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X Button Video Game Podcast - Episode 1 · The X Button Video Game Podcast

• 0:02
  Well, hello and welcome to the X Button Video Game Podcast.
• 0:09
  It's a brand new weekly audio and video podcast program show
• 0:14
  that we're making thanks to your help Internet on the Internet.
• 0:19
  My name is Max Scoville and I'm joined by two of my best friends
• 0:22
  in the whole universe, Brian Altano and Seth Macy.
• 0:25
  Hello, gentlemen. How's it going?
• 0:27
  This feels good. This feels really good.
• 0:29
  Amazing. This feels really good.
• 0:31
  Yeah. It's nice to have a little
• 0:33
  light, a little optimism. That's what we're shooting for
• 0:36
  here. So if you've never heard of us
• 0:39
  before and you don't know how you got here, I can't help you
• 0:43
  with that part. But I can give you a little bit
• 0:45
  of context as to who we are. I figured we could just kind of
• 0:49
  before we get into the news this week, which may be a week old by
• 0:51
  the time you hear this, Who knows?
• 0:53
  We can just kind of go around a little bit.
• 0:55
  It's going to be fun news. It's not going to be like, you
• 0:58
  know, important stuff. It's going to be about like, you
• 1:00
  know, cool video game news. It's not it's it's it's.
• 1:04
  Earthworm Jim has drowned. You'll read it.
• 1:06
  You'll read a game pro from 1998.
• 1:08
  That's not news. I'm sorry.
• 1:10
  It's still fun. I want to know what the fun
• 1:13
  factor. Is killed in another divorce no,
• 1:16
  but I want to go around and kind of talk about our our own little
• 1:18
  relationships with video games in case any people listening or
• 1:21
  watching don't know who we are or what our deal is we're let's
• 1:25
  do this alphabetically Brian I'll tunnel let's start with
• 1:28
  you. Sure.
• 1:28
  Yeah. I always hated that about my
• 1:30
  last name. I always had to read my book
• 1:31
  reports before everybody else. And I couldn't be like, oh man,
• 1:33
  that was such a good idea because I'd have to do that
• 1:35
  after the fact. No.
• 1:36
  So I'm a early 80s baby, I guess you would call it a elder
• 1:39
  millennial. And I started video gaming when
• 1:42
  my dad picked me up in a pizza parlor in New.
• 1:46
  Like not pick. He didn't pick me up there.
• 1:47
  I wasn't like the idea, just living there.
• 1:49
  In a pizza parlor, yeah. What a what a 80s like sick,
• 1:53
  animated like it's just like I'm a kid that lives in a pizza
• 1:56
  parlor. I need a dad.
• 1:57
  No, my dad brought me to a pizza joint in Jersey City, NJ, and
• 2:01
  they had a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet and I thought it was the
• 2:03
  most beautiful thing in the world.
• 2:05
  And he held me up and he put 1/4 in and I played and I probably
• 2:07
  died instantly and maybe put another quarter in.
• 2:10
  And I was immediately like, these things are really cool.
• 2:12
  And a couple years later moved to a different part of New
• 2:15
  Jersey and was like, I need a Nintendo.
• 2:18
  It's all I want for Christmas is an NES.
• 2:20
  And I got it, I believe in 1985 or 1986 with a stack of games
• 2:26
  that my dad got from this place called Nobody Beats the Wiz.
• 2:30
  No, it might have been the way. Actually.
• 2:31
  No, I think it was Crazy Eddie. Crazy Eddie.
• 2:34
  He went to jail for like embezzling stuff, but he was
• 2:37
  open, he was crazy and murder. So yeah, he that's.
• 2:39
  How he got off the charges? Insanity.
• 2:41
  Yeah, and because he killed Earthworm Jim, the judge was
• 2:45
  like, I'll shave 10 years. We all let's all agree that that
• 2:48
  guy sucks and he killed him with drowning, which I think is fine
• 2:52
  for Worms. No, so they, they, I got a stack
• 2:56
  of NES games and was like, I'm just in love.
• 2:58
  And you know, I was in that era where I was trading games with
• 3:01
  friends and stuff like that. And I, my daughter's in 3rd
• 3:05
  grade now, so I play a lot of video games with her and I swear
• 3:07
  I'll make this quick. I was telling her a story in the
• 3:10
  car this morning about how when I was in 3rd grade I got in
• 3:13
  trouble because made a bunch of my friends made our own like
• 3:16
  bootleg Nintendo power style video game magazine with hand
• 3:20
  drawn maps and. Cheat codes that we stole.
• 3:23
  From Nintendo Power and like, you know, stuff were like blurbs
• 3:27
  about games we're playing and stuff like that.
• 3:28
  And we went to the library and we printed like 100 copies and
• 3:31
  we were selling him. And Nintendo sent you a cease
• 3:33
  and desist. Yeah, I was.
• 3:34
  I was the first person. Even invented yet, but they
• 3:36
  somehow managed to e-mail you. They blocked your channel which
• 3:39
  was I. Yeah, there's a there's a
• 3:41
  documentary about me on on Pizzone, which is a streaming
• 3:46
  site. And I was the first kid to be
• 3:48
  sued by Nintendo for touring fan art.
• 3:50
  No, they said the principal pulled me in her office and was
• 3:54
  like, you can't do any, you can't sell, you can't sell
• 3:57
  anything at school period. Let's start there.
• 3:59
  Like you can't just have a store in your backpack.
• 4:02
  But secondly, like you can't use the school equipment and the,
• 4:04
  and the printer paper and stuff like that.
• 4:07
  But it's pretty cool that you guys are making your own
• 4:09
  magazine and the writings good and the arts good.
• 4:11
  So you know, I'll give you, you get a Gold Star there, but you
• 4:14
  can't sell these things here. And I asked my dad, can I print
• 4:17
  it on your, your printer? And he's like, what?
• 4:18
  You're crazy and so then that ended but that was my first time
• 4:22
  covering video games and sharing my love for video games with
• 4:25
  other people, which luckily, thanks to my friends right here
• 4:27
  and our wonderful listeners, I get to keep doing today so for.
• 4:31
  Any of our any of our younger listeners or viewers back in the
• 4:34
  in the 90s, printing something on an inkjet printer cost more
• 4:38
  than a car. If it was color, forget about
• 4:41
  it. That was like you'd get maybe 1.
• 4:43
  Printer was the size of a cartoon.
• 4:45
  We I'd like a print class once where the guy came in one day
• 4:49
  like it was like when they get off, you know, if they hold the
• 4:52
  phone up and back to the future, you're never gonna believe what
• 4:54
  they're listening. This is gonna blow your mind
• 4:58
  where he came in with like a printer and he was just like,
• 5:00
  check this out. And he printed this like picture
• 5:02
  of like a forest. And he started at the beginning
• 5:04
  of the class. And by the end of the class, it
• 5:05
  was just like, and by the end he was like, look at this.
• 5:11
  And we were like, Oh my God, he did it.
• 5:14
  Wow. So yeah, technology got better.
• 5:16
  Anyway, Speaking of vintage electronics, Seth Macy, what's
• 5:19
  your origin story? Well, I am a vintage electronic
• 5:23
  myself. I am.
• 5:24
  I am actually at the very end of Gen.
• 5:27
  X, that's how old. I comic series.
• 5:31
  Yes, by oh God, I have that right over there.
• 5:34
  I have the first issue of that with the sticker that I, the
• 5:37
  price sticker that I had on it when I tried to sell it at the
• 5:40
  Holiday Market in North Haven, ME for $13, which is what Wizard
• 5:44
  Magazine had it listed as. So I'd always be like, Dad, I
• 5:47
  have at least $500 worth of comics and he'd always say only
• 5:50
  if somebody wants to pay that much.
• 5:51
  And I was like, screw you, Dad. But he was right.
• 5:54
  So thanks Dad, for that valuable life lesson.
• 5:58
  What was your first video game, Seth?
• 5:59
  What was your first memory of all that?
• 6:01
  The first I remember like we were at like, I don't know, a
• 6:05
  party, my parents, friends and there's like kids and I just
• 6:08
  remember going down into the basement and seeing Pac-Man for
• 6:13
  the Atari 2600, which was not a good game at all.
• 6:17
  But I didn't know that until much later on.
• 6:19
  I was probably 5, maybe 4. And we don't talk about this now
• 6:25
  because it's not it's just a video games are just such a
• 6:27
  thing. But being able to move this, the
• 6:30
  things that were on the screen, the image was like a huge
• 6:33
  novelty at the time. And I was just like, I was
• 6:36
  dialed in. I didn't even play.
• 6:37
  I watched another kid play forever.
• 6:40
  And then, you know, our downstairs friends in the
• 6:44
  apartment we lived in, they got an Atari 2600, and eventually we
• 6:46
  got a Coleco Vision. And yeah.
• 6:49
  And yes, that was a fun one. The year after, we got a Tandy
• 6:53
  Color Computer 3. I'm sorry, Mom, I wasn't nice to
• 6:57
  you when you gave that to us for Christmas.
• 7:00
  Why not? We wanted a Nintendo.
• 7:01
  We. Didn't we wanted you got a
• 7:02
  Tandy? We got a Tandy Color Computer 3
• 7:04
  because the guy at RadioShack was like, honestly, this is
• 7:07
  better than a Nintendo. And my mom was like, really?
• 7:09
  OK, So yeah, NES, we, my brother and I worked, got summer jobs to
• 7:15
  buy a Super NES. And then I've just, I've had
• 7:17
  every everything ever since then.
• 7:19
  I like Nintendo quite a bit. But you know, I did have a
• 7:23
  PlayStation and an Xbox. I've had, yeah, you know what?
• 7:26
  I've had every console since like the N64, with the exception
• 7:31
  of the Dreamcast. So which I have now.
• 7:33
  I have a Dreamcast now. Somebody just gave me one like
• 7:36
  five years ago. Yeah, no, you.
• 7:38
  Have like a you have like a payphone.
• 7:40
  I do I have a payphone hold check.
• 7:41
  It out, Yeah, you got like, I don't have a Dreamcast, but I
• 7:44
  have a payphone and multiple Coleco visions and let me call
• 7:48
  it what you can play. Telephone games on that.
• 7:50
  It's a Dale Earnhardt phone. Prank calling my grandmother.
• 7:53
  For real right now you call. Give it That's a Dale Earnhardt.
• 7:57
  The phone, are you? Yeah.
• 7:58
  Kidding me? No, I'm not.
• 8:00
  This is not a call in show. Are you calling yourself?
• 8:03
  Yeah. Who did you call?
• 8:05
  Who did you call? I know you could do that.
• 8:09
  Why would I have a payphone if I couldn't call it for my Dale
• 8:12
  Earnhardt phone? Doesn't even make sense.
• 8:16
  Sure. No, it is worth pointing out
• 8:19
  that we all, we all play video games on every system.
