From 8-Bit to 4K Episode 29: The Shape of Games

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome back to from 8bit to 4k. I'm your host this week, Mike. Many names with me, I have one of my usual co hosts, Jack Zelman. [00:00:20] Speaker B: Hello, it's me. I'm Jack Silman. [00:00:22] Speaker A: And unfortunately, Pillow is unable to make it this week. We had some scheduling problems with timing on things, but we have a guest host that you may remember from before. We have Kayla back with us. [00:00:32] Speaker C: Hello, I'm Kaylaer. 4K for short. Whichever you prefer. [00:00:37] Speaker A: All right. And we are part of the four words podcast, you know, conglomeration thing. You can find [email protected]. Right, the4wordsatreon.com. [00:00:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it's in the document. It's patreon.com theforwardspodcast. [00:00:54] Speaker A: Slash the forwards. That's it. And then we have a discord. Please join us within that discord for the Patreon. You can give us a dollar a month to tell us you love us. $5 will give you some exclusive behind the scenes. You get two this week, so one of them's a little bit more hefty than the other. And then $10 will give you a shout out. And those people getting shoutouts are Codex, Ninja, Pillow, Pet Labana, Uncle ChrisCo, and Scipius Esquire. Thank you guys very much for joining us at the shoutout tier. So this week is an interesting week because we've had some very, very different designs in what we're going to do with this. Jax, tell us how you found this. [00:01:37] Speaker B: So I was in K's Discord and someone in one of the gaming channels posted a graphic of the nine games that shaped who I am. And my reaction upon seeing it was, wow, that is definitely the games of a 20 year old, which, A, I felt really old, but B, it got me thinking, like, okay, but as a gamer, like, there are a lot of games that shaped who I am, both from my childhood and not from my childhood. This would make an interesting podcast topic. And I pitched that to Mike and he immediately was struggling to pare his list down to nine. [00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah, this is an incredibly interesting topic to me because it is so much more than just your favorite games. You have to go and try and figure out if you are someone who is like us, a gamer who is really, well, like, immersed in the scene, paring down to just what made me who I am, what shaped who I am. This is more than just my tastes in games. These are things that fundamentally shaped who I am as a person at times. [00:02:45] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:02:46] Speaker A: And so when this Got through. It was immediate. This needs to be an episode. This absolutely has to be an episode. And so we immediately got to work on doing this. I was still struggling with this three minutes before recording. I could still theoretically change things right now, but I won't do that because I've locked what we have in. I'm still struggling with a couple numbers. Unfortunately, because Pillow isn't here, he won't be able to share his reasons with us. So we're gonna grab his stuff at the top of next episode because, honestly, I think it's a fantastic topic for all of us, and he's gonna have some actually different games than the rest of us. [00:03:22] Speaker B: So that being said, he also picked a lot of games he's talked about recently, so I think it'll be good as a subtopic on the next episode. [00:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think as our guest K. Take a shot from what you're gonna do. Which. Which one of your games do you want to do? You want to talk about how it shaped you first? [00:03:40] Speaker C: I think the first one. I might as well just start with the. The first one on my list is Chrono Trigger. Honestly, that. I don't know if it really, like, made me a gamer, but it definitely made me very interested in games because it. It really got me hooked on just adventure and storytelling because it has a good number of ways that you can [00:04:08] Speaker B: end the game, even on a first playthrough. There's like four endings, if you count the bad ending. And then there's like 13 endings total in Chrono Trigger. And that was in 1995, when most games are like, we barely have a story. [00:04:24] Speaker A: This is one of the fundamental, like, original big story games. It's still widely considered one of the best RPGs ever made. [00:04:32] Speaker C: And even then, just the characters are really amazing. [00:04:35] Speaker A: Incredible character work. Yeah. [00:04:38] Speaker B: It's easily the most iconic JRPG of the Super Nintendo era. [00:04:44] Speaker C: It was also. I don't think it was the very first game I ever played, but it is one of the first games I played. Like, probably, like one of the first three games I ever played when I was, like, very, very little. [00:04:54] Speaker B: Okay, I have a question now. How did that not just spoil video games for you forever? Because every game you play after is [00:05:01] Speaker C: not as good because I was very, very little. [00:05:05] Speaker A: Like, when you're five or six, when you play these games, it's. Oh, cool. That was awesome. Next. [00:05:11] Speaker C: Like, as a very little kid, I really like the characters walking around and fighting. And that was like. That just goes to Testament of It being incredibly fun, but as I got older and actually was able to play it and enjoy like its actual full, you know, width and breadth, it became incredible. Like just one of the most incredible games that you can play. That's why I'm like, I kind of would like a bit of a remake where like, you know, like I think I brought up last time I was on where like they give it a threads of Time treatment which still hasn't come out. I'm very sad and we don't know when it'll come out. But if they gave it that kind of graphical overhaul and some like just you know, a touch up on like the turn based Chrono Trigger is deserving [00:06:04] Speaker B: of a remake of the like scope and caliber of the Final Fantasy VII remake. [00:06:09] Speaker A: Final Fantasy even, even Final Fantasy tactics, the way they redid that would be fantastic for that. [00:06:14] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's one that I feel like every generation should be able to enjoy. [00:06:21] Speaker B: So I have a question for you. Who was your favorite character in Chrono Trigger when you were a kid and is it still the same character now? [00:06:29] Speaker C: I think as a kid I liked the dark mage guy. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Magus. [00:06:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I liked Magus because he. Well, it was a mixture of Magus and the princess Magus because like I managed to recruit him at 5. I was like, oh, he's a boss. And then you manage to beat him and if you do it right, you recruit him and he joins your party. And as a little kid that blew my mind. But I also like the princess because she was very pretty. As an adult though, I kind of like, I can't remember her name. The barbarian woman. Ayla. [00:07:06] Speaker B: I love Ayla. [00:07:07] Speaker C: Yes, yes, I like Ayla. She's very, she's very nice. I like her. [00:07:12] Speaker A: As you're saying that, another game popped into my head. It's like, fuck. [00:07:18] Speaker B: I have a feeling that's not gonna be the only time Mike feels that way on this. [00:07:21] Speaker A: No, it's. It's gonna happen a lot. Someone's gonna say an idea and I'm gonna sit there and I go, shit. This other thing from another game is so great. Why didn't I do this? [00:07:30] Speaker B: Should I go next then? [00:07:31] Speaker A: I think you should go next. Jax, give us a game. [00:07:33] Speaker B: Alright. Since you went with one of the earliest games you played as a kid, I will go with my first exposure to video games when I was four, my uncle, on a family event of some kind, brought over his original Nintendo, the NES and his copy of Super Mario Brothers. And that shit blew my Mind as a four year old, that was my first exposure to video games. I didn't know what video games were at that point, but I knew I wanted that and I wanted to make video games because I was like, that is the coolest thing ever. I want to make that stuff when I grow up. So my four year old ass. Of course I didn't have any means of my own. I was like, mommy, daddy, can I have a Nintendo? My parents did not want me to play video games, but they also didn't want to deal with their child throwing a tantrum if they said no. So their solution was to be like, well, son, if you save up your money, you can buy it yourself once you have enough. I got a $2 a week allowance at 4 years old. And in 1990 the NES was $150. So they figured, well, that'll take him forever. There's no way he'll do that. That's over a year of saving. Sure enough, combined with some money for my birthday. About a year later I had enough money to buy a Nintendo and five year old me went to my parents one day and was like, okay, I have enough. Can we go to the store and buy a Nintendo now? And my parents realized they had backed themselves into a corner. They couldn't say no now because that was the condition they had set out. So five year old me got to buy a Nintendo with my own money and I have been a video gamer ever since. [00:09:11] Speaker A: I'm going to make an old reference. Did you go to Toys R Us to get it? [00:09:16] Speaker B: Um, I have no idea what store they took me to. I don't remember that part. I just remember wanting it so badly that I stopped buying toys, I stopped buying candy. I saved my money for a year, which is insane as a four year old. [00:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I would not have had the impulse control probably. [00:09:37] Speaker B: I don't have that kind of impulse control now. I don't know how the hell I did it as a kid, but that's how I became a gamer, guys. I saved up for a year to buy Super Mario Brothers because it was the coolest thing ever and I had to have it. [00:09:51] Speaker C: It's called Hyperfocus. [00:09:53] Speaker A: Yeah, fair. So unlike these two, I used to have my first game that I can remember on this list, but that has since changed because I've had to revise this list multiple times. And I think that game in general just fell away because didn't capture me in the same way. Even though it is a seminal thing because it was my first game. I'm gonna give you guys a fun sneak peek. All three of us have a game from this franchise here. All of them are different games. [00:10:22] Speaker B: That's where you're starting with. [00:10:23] Speaker A: I'm starting here. One of the most seminal games for me because it is my first of. One of my favorite genres and really, like, got me into so much was Metroid Fusion. I love Metroid Prime. I love Zero Mission. I adore. [00:10:39] Speaker B: Someday I'll get you to play Super Metroid. [00:10:42] Speaker A: I actually really love the Metroid II remake that they did. Actually. AM2R is fantastic. I love so many Metroid games. Super Metroid is on my list of things I need to play, and I'm putting it off, and I don't know why. I think because once I've done it, I'll have done it, and I'm not gonna be doing it a million times. I want to savor that for later. But Fusion was such an interesting game to me. I didn't have the experience of understanding