh my God.
[00:20:51] Speaker D: Yeah, the. The gameplay holds up like, like when it comes to the vehicle and driving around, there's also like this weird aspect because you are like this robot that you could. But you can also transform into different, like, robots to complete your job that you need to do. Because you, you're a photographer, right? So you're in the. The quest that you have to do. You have to try to like, sneak into like a certain area to be able to get photos and stuff like that. So you'll like transform into a different robot and like hide from like the police and stuff like that that are in the game and like this and that. So like, there's a lot of like, different aspects to the game itself. That's really fun.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: According to the Steam page, your character's named Detritus.
[00:21:32] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: That's hilarious.
[00:21:35] Speaker D: Yep, yep.
Highly recommend. Really fun game.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: I am literally going to add it to my wish list to maybe pick it up when it goes on a Steam sale. Just literally just based on you recommending it and it being Mercury Steam, where they haven't missed since really. Like, not all of their games have been 10 out of 10. But they've made good games.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: They've had some great stuff. Apparently they made a game that got released like May of this year.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Last year. It's 2026 now.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: This year. Blades of Fire.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: What?
[00:22:06] Speaker B: That.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: That's a 2025 game.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Oh, then it must have been an update then. Something says May 2016. 2026.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: All right. Pillow.
[00:22:17] Speaker C: Yeah. So a game that I want to talk about is called Sarge's Heroes. And it takes the army men that were super popular with kids, especially in like from the 70s on until, you know, modern days. I don't think they get played with nearly as much. They're not nearly as popular. And they have the Green army versus the Tan Army. The Tan army men found portals to the human world, the real world, our world, and were able to like, bring items back and got like super weapons from it. And you take place as Sarge, who is the commander of a elite Bravo Company team to fight this evil general of the Tan Army. And it is.
It was such a fun third person shooter.
You just went around in these, these open world levels, I'm gonna call it that because that's exactly what they were. And you went around and you saved your commandos and you destroyed these portals went through it took your imagination from the time when you were a kid with this game playing with army men and just brought it to life. And Jax, you might be happy to know that it was developed by the 3do company.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: It was, to be fair, most of the army games were. But this is like the best one of them. Yeah, most of the Army Men games were actual Schlock and Sarge's Heroes was not.
[00:23:54] Speaker C: Yeah, Sergeant's Heroes and then the second one, Sergeant's Heroes two were pretty good. And then Sarge's War was just kind of. They tried too much. They took away from like the. The whimsical childhood feel to it and tried to make it more dark and gritty.
But yeah, army of Sarge's Hero is just a great game. And it was overshadowed by like Donkey Kong 64 and Mario Party, those games that came out that time. I mean even one more that I would even consider a hidden gem was Jet Force Gemini came out this year and it was really popular.
A lot more popular than this game, but it was, it had great multiplayer.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: I'm pretty sure we've sung the praises of Jet Force Gemini on this show. Not that long.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Yeah, we have.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Yeah. Many of time. Many a time.
I don't know if it would be worth going, but it probably has not. I have not played it. It probably has aged horribly. Like most shooting games from this time your. The controls will just make you mad. Like most Nintendo 64 games.
I would maybe say go watch some gameplay of it because it is fun. It's got some really funny voice lines in it.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: I think going and watching a like let's play of it is the best way to experience this game because then you don't have to deal with all of the control frustration. And this is an early 3D game. It has some dodgy like hit detection and collision issues. Yeah, I, I do like almost everything in that era does.
[00:25:29] Speaker C: I do remember getting very infuriated as a kid playing this game because of like the hit detection and like it was, it was very frustrating.
But the game itself, I just remember it being. And this might be nostalgia talking, just a really fun game. Especially play with like your. Your friends in like a. The death match style games where you could just go against each other, try to find each other 1v1 in this giant open world level.
[00:26:00] Speaker D: As someone who has kids like I like I haven't seen an army man and like for like I don't know. I don't even know if they exist anymore to be honest. I don't think so.
But you're bringing up this, you bringing up this game or might this unlocked a memory of like me like hiding army men throughout the house and like.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Oh yeah, no, try to sneak just
[00:26:20] Speaker D: like yeah, yeah, for sure. And going through the grocery store with them and stuff.
[00:26:25] Speaker C: I would always like the one that
[00:26:26] Speaker D: was like kneeling with like the gun.
[00:26:27] Speaker C: You know, play for hours outside and like the dirt setting up like tan versus green and just always, just playing out these massive battles in my head.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: See, I had linked logs, so my version of that was always the Settlers versus the Indians.
[00:26:44] Speaker C: I remember those.
[00:26:45] Speaker D: So fun.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: All right, Mike, explain Grim dawn to us. What makes it different than every other arpg? What's good about it?
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah, as I've alluded to here, Grim dawn is another ARPG that's not often talked about in comparison with a lot of the others.
