Latest / Cart Creeps / Budget Gaming in 2026: Small Bucks, Big Fun | CreepChat 1

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Budget Gaming in 2026: Small Bucks, Big Fun | CreepChat 1 · Cart Creeps

• Carter Creepington: Hello and welcome to the first installment of I guess we're calling it Creep Talk for now. this is gonna be our bi monthly episode. We've only been putting out an episode a month so far, and we'd like to be putting out more. So these are going to be more specific to like topics and just talking about retro gaming and gaming related things versus talking about our retro games, which is kind of our bread and butter thing. hopefully this will be a little shorter. I guess you you you already know the answer because you're looking at the the bottom of the screen. so you let us know it's too long. Spoiler alert. Yeah, it's too long. I'm sure we could talk about stuff just as much like just as long. It's just we have to rein ourselves in. But if you'll notice, two people are not here. So we know we had we had the vote last time. If you've watched the most recent episode about Resident Evil Two, if you haven't go check it out. And we you know, we told you guys to vote on who your favorite podcast hosts were, and obviously we were the winners, so we fired the other two guys. Not really, but they just weren't able to make it. so we're gonna go on without them and Ryan and Keith, baby, started the two man power trip. Let's fucking do it. Now we can hold this above them forever. But yeah, for sure. So yeah, the the the criteria for these little mini episodes that we're gonna go from now on are you have to finish the most recent game of the month. So since those two chumps didn't finish Resident Evil Two, it's just us here today. And yeah. The next game is Final Fantasy Seven, so there might not be an episode next month. We'll see what happens. Yeah, we we keep a you know, we do follow like a four week window of recording, playing recording the last episode, you know, in this case, Resident Evil two, and we rolled the wheel and it is our live reaction. We're like, Okay, so now we know we can start playing You know, final in this case, Final Fantasy seven. Seven. And yeah, so we got, you know, how it it's a long game. It's like a thirty six hour game and it's the longest one we've had so far. Mm-hmm. I mean, I've played plenty of long games, but playing a game this long in a span of a month is a lot to ask, just because as soon I know usually the first week it seems like all of us don't even play the game after like I definitely like yeah, I I I'd s I'd put it on the back burner. Especially Resident Evil two because I like I can I can beat this in the day we recorded. It's like I just I'll put it off for a bit and then just then rip it out when I need to. But yeah, like you have to you for this you have to like lock in like immediately to try and get that. And like another thing is like I usually spend the first week managing the files and starting the editing process of the video. So I that kinda like takes up a lot of the time I could be using to play the game and So far, as of right now, which is two weeks before our recording of the actual episode for Final Fantasy Seven, I have played nine hours according to the game clock, which if you're you know, get your math right, I should be at least at eighteen by now. I should have played at least twice as much. So might have to do a big push. We'll see if it works out. I don't know. I'm about three hours or three no, mine's at I think mine's at like four hours, I think. Okay, yeah. Because you said you're at like Shinra. Or something. I'm at the front building. Yeah, making my way through the building now. Which is the end of the remake first game, apparently. But yeah. So really the topic we're talking about today, it's very topical. considering this is kind of what our podcast is about. It's about playing old games rather than playing new games. And boy, are new games and new hardware expensive. So recently This will be coming out a couple of weeks after the news of the Steam Machine's price came out. Steam Cube. If you're not Yeah, the Gabe Gabe Cube. if you're not aware. the five twelve version, five hundred and twelve gigabytes of storage is a thousand forty nine dollars and the two terabyte version is thirteen forty nine and that's not including the controllers. To bundle a controller with it adds an extra what, sixty bucks? Looks like something. Seventy? No, it's a it's it's it's more than that because it's yeah, it's a hundred bucks if you buy the controller outright, but they knock a little bit off. How nice of them. Yeah, it's yeah, it's still a lot. It's unfortunate. And no, it's not it's not Valve's fault. You know, they the RAM pocalypse is upon us. The SSDs are also, especially the NVMe SSDs, the little ones. they're also super expensive right now. Like RAM prices have like at least I think tripled, if not more, since a couple of years ago. Yeah. So it's hard to build any computer right now and then y you know, good good guy Valve is kind of like you know, dead on arrival Valve at this point. It would have been nice because, you know, I've 'cause you know, the Steam Machine is like 'cause you know, I'm compared to the others, you know, other guy our friends, you know, other hosts there, they have like, you know, they have their PCs and Ryan he's built his PC. Our friend Alan, he's also built his PC, you know, they're all about that stuff. I'm more of the of the common man. I don't wanna deal with all that. Yeah, it's like, it's cheaper and it's you know, if you know what you're doing, it can be nice and easy. I don't wanna deal with all that shit. And but like, you know, so having a little cube that you hook up to whatever you need to would have been really great. And I was actually looking forward to getting it. not in not anymore, you know, it's just yeah, shit ain't happening now. It's unfortunate and like even like within the first like couple of days, Linus Tech Tips I put out a video of them building their own steam, you know. Steam machine. I mean it doesn't have the same form factor. That's a lot of what I think you'd be paying for. It's the form factor and the like obviously it's going to like just work because it's valve software on valve hardware. But you can put Steam OS on other hardware. All it's got usually has to be AMD processor hardware. And like they made a much cheaper machine, which was much higher performance, just you know, without much effort. I mean, cost wise, it was still expensive because everything is expensive now. Right. But it's just unfortunate because like it's like all you're really getting from the steam machine versus building basically building a steam machine is the are you know, the integrated form factor and the already like custom you know, it's the software spent to go with the hardware. And then you can still buy a steam controller, but you could buy there's plenty of good controllers out there that are cheaper. Right. as well. There's really no point buying a steam controller, really. I mean it's like Yeah. I mean I was interested in getting one. 'Cause I have a Steam Deck. Yeah, I didn't even like how it looked. So I like, I mean, I like the trackpads on the Steam Deck. I don't really use them in games. You can use you can set up to do whatever you want, which is why I like As we talked about on the Doom episode, I used it like as a a weapon wheel. so I like that about it. And I like the the feel of it's fine, of the Steam Deck controller, you know, the Steam Deck itself that is. So I was interested in it, but like a hundred bucks is a little high. It's not crazy high. Like I think PS five controllers are Comparable, but and then you have the big one track pad thing going on. Yeah, dual sense the dual sense is eighty and then the the premium controller, the edge, which I did buy during Christmas time because you know everything was on sale. That was normally like a hundred something, but I got that on sale, so and it wasn't too bad. But but yeah, I mean that one that one's pretty nice. It feels it's pretty solid, but yeah, I mean, just you're only waiting like And like even if like the Steam Machine, even if that does get like discounted or something like that, that shit's gonna still be that's still gonna run you too much. It's like you can't even like wait for a deal for that 'cause like there's no deal that's gonna be yeah good enough for you to wanna buy that. Yeah, I think Steam Machine Two will be out by the time like it would ever even be worth the money to buy one. Right. 