the rest of the Metroid franchise, but the intro in the beginning of that is so fundamentally cooking into you that you instantly get this understanding of who Samus is, why I'm doing this, and how atmosphere in a game can be done. Metroid Fusion terrified me because of the SA X I had saved at a point and would not play for, like, two weeks because I could hear the SA X underneath the floor, and I couldn't figure out how to get around it without going through it. And I didn't want to do it. It's such a pivotal moment into, like, this is the kind of emotion that games can bring out. And this started that for me. And I've since played Fusion multiple times. And it is the game that, like, you'll hear a couple times here, that something got me into a genre afterwards. And I've gone back to play previous versions because of this. This is one of the games where. Yeah, it's not the first one, but it was done so well. I went back and played the other ones because I wanted to know more. Also, just Samus was kick ass. And seeing. Seeing a woman like that that early on being so awesome is something that I think has made me judge how other people put women in games forever. Yeah, let's bounce backwards. Snake and Mac. Jax, what are you going with? [00:12:33] Speaker B: Okay, so I wanted to put a JRPG on my list because I adore the genre. I play a ton of them, and if I wanted to go with my first one, I would have actually picked the first Dragon Quest, which was Called Dragon Warrior and the us. I have fond memories of it. I have stories about that game. I think I've told them on this podcast already. [00:12:55] Speaker A: This one. [00:12:55] Speaker B: So. So I picked a different game which is also a formative, important game. I adore Secret of Mana. I don't think Secret of Mana is the best JRPG on the Super Nintendo. It is my personal favorite JRPG on the Super Nintendo. It means a lot to me. This game was a formative game for me. I got it, I think literally when it came out in 1993 or whatever secret of Mana was when I realized, wait, I can share my love of video games with other people. Because Secret of Mana is co op. You can play two player cooperative in Secret of Mana. I had never gotten to do that in a game. Everything we played before was either turn taking turns like Mario Brothers games or was pure competitive competitive games like a Street Fighter or something like it. Secret of Mana was my exposure to co op gaming. That was the first time I ever played it where my sister and I played Secret of Mana. And I always played as the boy because he did the most damage with his attacks. She always played as the girl because the girl had magic and good attacks. And no one played as the sprite because the sprite sucks at everything except offensive magic. I love Secret of Mana. I remember as a kid getting stuck for a long ass time because there is a puzzle early on in the game that is very simple. The prompt the game gives you is walk the seasons from spring to winter, spring again and you can enter and my dumb ass. There's. There's four screens in a square shape and you just go counterclockwise. That's all you have to do. And it'll open up once you've gone through the five tiles. My dumbass thought that the one that was summer was supposed to be fall and thought the one that was fall was supposed to be summer and kept trying to find like a secret passage to go diagonally through it and never found one because there isn't one. And it took me months to progress the game because it didn't occur to me to just go clockwise. I was a dumb kid sometimes. [00:15:04] Speaker A: We all are. [00:15:05] Speaker B: But I fucking love Secret of Mana. It is such a good game. I've replayed it as an adult with my wife in co op and she got to play the whole game with me. She had never played it before and she had a blast. God, I wish the remake of this game was good. It has a remake. It sucks. Don't play the Remake. [00:15:27] Speaker A: So I realized 10 seconds after I started it that to do a proper Snake, I should have done a second one first. [00:15:32] Speaker B: You should have. [00:15:33] Speaker A: So I'm gonna rectify that now and go into my other one. Going off of something you said there, realizing that one of the games on this list is also my first co op game. And it was a game that like cemented a friendship with my friends. This is, this is pretty much one of the things that gave me like comfort in my early teens. Combat Evolved is a game that like fundamentally made one of my best friends and I as close as we were together. And it is a game that I actually think is still phenomenal enough that like, I wish I could wipe it from my mind and experience it again for the first time. It's so uniquely made for that time period that it set the tone for what games would be for the next five years. Pretty much so many things took from Halo and it was done so well. And it got me and my buddy Felix really good friends. Like I adore that man. I haven't talked to him in a couple years because life. But he was such a good dude. And I was never allowed to have a console as a child. I got my first one when I moved to college. And so he was really like the person who brought me into consoles as gaming, which brought me into more games than I could really play anywhere else and more elaborate games because there's only so much you can do on a Game Boy. And then it was also the first true co op game I ever played. And it was just like this. This collaborative feeling of playing a co op game is unlike anything you ever had before. It not having to compete and then also doing the competitions, the PvP and that was also just such a. Such a gem. [00:17:19] Speaker B: I have fond memories of going to the Comic Shop in the town that I grew up when Combat Evolved was current for a like LAN party tournament that we had there. We had four Xboxes networked together playing 16 player Blood Gulch in the Comic Shop. [00:17:42] Speaker A: It was amazing. It has such great memories for me. And it is the game that one, that got me into shooters in general as a genre. 2 got me into co op gaming and 3 got me into like what was the first true console experience I had. And it was just, it was just so, so great. And even the storytelling in that game, it's not as brilliant as a lot of story is to follow, but for what it was delivering, especially when I was that age, was so much more than almost anything else then. But what really got me from Halo that I've actually not spoken of. Here is the score. Listening to that game's soundtrack again will bring me a memory. Anytime I see it, anytime I hear it, and it's just. [00:18:28] Speaker B: Okay, I have a question for you before we move on to K's picks. When you hear the Halo theme, do you Hear the Halo 1 version in your head or do you Hear the Halo 2 electric guitar version in your head? [00:18:41] Speaker A: I. [00:18:42] Speaker B: Because for me, it's the Halo 2 electric guitar version, even though I think Halo 1 was more iconic for me. [00:18:47] Speaker A: So in the first one, because I have the CD from it, it has no electric guitar until its third portion and then it comes in. It's not long with electric guitar, but it is. The original version has a little bit in it. [00:19:02] Speaker B: Yes. [00:19:03] Speaker A: And that is. [00:19:03] Speaker B: The version I have is more electric throughout. [00:19:07] Speaker A: I have that version because that is saved and is in my major playlist. It will show up randomly while I'm driving and I can't skip it. [00:19:16] Speaker B: You start just humming along. [00:19:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. And I've almost crouched a couple times from loving it. Going a little bit too deep into it. [00:19:24] Speaker B: Drive safely, Mike. Come on, it's fun. [00:19:27] Speaker A: Okay, take us a game. [00:19:31] Speaker C: Let's see. Let's see. [00:19:34] Speaker A: Well, if you don't pick one, I'm going to pick one for you. [00:19:37] Speaker C: Mike did Metroid Fusion and then Jax talked about Mario or no Secrets of Mana. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go weird and pick the rhythm game. Be Beat Saber. Honestly, I like it because it makes me exercise, like, a lot and I got really, really good at it. [00:20:03] Speaker B: You are good at Beat Saber. I wish I was as good at Beat Saber as you are. [00:20:08] Speaker C: I was good at Beat Saber. There's no way I would. I would have to, like, dedicate like three months just to get back to, like, how good I used to be. Like, for three months, it would be the only game I stream or almost exclusively because I used to be former top 10,000 globally, but I got sick and then I ended up kind of dropping it. But it is so much fun to just, like, have, like, swords and like, actually just swing at blocks. It sounds really, really dumb, but it is really, really good. Mostly because people are pretty good at making custom maps. Kind of have to know a few tricks to navigate the really shitty meme maps or maps that people make just to have, like a really high note count. And it's really, really dumb. [00:21:01] Speaker B: I just don't play those ones. They're not fun. [00:21:04] Speaker C: But as far as, like, how it shaped me personally. It kind of, like, cemented me as a streamer because, like, up till Beat Saber, I kind of just was really random. Random days, random times, random everything. Which isn't necessarily bad if you're a new streamer or want to get into streaming, but, like, kind of having your own niche that you can, like, be known for, it does help a bit. And for me, it was Beat Saber. And that's where I, like, really started growing from. Like, that's how I met. They used to be known as Fua, but now they're like Momo. I got rated by people who are still friends that I didn't know back then. I know for one of my birthdays, I did like a. A big multiplayer multiplayer stream of that. And Jax just. Jax did a fair amount of sweating on that one. [00:22:09] Speaker B: Yeah, you picked a lot of songs that I just could not keep up with. I'm not nearly as good at Beat Saber as K is. [00:22:16] Speaker C: I still have, like a few clips on my channel of Beat Saber, but, like, that really cemented me as just someone who streamed and enjoys streaming. [00:22:26] Speaker A: That's a. That's a good one. I think I'm gonna make you take your MMO that you were talking about now as your second one. Tell us about your MMO. [00:22:34] Speaker C: Well, there's two MMOs on my list, but I'll go with the first one I have listed, which is really, really obscure. [00:22:41] Speaker B: That's okay. [00:22:43] Speaker C: It's called Repels, and I would say how it shaped me. And this is probably gonna not be the most glamorous shape, I would say, [00:22:56] Speaker B: since none of us know what that is. What is Repels? [00:23:00] Speaker C: Repels is a obscure Korean style MMO whose main focus is farming with a really good pet taming system. And when I first started it, what I enjoyed the most was you kill enemy, you get experience, you level up, you have a job, the jobs can advance. You get more advanced skills from advanced jobs, do more things, and when you kill enemies, they give you job points. So it's almost like the job system has its own separate experience system. Did things to my brain juices, and I really liked it. How it shaped me, though, is I happen to really