One of the main things this game has been going for a very long time. I believe its first Release is in 2016, so it's been going on for 10 years now. It is updated as of a month ago. They got a new patch, a new expansion with more stuff to it. The main key gimmick for Grim dawn over any other arpg, when you start a game, you select your class and that's how you start working on things.
Somewhere in your first 20ish levels or so, you get a second class and you can grab any other class and mash them together. And that creation is what makes Grim dawn different, is that whole you are making your own class through a combination of any of the two that you have available. That gives you a shit ton of really like unique ability to make something feel your own. So even if you both you and a friend start with the same class, you can both go with a different subclass and suddenly you have something very, very, very different.
That is actually what me and my friend did last time. We did a co op with this. It is an online and a land co op game. You can do both. Yes, it has LAN co op, which is not something that you see common anymore.
It has quite a lot of the systems that you'll find in a lot of modern RPGs.
It is long. This has a very long single player campaign and there are multiple campaigns stacked on top of each other that you go through from every time. So if you've never played this game, you've got a good 30, 40 hours worth of content for your first playthrough. Because it is like most games, most people when they play an rpg, their first playthrough is a story playthrough. And then every other playthrough after that is the let's get to endgame and base it out. That first playthrough takes you five to six times longer than any other playthrough because you're always trying to figure out what's going on and you're learning the systems there.
It has quite a lot of minuscule little change. Like it has a lot of little tweaks and buffs that you can do. So it's more granular in how it does its power ups.
What am I trying to say properly here? It has. Oh, choice. There's a lot of stuff to the itemization instead of it being more small scale. So you, you have the option of going deep into stats. And this is, this is a game designed around the Diablo 2 style of game. So there are original talent trees, there are stats that you are leveling up, you are actually leveling up. When you are leveling, you have the granularity of choice in these. So like you have a great amount of, amount of customization per character. And it has a lot of the old Diablo 2 feel. Without being caught in how old Diablo 2 is. It is not quite at the same level as the modern ARPGs of Diablo 4 and POE 2. It's really like right in that, that era of like five, ten years ago where it hit its stride. But it's. If you've got 20 bucks on sale, you can get crap ton of stuff for it usually goes on sale with the big sales and you can get four expansions on it and it's a lot of content.
[00:30:21] Speaker D: Nice.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Fair enough. All right, I'm gonna wrap up our trip down nostalgia lane with a PlayStation 1 game that I am not joking. More people bought this game just for the demo disc that was packed in on it, then bought it actually intending to play Brave Fencer Musashi because Brave Fencer Musashi in the North American market came with a demo disc for Final Fantasy 8 before Final Fantasy 8 was actually available.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Yep, that makes sense.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
But Brave Fencer Musashi itself is actually a really good game.
So this is a third person top down action adventure, platforming, hack and slash game.
It has a lot of RPG elements in the same way that Zelda has a lot of RPG elements. There's NPCs. You do quests yet help out NPCs with whatever their troubles are. This game has a day night cycle, but it's not like an RPG and it doesn't have a stat spread and experience points in any of those sorts of things. So it's very Zelda, like not just in terms of like what kind of game it is, but also in terms of its structure. Because you go through the world and you make it to the next dungeon and then you go into the dungeon and there's puzzles within the dungeon, you have to solve so you can make it to a boss. So you fight the boss and you get new powers as you progress that let you get to more places. It's literally the Zelda formula.
[00:31:51] Speaker D: Nice.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: It's genuinely a lot of fun to play. Despite the fact that this is a PS1 game and they really were just barely learning how to do 3D games back then.
It does not take itself seriously at all. I am not exaggerating. You play as Musashi, who is a reincarnation of a legendary Brave Fencer Musashi, who saved the kingdom 150 years ago.
And you are summoned to the all you can eat kingdom by Princess Filet to save them from the invading Thirst Quencher Empire.
[00:32:25] Speaker D: You were with me like, I was with you. Like, basically up until the naming of the story.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: The names are ridiculous and the game has a weird sense of humor in a way that is charming. Throughout the entire game, everything has silly names.
A lot of the scenarios are intentionally over the top and ridiculous.
At one point, you literally dance battle with a boss to defeat them instead of fighting themselves.
It is a weird game. The voice acting is goofy as fuck in the English version. I assume it was goofy in the Japanese version, but I don't know Japanese, so I can't say.
And it's just genuinely a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, like a lot of games we've talked about tonight, it's not available legally in any way on modern platforms. It did get a sequel, but the sequel sucks. It lacks the soul of the original.
But this is. This is one of the better. Zelda likes to not actually be a Zelda title. It's not Okami level good. Okami is literally Zelda level good.
It's not that good.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: A lot of them. Okami is.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: It's better. It's better than a lot of Zeldas. It's worse than the very best Zelda's only.
