[Music]
Hello and welcome to an only episode of Freeze Frames per second,
the little video gaming spin-off podcast from anime brain freeze.
Uh, yeah, we...
We have been saying we're gonna do these sporadically whenever time is available and when we want to do it
and when we have played enough games and we have done that
over the past weeks, months, whatever, so it's about time we do another one of these because otherwise
these these games are gonna pile up and I will at least I will have forgotten all about the ones I
played. It's gonna be hard already in this one, so yeah. Yeah, I mean same on a save up for getting
stuff. Yeah, which is not a problem really unless it's a story having... Hey, I'm gonna like wait,
what was this again? We're... but also you could argue then it didn't make a lasting impression
or whatever, which is also part of a review, I guess. But anyway, yeah, let's just get right into
the play buffet. [Music]
John will start us off with a couple of retro pickups from local conventions if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, I like going to some local conventions like...
There's a few big ones I like hitting. I'm not going to say the names of the local ones
for my own peace of mind, but I like going to Pax East, going to New York anime, they changed
the name of it. It used to be called New York Anime Fest and I think it's just anime NYC,
that's what it's called now. Much to the chagrin of me not liking what Crunchyroll does, but it's,
you know, one of the vendors that I like goes there and they have lots of lots and lots of retro games.
Didn't pick anything up from them this year, but one of the local ones I went to, I found a whole bunch
of good stuff. I got some super Famicom games. Final Fantasy's 4 through 6 and say condense,
that's 2, 3, the dude was so long, dirt cheap and it was pretty hard to say no for two $10 a pop.
I assume those came without the box and the manual and whatever.
Yeah, just the cartridges, which is fine. I mean, I have a lot of loose cartridges sitting
around now and I need to figure out a solution for that because...
I mean, there are options for that. I remember even back in the day, I had like these plastic folder
thingies that were suited for a Super Nintendo game. Yeah, I just need to do something about it.
That's the issue. I need to do it. Again, you've been playing lately Soul Blazer.
Yes, that is not in my playlist because I just finished it today.
And also, it's part of a playthrough of the Quintet trilogy. I guess it's five games that
kind of are somewhat related to each other but I'm only playing the three that are related to
illusion of Gaia, which was the actual game I wanted to replay and I was like, "Hey, I've never played
Soul Blazer. Hey, I've never played Teranigma." So, yeah, played Soul Blazer for the first time.
Like that, gonna talk more extensively about the next time we do this enough of the other two games.
Yeah, the through line on those games is pretty clear. Actory, so one and two are sort of
tangentially there. Yeah, they all have the master, right? And an angel coming down from heaven or whatever.
You being the master yourself and whatever. But again, we're gonna talk more about this when
we talk about the three games that I'm playing right now. Super Adventure Island too, which is a game I
sort of touched on off through emulation, but I was like, yeah, I want a copy of this because it's
very much a departure from the rest of Adventure Island in that it's more Metroid-ish where you're
going around various maps, getting upgrades and whatnot. It's not like the Street Forward platform
or all the other Adventure Islands are, which is cool. And Rockman 4, because you know, add another
Rockman cartridge to the pile. Last year, the full series now, or are you still missing some of the
original ones? I have four and five, I think. I wanted to get three at one point. This show I went to
last year, they had three, four and five. And I wanted to just nab all of them, but they didn't take
card. So it's like, and I didn't have any cash on, but you're like, hey, you can just venbo us and I was like,
cool. So I paid for that one. I got it. I got in my hands and now I've got that I still haven't put
any of those card-credits into my poly mega yet to install the ROMs on there, some so I can miss
around with them, but you know, me, if not this weekend eventually, I will. So, yeah, those were the
major name pickups from this this convention season as it were. I think, I think at packs, I picked up
a couple of things. What was I think it was a couple of the level five games on PS2. I think I picked
up a copy of, oh, God, what was that one action or row galaxy? Yes, I think we talked about this
the last time. Did we? Maybe we did. I don't remember, Galaxy, and I mentioned that I remember liking it a
lot, but I don't remember anything about the story. Right. It was rogue Galaxy and then something else.
So it's man, I probably said it then, but level five came out swinging with the first few games on
the PS2, like both the dark clouds, Dragon Quest 8, rogue Galaxy. What a stack to line up.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's pretty much all of that. Cool. Yeah, I didn't go to any
conventions, pick up any retro games. I mean, I played a couple of retro games or retro style games,
and now currently playing actual Super Nintendo games. So looking forward to more of that, because
definitely wasn't the mood for some nostalgia stuff, but we also played both of us, some modern
games, some very modern games actually, and shockingly modern. Shockingly modern. Yes. So the first
couple, I guess, duo that both of us play is Mario Kart World, the first Mario Kart
since Mario Kart 8 deluxe, I guess, and the first launch title for the Switch 2.
And also the new Sonic Racing game that came out, Sonic Racing Crossworlds.
I guess two very comparable games that they are kart racers and have a very similar-ish flavor,
or very comparable in certain regards. Of course, also I have the differences and stuff like that, but
you could see the influence of Mario Kart in Sonic Racing. And I believe
well, you could also argue that Diddy Kong Racing had some influence later,
later, installments of Mario Kart in terms of what you were able to do there, and the same
had influence on Sonic Racing. Yeah, I mean, I never played a whole lot of Diddy Kong racing.
I feel like Mario Kart looked at the way that game did drifting after Mario Kart 64, and was like,
yeah, that looks pretty good. Yeah, because drifting in any game, well, I'm Super Mario Kart,
and Mario Kart 64 drifting in those games was rough and frustrating, you might as well have
just driven straight through every curve. Yeah, that's true. Which is a lot of like,
a lot of general racing games that are not kart racers, I feel like I have a problem with the
drifting mechanics where I feel like they should handle differently, they should handle more
arcadey and you're just running into wall over and over again, you have to break a lot, and that
doesn't feel satisfying to me. Which I feel like these two games don't do, so they're usually very
much to my liking, just in terms of base mechanics. You know, you got your boots, you got your drifts,
you've got the item pickups that have pretty much the same flavor across both games, just in different
variations, you know, you have your rockets, you have your minds, whatever. And yeah, that is the case
here as well. I guess two new things, both of them have, like, or each one of them offers a new
new thing that wasn't really in the series before. And Mario Kart World is open world now, I still
don't know, I suggest. And Sonic Racing Crossworld has you like being able to drive through portals
and switch from racing tracks to different racing tracks to different worlds, basically.
And I don't know, you feel about these two features just in general, John.
What, how do you feel about them? Like, I think, I think it's better executed in Sonic
Crossworlds. I would agree with that because yeah, you're going through different portals and,
you know, but you are, it boils down to, it's still a bespoke track that you are racing on. And,
you know, it's got different obstacles and different, different, different, Mario Kart World,
you're racing on highways. Yeah. Wow. Whoa, look at this street line to this street line.
The actual, the tracks that are actual tracks are neat, but they're so few and far between.
And I guess people found a way to be able to race on them online if you picked random.
And then Nintendo was like, no, no, no, that's not how we want you to play the game you paid for.
And they patched that out, which is like, for what purpose? And then the open, and then the open
world maps, like, yeah, it's big and you can explore it. And yeah, that's pretty much it.
Yeah. I was expecting when they were like, hey, this is more like, oh, okay, so you can't,
I have to normal tracks, but you can also go off track and free row mode and just have activities
everywhere, like you usually have no more games. You maybe have some trick sections, you can maybe
on the usual tracks, do some other stuff, not just the races, you know, like burnout, maybe,
where you have like the crash courses, you have the racing courses, there's the elimination stuff,
stuff like that, right? The elimination races and things like that. And I was expecting something
like that from Mario Kart World, and also like, hey, here's some secret sitting, maybe some costumes
hitting. And technically that is in there, but that's also on the tracks because the additional
costumes you can pick up during the races, if you get the right item, it is easier in free row mode
where you can just go around and spawn that shit over and over again, if you still missing one
costume, but technically, technically, you can also pick them up on normal tracks.
Some of the characters you unlock are so weirdly specifically, you have to be in a race at a
specific position, hope someone spawns Camac, and then he has to zap you and hope you turn into that
character, which one's like, it's like, that's stupid man, come on. Here we is this game coming out in.
Yeah, for that, the free row mode is definitely better.
Like if it works, like if, if, if, I don't know if that works for all the costumes you need to get,
or if you have to get some of them in actual races, I think some of them you do need to be in actual
race, like the Camac ones, so great. Okay. But I think the main problem and you already touched on that
for my card world is that due to the open world nature of it, all or a lot of it's racing is
lacking an identity, like there are no, like, I don't, or there are a couple of identifiable,
identifiable tracks, but a lot of them are merging into each other where you like, you have to one track
that is kind of closed, but then it's open up, so, and you drive through the new one, and that
becomes the next race. And so all of these tracks are kind of blending into each other,
and you don't have that many differences between them, and also the music constantly switches,
it's not, switches is not one specific, music track for one specific race track. I guess the music I
have less of an issue with only because it, this is like a smash brother style soundtrack where it's
like, can you think of a song from a Mario game? It's in there, and it's a really cool version of it.
Yeah, I get it, but then the thing is, okay, then I'm going to listen to that as a soundtrack while
working or whatever, or doing anything else. When I'm doing the race, I want specific songs,
like, that are geared specifically towards that race track, because I don't know, that just belongs to
me in this kind of, in this kind of racing game. I get you, that's true. That's, that, that just
bothered me, because it felt like I'm just going through the motions, there are a couple of, like,
the first mushroom couple, or whatever, at the end, the Donkey Kong level or whatever it is.
That was pretty identifiable. Everything that came before that was just like, okay, I don't even remember
which was which, and the tracks are very wide, because now you also have an increased
amount of drivers on the track, so the road needs to be wider, so everyone fits, needs can fit on
there, which makes it feel slower, even the higher CC ranks and whatever. So I just, it wasn't really my
thing. I played the shit out of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I played, played through all of the, the different
cups and all the different leaks or whatever, up to 200, I think. I don't know if I perfected them all,
got three stars everywhere, but I at least got gold everywhere that I know.
Said I didn't do. I just raced on everything and then when someone was like, hey, let's play
Marriacar, okay. Yeah, but I really love that game. There were so many tracks that I enjoyed, like I think
that version of Mount Wario was one of my favorite tracks, and that's where the music stuff
plays into it, because I think the music was so well employed in that, in that, in that particular
track where you go down the slope, on the snow, and everything, and then the music really picks up for
the third lap, and it's like really this high speed downhill race, and it's super exciting. I think
that is one of the perfect Mario Kart tracks and perfect Mario Kart music tracks and everything.
And I love that. And Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, I love that shit. And in Mario Kart World, I mean, I haven't
played it as much of course, and really went through all the cups only once in 50, I think. And after
that, I was like, okay, I think I'm done. Yeah, I think I only did one or two of the GPs and 100 CC.
I'm going to go back and eventually just do them all just to have all the tracks unlocked, because
there's a final GP though in locks, have to be all the others. So, yeah, I didn't, yeah, I didn't play
eight quite as extensively as you, but man, eight is crazy, because it's basically at this point,
got two and a half games worth of content. Yes, yes, that's that. I mean, work can still get there. I
don't know if it will. I feel like a lot of people have cooled on it pretty quickly after it's released
from what I could go together. But now that race is cool. Yeah, sure. I don't even know if I've
played much of that, but yeah, the idea is I played it a whole bunch, and I got my one win, and I was like,
I'm done. Let's go. Yeah. But it looks pretty. Let's, you know, it's a pretty smart, you know, of course.
It's very pretty. It looks good. It sounds good. Set the soundtrack is asus, even though I'm missing
just the the track specific music and everything, but people for weeks were still finding new songs in
there. I think there was a playlist with like 300 songs and it's like, how did you fit this much in?
Hear what? Like the memorial paint songs in there. What? What do you mean?
Yeah, sure. Everyone is here, even cows for some reason. Yeah, I don't get that, but okay.
Hey, they were in all the Mario Kart games before, I guess, or in a lot of them, so why not make one
of them a driver makes that I guess. I guess. I guess. But yeah, I don't know when if I would go back
to it, maybe if I'll take the switch on a road and have like, have like someone around to play against,
maybe I'll play some of the other GPs or whatever, we'll see, but for now I'm not itching to
pick up Mario Kart World again, which wasn't the case for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for me. But I'm itching
to play a pick up Sonic racing cross-welds again, because I had a really good time with that one.
I think their track designs are cool. That also has a bit of a problem with track identity,
but like you said, it's more still, it's still singular tracks that have just two different variations.
But it still feels like, you know, a singular track that is not bleeding into another one.