'Cause like the prices probably are not gonna drop. Like, you know, if it w came out around eight hundred bucks, sure. Like that would that's reasonable. Like that would have been much more much more reasonable. That's what PS5 pros are now, or eight hundred. Yeah. Still at that point you could really compare it to a PS five pro. I mean, and all consoles, I think, across the board are going up in price just because of the way that the economy and, you know, the availability of components is right now. I think Switch two was one of the first ones that announced it. I know Xbox recently announced it, and yeah, PlayStation I believe is going up as well. So it's a fun it's unfortunate it's hard to it's if you don't have hardware already, one of these ecosystems already, it's kinda you're kind of in a tough spot. You probably have one if you're listening to this. And but if you don't, we can talk about what you could do. I missed my chance to get a PS5 Pro when it was cheaper. It's like fuck. Yeah. Yeah. So right now, Steam Machine, I don't think there's any like argument. Just if you don't have a console and you want a console like experience, get a PS five. If you have if you want a PC experience, just build a build a PC and get a HDMI cable. You know, build a small form factor PC and still put it in your living room and get a wireless keyboard or whatever, you know. The only thing you're really losing out on is I think like it's called C E C. I don't remember what the acronym stands for, but like you can have the steam controller like turn on and it turns on your TV too. So okay. Exactly. So on top of that, the software side as in games side, GTA six prices were also recently announced. and it is eighty dollars for the basic edition and I guess the premium version of the game is gonna come for a hundred dollars and it's gonna be digital only. so I guess I think you can buy a box is what I've heard. You can buy the box with a code in it. so people are kind of mi there's mixed, you know, emotions about it across the board. It's like, you know, you can you can pre order it, but like you're not what is the point of pre order pre ordering back in the day when we were, you know, teenagers. Going to midnight releases and things like that, it mattered because they were they were going to sell out 'cause it was all physical. Right. But it's digital. Like you're not what are you pre ordering? You're just pre ordering software. You could just buy it on the day it releases anyways. I don't really understand the reasoning behind pre ordering it. And also like the logic of like the pricing is that, okay, so they're cutting cost by making digital only. So naturally you think, that would actually lower the price. Well actually no, it's actually Inexplicably raised the price. Yeah, it's eighty dollars. Like games now. We've moved we used to have the sixty dollar game. This is wasting resources making boxes too. Foxes. Yeah, it's just plastic. It's wasted plastic at that point. You can put it on a shelf, I guess. But you're wasting, you know, plastic to just make something that no one nothing's in it. So back in the day, I think games PS two era games were like fifty bucks. I remember the for a long time games were sixty bucks. Mm-hmm. Now they're pushing up into 70, and now it's getting to that eighty dollar price point because I believe Mario Kart World for Switch 2 was also $80 out the gate, which is a lot for a Mario Kart game. Yeah. But GTA six premium version, right? So my understanding, and I don't know if it's been officially confirmed by Rockstar, but all you get is like access to like in game like clothing stores and like you know Chop shops like auto like car customization shops. And it's like what it's like this is horse armor. This is oblivion horse armor. Like it's the same thing. You're paying for cosmet I'm assuming you're paying for cosmetics. Hopefully you are only paying for cosmetics. Because if you're paying for like better weapons and stuff, then it's like pay to win. I don't know. I'm sure this has something to do with the way they're gonna like integrate G GTA online is going to work. And GTA GTA Law is probably gonna be separate from the game itself. So it's like it's gonna be a whole separate thing. So then I don't know why you'd buy the pay like the paywalled like extras shirts in GTA six for twenty bucks if it's a single player only thing. That doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah. People are like I crazy there's I've seen like surveys like, yeah, well, I'm gonna buy the hundred dollar version because like well, it's twenty more bucks for like some game shirts. It's like it's it doesn't make any sense much sense to me. I mean, to be fair, I used to play, and this is like gonna date me and also be like people are gonna be that's weird. Why did you play that? But have a hotel, I'm sure you've heard of it, maybe. yeah. It was like a friend of that a social game. Yeah. And like that game had you had to spend real money to get like coins to buy like furniture to put into your room. I did it a couple of times. I didn't spend much money, but I did do it at least once. You know, so you know, I'm I'm like I'm also I'm not above I also bought like I bought horse armor. I'll be honest. When it came out On you know, three sixty for Oblivion. I bought horse armor. I like, that looks cool. The Elven armor on Shadowmere in Oblivion, you know, why it's golden armor. It looks it looks sick, but it was real money for cosmetic, you know, single player game. Right. Gotcha games have, you know, they've gotten in my pockets. Overwatch has taken an unbelievable amount of money from me. So Yeah, and that's something I g I was thinking about with this this topic. Like there are games out there that are like technically like free, like Fortnite, I believe, is still free. Fortnite makes its money off of skins and stuff like that. And that's a totally different thing. And I mean, if you want to play Fortnite and spend no money, you if you have so a way to play it, it's free, I guess. You just get your mom to be buy everything. Yeah. Yeah. People might make fun of you for having the basic skins and the basic emotes or whatever. I've never actually played Fortnite. Me neither. So I may be wrong about how it works, but all that to say, so what we're gonna talk about today is a manifesto or a you know, which is our manifest. Careful with manifesto. what so what do we do in twenty twenty six to still have fun and play video games when everything is so expensive and we can't like I I don't even want to spend eighty dollars on a game. Yeah. So we can stop buying games new and we can there's a couple of different options for playing games for The cheap, you know, on the cheap for small bucks. as we say. So golden rule. I have not bought a new game in twenty twenty six. I probably won't. No. I probably won't buy GTA six out the gate. I mean there'll be years it's not coming out on PC yet anyways. that's usually how they that's usually what they do with that's what they did with five as well. Took a while before it same thing with Red Dead Redemption, it was the same way. So I won't be buying that new. And I don't think there's anything else coming out this year that I would buy new. So I'm the opposite. I've bought quite a few games this year. I was thinking you I wasn't sure, but I was assuming you were like a a buy new games guy. And I think Jay is as well. He was to a point. I know he's a he is a Switch 2 owner. So you probably you kind of have to buy new games if you have a new console. Right. so yeah, what was the when was the last time you actually, you know, bought a a brand new full price game? Brand new full priced Would have been I just bought Prag Pragmata. That'd have been the most recent game. Capcom game. Capcom guy. So it was a lot of fun. So like, hey man, Capcom. Capcom can't miss right now. So like if fuck, I'll do it. they're dropping Onamusha, I think in September, and I'm probably gonna get that too. You know, it's like but you know, it's so funny 'cause like buying like the super premium, you know, super deluxe edition. I'm also guilty of that as well. It's like if but I but I also buy my games digitally 'cause like nowadays games don't even like give you like the super premium editions. They don't like give you just random bullshit like a fucking figure or a mount or you know or like you know, a little bust or some swag like a bag or whatever. Like they don't they don't do that anymore, which which does suck. So like I bought I bought Marvel token Fighting Souls, newest fighting game from Oxys and Sony coming out in in August. 'cause I was super excited for 'cause I, you I love fighting games and so like I bought like the Super Mega Ultra Del d edition, which is like season one DLC, you know, locked in already, and then they give you five costumes and they give you like like lobby avatars and all this other stuff and like colors and like just I don't care. Just give it to me. Give it to me. So I know like I mean, like then I'm I wish I was stronger when it comes to stuff like that, but they get me. They get me every time. Yeah. I so I went on my Steam account because I really only buy games through Steam. 'cause that's all I actually play on is a Steam Deck and I used to just only play on PC because I don't own any other I own a Switch. I haven't bought ever bought a full price game for it. The last time I bought a full price game was last year. it was well. There's a caveat to that, 'cause I bought a full price game that was not sixty dollars as well. But last time I bought a full price game was April twenty second, twenty twenty five, which was the Elder Skulls four Oblivion Remastered Deluxe edition, which I don't actually remember what the differences were. Or some between the two Yeah. But yeah, so that was that was six sixty dollars. And we'll talk about in a second about regrets and stuff about buying full price games and things like that. But before that, the last time I and I'm looking through my purchase history, which I'm not gonna, you know, share on screen. I mean make it I might share part of it. not the last mic. Put your credit card. but all of them are sales, right? So day of the diver, forty five percent off. Kingdom come deliverance two, thirty five percent off, Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty, the DLC, thirty percent. Anniversary World Tour, ninety percent off. Road Warden, sixty five percent. like four games. Vampire Survivors, Hades, Axemberge, 1 and 2. 