But, like, I would definitely say Brave Fencer Musashi is on par with the middling Zeldas, which is still pretty high praise, honestly.
Yeah, like, Zelda's only had a couple of genuinely bad games, and this is definitely better than those. I love it. I love Brave Fencer Musashi. My. My League of Legends Smurf account is literally named Brave Fencer Jax because of Brave Fencer Musashi.
[00:34:05] Speaker D: Nice.
I didn't know that.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
All right, so those are our hidden gems we've pitched. Unfortunately, most of them are not legally available nowadays, but some of them are. So check out those ones and check out the other ones if you want. We're not stopping you. So let's talk about what we've been doing the past couple weeks.
And pillow you've got the shortest list, so I'm gonna throw it to you first so you can talk about yours so that you can then chime in on everyone else's.
[00:34:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
Witcher 3 was announced to be getting a remaster, which I was not expecting it at all.
With this remaster, it is free if you own the game on any of the platforms. Completely free, including all the paid DLCs. And I do believe they're coming out and I haven't done a whole lot of research into it because I've been working, haven't had a whole lot of time. I think they're coming out with a whole new stuff. Storyline DLC for the Witcher 3, which will be.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: That's not out yet. But yes, that will be released as a paid expansion in 2027.
[00:35:14] Speaker C: So it will be a paid expansion. Okay.
Yeah. But CD Projekt Red we've praised them in the past and I will continue to praise them.
A free complete remaster for anybody that's already owned the game. So if you have any interest in playing a remastered one of the best Witcher games, go to any game shop. Buy the game while it's cheap. So you get the remaster for free or wait for it to go on sale. Because we just talked about it having a huge sale not but a few episodes ago where the whole collection was dirt cheap already. I know, I brought it up.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: It also is they're upgrading it for Switch 2 so that it's if you are interested in playing it portably and don't own a Steam deck, it will actually be a competent release. Because the witcher was Witcher 3 was available on Switch 1, but they had to pare so much down to make that game work on the Switch one. But it should be actually competent on the Switch two.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: So here's my first question for you. Oh yeah, keep.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: I was gonna say my worry for a PC player is hopefully this remaster does as little as possible to break mods so that mod creators can easily update their mods to work with the remaster. I'm hoping it doesn't just restructure things that didn't need to be restructured for the purposes of restructuring them.
We'll see, but we don't know yet because this comes out in September.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: Did you say if you do not have the paid dlc, if you have the base game, you're getting the original DLCs or do you have to get my each of the DLCs right now?
[00:36:53] Speaker C: From my understanding, as long as you have the base game, they're just giving you the DLCs.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: So blood and Wine.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: All current owners of the Witcher 3 will gain access to its original two expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood of Wine, for free. This was announced at Gamescom, so.
[00:37:09] Speaker D: Fuck, that's really cool if.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: And that's right now like the remaster comes out next month. Those DLCs are now unlocked for everyone who owns base. Witcher 3 on Steam, GOG or.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Oh, they just turned your. Your base edition into a complete edition.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:37:26] Speaker B: Huh.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: It's really cool.
[00:37:28] Speaker C: And now all this building up for. I know the new Witcher game that'll be. I don't think it's been announced as far as date wise, but I mean this is gonna just be build up of hype for it.
I. I am so excited about this because I love The Witcher. Witcher 3. It. It was dated.
Very clearly dated.
PC players don't have this problem because of mods, but console players, it's. They're completely like. I'm just so excited to have a remaster. To be able to just sit on a couch and play the music. The soundtrack from this game is just so good.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: It feels so weird for Witcher 3 to get a remaster because it doesn't feel like it's that old. But this is an 11 year old video game.
[00:38:11] Speaker B: It's older than Grim Dawn.
[00:38:13] Speaker D: That's crazy. Yeah.
[00:38:17] Speaker C: So yeah, that's what I've looked forward to all week from. Since I've heard it. I've just been like looking up every other day like when's the release date? When's the release date? I just. I'm excited to be able to just sit down and play it.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: I think we all love the Witcher here.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: I think we all just love CD Projekt Red here and then everything they do is just touched by gold.
[00:38:39] Speaker D: Good.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. All right, who wants to go next? What? Do you want to share the suite?
[00:38:43] Speaker B: Although it. I was talking already.
I'll sweet to you.
[00:38:47] Speaker D: Oh, next. Yeah, I mean as of late like I've been playing a lot of games with my kids or whatever. Playing just on the switch too to be honest. Like my daughter's really into pickopia, so like she's. I haven't played it all that much but it's honestly like has more stuff than like Animal Crossing that to actually do in the game which I personally really like, because it's more involved and also has the Pokemon charm. It's like a good mix of like different, like, like Minecraft, Animal Crossing.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: Pokemon like has played the crap out of Pocopia. And she literally said this is like Animal Crossing. But interesting.