• 8:21
  We are are doing a Nintendo focus show on top of this called
• 8:24
  Nintendo, Nintendo 64. But yeah, we play everything.
• 8:27
  That's a big kind of the inspiration behind us doing this
• 8:30
  show. So, Max, what's your deal?
• 8:32
  Well, I'm just a little old baby, a little almost 40 year
• 8:35
  old baby. Like put on all the New Year's
• 8:38
  clip art. No, my, my relationship with
• 8:41
  gaming has kind of always been, I don't know, holistic.
• 8:45
  Like, I like, I like video games.
• 8:46
  I like comics, I like movies, I like art, I like books.
• 8:49
  I like all that stuff. And I like how it overlaps and
• 8:51
  bleeds into itself. Growing up, my mom was a huge
• 8:55
  pain in the ass and was one of those people who would hear on
• 8:58
  the news that video games will make your kids terrible and was
• 9:01
  like, we can't have that. But also she's like an infamous
• 9:04
  Luddite and would be like, I'd be like mom, I want to play
• 9:07
  video games And she's like, we can't have video games.
• 9:10
  We don't have a VCR anyway, still working through some of
• 9:15
  that. But my earliest memories of
• 9:17
  gaming was a lot of playing at people's house, at friends
• 9:19
  houses and stuff. And I remember, I mean, I have
• 9:22
  like, you know, faint, faint early memories of playing Duck
• 9:27
  Hunt and just being like, this is sick.
• 9:28
  You can shoot a gun at the TV. Like, these are all these things
• 9:32
  my mom hates. Guns, TV, video games all
• 9:34
  together. Ducks.
• 9:36
  Yeah. Water fowl.
• 9:38
  The French do kill a lot of ducks.
• 9:40
  Yeah, but no the. Fatten them up for their tasty
• 9:44
  livers. That's a for the that's.
• 9:46
  A Yeah, the lorange. Who's the goose now?
• 9:50
  This guy. I remember a very early, very,
• 9:54
  very early core memory of playing Kid Chameleon.
• 9:58
  And I think that was like the first time, like I always loved
• 10:00
  I was a video games for being like almost like somewhere
• 10:03
  between like dioramas and like playsets.
• 10:06
  Like I always like the sort of toy attic side to it where it's
• 10:08
  like, here's like a little world you just kind of go into.
• 10:11
  And kid Chameleon is a game where you put on different hats
• 10:15
  and you get to do different stuff and different.
• 10:17
  It's really kind of the original Assassin's Creed.
• 10:18
  If you think about it. This kid gets sucked back in
• 10:20
  time and has to like relive his ancestors sins or whatever.
• 10:23
  But it's also probably why I dress like that dude on a daily
• 10:26
  basis. But yeah, later on I moved to I
• 10:29
  moved to a new neighborhood and my would be best friend moved in
• 10:34
  next door was, you know, he always, he had AC at an NES
• 10:36
  super NES. His his dad was one of the first
• 10:40
  people to be like, oh, let's get a get a PC.
• 10:42
  And my friend was like, I better install Doom.
• 10:45
  And so he very much became like a Big Brother figure to me and
• 10:47
  like exposed me to a lot of a lot of video games And I I beat
• 10:50
  link to the past at his house for the first time, fell madly
• 10:53
  in love with secretive evermore Metal Gear Solid came along.
• 10:56
  That was a huge kind of just paradigm shift.
• 10:59
  That was really the first time when I was like, I I I wanted
• 11:03
  understand video games more like I want to unpack what these
• 11:05
  things are as a medium. Yeah, and he I mean, he showed
• 11:09
  me how to like emulate older games and back in the old 28
• 11:13
  eight dial up days, like you couldn't really emulate newer
• 11:16
  games. So I played a lot of older stuff
• 11:18
  that was kind of kind of like, you know, before my time a
• 11:21
  little bit. So, you know, that's why we
• 11:23
  that's why we talked to talk a rafters on Alfred Chicken over
• 11:26
  here. Yeah, I don't know.
• 11:29
  I've been, I've been covering games professionally for like
• 11:31
  over 15 years now. I mean, we've kind of all been
• 11:34
  doing that whole side of things. That's I think that's less
• 11:36
  interesting than the the weird murky origins though.
• 11:39
  No, it's, it is. It's like Max, you and I
• 11:41
  specifically did podcast Beyond Together, which was a
• 11:44
  PlayStation Focus show and we had a lot of fun with it.
• 11:47
  But we noticed that over the last couple of years, it fell
• 11:51
  less and less sort of pertinent to do a a specific show around
• 11:57
  PlayStation. I think Nintendo always made a
• 11:59
  ton of sense, but PlayStation right now, even our our friends
• 12:02
  that kind of funny shout out to Greg and Tim and all those boys.
• 12:05
  They they kind of sunset at their PlayStation podcast a
• 12:08
  while ago and we kind of turned beyond into a slightly different
• 12:11
  thing. And so I think the focus with
• 12:14
  this show when the three of us got our heads together was like,
• 12:16
  let's just make something where we can celebrate all things
• 12:20
  video games everywhere we play them because we all have all the
• 12:23
  consoles, gaming PCs and weird esoteric handhelds at any given
• 12:27
  moment. Seth is like, you know, cracking
• 12:29
  into like a a weird, you know, supreme themed analog pocket or
• 12:34
  I'm, you know, just installing a dual screen mod on my ay and
• 12:37
  Thor or, you know, maxes of your helmet on.
• 12:40
  It's great. I love, I love the technology
• 12:42
  side of it, but it's only so interesting without the games.
• 12:46
  And really the game's kind of, you know, the the hardware as a
• 12:50
  means to an end to play the game.
• 12:52
  So it's kind of two different conversations we can have about
• 12:54
  that stuff. But yeah, I mean, it is, it is
• 12:56
  weird to be like, oh, we're the PlayStation show.
• 12:58
  What's what's placed? What's Sony up to these days?
• 13:00
  Yeah, they're making a Zelda movie.
• 13:02
  What? Yeah, they're they're making
• 13:05
  more streaming shows and movies than they are games these days,
• 13:08
  which. No, they're not even going to
• 13:10
  CES for the first time in 60 years because they're just like,
• 13:13
  we're not going to do electronics anymore, we're going
• 13:14
  to do some entertainment. Yeah.
• 13:16
  So great news, Morbius fans. Could we see every time?
• 13:20
  Morbius, where that came from us was unnecessary.
• 13:26
  Yeah, Speaking of Sony doing things, or rather not doing
• 13:29
  things on a regular basis, that brings us to our first topic I
• 13:32
  want to I want to cover, which is that Naughty Dog has
• 13:34
  confirmed we won't see Intergalactic The Heretic
• 13:37
  Prophet until 2027. There's a quote that says
• 13:41
  there's an electricity around the studio right now as all the
• 13:43
  pieces come together. And we're stoked to finally
• 13:45
  unveil Intergalactic in all its glory.
• 13:47
  But we need to cook for just a little bit longer.
• 13:50
  So we want to set expectations. We're going to be quiet for the
• 13:52
  rest of this year. In 2027, that changes will fully
• 13:56
  reveal Intergalactic The Heretic Prophet and give you a proper
• 13:58
  look at Jordan's wild sci-fi venture.
• 14:00
  To me, Jordan's wild sci-fi adventure is Space Jam.
• 14:03
  But, you know, don't let me get sidetracked.
• 14:05
  We know it's been a long time since we've had much to share
• 14:08
  with you. We don't take your continued
• 14:10
  support for granted. We're working incredibly hard to
• 14:11
  make something worthy of your patients.
• 14:14
  So that basically means we're not going to be seeing
• 14:15
  intergalactic at the Tgas, which are where it was revealed
• 14:18
  however many years ago. How we feeling about this?
• 14:22
  I feel like announcing that something isn't going to happen
• 14:27
  is the new announcing something is going to happen, and it's
• 14:30
  become far more common in the games industry.
• 14:33
  And honestly, I'm here for it. I think it's a lot easier to set
• 14:37
  the expectations that something won't disappoint fans.
• 14:41
  Like, I think all all predictions led to people
• 14:45
  probably assuming that Neil Druckmann and the cast of this
• 14:49
  game would show up on stage at the Game Awards this December
• 14:52
  with Jeff Keeley and show off brand new gameplay and all that
• 14:54
  stuff like that. And knowing that's not going to
• 14:57
  happen now is sort of a relief, right?
• 14:59
  Like it's it's because when it doesn't appear in that three
• 15:02
  hour broadcast, you're not disappointed anymore.
• 15:05
  You're just kind of like, OK. But I think bigger picture, it's
• 15:08
  kind of a bummer that this is we've gone this far into this
• 15:11
  generation without getting something brand new from Naughty
• 15:13
  Dog. And that stings a little bit.
• 15:16
  This game looks really awesome. I'm in on day one.
• 15:19
  I'm just kind of bummed that it's going to take seven years
• 15:22
  for us to get our first glimpse of APS 5 exclusive game from
• 15:27
  Naughty Dog that is solely built in and for this generation.
• 15:34
  You know what? I think This is why I was never
• 15:38
  invited on Beyond don't care about this game at all.
• 15:41
  It doesn't look like a game that I'm Yeah, all we've seen of it
• 15:44
  was a a commercial for Adidas and Porsche with some some
• 15:48
  dialogue. That's all we know.
• 15:49
  So yeah, I just. Accept that she has she has the
• 15:51
  same haircut as us and I, I need to support, I need to support
• 15:54
  that in games. That is, I do support that, but
• 15:57
  no, I just I those kind of sort of big games with set pieces
• 16:03
  aren't my Forte as much as other games.
• 16:07
  I I feel like Sony's kind of actually Max, I think you wrote
• 16:10
  about this, didn't you? Were there kind of they just do
• 16:13
  the same kind of story all the time?
• 16:16
  I saw that with Wolverine where I was like, OK, I don't know,
• 16:18
  it's Insomniac, it's different. But it starts with a big action
• 16:23
  sequence where some QuickTime events and then some some snarky
• 16:26
  quips and then it goes into you can walk around for a little bit
• 16:29
  and then about 3 or 4 hours into it you start actually playing
• 16:32
  the game. So, and I think that's what this
• 16:34
  is going to be. And I'm not interested in
• 16:35
  everybody who I've no. No, that's you're that's totally
• 16:38
  fine. That's fair.
• 16:39
  My I'm I'm kind of with you on that to a certain like I the way
• 16:42
  that they revealed this exciting new video game is by a bunch of
• 16:45
  people talking like that's that's true.
• 16:48
  I I think there is a place for this, this pursuit of, you know,
• 16:52
  launching oneself across the uncanny valley and having these
• 16:55
  incredible human performances in games.
• 16:56
  But I do, we think we've reached a point where I think we're just
• 17:00
  sort of bogged down and getting the pores and the, you know, the
• 17:03
  lighting, right, the the shaders for earlobes or whatever to make
• 17:07
  everything look so. Loading shaders when I start up
• 17:10
  a game that is one of my favorite.