It's just, or two singular tracks that are mixed together, but they're not bleeding into any other
one in the same cup after that. Except for the final one that you do in every
cup is a mix-up of all of them, I think, but I think I actually need idea, but it also feels a little
bit like a cup out. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they could have just, you know, reduced the numbers of
cups and just put, you know, one more in each of the cups and feels like, hey, you're gonna get more
cups down the road, maybe or whatever. So that would have been so being fine. Like, look, the
last one would be like, this best off of the tracks you just raised just before this feels kind of
like an, okay, you could maybe have done this in the last one where the last one is like maybe longer,
not just three laps, but I don't know, however many, just all the tracks that you just played and
you have to really get your stamina in or whatever and to a lap for each of them. That would have
been neat, but that would be a heck of a race. Yeah. So that you could have done that, but yeah,
if I ever lamented on a recording that in regards to Mario Karton different tracks, that they are a bunch
of cowards for not making a great breeze that is entirely rainbow roads. I thought that they,
I mean, you know, cowards. Yes, but, but come on, Nintendo, Nintendo, come on. Yeah, don't be cowards.
Rainbow Cup. I mean, maybe do this one. And I want to say the, the cross, the drive up in Maracot
World 2 rainbow road was pretty, kind, pretty epic. Like that felt pretty cool. You could just
launched up into space and whatever. That, that was pretty, pretty neat. But, yeah, you're right.
Like, they should maybe do Mario Kart, where it's like just rainbow roads like, or maybe some day.
I haven't played all of Sonic Racing Crosswalls yet, not all tracks because because I was like,
Mega Man is going to, it's not going to be long until our blue, blue main man is in the game. So
I'm just going to experience it. The rest of the tracks, I only play through one cup, I think,
with, with, with, with, rock, when he is released. And they really put, I was so happy. I was,
before they confirmed that I was like, hey, if they don't put his cart from battling chase in there,
what are we even doing? And then they did it. Yeah, that would have been like, what, come on.
What do you mean you didn't do that? But, I mean, I remember when the leaks were, like, there was,
there were some people at some event and they've got some promo material and the Mega Man logo is
on there and everyone was like, what, what do you mean? Hold on, hold on. What? And then that kind of
forced Sega's hand and they were like, here's a trailer. So that was cool to see. Is
you coming in general or something? If Capcom won't do our boy right, someone else will.
At least we're getting collections. I guess the only one still not announced at this point is
a legend's collection. We'd see if that is actually going to happen. I mean, the insane amount of
cope when people were like, is pragmatas secretly a Mega Man? Shut shut what do you shut up? Stop, stop it.
No, it's a role game because, you know, the girl is actually role. Oh my god. The guy is
doxelied. Yeah, I would see. I doubt that as well, but it was funny listening to that.
I don't know if I'll ever play pragmatas because it sounds too much like a puzzle game and like
it would be really stressful, but also people have said it's super fun. So I guess I'm going to check out
the demo or whatever before I buy it. Yeah, it looks cool. I'm going to check that out. But yeah,
terms of the two card races we played, I definitely would recommend Sonic Racing crossroads over Mario
Cardworld unless you are a diet Mario fan and hate Sonic, which, okay, fair. But I feel like the two
fandoms are so intertwined at this point though. That's true. I mean, they've been in each other's comics
at this point. There's been, no, this is the next big crossover. For again, there's another
crossover, come after this where there's supposed to be Sonic levels coming to Pac-Man world
repack too, which is awesome. They showed a trailer for that deal. I was like, what do you mean I'm
running a running Green Hill as Pac-Man, huh? Yeah, sure. Why not? But yeah, the rival rivalry is long
that. I mean, that has been relegated to the Sonic at the Olympic Games, I guess maybe, I don't
even know if Mario appears in that. Sonic at Mario at the Olympic Games, right? Yeah, I don't.
I think the next Sonic Olympic Games is supposed to just be Sonic characters, so I think
if they'll put Mario in the switch version of Sonic Racing Cross Wars, I don't want Mario and Sonic
to have had a falling out after all this time. That would make me actually really sad if they're like,
oh, Mario and Sonic can't cross over anymore. So come on, really? Why? Yeah, I don't know. But
yeah, definitely in terms of these two games, I would recommend Sonic Racing over Mario Kart World.
And, you know, I love Mario Kart at Deluxe, but I also love Sonic Racing Transform, which is also
next to Mario Kart. Yes. Probably my favorite card racer and they might be on the same level. And
I was disappointed with Sonic Team Racing, so I'm glad that Sonic Racing Cross Wars definitely
goes back into more of the Transform thing, even though I'm missing Sega All-Star's bit, which
a bit is in there, of course, now because we have crossover characters from other games, so it's
not just Sonic characters anymore. Yeah, so see, it can race as Ichiban and races as you can race as
Hatsune Miku can also race as Joker from Persona, so there's some stuff in there and
Megaman like we said, so that's cool. I just, if it's only the Sonic characters, I'm like, okay,
whatever, but if it's more guest characters and stuff, I'm all on board.
It feels like Sonic Racing is the proper successor to like Mario Kart arcade GP.
Which was the big crossover game they had. I love Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as well. I'm still a little
disappointed. They didn't lean further into it and make it more like smash cart just bring in everyone.
Like at one point, I remember there were rumors like Kirby is going to be a playable character.
I was like, put him in. Yeah, sure. That made it.
And we'll see, maybe they'll do that in world because there are already so many outlander's
characters in there, but it's all just Mario characters like in 8 we had the villager in Link and
we had who was bluefell. It was about. Yeah, that was nice.
We did have a Falcon, right? We only had a, just, just,
had the car, big blue and, oh god, there's the other true, mute city. That's a, yeah,
I want a new F-0 to everyone does, but the title won't give it to us. Yeah, we'll see.
Hey, you can now play Mario Kart, Mario Kart, F-0GX on, on Switch Online on the GameCube.
That, that's nice. That's not what people want. Yeah, it's a proper remaster.
It's that we're getting Kirby, our, our writers. I want to talk about that for a quick second.
We didn't put it on the docket, but I played a little bit of the network test last weekend.
That game's pretty fun and I think it's going to be a really good.
I think there's another network test either right now or later on today.
Yeah, I'm interested in it. The thing is, I heard this game is more about this city,
free-rome thing and I've more into normal, the normal racing stuff, so I don't know much
that game will be for me. Well, I think you'll still be able to do regular races.
Yes, you can, but it's not the main focus. But I mean, yeah, city trial will be the big focus,
but you just want your, your regular old, did that regular old race? You could just,
you can go do that and I'm sure there will be plenty of people playing that mode.
People have been so starved for Kirby, our writer since when did it release on the GameCube?
Jesus, I don't know, but it's been a minute and you know, and it was a big,
cult favorite and I never played it back then. Me neither, which we'll talk about in a,
in a little bit that now I have no reason not to, but now that there is a new game coming out and
it looks really nice and it plays really well, I'm actually really excited for it.
Yeah, I'll definitely look into it. I mean, there are a lot of other games coming
out that I want to play one in two weeks for, I think, when is Metroid Prime for coming out?
Like two, two, three weeks? It's the first week of December. So I need to be done with
a illusion of Guy Antara and Nigma until then because then it's going to be all Metroid, baby.
I, yeah, I'm putting that on my Christmas list, so I'm not getting it right away. So,
yeah, I hope I can, I will do my best to avoid, but I mean, I don't know about you, but I use
Twitter and Blue Sky so sparingly nowadays, avoiding spoilers just seems really easy for me.
I do it way too much, but I feel like people spoiling shit on Blue Sky is not as bad as it was on Twitter.
It's like they're less intentionally as foolish people around to try to slide into comments of
people posting about the game and then posting screenshots of end-game stuff and, you know,
importancies from movies that are constantly on Twitter on Blue Sky, I have encountered that,
I don't know, never. Just someone maybe accidentally just talking about it without thinking about
that is an end-game thing that they're talking about. So, and if it's, if I'm too incessant on,
oh god, I don't want to know anything about the story of this game, I'm just not going to use it
until I've played the game, I just not going to use social media, but just in general, good idea.
Don't use social as much if at all. But John, you have played a couple of other games. What's the
next one you want to talk about? I guess we'll talk about a couple things I can knock out real quick,
a couple of mobile games I've been looking at. Well, one mobile game I can mention is that I
stop playing Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket. I feel like I got to a point where I was like,
you know, this game is still neat, but I feel like I've seen everything it has to offer.
And then they started making really weird decisions with it after I quit. So I was like, oh,
okay, I hit the eject button at the perfect time then. Like they started offering this one card
pack that's like, oh, it's all high-rarity cards, but there's like, I forget how many cards were
in the pack. It was like some absurd amount that you would have to whale like an idiot in order to
get all of them in. And then sometimes, and it was like other sets combined, but sometimes you
wouldn't always get the card you wanted for the set you were trying to complete. And the developer
at one point were like, oh, well, we're gonna be rolling out a fix for this in summer of 2026. And I'm
like, what do you mean it's gonna take half a year for this? Why? Huh? Seems to require
extensive, extensive buckle, whatever. I don't know, but it seems like a long time for a fix
like that to come out. So I was just like, I'm sitting back seeing, like I see a couple of our
friends still play in training back and forth. And I'm like, I'm glad y'all are still enjoying it,
but I'm just like, nah, nah. I wanted to move on and try some other stuff.
Understandable. Because Uma Musume released, not only an anime forum, I don't think it's a game
for me. Oh, okay. Surprise. But I think it's a neat game because it's more of a management game where
you're trying your best to help the girls, you know, up their stats so they can win races and move
forward. Like every time you select, you just like, oh, I want to do a career. You're starting fresh.
So it's kind of rogue-like-ish on each run, but you were carrying forth stats from your other
racers and you have these support cards that you can use to put into up your stats. You could borrow
a support card from a friend and that sort of stuff. And it comes down to a lot of RNG for a long time.
And there's this website called Game Torah that people were using to be like, because there's
at certain points in the career where it's like, it's also largely visual novel-ish where they present
you a choice. Each choice has a different effect. And now with the latest patch that they rolled out,
you can see the effect of each choice without having to go outside the game and it makes the game
infinitely more playable. Yeah, sure. Sounds like it. Which is fantastic. And it'll even tell you,
like, oh, this choice will lead to this. This choice may lead to this or this. And you kind of have
to balance in your head, like, okay, well, this one is guaranteed, but this one I might get something
good, but it might do something bad. So there's that. It's also a game of balancing out your character stats,
because like, when the game launched, it was kind of in a place where you could just mash the speed
button all day long and your character would max out their speed and just win every race.
I took, I took Sakura Boxing, oh, all the way to the end of her career just by mashing the speed,
but now I was like, wow, this is great. It's a win button. Yeah. And then I tried taking Hado Udada to the end
of her career, which I managed to do. So basically you get to the end of a character's career.
There's not, well, now there's two different career modes. There's like a, forget how they were
free. It's like a team mode to the other one. And I haven't done it yet, but I've seen a little bit
of it. But the other one is you have to race to the end of their career. And then after you do that,
there's like an overtime segment where it's, you can race in the URA finale and try and become the
the number one, uma in the school sort of thing. And I managed to do that with Sakura Boxing,
oh, and poor Hado Udada, I couldn't get her to the end of the URA finale, but Udada doesn't,
technically, doesn't have to win a single race, because if you know her history, she never won a race
in real life. So, but it is, it is possible if you know the strats to win her final race and get a
different ending, which is neat. It is a game where you have to think a lot of steps ahead. And it's like,
well, I need to have this many fans by this day, the stat spread needs to be like this so that I can
win different race, because you have different race like you have your Pacer or so you have your,
the, the ones who come in at the end, you have the ones who want to also easily lead the pack and you have
to keep that in mind when you're standing out each girl, they, they're going to race differently.
But it sounds like a lot of time. It's, it's neat, but it's also a lot. So you have to go into it with the
mindset that you need, you can't just mash one button and win now that it's been patched.
You have to understand how each character wants to race and you have to build around that.
That's a bit too involved for you. I think a little bit like I started a career the other day.
There was one girl in particular. I wanted to pull and I got her and I was like, all right,
I'll start a career with her and I started and I just haven't finished yet. So here has been
on hold for like three days, but I want to get back to an eventually try and finish it. So, okay.
It's, it is a neat game and it takes a special kind of brain to want to constantly grind it out.
But between that, there was also this new game that were these called Stella Sora and it is a
grinders game because the idea behind it is, I'm not quite sure how to describe it because a lot of it
is just centered around grinding. There are these things you do call the sentience and you're going up
this tower and it's kind of also roguelikeish in that your character stats are fixed. Like outside
of the tower, you are leveling them up and you're boosting up their skills and whatnot. Like that is
all fixed. The tower climb itself is the team that you bring in as a whole levels up and you gain
different skills and you kind of are building out different kits that you can use in other modes
that you can play. When you reach the top of the tower, what you do is you save that run as a record
and then you take that record into the other like, like I said, the other modes and you're like, well,
I'm going to use, I think the way the characters are kitted out like this will be better for this
situation. I think the way they're kitted out like this will be better for this situation.