[00:39:27] Speaker D: Yes. And so helping her with it and like playing with it, like one thing that Nintendo always has and it's a reason why I still have like a switch that like playing with games with the kids is always just so much so, so fun, like playing with them. And with that, I've also recently introduced them to watching kind of basic anime and stuff like that. Like every night I've been watching like we're on Shippuden. We're watching Shippuden right now in Naruto. And then we're watching My Hero as well. Just kind of just going through like this basic stuff.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: I'm assuming that means you have Crunchyroll.
[00:40:04] Speaker D: I do have Crunchyroll actually. Like my. I share an account with apps. But yes, I have Crunchyroll. Yes.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: I have a recommendation then for something that I think your kids would enjoy and you would enjoy. Welcome to Demon School Iruma Kun.
It is literally about a teenage boy whose parents are the literal worst who sell him to a demon.
And the demon is like, cool, you're my grandson now. You get to go to school and sends him off to Demon School and he makes friends and it's. It's very silly and fun. Charming and probably like it's very much like fun.
Mildly suggestive in the way that is still okay for kids.
Goofy Shonen Fair.
Not that goofy, but not as far off as you would think. One of the characters literally is just a crazy person who has pockets that she can just replicate anything that she sees.
So she just pulls out, you know, candy or water or whatever strikes her fancy because she's a nut job and that's like part of her charm. She's my favorite character.
I highly recommend as a great like show to watch with kids.
[00:41:19] Speaker D: I'm always looking to watch some. So Archer. I'd look it up.
And then lastly I just wanted to touch on this because also I wanted to gauge your guys like interest slash like what wants of the game. I'm really excited for the OOT remake.
I mean I don't think it's the best. I don't think it's the best Zelda game personally. But I do, I do. I have played it multiple times. I really do enjoy the game.
My wants from the game because it's a remake. It's not a remaster. Is that like. I hope that it's not a one to one to Absolutely. Absolutely everything. I hope that they take like executive decisions to keep some of the nostalgia there. Like for example, like the first, like the Deku Tree. Like I hope that they keep the jump down into like the, you know, like the same feel of the dungeon. But I hope that the rooms aren't
[00:42:19] Speaker B: like one to one identity.
[00:42:20] Speaker D: I have to hit this eye here to open this door specifically. I hope they take on a whim to kind of like expand some of the puzzles maybe in the game and. And stuff like that.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: I want that.
[00:42:31] Speaker D: That's what I hope.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: I want that so much. If this is just like Link's Awakening where it's like, here's the exact same game but with a really nice coat of paint and it controls a lot better.
Cool.
Ocarina of Time definitely needs some control improvements. I replayed the original not very long ago and it's kind of a slog. It hasn't aged well in a lot of ways. Not just n 64 ways, but like things like putting on the iron boots to sink or taking them off to rise in the water temple. People hate the water temple because the boot interface is bad, not because the temple is bad.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: So. So the thing I think that I will put in as my key thing, they need to add in the content they wanted to make in the first place. The Temple of Light.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Yes. I want it to be like a full on. We are reimagining the game from the ground up and keeping the things that were good in Ocarina of Time, throwing out some of the bad and giving levels that remind you of the original but are not one for one identical.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say I'm a huge OOT fanboy. I talk about it all the time. I got a tattoo of it on my arm and on my hand.
I'm a huge.
I'm so excited. We talked about this when Star Fox 64 or the whatever the remaster came out or whatever they called it.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Yeah, because they announced it then.
[00:44:02] Speaker C: So the only reason I don't think we're going to. I think we're going to get a Temple of Light because that was scrapped content. But that was scrapped content that was later added into Twilight Princess.
The Temple of Time dungeon. I think we're going to get a temple. I think they're going to add all their scrapped ideas, all the scrapped content. I'm hoping for more developed dialogue lore and city or lore development some more, you know, timeline Placement, like putting it. We already know where it is in the timeline. But describing that, I hope we get history, a better history. Like, that describes the war and describes him getting placed in the Deku tree's care. And I. I want more development of the story. Like what they do with Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild.
[00:44:57] Speaker D: I want.
[00:44:57] Speaker C: I want some cutscenes. I want just storytelling. And from the announcement with the tapestry, I'm assuming we're gonna get that just based off that. But the interesting thing, I'm glad we're on this topic again. About the announcement trailer. When they're talking about it, they're talking about it from a future perspective. They are telling the story. This is where I'm going to. They are. They're telling a story of stuff that's already happened, and they're not saying it from a perspective of what's going to happen.
So this is going to be a retelling of the story. So that's why I'm very hopeful it's going to be a complete reimagining of the game because of that perspective.
I watch a lot of Theory videos and I'm excited.