• 17:11
  Pastimes. Yeah, well, this lady had to
• 17:13
  load up a shaver so I could get that buzzed head.
• 17:15
  Oh, doesn't make sense in space to have your hair floating
• 17:18
  around every which way. You'd look silly.
• 17:19
  It would be no good look silly. I Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm the,
• 17:22
  the thing I'm excited about for this game is that we watched, we
• 17:25
  watched Naughty Dog go down this sort of this funnel of
• 17:29
  seriousness. And they went from like Crash
• 17:32
  Bandicoot to like Jack and Dexter to like Uncharted to like
• 17:36
  The Last of Us. And it's like you went from like
• 17:39
  you went from like colorful cartoon platformer who smashes
• 17:42
  boxes to eat the succulent fruit within to like just sad, sad
• 17:47
  make you feel bad murder game, you know, And it's like, you
• 17:50
  know, obviously I remember like back when the Last of Us first
• 17:53
  came out there being a discussion about like, but is it
• 17:56
  fun in like, is it OK to be like this is fun?
• 17:59
  It's like you just killed a guy with a hammer because he tried
• 18:02
  to take your bottled water or whatever.
• 18:04
  Like there's it's it's bleak, like if those games are are
• 18:08
  gnarly and the second one, even just, you know, got it went even
• 18:11
  further that direction. And the fact that intergalactic
• 18:13
  is coming out by being like from the studio that bought you
• 18:16
  brought you Crash Bandicoot and Jack and Daxter gives me a
• 18:19
  little bit of hope. And that alongside the fact that
• 18:21
  it's more colorful, it's kind of this like retrofuturistic 80s
• 18:24
  aesthetic, very, very clearly cribbing a bit from Akira, which
• 18:28
  I think is, is rad. I'm excited to see what they do
• 18:31
  with it. And also the one little glimmer
• 18:33
  of something that resembles gameplay we've seen makes it
• 18:36
  look like a from Soft game with lightsabers.
• 18:38
  So maybe it's doing something interesting.
• 18:41
  But I'm also I, I do think there's a, there's a, you wait
• 18:44
  around too long for something and it's, it's, it's hard to
• 18:47
  maintain that level of excitement or expectation.
• 18:50
  And the fact that Naughty Dog got funneled into making that
• 18:54
  Last of Us live service title for so long and then it just
• 18:58
  disappeared entirely. I think, you know, really,
• 19:02
  really got rid of a lot of, of good faith they had.
• 19:04
  And I, I still think they're going to come out swinging with
• 19:06
  an incredible game because they are one of those prestige
• 19:08
  studios that makes good games. But yeah, I, I, there's a,
• 19:13
  there's a thing we run into where when you wait so long for
• 19:17
  a game to come out that by the time it comes out, no matter
• 19:21
  what it is, some part of you is like, that's it.
• 19:23
  And yeah, I mean, I think I'm very excited to see what the
• 19:27
  discourse around GTA6 is, which I think, baby, I think that is
• 19:31
  going to be one of the most impressive pieces of
• 19:33
  entertainment anything ever made without question.
• 19:36
  But I do think there's going to be a, you know, a selection of
• 19:39
  people who are hoping it's like super GTA5.
• 19:43
  And I think it's going to be something very different from
• 19:45
  that. And some people are like, what
• 19:47
  do you mean? I can't steal a Harrier jet or
• 19:49
  whatever. Like, I don't know what the
• 19:50
  complaints are going to be, but I think it is going to be just
• 19:53
  in the interest of making that get the game that Rockstar wants
• 19:55
  to make. I think it's going to be maybe
• 19:58
  not what people are expecting, always in the best ways, so.
• 20:02
  Yeah, I think I, I think you're spot on.
• 20:03
  And having that that much anticipation and expectation for
• 20:07
  that long, I think invariably you're going to have people who
• 20:11
  build a version of something in their heads that doesn't match
• 20:13
  to the reality that they ultimately get to for for
• 20:17
  intergalactic. I think, I think, I think you
• 20:19
  nailed it, Max. And I think that like, like,
• 20:21
  look, I, I love The Last of Us. I love the Last of Us Part 2
• 20:23
  even more. I think that game has some of
• 20:24
  the best combat and best stealth of any video game ever.
• 20:29
  But we are on like by the time The Last of Us part Part 2,
• 20:35
  season 2, the TV show adaptation of the game that got several
• 20:40
  remasters, which was a sequel that alongside had a canned
• 20:45
  multiplayer game that they spent several years on.
• 20:47
  That's like you're looking at what, 1314 years of one studio
• 20:53
  basically being connected to one IP and that IP basically being
• 20:57
  of a era of like, hey, the road is a really popular movie and
• 21:01
  book and The Walking Dead's pretty big, so we're going to
• 21:04
  make our own take on that that's gritty and serious.
• 21:08
  The Walking Rd. Yeah, it's.
• 21:09
  The working title. Actually, people are not.
• 21:13
  So, yeah, I, I'm, I'm happy that they can finally kind of like
• 21:16
  close the door on that. And I know they're, they're
• 21:17
  always going to have, you know, they, they announced recently
• 21:20
  like they're still figuring out new stories in, in that world
• 21:23
  effectively, right. And but I I love the idea of
• 21:25
  this prestigious studio doing something big and new in space
• 21:30
  where the protagonist lands on planets with a cool leather
• 21:33
  jacket and beats up gigantic alien monsters with a lightsaber
• 21:36
  thing cool. That is like that seems so
• 21:39
  tonally shifted from the Last of Us thing that we've been kind of
• 21:44
  in for so long with Naughty Dog. And I think, you know, even
• 21:47
  Uncharted 4 to a degree, I believe like it it, it was can't
• 21:51
  be, but it also it it got pretty dark at at at some points.
• 21:55
  And I think it, you know, took it took itself a little too
• 21:57
  seriously. And I think that like when
• 21:59
  Indiana Jones ever does that, it sort of loses the plot a little
• 22:01
  bit, right? And so I, I think you want pulpy
• 22:04
  campiness there. And I hope that they can tap
• 22:06
  into that a little bit here. I I hope I'm going to say
• 22:08
  something controversial here. I hope that they make something
• 22:11
  that is family friendly at some point.
• 22:14
  I hope that they go full circle because like, I mean, we, you
• 22:17
  know, we we're basically children when Crash Bandicoot
• 22:19
  came out. And then you're like a little
• 22:20
  bit older and like, I, I think it's really cool how that studio
• 22:22
  has grown up with its audience. But you reach a point where
• 22:25
  like, you know, you've got that we you know, we talk about how
• 22:27
  PlayStation makes a lot of sad dad games and it's like, yeah,
• 22:30
  that's true. But you, there's also the point
• 22:32
  where, I don't know, I would love to have a Naughty Dog game
• 22:35
  that I can play with my kid that isn't, you know, 40 years old,
• 22:39
  you know what I mean? Like, I think it'd be really
• 22:41
  cool. And and you look at, you know,
• 22:43
  you look at good Pixar movies and those are, I think that's
• 22:47
  what I would point to, to be like, OK, this is the prestige
• 22:49
  of an all ages product that is also appreciated by literally
• 22:53
  all ages. You know, if if you you take it
• 22:55
  4 year old, they're like, haha, the rat is cooking.
• 22:57
  And you know, you take an adult, they're like the rat is cooking
• 23:00
  really well. Like the rat has pathos while
• 23:03
  it's cooking, you know? There's no, there's that,
• 23:05
  there's that theater test where you're, you're seeing like a,
• 23:08
  you know, a movie like that, that scales for all ages and
• 23:11
  the, there are pockets of the room laughing at different
• 23:13
  parts. And I, and I always appreciate
• 23:15
  that, right. And then an adult is sobbing and
• 23:17
  a little kids like what's wrong with my dad?
• 23:19
  And kind of like, well, I brought, I snuck 2 beers into
• 23:21
  the theater and just thinking about life and how limited it
• 23:25
  is. And she's like, OK, but the rat
• 23:27
  can cook though, like pay attention, you know, so I think
• 23:30
  that's important. I'm totally with you on that.
• 23:32
  That would be that would be really cool if they if they did
• 23:35
  did that eventually. I mean, that's what honestly,
• 23:37
  yeah, that's. What Nintendo, Nintendo does on
• 23:39
  a mechanical sense, like I think, you know, look at Tears
• 23:40
  of the Kingdom, like that is that's an all ages game.
• 23:44
  Like you can give that to a little kid and they can play it.
• 23:45
  But it's also incredibly, incredibly, infinitely complex
• 23:49
  where you can give it to someone who's been playing games their
• 23:52
  whole life and they find new stuff to do with it.
• 23:53
  And it's like how you engage with that is really up to you.
• 23:56
  But yeah, you know, it's not, it's the maturity of that game
• 24:00
  doesn't come from the story and it doesn't come from, you know,
• 24:03
  the the tone of it at all. Like it's it comes from the fact
• 24:06
  that it will reward creative play.
• 24:09
  That's not the kind of game that Naughty Dog makes.
• 24:10
  So I feel like they need to, you know, they would have to nail
• 24:13
  that in the story department and, you know, make a game where
• 24:15
  people aren't killing each other with ball peen hammers and like,
• 24:17
  broken bottles. You know, like it's kind of, I
• 24:19
  don't, I don't know. The the the ball peen hammer
• 24:23
  falls apart after 10 uses, that's where.
• 24:26
  That's the trick. No, I mean, you know, I think.
• 24:28
  The the creativity of play in Zelda versus like the lack
• 24:32
  thereof. And I think why I don't really
• 24:34
  like those games because they don't let you.
• 24:38
  I just like to kind of do whatever I want to do, which is
• 24:41
  why all my favorite games are open world games because I want
• 24:44
  to be like playing in the like in the sandbox with my toys.
• 24:47
  And that's kind of what like Red Dead Redemption, you know, Metal
• 24:50
  Gear Solid 5 tears, the Kingdom, breath of the wild.
• 24:53
  Those are like my favorite games.
• 24:55
  Well, Skyrim, my favorite games of all time and the Sony games,
• 24:59
  I tend to just not enjoy them as much as any as other people.
• 25:03
  And it it, it puts a big X on my head.
• 25:07
  Oh that's right, X button. There's there, there is this
• 25:11
  theory that this that this will have some open world elements to
• 25:14
  it or some, or some wide linear stuff, right.
• 25:17
  And I think that like that's, there's a push and pull with
• 25:19
  that. I think that those were some of
• 25:21
  the sections in Wolverine, you know, that Insomniac released
• 25:25
  recently that I I think felt like they were a good idea on
• 25:30
  paper. But then ultimately you're in
• 25:32
  these kind of environments that that character specifically
• 25:34
  doesn't really make a ton of sense rummaging around the
• 25:37
  alleyways of like looking for, you know, those big PC gaming
• 25:41
  towers to smash and get costume points or whatever.