like women. And this is where my fascination with women and impractical armor kind of came from. Like, if I was to go back in time and be like, oh, I like women in sexy armor, it was Repels. Repels did that to me. [00:24:03] Speaker B: Yeah, guys, if you didn't know K is a degenerate like I am, I [00:24:07] Speaker C: wouldn't say an entire degenerate. I. I can function pretty normally. It's just like. [00:24:13] Speaker B: That's why I said like I am. [00:24:15] Speaker C: I have a lot of things just saved on my phone. [00:24:19] Speaker B: I'm in your discord. I know what kind of community you keep. You're a degenerate, just like I am. [00:24:25] Speaker C: No, no, no, no, it's not. I keep a community. I have a community. I have a place for a community to exist. [00:24:32] Speaker A: See, it sounds like you collect them. [00:24:34] Speaker B: She does. She collects them. [00:24:35] Speaker C: They find me. They find me. I just go live and then people find me. [00:24:42] Speaker A: Oh, man. Okay, let's go to Jax. Jax, take your pick. Are you gonna do rhythm or are you gonna do mmo? [00:24:51] Speaker B: I'm gonna do the rhythm game. Since K talked about Beat Saber when I was about 20, 19 or 20, DDR was just getting big in the US and I was going to college at the time, and my friends and I went to an arcade one time and some of them were making fun of people playing DDR and I was like, hey, we've never played this game. Why are we making fun of people of this game we've never played? They were like, okay, we'll play it then. So I did, and I sucked because of course everyone sucks at rhythm games when they're new. But I had a blast. And so did my friends that were formerly making fun of people playing DDR. And that took me down a rabbit hole of playing DDR a lot. In the span of about a year, I made no other changes to my lifestyle except I suddenly had a Dance Dance Revolution addiction. I lost £80 in that year. I went from being a fat guy to being like, actually in shape for the first time in my life when I was 20. So I picked the DDR that the arcade where I lived had, which is DDR max 2. But really it's just DDR as a franchise. The individual games only matter as far as, like, some of the songs that I fondly remember are in that mix. I remember playing Kind Lady a lot, which is not even that great of a song, but it was the one that 20 year old me was like, oh, I like the note chart for this. This is fun to play. And that's kind of where I land on rhythm games is they need to have fun note charts that are actually interesting what they make you do. Not just difficult for me to have fun. So like the beat Saber K was talking about, I found maps people have made that require you to like basically do a choreographed dance with your swords to be able to hit the notes correctly, and those are amazing. DDR is kind of the same way. Some songs literally just have you stomping on the notes really fast, and some songs have you galloping across the mat or. Or doing spins to hit the notes easily or other fun things. And those are where my jam is. I played so much DDR, I still to this day own a pair of cobalt flux DDR dance mats for the PlayStation, which are, at the time, they were $300 each in 2005, 2006, something like that. They were not cheap. They still work. I love DDR. It's such an important game to my life. My goal for fitness right now is to lose enough weight and get in enough shape that I can actually play DDR again, because I can still, gameplay wise, do, like, relatively difficult songs, but I can't move my body like that anymore. So, yeah, that's why dance Dance Revolution Max 2. [00:27:51] Speaker A: I'm gonna. I'm gonna bounce off that one if. Well, no go Crayola. Yeah. What do you got? [00:27:55] Speaker C: I was gonna say if I was to pick up another rhythm game, it probably would be DDR because. Or something like DDR because, like, it just makes you move your whole body. It's like, even better for, like, exercise. [00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just too high impact for me now. I'm too heavy, My feet are too weak. I cannot deal with that level of impact. [00:28:13] Speaker A: That's it. That's a shame. Let's hope you get there soon enough. [00:28:16] Speaker B: That's the goal. [00:28:18] Speaker C: All right. [00:28:18] Speaker A: I'm going to bounce off that and start with my rhythm game. And mine is Rock Band. Rock Band. Like, I started with Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 3 specifically. But just because Guitar Hero was the one that I started with, didn't mean it was the one that had the most impact on me. We started Rock Band my first year in college, and it is the reason that I know anybody who lived with me in that floor in college. We started playing with. And as we're going, more people would. Would wander in and we'd talk and we'd play. And then suddenly there was a round robin playgroup of people doing Rock Band together. And then occasionally we'd be like, oh, one person will bow out, another person will come in. Sometimes you'd have to play two things at once. One person is doing songs and one person at the same time, they're doing guitar or something like that. And it became. It became the, like, the communal, fun way to do things together in my first year in college. And that really, like, that is How I met a lot of friends of mine. But also it is. It has shaped how I want to influence with other people since then. Without that, I'm a lot more of a shut in of a person. Before that, I'm not as open as I am. That got me seeing people that I didn't immediately recognize or vaguely recognized and talking to them consistently and then hanging out with them and then playing with them and then being open to talking about other things. Because through Rock Band I would talk with them and then we'd do other things. Because we did Rock Band together. We play magic together. We would play Starcraft. Actually at the time it was Dota. We played a lot of Dota together. And this became just my way into being a personable individual. Because before this, Guitar Hero was Matte Mouse. Two people and you're doing some stuff together and you can do that with just a friend. Rock Band needs more. [00:30:06] Speaker B: I think the magic of Rock Band was the fact that it had a singing role. So even people who were God awful with controllers or had no sense of rhythm, everyone can have fun singing. My mom played Rock Band with me and my sister because she could sing while we're playing the guitar or drums. [00:30:25] Speaker A: My parents, eventually they didn't get Rock Band because they had a weird. I was still annoyed with them. Annoyed with them because they got a Wii as soon as I moved out of the house. But they ended up with Guitar Hero 5 because Guitar Hero 5 was imitating rock Band and it was just something that we could do together as a family. But that was also because of Rock Band. If Rock Band was not a thing, Guitar Hero would never have done that. It also cemented several of my favorite songs of all time. I still distinctly remember doing Misery Business on the drums and just having so much fun. [00:31:00] Speaker B: Guitar Hero and Rock Band showed me so much music that I now love that I just didn't know about prior to those games. [00:31:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they really did. Bouncing off Go Go Go. [00:31:12] Speaker C: I remember like Rock Band and Guitar Hero were kind of like the first real big rhythm games that kind of just hit the just like gaming scene as a whole. I like where everybody could like really participate too. Like that's why it was so big. Like everybody was just able to get into it. [00:31:31] Speaker B: They were the first rhythm games that weren't heavy exercise that went mainstream because DDR had gone mainstream by then. But DDR was a physical game whereas Rock Band, like you're playing with guitar or drums or you're singing. Everyone could do that regardless of fitness level. [00:31:48] Speaker A: Guitar Hero 1 was never as big as Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band popularized it, I think. [00:31:55] Speaker C: Well, also, like, rhythm games weren't all that big back then. Back then it was just DDR and then like really weird, obscure Nintendo games. [00:32:05] Speaker A: There were a bunch of PC things too. [00:32:06] Speaker B: Well, and then the whole Bomani franchise, but that mostly didn't make it over here. Yeah, there was always the Beatmania weirdos who were obsessed with Beatmania. [00:32:16] Speaker C: Yeah. So like Rock Band and Guitar Hero were kind of like the first real rhythm games we kind of got as like a gaming market here in the U.S. yep. [00:32:24] Speaker B: They were definitely the first homegrown ones because everything prior to that that had any traction was Japanese. [00:32:30] Speaker A: That or just arcade. [00:32:32] Speaker B: Usually both. [00:32:33] Speaker A: Yeah, true. But bouncing off of that. And I'm going to go into the mmo, which all of you should immediately understand where I'm going with this. World of Warcraft is the game that has probably done more to shape my social life than anything else. I am living where I am right now because of. [00:32:51] Speaker B: Wow. [00:32:52] Speaker A: Someone I was in the guild with needed a roommate and we moved in together. I. I met friends that I have now known for 20 years because of. Wow. It is. It is the reason that I still have so many people that I talk to online that are really good friends. And it is part of that is one of the reasons why I never put the game down is because I have an interaction with people that I wouldn't otherwise. But also it's evolved into ways that I find incredibly interesting in gaming. They keep experimenting with more and more new and interesting mechanics or bringing in things from other genres to pull it into this. And as a. As a amateur game designer, as someone who did a lot in studying game design, it intrigues me so much and it always makes me want to do more. And I wish I had more time on my hands to actually do Game Des because it's something that I'm really passionate about, which is why, kind of how that podcast started in general. [00:33:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:33:56] Speaker A: Hey, Jax. Take one. All right. [00:33:58] Speaker B: I'll go with one of my Blizzard games to follow on from. Wow. You know what? I'm just gonna do both of them because they're both important for me for different reasons. I'm gonna start with Diablo 2. When Diablo II came out, I was too young for the rating. It was a mature rated game, 17 and up in the US and my parents were very much the type of people who believe the rating system is infallible. I wasn't allowed to watch PG13 movies until I was 13. I wasn't allowed to buy teen rated video games until I was 13. And I wasn't allowed to buy M rated video games until I was 17. But that didn't stop me in the case of Diablo 2. I wanted to play this game so bad and I had seen it and knew that the actual subject matter was not gonna get me in any trouble. I had a friend buy my copy of Diablo II and I used a printer at school to print out the Diablo 2 cover art for the jewel case. But that I had edited the M rating to show teen rating instead in Ms. Paint. [00:35:05] Speaker A: Oh, your parents looked at everything. Oh geez. [00:35:08] Speaker C: Right. [00:35:09] Speaker B: So