71% off. So I always buy, I almost exclusively buy on sales. And the next to let's next most recent time I bought something that wasn't on sale was something, a game called Strife, which is kind of like if it's like a old school shooter, like boomer shooter kind of game. okay. That was full price, but it was $10. before that, we have another full price game that was also ten dollars. It was Cultic. And Before that, and this is going back to 2023, Project Zomboid for 20 bucks in twenty May of 2023. And I bought the Steam Deck, and it's on here as well. That was the September of 2024. So yeah, then the next most recent game I purchased full price was Cyberpunk twenty twenty twenty seventy-seven in December of twenty twenty, which is actually a little bit after it came out, maybe a month or two or something like that. So I'm pretty good about not buying brand new full priced games. Now, that being said, let me let me show you something. I don't think I've ever shown it on the podcast. I've talked about it before. here we go. This is fancy stuff. This is good stuff here, folks. He's standing up. I have to commentate for the audio listeners. Grabbing something. Whoa. Yeah, so for people that can't see. It's the full size T fifty one B helmet from Fallout seventy six, super duper, whatever, highest expensive edition. You know, the whole asbestos one, right? It's the it was the canvas bag fiasco thing, the vinyl canvas bag fiasco that people were so mad about. yeah, I remember. So I did buy this. I don't remember this game count came out years ago at this point. but I really wanted the helmet, you know. Like and I like we said before, it it's cool, it's kinda cool when special editions I can't even fit it in frame. Yeah. Special editions use like give you something. Give you stuff. I mean, behind me, it's always in the background is the legendary edition, Halo 3 Legendary Edition Master Chief helmet, which I bought back in 2007. Yeah. But stuff like this, you know, the giant helmet is worth it. Well, kind of worth it. the game was, you know, I I f get fell forward again award, you know, but that's the game. So 76 was kind of a flop. well, I don't want to say kinda. I enjoyed it, the time I spent with it. It is still going. People still play it. it was fun when I played it, but it wasn't what it, you know, everyone thought it was gonna be. I would put this on, but then you won't be able to it does have like a voice modulator, which and it has the little what is it? Where's the the light turn the turn turns on. See? nice. The headlamp works. And I think the it makes the vats sound. no, that's the voice sound. Yeah, there you go. Nice. But you can't see anything out of it. It's super uncomfortable. Okay. And yeah, I don't I don't have anything I'm trying to think. I don't have any kind of like big gaming like merch like that. I just have like little art books or books that come in game sometimes, but nothing no big swings like that. Another thing I thought about with GTA, specifically GTA, they're famous for coming with maps. So I wonder If there at least be a map of by city in the case, because I have the GTA four and five maps. because I owned I bought both of those when they came out. I mean GTA four came out what like two thousand eight? Eight, yeah, something around the air. eight or nine, maybe. So yeah, I have that. I don't think it's on they're not on the wall, they're in the closet, but I do have both of those maps. And I have a red dead like I you know, video game maps is something that people really appreciate. So I do hope that at least If you get the physical copy of the game, you get a map. And if not, that's kinda lame. Yeah. you know, we're not we're also guilty of spending money on games. But special editions too. Special editions, I think, are fine when you get something that feels valuable or worth it to you, like, you know, something cool to display. A figure or yeah, not a digital sh clothing store in GTA six. So the thing is, there's already plenty of games out there. The some of the great the greatest games ever made are already have already been made and can be played by you right now. And I'm sure that'll play Resident Evil 2 right now. Yeah, you should. it was a good game. Mm-hmm. You can play Final Fantasy VII along with us as well if you'd like. we're still playing it, so but ten bucks also. So Yeah. So not to mention, I'm sure, especially if you're a PC gamer, and probably if you're play if you're a console gamer as well. You already have a backlog full of games because you especially for sure if you're a PC gamer, you buy on the Steam sale, you're like, this game like four dollars. I'm gonna buy it. And you know what? You've never played it. You turn you have it's the meme about the turn Steam sales into game like hours played and hours played. I have a ton I own like a hundred and fifty something games on Steam and I've played probably, I don't know, maybe thirty of them, and not even all of them to completion either. So first of all, if you want to have fun playing games in twenty twenty six. Work on your backlog. And it I know it can be hard because like when a game comes out and it's the new hotness, it's like like GTA six. Everyone's gonna be talking about it, everyone's gonna be going crazy for it. It's hard to like, you know, look back and play some old game for like that's ten years old. Like, you know, whatever. But it's as long as you're enjoying it, you know. And I mean there's like methods for like actually working through your backlog, like put out something physical to represent I saw I watched a video on YouTube about this. I'll see if I can find it and link it or at least pop it up here. But he was like, get physical representations of like your games, like have a little shelf or like a little basket, right? And like put in like a book or like three books, three movies or something like that, and three games. And most games are digital, so just get something that represents the game, like a I don't know, a figure or something. Anything that's like and put put it on a little label on it. So you have something physical. to like interact with. And then when it's time to like you have free time, instead of like booting up your PlayStation or going on to your PC or Steam Deck or something and scrolling through your library and like, I really want to play any of these like you have these physical p things you picked out already and work through each of them until they're done. Because like they're physically there. And then once you're done, replace it with the next one. And then that way you can work through it. So that's backlog that's good. But it like you said is tough having everything on digital is so It's kind of a problem with like just like shopping in general is like, you know, taking out the physical act of either like buying something or like buying a game or physically having something or like giving money to someone in a store. Like, online shopping is so fucking dangerous because like you just click a button, double tap on your iPhone and your fucking face ID and it's like bam like that and it's in your pocket. You don't even think about how much money you just spent, or the fact that you got shit coming to you or I'll buy this digital game. I'll buy this I'll buy five games on Steam Sale and then just move on and then like then Yeah. Shit, where all these games come from? Yeah, it's crazy though. Like I'm really guilty of this. It like I get paid and I'm like, Well, I need a thing. Yeah. And then you buy a thing and it comes to your house and then you're like you're super anticipatory. Like you're like, man, I can't wait for the the thing to come. And then you get it and you use it for a little bit. And then it sits on a shelf or something. Like my shelf behind me is full of books that I bought that I mean books I say books are a little different. It's a books. Books are for nerds, but yeah, yeah. They're cheaper. Well, they're kind of expensive now. But like just knickknacks and doodads and things that you don't need that you want to buy and it's the immediate gratification of like, well, I'm getting a new thing. It's a hard thing to break yourself of. It's really good to I like another thing that I do, for the people in the back, I like to build Gunpla. You can see my Master or high grade Xeong there and high grade Char Zaku from Gquocs, you know, those those are really cool. But in this I have a shelf back here. Also just overflowing with kits I haven't built yet. So it's fucking so and our friend Tyler has it even worse than me. So like what's really good is to have a friend who shares in your hobby and I could just bum kits off of him that he's trying to get rid of. So it'll it works out. But yeah, like and then When I go to like I go to a fighting game tournament in called Zephyr Arcade. It's really great place in in Durham. I go to that place, they have they have gun plaquets there, they have they even have like miniature paints and stuff there now. They have like they have everything there and they run fighting game tournaments, and like, my god, this place is amazing. Every time I go there, every month that I when when I can make it, I walk out of there with a kit. I'm like, Fuck yeah. I can't do that. Yeah. That's how I yeah, and it's a that's another thing. And like a hobby I used to be more into is like miniatures, like if for Dungeons and Dragons and things like that. I've never been into war gaming, specifically 40k stuff, but that's a big thing with 40k, like and miniature war gamers. It's like your unpainted pile. And so it just keeps growing. And you'll buy a new model and you're like, Well, I want to paint this one because I just got I just got it. So you might do that, but you you have too many, and that's I was the same way. Anytime I'd go into a a game like a hobby store, like a gaming store for that sells like D D stuff, I would buy minis. 