• 25:44
  And so that's, that's tough. It's it's, it's tough.
• 25:47
  And I get like coming off of off of Wolverine specifically, like
• 25:51
  I think that there's probably some apprehension there because
• 25:54
  that was, you know, that was a pretty good attempt at, at
• 25:58
  something from kind of a bygone era.
• 26:01
  And I think gamers are expecting something more at this point.
• 26:05
  And I think with Naughty Dog specifically, like if they made
• 26:07
  a really linear game after this long, I think people would be
• 26:12
  really bummed out. Like if it was just tunnel,
• 26:14
  tunnel, tunnel cutscene, walk and talk, walk and talk tunnel,
• 26:17
  tunnel cutscene, boss room, tunnel tunnel cutscene fly
• 26:20
  right? Like I think people would be
• 26:21
  like, I'm, I'm a little over it. And so I'm hoping they find like
• 26:27
  I'm hoping they have that thing where you land on a planet and
• 26:29
  you're like, I don't even know where to start, right.
• 26:30
  And it it rewards that, that's my.
• 26:32
  Favorite thing? Yeah, that's all.
• 26:34
  I mean, they're also not a city that's known for that, that
• 26:37
  level of openness. And it's, you know, I mean,
• 26:40
  having an big, a huge open world is sort of antithetical to
• 26:43
  telling a story. Yeah.
• 26:45
  Yeah. That's a interesting,
• 26:46
  interesting problem I have. Well, did it Red Dead Redemption
• 26:52
  2. Like there's Red Dead, there's
• 26:53
  also. Red Dead Redemption 2 I like,
• 26:56
  I'm not even like a guy who's like, yeah, I loved stories and
• 26:58
  games, but that was the one where I was like, oh, my God,
• 27:00
  I'm invested in this story to the point where I like the
• 27:03
  characters so much that I never actually beat the game because I
• 27:06
  knew that it didn't end well. And I just wanted to, like, hang
• 27:09
  out with these. There's that one scene where
• 27:10
  you, like, go fishing. And I was like, oh, here we go.
• 27:12
  And they're gonna be like, do you remember that drunk lady at
• 27:14
  the bar? Oh, I sure do.
• 27:16
  But it actually turned into like a really organically good
• 27:20
  conversation that they were having while you're like doing a
• 27:23
  fishing mini man. Don't even get me started.
• 27:25
  I read, I guess you. Didn't get me started.
• 27:27
  Unredited redemption too. The exception to telling, you
• 27:29
  know, an open world is like, if you wander off in any direction,
• 27:32
  like you can find a story that's worth hearing, you know?
• 27:34
  And it's like creating creating a trail of bread crumbs that the
• 27:37
  player actually wants to follow rather than just being like,
• 27:40
  anyway, you cannot progress to the next area unless you sit
• 27:42
  through these following cutscenes.
• 27:45
  No, so my, my last, my I think my last big shoot that I did for
• 27:51
  IGN even it was actually a couple days after I was let go,
• 27:55
  but I was like, I want to finish this and it's it should be live
• 27:58
  now. But it was an hour long
• 27:59
  interview with Dan Hauser. And you know, like Dan Hauser
• 28:02
  worked on GTA, Red Dead, every, everything in between.
• 28:05
  And he told me specifically like to him, open world games are the
• 28:10
  future of video game storytelling.
• 28:13
  And that the linear path is effectively still chasing this
• 28:17
  idea that video games should be like movies and they're taking a
• 28:20
  lot of ideas from movies. But movies do that so well in
• 28:23
  their own way, in their own medium, right?
• 28:25
  Like you, you can put yourself into the character story in your
• 28:28
  own head, like you're reading a book or watching ATV show or
• 28:31
  watching a movie, but with an open world game, you have the
• 28:34
  big story beats, but all of the crazy stuff that you do in
• 28:37
  between that becomes the story and all of that.
• 28:41
  Like when I, I don't know, Max would one of my favorite things
• 28:43
  in the world is to talk about like Far Cry with you and just
• 28:46
  how much fun. Like, hey, we went to this camp
• 28:49
  and you know, I shot off a lock and the bear ran out and then he
• 28:52
  accidentally started a fire. And then I zip lined in and I,
• 28:54
  you know, choke, choke the guy and like all this other stuff.
• 28:57
  And you're like, Oh yeah, well, I did this.
• 29:00
  Whereas like, you know, when we talked about Wolverine, it was
• 29:03
  kind of like, yeah, I pressed the XA bunch of times and I, I
• 29:05
  killed a bunch of, you know, mini Sentinels.
• 29:07
  And then there was a, there was a cutscene and I did it again.
• 29:11
  And not to say that there's only one way to make a video game,
• 29:14
  but I sort of see his point in that.
• 29:16
  And he's got, he's got the pedigree to back it up and he's
• 29:19
  making new open world games now with absurd ventures and hearing
• 29:23
  someone say that kind of stuff. I'm, I'm kind of like, that's a
• 29:26
  really interesting philosophy because this is a this is a
• 29:29
  thing that movies can't do right.
• 29:32
  Movies, movies can't copy the, the chaos of an open world game
• 29:36
  of how much stuff happens between the set pieces and
• 29:39
  between the big story beats that becomes your story, you know?
• 29:42
  And, and so, yeah, I think that that was kind of inspiring.
• 29:46
  And so I'm, I'm hopeful. We're working on a, a I was
• 29:51
  working on a feature at IGN. We have the series called art of
• 29:54
  the level, which is, you know, taking a particular area of a
• 29:56
  game and breaking down what works about it, What doesn't,
• 29:58
  you know, what makes, what makes it so kind of emblematic of that
• 30:02
  particular game? Been doing them for GTA, which
• 30:04
  is weird because that doesn't really have levels.
• 30:06
  You know, it's got, it's got missions and it's got large
• 30:09
  areas. And the one I was doing was for
• 30:11
  GTA5. And it's the, you know, I, I, I
• 30:14
  kind of zeroed in on the one that they put in the original
• 30:17
  trailer, which is basically just the armored car scene from, from
• 30:21
  heat. And like GTA5 is like, is it has
• 30:23
  a lot of heat DNA. Like it is, it makes no secret
• 30:26
  about that. But what I really adore about
• 30:28
  that mission is that that takes place maybe like 1/3 or halfway
• 30:33
  through that game. Like it takes place really far
• 30:35
  in there. So by the time you get there,
• 30:37
  you're not like, they're just covering heat.
• 30:39
  They're like, oh, I'm completely invested with these characters.
• 30:41
  I don't care if they're doing a little bit of heat cosplay.
• 30:43
  In fact, the way that mission is broken up is like the armored
• 30:46
  car heist and like the subsequent shootout is like the
• 30:49
  kind of the big climax. But there's a there's a series
• 30:53
  of little fetch quests that lead up to it, which are all
• 30:55
  presented as story missions. And if you haven't played
• 30:57
  before, it's really funny because you know, like Lester
• 30:59
  will call you up and he's like, hey, guys, you're going to be
• 31:01
  robbing a car. So you got to go get some funny
• 31:03
  masks and stuff. And you're like, all right.
• 31:05
  And you go do a, you know, a mission where you go to the
• 31:09
  costume store in Venice Beach and you buy masks and you can
• 31:15
  speed run that and get a gold medal for doing it really
• 31:17
  quickly, which is like a weird thing to do because you don't do
• 31:19
  anything. You drive to the place you walk
• 31:21
  in, you buy the mask and you walk out and it goes.
• 31:23
  And it's like, OK, you want, I don't know, I did the law and
• 31:25
  order noise for GTA. But you know, the noise I'm
• 31:26
  talking about. The funny thing is like if you
• 31:30
  if you specifically select the exact outfits from Heat that
• 31:33
  they wear in that scene, it gives you like a little wink and
• 31:36
  a nod. It's a little bonus achievement
• 31:37
  or, you know, bonus objective. I know that.
• 31:39
  Yeah, it's like they very much kind of like wink and just on
• 31:43
  the on the nose like, yes, so you are literally cosplaying as
• 31:46
  characters from Heat. And here's a little, you know,
• 31:48
  acknowledgement of that. But the fact that it takes these
• 31:51
  otherwise completely uninteresting little segments of
• 31:53
  a mission that build towards something bigger, where it's
• 31:55
  like going to a store and buying a jumpsuit in a video game is
• 31:59
  not an interesting thing to do mechanically.
• 32:02
  But if you're doing that as like a side objective while you're
• 32:04
  out doing all this other stuff that you do in a big open world
• 32:07
  game, it really kind of it it, it weaves, it makes a it's like
• 32:11
  a tapestry, like it's weaving in and out, you know, and it's got
• 32:14
  you've got a handful of these little things and it's that it's
• 32:17
  so wonderful for. I think it's also a big, you
• 32:20
  know, movement away from what a lot of earlier GTA games would
• 32:23
  do, where it would take all of these objectives and squish them
• 32:26
  together into this big, you know, cartoon Dagwood sandwich
• 32:28
  of you got to do, which could always be checkpointed kind of
• 32:32
  weirdly where like a reference objective one drive to the
• 32:35
  bowling alley. And if you drive to the bowling
• 32:37
  alley and like get shot or something, they're like, no, no,
• 32:39
  no, no, you got to drive to the bowling alley all over and
• 32:41
  you're like, OK, the driving to the bowling alley.
• 32:43
  I'll take a cab next time. Like it's.
• 32:46
  Not no. It's I think that's spot I'm in.
• 32:48
  And it's exactly like, it's exactly why I loved Sinners so
• 32:53
  much. And I think it's because, and
• 32:54
  I've, I've saw a lot of people who went into that movie and
• 32:57
  they're like, nothing scary happens for the first hour,
• 33:00
  which is like a failure of horror.
• 33:02
  And I'm like, well, you know, the opening scene is a guy
• 33:05
  covered in blood walking into a church.
• 33:06
  But sure, I'll humor you. But for me, the idea of the
• 33:10
  director spending the first hour accumulating all the pieces and
• 33:15
  all the ingredients and then cooking, I think there's
• 33:17
  something really magical about that.
• 33:19
  And I think that's exactly what that GTA mission did, right?
• 33:22
  It is, it is basically it's like you said, it's taking all these
• 33:24
  little things that are not necessarily interesting in
• 33:27
  isolation, but they're building up like you're like, oh, he's,
• 33:29
  you know, he's got a wardrobe change.
• 33:31
  What's going on with that? Why are they wearing that thing?
• 33:33
  And all of a sudden it client axes in this gigantic, crazy,
• 33:37
  you know, insane action over the top thing.
• 33:40
  And I I love that. And I think that like, if you
• 33:44
  have the patience for it and you're willing to meet it on its
• 33:47
  level, I really love when art does stuff like that.
• 33:50
  It it, it basically says like, we'll get there, don't worry.