[00:45:51] Speaker D: Just briefly, before we close, like, the chapter on this, I wanted to gauge your guys is like. Like one thing. Like, for me, I think it would be really cool to have, like, chic in some aspect. Like. Like be involved in, like, when you're Adult Link or whatever. Like, to, like, have, like, her somewhere. You know what I mean? Like, to see her more in the game would be kind of cool. I feel like that would be, like, kind of cool in, like, the grand scheme of things. Maybe that would. That that's my hope, at least.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: I want to see more fleshed out of the traveling back and forth through time. Because when I replayed Ocarina of Time, it feels very much like, oh, I got through the Kid Link segment. Now I'm in the Adult Link segment. I go back to Kid Link for very specific things, and otherwise the rest of the game is Adult Link.
[00:46:33] Speaker D: Oh, so you want to, like, go back?
[00:46:35] Speaker A: I want. I want them to flesh out more back and forth and give you more reason to go back and forth beyond just this puzzle mandates it. Or this is now a Kid Link dungeon that I have to do real quick.
[00:46:46] Speaker D: Yeah, like, I have to go drop the bean. And then now I'm at a battle link or whatever.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: There's those things for some side things. I want more like main quests, major story things. Cause I did not do a bunch of side stuff in my playthrough recently. And I think it was literally just the well dungeon to get into the Shadow Temple and the Spirit Temple bit that you do as Kid Link. And those are the only times I had to go back.
[00:47:13] Speaker D: I'm trying to remember in the game, I think there's like maybe one or two instances where you interact with like an NPC or whatever and they like remember a small child or whatever, Right? There's a few, but I don't remember like it being like a lot or whatever. So it'd be kind of cool to have that, like you interact with the world in like a different way and then something happens.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: I want it to be like you interact with someone and like you remind me of someone and it's someone you never met as a kid and then you go and meet them later.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:39] Speaker C: Kind of like when you learn the Song of Storms, like that. That whole time paradox of.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:47:46] Speaker C: Weirdness.
I agree with all of that. I think adding something cool like when you're a child, like this little tree that's barely grown is, you know, just out there. And then when you're an adult, the tree is now blocking your way someplace. And now you got to go back as a kid, cut down this tree to get to where you got to go.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: On that note, also more differences between the child and adult Link worlds. Because it's very obvious playing Ocarina at time how much of that was asset reuse to make the game possible to make on the N64. This remake should not have any of those limitations. I want Hyrule Field to look and feel different. I want Kakariko to look and feel different. Seven years have passed and it has been a calamity where Ganon has fucked the world in those seven years.
Make shit actually look different.
[00:48:35] Speaker D: And it's just an open field that looks exactly the same.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:48:38] Speaker D: Yeah, that'd be. Yeah, that'd be cool.
[00:48:39] Speaker C: To touch on my wishes of more story development. I want to know where. Like where. Where Zelda and Impa go. Like, I want to know where they go. Like what? Where like. Like you said with Sheik. Tell me the story. What. What Sheik been up to other than just showing up and like giving me a song and saying like, you know, time flows in weird ways and just. But where. Where has she been? How did she get to where she is? I want to see her story too.
[00:49:10] Speaker D: That'd be cool.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: I hope so. If it's literally just a Link's Awakening style remake, I think we're all going to be very Disappointed. Even though that would still be a good product.
[00:49:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:19] Speaker A: But whereas, like, for Link's Awakening, I didn't actually think that was an appropriate way to.
[00:49:23] Speaker C: If they add a stamina bar, I'm going to be so upset.
Yeah.
[00:49:30] Speaker D: If they add stuff that just make, like, ruin the experience. Yeah. I might be a little bit.
[00:49:34] Speaker C: If I pick up one peeved item or one weapon with a durability, I'm going to rage.
Yeah.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: There is one in Ocarina of Time. It breaks the precise. You use it.
[00:49:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. The Giant's knife.
[00:49:51] Speaker A: Yes. Before you get into the Biggoron Sword.
[00:49:55] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: Anyway, Mike, it's your turn. Tell us what you've been up to.
[00:50:01] Speaker B: Okay, so I'm gonna start with the easy portion of this. I've played maybe another four different Little Idle games that I've been messing around with, checking them out.
Little thing called Revolution Idol, it's just circles until Infinity.
It's a fun little way to break a little time.
Little thing called Desk Girl Idle, which is really interesting because it pops up on the bottom of your screen and is a little overlay so you can still see everything else on your screen while you have this little overlay going. So it feels a lot like you are actually having something go on while you are doing other things instead of having this take over other things. I like that one probably the most, Panoptica, which is essentially a little bit of a.
An auto battle for a character. You can make wizards and fighters and stuff and send them off to go do things. It's okay. And then Lost Vessel, which is the most crunchy. And I'm not entirely sure how to describe it, because it's like, it's. It's full Sci Fi crashed onto things, but it's almost entirely spreadsheet bars, and it's just seeing things move and go. So it. It's. It's less interactive than the others are, but it has a lot more things to be doing simultaneously. So it catches the Idol glitch. It's fun.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Okay. Next, something that happened during this shoot that I'm going to talk about. I discovered that the people who make Team ICO are making another game and that the trailer came out this year and I did not know it.