'Cause they're like they're really cheap. They're like a couple dollars. it most like five and usually they're less than five dollars for each. So I'd buy and like this one's cool. I'll paint it eventually. And it's I've painted my my maybe fifteen of like the fucking like thirty or more plus that I have. And I'm never gonna get around to painting all of them. That's sh and I'll probably buy more before I do, but I'm you know, like it's just something it's one of those hobbies that you just kind of pick up for a while and then you put down, and it's hard to get pick it back up again. Just get your kid to paint and that'll that'll they'll handle it. We did talk about we mentioned talking about being remorseful or regretting games you bought at full price. So I back when I bought Fallout 76, super whatever edition I got, I was probably I had more free money to just spend on stuff like that. So it wasn't as big of a deal. I did not get much money's worth out of the game for sure for how much I spent on it. So I guess I could say like I regretted that. But even like my most recent like full price purchase, which was Oblivion. I love that like I love Oblivion. I love that game. Yeah. And I knew I was gonna buy it. And I bought it basically like day one. but I didn't need to. I've played the game plenty of times. I could play the original game on my PC, it's possible to do. Not that I probably would, but it's like I could have waited. It's on sale right now. It seems summer still still going on. It's like thirty five dollars. And I could have waited. I've played the game plenty of times. I didn't finish the game when I was playing it when I bought it. I mean I've finished it before, but I didn't need to buy it. And like I kind of regret it just because I could have waited. And like the game itself, it's good, but it's got like Unreal Engine Five. It's like it's it's some weird n there's some weirdness with it. It's like it really taxes like your hardware for no reason. Unreal five is just like that. It's just like that for some reason. Mm-hmm. So I was running on Steam Deck too, so I had to like turn a bunch of stuff down. It worked. It like it worked fine, but it wasn't like an ideal experience. It did crash less than the original, which 'cause the original crashes all the time. yeah, that'll do it. But what about you? What about like regretting any of your recent big per like game purchases? I'm trying to think. You know, I'm pretty good about buying something that I know I'll like. and I Nope, not me. I everything I buy is perfect and not. Everything I buy is perfect and I have like the best fun with it and I have no regrets about anything I've ever done. Yeah, I would honestly the biggest thing I'd say are mobile games. That's the ones that I they're not and like they're always free, but they're also like they suck your money out. I'm like, why do you do that? It's like it's like I'm yeah, I I can look at my phone, I have 'cause isn't there a Marvel Marvel Snap. There's like 50 Marvel mobile games, but there's Marvel Snap. That's the one I really got into. there was also Tepin, which is a Capcom card game. That died, and like it's the servers are dead, so like all that money's just gone. there's also a Gundam card, our UC mobile game that I've also put money into. there's just yeah, then like every time I like look at my phone, I look at the mobile games I have, I'm like, I've put too much money in TV. I shouldn't have done that. Every time I look at it, I feel bad. It's always like the mobile stuff because like again, it's like you don't think about it. It feels less tangible. Yeah, exactly. It's you don't think about it, you just double tap and then just yeah, take it out. But like it's a bit harder on the PS five 'cause like I have to I have to put in my password every time I buy something. So it's like it's a bit more yeah more of a commitment there. That's another pro tip I would say. Don't put in your credit don't save your credit card information on any website. I mean, except maybe Amazon, 'cause you if you just use it for buying, you know, so you know, household stuff. But I don't have my credit card saved on Steam. I never have I mean my debit card, but I never have because one, it's scary 'cause Steam accounts do get hacked. You know, and then they can if it's a link to it, they can buy whatever they want and send it to themselves. They can gift themselves a game. But on top of that, having to do it like a little thing, a little roadblock to that makes like do I have to have do I remember my card information on top off the top of my head? Probably not. I actually used to, I don't anymore. so now I have to walk in the other room and get my wallet and buy it. It's like it's you know, just little roadblocks help you like stops yeah purchases like that. Right. Immediate impulse buy stuff. Mm-hmm. So speaking of you're talking about you wanted to mention fighting game pricing. Yeah, it's it's it's It's it's kind of been a consistent kind of issue. You know, speaking of Marvel Tokon, like that's gonna like I mean, that's actually a sixty dollar game. So that's actually breaking the mold there. So actually pretty good. but the a lot of times fighting games, if you're not like really into it, like you'll like say Street Fighter Six. Street Fighter Six came out at seventy dollars and then they had they do their season pass, fighter pass, so that's twenty bucks. So that's and they're on year four now. So when you look at breakdown how much money you've like spent on the game, it's like it's like eighty bucks right there. So if if you're coming into the game later, like today, it's a lot more of a, you know, tougher sell to get into a game like that because of how expensive it is to get the characters that you want or get the characters in the game. And then like they did like the they did like a year one and two like edition because it's been out for a while. So that that that helps with that. But it's still like a real tough sell on that. 2XKO, which is a fighting game based off of League of Legends, they tried to, you know, they've kind of broken the mold in that they're it's a totally free-to-play game. So it's kind of like, you know, your Overwatches or are your Marvel rivals or what have you, you know, just free to play and you just buy the, you know, buy which character you want and you just roll with that and then you pay for cosmetics and stuff like that. But even then that game isn't like it it I mean, I didn't really enjoy it. I'm I'm really enjoying But you know it's I'm not I'm not super in the league, so I'm not I don't I didn't really care. But but even that game, that's that's kinda struggled to kind of, you know, find its place. I mean it it does well, but you know, it's it's still like a really fighting games just are always just in this weird spot of like trying to be like a live service game, but also still like a standard regular priced game. Like one of the most like mm you know, original like ideas in gaming. an arcade game an arcade fighting game, like it shouldn't there shouldn't be more to it than like putting quarters in it. You know? Like it should be it's pretty like it's a pure experience. So it but the way everything is now, live service and microtransactions. Nobody talks about micro transactions anymore. There was like years and years everyone was like railing against so much everyone's just accepted it now. That's just the way it is. And it's like right. It doesn't have to be that way. You could play other games. You can refuse to participate. But it's it's it's like it's a lost cause at this point. It's never going to end because everyone's already bought into it. And sometimes you win, sometimes like you've you've like enough people shouted about the online past that they stopped doing that. Yeah. And like loot boxes were such a thing for such a long time. People complained about I don't know how I mean I think Counter Strike still does the like loot box skin maybe skins. I don't know. I don't really I'm not a Counter Strike player. I know it's still out there. Overwatch took that shit out. That's where all the that's where all my money went. Then they took it out and then they've kind of put it back in also that's kind of they've kind of went back to it, so I don't know. Yeah. So all that to be said, what can you do to play games for less money, considering nobody has any money in twenty twenty six? No, no, no. no of course not no. What we meant what he meant to say was you can raise the black flag or sell the you know seven C's, the high C's. Centre that one like my like last year. So emulation, right? Obviously we talk about that's kind of our whole thing. It's what we no mo mostly do on this podcast is emulate older games. And You know, we talk about yeah, I emulated on my Steam Deck or yeah, I emulated on my like handheld, my whatever R one, two or three, whatever, which we'll talk about in a second. But you most likely have something in your hand or maybe what you're watching this or listening to this on that can already emulate plenty of games. Mm even even iPhones. Android is much better about it, but yeah, a smartphone. There's iPhone emulators. I know there's some good standalone ones like for Game Boy and stuff now. And Android you You can have Retro Arch on Android. And most smartphones are pretty fast. Like if you have a Samsung Galaxy or something like that, you probably have a high end, you know, game. Like, yeah, it's a super high end CPU already in it. It's like a Snapdragon, whatever. It's like super powerful. So you can most phones are better than the handhelds we have right now. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like even my old phone, which is a Pixel Six, which is really dated at this point, it can play a lot of stuff. I bet it could probably play PS1 games. I'm not sure. It's not a super high performance. CPU, I've never tried it because I have my own little, you know, standalone retro handhelds. But if you just want to play Pokemon or something on your phone, you know, as opposed to scrolling on Instagram or something like that, or scrolling Facebook or X or looking at our TikTok at card creeps, you know, looking at our TikTok card creeps. Instead of looking that at those, it's better for your brain to spend it your use it on something else, like emulating old games on your phones. And I mean phones, it's a touch screen thing, right? It's probably better to play if you're unless you invest in like a controller or one of those. They also have the backbone, actually. Yeah, the backbone. I'll be right back. I'll show it off. Yeah. So unless you have a built in, you know, a way to have a controller attached to your phone or have a you know, Bluetooth controller, you could just you probably want to stick to like RPGs and stuff that doesn't require a lot of you know, fast, quick inputs. But 'cause it's a touch screen. But if you do have something like Keith is showing here a a backbone. It's called the backbone. Yeah. Slap it in there. Slides out. I'll I'll show it for the camera. And I'm at this point, backbone's been around for such a long time. I bet they're pretty probably pretty cheap. So it wouldn't be hard to get your hands on something like this. And there's plenty of things like the backbone out there. And there's even more recent developments with like mag safe detachable like slide out like controller control pads for phones and stuff like that. So and that you know there's plenty of options to emulate on your phone. So maybe you don't want to, maybe you like the separation of like I don't want to be eating up my battery power on my phone playing games when I need to use it for phone stuff. Yeah there you go look at my cool last of us two background by Yojinkawa on my phone. But yeah that's what it looks like when it connected. And it's I've I have messed around with it for like, you know, I dabbled in it. 'cause I can PlayStation has the PlayStation Remote Play. That's the term. Remote play. It's like yeah, like Moonlight or something like that. Yeah. Right. So yeah, I could play my PlayStation games from my phone if once I have it connected. And so yeah, so and it does work with that. it's it's not you need fast Wi Fi. You need fast Wi Fi for that typically. You like especially if you're out in public, like with your you're playing on your Console at home and you're somewhere else, you need two fast Wi-Fi connections usually because it's streaming games over. Yeah. Right. So yeah, it but yeah, it's the lag isn't like too bad on the compared to you know when using the backbone buttons, but it it all works, it's all all functional and it's nice. Got it from our friend Tyler. He he has one of these. Yeah. Push he pushed, she shoved it in my hands and said, use this. So likely you don't need to buy anything. you just raise the black flag and go on some websites and find some files. and you can play a lot of really great games on your phone. But if you don't like the idea of that, you could either there's actually, you know, a pretty big scene around modding existing older handheld consoles like the DS and the three D S. Jay, you know, our host who isn't here obviously 'cause he's a 'cause he didn't complete the game. He didn't complete the game. So and we fired him. He has a modded three DS and he has like he's able to play pretty much any Nintendo you know. You hear that? Do you hear my cat? I did hear that. Can you hear it? I did hear that. One second. Yeah, so like I was saying, Jay has a three D S that's like, I guess jailbroken or something like that. It's got custom yeah software, firmware on it. You let him play other Nintendo games, older games, you know, putting ROMs on it. I think using an S D card and those there's like things out there like that are simple, like S D card. It's like a switch or a sorry, a three D S like cartridge that has like an S D card in it. Okay. Those things. I don't know how much I can't speak to the like how good they are. Yeah, I'm I don't do that illegal stuff that Jay does. Right. I remember I'm thinking like jailbroken. My my dad's friend had a jailbroken Xbox. and he just put like a just a shit ton of games on there. And I remember messing around with it, and he had Dead or Alive Extreme Beach volleyball. And I remember messing with it. And then I was playing it, then I realized that he had he somehow, I don't know how he did it, but it's really funny. He put like a nude mod on there so they're all thank you. It's the day you became a man. yeah. I was like, God, okay. Yeah, I I don't personally dabble in the like modding of nude nude mods. Well that. I don't I don't do that. Or modding consoles, but that's a pretty big community. It's its own like subgenre of hobby. It's a cool thing to get into. I like I like watching videos of like retro mods for like not Nacho Macho Productions, I think is his name. He does all kinds of mods on like consoles like turn you know, Game Boy or sorry, yeah, like crazy Game Boy stuff. recently there's like a GameCube with an easier way to like put like a hard drive in it, you know, that you can just load stuff onto and custom firmwares and stuff on it. So something to look into if you have one of those. And if you don't have one, some of them, especially game Cubes are still pretty cheap. You can buy used GameCubes and some other consoles for pretty cheap still. They're not console old consoles have not gone crazy in pricing. I mean a lot of them who knows what kind of shape they're in. But you know, you can get multi you could find parts for them still. There are millions of of them were made for the most part for a lot of these older consoles until you get to like the more niche stuff like Dreamcast and things like that. But yeah, right, right. If you don't want to play on your phone. And you don't want to you know an old console modding it, cutting it up, whatever. Not that you have to do that to all of them, but some of them you will have to get in. You usually have to get into them for like consoles. Yeah. you could just get a sixty dollar ish budget, you know. it's sixty dollars is fairly budget these days because it's everything costs a lot of money. Can't walk outside without spending a hundred bucks. But you could buy a retro handheld like you know, the Miyu Mini Plus. look, it's us. Whoa. Mia Mini Plus is still in like the sixty dish dollar range. I think the RG three five XXH is another one that I would recommend. It's one of my favorites, horizontal guy that you know, similar similar like games. The XXH is more powerful than the Mi Mini Plus. You could play I think some in sixty four, but all pretty much all PS one and everything older than that. And you know, you you might say, Well, what I don't want to play old games. Like like w you know, these games are super old. They're like more than twenty years old. But yeah, every time you look up like a list of like ver greatest games of all time, most of the games on there are old. Like the OGs, the greats, like the Metroids and the Zeldas and all that stuff. And you've never played games like that. Resident Evil Twos. Then you should definitely like spend the time doing something, playing them. And like games that are a little less well known, like Chrono Trigger. It's like a super, you know. One of the greatest art JRPGs of all time. And all these things you can be had for like 60 bucks-ish on AliExpress. And I mean, it's coming from China. And somehow these things have kind of survived the tariffs thing and the RAM issues. They're still relatively affordable. They have gone up. I believe my XXH was like 50 bucks when I bought it. Now I think they're around 60. But AliExpress runs like sales all the time. And When I say sales, they usually have like coupons, so there's like coupon codes to use to drop the prices, and usually they're like price tiered. So like spend X amount of dollars, get X amount of dollars off. So you kinda have to pick and choose what you want to buy. It's good plus like with those old classic games, like especially for like Nintendo games, like a lot of those old classics, they just aren't available. Like, you know, it's like I mentioned our Resident Evil episodes, like all of Resident Evil's, they're easily accessible on pretty much anything now, but That's kind of the exception. That's not the standard, you know. that, you know, a lot of franchises just aren't easily accessible anymore. And even within Capcom, like a lot of their old franchises aren't as they've gotten a lot better about it. But you know, there's still some games that are missing that they've people want them to like bring back or do something with. But like the companies just like sit on them. I mean, like, yeah, you can now play you can play Super Metroid, but like you have to go through so many fucking hoops to just to play that. You have to you know switch and get a subscription and then you know All of a sudden it's like, man, it's like you can't just buy it anymore. It's like the way to go is just get a retro handout. Yeah. This could be an entire like episode in its in and of itself about like game preservation. A lot of people argue that is it piracy if you're not allowed, if you can't own