then I had Diablo 2, but it was teen rated. See, they didn't know that the game was actually an M rated game. They just knew, oh, he brought home some teen rated game, whatever. And they would see me playing it occasionally. And if you've ever seen Diablo 2, like it's pretty tame. As long as they didn't walk in on the like one FMV cutscene of Andariel where you see her hits almost completely exposed, they had no way of knowing. So I played Diablo 2 and I don't think I would be the person I am today without it because it was such a formative, like this is where my theory crafting mind came from. Like my like figuring out builds and all of that is because of my time playing Diablo 2. And remember I'm the guy. I now have like 7,000 hours in the spiritual successor to Diablo 2, which is path of exile. I chose Diablo 2 instead of path of Exile because I think it's more formative for me and Path of Exile is the result of that formative. The other Blizzard game I picked is starcraft. And my reason for that is really simple and that's why I'm mashing these together. StarCraft was the first game I ever played online, just full stop. I had never played a game online prior to Starcraft. I did not have broadband Internet at the time. I had dial up. And in order to play StarCraft, I wasn't allowed to tie up the phone line during hours where my parents cared about getting phone calls. So to play it online I had to wait until after 9pm and then I got to play Starcraft for like an hour and then I had to go to bed and I made full use of that. I played so many, both regular and custom maps of starcraft, spent way more time than I would have liked on Big Game Hunters because for some reason everyone in 1999 loved big game Hunters. Which is just a stock map from Starcraft, but with resources cranked up to 11. That's it. That's all the map is. I played the shit out of Starcraft and that led to me then playing Warcraft 3, becoming a Dota player and eventually the League of Legends player that I am today. So, like, StarCraft is where all of that came from. StarCraft is like where I got my competitive gaming urges from. [00:37:33] Speaker A: Damn. That reasoning is making me want to change one of my things. I'm not going to. I'm not going to, but I'm. It makes me want to change it. [00:37:41] Speaker B: I think it's K's turn now. [00:37:42] Speaker A: Okay, give us one. [00:37:45] Speaker C: I feel like everybody's list should include a good jrpg. For me, that one, I think one that really shaped a huge part of my personality is Tales of Symphonia. It's a good fucking I. It is. It is absolutely incredible. My first Tales game, but I was raised Christian, was in church for a long time, baptized, all that stuff. And I think tales of. Not to bash religion or anything, but for like, on a personal level, Tales of Symphonia kind of like, kind of cracked the religious indoctrination that I was kind of like going through when I was younger in kind of like my 13, 14, 15 years. [00:38:37] Speaker B: I. I knew that was where you were going the moment you brought up that you were raised Christian. This game is such a, like, questioning the religious authority game. [00:38:46] Speaker C: It is. It is. It. It is incredible when it comes to questioning religious authority. I don't know if it would be okay to spoil it because it's such a, like, massive part of the game. [00:38:59] Speaker B: That's up to you. That's. There is a spoiler warning. Tales of Symphonia. Spoilers abound. Skip ahead two minutes if you care. [00:39:07] Speaker C: Because they. They first introduce you into a world where they are very religious. Your friend is destined to be, like, sacrificed for religious reasons. And they have to pass all of these religious trials and, like, prepare their body and all this other stuff, only to find out that A. You're. I don't know. Did they ever confirm Kratos is Lloyd's dad? [00:39:35] Speaker B: Yes. [00:39:36] Speaker C: Yeah. Only to find out a, your dad is an angel. He's been active in oppressing the world along with his old travel companions. And all of this has just been a form of control so they can create, like the perfect vessel to revive an old lost hero that everybody has been religiously indoctrinated to revive. And you get like, little tidbits here and there. And that's only the first half of the game, by the way. That's only the first half of the game. The. The gameplay itself is actually pretty fun. It's a really good action based game. But like, it really kind of broke me out of being like this weird hyper Christian thing where I was even considering being like a pastor and just all this other stuff. And I'm just like. I look back on that and I think I would be on a completely different trajectory if I had never played Tales of Symphonia. [00:40:39] Speaker B: That's such a good reason to pick this particular Tales game. I do think it's probably the second best of the 3D Tales games, but that's such a good reason. It's such a good game. Like, if you haven't played Tales of Symphonia, you should. It's really goddamn good. [00:40:54] Speaker C: Who. [00:40:55] Speaker B: Who is your favorite character in Tales of Symphonia? [00:41:00] Speaker C: You know, it's Sheena. Because I like boobs. Why did you even ask? [00:41:06] Speaker B: It could have been rain. For the same reason. [00:41:09] Speaker C: No, no. The moment Sheena walked on screen with her. Her Booba Window Ninja outfit, I. I was smitten. It's her. It will always be her. [00:41:22] Speaker B: Go for the Booba ninja instead of the Onee san. I see how it is. I was always a sucker for Procea because the little girl with giant axe, [00:41:31] Speaker C: it's a very large axe, and she's [00:41:33] Speaker B: fun to play because she gets to go immune to knock back and just power through enemies. I love Tales of Symphonia. I had a Tales game on my list for a long time. I replaced it with DDR. [00:41:46] Speaker C: I did play Tales of Fantasia. Not, I would say. Well, I mean, it was also a Game Boy game. It was still pretty fun. Oh, God. [00:41:53] Speaker B: You played the worst version of Tales of Fantasia. It's the only version that was ever released in the us. [00:41:58] Speaker A: You get what you use, you play what you can. [00:42:02] Speaker C: It was. It was still pretty good, but it felt more like the. It felt more like the just old timey, you know, generic adventure game. [00:42:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:14] Speaker C: Got a. Yeah. Village gets destroyed. Go save the world. [00:42:18] Speaker B: Yep. Go fight this evil wizard who is a bad guy for reasons that are never really made super clear. He's just the big bad. It feels like it was still pretty fun story, basically. Like, it's not bad, but. [00:42:29] Speaker C: But Tales of Symphony will always be one of my, like, absolute favorite games. And I played that back on the GameCube. [00:42:36] Speaker B: Yep. [00:42:37] Speaker A: All right, I'm making the request now. Tell us why Metroid prime is Your [00:42:42] Speaker C: Metroid game, I would say A, I played that one back in the GameCube era. B, that is probably the game that probably gave me the most sense of adventure. I distinctly remember rolling around in ball form, desperately looking for anything and everything that I could just scan. Like yes, I enjoyed shooting all the enemies, finding all the power ups, having my, my charge beam, just one shot, as much stuff as I could. But I distinctly remember rolling around and I would just obsessively look for everything that I could scan because I wanted to 100%, 100% complete the scan log because it had a percentage and like I never paid attention to it. But once you hit like 80%, my brain's just like, you know, we might as well just 100% this. [00:43:44] Speaker A: Hope you didn't lock yourself out of scanning some bosses by then. [00:43:47] Speaker C: I probably did. That's probably why I think I was always stuck at like 97%. [00:43:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that game has a bunch of missable skins, not just bosses. It's very annoying. [00:43:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:57] Speaker C: The entire first zone, but that's what I did is I would spend a good chunk of hours just rolling around in ball form, just looking for anything and everything that I did not recognize. [00:44:11] Speaker A: It's such a good game. It is in my top games of all time. I seriously considered replacing Fusion with it, but it's. It's that it's the game I played because Fusion was the game I played. Metroid may have other reasons to be on that list. Like it is kind of the reason that open world games kind of became a thing because of that adventure with, with how Metroid prime played. Going back, seeing the world having a consistent just area that you always wander through in this massive 3D space was, was so impressive. Especially, especially on the GameCube. [00:44:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it was. It's just really well made. Like, it just encourages you to explore like as much as possible. Like I have, I've played a few other Metroid games since then, but Metroid prime just did like the exploration so, so well. [00:45:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:11] Speaker B: If I may move on to my Metroid game, Metroid prime translated to 3D perfectly what made Super Metroid a masterpiece. Metroid prime and Super Metroid both have so much environmental storytelling, so much subtle signposting and guiding that you as a player don't even realize you are being guided in the correct direction by the game design, by the level design. [00:45:40] Speaker A: And even when it gives you guidance, it does it in such a way that it feels natural. Yes, I should be getting these things as, as hints as, as Logs. Hey, I need to go down here because this is the thing that it's telling me to go get. [00:45:57] Speaker B: Yes. So Super Metroid is that game for me. I am a little older, but also I. Super Metroid is one of the few games on my list that it belongs here because it is literally my favorite video game. I love Super Metroid more than any other video game. I have literally been playing Super Metroid at least annually for 32 years since it came out in 1994. That is how important this game is to me. Super Metroid taught me that exploring is fun in games. Like just full stop Games prior to Super Metroid were largely linear platformers, linear RPGs, linear whatever. And then Super Metroid is this weird non linear exploration game where there's creepy shit. You find fucking dead bodies in a near silent wreckage. I had not played Metroid 1 and 2. I did not know initially oh, this is the destroyed part of this planet from the cutscene at the start of the game. But I figured that out pretty quick. The. The transition as the planet wakes up and the pirates come out and start attacking you in the areas you just went through that were devoid of enemies moments before the statue waking up and attacking you when you collect an item from it after you had just collected items from statues that did not do that. Just subverting your expectations. Super Metroid is a fucking masterpiece. No game has ever managed to top Super Metroid for me. To the point where it's one of the things I stream the most often. Now I play Super Metroid's map randomizer that people made because they love this 32 year old video game. I