[00:51:33] Speaker A: I didn't know that either. What are they making?
[00:51:35] Speaker B: Gen Atlas did not know that that was what this was it. They. The trailer came out at.
I think it was Gamescom earlier this year, a couple months ago. Did not know that was them. There was no information that I like. I checked out it looks precisely as weird as you'd think anything by Team Echo would only in a very modern word it looks really interesting. I'm very excited for it.
[00:51:57] Speaker C: Cool.
[00:51:58] Speaker B: Quick wow update for stuff because I've been doing a lot of wow.
Starting to raid raiding is. Is every bit as intense as I want it to be. So if you. If you've ever done any form of raiding which is intense collaborative teamwork work in mmo, it's a blast. I'm loving the rating.
Mythic plus has been doing pretty well. Fun too. Like in the new class I've been playing like in Druid. That's enough on my wow. The last thing I got really been going for me is I've been doing a deep dive back into more Babylon 5. I forgot how intense some of the storytelling is in this. Babylon 5 is very unique in all of the major sci fi's. It was designed as one full story.
There is very little but there is episode of the week. It is mostly references and bits and pieces that you won't understand until later. But now that I've seen the whole thing, obviously when I go back I'm seeing the picture being built and character development and how things are going. So things that seem like throwaway episodes at the time are not because they're used to develop certain things or ideas or people. And then there are things that hurt because they hit a message really hard.
The most recent one I can think of is a show Shadows of Gethsemane.
It explores the concept of murder and guilt. And the basic thing for the show synopsis is capital punishment is gone in this future. Instead they do something called death of personality where your mind is wiped and you are sent to go out help the people that you hurt. And what are the moral ramifications of this? What happens when these people can't forgive?
What happens when this person remembers things that they've never done and now they're guilty of things they can't remember doing. And the amount of emotion that this episode can bring out with some wonderful acting.
[00:53:57] Speaker D: It.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: It hit me in a way that I don't remember seeing the first time because I'm significantly older and have seen a lot more go on in the world. And. And the scariest thing is how intensely political the show is with the relations that are now very, very common in the world around us that they were hinting at in 1995, 96. And it's horrifying how right they were with things.
It's so well done. And I think more people need to watch Babylon 5.
[00:54:34] Speaker D: It's always interesting watching like older shows like that and then like connecting the dots to like how, how shit is now.
[00:54:41] Speaker B: They hit the political nail on the fucking head to a scary degree.
[00:54:46] Speaker A: Fair enough.
Alright, I got a couple games to talk about and a couple anime to talk about. So I got a chance finally to play Mario Kart World in multiplayer with other people, not just me and my wife. So I can actually compare it to Mario Kart 8 now. And I think the more people you have, the more Mario Kart world actually shines.
Mario Kart World, generally people don't seem to like it as much as they did eight.
And I think some of that comes down to some of the like design decisions around why they made it an open world. The like driving between levels races are just less engaging than laps on a track are, honestly.
[00:55:29] Speaker D: But yeah, I can see that when you're.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: You're playing with more people, the extra chaos from there being 24 racers on the field now shines through because you have so many more moments of your friend just getting absolutely wombo comboed and you're sitting right now next to them and you guys get to laugh and have fun. And that's just exaggerated because Mario Kart World is bigger and crazier in that way.
So that's a lot of fun.
I do think it's a good game. I do think it's overpriced.
I got it as my packing game with the Switch 2 because it was more expensive than Pickopia, which is my other option. And then I bought Procopia.
[00:56:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: Because I was like, well, I can get both and this is the cheapest way to do it, but it's a lot of fun. The other game I've been playing on my Switch recently is Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, which is a remake of Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, which was itself a collection of Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2. But it had some extra content and this includes that, which is actually pretty cool because most of the time when there's multiple remakes of games, they tend to drop the inner cidal remakes content.
[00:56:47] Speaker B: But.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: So this is essentially a remake of Monkey Ball Deluxe is what it, what it fundamentally builds out to.
They've had some changes to some of the levels in this. Some of the more frustrating or bullshit levels in the original game got changed, but the original version is still there in a mode where you can go play original stages. If you want to play the unaltered versions of those levels, it's still just as silly as ever. Super Monkey Ball is super charming and weird and goofy.
If you don't know what Super Monkey Ball is, you're a monkey, you're in a ball, you're in a stage. You can tilt the stage to cause your monkey to roll around and you need to make it to the goal. And if you fall off the stage, you die.
That's it. That's the whole game. The original Super Monkey Ball was made by Amusement Vision for Sega on the GameCube, which are the same people who made F0GX, the best racing game ever made. And you can't convince me otherwise.