it. Like is piracy isn't stealing if buying isn't owning. So on the Nintendo store, we're talking about playing old like retro Nintendo games on you have to have a subscription, right? play them. And I mean Nintendo reserves the right to pull them off at any time because I mean it does belong to them. But it's such an a lot of these games are super basically inaccessible or impossible to get or play anymore. Yeah. Aside from people online have curated and kept up with like the files and the games. Like they're all people are still like trying hard to keep these things accessible for people when all companies want to do is obviously make money off of them. And yeah to be fair it's their it's their I intellectual property, but they're Pricing people out of things like this. And then yeah, there's also instances of like IPs that are owned by companies that are never gonna get revived, you know, or like that and there's no way to ever you're never gonna get a new version of this game. So the only way to get it is to find either an old console and an old copy of the game, or, you know, like we said before, just you know, go on the internet. Censored. So these things, I think it's a good it's a great deal. You can carry them with you. You can stick them in your pocket. Some of them are bigger than others, but most of them you can stick them in your pocket, you stick them in your bag or whatever. Take it with you, play it on your lunch breaks. Yeah. Play it on the on the bus or something. give one to your kid. They can play it in the back of the car. You know, get them into game retro games. These things are very affordable. They're super customizable. It doesn't require too much technical know how to get them running. Even if someone as dumb as me can make it work. Yeah. And if you're into that, if you're into that kind of stuff and customizing them, you can do a lot of cool stuff with them. There's a lot of other things you can do. You don't you can play other stuff beyond just retro consoles. There's like people making like Pico 8, it's like a fantasy retro a fantasy console where people are actively making new games for it. They're like little short, small games. Like weight games, you know. People still make new Game Boy Advance and Game Boy games. Like people make them at just because, you know, they're fans of retro stuff. Yeah. And You can play all this stuff for like about sixty bucks. You have to wait a little bit 'cause it's coming from China. So it might take a couple weeks, but very cheap, very affordable. pretty much all these in this price range can play PS one and below. And there's plenty of good games. And every game we've played so far on Gar Creeps, with maybe the exception of space station Silicon Valley, can be played on some of the on these. And Keith has played most of his ones. Most of my games have been on the RX7. On your handheld R36S. Yeah, but whatever. Yeah. yeah. Space station technically worked on there, but you don't have to play that one anyways. It wasn't that good. That's true. That's true. So we have that, right? And sixty dollars, obviously you're like, that's a great value proposition, but you can spend just a little bit much, well, not a little bit, but a bit more. Still much less than playing, paying for a something like a Steam Deck or a console, like a PlayStation 5. And get like a $250 ish range Android handheld, right? Something like the your RP or Retroid Pocket Sixes. I'll grab it. I forgot to grab it. Your Retroid Pocket 5s, they're on sale now because the six is out and the Retro Pocket Nova is coming out soon. These Android handhelds, there's other ones. There's the Odin three. You probably bought an Odin device that's a little bit older for a little less money at this point. And these things can play more than just PS one. They can usually play PS2, GameCube. A lot of times they can play Wii games and pretty much obviously anything else below that. And on top of that, a lot of them can play some PC games like indie games and lighter games and maybe some even heavier weight games using something called game native. So for about two hundred and fifty bucks. This was two fifty. Yeah, you can have something that can play and there we are. bigger catalog. Think about like PS a lot of people will say that the PS2 and GameCube generation is their favorite generation. And there's a especially people our age, 30 somethings. that that's where we really like what you mean. That's where we really like started our you know really gaming because we were past the point of being children where we didn't understand what we were doing and into the point where we're really into the games. And we play all your favorite PS2 and GameCube classics and even some Wii games and even some Which games it's possible on these things. I've never actually done that. I never emulated Switch, but I know you it you can. It's a little harder. They're harder to come by, the the ROMs. When Metroid Dread came out, PC Gamer put out a guide on how to fucking put it on your PC. Yeah. But yeah, that's another thing we actually didn't mention. If you have a PC, any somewhat comparable gaming PC, you can emulate all the stuff we just mentioned as well. Like super. Yeah. Super easy. If you have graphics card, even if it's an older system, all this stuff that we're talking about is ancient at this point. It's term in terms of like hardware. It's twenty years old or more. My l like my shitty little laptop could r run everyone. You could play a decent amount of stuff. Yeah. So as long as you have like enough RAM and a decent a little bit of like graphical processing power, you can play a lot of stuff on even a PC. And then you just get you a controller, an HDMI cable and you can be playing retro games on your couch if you want. Yep. So lastly If you want to save a little bit of money on these things, I've done this in the past. you can go onto Retro Handheld's Discord server. And I think you might have to be at least like a real person. I don't think you need to have any other stipulations besides like not being a robot. there's a buying and selling and trading section of that server. And people are always these things are coming out like mm every week. Like there's a new version of these handhelds every single week. And people that like it's a disease, right? That I have 'cause I have a bunch of them. their hobby is buying these things rather than actually playing them. So they'll buy a bunch of and then like when the new thing comes out, like the RP six is out, like people I bet you could probably find an RP five, which is one Keith has, on Artro handheld at some point. Someone's selling it for d obviously significantly less than buying it new. And I bought an R thirty six ass off of there for like twenty bucks. And I've checked like I've watched I've actually sold stuff on there too. I sold my Odin two to someone. I sold I also sold like a tablet, like an old NVIDIA shield tablet. And tried selling no, I s did sell the Data Frog S F two thousand. If you if you know, you know the little terrible Data Frog. Same guy bought that, he bought the tablet and then I sold the Odin two to somebody too because I Talked about this before. What I really wanted was Steam Deck, but I bought the Odin Two. So it a at the time it was the highest is Odin two Pro, highest like one of the highest end Android handhelds. Like kind of like which it would be about as powerful as what you have, Keith. But just it was a little bit bigger. You also sold me your other RNS R thirty six S. Yeah. So yeah, go on there, go on their Discord, join their Discord, and then if you want to buy something like for a discount, look through there, troll through there. I don't think people scam anyone on there. It's pretty respectful. Like you have to post timestamps with like okay, this is like, hey, this is me, my username, this is when I'm posting it. And like usually people will like pay over PayPal because it's the most secure, like easiest to like fraud detection thing. Mm-hmm. so that's how I've done it is done PayPal friends and family, I think before. so yeah, if you wanna save even a little bit more money than already on these budget things, like people will sell things like this because they'll just buy them off Like, it's on sale. I'll buy three of them. Yeah. And like, I don't need them. And they'll sell them. They offload them. So you can buy a lot of stuff for pretty cheap on the Retro Handhelds Discord. So check that out. Also check out our Discord, which we haven't mentioned before. come and talk to us about this stuff. Ask us what if you want to know what handheld we think you should buy. Well, I'll it'll be me telling you what to buy. It will be right and join leading that conversation. Yeah, go ahead and join. And I can tell you what you should probably consider buying. If you're interested in this buying one of these. Ryan has several keywords that will just launch them into any conversation about a deep dive. So you see first you gotta figure out what games you wanna play and then you gotta figure out what which kind of like which which you know layout you like. Do you like the Game Boy style, like the vertical, you know, do you like the horizontal, like the X X H or do you want like a flippy guy like the Me Mini Flip, you know? What you just depends on what you want, but yeah. If you're interested in learning more, you can join our Discord and we can I can point you in the right direction for some of this stuff. Continuing on, the last thing, and this is we've talked about we've touched on this already, is mastering your your digital sales landscape, right? So most likely