So it's neat in that, you know, you can save up the party of three characters in several different
ways and then try and experiment around with that. And I just, I need to level up more characters.
So I have a little bit more versatility, but there's, there's like six different elements that you can
build teams out of. So one type of element might be more geared to something than another and it's
like, eh, they gotcha component to it because of the many team members or whatever.
Yes, and the full rates are kind of terrible.
So if you're looking to get a specific character, you're going to be pulling a lot, a lot, a lot,
so I think it's neat. And I played it for a few weeks now. And I mean, I like it. I don't know
how much longer I'll keep playing it, but at least like enough to have explored, you know, to explore
what it's got going on for it. So I think it's pretty cool for what it is. But yeah, that is most of
the gotcha corner kind of, I have one other free to play a game that I looked at, but you know,
let's talk about that in a little bit. So what do you got next for us?
Yeah, I mean, I talked about this the last time. I think, I don't know if I was still a process,
or if I just finished it, I was revisiting Blaster Master Zero, you know, the kind of remake,
kind of sequel, kind of reboot of the Blaster Master game of the NES. And that had two sequels,
and I had already before that revisit played Blaster Master Zero 2. I hadn't placed Blaster Master Zero 3
yet. So that was the first time. And in the previous episode, I talked about how I like Blaster Master
one more because it felt much more connected, Metroidvania-ish, and you have a lot more
planet hopping in the second one because it's set in space, and not, you know,
you dig in underground or whatever, in on earth. And the weapons are also shit in that. At least the
ones for Jason, the main character, when you go into, you know, the Blaster Master Zero games are like
you have the overworld stuff where you move around in your tank, and that is Metroidvania issue,
get more abilities for your tank, like driving up walls or whatever, or being able to hover,
being able to swim underwater, whatever, and you can get to other parts of the map. And that is
the case in both Blaster Master Zero 1 and 2, into it's just more relegated to you being able to
access parts of different planets, so it doesn't feel as interconnected as in one. I also felt the
music wasn't as good in 2 as in one, like I was not super happy with the game, like I like parts of it.
It's, you know, it look good and it still played well. It's just, you know, the parts where you,
the other part, not the overworld part, where you get in the actual dungeons and you move around as
Jason, you also have a, you know, specific weapon set, and I did not, the first time I played Blaster Master Zero
2, I didn't like the weapons for that because they were, they were much more diverse, but the problem is
they all kind of sucked. And the problems when you get hit in that game, you lose basically a weapons
slot. So if you have a level leveled up your weapon to the max and you get hit, you get downgraded
a level and so on and so on. So the more times you get hit, the weaker you get. And the problem is
in Blaster Master, I mean, in Blaster Master 1, you have at least a couple of weapons before the
final level that are still okay in Blaster Master Zero 2, kind of every weapon before the final
max one sucks. So I still hadn't finished too. I was kind of getting frustrated with the whole
dodging thing that you had to do sometimes. That, that was kind of like, I didn't quite grasp that
the first time I played it. And that was the thing that really opened up for me on this playthrough
where I really leaned into the counter stuff and the different versions of the counters you had
for different, for the specific situations that you could equip. And that made the game a lot more
enjoyable and playable. Once I actually gave, oh, I should be using this counter here instead, the normal
one and this other counter makes more sense for this boss and whatever. And the game is really
geared towards you like just abusing that counter mechanic. And if you don't do that, you're gonna have
a bad time. So once I actually got myself invested in it and stopped playing Blaster Master Zero 2,
like Blaster Master Zero 1, I had this time a lot more fun with it. Enjoy it a lot. And I was like,
oh, this is no, this is actually good. It's not as good as the first one, still in my opinion,
because like I said, it doesn't feel as interconnected and more level based, which I don't mind. But in,
you know, when the first game is set up like it was that the second game, not having that particular
flavor, it's like, okay, I don't know if I want that from this game. But I like the new characters
that you get, you know, the other Blaster Masters that you that you have that you meet on the different
planets, they're all quirky and fun with their own, every one of them having like the little Android
body, like you do with everything. And, you know, you have a mission of saving here or whatever.
You know, that was cool. Like I like the story more in the second one than in the first one,
because it was more involved, I guess. Although I already liked the planting the first one. And
it has a great finale and everything and really epic and everything. And then I went to Blaster
Masters 0 or 3 and I think that's my favorite one, which doesn't necessarily happen always in the
trilogy, I guess. But I think this is was just putting together the best parts of one and two. Yes,
you still have it be a bit more planet topping, but it's also more connected metroidvania,
ashtand 2 was. So it feels like they were really trying to blend parts of one and two. You got better
weapons. I think it's been that's the problem talking about it's been too long since I played this.
I think the counter mechanic is still there. I don't know if it I think they added some stuff to that
and some different counters. But you meet new characters and everything. The levels are damn cool.
And the story really went places at the end, which I did not expect. It got really out there,
really anime and was pretty fucking cool and there were some nice twists in there at the end and
a really Jesus Christ fucking hard boss fight that is not skippable like that's not an optional boss.
I won't give give it away against who that fight is, but small spot is it's a returning character
from the second game. And it's Jesus fuck that really like until I understood what I had to do.
Like the first couple of times I thought that was like what am I supposed to do here? I'm just dying.
Like I haven't even taken down half of his health or whatever. What am I supposed to do? And then
you know after doing a couple of things and trying to do things I was like oh okay I get it now
which is kind of like the best kinds of bosses when I feel like it's hopeless and then I discover
the one thing when like oh this is how you're supposed to beat the guy. And it's still super hard
don't get me wrong but it's doable and I was like okay I see the light at the end of the tunnel here and
yeah that was that was one of those really like when you beat that fucker fists in the air and like
yes I got you bitch and that was really good and that also all leads to a very satisfying finale
in terms of story. It's not a final boss fight that is so hard that was actually kind of easy I
think but the one right before that and you know everything that comes after that and then you have like
and this this really cool credit sequence and a thing at the credit sequence so there's I
the problem is I don't want to spoil it but I also don't want people on missing out on a key thing
at the end of the game. So when you think the credits have rolled and the game is just lingering on
a specific shot try pressing a certain button or something on the d-pad again please because otherwise
you're missing out because that is the ending is a bit interactive and so I won't give away
what it is and what it does but if you if you've seen the cover of of three of Blastamas 0-3 or at
least of the version that I have I was the entire game was like wait when is that gonna happen
I feel like we're still missing that and so the ending gave me that but that really happens at the
tail end of the credit and it was really nice it's kind of a bittersweet ending in a way but also
really cool and out there and sci fi and everything so I did not expect that from that game
and I mean I've played a lot of inter-create games and I feel like the story in in the gun vault
games is kind of like okay all right it's okay but I was really happy with how Blastamas 0
wrapped up and I hope they don't give a fourth one because this ending feels or do a fourth one
because this ending definitely feels like a definitive ending like is a full story from one which they
maybe didn't even think they would do it two in three at that point how that wrapped up but
two definitely feels like okay there's more coming in three definitely feels like this is it this is
like the ending we had envisioned for this and this is how we wanted to wrap this up and like I said
it was much more elaborate and I expected it and much more emotionally engaging I was really like at
the end oh that was really nice it was really cool so didn't expect that to get that from the
serious like in terms of story and everything because you know it's basic to the platform a game and
but man they really went there and some really cool shit so yeah I can only recommend if you're into
into your 2d Metroidvania thingies or whatever to go for that series and if you don't or not like I
said if you don't like too that much try to really figure out the counter mechanic and really try
to use that and abuse that and just to get to three and three is obviously worth it in my opinion
and yeah I had a really great time with this I was really happy how it wrapped up so yes last
semester zero good serious definitely one of my now ranking very high in one of my in my favorite 2d
serious platformer thingies that that I've played over the years especially when it comes to you
know doing new games retro style cool stuff John what what else have you played
it's a couple things so touch on that I've started or one that I started one that I sort of just
looked at out of curiosity um took a look at sonic rumble it's basically sonic fall guys
oh yeah okay I mean it's goofy it's silly for what it is I was I won my first match and I was the
ultimate sonic fall guy champion dude I heard it's kind of bad but I haven't played it so I mean it's
it's it's okay I guess I don't know whether or not say it's good or bad but like I said I started
up out of curiosity and I was like okay sure it's it's very derivative very derivative but you know
I don't know really what to say beyond that but if you're really that much of a sonic super fan and
you know me I don't know if I would continue playing it but you know every once in a great while
it might be fun to be like hey I want to play this to stomp on the stupid kids who are playing this
but that is what it is there's an indie game I started messing around with uh called
bounty star the morrow stale of graveyard klem that's a title it is uh and it's very very descriptive of
what the game is about it's about this uh woman named klem mckinney who's like this she's like this war
veteran and she is it helps protect this town with this other group of people and they have these
mech suits like I'd probably say the size of it is probably on par with something like a nightmare frame
like less so than like a Gundam because of the side the relative size of it it's not like a huge
machine uh but I think the type of gameplay they were trying to go for when I was messing around with it
was like armored core like the old armored core not like four five and six which are
faster and a lot more explosive and reactive because it's a bit more slower paste and deliberate and
I mean granted there are some enemies who can do some crazy stuff but uh the whole conceit is that
you playing as klem have you know just driven these bandits out of town one night and then on their way out
they decide you let them free and they decide on the way out hey that was real neighborly of you
we're gonna blow up your town anyway so yeah this is sort of like a story of
klem trying to get back to what she was like his that the people of the town might still be out there
you know obviously you know there were a lot of people dead there were a lot of people just like got
out of there when they could and now she's out there doing a whole bunch of bounties and you have
this base that you're building up that you or sort of like building it's this homestead you can
have livestock you can grow plants you can cook meals before you go out on missions they give a
different buffs to you and the robot and there's a whole lot of customization to the robot as well
like different weapons different accessory different types of armor and frames you can put on it so
it's really neat for what it is and I've only played a little bit of it so far but I'm
looking forward to messing around with it a bit more and I just think it's really cool that it's
not it's not trying to be the big robot game that armored core six was and I think armored core six is
a great game but this is you know much smaller scale it's more level like it's a lot more level in
mission based like armored core yeah there are specific missions out there but it feels a lot bigger
in scale than this is and I just think it's really neat so I'm looking forward to playing more of it
and I think it's cool and I hope other people check it out because it's definitely a smaller budget
game it's not like your big 60 70 80 dollar game it's 25 bucks if you're interested so
and the publisher Ana porna they they like putting out a lot of you know publishing a lot of really
cool stuff so glad to see that glad to see the tradition continues and with that kind of genre actually
I didn't expect Ana porna to go and do that but yeah yeah I just felt like I'd put those two together
just because you know I haven't played quite as much from yet and I have a bit more stuff to touch
on than you so what else you got I after Blasoma's massive zero I think I was still in the process of
finishing up also trials of mana the remake but that I already talked about previously so I don't
have to bring it up but I was always trying to sprinkle in 2d games so I think a semasa zero came
before the second run or whatever and I also the played berserk boy which is a mega man like
different flavors has a bit of mega man zero in it has a bit of mighty number nine in it
I mean or I mean but it's it's good because I played a little bit of the demo so yeah maybe not
even mighty number nine maybe it's more luminous of enter x I guess or x you know you you don't shoot
the bad guys you dash into them mostly I mean you get other powers too and have other ways to kill
them too later you get which is the most imbe- fucking imbellen skill like overpowered skill later you get
like a grenade launcher or whatever and that is just killing everything so you also have that
but in the beginning your main berserk power is just dishing into the bad guys and killing them that
way and bouncing off them and using the dash also to get the ground also it's your main
tool of mobility and everything and you go through different levels they have different flavors
I wanted them to be a bit more diverse because they all feel kind of a bit like okay you know
still kind of an attack environment in a way so they're not that visually distinctive I believe
there's enough and they are definitely you have your eyes fire or whatever but still some parts
of the levels looked a bit sameish and it didn't help that the map wasn't super great
when it comes to you having to try collectible stuff because you have to save base members which is
kind of like a mega-man zero thing right but you also have to collect medals and everything and
for that you have to teleport between certain things there were since it's an indie game
there were not that really good like if many good FAQs out there when I played that and I had to go
through a long play let's play off someone off of the game and check out all their picked it up
so at least I found something on youtube um it was fun the story is nothing to write home about like
it was okay but it was very basic but you know the gameplay was fun it was well thought out it had some
some wonky stuff on certain parts when it came to movement where it just the flow the gameplay
flow on the floor if you go to the level didn't feel as good a couple of sudden deaths sudden death
a moment that were not super fair which feels like it's it's also part of the mega-man stable I guess
what I feel like in a lot of those games except for the really shitty ones that is more balanced
Berserkro had some moments where it's like oh god this is annoying do we have to do this now and then
the you know the the uh respawn points are not necessarily great where it's like oh god I have to
go through all this entire part again are you kidding me um but it was still like 90% of the time it was