• 33:54
  Like you can peek in the oven a couple of times.
• 33:55
  But like, let let me cook. I'm, I'm building something
• 33:58
  here. And then, yeah, I mean the IT
• 33:59
  pays off. The underlying thing with an
• 34:02
  open world is like, is it, is it you want to hang out there like
• 34:06
  it? You know, in some cases it's
• 34:07
  like, absolutely. Are you kidding me?
• 34:09
  No, we should not hang out there.
• 34:10
  Like you want to go to Yarnham? Dead horses and dudes with like
• 34:16
  harrows trying to beat you to death.
• 34:18
  Like, why would you go there? It's.
• 34:19
  Awful. Anytime there's like a message
• 34:21
  board post about like which video game world would you want
• 34:23
  to hang out in? People are like, oh, Wind Waker,
• 34:25
  I'd love to be on No one. No one says Yarnham, right?
• 34:27
  Nobody's like Vice City. I want to get, I want a car to
• 34:30
  hit me while I'm standing on the street, you know?
• 34:33
  Speaking of GTA though, we should talk about GTA 6 because
• 34:36
  our friend legally. Obligated to as a video that we
• 34:39
  show being produced this decade, we should bring.
• 34:41
  That's true. Our friend and former coworker
• 34:45
  Alana Pierce published a video recently that Max I believe you
• 34:50
  and I were also talking about the same exact subject a couple
• 34:54
  days ago about GTA Sixes eligibility for the Game Awards.
• 35:00
  Wait, hold on quick correction since recording this.
• 35:02
  The Game Awards confirmed the cutoff date for nominee
• 35:04
  eligibility stating on the official sites FAQ section.
• 35:07
  Quote Games must be made commercially available to
• 35:09
  customers on or before Friday, November 20th, 2026 at 9:00 PM
• 35:13
  Pacific Time, which is about a day and 1/2 after GTA6 goes live
• 35:17
  and more or less in line with the TGA cutoff dates from
• 35:19
  previous years. Presumably TGA judges will have
• 35:22
  had plenty of time with early builds of the game by then.
• 35:25
  Meanwhile, in the Players voice category quote games must ship
• 35:28
  on or before November 30th, 2026, so presumably everybody
• 35:32
  who is loudly declaring GTA6 to be the game of the year will
• 35:35
  have completed its 80 to 100 hour main campaign by then.
• 35:38
  Anyway, back to the show. The rest of the conversation
• 35:40
  still goes. Or Video game awards in general,
• 35:43
  Game of the Year awards. And it's in a really interesting
• 35:46
  spot because there are numerous video game award shows, right?
• 35:53
  What's the what's the one that happens in the UK that takes
• 35:56
  place in like March or something?
• 35:58
  Yeah, the and that is that is so far after the year has wrapped
• 36:02
  that you're almost like you guys are still talking about 20.
• 36:04
  That's where the Academy Awards are.
• 36:06
  They have exactly January, February when all the dust is
• 36:08
  settled. But yeah.
• 36:09
  Yeah, every like winter I see all the UK people I know in
• 36:13
  suits be like, ah mate, the BAFTA's what a delightful time.
• 36:16
  I'm like, Oh yeah, that's a. It's, it's, it's like bad for
• 36:19
  SEO or whatever, but it's so it's so good for art to let
• 36:23
  those, those things sort of have their moment and have their
• 36:27
  time. And I think that the way a bunch
• 36:29
  of big video game websites and small video game websites and
• 36:32
  the Game Awards do it, it's a little different because they
• 36:34
  have generally they have a cut off date for what is eligible.
• 36:39
  And it's somewhere between like mid or early November or mid
• 36:43
  November at the earliest and the second, second or so week of
• 36:47
  December at the latest, right? And throughout time we've seen
• 36:50
  games get delayed a little bit, come out December 10th or
• 36:53
  something like that. They're not eligible.
• 36:55
  There was, you know, there are games that came out two days
• 36:57
  before the Game Awards eligibility cut off date or two
• 37:01
  days after. And that wasn't enough time for
• 37:04
  the jurors and the press and all the, the, the fans and everybody
• 37:06
  who votes on these things to really spend any time with them.
• 37:10
  And so, yeah, go check out her video.
• 37:11
  It's really good because it's, I think it's a really analytical
• 37:15
  perspective on how that process works.
• 37:18
  And I will say from from our side, having voted in what's
• 37:23
  what, 17 years of IGN scheme of the year awards, I don't not
• 37:26
  even sure how many TG as we were asked to be to basically fill
• 37:31
  out forms for, because that whole process is those those
• 37:34
  forms get sent out to people all over the industry who are like
• 37:37
  in the know. And I will say from full, full
• 37:40
  transparency, like there are years where there is a clear
• 37:43
  front runner, like internally, externally, like clear obscure
• 37:47
  was one of them last year where I was like, this is far and away
• 37:50
  the game that everybody loves. And it's not for me.
• 37:54
  It's just something that does not resonate with me.
• 37:56
  I played like 3 hours and bounced off of it and was like,
• 38:00
  yeah, this is not my thing, maybe I'll go back to it.
• 38:01
  And then had I had people be like, well, it's like 30 hours
• 38:03
  long. And I was like, OK, no
• 38:04
  disrespect to this game. Like it looks great, sounds
• 38:07
  great. Just did not click with me
• 38:08
  personally. And so when I get that form for
• 38:11
  the TG as I just omit my vote in those categories or I will vote
• 38:16
  for the categories where I am well versed.
• 38:18
  And I did have a clear front runner.
• 38:20
  Like last year I was like Donkey Kong Bonanza, it was one of my
• 38:23
  favorite games. So I voted for that over Claire
• 38:25
  Obscur, and people probably thought I was crazy for that.
• 38:28
  And so I, I don't know, I'm sort of a gremlin in the system, I
• 38:30
  guess. Like I'm throwing throwing.
• 38:32
  Wrenches around, correct me if I'm wrong, but the way that the
• 38:35
  IGN voting and the TGA's worked is that we would take a vote
• 38:38
  internally and then our winners would then go on the ballot that
• 38:41
  way. Yeah.
• 38:42
  So like we all, we all shared a TGA vote like the like the
• 38:46
  interns in Life Aquatic share a Glock.
• 38:47
  Like we're like, we can't, we can't 1.
• 38:50
  So you get this weird, you know, debate.
• 38:52
  And that's in addition to the whole game of the year
• 38:54
  conversation that happens internally there, which that,
• 38:57
  you know, frequently turns into like knock down, drag out
• 39:00
  arguments about the most, you know, trivial things like this
• 39:03
  is the best action adventure game of the year.
• 39:05
  It's not an action adventure. It's an adventure game or it's
• 39:08
  an action game. No, it's an action RPG, Yeah.
• 39:10
  Exactly, it's not an action game, there's a skill tree, it's
• 39:13
  an RPG. But yeah like the the weird
• 39:16
  thing here. Can GTA be included?
• 39:20
  Because I'm pretty sure it's after the cut off.
• 39:22
  It's out on November 19th and the cut off I feel like is
• 39:26
  usually in the 1st 10 days of November.
• 39:28
  I could be a little bit off there, but you know, that's it's
• 39:32
  people are starting to go, you know, off on off break for the
• 39:34
  holidays. It's that's usually when most of
• 39:36
  the big games have come out. Everything's kind of going to be
• 39:38
  on store shelves before Black Friday, or at least that was the
• 39:41
  case back when games came on discs.
• 39:43
  But you know, it's there's every everything in in gaming is sort
• 39:47
  of framed around this big holiday rush.
• 39:49
  And since then, everything sort of bled over and you get, you
• 39:53
  know, this, there's this wonderful thing that's been
• 39:55
  happening in in recent years where games were like, yeah,
• 39:58
  what if we didn't come out between mid-october and 2/3 of
• 40:03
  the way through November? And you get games that like,
• 40:07
  like Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, was it Wildlands?
• 40:11
  That was like the best selling game of the year up until
• 40:14
  October. And then a bunch of other stuff
• 40:15
  came out and completely trounced it.
• 40:17
  Last I checked, Resident Evil Requiem is the best selling game
• 40:20
  of the year. Which probably has a lot to the
• 40:23
  fact that it came out in like what February was it super
• 40:26
  early? You know, like Capcom has kind
• 40:27
  of staked out that early part of the year.
• 40:29
  So it gets all this momentum and it gets, you know, tons and tons
• 40:31
  of sales. And also it doesn't it doesn't
• 40:33
  hurt that it was on not just PS 5 and Xbox and PC, but also
• 40:37
  Switch, which helped that out a bunch.
• 40:39
  But it's the interesting kind of flip side of that is that by the
• 40:42
  time the game of the year conversation rolls around,
• 40:45
  people are tired of talking about those games or the.
• 40:47
  Regency bias has evaporated. Yeah, yeah.
• 40:49
  So there's this, there's this weird balancing of act like,
• 40:52
  what are you trying to do here? Are you trying to release a game
• 40:53
  that's going to sell a lot of copies?
• 40:54
  You're going to try to release a game that's going to sell a lot
• 40:57
  of copies immediately during the holiday rush?
• 40:59
  Are you going to try to make a game that wins awards?
• 41:01
  Like, what's the objective here? And it's tough, yeah.
• 41:05
  Yeah, and I think what's interesting about it
• 41:06
  specifically, like you shouted out some great ones.
• 41:09
  I remembered Super Smash Brothers Ultimate came out
• 41:12
  December 7th and we were like, and it was like these are these
• 41:16
  are games that it's not just that they came out too late for
• 41:19
  these, you know, sort of arbitrary cut off dates.
• 41:22
  These are games that you need to place for significant amounts of
• 41:25
  time to really understand if they're even eligible for game
• 41:28
  of the year. And what the problem is by the
• 41:31
  time like forget about recency bias, by the time you're in the
• 41:34
  November after that, a year later, no one's even talking
• 41:38
  about those games anymore. Obviously GTA is going to be an
• 41:40
  exception. We're going to be buying that
• 41:41
  game and talking about it. But even if they were to, so
• 41:45
  I'll put it this way, we currently don't know.
• 41:47
  I, I will say this full, full transparency.
• 41:49
  I don't know what Rockstar's plan is for getting review code
• 41:53
  out to press to influencers, to Youtubers, to anybody who's
• 41:59
  going to do this. I'm trying to remember what they
• 42:01
  did with their previous game, which was, you know, Red Dead
• 42:03
  Redemption 2. And I believe that outlets and
• 42:06
  individuals were given access a little bit early on a on a
• 42:10
  smaller basis, and that I do remember buying that game
• 42:13
  specifically with my own money launch week.
• 42:15
  And so we don't even know like Rockstar, they're the only
• 42:18
  company that can be like, yeah, man, we're not sending out
• 42:21
  review code until the day of, right?
• 42:23
  It could. Yeah, they can do that.