So this is just. It's basically the good Monkey Ball games, but on modern platforms. I have a caveat for this though. This is not the first time I've tried to play this Super Monkey Ball collection. The first time I tried to play it, I had a horrible time because I was using my 8bitdo ultimate, which is a controller that has a circular gate.
Most modern controllers, PS5 controllers, Switch Pro controllers, all of those all have circular gates. And for modern games, that's great. It allows fine controls, but Super Monkey Ball was designed for the GameCube. GameCube controllers have an octagonal gate, which means it is very easy to hold perfectly straight up, left, right, down, or the four diagonals while still having actual analog control for everything in between.
That is necessary to be able to have fun in Super Monkey Ball. This time around, I played the game with my 8bitdo N64 controller, which has an octagonal gate. And because it's Super Monkey Ball and the controls are literally the analog stick and then the right analog stick controls the camera, which it recognizes the C buttons on my N64 controller and lets them control the camera. So I can just control the camera with the buttons, which I was so happy about. I get to play it with my N64 controller, which has the gate I need so I can actually play and enjoy the game as intended. Super Monkey Ball is just a lot of fun. Some of the levels are genuinely shit, but that was true in the original too.
Some of the levels are ludicrous. There are multiple levels where the only way I can figure out how to clear it is a cheese clear. I don't know what the intended way to clear the level is.
[00:59:30] Speaker B: That was funny.
[00:59:30] Speaker A: Like, I don't know how the fuck they ever expected people to clear this anyway, other than finding a weird way to bounce yourself across the level.
But it's a lot of fun. I highly recommend pick this game up when it's on sale. Don't pay full price for it, but it's a lot of fun if you have a controller that has the gate. If you don't have a controller with an octagonal gate, don't bother. Seriously, it's that bad? Without the proper controller gate, you just won't have fun because so many of the sections in the game will have you trying to guide your monkey across a tiny strip of level that is impossible to do if you can't perfectly angle your analog stick. It kind of makes me sad that the game doesn't have any kind of tools to try to accommodate that. It has a helper mode if you want a slow mo or other features that basically are cheat modes to make the game easier. Which good for them, but it's not what I want. I just wanted them to have some ways to offset the fact that most controllers are not octagon gates nowadays.
This also does have some extra characters that the original games didn't have. So you can play Super Monkey Ball as Sonic or Tails, which turns the Bananas into rings or some other SEGA characters. Or someone from Jet Set Radio. There's Kazuma Kiryu from Yakuza Jet Set Radio.
[01:00:55] Speaker B: Holy.
[01:00:55] Speaker A: You can also play as a SEGA Game Gear or a SEGA Saturn or a SEGA Dreamcast for some reason.
I don't know why.
[01:01:08] Speaker D: That's weird.
[01:01:09] Speaker A: Really weird.
It's really weird. I don't know what to say about that. It's just bizarre.
Not bad, just weird.
[01:01:21] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:01:24] Speaker A: The other weirdness about this game is it has a lot of other modes. Like they kept all of the like multiplayer mini games from the originals that just kinda suck. I don't know why they even bothered including them. They didn't need to be remade. They're not good. No one wants to play Monkey Golf or Monkey Pool or any of those things. They're just not good. And because this is a remake, it's missing some of the like licensed shit or charm that was in a few levels. So the bananas in the original Super Monkey Ball Dole paid to have their name put on all of the bananas the way that Dole like put stickers on all of their bananas they sell in America. It's not there on this because they didn't pay for it, so why would they keep it? I don't blame SEGA for that. But it's weird. It feels wrong. And similarly, there is a level in the original game that the whole level was a website URL for Amusement Vision.
That website doesn't exist anymore. So instead of making a new one and changing the URL to whatever they have now, they just put artwork of monkeys instead. Like it's. It's thematically fits. And if you didn't know what the original was, you just be like, well, that was a weird level.
But it makes me sad that them putting a website in the level as like a go. Here, check this out. Is just gone.
Lastly, I want to talk about some anime because I have been watching an anime called Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games, which is about teenage girls in high school going to a like high society girls school, like private school, who are obsessed with Street Fighter 6. And I do mean literally Street Fighter 6 because Capcom licensed their game into this. Like they let them use actual real Street Fighter 4 and 6 footage and they go to EVO and play fighting games. Like where the anime currently is at. They are in the middle of an arc where they are literally competing at EVO Japan and some of the characters are literally getting matched up against pro players.
[01:03:44] Speaker B: Now it makes sense why they Street Fighter 6 instead of another Street Fighter, right?
[01:03:48] Speaker A: Because that's what makes sense.
Other games are in this. Like it's Evo. So Tekken 8 and Guilty Gear Strive are at this event in this anime. It is so cool to have actual game footage and actual like the characters are talking about the game in real ways.
The commentators at EVO in this anime are commentating it like it's a real match.