play it at least once a week. I love Super Metroid. [00:47:44] Speaker A: It is. It is a masterclass in how to properly utilize backtracking. Every Metroid game is pretty much. [00:47:50] Speaker B: Except for Fusion. [00:47:52] Speaker A: Fusion doesn't really have backtracking in the same way, but when you can backtrack it does it as well as it can. It's the most linear of them. Yeah. Metroid, Metroid. You have Metroid as a special to you as Lord of the Rings is to me. But Lord of the Rings not a video game that would be on this list. None of them are good enough to be here. [00:48:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it's gotten a couple of okay video games, but. [00:48:16] Speaker A: And one really good one. [00:48:17] Speaker B: The problem is that none of them are formative video games in the same way that the games we've picked here. [00:48:22] Speaker A: No, no. If this was a game design one, I'd talk about a couple of them, but not, not. Not the same thing. [00:48:28] Speaker B: All right, Mike, let's get towards the end of this. What game do you want to talk about next? [00:48:33] Speaker A: I think there are two that need to be talked about for me, and that one really is, like, the game that made me truly not just be in game design, but, like, became the foundation for what I judge multiple sides of games work with. It is an indie game that is so well made that I think it should be in everyone's list of games to play. It is a cheap game. It is not a long game, but it has so much to it. Bastion is a formative game in my evolution from just someone who likes playing games into someone who analyzes games, into someone who studies mechanics, who tries to build and evolve and create. And it's doing that in its own living world that's building itself in front of you. It is the first game that truly knows it is a game and tells you what's going on in real time. It understands you're doing things. And these things don't have fundamental impact on the world, but has a fundamental impact on the story that you feel because of how they utilize the narrator. And the narrator is just such a core concept to Bastion and how voice can be so much more than just voice acting. This man should have gotten whatever award for voice acting was at the time. I cannot recall his name. He has a voice like liquid velvet in your ears. It is. It is something that made me want. Not just want to be a game designer because I was currently working in game school, but it. It opened my eyes to what game design can be. [00:50:23] Speaker B: Logan Cunningham is the name you're looking for. [00:50:26] Speaker A: Logan Cunningham, phenomenal voice actor. [00:50:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I've got Bastion in my backlog. Like, it's actually one that I do want to play. [00:50:36] Speaker A: You should play it really good. Supergiant games. The creators hit fucking gold and they've played. I know he doesn't like one of the games that they've released right afterwards, but for me, they have not made a failure. [00:50:49] Speaker B: And if you want to know what this guy's voice sounds like, the narrator of Bastion, he voices Hades in the Hades games. He voices Homer, the narrator in the Hades games. Like, he is an incredible voice actor. [00:51:03] Speaker A: He works, like, very often with super Giant games. [00:51:07] Speaker B: Yeah, he's literally just personal friends with Darren Corp, as far as I understand. [00:51:12] Speaker A: But, yeah, this game is a foundational piece of how I view game design, and that is why it needs to be on this list. There is another game now on this list that is the reason that Difficulty is such a big thing for me back when the original came out, because I am not calling the original a foundation came for me. I never started with Dark Souls 1. I started with Dark Souls 2. Because Dark Souls 2 for me is the reason that I like not just the franchise, but that style of game. It is the reason that I got into hyper difficulty in that cathartic thing that I started chasing that feel of a hard game. Because when Dark Souls 1 came out, my first experience with it was being in a room with my friend who was struggling to face Orenzaden Smough. And I saw him absolutely furious and going, why the fuck would you want to bash your head against a wall for five hours? You're not having fun. No, I am. Shut the fuck up. No. And he got so frustrated and so mad, he almost threw his controller through the monitor. And then he had to stop playing for a while. That is not an experience that I wanted, but because of games like Bastion, when Dark Souls 2's trailer came out and I started seeing what the story could be and started seeing what this was, I went, okay, as a foundational piece of game design, I need to play this game. So I started playing and I played five hours and didn't get it. I was mad, I was furious, I wasn't going anywhere. And a friend of mine went, why are you doing it this way? Just because someone was talking about it. You don't play games like this. Do something else. Switch it around. I know you like doing this more. And it clicked. I played it in a different style with different weapon and suddenly it all fell into place. And I understood how that thing that I couldn't do five hours ago over and over and over again could be this absolute catharsis when you overcome it. And Dark Souls 2 is the reason that I like the genre. It is the reason that two of my top three games are direct from software games in Bloodborne and Elden Ring. I would never have played them without Dark Souls 2. And it introduced me to a whole new world of storytelling with how it has not just its sort of semi hidden storyline which is hidden away into item descriptions and locked away behind environment. This is environmental storytelling as a masterclass, but then also hidden away inside dialogues and hidden away in itty bitty pieces. Layered and layered out, played multiple times. The way it can involve. There's levels in these games that if you aren't looking at a guide and having someone tell you about them, 90% of people will never find. [00:54:06] Speaker C: And they make. Yeah, I saw. I saw On a TikTok like a while ago. Gwen's theme, the. The pling, pling, plong that you hear when, like, you eventually, you know, come up upon his wandering corpse. That entire theme is all played on white keys. None of the keys that. That they play are touch the. The middle black keys. They're all played on the white keys. So, like, even his theme is. Is like rejecting the darkness. [00:54:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that is. That is Dark Souls 1. Gwyn is an amazing character. [00:54:42] Speaker C: I thought that was Dark Souls 2. [00:54:44] Speaker A: No, that is Dark Souls 1. Gwyn is never in Dark Souls 2. His theme shows up again in 3. It's again, same kind of thing. If I'd played Dark Souls 1 at the time and actually enjoyed it, that may have been part of that storytelling. But things like that are still present in Dark Souls 2. And it's just subtle world building at its finest. Even when a giant dragon whose spinal column is on the outside trying to eat you is ramming your face in. Jax, I think you and I are going to talk about the same game now, so let's go with the same one. There's only one game that the two of us have on here, and I don't know if you have it on for the same reason I do. [00:55:30] Speaker B: Why do you have League of Legends on your list? [00:55:33] Speaker A: League of Legends is the reason that I have started podcasting in general. It is what got me into this world where we are in now. Without it, I would not be doing [00:55:45] Speaker B: this same at a much earlier point, since I'm literally the one who brought you into podcasting. [00:55:51] Speaker A: But yes, I'd wanted to do it, and nothing had ever gotten me into the point where I was able to express my passion out. I'd never put in the work to try and start with that. I never knew where to start. League of Legends brought me in there. It's also, in general, one of the things that got me into so many social worlds because of things with League. And it is. It is the genesis for this podcast. Yeah, we would not have done that without that. Do you have any other reasons besides that? [00:56:22] Speaker B: No, that's the same reason it's on there for me. I became a podcaster because of League of Legends. It has shaped the last 17 years of my life. That is how long I've been playing that game. [00:56:33] Speaker A: God, yeah. I have been playing it for 17 years. Fuck. Killer. Save us from our old age. [00:56:40] Speaker B: How is League? How I met you? No, furries are how I met you. [00:56:44] Speaker C: Well, so furry. So like, it's. It's a Mix. So, like, yes, I'm a furry. I followed furry creators. She happened to be one of them. And then I ended up seeing them on Twitch. And then I popped into their streams, and then usually those streams were League. And then that's how I met you. [00:57:04] Speaker B: All right, that's fair, I'll give you that. [00:57:06] Speaker A: Which you met her because of League, so it all circles back to League. [00:57:11] Speaker B: That's fair. [00:57:12] Speaker C: It's always League until it's deadlock. [00:57:16] Speaker B: We'll get there. [00:57:17] Speaker C: Superior game. [00:57:18] Speaker B: We'll get there. Tell us about a couple other games on your list, K. [00:57:23] Speaker C: Well, I might as well go with the one that also made me, like, really social. It also kind of like also kicked off my streaming career. And that was Blade and Soul. It's another Korean mmo. However, this one was where Repels was kind of just like, run up to enemy, hit them as hard as you can, do your best to live. Blade and Soul was kind of tactical. You have move rotations. Moves would buff other moves. So like, you would want to know your playstyles, rotation as best as you could. And a big part of that game was multiplayer Dungeons Guilds and Raids. I would say that was like my first game where those things were pretty big aspects. So, like, that's where I really kind of like got into the MMO part of the MMO itself. Like, I kind of showed up and. And stayed for the outfit farming because it has a lot of outfits. Like, every dungeon has an outfit, every raid has an outfit. There's a cash up that just sells tons of outfits. They're like, I'm. I am weak for outfits. That's how games get me. Okay. If. If it doesn't have a way for me to farm outfits, I find a way to mod it in. That's what I do is just outfit modding. [00:58:56] Speaker B: Or I'm assuming that's why you have Skyrim on your list too. [00:59:01] Speaker C: It is exactly why I have Skyrim on my list. Like, yes, it is a great adventure game. I couldn't care less about that part. It's the modding itself. It is. I was able to mod in all kinds of armors, weapons, Macho Man, Randy Savage. Nope, nope, not those kind of mods. I actually went and did like, the. The more realistic dragons, like, I would make like, their. Their scales and textures, like high res. Because, like, Skyrim is really old. [00:59:39] Speaker A: You didn't get one of the nine high res versions. [00:59:42] Speaker C: I. Well, I mean, I've got whatever the. The anniversary update version. Like, I have like the base Skyrim and then whatever the anniversary Skyrim is that they forced you to have. I don't know, it's weird but like for