super fun for me and it was like yeah this is a really good mega-man like so I can recommend that if
you are into that series uh it looks really good like really big sprites sprites I don't even know if
they're proper sprites or if they are like drawn over you know uh normal CG models or whatever and
how they actually designed but it looks really nice it looks really Saturday morning uh cartoonish in
terms of design what you agree John I mean you played the demo how did you feel about this
yeah definitely has that salary morning cartoon you look I think
when I get tell when I was waiting it just looks like sprites I mean I don't know
how much it'd be drawn over or anything but you know it looked like they were just trying to go for a
a hand-drawn look yeah it did and it works absolutely and the music is great I like that a lot too
how did you feel about the gameplay when you checked it out I thought you know just pre-fast and
can I click you were describing like I just I need it's on the list the list ever grows I mean it's a
quick game and I think by the time you get to it you will also have more uh people who actually
show you where the collectible stuff is because some of that stuff is pretty well hidden or it's like
wait there that's where it was Jesus Christ how am I supposed to find that so I mean you don't have
to do it I don't even remember what you get if you get an alternate ending if you collect all
metals or whatever or different power I don't remember I remember it being worth it for some reason
so otherwise I wouldn't have done it but uh it was a fun time absolutely so definitely recommend
you checking that out as well what else you got captain tow treasurer tracker yes which is a port I guess
I kept putting it off from the Wii U version I eventually sat down and wanted to play the switch
version and that games neat uh frustrating as heck toward the end but okay the the puzzle solving
element is pretty cool um I know the fact you know all the stages are different dioramas basically
isn't it obviously this was the concept that they took from mario 3d world and decided let's just
make a game out of it uh yes sure neat that's fine um some of the stuff they expect you to try and find
while you're playing like look for this little dot on the screen basically like the little
pixel toads or the like you have to rip these posters off the walls it's like you have to really
like pay attention and it's weird because the game is geared around the touch screen which means it
doesn't work as well it's what I wonder because you know it coming off the Wii U on the Wii U
originally I think there wasn't some kind of interaction between the the gamepad and the main
screen right yeah it's definitely better geared toward the touch like playing in portable mode with
the touch screen like there are ways some of the things do work in uh docked mode but it's like boy
they stay sure didn't intend for it to be played this way so why the switch port exists is actually
kind of a mystery to me but it's because nobody owned a Wii U there is that
but it's still it feels like they could have maybe figured things out a little better than they did
like it for some of the parts were just like cranks you can hold down like z-r on the joy kind of like
use the motion control to actually twist it around and sometimes it works um sometimes it works
so what does it was that the frustrating part to what's and you were talking about or was that
related to something else I mean there's that but then there's also some levels toward the end of the
game there are like there's one stage where is there's a lava all over the place and there's these
speed booster pads that you have to run on and trying to find the pixel to toward the end of the
stage is like it is quite literally a spotting pixels because it's so small and it blends in with
everything else and I must have redone that stage like 50 times at least trying to do that
and then the final stage is a real pisser because it's like oh you need to clear the stage with
I forget how many coins it was it's like either a hundred and fifty or two hundred and the way
they hide coins in the first half of the stage for you to get to the boss is dvs like you have to
scrape through the stage to find all them the nice thing is there's a checkpoint before the boss so if
you lose a life you go back to the checkpoint when you go back to the checkpoint your coin count
resets to zero oh Jesus Christ so you have to do it clean from beginning to end and it's like
I got to I did all of the objectives in every other stage except for that and I was just like no
yeah that feels like it's trying to waste your time and I was like that's it I'm done and the
fun thing is after you finish the game they're like here's like 30 more levels I'm like what are you
doing to me that's it no I kind of you know it might be my increasing age at this point but I
get very sick of games that are that finish and then they're not over because they still have a
post game thing or like Jesus Christ why I get it you need longevity in everything and people need
to get the most out of because games will get more expensive and everything I get it but when the
credits roll I kind of want to be done with the game and not have like oh there's here this
fucking here 10 hours more of this this shit and I'm like yeah I liked it but not that much
I want to play something else the next thing I'm gonna talk about did that as well but with this one
they did two credit rolls in Captain Toad one one after episode one and one after episode three which
is the intended end of the game because you get that you see the full ending sequence and say
yay the game and then they I believe I believe please don't quote me on this I believe the levels
they drop on you after the end of the game are supposed to be like some of the DLC levels from the
Wii U version I think but I'm not 100% on that but it's still like brother please brother
please calm down no I get it and I'll talk about the game at the tail end of this that also kind of
did the same thing so I think it's neat but it's also a lot of game and I was just by the end of it I
was so frustrated with like the last three to five levels I was like I want to be done please let
me be done like I start I touched on some of the other levels a little bit and I was like
I could I could spend another probably 20 hours playing this game and I probably just be sitting there
like we miss it over yeah I'm so I just kind of walked away from it I have the Wii U version I
touched at once and I was like all right I don't like puzzle games I didn't abide this that's
like that's like the remake of Mario versus Donkey Kong that they released on Switch like so
after you finished the game they're like here's the plus worlds is there new and they have an extra
challenge and I'm like that's neat okay and apparently after you beat those there's another set of
stages and I'm like Jesus stop too much yeah so I'll never play this I won't get the the the
Switch version of this but hey I'm glad it's except for it being too much and the final levels and
so on I'm glad to hear that it sounds fun it just was just the most interesting thing to me was like
wait how are they gonna actually do the thing that they did on a Wii U on the Switch because you know
it's a different system it works differently this is also the thing I'm thinking about if they ever
bring over Starfrog zero like how will they do that like you can use the right joy con
like a Wii U remote and point at the screen to interact with stuff but the joy con also works
differently than the Wii mode because the Wii mode had you know the infrared sensor the joy con
only has the gyroscope so if it's pointing in the wrong direction you're constantly having a
reset its position but with a lot of games like this that have that feature they actually thought
of that in reciting the position is just push a button on the controller and it's like okay at
least you got that figured out really interested to see I got myself X and I'm glad Chronicles X
which I will eventually play about first X and I'm glad Chronicles 3 now that's gonna finally run at
a stable 30 probably on Switch 2 and there is a feature in that game where I very much
that was very much geared toward or Taylor toward the Wii U experience in you having
this tablet with a touchscreen in your hand as well it's not as integral in terms of actually having
to move around but it's like this map where you can do specific specific tasks like do this this
management system with the notes that you planned all over the world and that you can quickly
teleport teleport between notes and you didn't have to open like a map screen for it was just on
your tablet the entire time and not having that I wonder how that will play out on the Switch version
it's not it's not problematic to port in terms of you just have to probably hit a button and then
you get that but that additional button might actually you know make the experience worse than
it was on the Wii U because you constantly have to switch screens to actually use that thing so I
wonder how this will work so interested to see it eventually but it's yeah that's the thing I'm
always interested to see when they do ports of Wii U games that actually did a bit more a heavier
made heavier use of both the main screen and your Wii U gamepad in connection to with each other
I'm always interested to see how they worked that out for the Switch and if it's actually playable
yeah I'm not sure about that either but I mean but it seems to like they at least got it kind of
working for yeah yeah that's good and I'm being apparently people seem to have been fine with
Xenoblade X on Switch so yeah so apparently the runs good I'm looking forward to revisiting that game
it's been a long time I hope now we're gonna get the second one off that because the ending is
very open so about the 60 FPS patches for that in the other Xenoblade games yeah yeah
like people data mined out is 60 FPS mode in Xenoblade X so now then I don't know
they might they might do a switch to version of that and then you know release that and next year or
whatever yeah no idea if monolith soft is working on that or if they're working on their next big
thing whatever it may be then oh yes remake I wish that'll never happen because Xenoblade
years is so tied up in legal red tape between square and band i namco and that's a bummer that game
deserves to to get a full release with all the missing content that they weren't able to implement
because of the mismanagement I keep saying that after Final Fantasy VII remake three comes out
do you see no gears but that will be a little probably never happen yeah I mean there's not that much
legal tape red tape with Final Fantasy VII because it's still with the same people and also
Xenoblade was not as successful like it is a cold hit for a lot of people but it is not like this
blockbuster super hit that Final Fantasy VII was so I don't know if it will actually justify that
in the other hand you don't need to make it as big of a remake as well Fantasy VII make it a fucking
HD remaster in the style of that what they're doing right now with dragon quest and you know the
octopath traveler style whatever just do it like that only with with Xenoblade years and
all the content in there that wasn't in the original game but was intended to possibly I mean there's
a whole book for that shit that they can use to you know that would be that would be neat but
part of me yearns for a big budget remake of Xenoghears but I know I know that that won't happen John
I can't see that happening unless Nintendo is like hey just you know the Xenoblade Chronicles games
have been pretty successful for us most of the guys who worked on that are with monolith and
whatever are there the people who worked under them and whatever so just give us the rights to
that shit and we're just gonna do a remake of that I can't see anything I I don't think this
will happen but it would be nice it would be nice I recently replayed that game I enjoyed it very
much and I'm listening to a podcast like going through the entire story of the game and talking
about the background stuff and I didn't know that so much was missing from that game I mean it was
evident because of how disc 2 pants out but yes but but but I wasn't aware like with all all the all
all the stuff that was missing that was intended to be real dungeons and whatever and not just a
boss fight so yeah I have one friend who's a massive mega super fan of Xenoghears and he had
talked about all of that at length in me a long time we're gonna say Jesus they really just
chopped this game down to nothing oh they had they they had two choices they could have just ended
it at a very very inopportune time which probably would have kept them from actually making the second
part of the game or at least that was their assumption because that would have been like right
after Solaris or whatever with the super open and it not really a finale ash feeling and then
they could have you know speculated on being able to make its proper second game as intended
but the one the path they chose was like no we just want to tell a finished story so this is the
only option we see for that and I can see why that tap it just it was an inexperienced in experience
team that did that and it was just bad planning and shit happens I mean we still got a great game out
of it so that's that's kind of the the saving grace for all this but it's always like it always makes
you wonder what could have been so I mean David's also super ambitious because you finished the game
and it says I think it's there are like oh Xenoghears part five and it's like it's intended to be like a
seven part story yeah and then Xenosauga happened and like barely anyone like Xenosauga so yeah
like I think Xenosauga one is okay two is kind of three is pretty good but on the whole the
badding average of Xenosauga was like mmm I'm gonna touch those games I was like I like Xenoghears a lot
a whole damn lot but I was like Xenosauga sounds like much more of a mixed bag
it really is yeah but I still have not touched Xenoblade two or three but I loved Xenoblade one so
you I think you were really like to I feel like that game is geared towards you in a many different ways
and it also does some it does some things differently like then one definitely
but yeah it hurts some things but I don't know the details because I haven't touched it for myself
but the story is really interesting so I recommend you getting there rather sooner than later
and yes I get it super big games but I'm looking forward to finally playing three in the not
too distant future after Metroid probably you know interjecting a small game after that you know
pellet cleanser and then I'm probably gonna go to Xenoblade probably because
but I played another really big RPG and we already talked about this so
I don't want to recapitulate all of that but I played the remake of Persona 3 Persona 3 Reelout
my second Persona game technically I mean I watched someone else play one or two for a bit
back in the day but the first one that I really played for myself was five so the most recent one
technically I mean one and two might as well be a difference yes so I've heard or so I remember
but I fucking loved five it's up in the pantheon pantheon of my favorite RPG at the RPGs at this point
definitely just blew me away so much so that I played it through the back to back twice
like I played through the whole game and then I went right back into it for new game plus and
played all over it again like I think I've never done this with an RPG and five was like this was
over I wasn't able to max out all social links and I was like I'm not done with this I'm gonna do
this again and use a guide and get everyone like max out and whatever and I try to do this for
Persona 3 Reelout 2 I was like okay I'm just gonna use a guide hope it's non-spoiler and that guy
fucked me because there were several errors in that so I wasn't able to max out all the social links
at the end oh no yes and I noticed that too late at a certain point I was like wait wait
these don't match up like it always said what level you reach in the you know in the social
interactions in the guide so I said now you're at level so on so I was like wait but I'm missing
two levels how did that happen and I went back and they actually they fucked up some of the
planning in that guide so and didn't notice it themselves apparently and just jumped for one or
two characters from level six to level eight without actually doing the lack work in the guide to
tell you that you need to have the interaction with these characters at specific days they just
forgot to put them in there apparently and they focus so much on the beginning to get your
social stats so your you know to the stuff you need to get into certain buildings or to get good
rewards in school or whatever that I didn't have enough time to max out everyone at the end and
that made me really fucking angry I even commented on the guide and they removed my comment I was nice
I was nice in the current assess I was just please to everyone who's reading this