you're already locked into one of these ecosystems, be it PlayStation or Steam or Nintendo. Unfortunately, hopefully not, but it could be right. And maybe Xbox? Like are there actual Xbox people out there still? I mean they must exist, but I don't know any of them. They're just PC people now, really. Yeah, exactly. I I was gonna say if you're an Xbox person, I don't really know what to tell you besides get like what is it, Xbox games? Game Game Pass. Yeah. Game pass. And then you can get a bunch of games for basic like you can play Forzo, the new Forza or whatever for like f I don't know, it's a subscription service. Every newest game immediately Yeah. Does PlayStation have a similar service where it's like a You get free games. So yeah, so PlayStation Plus, they have different they have like three different levels. basic extra and premium, I think they're called. the all three levels do they PlayStation Plus, they do three games a month, totally free. You can download it. Sometimes they're they're they range wildly. Like one like a like a couple months ago, WWE two K twenty five was up there. And that's like, you know, they'll put like they'll put yearly games up there like EA Sports, like their football club, FC twenty-five, whatever's up there. So you know, like they'll Yeah. Right. So yeah, like the the games like they they wild range pretty wildly and it's always it's always cool to see what they put up there. and then there are the extra where you can get they also just have a lot of their games on their digital storefront are just if you have this level of PlayStation Plus, you can just download for free. otherwise it's like there's like a s cheap like super cheap. Like Tekken three, if you have PlayStation Plus extra, it's free, but it's like five seventy nine or something. It's like super cheap. So I did buy that 'cause you know, it's Tekken three. So but you know It's a deal. Exactly. Exactly. Gotta buy the deals. Right, exactly. They do give out free games occasionally so yeah. Or every month I should say. Yeah. Yeah. So basically this is this section is talking about just learning how to buy the deals, right? Yeah. So first we'll talk about if you're if you're Steam if you're a a Steam person, if you're a PC person, I think you already if you're a Steam PC person, you're probably already familiar with how all this works and the best way to go about it. But obviously Steam has really big sales multiple times per year, the summer sale, the winter sale. And I guess they have them in spring and f I think they have spring and fall too. Obviously those are huge sales and usually that's we're putting a post on our Discord about it. Yeah, we should get it posted on Instagram and TikTok and Patreon, where you check out our picks for the Steam Summer Sale, which is it'll be over by the time this comes out. But if you want to know, Keith Pick Bejeweled three. When Ryan asked, I didn't know what he was asking for, so I just looked on a rant on the store and just saw a random game and I thought that's gonna be funny. I didn't realize he'd he was making a post about it, so but you know what? It's whatever. Yeah, was ninety nine. Yeah. my pick was cultic, which I've talked about on here a couple of times, Boomer Shooter. Gabe said Kingdom Come Deliverance two, which is it was like thirty two dollars for the whole thing, and that's a great game. good price for it. And then Jay said Hades two, which is also on a pretty good sale, and you can get a bundle of Hades two plus one, I guess the soundtracks. That's the weird thing about Steam. You c you almost always get soundtracks in the bundles, which is funny. That's cool. But yeah. So what I would do is go on Steam and there's if there's a game you want, you know you want, but you don't want to pay full price for it, right? I've had Baldur's Gate three on my wish list for a really long time. So yeah, go ahead and wish list a game and then use some tool like Steam DB, which tracks low price like historical low prices for these games. So sometimes games will go on sale, but then later they'll go on bigger sale. So like A classic game that goes on sale all the time is Red Dead Redemption 2. It go usually it's it's normally still like sixty bucks, but it goes on sale pretty often and it goes to seventy five percent sale, so it's like fifteen dollars. Mm-hmm. So just make sure you're wish listing the games that you want actually really want and you're not buying them until the sales come up. And you just wish list them because it's not like they're random, right? So some randomly they'll be, Rockstar sale or two you know, whatever two K publisher sale like Borderlands. That's two K, right? Yeah. Yes, yes, it is. Mm-hmm. Just do that and then don't ever buy anything full price unless you really, really, really want it. Or unless you're a fool like me. Yeah. So you can almost always find a deal on Steam. And you get yourself in trouble during the big sales because you're like, this game's like four dollars. I should I I bought Far Cry four for like five or six dollars a couple of years ago, and I haven't played it. Of course, added to my backlog. I played like Far Cry two. I never played any of the other Far Cries. I played Far Cry two back in the day. yeah. And but yeah, you'll do that. That's the one double edged sword about Steam sales is you gotta watch yourself 'cause you'll just end up stacking up your backlog. So yeah. If you're if you're a PlayStation guy, if a Playstation Network, obviously they also do but like you said the The sales, the bi weekly themed sales, like Critics Choice, under twenty dollars, stuff like that. So just watch out for those. Just like with Steam, it's hard to get new games for cheap. That almost never happens. But on Steam it's more likely. It might take a year or two. But like Baldur's Gate. It like I should mention, Baldur's Gate has gone on sale multiple times since I've wish listed it, but it's never been low enough that I wanted to buy it. So it's always been like forty five dollars, something like that. That's still kind of expensive for me. I don't you know, so I'll just wait. Eventually I don't need to play it right now. Everyone's already played it. Everyone's already talked it to death. I've heard about it for years now. I'll play it eventually when it's cheaper. Twenty thirty bucks. Yeah. So yeah, you can w there's you can always wait. They'll always eventually go on sale unless it's a Nintendo game. But PlayStation also has their has a wish list thing and they'll so if you wish list a game, it'll actually like send you a notification, hey, this is on sale for this much. Tyler's a big wish list guy, so he's always telling me about stuff so he goes on wish lists. I'm silly, I wish list stuff that's that's coming out already. So it's like, you know Yeah. Yeah, that's basically hey, pre order this. Like, okay, I'll do that. So Yeah. I wish list games on Steam that are like in like it's cause Steam does that with like it's coming out, but it's a like a random, like not triple A game. Like So I want to know when it's actually coming out because it's it's on Steam, but it hasn't told you 'cause it more like indie titles. And I'll do that because I'm not following it specifically on any other, you know, platform. But then it tells me, okay, this game I wish listed is finally out, so I'll check it out at that point. All like the game like, you know, game awards and summer games, Jeff, you know, all that stuff. They always say, Wish list today, wish list now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I'll see ads on Instagram are like wish list now. Using the Car Creeps Instagram, when I'm signed into the Car Creeps Instagram, I get tons of like indie game stuff fed to me and I'm like, that looks cool. Maybe I and I will go wish list them sometimes. but yeah, speaking of Nintendo and their pricing, and well we'll s we will say that obviously they're they're notoriously stingy with their first party games. apparently, according to what my research it does happen sometimes that we'll discount them. I've never seen it. I also don't look at I've never seen it. But that's my my story is I bought a switch, Switch one in like twenty twenty four, 'cause I never had one. I talked about this before. And I was like, okay, well, I've got a switch. I need to go get Mario Kart because it's just it's Mario Kart. And I'm like looking at the online eShop and I'm like, it's sixty dollars. Like still. The game is like what? It came out in twenty five Fifteen? Because it's a it's a Mario Kart eight is a Wii U game. It's a Wii U game, yeah. So Yeah, and just like r slightly, I don't know, upgraded, updated graphics and more tracks or something for Switch. But like the game is like ten years old. And they still want they probably still charge you six dollars for it right now. I have I could probably check. But I I bet even when you're listening to this podcast it's funnier to slander it without looking into it. Yeah, it is. That way if I'm if we're wrong, people will Well, it's in engagement rage bait and then they'll tell us we're on. Good or bad, it it works out for us, so whatever. Yeah. I bet that even right now it's still expensive, even with Mario Kart World being out. And that's how it was. And I was like, seriously? So what I think I ended up doing was buying it in a GameStop, which is hilarious. In the big t at that time, the big two four, the big twenty twenty four. I literally went to the GameStop and bought it. Like I remember it ca it actually have been on eBay. I think I checked GameStop and it was still expensive there, even used. So I may have bought a used one on