• 42:24
  They might do that. That's entirely possible, given
• 42:26
  for spoiler. Purposes and stuff like that.
• 42:28
  This is like look at the the amount of there.
• 42:31
  There's a guy who's been leaking early builds of GTA6 for like a
• 42:35
  full year now and he's still threatening to do it and it's
• 42:39
  like the game's out in like a month, so you know.
• 42:41
  Threatening to do that until like years after that game is
• 42:43
  out. I would love to see I love
• 42:45
  seeing I'm gonna do it. People like no, but like say
• 42:47
  that say this game takes 3040 hours to beat or something like
• 42:50
  that. Even if it came out two days
• 42:52
  before like the cutoff date, it that's that's you being like, Oh
• 42:55
  my God, what a what an amazing first five hours of this game
• 42:59
  game of the year and then not knowing anything that happens
• 43:01
  afterwards. I got, which isn't isn't fair.
• 43:03
  Red Dead was what, 2018? Yeah, I got I got married in
• 43:08
  2018 after being engaged for like 7 years or something and
• 43:11
  having to keep like shuffling around wedding plans.
• 43:14
  And I was more impressed that I finished Red Dead 2 cuz I was
• 43:17
  like, this is, and this is a journey.
• 43:20
  And I like, you know, I was, you know, kind of no lifing it and
• 43:22
  trying to get through it, but also juggling everything else.
• 43:24
  And also that's not a game that rewards that.
• 43:27
  Like that's a game where you really want to just kind of let
• 43:29
  it, you know, you want to soak in it, you want to take it in,
• 43:31
  you want to enjoy it on your own terms.
• 43:32
  And like, I think a lot of games are done a disservice by that,
• 43:36
  like trying to trying to beat GTA6, what however long it is
• 43:40
  in, if you have a weak turn around time that's gonna suck,
• 43:44
  that's terrible. Glad I don't have to do.
• 43:46
  I am worried enough about us as three unemployed married fathers
• 43:52
  who are going to buy GTA Dollar fathers with our own money and
• 43:59
  our wives are going to be like, what are you doing?
• 44:01
  And you're like, we've I've waited 15 years.
• 44:03
  They'd be like, yeah, like. Hun, we've launched the Pro,
• 44:06
  we've launched the Patreon. This is I have to do this.
• 44:09
  Yeah. Faint.
• 44:09
  No. Dude, like I was, I don't know,
• 44:11
  we're texting about this and we're like, well, I guess I'll
• 44:13
  be, I guess I will not be working when GTA 6 comes out.
• 44:18
  And you're like, you know, that's like the number one thing
• 44:20
  that comes out in like custody hearings, right?
• 44:23
  Like unemployed dad playing GTA6 over Thanksgiving or whatever
• 44:28
  but. That's so funny.
• 44:30
  It's significant though, like it's a big it's a big deal that
• 44:32
  game. I mean the the game awards thing
• 44:35
  of it all is like, ultimately it doesn't matter.
• 44:38
  Rockstar does not need the game awards to make someone no who is
• 44:42
  who is there being like wow, the game of the game award for best
• 44:46
  game Gtas. I think I'll give a.
• 44:48
  They didn't. I'll get it now you.
• 44:50
  Get one last time they lost to God of War with Red Dead.
• 44:54
  That was the same year. Like they did.
• 44:55
  Not really. Yeah.
• 44:57
  Yeah, I'm wondering if they're if they're pissed about that
• 44:59
  because it's like, it's like rock stars, like they don't,
• 45:01
  they don't need, they don't need to give a but also like they
• 45:04
  want a trophy, they want a cool trophy.
• 45:06
  They want to be able to put game of the year on the side.
• 45:09
  They want to have that. I would.
• 45:11
  I would probably. There's nothing that says you
• 45:14
  can't just put game of the year like on yourself.
• 45:17
  You can just write a sticker. You can go to Cole and you can
• 45:19
  go in the dressing room and you can write game of the year on
• 45:22
  the wall in Kohl's. And if you get, it's not legal,
• 45:25
  but you can do it. I'm not going to tell anyone if
• 45:27
  you do, Mervyn. I thought you meant like on the
• 45:30
  wall in coals like you had coals like for.
• 45:33
  You could do that. You could take charcoal and go
• 45:35
  to Murphins and write it. Just throw them off your trail.
• 45:38
  What are we talking about? Do the coals charcoal challenge
• 45:41
  and see how much charcoal you could sneak in it if they get.
• 45:48
  If you get caught just be like coals.
• 45:49
  You've been very naughty. This.
• 45:50
  What are you gonna do? Coal the cops?
• 45:54
  How did we get here? All right, let's talk about some
• 45:58
  games we've been playing because they're they're making them and
• 46:01
  they're out there. Yes.
• 46:02
  Brian, what do you plan? Well, you and I recently talked
• 46:05
  about Star Wars galactic racer we talked about on our on our
• 46:08
  final episode of beyond, which I I want to give another shout out
• 46:12
  to the single player version of that game is available to stream
• 46:15
  on Amazon Luna if you're a prime member right now as it's.
• 46:17
  Not important that might that might be long gone.
• 46:19
  Might be gone, I don't know if. That's the best way to.
• 46:21
  That's a very fast-paced game. I don't know if streaming is the
• 46:24
  way to do it. Yeah, I don't know what to say.
• 46:27
  Give it a shot if you have the infrastructure.
• 46:29
  You're one of those Luna heads out there, and I know you're
• 46:31
  listening. Plug yourself into the Luna
• 46:34
  Matrix. Luna Heads.
• 46:35
  Well there was. What was the Google streaming
• 46:39
  cloud thing that had the most die hard fan base ever?
• 46:43
  Stadia. Yes.
• 46:45
  Stadia. One of us, one of us found it.
• 46:47
  That's I remember, like anytime we'd be like, yeah, and it's
• 46:50
  coming to the PS4 and Xbox and Nintendo and Stadia.
• 46:55
  I guess people would be like, how dare you?
• 46:58
  It would be like, all right, well, we're gonna, we're gonna
• 47:00
  win this war of attrition. They named a video a streaming
• 47:03
  platform that sounds like a sugar substitute that you put in
• 47:07
  your coffee. Yeah, when my my aunt puts it in
• 47:10
  her teeth because she's very ill.
• 47:12
  No. So I, I've been on a huge
• 47:14
  Castlevania kick. I I downloaded the Belmont's
• 47:18
  Curse demo on Switch to which I am sad to report is not the
• 47:23
  place to play that game. No.
• 47:26
  As of right now, Konami is just doing a switch one version of
• 47:30
  that game. So on switch to you can you can
• 47:33
  do like the whole graphic boost stuff, but it just does not look
• 47:36
  great like it every time the camera punches in it's like
• 47:38
  blurry and it's just it's it's such a bummer because to me
• 47:42
  Castlevania is so it's such a handheld thing for me, but I am
• 47:47
  playing the dominus collection, which I yeah, I mentioned I
• 47:51
  mentioned this on my final episode of Nintendo voice chat.
• 47:54
  Shout out to Logan plan what up over at NBC.
• 47:57
  We love you, brother love you. The the cool thing about that
• 48:01
  collection is they let you arrange all the screens.
• 48:04
  These were originally dual screen games and now you can
• 48:07
  basically have, you know, gameplay, map inventory and you
• 48:11
  can make some small, some big. You can make it so it's old
• 48:13
  school and you just click a button to switch between them
• 48:15
  and you just have full gameplay. And these games are so great.
• 48:18
  Like they are such they're such awesome games.
• 48:21
  And I feel like Belmont's curses is different because it is way
• 48:25
  more dead salzy and coming off of a bunch of Castlevanias.
• 48:29
  I'm like, all right, so I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm
• 48:31
  gonna, I'm gonna sort of reconnect with this and
• 48:34
  recalibrate here and, and get into it.
• 48:36
  But yeah, Bellmont's Curse is one of my most anticipated games
• 48:39
  this fall. I'm gonna, I'm gonna think I'm
• 48:40
  gonna get it on PS5 now, which I'm surprised about.
• 48:44
  I really if like if they announced the switch to version
• 48:47
  tomorrow, I would, I would pre-order that or wait for it.
• 48:51
  But now I'm playing Order of Ecclesia, which is or Ecclesia,
• 48:54
  however you say, one of those silly ass names.
• 48:56
  It's a man. Up word doesn't matter.
• 48:58
  It's just awesome. It's just such a good just a
• 49:01
  good ass action platforming Castlevania game.
• 49:05
  Like it is just like them at their peak just doing everything
• 49:09
  right about that's like that series from like Symphony of the
• 49:11
  Night to the end of the DS era is just pretty much perfect.
• 49:16
  Like even even the couple of stumbles here and there are
• 49:18
  like, these are still great. Like a pretty good Castlevania
• 49:22
  game from that era still rips harder than just, I don't know,
• 49:27
  the average action platformer that that was coming out during
• 49:30
  that time. And so yeah, Dominus Collection
• 49:32
  and the advanced Collection are regularly on sale.
• 49:35
  They are some of my favorite action RPGs ever.
• 49:37
  They're they're they give me that blood borne vibe where
• 49:40
  you're just killing big nasty monsters and horrible creatures.
• 49:43
  You're grinding and farming and you know you fight the same
• 49:47
  merman 600 times to get a card or whatever that let's you throw
• 49:51
  bubbles at somebody. But I just love those games so
• 49:54
  much. And on the flip side, I've been
• 49:55
  playing a lot of my AY and Thor where instead of taking a dual
• 49:59
  screen game and putting it into a single screen, they're taking
• 50:02
  single screen games and modders are figuring out how to make
• 50:04
  dual screen versions of them. So I'm playing, I'm bouncing
• 50:07
  between Minish Cap, Chrono Trigger and Link to the Past,
• 50:10
  which have all, they've all gotten dual screen mods.
• 50:13
  And I know the Chrono Trigger did get ADS port, but this one
• 50:17
  uses the Android version, so it's full widescreen and it's
• 50:21
  got, you know, they've got like touch screen, bottom screen
• 50:24
  elements and maps down there. And if you want to switch
• 50:26
  between your weapons and Link to the Past, like all of that is
• 50:28
  right there. And it they feel like proper
• 50:31
  full releases from Nintendo, like they feel like something
• 50:34
  that Nintendo would do. There's also another one for
• 50:36
  Dusk, which is the Twilight Princess mod that are basically
• 50:41
  port that people got running and that got a dual screen mod on
• 50:44
  it. So yeah, if you have a handheld
• 50:46
  device that can do dual screen emulation, people are that
• 50:51
  community is doing the coolest stuff in the world right now.
• 50:54
  And I will always big be a big fan of that clamshell handheld
• 50:58
  design. And so yeah, it just makes me so
• 51:00
  happy to see that stuff happening.
• 51:01
  So check all that out. Get an AY and Thor before they
• 51:04
  get more pricing. Get any video game hardware
• 51:06
  before it gets a price increase. Yeah, honestly.