don't use this guide because of these and these reasons I didn't insult anyone and they removed the
fucking comment oh my god that is scummy wait let me let me actually yes it was the persona three
calendar a reload calendar guide from game rent shows me to use something that game rent does
okay maybe that was my mistake but just for you people out there who intend to play persona
three reload and want to do it with the guide so you can max out all your social links don't use that one
because that one is bugged and there's shit missing and you're not gonna be able to mix max out all
your social links and if you're trying to find my comments under that that article that says the same
thing it's not there anymore so I don't know if the author of the guide removed that or if someone else
from the site did it but there is definitely there's definitely several errors in that guide and
if you follow it closely you will not be able to make socials that's your social links so that was
a bit of a bummer by the end there that kind of I mean it doesn't completely ruin the game because
the game is great it's a great story it's a very dark story I mean persona five was also very dark
story but that had a very much more uplifting ending which this one doesn't it is it's also kind of
nice and fitting ending very much in in tune with the theme of the show of the show with in tune with
the theme of the game it totally fits it makes sense the thing that bumped me out and that was the
another fall of the internet because I believe that I guess or didn't uh didn't research it thoroughly
enough so it was maybe my fault you have you can romance girls in these games uh and I was looking for
okay who is the main girl for this in terms of story like what makes the most sense in terms of
the main plot which girl you know you end up with at the end uh and there were several people
who are like yeah you can romance all of them there's no punishment for that there's like I don't
care I don't want to build a haram I want to have the relationship that makes the most sense in terms
of the story of the fucking game uh so they named two characters that were the intended demands uh
that seemed like they were intended to be the mains uh also you know emphasized by the OVA
by the movies that came out the anime moves or whatever and that those are you curry and agus
it's definitely agus just for absolutely like it makes like it's no sense in terms of story to go for
anyone else the problem is I went for you curry because of who is you know I was worried because I was
also a god uh who uh will I even be able to to max everyone out and laugh and uh so I remember with
you curry so I also you get a special event on Christmas uh that you can spend with the person
you're romancing a romancing in the game and uh agus is unlocked uh her roman's option is unlocked
very late in the game so you couldn't even have her take part in that so I went for you curry problem
is story-wise go for agus because she is absolutely absolutely the girl the main character is supposed
to end up with like the whole ending credit scene like is totally about her and that character the whole
DLC uh the answer is about her which I haven't played yet because I'll get to that but um like if you
want to go for the in the girl if you can go for any girl you want to I don't want to like dig
day to you but if you want to go for the person that makes the most sense in terms of story and
character relation everything to the main character then go with agus because see she is absolutely
after a sec a certain point a second main character of the game and you know in the DLC even more so
so feel free to go for anyone else but if you want to get the most out of the most satisfying
ending and the most emotional and personal ending go with her and I didn't do that and so that hampered
the experience a bit and I think a person of five that is not much of an issue really because
there is not that much of a clear main girl there I feel like you know I don't even know who who
would it could be there but I feel like it's more open there and in but in three it's definitely her
it's definitely her so that was kind of like that does work all like these little detracting factors
and I was like oh I didn't didn't get the the the the perfect a quote-unquote story ending in terms
of character relationships and I wasn't able to max on all the social links so that hampered my
experience with the game a bit doesn't have to be the case for you just use a different guide and
also if you don't give a shit about mixing everyone out and getting like the perfect ending then
that also won't bother you it's just it for me outside of these misgivings I had a really good time
with persona three reload not as good of a time just in general as with five but that might also
be because five was just my first real persona game and I had such a good time with that and such a
great experience with the story and everything and so yeah but the story in three is great the characters
are great it has best best boy Kuro Maru and he was great Jesus Christ that dog is overpowered
yeah he is so fucking good I was happy I was glad I kept him in my party pretty much like after the
half-word point for the entire time because he was just like the the best solution to everything also
has the ultimate debuff at the end the ultimate debuff magic that you get from I mean I had that
with with my main character too but it was nice to have a side character who can do that so
debilitate or whatever it's called and yeah he he's great all the other characters are great
I mean Junpei is an idiot but even his he's called stupid for reason yeah even his story was good
and sweet by the end and I like that too and I think he was fun like he was probably he made me laugh
the most because he's like this like this dream boat right every girl kind of is like or looking at
him oh my god he's such a star whatever but he's such an awkward dude like who doesn't even notice it
because he's so focused on working out and training and being good in class and whatever he
isn't mean or anything he's just a bit weird but there are so many moments where he behaved like if
somewhat robot even more so than Aegis that made me laugh out loud like he's a really fun character
also my main in persona three arena persona for arena and yeah he's he's super fun and I like all the
other characters I like Mitsu Mitsu I like Fuka I like Yukari she's super fun give everyone a lip
and whatever give everyone lip and whatever Ken was fun too and I'm not that big on like kids
in in these kind of games with this kind of cast but he wasn't annoying in any or anything so
and his story with his relationship to one of the other characters which game you could have
warned me about that I put a lot of a lot of my additional you know stat boosters into that person
yeah yeah yeah but his relationship their relationship is cool and like I said Kuro Moro is amazing
and Aegis is fun too you know it's kind of a bummer that you unlock her you know her social links
stuff so late I would have liked to have that sprinkled more in between from beginning from the beginning
but you know her story is also cool there's more of her in the DLC which I haven't played yet because
after credits wrapped on that I was already in a pretty like somber mood because of the ending
and because of some of the stuff I missed and then the DLC is kind of just a grindfest as I've come
to learn and the game does the cardinal sin of basically unleveling your character like you suddenly
can't use your high level personas anymore your magic and the more you level you know all your
skills are gone and everything I was like so you're basically rebooting all my characters and I have
to do the shit all over again and I mean don't get me wrong the gameplay is fun but I already did all
of that and now you want me to do just that again and apparently the story is not that elaborate in
the DLC it's mostly just fights and so I was like I'm probably just gonna watch that on YouTube
someone else play through this for the story parts if they're not that many in there anyway
and yeah so I'm probably gonna do that because that kind of annoyed me it's like hey okay this
might be like a new game plus ish thing where it's like hey you get a bit more but you have your
super uploaded characters maybe a bit stronger enemies which would be the way to go for me in my
opinion like have you really like use your your your your level up personas and everything
and yeah I also like didn't fight the optional boss of the main game because that's some puzzle
puzzle bullshit yeah yeah yeah yeah and since I didn't wasn't able thanks to the shitty guy to
max out on my social links I wasn't able to get the ultimate persona which makes that fight
apparently much easier and since I didn't have that I was like nope I'm not gonna go out of my way
and try to do this shit for like one or two hours or whatever long that fight is gonna take
depending on how I have to set up my other personas and whatever it's like this is too this is too much
work this this is supposed to be fun and this sounds like work so I'm not gonna do that but everything
else else in the game I loved I think the persona games are just kind of made for me in that they're
very anime issue of course they're you know the way they're set up and the way the magic system
works with the elemental weaknesses and everything and the you being able to knock out the enemies
and then doing an all-out attack if that is successful and you know one of the reasons I like five more
than three was that five has actually dedicated dungeons which three doesn't have yet it's just a
tartarous thing which is like this randomly generated dungeon and so it all looks kind of same as
all the different levels of tartarous have a style a different style to them but just in terms of
moving around in these dungeons and the layout and everything because it's procedurally generated
and randomly it all looks it all felt kind of same or so I like that more about five five also has the
the random dungeon stuff as well but it also has dedicated dungeons which I really appreciate it
which were you know which all look different from each other and play different from each other
and has specific little quirks and gameplay mechanics in them that the other dungeons don't have
and that none of the things in persona three really have so but I like like I said I just like the
persona games and I'm really looking forward to the remake of forer I heard the story is only so so
John from what you said yeah I mean it's kind of predictable but the social length stuff is really
really good and I hope and they have more bespoke dungeons instead of the randomly generated ones
that they did from the original because I mean I feel like it kind of works for tartarous because
it's like ooh it's mysterious ooh it only pops out at the midnight hour and they get that kind of
gives them a little bit of leeway on that but in four it's like no I don't think it really works as
well for that okay yeah but hey I'm looking forward to to becoming friends with these characters
learning all about them and it's just it's just a fun RPG and I don't don't know or haven't played
that many RPGs that are just feel like classic turn-based RPGs JRPGs but are but are set in like
current time that are not as straight fantasy tale or sci-fi tale or whatever and that's just set at a
goddamn fucking Japanese high school and then you go around and have all the social stuff in there
and fantastic music and presentation I haven't even talked about that yet because that's one of
the best things about persona persona five just the way it looks just blew me away and three does the
same thing like the opening credits are so amazing and all the menu designs and the music in that in
those games it's just so goddamn good five definitely set the precedent for hyper stylized menus
because I mean look at metaphor look at three reload like they just kind of carried that forward
yeah I'm sure I'm sure four what are they calling for remake whatever they're calling it
they'll probably end up doing the same sort of thing I hope so because I just love how much style
this these versions of these games are oozing like like I said five just blew me away in terms of how it
looked and it's and three does the same thing just a different theme because five was red three is blue
and four is yellow and we'll see what six is gonna be probably maybe green maybe orange maybe purple
we'll see there's still some some primary colors left I guess so yeah I could definitely see green I
mean I think about purple and it feels close to blue and orange feels a little close to red like you
could make those work but I feel like green is the likely candidate yeah I mean technically we already
have green in the midnight hour and persona three right but it's only like yeah this is all scream yeah
it's not the yes splashes of green it's not aggressively blue like the rest of the game yeah I mean
that could go for different flavor of green so what's the app I'm just I mean I don't know when we'll
get six four is gonna come first definitely and but I'm looking forward to whenever we're gonna get
that big big shiny new one and I'm gonna play the shit out of that hey at least on all modern
platforms you can play the entire persona series one and two what's that persona started at three
might as well have but maybe I'll find a way to go back to one and two
so I don't feel like that's quite as deranged as the people who unironically say
Castlevania started at symphony of the night it's like shut up no that is absolutely not true
like the people who unironically say it like with persona yeah because one and two are like
they said are there so vastly different like I I think they got remade on the PSP why not port those
forward at some point like I mean I remake would be cool a modernize them but like me make
them available somewhere man and maybe they will we'll see but yeah what what else did you play
may have last like game proper because the rest of it is some early there is some other stuff that
they could be mentioned in other parts of our talk today but the last big one is Pokemon legends
Archaeus not the one you thought it was gonna be I bet about to say not the one everyone is thinking of
yeah I'm a little little behind so Archaeus is they definitely this was definitely them trying to
open world this year is because this released before Scarleton Violet yeah
and this game is cool because it's you know very certainly different time compared to when you would
think is like all the Pokemon games are usually pretty like contemporary to whatever current
time is you know it feels like it would could take place concurrently with whatever year it was
released and right you know but uh this they're like now we're gonna throw you back in time several
hundred years before Sinnoh was Sinnoh and you're just gonna have to survive being literally
Esekide so you start your own Pokemon journey out of your own home world and it's you're basically
going around the map like trying to sneak up on Pokemon and catch them stealthily and add them
to your party and by catching them and seeing them do different things you quote unquote research them
and that adds to like this thing where the higher your research level the stronger your Pokemon are
allowed to be and the further you can progress the story and it's kind of cool because they expanded
on some of the Pokemon by giving them regional variants so I went through and I was like I like
to play each game like I want to use stuff that's native to that region or stuff that I haven't used
before which a little tough now that we're uh nine generations in and a lot of the big name stuff
has been used so I decided to go for a lot more of the Hesuiian regional variants and that was
neat to do but uh the the I like the idea that they are laying the foundation for what diamond and
pearl and platinum were but boy oh boy they go out of their way to be like well you have to do this
researching and it drags the game down to like it's like you could speedrun your way through
this one like any given section of story and then like wait hold on how many stars do you have
and the stars indicate your research level and say well I have I have the one star will you need to
how do I get the second go back out in the field catch more Pokemon a lot more Pokemon a lot more
fight more of them try and see the different actions that they do and it's like
it's a big roadblock to retain urine across it which it kind of serves a purpose to let you level
up your team because you need to be a little bit higher level to finish this game than some of the
other ones like I eventually got to a point where I was like okay we're gonna stop and get to level 70
before I even think about finishing the game which that took a minute to do
but um the game is at least kind enough to in the polka decks to be like
well if you do these sorts of things you'll get more research points out of them and you'll be
able to level up slightly faster and even then that still takes a minute to do because I got