me it. Skyrim's always been the modding. Like it's the reason why I even have a desktop PC to begin with. Because I used to try and mod that shit on a just rinky dinky touchscreen laptop. That's what I used to try and do. And eventually I was like, oh, all this stuff I really want to do, I can't really do with this laptop. Because I didn't understand hardware back in the day. Because I played, I think just Blade and Soul and maybe a couple other games on the laptop. I didn't even have Steam. Like that's how bad of a PC gamer I used to be. I. I had a console that I played most of my games on and then I had my laptop for when I played Blade and Soul. I think that was it. So I didn't even understand hardware. I understood hardware so I could do more mods on Skyrim. [01:00:53] Speaker A: Specifically fashion souls. The true end game, man. It's true in everything. [01:00:59] Speaker B: It's true in so many games. [01:01:01] Speaker C: That's how games get me. I'm such. I'm so weak for fashion. Like that's, that's really what it is. Like all these games keep coming out and I'm like, I'm not impressed. I'm just like, it needs more fashion. I need outfits. Like, why is there no real character customization? Give me outfits. I don't care about your other content. Give me outfits. [01:01:20] Speaker B: I literally have modded in a ton of costumes into my Final Fantasy 7 rebirth game that I'll talk about in a little while for that very reason. Because I wanted more outfits. Because the default game has two to four per character and you have to wait till halfway through the game to swap them. And I was like, no, this won't do. What if I have these cool outfits from other Final Fantasy stuff or these other outfits that people just created that people modded into the game or. Yeah, some of them. They have their titties out. [01:01:49] Speaker A: Little of column A and little column B. Alright, I think, I think I'm gonna do something different with this last section. Jax, you have two last games on here. Go over them. [01:01:58] Speaker B: Alright, so both of these are on here for very specific story reasons. Not story of the game. I'm gonna tell stories. Advance Wars 2 is the game that prompted me to make a username on the Internet because I wanted to sign up for gamefaqs.com as 15 year old me, whatever age I was when Advance Wars 2 came out and I had to come up with a handle because that was the first time that I ever had to come up with a gamertag online or some way to identify myself. And I wound up going to a book that was my favorite book at the time, which is called the White Dragon, so. By Anne McCaffrey. It's a fantasy novel and I wanted to call myself Jaxom because that's the main character of the White Dragon. But Jaxom was taken on GameFAQs, so I modified it a little bit. I was like, well, if I can't be Jackson, I'll be Jacksonman. That sounds cool, right? I'm a teenager. Edgy stuff. Sounds cool. And I've been Jacksonman ever since, literally for about 25 years now. So that's why Advance Wars 2 is on this list, because that was the game that prompted me to sign up for GameFX. This was also my ex, like first descent into degeneracy. I absolutely wrote fan fiction for Advance Wars 2. I was that kind of person. [01:03:22] Speaker C: Not to massively. Not to massively segue, but there is a furry version of Advanced Wars. [01:03:32] Speaker B: There is. Trying to remember what it's called. [01:03:35] Speaker C: It's called Fuga Melodies of Steel. [01:03:37] Speaker B: Oh. [01:03:37] Speaker C: It's not even the one I was thinking of and it's really good storytelling from what I've heard. I. I haven't been able to play yet, but it is super deep in my backlog that I really, really want to play. It's got three games and people really, really like it and I. I really want to play them fair. But whenever advance wars comes up, that's all I can think of is Fuga Melodies of Steel. [01:04:09] Speaker A: I think Fire Emblem. [01:04:11] Speaker B: So the other game I have remaining on my list is left4dead2. I had a hard time picking between left4dead2 and Minecraft for this one for the exact same reason. Fairly early on in our relationship, my wife and I were forcibly separated from for about six months because a neighbor claimed I was beating her. And the cops didn't listen when she told them that no, I wasn't. And we had a protection order forced on us where we were supposed to be no contact. And since both of us thought that was bullshit, we simply stayed in contact through means that the government was not aware of 10, 15 years ago, whatever this was. So we played Left 4 Dead 2 together and we played Minecraft together. I settled on Left 4 Dead 2 because it's the game that stuck with me. More Minecraft. It's. It's an important game for that reason. But I don't care about Minecraft in the same way I care about Left 4 Dead 2. K and I have played Left 4 Dead 2, I think earlier this year together. [01:05:10] Speaker C: Yeah, it usually comes up like two to four times a year, I want to say. And that's mostly just because we mod it to be full of furry, like hot, furry women. [01:05:22] Speaker B: You do that. I just enjoy the game. And it was apparently December of last year, so it's been almost a year, but that's how recently I've played Left 4 Dead 2. It is still to this day the best co op game ever made. You can't convince me otherwise. [01:05:36] Speaker A: I can see how you'd think that. [01:05:38] Speaker B: I Love Left 4 Dead 2 and yeah, it got me through literally the heart, one of the hardest chapters of my entire life. [01:05:45] Speaker A: Well, that's a little hard to follow up because neither of, neither of mine are going to be on that level of sort of emotional point. Heroes of the might and Magic 3 is a game we've talked about multiple times. [01:05:58] Speaker B: It's a masterpiece. [01:05:59] Speaker A: It's a masterpiece. That is not why it's on here. The reason it's on here is because it's the very first PC game I ever played that was not an education game. I have to specify that because I've played Putt Putt Goes to the Moon. [01:06:13] Speaker B: Did you not play Space Cadet Pinball? [01:06:16] Speaker A: No. [01:06:16] Speaker C: Wow. [01:06:17] Speaker B: What the fuck, Mike? Are you sure? You're really a millennial. [01:06:21] Speaker A: That wasn't on Macs and my family only had Macs that came with everyone's Windows computer. [01:06:28] Speaker C: You didn't play Solitaire? [01:06:30] Speaker A: No. [01:06:31] Speaker C: Or Minesweeper? [01:06:32] Speaker A: Also not games that came on Macs. Yeah, a lot of stuff just wasn't baseline on Mac. Heroes was one of the few games that had a Mac version because it had such a different fucking operating system. It was a gift from my uncle. It was the reason that I started playing any game on PC. And it, it was so, so important into making me someone who plays PC games and plays multiple other games that are multiplayer and real time strategy. It's the. It is like before Starcraft, before Warcraft, the first strategy game. It was a great, great time and it was the only thing I could do for a long time because if my parents were mad at me, they would take away a Game Boy and I couldn't grab that. But I always knew everyone's password to get on the computer. So that's how I spent a lot of My time when I was young. And the other one is I had to have one of my early games on this list. I decided not to go with the very early games, the SEGA Game Gear, because that wasn't really what got me into being. Game Gear was something that I played a little bit and put down because none of the games that were there got me. This is the game that I first played that made me adore games. Pokemon Red version. Because Red was the first one I got. I got them both. I loved this game. I love everything about this game. I love playing this game. I love going back and seeing this game. I love experiencing it in its newer versions. Except one, but that one doesn't count. This got me a literal, lifelong love of Pokemon. It has gotten me more friends that lasted. Like Pokemon became the whole thing with everybody in my years in school. But most of the people in my school and I did not get along. Pokemon made me solid friends with someone who got me through my school years because there were only two or three people in my school year that I could actually, like, deal with. I was the nerd kid that everyone beat up on because I was always the little gamer in the corner. And he and I would be friends doing stuff otherwise. It is not just a foundational game to me. It's a foundational memory. It's a foundational experience into being the person I am more than a lot of other things. Because the people that I dealt with in grade school were kind of shit. The people in my year, in that school year, at some point in time, threw a bowling ball through my sister's windshield. I did not associate with almost any of them. And this game got me close to the friends that I had. And it is also the reason that I ended up talking to people and leaving that school and getting away from there. Because the only people that I dealt with also had problems with them. And all of us left. It is because of this game that I ended up enjoying reading. Because through this friend, we would do stuff together. And then we would be punished for not doing things and then go to the library and read. It is. It is essentially foundational to more than just games for me. You got two left. K. Give us. Give us a discussion on those last two. [01:09:59] Speaker C: All right, let's see. Which shoe do I have left? We'll save the. The one that I'm currently playing for last. So I think the next one, I think, would be Nier Automata, probably. I don't. I don't know how much I could say it really Shaped me per se. But it's always one that lingers on my mind just because of how deep and tragic it really is at the end of the day. Because a. The story and themes of it are so deep that even as a community, we're still kind of like exploring those themes. But the character endings are just incredibly tragic. Let's see. When did Near Automata come out? I don't know if I want to. I don't want to know if I want to spoil it. [01:10:52] Speaker A: It's a while. It's like 10 years. [01:10:54] Speaker B: Near. Near automata is nine years old. [01:10:57] Speaker C: Oh my God. Yeah. 2017. Holy. Totally different era, but pretty much everybody dies. And a lot of the theming goes around to how people die, why people die, and what that kind of means on just how they affected, how that affects what's immediately around them, and how the world just continues to go on. Because the storytelling in Nier Automata is so wild and so different because they built an entire history of Earth that we then live 600 years in the future and only to find out we've been reliving this tragic history for like 600 years on repeat. And every time they find out this history and why they're still trying to like, save humanity, even though humanity has long since been dead, it's like, well, if we find out that humanity, the only reason we're living for is dead, why are we even alive? Well, then they choose then to go and kind of just die and then be remade to go and live that again. And they're literally the. The first line is we are trapped in this endless cycle. Literally the first line of the game. We are trapped in an endless cycle of life