• 51:10
  Seth, what you plan? I'm playing Hell Let Loose
• 51:13
  Vietnam with the fellas. The beef Lords are back.
• 51:16
  That's my my gaming group. It's just like a bunch of dads
• 51:20
  and we just jump in. It's a little hard because Rich,
• 51:22
  he works like weird hours. So he'll I'll wake up and I'll
• 51:25
  check Discord in the morning and they'll be like a message at
• 51:28
  like from 12:30 at night. He's like anybody down for some
• 51:31
  late night hell let loose. Like nobody answers him because
• 51:34
  we're all long since asleep. But that game rules.
• 51:38
  I love it. It's so fun If you get 3 of the
• 51:42
  of the fellas together on a mortar squad, that is maybe one
• 51:45
  of the funnest ways to play as a USGI or as the NBA.
• 51:50
  The Mortar team, all day, every day.
• 51:52
  So the, the whole thing with that is it's like, it's like
• 51:55
  asymmetrical gameplay, right? Or.
• 51:57
  Between those, yeah, like you're, it's you versus it's
• 52:01
  like I don't know, like 30 versus 30.
• 52:04
  But it's like the the things you can do on either side is sort of
• 52:06
  dependent on historically what resources were available.
• 52:10
  Like, you know, there's obviously there's infantry and
• 52:12
  then the the parts of that there's like heavy, like
• 52:15
  armored. So like you can drive a tank,
• 52:18
  the GIS have a helicopter, the sky dragon, but the NVA have
• 52:23
  tunnels. So you can like build a tunnel
• 52:25
  and then you can just pop up in a different part of the map.
• 52:27
  It's like fast travel, so. Wow.
• 52:30
  So cool, it's so awesome. And then everyone's this got
• 52:33
  like proximity chat and everyone's just everyone is
• 52:36
  Larping the hell out of that game.
• 52:38
  Like when you play, everyone is either like, oh, I'm a GI, so
• 52:41
  they're going to be a GI. Like I listen to credence do
• 52:43
  that. And then when they're NBA, it's
• 52:45
  like you're NBA, you're like GI, your country doesn't love you GI
• 52:49
  and you like you just say all these horrible things to
• 52:51
  everybody. Well, let's.
• 52:52
  I mean, have you seen anybody doing like some like Forrest
• 52:54
  Gump LARP and just like Karen dudes around?
• 52:57
  I haven't. I'm sure if I played more I
• 52:59
  would see that. But yeah, that game is it's
• 53:01
  super fun. It's like super dad mode and
• 53:03
  people take it very, very seriously.
• 53:05
  They will get so mad at you if you're like goofing around like
• 53:08
  you've got to get in there. You've got to like knock the the
• 53:13
  enemies out. I think it's an arm of three
• 53:15
  mod. I think it's another one of
• 53:17
  those. That's so and and it got A and
• 53:19
  it became a it's own game, right and got like a full retail.
• 53:22
  How let loose is it is is set in World War 2 and then this is
• 53:26
  like the sequel. It just came out and the start
• 53:29
  of the summer and man. You like playing any other games
• 53:32
  with Soviet themes? That's a matter of fact.
• 53:36
  I downloaded a game called Whole.
• 53:38
  I have to look at it because I can never.
• 53:39
  It's called Workers and Resources Soviet Republic, which
• 53:42
  is where you build, it's a city building game.
• 53:45
  It's like city skylines except for it's like dirty communism.
• 53:49
  It's like you're building a coal factory and you have to get some
• 53:51
  dirty little trucks to bring the coal from the coal factory to
• 53:54
  the coal processing plant. And although by the way, you got
• 53:57
  to build some communist block housing, that just looks awful
• 54:01
  and horrible. And then I haven't gotten to the
• 54:02
  part yet where I need to like suppress my population because
• 54:06
  they're starting to get sick of, of my crap.
• 54:08
  But turns out idiot mode. I bought this like 3 weeks ago
• 54:13
  for 40 bucks and right now, well, I don't know if the steam
• 54:17
  sale is going on still it's nine it's 10 bucks right now on the
• 54:19
  steam sale. So yeah, that one again, I'm on
• 54:23
  my like my dad arc is infinite and it will never end.
• 54:27
  And I just like, yeah, yeah, that's.
• 54:29
  What I love about you stuff. Thank you.
• 54:32
  Dad Dad arc is an interesting way of putting that.
• 54:34
  I've noticed that like, my taste in games has changed so much in
• 54:38
  in recent years, and the running theme right now is roguelikes or
• 54:41
  roguelikes, which I used to think we're not.
• 54:44
  I used to be completely like that's a waste of time, that's
• 54:47
  deliberately Sisyphean. And now the flip side is like
• 54:51
  that my time means nothing regardless, so who cares if I
• 54:56
  lose after a run? I don't feel bad for bouncing
• 54:59
  off. I feel bad if I play 10 hours of
• 55:00
  a game and then get sidetracked by something else.
• 55:03
  But if I play 10 hours of a rogue light and I'm just, you
• 55:06
  know, I have a good time, I, you know, bash my head against it
• 55:08
  for a while, get some upgraded unlock, get some crazy builds
• 55:11
  and then go do something else. Like I don't feel any, I don't
• 55:14
  feel any like sense of obligation that I'm not, you
• 55:17
  know, I'm not getting the full experience.
• 55:20
  And I know that there's, you know, there are, there are rogue
• 55:22
  lights with great stories and that you should finish and see
• 55:24
  the ending. But like, I'm having a really
• 55:26
  good time with like Blood Dungeon for instance, man.
• 55:30
  It's so good. And I've gotten that yet?
• 55:32
  Yeah, everyone keeps telling me how rad it is.
• 55:34
  I fell down the ball pit earlier this year.
• 55:36
  That was another big one. Ball pit's amazing and.
• 55:40
  Expansion coming out next month actually.
• 55:42
  Yeah, they're also they're making heroin too.
• 55:45
  It's check your local dealer. No, but like I don't know, I had
• 55:51
  a really good time with these games and I'm I'm that's kind of
• 55:55
  something that's been fun for me with with Star Wars Galactic
• 55:57
  racers racer singular, though, I guess there are multiple of them
• 56:01
  in there, but it. Would be pretty boring if there
• 56:03
  was. Yeah, just, I mean, now this is
• 56:07
  not pod raising, but the other one I want to check out that I
• 56:11
  haven't jumped into yet is the Ghost of Yote Most wanted mode.
• 56:15
  Yeah, where they took like the bounty hunting mission and you
• 56:18
  just, you're going and like unlocking costumes and just kind
• 56:20
  of, I don't know, no, like that that gameplay loop I used to
• 56:23
  think it was again, I used to just be sort of like, oh, it's
• 56:25
  randomized that has no, that has no, I don't know, value is the
• 56:29
  wrong word for it. But like there was something
• 56:31
  about it that just wasn't appealing to me.
• 56:32
  And it's I've completely turned course on that where I'm like,
• 56:36
  cool, great, sign me up. And the thing I would liken it
• 56:38
  to is cooking versus other sort of longer form hobbies or
• 56:44
  activities where I cook all the time.
• 56:46
  And it it definitely scratches some creative itch, but it also
• 56:50
  is functional. Like I, you know, I spend an
• 56:51
  hour or two making dinner and then I feed it to everybody and
• 56:53
  they eat it and then it's gone. You know, you still got to wash
• 56:56
  it off the plates and stuff. But like, it's not, you know,
• 56:58
  it's not like I have all these half finished projects and stuff
• 57:01
  that I try to do or like, Oh, I'm going to make a paper mache
• 57:04
  Jigglypuff with my daughter. And it's sitting over there, no
• 57:07
  eyes. Like some let me just show you
• 57:09
  this horrible thing. This is.
• 57:10
  Not awful, I keep you. Like we're going to finish the
• 57:12
  Jigglypuff this weekend, but we haven't.
• 57:16
  That is working. On it.
• 57:17
  So it's incredible. It's just sleeping.
• 57:20
  It's just it. Yeah, it looks.
• 57:22
  It looks like a Jigglypuff in Silent Hill.
• 57:24
  It's terrible. But are you?
• 57:27
  Going to let all the candy and beat it with.
• 57:29
  Bats, I got AI got a life hack for you.
• 57:31
  Just paint a Ditto face on it and then that's like so easy to
• 57:34
  do. That is a great idea.
• 57:36
  That is a very good idea. But yeah.
• 57:37
  You should put Kirk, put Kirby's face on there, see how that
• 57:40
  feels. Just you.
• 57:41
  That's wrong. That's a crime against God.
• 57:42
  You can't do that. I've been playing I've been
• 57:45
  playing Pokopia with my daughter though, and Pokopia's.
• 57:48
  It's amazing. Favorite Nintendo Switch two
• 57:50
  game of the year? I have not.
• 57:52
  I haven't really gotten into like I'm never I've I never.
• 57:54
  I don't don't like the crafting stuff.
• 57:56
  Again, it's that like I, I have the like, I'll I'll play a bunch
• 58:01
  of one of those games and then I'll be like, I need to be
• 58:02
  digging real holes outside or like I need to be crafting real
• 58:05
  things in real life, which is. I need to be turning garbage
• 58:09
  into usable resources. Yeah, rubbish to eat, but.
• 58:14
  No, it's been it's been fun just kind of and like I'll, you know,
• 58:16
  well, she'll ask me to read a bunch of chatty ass cutscenes
• 58:20
  because, you know, again, like games, they talk too much.
• 58:22
  Those put the Pokémon. Why can't they just say their
• 58:24
  names repeatedly and let you figure it out?
• 58:26
  You know I don't that would be. Yeah, more straightforward
• 58:28
  picture above your head of what you're hungry for.
• 58:30
  Yeah, but you know, it'll be like, I don't know, piggies,
• 58:34
  like I'm depressed, bring me toys or whatever.
• 58:36
  You're like, all right, gotta go find some rocks to turn into
• 58:39
  toys or whatever. But I don't know what it was.
• 58:41
  I bounced off that game so hard and I was so in love with it.
• 58:44
  Like I think I just, I unlocked like the 4th or 5th area and I
• 58:48
  was just like, oh man, there's a lot to clean up here.
• 58:51
  And I think I just got overwhelmed and just put it
• 58:53
  down. But I I keep meaning to go back
• 58:56
  and check in on everyone and see if they're alive.
• 58:59
  Bulbasaur they are is not doing well, man.
• 59:02
  I'm just gonna let you know he's having a bad time.
• 59:06
  You should give. You should see if he's alright.
• 59:07
  Just text him, you know, see if he's every time.
• 59:09
  You would accident, you'd be like digging through a hole and
• 59:11
  you'd like accidentally smash the back of some Pokémon's bad
• 59:15
  house. You know, he you'd give you'd
• 59:17
  give like some it. It felt so like you would build
• 59:20
  some animals like a really nice house and then this other guy
• 59:22
  would just be like, Hey, so I just like, you know, if you make
• 59:25
  me like a grave and like a bowl, I can think about my dead wife
• 59:30
  and eat and you're like. It's so dark too.