I guess I got to a point where I was like decently leveled enough to get through it certain zones
and just be like hey I'm done no you're not JK it yet so I'm seeing there for like two to three hours
at any point just a roaming the map catching what I can fighting what I can and it just like
slows the game down to a crawl and from what I understand
Zay is a little bit better about that it lets you keep moving and keep moving forward and making progress
which I'm kind of looking forward to that aspect of it like I know people have some other issues with
Zay will probably talk about that when I eventually play it but like I said I enjoyed taking some
a couple of the older Pokemon that I had caught in other games and be like well I'm gonna try
racing this version of it because like everyone knows growl with an arc and nine because they were
in the original game but now it's double type it has it's fire and rock type and it has access to
other moves and it can do you know other things and now there's these Pokemon that you can
you come in with during parts of the story if you use them to ride around the map and
climb areas that normally wouldn't be accessible and this and that and the other thing and the
and I think the flavor of the game is really neat because then they have these other fights where
it's like there are these enraged Pokemon where you have to actually engage directly with them as
the trainer not as you know if fight them with your Pokemon where you have to throw these balls at
them to calm them down so then you can eventually if you have an opening send out your Pokemon to
fight them to weaken them a bit so you can continue the process and then you can calm them down so
then they're like oh I'm not quite as enraged as I was five minutes ago and they could just go
back to doing their thing did you in general which type of because this has a more active battle
style like you just described did you did you did you prefer that one over the normal turn-based style
stuff or well there is that which is exclusive to like the like I forget what they're called like
the totem Pokemon were in Sun and Moon like the whatever they're called in this game that's when
you engage them directly like that the other rest of it is like the turn-based normal stuff but
they added in as Pokemon level up in us they use moves more and more they can master
the moves and then you can use them in different ways called agile style and strong style which uses
more of the power points but in agile style the move power is reduced but you get an extra turn
after it so you can sort of strategize with that a little bit be like well if I do this I can
get a turn back and then hit them later on harder and then strong style gives up a turn but it hits
harder I believe the power differential is like I think it's like 20% is it 20% I believe between
20% upper down depending whether you select agile or strong and it can give you an edge like if you
want to finish a fight now you can hit with a strong style move but if you want to reclaim an extra
turn and then hit them twice in a row you can use agile style so I think that's a neat way to do it
this game also does away with the TM's that a lot of other games have as you increase your research
several there's this woman in the training grounds Zisu that you can go to and be like hey I want
to learn new moves you can pay her and you can add moves to your Pokemon moves move pools this
did the thing that carried over into Scarlet Scarlet Violet and I believe into ZA where as your
Pokemon learn moves they get put into a pool of moves that they have accessible any given point
you can only take four at a time into a battle but you can be like oh I want this this Pokemon to
also know these two other moves and you can switch them out situationally at no additional cost
the only thing about moves that you learn from Zisu is that they don't naturally master them so
you need to acquire items called seeds of mastery and then later on you can use those to force a
Pokemon to master and move that it wouldn't normally have otherwise so and then in the later in the
games after that they did away with the additional styles but keeping the additional moves you can
switch on in a in an out on the flight is such a good idea dude because for so long you'd either
have to override you would either have to override a move and lose it forever or you'd have to go to
the move delete or the move remember and it's like oh and at the move remember you need to spend a
heart scale and heart scales are very rare and hard to come by and it's like Jesus Christ
it's so much better now than it was and I'm glad that they have gotten into their heads yes this is
a better way to do it scarlet and violet the throw away the idea that TM's were infinite use after they
introduced that idea in black and white which was the best change in that game but then they brought
that back again for Z.A. as far as I understand which is like okay okay we're finally in a good spot
you can keep it like this this is great and you know obviously they're gonna try and find a way to
innovate the game moving the games when we for a coast there was god there was the big game freak
leak that happened wasn't a month or two ago I forget when exactly but it sounds like you know
they have plans for another legends game after this one gen 10 is in the works
there's no remake of black and white in the blueprint so sad that's the one thing I wanted most
maybe it was having eventually maybe but I was really hoping that after legends EA that would be
the next one but it was like okay all right but I think on the whole legends archius on the battle
side set a really good blueprint for the games moving forward on the exploration side it was
definitely definitely a first step towards the way that games are now because scarlet and violet
were definitely less of a slog in comparison and I sort of I kind of ruined this game a little bit
because I played scarlet violet first in spite of scarlet and violet's downsides when it
because it launched in a state and it got it got better is it went along and now the ideal way to
play is if you have a switch to because it plays so much better on them now and they're a lot more fun
than they were like they don't run like they're on a potato anymore so I've heard
and there's just a lot better now but legends archius is a neat for what it is but you have to be
willing to overcome some weird humps to get to the good stuff but I think it's said of neat blueprint
moving forward yeah I mean you're gonna have a second taste with that with or off that with the
Z a right so yes I play pokemon games in a weird way though because I like to look at the entire decks
when it's released and I'd be like okay how am I gonna build my team and I look at that and I'm like
okay I want my team to be this and then I look at the move pools and I want the move pools to be that
so it's gonna be a minute of researching what I want my team to be before I actually sit down
and play it and like I said I like to do different a little bit different teams each time I play but
there's so much overlap in the decks this time around in Z a because it's a lot smaller than it was
before so I'm just gonna have to at some point probably throw my hands up and be like all right
there's just going to be repeats in here because because my boy Marie Pneumferosa in there and I love
that pokemon so much I'm just like all right maybe you're gonna be on the team again if you were in
heart gold so yeah I mean pokemon is what it is and I'll probably keep playing them in spite of
what the games are and I know there's a lot of there's a lot of criticisms to be leveled against them
but you know after everyone made a big stink about the reduction of the size of the pocketexon
sword and shield well that game still sold I think like uh 26 million copies so I have it one of the
few Pokemon games I have no that's not true I have Arches as well but I have not touched it yet
so it's like one of those like well clearly other people didn't want to speak with their wallets
so sorry guys I mean I'm guilty of it too I bought sword and I I really enjoyed it so
but I also get where people were like I get where people were like uh but it was
the the the the the the the the the the the wild areas were definitely the blueprint for what Arches
and then what scarlet violet would become so yeah yeah I get it I understand but I'm I'm still here
being stupid consumer so but yeah like those Arches is cool like I said it it definitely walked
so the games after it could run so yeah it's pretty much that about that what you get
after the giant as RPG that I played I was like okay I need to do a smaller um to D game again and
thankfully a fucking great remake of a stellar or reboot or whatever you want to call it of a
of a franchise hits hit the gaming shelves and that is the new shinobi game shinobi art of vengeance
and that game was a blast I don't even know how much to say about that it's just a god damn good
side scroll action game just just a joy from beginning to end to play like the mechanics are fantastic
the game looks incredible like a fantastic art style uh you know the story is super basic but
it's it's fine it has everything and you want in there is enough fan service in there I guess because
I am not super familiar with shinobi games I didn't play any of them really because I didn't have
Sega consoles until the dreamcast and uh so this is my first real shinobi game that I played from
beginning to end played a bit of shadow dance or any arcade arcades but that's about it and a bit
of the ps2 game but this one was just fantastic just so much so much fun to play the bosses are
really well thought out and the different things you have to do it's very metroidvania ish
you have to unlock skills to later revisit certain levels and find more secrets and everything and
there are some the optional sort that does more damage is hidden behind these these obstacle courses
and challenge rooms you have to do and some of those are brutal but doable I did all of them
if you look at my gaming profile if you for some reason search that out I hope you don't
and don't find the game there that's because I had to play it on my uh us account profile because for
some reason did the dlc I got with it when I ordered from the drone games was fucking region blocked
I couldn't play it on my german account because the dd I couldn't unlock the dlc there for some reason
that's so weird what super weird I don't know why that happened but yeah so I had to use my
us a PlayStation account for that so it's the I'm glad I don't give a shit about trophies otherwise
I would probably be angry but that's why that game is on there no but fun breezy game uh long enough
for the game it like I said looks incredible the the fighting mechanics are just so much fun it's so
it feels so good to play that game it has just such great movement such cool comment mechanics and
variations that you can use and how you can play it and so on um yeah it's it's so well thought out
it's so much it's the music is fantastic and uh yeah I had a fantastic time from beginning to end
like if you're in the mood for a super good action game like in the t2d space just get there I'm
gonna play through a lot of ninja games in the coming months because this is the first one then we
have the new ninja guidance 2d game rage bound yeah yeah I have that as well that looks also fantastic
judging from the trailers I'm gonna play that next and then I have a cyber shadow which is more 8-bit
style ninja guidance I forgot about that game I'm gonna play that as well so you're gonna get a lot
more ninja games from me in the next episodes of freeze frames per seconds that's for sure but
shinobi is art of vengeance is a tough tough one to beat because that's just fantastic came from
beginning to end it's so good it's super hard it's brutal some of the bosses are insane and to
challenge courses are really really just holy shit some of them anyway some of them are super easy
which is like how is that the final one there was just too fucking easy but uh one of them in the middle
there good lord uh that really tested my platforming skills like they haven't been tested in a long
while so I really enjoyed that that sounds good I mean this is on my list I had played the demo of
ninja guidance so like this is on the list uh ninja guidance on the list cyber shadows on those
the messenger I still haven't finished I played a ton of that but I still haven't finished that game
is longer than I thought actually so I got me I don't know exactly how far I am in the game but I
had gotten all of the upgrades and thought I was relatively close to the end but the game was like
just kidding idiot so I I want to actually wrap that up before I look at all these other things but
yeah no I had only heard good things about uh Shinobi and ninja guidance so I heard the new
ninja the new new ninja guidance and she forzo so pretty decent too supposed to be good too nice to
hear off three was not that great so I flat it's a platinum did it right uh yeah they've worked on
it with a team ninja I believe nice cool cool looking forward to playing that eventually as well
uh resisting that's here that's here is the 3d version of that but uh ragebound is first
so and that seems to be a much more uh uh much different style but also really cool uh so yeah
forward to that john what else do you have left I got a couple quick things and I think that's it for me
so I was a thumb-on through youtube the other day and I saw Caleb Hart the speed runner was playing
some mega man X like he does but it was a little different than what I was expecting he was playing
the thing called the root matrix randomizer uh so this is a thing that was put together by this
japanese rom hacker pude saabay maybe if you put a mega man for minus infinity I have I don't know if
all is this a pet but yeah yeah that is one that is probably one of their big magnum opus rom hack works
because they're so minus infinity is insane and if you were sick of playing mega man over and over
you want something drastically different oh oh oh oh four mi has got it but um
what the root matrix randomizer is it takes the roms for rockman x1 2 and 3
and puts them together and it randomizes the items you can get across all three roms
interesting I wonder how they avoid breaking the games with that well there's there's a lot of
different settings and I think so you can download a utility and use it on your desktop but there's also
a website with a lot more customization options and I think there are certain things that are
done to prevent like soft locks in there so I think it's pretty much free of anything that where you
could potentially run across a game ending sequence of events but what this randomizes is literally
everything the weapons you get from bosses the the static items in each state you know how in some
stage or like oh there is a one-up that is always here oh there is like an energy you think there's
always here those can be anything so you can pick up and be like oh this one-up is now just a pellet
of energy this subtank this thing that was a subtank before well now it's a I don't know it's the
it's the shotgun ice and yes yes and the way it works is on the stage select for each game it
actually has a list of all of the items you can get in each stage and it will highlight them as you
pick them pick them up so you know whether or not you have quote unquote completed a stage and
from the stage like you hit the select button and it will drop out the game it was save the state
of the game recurrently by drop it out and cycle to the next game in sequence so the way versus you
won't necessarily have to complete the game but you the objective is to get sigma keys so you can
unlock the end game stages and the game is good the game is considered over once you have beaten sigma
at the end of each game okay sounds very interesting it's all in it's a lot and you can do all sorts of
weird toggles like you can randomize weapon properties oh wow okay so when I was watching Caleb
Hart like the the chameleon sting was a coded weapon for his playthrough like it was slicing through
every enemy in every boss the game also has a toggle where it's like well since this is going to be a
bit tougher since it's a randomizer well you can choose to start with the dash boots and x1 okay
okay that's you know that makes things a little bit easier but you can also choose to not start with
that so which will make you going through x1 considerably more difficult you can also have a toggle
where all bosses start at half health and then every four bosses you beat their life meter increases
and I believe it caps it like I think three full life meters so boss fights can get much longer
in much more intense compared to the vanilla games like one of the neat things when he was playing
x3 that I know that he figured out was that the boss fights that you have to redo like in particular
in the end game Doppler stages that one room where you have to refight the bosses before you go
fight Doppler you can skip that room entirely because you because it's designed so it's that you don't