and death. And you are trapped in that cycle for the entire game. I love. [01:12:37] Speaker B: I love the, like, theme of the game. Theme of the story being at the very beginning and you not really realizing the gravity of it until you've actually gotten deeper into the game. [01:12:50] Speaker C: It is. It's literally. It's the first line. They hit you with that. The first line. And it's just like, oh, it's. It's almost. It's almost a parody of Fallout going, war, War never changes. And then war has changed. And then you hear we're trapped in an endless cycle of life and death. And then the follow up line, which then comes in at the end of the game. I hope to someday meet the God who put us here. I can't remember the exact line, who put us here and one day kill him. And they let you meet the God Running the simulation. And this God is absolutely crazed because they've been trapped in their own cycle and trying to understand through your psych. It's, it's so deep and so twisted and weird and Yoko Taro is an absolute madman for writing this. It just, it's always on the back of my mind. It's. It's weird. It's, it's, it's just always on the back of my mind. It's just so deep. And the characters are really hot. Yes, we love, we love the Booty Bots, but at the end of the day, once you kind of get past the Booty Bots, you're really left with some really tough themes and thoughts of life and what that's really supposed to mean. [01:14:17] Speaker B: This is by far Yoko Taro's most well known title. [01:14:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really close. It really like redefined storytelling for another generation. [01:14:29] Speaker C: It is, I think, I think as far as like storytelling goes, I don't know if you can get any better than that. I'm sure we will someday, but like when there's just. We're still peeling back layers nine years later. I don't know if you can do better storytelling. [01:14:46] Speaker A: I'm not gonna say it's better, but there's a couple games that we need to, we need to introduce you to because they've got some, some deep story, but. Yeah, no, Nier Automata is a. Is a masterpiece on this and, and your last one. [01:14:59] Speaker C: My last one is one that I'm kind of currently playing. It's called Granblue Fantasy Relink. The Grand Blue series is a definitely kind of. I want to say weird because how they, how it originally came. Where it originally comes from is a Gacha game. And it, the Gacha game itself is pretty generic. It's sprite based. The character art is what people come for. The gameplay itself is very sprite based. And it's just an auto battler at the end of the day. And then they've had a few spin offs here and there, but I think their real game is Granblue Fantasy Relink. And I would say as far as adventure games goes, if you want to experience a real adventure, it would definitely be Relink because it introduces you to this really amazing world where everything is in the sky. It's just a whole bunch of just sky islands. And you kind of bounce from island to island, exploring the world and saving, saving people, protecting them from these like monsters and other things like that. I'm trying not to spoil it because it just had a Big massive update or a big massive DLC that I've been. I've been powering through with some friends. And I'd say the gameplay is really unique because the base game itself, I would say you kind of feel like you're playing Devil May Cry. There's, there's definitely like some combos. You're gonna be using skills and you just kind of have like a good time. However, once you kind of hit late game and end game territory, there's this piece of equipment called Sigils that is what you use for giving yourself like buffs and like buffing certain aspects of yourself. You know, like more attack, more dodges and other things like that. It kind of becomes Monster Hunter because you actually have to get good at dodging attacks, blocking them. There's certain mechanics that will require both of those things. So it's kind of like a low barrier to entry and you can have a good time with an action game. But if you've got a group of friends and you want to experience some really challenging fights and honestly, some of the coolest fights I've had have been in Relink. I will say summoning Bahamut as part of just like this like chain of Ultimates is probably some of the coolest stuff that I've ever, ever done in a video game. Giant anthropomorphic dragon just coming down out of the sky and just like launching a massive laser beam breath at an enemy. It's cool. It's. It's amazing. I. I don't think, like, as far as good as the storytelling is in Automata, I think Relink has some of just the coolest fights you can ever experience in a game. [01:18:16] Speaker A: All right, that, that really goes over quite a lot about, about kind of how we got here and who we are. You've. You've definitely learned some more about each of us from these. So let's, let's transition away from our fun topic and go into, go into what we've been doing with ourselves. I'm going to start it off with this one. It's been a busy month and a lot of shit's been coming out and there's more coming. I haven't even gotten all the things that I want to play. One of my favorite games has gotten a DLC, a huge DLC. The End Times DLC for Total Warhammer 3 came out with some new characters, a bunch of new mechanics, and it's so well done. It's so well done. My favorite character in the franchise is finally in the game. I have My Thanquil. I'm so happy. One of the most difficult and most complex characters I've ever made in Nagash's out. He plays so uniquely super fun. I haven't even gotten more than like 10 hours and 10 hours is nothing in that game. So like that end times the DLC and Total War is just. If you are at all interested in any of the characters, there are four that came with it. It's well worth it. You can get each of them individually if you don't want all four. I love Total War Warhammer 3 and this is like a capstone and they're not done yet. But this release has been the best release they have made that wasn't an expansion. The next thing that happened, Diablo's 30th anniversary came up. They made a major update for it that brought back a ton of old reference content. They rebuilt bosses, they rebuilt of loads levels from every Diablo ever made and they've brought them into Diablo 4 and they play really well. They've done a ton of balancing work. They've done a ton of work to redo items and skills and they have hidden things that were references to old games like runeword creation from items. It's such a great update. I'm like another 10 hours into that and I've been talking about other games and we're not going to go back into playing more Borderlands or, or my other games because there's. There's too many other ones. So I'm going to stop with games and like I've. I've been back into Babylon 5 again. I started getting through season four into season five where some of the best storytelling I think in any TV show ever is I adore this franchise. I think if you are a fan of sci fi and you especially if you like Star Trek, but if you're a Star wars fan, if you're a Firefly fan, if you're anything of the like big story into sci fi, Star wars, give Babylon 5 a shot. It's old, it has a lot of cheese to it and the first season is definitely the weakest. But it becomes something so special. And I've gotten to the points in the show where I have cried multiple times because of things that I. I know are coming and still the beats hit so hard. Unlike last time, I'm not going to go into a big story about it. I've been talking a lot going through this Jax. We've got a familiar name on this list. [01:21:36] Speaker B: Yeah, so I've played a lot more Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I'm about halfway through the game now, and without spoiling anything, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Still, the changes from Remake to Rebirth, the big thing is that Rebirth has more of like an open world game structure, unfortunately, kind of in the negative way. You literally go around the map finding towers, climbing towers and activating them so that it populates other things to do on your map and then you go do the other things. So it's very much like a more traditional open world game in that regard. [01:22:16] Speaker A: Boy, Assassin's Creed really ruined that for a lot of people, didn't it? [01:22:19] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:22:21] Speaker B: And like, I've talked about other games that do that too. Like Horizon Zero dawn does that. And I love Horizon Zero Dawn. So like, it's not like it makes the game bad, but it definitely feels a little bit less of the focused, tight experience that Remake was. That being said, I praise Remake for keeping the spirit of Final Fantasy 7 in just having tons of fucking minigames. Because Final Fantasy VII is just chock full of minigames for some reason. The original game is. It's weird they've kept that going. There's so many fucking minigames. I had to do a minigame for the parade sequence. I had to do minigames for so many things, some of which were really bad, which is also true to the Final Fantasy VII experience. I made it to the Gold Saucer and that started out with playing a shitty like rock, paper, scissors type minigame that's on brand for Final Fantasy 7. I do, however, have one minigame that frustrated me and this is actually a carryover of a minigame from Remake. The gym bros are back and I can't beat Sayu. Yeah, the. The Vtuber Sayu. He voices the. The character in the gym sequence. He's great. But this time around, instead of instead of Cloud doing squats, it's TIFA doing crunches. And instead of pressing face buttons on your controller in time to. To keep the rhythm going, to get more movements than Sayu, you have to use the shoulder buttons on your controller. And it's really hard. I can't beat him. Just shifting it to the shoulder buttons just makes it that much more difficult to keep my rhythm going because it's different fingers for each thing instead of moving one finger around the controller. And also the fact that it's tifa doing sit ups means I am more distracted, especially with some of the costumes I have available. I literally put different clothes on her to try to make it less distracting. It didn't help as much as I thought it would. [01:24:28] Speaker A: Well, I was going to ask about that and you already gave me the answer. [01:24:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely had her straight up naked the first time and that was a bad idea. I was not paying attention. So I had to put clothes on her to be able to do the minigame. And yeah, it's just more difficult as well. So I moved on. It's the only thing I haven't done so far that I've been able to find up through. I'm in chapter eight. There's 14 chapters, so I'm literally about halfway through. If you've played Final Fantasy VII and know the original story, you know, gold saucer about where I'm at story wise, that's the easiest way for me to summarize it without spoiling anything. It's really good. Yuffie's an actual full party member now in the main party instead of in her own weird side thing like she was in remake. I'm having a lot of fun with it. I'm gonna keep playing it. I'm probably gonna be done with it well before the next chapter comes out in 2027 and then I'm gonna have