Talking about like the foot game and Okizume and all the other like obscure fighting game terminology. Like this. This show loves fighting games.
[01:04:27] Speaker B: Do they? Do they have a segment on the perfect Fairy thing? Oh God. What the hell's his name?
[01:04:32] Speaker A: Yes, there is a reference to Evo moment 37 where D. Daigo and Justin Wong faced off against each other.
I'm pretty sure one of these pro players is loosely modeled after Daigo.
Loosely. But it's not directly referenced.
It's more of a. Like they have a moment where one of the characters parries several hits. It's not the same super from Chun Li, but it's clearly they're trying to like draw an analogies to that.
It's really good. It's really charming. It's a comedy, it's a drama. It's Yuri. It's great.
Highly recommend. Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games. It does not have a dub. It is subtitle only and it's on crunchyroll. The other anime I have been watching is weird. It is called Dara San of Reiwa and this anime is 18 plus because there's just tit sometimes.
But it's not really an ecchi anime.
This is a show about a couple of kids who live in rural Japan and their family maintains a, like, fence to keep people from climbing this mountain where there's a God that lives on the mountain. And an earthquake causes a landslide that takes out some of the fence, which results in these kids meeting the God and making friends with her. And she's a snake lady, like yokai monster. She doesn't have any clothes. She's never seen the purpose in having clothes. She's been around for hundreds of years. So the kids literally steal their mom's underwear and bring it to her so she can wear clothes so she's not naked around them in the first episode. But then from there it goes on this, like, weird.
It transitions from, like, telling the story of hundreds of years ago of these, like, priestesses and fighting the monster that lived in this region before and their story and then transitioning to this modern time where this snake monster lady is now, like, chatting on her cell phone with teenagers and being bullied by the teenagers to go sell, like, handmade crafts at a, like, flea market.
And just generally, you know, slice of lifey kind of fun stuff. And it's just. I don't understand why they chose to just have nudity in this. It doesn't need it. And that's me saying that.
[01:07:04] Speaker B: So I'm going to make a weird reference.
[01:07:05] Speaker D: It's just kind of out of place.
[01:07:06] Speaker B: Gonna make a weird reference here.
[01:07:07] Speaker D: Is it just like. Is this, like, out of place?
[01:07:10] Speaker A: It's not even that it's out of place, it's just that it's unnecessary.
[01:07:13] Speaker B: This suddenly reminds me of Monty Python, which there is spontaneous nudity for no reason whatsoever. Randomly.
[01:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah. It's kind of like that.
[01:07:24] Speaker B: And also has nothing to do with the plot. Never relevant again. Just there, then gone.
[01:07:28] Speaker A: The other thing that's weird about this one to me is that it's this like, kind of charming slice of lifey thing, but also it's fucking dark in places.
There is a sequence where a YouTuber breaks into the. The breaks through the fence and goes up the mountain and goes to the shrine that is there that seals this monster to this mountain and breaks into the shrine and grabs the. The cursed object that's in there which gets her killed in a very bloody way. Like this anime does not pull its punches. It is dark and violent. I am leaving out a lot because I don't want to spoil it because it's actually really good.
I just. I didn't expect the. The 18 plus softcore porny looking anime to also just be genuinely funny. Like it's made me laugh out loud multiple times and charming and also heavy. So yeah, that's what I've been watching other than my usual.
[01:08:29] Speaker C: That's why you're talking about it. I was looking it up a little bit and someone called them snitties.
[01:08:37] Speaker A: Of course they did got a little bit.
And quite literally they play with like tropes from hentai sometimes. So one of the kids goes to his teacher and the snake lady is watching and assumes that the teacher is a pedophile.
[01:08:57] Speaker D: Like they.
[01:08:57] Speaker A: They straight up play into like hentai tropes of this. They make it look like the teacher is a creepy. Until you learn that no, the teacher just really likes making cosplay clothes and is not allowed to have a side job. And the kid is like blackmailing the teacher with the knowledge of this to get clothes made for the snake lady. It's not dark at all in that way. But they will set the expectation of that so they can then subvert your expectations.
It's great. I'm enjoying the hell out of it. But it's also very much like you need to be a Weeb to enjoy this show. If you're not like relatively knowledgeable about at least anime specific Japanese culture, you're just not gonna enjoy the show because you won't know what they're referencing.
[01:09:43] Speaker D: That makes sense.
[01:09:44] Speaker A: All right. This has been episode 27 of from 8bit to 4k.
Thanks for joining us. Witchit Black Mass.
[01:09:51] Speaker D: Hey, I enjoyed it. Definitely want to join again for sure.
[01:09:54] Speaker A: Absolutely. You are welcome back anytime. I've been Jack Selman for Mike and many names for Pillow pet and for Witchit Black Mass. Have a great night.
[01:10:03] Speaker C: Good night.
[01:10:04] Speaker B: Good night everybody.