• 59:33
  Yeah, it really is. It's so it really is.
• 59:36
  It's. It's so.
• 59:38
  It's like, it's so sad because it's basically like a bunch of
• 59:41
  Labrador retrievers got let go in the woods and they're like,
• 59:45
  well, the, but our people will be back anytime now and they're
• 59:49
  just running around slobbering on stuff and being adorable.
• 59:51
  And it's, yeah, I got to get back into that game too.
• 59:54
  I didn't bounce. I just, something else came up
• 59:57
  that I started playing and it like ruined my momentum, You
• 1:00:00
  know, I think I had like 60 hours into it.
• 1:00:02
  Well, there's some other games that came out this year.
• 1:00:04
  It's been a busy one. No, it's that what's in Shibuya?
• 1:00:07
  It's a station. There's that the statue of a dog
• 1:00:09
  that, like his owner just left one day and he would just go
• 1:00:12
  This. Yeah, he would.
• 1:00:13
  How'd you go? Would go to the station every
• 1:00:15
  day waiting for his master. And his master never came.
• 1:00:18
  And then they took the dog and they covered him in iron and
• 1:00:22
  made him a statue. That last part's not sure so but
• 1:00:26
  that's what that's the same vibe of that of that game.
• 1:00:28
  And then they're like, they're like, oh, you can unlock
• 1:00:31
  sunglasses and you're like, hey, hold on, man.
• 1:00:33
  Can we talk about the other thing?
• 1:00:35
  Looking at that as like a from a sort of sociology standpoint,
• 1:00:38
  but then also like a zoological standpoint, it's pretty weird.
• 1:00:42
  Like it's pretty, it's pretty weird on it.
• 1:00:43
  Like even by Pokémon standards. But yeah, like playing with my
• 1:00:47
  kid, she's like, what's in that Bush?
• 1:00:49
  And I'm like, it's a squirrel or whatever.
• 1:00:51
  And it comes out, she's like, OK, that's cool.
• 1:00:53
  And she's like, what's in that tree?
• 1:00:54
  I'm like, it's a site there. And she's like, is it gonna hurt
• 1:00:56
  me? And I'm like, not in this game.
• 1:00:58
  But if you ever see something like that in real life, run
• 1:01:00
  away. Like that's a, that's a
• 1:01:02
  velociraptor with praying mantis arms.
• 1:01:05
  That thing will kill you. That is absolutely a violent
• 1:01:07
  enemy hit Monchan just sitting on a bench.
• 1:01:11
  Like, that's not even an animal, that's a guy.
• 1:01:13
  I. Keep that thing alone.
• 1:01:15
  There's definitely Max you and I had a theory about how many
• 1:01:18
  Pokémon are just a dude in a suit.
• 1:01:22
  It's a not insignificant amount that it's just like, that's not
• 1:01:25
  a, that's OK, That's a, that's just a guy that's a guy in a
• 1:01:27
  suit. Like when you see a huge dog at
• 1:01:29
  the airport and you're like, you're trying to sneak a man out
• 1:01:31
  of that play. I like that theory a lot.
• 1:01:36
  Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so that's what we've
• 1:01:38
  been playing. We should probably wrap things
• 1:01:41
  up. But I do want to thank you.
• 1:01:43
  Thank you for hanging out, fellas.
• 1:01:44
  This was fun. This was nice.
• 1:01:46
  We should we should probably do this again sometime.
• 1:01:49
  But also thank you to everybody who gave us a shot and give us
• 1:01:51
  give us a watch or listen. To be perfectly honest, we are
• 1:01:54
  we are shooting this like a pilot.
• 1:01:56
  We have no idea if it's going to come out right or look good or
• 1:01:59
  sound right or whatever, but we are figuring things out as we
• 1:02:01
  go. If you want to support, we're
• 1:02:03
  doing, please subscribe to us on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter,
• 1:02:07
  Instagram, threads, X, wherever you get your X button and
• 1:02:10
  wherever you get your podcasts. Just go just do the do the do
• 1:02:13
  all the stuff that everyone always tells you to do, but
• 1:02:15
  also, please go support our Patreon.
• 1:02:18
  We got a bunch of different tears and tears that come out of
• 1:02:20
  our eyes because we need work, but also tears that you can
• 1:02:23
  support to help keep us from crying so much like huge babies.
• 1:02:28
  And we are try to do more stuff. We've got all sorts of stuff
• 1:02:31
  planned. We want to see what what works,
• 1:02:32
  what does it, what makes sense and we want to hear from you and
• 1:02:35
  also keep an eye out for our Nintendo centric show,
• 1:02:39
  Nintendo's 64, which is. Infrendo 64 So each week we'll
• 1:02:44
  have a new episode of the X Button video game podcast and
• 1:02:46
  Infrendo 64. And that's just for now.
• 1:02:49
  Like Max said, support that Patreon.
• 1:02:51
  We need little things like, you know, buying video games and we
• 1:02:56
  need big things like new laptops and stuff to like, literally
• 1:03:01
  make our shows on. And so, yeah, like, you know, we
• 1:03:04
  are, we're figuring this out as we go.
• 1:03:06
  We are scrappy. Eventually we'd love to have
• 1:03:08
  like, you know, you're looking at gameplay of everything we're
• 1:03:11
  talking about. And, you know, there's a fancy
• 1:03:13
  intro and there's like, you know, there's a whole band.
• 1:03:15
  They're on a roof and it says a crane shot.
• 1:03:18
  We don't know how to spend money.
• 1:03:20
  We're really more now. Into one another in the intro,
• 1:03:23
  like 1991 movie Terminator 2, we're actually.
• 1:03:26
  We have a one stretch goal on the Patreon.
• 1:03:28
  We are trying to get a mascot. We want to get the X baboon and
• 1:03:31
  so we're trying to get a live baboon that we can have shared
• 1:03:34
  custody of. We'll ship it back and forth
• 1:03:36
  between the our houses. And yeah, if anyone knows a good
• 1:03:41
  divorce lawyer let us know cuz yeah that might be 1.
• 1:03:44
  You know I only have so much love in my life.
• 1:03:46
  Forgot I take care of that X baboon.
• 1:03:49
  I got to train him to do emails so I can do GTA6 baboon
• 1:03:55
  everywhere and there's just piles of plates and I'm just
• 1:03:58
  like smoking a cigarette and look, what's that thing about?
• 1:04:00
  Like the monkeys on typewriters will eventually.
• 1:04:02
  Write Shakespeare. I think if you've got a baboon
• 1:04:04
  and ChatGPT, you've got yourself somebody who can answer emails.
• 1:04:08
  Why do you say it like that? Why do you say But I always
• 1:04:10
  said. Baboon, I like saying it, but
• 1:04:13
  sounds. You say it like.
• 1:04:14
  Babar the elephant baboon. It sounds a bar.
• 1:04:18
  Like French elephant? It sounds like buffoon.
• 1:04:21
  Is it Baba? Is it Babar?
• 1:04:22
  Babar. Bay Bar Bay Bar.
• 1:04:25
  I always. I always thought it was Bay Bar
• 1:04:28
  but. It is Babar.
• 1:04:29
  It's Babar. It is Babar.
• 1:04:31
  Yes, OK, because it's. French.
• 1:04:33
  Do you think he goes to the? Babar after.
• 1:04:35
  Work. With the baboons.
• 1:04:38
  It's so dumb. No, please support our Patreon.
• 1:04:42
  This is the happiest we've been in weeks.
• 1:04:45
  I'll be completely honest with you.
• 1:04:46
  It's been we've been pretty down in the dumps.
• 1:04:49
  And so we want to we want to get back to making cool stuff.
• 1:04:52
  We want to get all of our friends around the industry to
• 1:04:54
  guests on these shows, devs, voice actors, celebrities, our
• 1:04:59
  peers who have their own shows. Shout out to pretty much
• 1:05:02
  everybody. Shout out to Giant Bomb Kit and
• 1:05:05
  Krista to Game Informer to kind of Funny so many.
• 1:05:09
  We want to work with all of these people and build this big
• 1:05:12
  cool network where we're just collaborating all the time.
• 1:05:15
  So you'll see us on their shows, We'll be on.
• 1:05:17
  They'll be on our shows. We're going to do everything we
• 1:05:19
  can to make this feel like one big happy family because that's
• 1:05:22
  the thing we can do now. Yeah.
• 1:05:24
  What do we? I don't want to spoil the
• 1:05:26
  future. Plans but X button live, we
• 1:05:30
  could do that. We could do that too.
• 1:05:32
  Yeah, we we can do that too. I know a guy who can jump
• 1:05:34
  around. On stage for 16 hours who I know
• 1:05:38
  we. Want to do like packs?
• 1:05:39
  Panels and stuff like that, you can jump around on stage there,
• 1:05:41
  that'll be OK. We're going to do a potluck.
• 1:05:45
  We're we're all gonna everyone's going to come over to, we're
• 1:05:48
  going to go to the YMCA and everybody just brings this
• 1:05:51
  stuff, whatever they got. And then we're going to do,
• 1:05:54
  there's going to be a dance party if you go to the YMCA and
• 1:05:58
  you go in the. Pool, you might notice that
• 1:05:59
  there's nothing on that list of rules on the sign that says you
• 1:06:02
  can't have a big potluck supper in the pool.
• 1:06:05
  So in the pool, you know, just put that out there.
• 1:06:10
  It's. Gonna be great.
• 1:06:10
  It's going it's it's going great.
• 1:06:12
  It's going to be great and it's all thanks to you.
• 1:06:14
  So seriously, thank you for letting us do this and thank you
• 1:06:18
  for supporting us. And we're really we're just
• 1:06:20
  getting started. We're really happy to figure out
• 1:06:22
  how to end the show, but we're I know we did this.
• 1:06:25
  Do we do it? I know we could say.
• 1:06:26
  We could say do. A Patreon exclusive episode.
• 1:06:31
  Yeah, do that. Yeah, we do.
• 1:06:32
  We do have. A special tier.
• 1:06:33
  So go, go check that out if you are a member at that level and
• 1:06:38
  we will go do that right now. Until then, we'll get on your
• 1:06:41
  level. We'll get on your level.
• 1:06:43
  Get on our level. Is that is that that's our our
• 1:06:45
  outro. That's mean.
• 1:06:46
  It's mean, right? Get on our level.
• 1:06:48
  Head on over to. Patreon for more that we'll
• 1:06:50
  record. Right now that I don't, we
• 1:06:51
  haven't. We'll figure it out.
• 1:06:53
  We'll see you there also. I don't Yeah, I don't want.
• 1:06:54
  I don't don't get on our level. You you probably have a job
• 1:06:58
  that's that's not a good one.