eBay with no box. It was just yeah, kark. But yeah. Yeah, but walking to GameStop is so funny nowadays. I know. I never I haven't been I don't go to them and I haven't been in them in years except for that. And I was like, this is weird. It's just because they're just selling toys. Yeah, right. Well I went to buy my couch, there was a GameStop like next to it. So I went to GameStop first and it's like just just like walking around. It's like no one in there. It's just the guy, yeah, clerk and was like, Hey, how's it going? It's like, Hey, how's it going? Like walking around looking at games, like I'm not buying this, so I don't know what I'm doing here. But then I feel bad for just like wandering around. So for my you know, podcasting setup, I bought a new mouse pad, a one a one piece mouse pad, and and a and I think a USB cord because I just felt weird about just like not buying anything after walking around for so long. So it's like fuck, I gotta get something in here. Nice. Yeah, but eShop. I I eShop also if you I don't know if you've ever gone on it recently on a Switch one. It like lags really bad. This is your first party, like this is your shop on your console. Why does it feel like this? Yeah. They actually do s have lots of sales on third party games. I bought a couple third party games from the eShop when I was you know, playing the Switch more. No, nothing like crazy, like overcooked too, like a little party game where you assemble food. Yeah, that's a fun game. And like Turnip Boy commits tax evasion. And that was like a really cheap one. It was a short little game. I was like, sure, why not? It was it was on sale. I also bought a limbo, that like platform or platformer side scrolling dark, spooky thing, which I never actually played. It came back on out it came out back on the three sixty days, but never played it and was good. it was but yeah, it was definitely on sale. So yeah. There's stuff out there to track these games and like go online. Like s something called a website called Deku Deals. And you can actually pick which console you use. And this is mostly for digital stuff, obviously. It's not for like physic tracking prices of physical games, which they're you know as of now there are still physical games. You know, for some consoles. they still sell PS fives with a, you know, disc drive pump. So yeah, go on a website like that or check out Steam DB. and track your the game of choice that you're trying to buy and see when it most likely is going to go on sale again. Other than that, I think we've pretty much covered it. So yeah, either emulate on something you already have, like a PC or your phone or an old console if you if it's already kind of messed up, maybe you can try modding it. Then if you want to spend a little bit of money and have infinite basically infinite game access as long as you you know hoist the black flag. Get it get you a retro handheld from AliExpress. Get either get the budget one or the heavy hitter one. You'll have a good experience either way. But I will say, be warned that if you buy one, you're gonna buy more because you're like, wow, this thing's pretty sweet. It even happened to me. I I bought one for cheap and then bought an expensive one. I didn't think I'd do it. This damn podcast got me. Yeah. Me and Mini Plus is my recommendation. It's not the most powerful, but it's the best user experience using onion custom firmware, which is, you know, you there's videos out there to find. It's not hard to get that set up on your your little Miyu Mini. and then yeah, get an Android one. So we're talking about the slightly more expensive ones. They're a little bit harder to set up. There's more involved, but they can do a lot more. So check those out if you're interested in those. And then again, check out Retro Handheld's Discord buy and sell section to get some deals on this stuff if you're okay with buying something that's slightly used. And then lastly, yeah, check out sites like SteamDB and Deku Deals and just make sure you're buying on sales because there's really no reason to buy a full price game now, especially when they're going to be eighty dollars going forward. Like right. Yeah, that sucks too. GTA six is gonna fucking they're everyone's gonna follow that example because it's gonna sell like crazy. Everyone's gonna buy it. It's that's true. I mean you might not have buyers or more with GTA six, but at that point you're just kinda bought into the the the system that we operate in now. Yeah you know fight against the system. Fight it buy more stuff. Yeah. Fight against the system and play old games because old games are good and there's lots of them out there and play the ones that we're playing. And yeah check out join our Discord. You can play along. You can play along. You can check out our Patreon of whatever tier you join at you can vote on neck upcoming games of the month for when we replace the game even the lowest tier You get early access to these videos two days before everybody else. And I also want yeah. I want to introduce a new thing we're gonna try out. And we'll just call it we're calling it the high score challenge, right? So what we're gonna do is pick a game on these episodes, these creep talk episodes, the s the sh hopefully shorter ones. It looks shorter. It looks it's it's looking shorter, it should be a little shorter. Yeah, this will be shorter 'cause we've we've taken big breaks during this. You won't know them, but yeah. You won't experience it. But we did, yeah, take breaks. So yeah, high score challenge. So we're gonna pick a game. Right now we're gonna pick the first game, and our idea is we pick a game, everyone plays it, right? Or if you wanna play it, play it. Try to get the highest score you can. This is gonna be games like arcade games and anything that has an achievable high score, right? And I know obviously you can cheat on these. It's easy, it'd be super easy to cheat. You could use stave states, you could do slow motion, but we're just gonna go on the honor system for now. Yeah. Unless you guys ruin our trust and then we won't do it anymore. But right now our idea is if you win the high s you get the high score, you can pick the next game that we play for the high score challenge. With our approval, you out we'll ask you what you want to pick. We'll let you know like, okay, yeah, that one will work 'cause it actually is a high score game versus something that's like kinda like iffy. But yeah, so on This episode we'll announce it and and the game that we're gonna pick is Pokemon, Pinball, Ruby, and Sapphire for the Game Boy Advance. And I will say specifically it is we'll pick the red table and normal ball speed 'cause there's normal and slow. So normal ball speed, just see what your highest score you can get is. next time we have a creep talk episode, which will be a month from now, we'll go over the winner and we'll announce a new one. When Keith wins, Keith is gonna pick a fighting game. Just letting you all know that now. Yeah, if we win, if the creeps win one of them, then we will also get to pick the game. Try and beat the creeps. Yeah. That's the real challenge. Well, yeah, that's a fun little game. I put it on my my daughter's handheld I had made for her. I mean, I took that R thirty six S, like the one you have, and I loaded up the custom firmware, put our custom loading screen on it and put it in kid mode. So there's only like five games and all she can see is just the game. She can't like access like Game Boy and then Game Boy Color. It's just the game. So it's simplified. For her. And that's one of put on there because she's played it on mine before and she likes it. So yeah, so Pokemon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire for Game Boy Advance. It's a fun little game. Try it out. So post your high score. There'll be a channel in our Discord for the high score challenge posting your your score section. Take a picture, not a screenshot. It's just more honest. And I'm not I'm not we're not gonna enforce like putting like this is the name and the date right now. We may in the future. We trust you. For now. Yeah, we trust you. We don't trust Gabin Jason. I was gonna say game first, yeah. Old cheating game. Lying bastard. Hopefully you guys enjoy this new format for the side episodes. It won't always be two of us. Hopefully it'll be four of us next time. Probably end up being longer with more people. Hopefully you enjoyed it. If you'll always be the two man power trip, baby. Just yes. Or the first. So if you like this video, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button. If you have games in your backlog, tell us what they are. Tell us what you're going to play next. And also like what console you might consider modding or what handheld you might consider picking up. again, don't forget to join us on our Discord. You can find our links in the description below. You can also follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Instagram, TikTok, and I think that's about it. You check out our Patreon. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else, Keith? have fun. Don't cheat. Don't buy full price games. Yeah, don't be like me. Be better than me. Don't buy full price games at maximum price. You know, look. Just because you have the disposable income doesn't mean you should always dispose of it, you know? Save your money, you know, put it in, you know, look, you know what? It's time to get real. I'm gonna turn my chair around. We're gonna get real. Let's talk let's talk finances, folks. That's what we're really here about. So here we go. Alright, so what you wanna do definitely gonna cut have cut this off and