get anything from those bosses in the original game so it's like why do you need to refight them the
game will just say okay okay you could just go one through and it's just a real neat way to mix up
playing these games because I mean there are some rom hacks out there for the early s games but not
all of them are in my opinion all that interesting like you have your kaizo s1 search is like
really goofy with stupid stage layouts and it's like oh man that's not it so I hadn't finished a run
of this yet but I've gotten a decent way into it but I think this is a great way to make the first
three games a lot more replayable and I think if you if you're tired of playing the original games
the way they are it's definitely worth checking out the thing is you have to set it up in a very
specific emulator biz hawk which I think is one that a lot of people use for like task runs
and then you have to set the emulation core to a certain one and then you have to run the game not
from the boot rom but from the Lewis script I say all of this because I would have figured this out
easily if I looked at the read me because I was like I was trying different amulators I tried z-sness
I tried s-ne-s-9-x I tried b-sness I tried aries I was like why are any of these working well you have
to again biz hawk with the foused s-ne-s core with the Lewis script and I was like oh I feel stupid now
shoot well I mean an honest mistake to make I wonder if we'll see this at a game stand quick events in
the not too distant future all of that yes that worked great because like Caleb was playing it like
max difficulty with like of course basically all of the buttons pressed and I was like okay I just
try this out first and slow things down a little bit so fun fun way to re-experience these games
in a different way oh no yeah for sure so definitely and it's also you know super replayable because
you can get a different seat every time so yeah yeah then the other quick thing was I spent some money
on something so I have a steam deck and I like it but it's it's been out for a few years now it's
getting a little long in the tooth and I wanted an upgrade and I put an ROGX box ally X and it's
neat you know it definitely has the extra power that the steam deck is lacking because I was
interested in this or the MSI claw a eight but MSI is being really cagey about a US release of it
because you have they have all sorts of promotional materials and it's out in China and I think most
of Asia and it's out in Europe and it's like hey guys I'm just gonna raise my hand over here and ask
about the US no it's not okay so I got the Xbox ally X and I think it's pretty cool and I got it
with the intention of okay so this whole windows thing that they have on it with the Xbox full screen
experience looks neat and I'll try it out for maybe a week or two and see how I like it now I got
it off there and I put bad light on it immediately I saw people having to install T an
install teams from the fucking gaming hand Ted and I laugh I mean because it's just windows
for better and for and for worse I think the I think the way the Xbox full screen experience
got what a stupid name I think it is a good first step and I think it's neat for what it is
it's not there it is not there okay and every time I was like well I just want to play games on steam
and you know you could drop out of it and go into steam big picture mode but you can't you just
don't get this steam experience as it's intended because everything on the gamepad is
understandably geared toward windows and what what it wants to do underneath so eventually I was
just like okay we're gonna scrub windows off this we're gonna put bad light on there which is
basically steam OS and all but name and we're gonna try that and I love it it's so much better
with steam OS on there like you you can put the official valve steam OS in there but they explicitly
state on the steam OS page this is in beta form for ROG ally hardware so please be aware of that
whereas bad site is like yes we have we have gone through it and we have tailored it to work a bit more
a bit better with the ally hardware like there's this one youtube channel that I watch sometimes I
think is what's it called David does tech stuff that's it yeah and he was talking about his experience
with bad site on the Xbox ally actually and he said it was a bit rough but then I guess the bad
site team were like basically like the next day or the week after we're like we hear you and we fix
a whole bunch of things and we encourage people to try it against like all right this will be my
first port of call and I put it on there I'm like this is great this is awesome there's a few
weird little hangups like the start-up sound like does some weird stuff it's a little funky when
it starts up and I'm like I don't think it should be sound like that the back buttons on the
unit don't seem to work properly unless you switch the controller type back and forth which
that also might be a me issue because I opened the unit up to replace the hard drive and the
ribbon cable that connects the back buttons to the main board came loose and I had a time getting
it put back in so skill issue on my part but if you go into the controller settings and you toggle
the control because you can have it recognize the buttons on the unit as an Xbox controller a
steam controller or a dual sense and if you toggle it to one of those we'll start detecting the
rear buttons again so it's like okay cool because I also I also screwed up when I was putting it back
together and it wasn't turning on and I was like oh god what did I do wrong the thing I did wrong was
so on a steam deck when you want to do work on it they encourage you to discharge the battery to a
certain amount then go into the bio settings and then put it into what's called battery storage
mode so then the unit cannot turn on unless you actually plug it into power and the ally X does not
have that setting but it does it on its own if you disconnect the battery which is you kind of need
to do it gets the hard drive slot on it so then I was like what wait am I an idiot do I need to plug
it back into wake it back up the answer is yes I was stupid so it got working after that and now it
seems to be working mostly as intended and I'm having a real good time with it and you can tell
there is a big difference in power from the steam deck going from I forget what exactly is a
class of the APU is in the steam deck but the ally X has the Z2 extreme in it which you know AMD is
really pushing and we'll be probably talking about AMD and some of their other hardware in a little
bit just a touch on it but yeah it's a neat unit and I'm glad you know I've got it working
a way that I like so I know obviously it's a pretty steep price tag and I went into that with
that understanding my credit card hurt for a little bit but I decided I was just like I know I
can't see done this I just have to pay it off so I don't know if it was the right time to buy it
after I got into a fender bender and my car had to get repaired but I thankfully I think insurance
will cover that so yes it was it was it was an expensive toy and I'm looking forward to messing around
with it a bit more well I wish you a lot of fun with it I hope it works out yeah you did you have
anything else yes I have one more game left gonna get too deep into it we're because we're running a
bit low on time so I also played the new Donkey Kong game Donkey Kong Bonanza on Switch 2 which is
by the Mario Odyssey team and that is very evident when you play it because it definitely feels like
that game just with Donkey Kong in a way and it's where you can tell from like all the trailers and
promotional material and that is not like that's not a slight towards the game or whatever like that
is actually a good thing I mean I like Odyssey not as much as Mario Galaxy but I still like the game a
lot of the movement in that game in the movement in this game is fantastic as well and you know you
go around the Donkey Kong you dig down to the planet core you make friends with a little stone
that is obviously the little kit version of Pauline which makes this a prequel I guess to the Mario
games I'm not sure how the the lore works out there but yeah she is there's this evil cooperation and
they want to get to the planet core and do some bad things there and they're stealing all the bananas
and Donkey Kong is all about them bananas and he's gonna try to get them back and not my bananas bro
yeah and Pauline helps him with that because she's also a special power that can help
Donkey Kong getting decay then nobody calls them Donkey Kong in that game everyone calls him just decay
and help decay get where where he needs to be and you know you got you punch a lot and the most
fun thing I guess about the game is that you can punch the and most of the environment and just
punch yourself through there basically you can punch a hole in pretty much everything and just
unearth shit like treasures and whatever and gold and get to get to these big bananas that give you
skill points but you can also you know use treasure maps and buy them and find them in in in
chess and stuff like that and then try to find stuff through there and you also unlock a special
berserk modes in a way where you get special abilities you can turn into a con version of yourself
that can punch harder and shit like that and can punch through surfaces that normal decay can
punch through can turn into an elephant version of yourself a snake version of yourself basically
all your elemental friends that you had in the Donkey Kong Country games before or at least some of
them you can turn into you can turn into a rhino but ramby is in there running around with cranky
and you can find them and he'll give you special something for that too if you can find them in every
stage and yeah so the gameplay loop is basically get to a new layer towards the planet core and then
find a lot of shit and find the bananas a skill where you can transform into a new
animal version which looks super freaky like if you ever wanted it to to know what a or if you didn't
want to know what a what an ape crossed with an ostrich looks like well that game is gonna give
it to you anyway oh no so but it's fun and it gives a lot of gameplay variety not all the forms are
as useful like the the zebra form I didn't use as much because it is fast but it's very
contextual and otherwise it's a bit finicky to control so I wasn't a super big fan of it but I used
to snake version a lot I used the especially the the elephant version a lot because it has super
useful skill when it comes to collecting items and everything and eliminating environmental hazard
so I use that a lot and the fun thing is there's always a different theme playing because a lot of
that game is also about music and singing with poline and everything because she's a singer right
and so a different music is playing when you have a different form a different animal form
and all of these tracks are bangers and uh yeah it's super fun like it's it's basically like
differently coded Mario game uh just with a different character but also special abilities and everything
and a lot of stuff to explore very weird quirky side characters that you can uh engage with and
everything a lot of things to find and uh to dig for and uh lots of secrets and so there were a lot
of moments uh also special challenge rooms and everything where you have to find three bananas
in rooms and and and stuff like that or beat enemies in a certain amount of time whatever
and all of that is super fun like the the game is a blast from beginning to end is super enjoyable
it's it's pretty beefy like there are enough worlds in there and there's also a part where you can do
go through two different routes but you can return to the other version of the route as well if you
want so uh or you should do that actually so uh yeah it's just it's a really good adventure game and uh
with entertaining uh with with nice sympathetic characters and everything and cool worlds very
varied worlds that look very different and are very big uh cool atmosphere and everything i really
enjoyed that game i enjoyed it even more than Mario Odyssey uh really really fun time great outing
for for a decay game like like he's the main star now of the show like it really feels like they put
a lot into that game and it definitely feels like okay he's won now am he in the way he always was but
i feel like he that this is this is the big outing he has been deserving of for a long time and it's
just like believe the hype like everyone gave this high ratings for a good reason it's just super fun
and uh i can't recommend it enough like it's super good the only fit it downside at this this is where
we get to the beginning of the section right at the end uh right when i finished it with was
was a super satisfying finish like the the final stretch of that game the finale is insane
like it's so much fun and it's so intense and such a climactic finale thing i didn't expect that
from this game it just feels like holy shit it's kind of like the but the the the section in the
at the end of Mario Odyssey where you turn into Bowser uh but like longer and just insane
it's just crazy it's just super intense and really good in terms of gameplay uh mechanics you have to
use yeah like you have to implore all of the different forms that you have been collecting so
none of them are like forgettable in that regard or you did collect them not for nothing so
it's just like holy shit we're in the end game now she's just getting real but it's not super
difficult as well so it's not frustrating i had a really good time with that but after that and after
you are done with the amazing credits and everything here is a little bit extra and you could do go
back underground and do this stuff and this stuff and roll and i was like no i'm good
i'm just like this was a perfect ending i don't need more of this i guess it's good great for the
people who want to spend more time there's also dlc i don't want any of that that game had the perfect
length when the credits end i think that's where they should end and that's where the game should end
i don't need more of this this was just the perfect game and yeah i just don't need more of this i'm
fine it's great it's great the way it was and i don't need to have some additional shit tacked onto
that uh it just felt a bit weird to just go back and then have some one of the characters be like hey
i'm back again and uh for this and this reason and you also get don't get aside from you know a couple
of additional challenges and so on you don't get that much out of it in terms of story apparently
just a jpeg at the end and special ones like i'm not gonna do it for that sorry uh i didn't do it
for uh for hideys and i'm not gonna do it for this so uh but yeah super fun time i still think it's
funny that uh they hinted at this with uh dk's new look and mark it well i guess new old look in mario
cart world and it was like well why did they change it from the dk seal oh so i think a lot of people
were hoping the dlc would be a little bit more because i know the big dk fans were like you know
dk64 is the game that it is but cong island is super iconic and it they kind of reduced it down to like
in the dlc which is sort of unfortunate but you know i guess it's cool that they're at least acknowledging
that it's still somewhere out there i guess yes but yeah i hey if you like nintendo games you're gonna
play this anyway but this is definitely one of the best ones in recent times that i've played like i
incredible amount of fun with this game so just great a from beginning to a and at least a
if not s so yeah cool fun time and with that's we're are done we are done with the playbuffer a very
beefy one we're stuffed and we're gonna move over to a couple of quick news bits and now ladies and
gentlemen a bit of news so we're gonna try and roll through at least the first few of these real quick
the last one is actually interesting to me yeah um for sure i don't know what micr
soft is doing it xbox right now nobody does really i think yeah because a lot of weird decisions are
being made because this is an xbox that's an xbox i i just talked about something that i bought that
was bringing in xbox because it is also an xbox so when everything is an xbox is nothing an xbox
yeah and also making the the game pass more expensive like very a lot of very weird decisions
so all of this to say is what is going on with their quote unquote next generation of hardware
because they keep saying oh it's gonna be the biggest um leap in generational processing ever at my guy
do i need to show you the jump from the ps1 to the ps2 that was galactic
everything else after that was like diminishing returns like even even though the ps3 and ps4 were
crazy in compare it's still crazy in compared to the ps2 i still feel like the biggest jump that
i ever witnessed was from ps1 to ps2 i don't know about you probably i mean you could argue from
from the six-bit era to the twenty twenty two-bit era right yeah i guess you could yeah a little bit
of that but i just i don't know there's just something about going from ps1 to ps2 or heck even