to wait and that's gonna suck, but so be it. That's what happens when you pick up a game that hasn't finished yet. [01:25:36] Speaker A: Yep, that's what they have when you split a game into three. All right, hit K. Yes. These games on your list, talk about them, what you been doing. [01:25:47] Speaker C: So what I've mostly been up to, and I've been pretty much playing it since launch about a week and a half ago or two weeks ago. I don't know. Time is rough for me. It came out really recently. Animo initially. I wasn't too sold on it back when I was like initially announced because like it. They announced it like it feels like right after Palworld got really popular and they were like, oh, okay, so Creature Collectors is still something people want. And so Microsoft was like, all right, we'll sponsor our own Creature Collector. And so I wasn't too sold on it, but as I watched like the gameplay come out and saw some of like the, the creatures, I got pretty interested. And it's actually just really fun to play. It kind of feels like I'm about out of content, but it feels like, it kind of feels like, you know, once you get all the stuff that you want, it kind of feels like they. It just launched. So like there's not stuff to like really hold you after you kind of get everything. But it's fun enough that I'VE actually dedicated. Let's see here. A lot of time. Let's see. About 51 hours since it came out. [01:27:10] Speaker A: Damn, those are so. [01:27:12] Speaker C: Yeah. After it came out, that I've just been having a good time with it. And it's an mmo, so it's really easy to, like, pal up with friends and do a bit of farming for items and some other stuff like that. And it's got some really nice social spaces. Like, I made a. They have a. A home system. And part of that is, like, you have an RV that you can move around. And so I made me and my friends an RV park. So, like, when we're just kind of like, vibing after we've done our dailies and stuff, which I surprisingly. I've logged on for every single day. I have logged on and done my dailies every single day, which isn't something I even really used to do for, like, my other MMOs. It's just a lot of fun to play. And then my other game that I play, which is the superior game to League, is Deadlock. It's. It's a bit of a. An Overwatch 2 and League hybrid. It has really unique heroes, a really unique aesthetic, and it just got a massive update today. I literally went to sleep and then woke up for the podcast and they had dropped their big, massive update. They've changed the map, so the map is completely different. They've changed some items, they've added some new systems for the items. UIs got a whole bunch of changes. And I am very much looking forward to exploring all of these changes. And then they've also teased six characters, which I think are all looking really interesting. They're adding Baba Yaga as a character. Let's see here. I gotta scroll back up. [01:29:12] Speaker A: I'm assuming you mean the Hag. [01:29:16] Speaker C: Yes, literally, the Hag. The. The Hag. Baba Yaga. She looks like she might be kind of fun to play. She's sitting on a bench and the bench is what she moves around on. So, like, the bench has legs and they. The bench is what runs. They're adding the Rat King, who absolutely looks just absolutely silly. I could probably just like, drop a link in. Oh, I don't know if I dropped a link in the side chat. [01:29:45] Speaker A: Other games. Just put another games. [01:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll. I'll put it in the show notes if you want. [01:29:50] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, I could. I could post it to the show notes. There we go. I. I really like how they're portraying the Rat King. They're adding kind of like this cute, cute painter girl. We've got like an undead jetpack skeleton. I'm pretty sure this lady's supposed to be a succubus nurse. And I don't know too much. This guy seems a little more cultural, but he seems to be. His name's Solomon. So I'm not too sure where he's like fitting in cultural, cultural wise. But they've just made massive changes. They've been working on this, this massive change for about I want to say eight months because they added, I want to say Celeste was the last hero they added and it had been pretty quiet since outside of just like some balance patches. But this has been in the, in the work for like eight months. And I am very excited to get in and explore the new map. Something that I kind of like that they're, they're experimenting for the next few days is when you buy buffs they'll have like randomly. If you go to a different trader, the that trader you can randomly roll some additional benefits as well as like some negative aspects onto the buff itself. So like you might buy something that's you know, like kind of weak, but then you can roll it into like the game changing buff item that it potentially could be. So. And it just dropped. I'm like itching to play. [01:31:40] Speaker B: You're gonna make me reinstall this game to play it with you again, aren't you? [01:31:44] Speaker C: You should. It's really, really good. [01:31:47] Speaker B: How does the gunplay feel on any of the new characters? Do you know yet? That was my biggest reason I bounced off of it is that the gunplay just didn't feel right to me. [01:31:57] Speaker C: I've. So like when it comes to the gunplay, I've kind of discovered which characters are gun heroes and which characters are more like power heroes. So that like might help. But the, the new characters, they haven't added yet. They implemented the map changes. A bunch of UI stuff and a lot of quality of life like information feedback from, from the UI stuff and excuse me goodness, I'm not used to talking this much. [01:32:33] Speaker B: You literally make almost every day you don't work. [01:32:39] Speaker C: But like I usually don't talk uninterrupted for like 10 minutes at a time. But the new characters, they haven't added yet. They're. They're implementing, they implemented these massive map changes because like it's almost a brand new map that they, they chucked the old map and implemented a completely new map with unique mobs scattered all over for the jungles. You know, when you go and do your Jungle stuff and all the UI and item stuff. And so what they're going to do is they're going to allow people to. To. This is what they did with the last hero batch, is they allow people to vote in which order the characters are going to add. So once they're ready to implement a new character, they'll throw up a vote. We vote on which of the six characters gets added first, and then they'll throw up the next. They'll throw up the. The list minus the one they already added. And so they'll give us the. The new characters in an incremental change. I would say if any of the heroes are gonna be gun heroes, I would say it'll probably be the Rat King and the undead Jetpack guy. If you're. If you're looking at the link, he's got. The undead Jetpack guy looks really silly. He's got a mustache, too. [01:33:59] Speaker B: Oh, my God, he does. He's got, like, a Red Baron mustache. [01:34:03] Speaker C: Yeah, it's pretty hilarious. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how the Succubus nurse plays, because her purpose purse is also like a mimic bag. So, like, I'm wondering if she's going to be support or dps. [01:34:17] Speaker A: All right, that's. That's definitely interesting. I'm very persnickety about that kind of combo. Having played not just all the MOBAs, I'm very persnicket about mechanically there, but having played Warframe and Destiny, the shooters, the looter shooter kind of combo that it feeds into is very, very mechanically tight. So. So I'm. I'm skeptical of it, but I'll take a look at it. [01:34:44] Speaker B: I think what I'm hearing is, Mike, we need to install Deadlock and play with the furries. [01:34:49] Speaker A: Is it free? [01:34:52] Speaker C: Is free. Jax will probably have to get you an invite, because how Deadlock works, how you get access is you have a friend who has access, and then they invite other people into the game. [01:35:04] Speaker B: How do I get. We'll do that off the pod. [01:35:07] Speaker A: We'll figure it out. Figure out if that's gonna be a thing. Oh, it's still Playtest. This is still early pre release. [01:35:13] Speaker C: Yeah, it's kind of going the Warframe route, where it's like, even after Warframe's been out for well over a decade, it's still beta. [01:35:20] Speaker A: I already have an invite. [01:35:22] Speaker B: There you go. [01:35:23] Speaker C: Oh, look at that. [01:35:24] Speaker B: All right, at some point, we'll join you and play Deadlock with you, and I'll give it another shot. [01:35:30] Speaker C: Yeah, it's it's definitely really good. I think what I'll do is instead of us have played live matches against real players is maybe have you guys go through a few bot matches first just so you can kind of get a feel of maybe some different characters. [01:35:45] Speaker B: Like one of them maybe. [01:35:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:35:48] Speaker C: But we'll see if. If you specifically want to use like gun for your main source of damage. There are heroes that, that I've gone the gambit. I. I find having a good mix and match of powers and gunplay is kind of like the way to go. [01:36:07] Speaker A: Well, we'll. We'll take a look at this in the future and see how this works out. But I think. [01:36:13] Speaker B: I think the key here is tune into Twitch TV Dragon Momantics to watch K play Deadlock. [01:36:20] Speaker A: Yes. And is there. As we're coming to the end of here, are there any other socials that you want to plug Killer? [01:36:26] Speaker C: No, that's. That's mostly the main thing I'm on. I don't. I don't post a whole bunch of my Blue sky or Twitter really at all. I'm just. I'm either streaming or I'm at work. That's usually. That's usually my situation. [01:36:38] Speaker B: Most of your Blue sky is people posting things for you because you lost things on your stream roll and they have to post for you. [01:36:47] Speaker A: And we will not advertise Jax's Twitter because that's not a thing we're true to advertise. [01:36:53] Speaker C: I mean like, I also do. I also do like a punishment wheel where like if. If somebody subs to me or donates 100 bits, they. And it rolls it. Like I'll post like whatever they type out in chat onto Blue sky as a status, assuming it doesn't break pos, you know, can't go too crazy. But I'll. I'll. I'll type some wild stuff as a status if somebody rolls it. [01:37:18] Speaker B: That's the only way to ever get her to admit she's cute, which I'm not. [01:37:22] Speaker A: Well now. Now everybody knows to. To comment that and don't do it. [01:37:27] Speaker C: I'll find you and I'll bite you. [01:37:28] Speaker A: Well on that. On that threat of violence. Jax. Jax can be found at Twitch tv Jackson and I can be found at my company names at occasionally, maybe possibly if I start streaming. [01:37:43] Speaker B: We'll bully you into streaming again. [01:37:45] Speaker A: We're getting this. I should probably get to it, but this has been from 8bit to 4k. We really wish Pillow had been here to do some discussions, but Kayla, it's been good to have you on. So, from Klair, from Jax, from me. Good night, everybody. [01:38:00] Speaker B: Bye. [01:38:00] Speaker C: Bye. Bye.