n64 to game cube yes i mean eventually we're gonna talk about it in our game we personal gaming
histories but yeah definitely these generations like sixty-buty thirty two uh uh uh bit and thirty two
bit two whatever ps2 game cube and first Xbox were that that was definitely the big biggest
leaf after that the upgrades were noticeable but more more cosmetic um but yeah that leaves me to be
like well they keep talking about there's gonna be new hardware and they're like oh what's going to
be premium it's going to be a curated experience which makes some people are like oh the
curation is good and i sort of sit there and i say what does that mean for backward compatibility
that's what i think how much and how much is the next Xbox gonna be because then let's not make any
bones about it the next Xbox is just going to be a branded pc sure i mean that's what it's gonna be
in their time while i mean yeah i mean the the Xbox one in the series consoles are definitely
running on a windows kernel that's for sure like there's no bones about that but you know the next one
is just going to be a pc and when they're talking about oh you could put different launchers on
there so so like my computer this is what you're talking about so i just i have this feeling that
the next generation of Xbox is just gonna be DOA man i don't know how much longer they can go
especially when they're talking about oh it's going to be premium how much is premium is that
going to be a thousand dollar machine is it going to be 1200 because they are so i was talking about
this with some friends on a different discourse or like because a lot of people are out of touch on
what an entry level pc should cost so this this thing is going to be stupid expensive like you
probably even more than the Xbox aliex let's see i mean if maybe eventually they don't have a strong
setting in Japan maybe eventually they will go down the second route and only be a game's publisher
of the stuff they have dirty doing that though because gears and halo you know it's going to save
x-Fosh games studios putting gears of war and halo on playstation yes no it's like no it's not yeah
they're panic in a bit definitely because they don't know what to do with that brand really
anymore but we'll see where it goes yeah the next one is ub soft is definitely entering its death spiral
it feels like it they were they canceled like some investor meeting and they're not releasing
their numbers and it's like oh you guys are like in huge trouble aren't you which for ub soft the
corporation good for all the developers there i feel for them because their teams you know in spite of
i feel like the teams at ub soft make good games in spite of what the decisions at the top brass
make for them yes oh so i feel for them on that like i am not i am not going to lay issues with games
directly at the feet of developers you know when it's clear it's not their problem
like like an actual game design thing i might be like i'm not quite sure the developers for
thinking on this but you know on stuff like DLC structures and like releases on like
the different tiered releases that a lot of games have now where you need a spreadsheet to figure
out which version you want to buy that's on the actual hot rubs and it's stupid and that needs to
stop man. Absolutely and i mean they're not the only ones like i feel like a
depending on how that private equity thing will turn out might also go down the drain in the not
too distant future because usually we know how these things pen out usually i mean as far as i'm
concerned EA or dead they don't exist to me and like for a while it was like yeah EA aren't great
but they still have some good games out there but now it's just like now it's like oh they're owned by
Saudi Arabia now okay they're they're out of the picture i don't care anymore i'm glad i
wasn't a big devotee to battlefield like there are some good battlefield games there i
and much like call of duty i like the one that everyone hates so hey at the reason i star wars
a Jedi games were great i haven't played the game yet but i really like phone order so
yeah i got some good games i heard those are both really good i and in spite of itself i hear people
are having a good time with battlefield six which is like okay i'm glad you're having a good time
with it i will look back at hard line and be like you know what that's the one i enjoyed
the last bad news before we get into good news is AI slop is a problem
yeah no kidding and and now now it's a problem in the games sphere because
hoi overs is implying it in a lot in a lot of their games and they have job listings they're like
oh you need to be proficient in AI prompts so you mean typing a sentence yeah they're using it in
call of duty like clearly like it's bad in black ops 7 like a really bad and some of the textures
is something like banners and some of the menus it's like oh and then it was used for voice acting
in arc-raders which i get i guess what they did was and this is is this bad yes but this is the
least offensive i feel like to me because they actually paid people to be like hey can we sample your
voice so then later on down the line when we need extra stuff to put in for like an item description
or whatnot that we can do that with your voice if it's restricted to that the problem is like the
contract airtight in that regard that i can't abuse that i mean i don't trust them that's that's
what i'm hoping for like i want to hope it's the best of that but like if they keep it restricted and
locked down to something like that then okay i guess but like pay your pay your actors pay your
developers man the last bit is good news valve announced new hardware they're actually doing something
that's crazy i mean they already did something with the steam deck and that seems to have been a
big success for them so now they're going into well everything else i mean they did release a
a VR headset before which they're doing again with the steam frame i guess yes yeah i mean the
index was neat but it was a little cost prohibitive and it was clunky to use so the steam frame just
sounds like it's a better version of the uh meta quest three yeah yeah yeah so i'm just like hey if you
can if you can get it at the right price maybe i'd be willing to get rid of my quest three for that
because it will also just play steam games because they touted that any games you have on an
SD card that you could put into this new steam machine that a lot of people are affectionately
dubbing the Gabe cube or that you could put into a steam deck you'll just be able to put into your
steam frame you can play the game using the vice or regardless of whether or not it supports VR
it's like that's cool that's awesome that sounds really nice i might actually consider it as well
yeah because the other two things i'm a little less interested in because i think the steam
controller two looks a little clunky but i know people are funny edit where someone put a moway face
on oh my god because i know there were big fans of the steam controller one and you know this has
the touch pads right from the steam deck and you know people really like those and they
and i've seen a lot of people make good use of it so i'm like hey if you make good use of it and you
and you can get over the way the thing looks cool more power to you but i don't think i'll be buying it
which is the same as i don't think i'd be buying the steam the new steam machine because i don't
really have a use for it i have the small pc that i built and i have my main computer so it's like
i wouldn't really have a place for it but for the people who want something like this this
that's great that's awesome i think this is a really cool solution i'm really interested to see
about the price points of these things i mean controller i think yes but i wonder if steam
machine is going to be actually more expensive than people anticipate because this just really
feels like it's going to be uh no if it mid-tier or high and this gaming pc which is steam OS on it
probably and those are not necessarily like you just talked about you know with the Xbox stuff
necessarily cheap so with what's it i think how it plays off but i'm also like i'm not going to get
the controller and the steam machine but i'm interested in the frame so yeah i mean i think some
people are theorizing that the cube will probably be between six and eight hundred dollars which
if it's delivering on the promise of the performance that i'm talking about which is to be around
the ps5 range which you know trying to get to that on pc is a bit more costly because you know obviously
play state obviously like playstation x-box and the tendo hardware that's all subsidized so they can
knock down the costs a little bit yes but for something like this that would be a i think a good
praise range for someone who wants a living room box i can play you know just pc games and it
sort of heartens me a little bit to see that pc games are a bit more on the rise than they used to be
because you know everything costs so much now and it's just like yeah and so if the pc is a reliable
source to get games cheap very quickly because the the steam sales are just very good in terms of value
for the customer mostly so if this can cause even a little bit of disruption i think that's great
i mean they could be that could be actually the x-box killer right like if that thing takes off
because ste steam is just such an is just a well established storefront that has a lot of people
and if the price point is on par with the x-box but just with this incredibly big library that already
has a lot of micrassame with soft games in it then you get you got the thing the real competition
for that and also technically a lot of not all of them but a lot of PlayStation games are on that now
as well so we'll see what vav does with that but it's gonna it's it's herelding interesting times
it's definitely a shake up yeah there's this youtube channel mores law is dead talks about a lot of
tech stuff i mean if i think you and i both listen to digital found redirect and they reference them a
lot yeah had a video i think either today or the other day is saying valve might price x-box out of
gaming no i think x-box might price x-box out of gaming at this point like like i'd get the point
they're trying to make by saying that but like if the steam box comes in at what i suspect might be
half the price of the next x-box it's over yeah probably i mean x-box is still an established brand
and i don't know how much overlap there is between the call of duty bros and you know who don't
have a pc and just get their x-box for that and that is still a use customer base i guess and if they
will you know spring for a valve hardware but i must imagine speed steam has been around for so long
and it has been such everyone who is in the games we will have heard about it at some point so i
think that will have enough power to if they advertise this properly through all their channels
for people to realize okay there is this new thing now and it's gonna give you a lot of
fantastic games with really for not super affordable but on an acceptable level
with good power and everything and a good like really good ecosystem now because now you have the extra
weird controller you have a vr headset that works flawlessly probably with that you have
like this thing and you have the steam deck that also is kind of integrated with that
like that whole ecosystem and it all kind of works probably together with by employing steamOS
in a good way so that sounds like something that if it all works like it's supposed to
that's it's gonna have a lot of pull but again i'm not an industry as expert i'm just very
interested to see how this will work out for valve i hope it doesn't i hope it causes you know
again some disruption in shows you know hey the pc space is viable and you can get in on it you know
you don't have to spend two thousand you also don't have to spend two thousand dollars to build a
computer like i see videos all the time where people like i gave myself a budget of six hundred dollars
and you can build a respectable gaming pc for that amount you don't have to buy the top of the line
graphics card you don't have to max out your RAM you don't have to buy the best processor
just comes down to what you want to do with it and then you can build around that yeah i think
that covers pretty much all of the i mean there's obviously tons of other new stuff out there
that we could have gone into but shout out to the youtube channel inside games where Bruce
Lawrence and Bryan are all doing their best to cover the gaming news day by day and there's a lot
of gaming news day by day oh yeah we could just for that we could do this more on a regular basis but
also there's too much there's too much yes speaking of which we still have one little section left
and we're gonna quickly get to that one up for discussion our personal gaming histories
all right yes this is the slash edit this the editorial section or whatever section
and i think in the first episode we did some games we look forward to this year and now since last
episode we started talking about our personal gaming history so the consoles or whatever we had
what we gained on and what games we played and i originally intended to have this a bit bigger
in this episode but i miscalculated a bit so we're gonna have only two small sections for this
first i forgot to mention last time when we talked about the NES era two of my favorites like
crabby's adventure i played that game from like two like i don't know 10 times or something i
play through that 10 times or or or more i don't know it like game is so good oh it still holds up
you know it's wild to me about Kirby's adventure everyone is like oh that's the first Kirby game
no you idiot Kirby's dreamland was first like so when people say that i'm like you're
painly wrong and a lot of people probably don't even know about dreamland two and three so
but yeah adventure i just love the shit out of that of the game because in dreamland Kirby
couldn't you know still adopt the abilities of the enemies he was consuming and that came in
Kirby's adventure and i love that because you know that's one of the things i also liked about
like about mega man like copying the abilities of your opponents or whatever and now i've got your
power yeah exactly and Kirby does the same thing here and it's just a fun game it's breezy and i
played through it through with you know when you through hot mode as well and then you can unlock
the super hard mode and also the music player and whatever and i did all of that shit and i love
that game and what i also forgot to mention were the capcom disney games on any as in we're gonna talk
about those more also next episode probably but those also all worth or not all of them but a lot
of them were really good duck tails duck tails too played the shit out of those games the chip and
Dale games also a little fun with so i missed those games like almost entirely wow okay like i
put i played the duck tails remaster but i i think there is like a disney collection of games
and i started to touch on that but i didn't really play too much of it but like back in the day i
like i missed those entirely um i know they're this is skipping ahead a little bit but i know there was
a bunch of those magical adventure Mickey games on the super Nintendo apparently those are all
really good so like i would like to sit down and like touch on those at some point which i'm
no excuse now emulation is the thing oh god don't let me tend to cure this emulation like it
just rereleased the fucking games for fuck's sake no but all of that that would be on capcom so that's
true i mean not all of them are great i think tailspin was super good uh dark wing duck i really enjoyed
that was a fun that was a fun thing i'm in like uh i think i never finished this because the game is
fucking hard uh but that i enjoyed yeah i played the first magical adventure like Mickey's magical quest
mystic quest or whatever it's called on the super Nintendo uh i really liked and played the other two's
allotted but we get to those in the next episode so this episode uh we're just gonna quickly talk about
the some early pc experiences i guess and uh gameboy and gameboy is very gonna be very quick for me
because i didn't own one i only played uh on the gameboys of friends uh all of my friends had some but
i didn't get one because i went from any as right to super Nintendo and i'm not a big mobile game in
general not even today like i play my switch pretty much exclusively docked i only play them
it more by when i'm like i don't know visiting at my parents or when i'm on vacation and otherwise
that thing stays in the dock and uh so i say i happen i didn't even get a game but i got a gameboy
advanced but not many games for it didn't play a lot on it and i didn't get a ds i got a 3 ds
didn't get that many games for that either so i'm just not a big mobile gamer and
to start off not being that was me not owning an original game but i mean at least a nice suit the 3
ds and gba is they were both fully backward compatible she could play whatever on them it doesn't matter
now yeah that's true but yeah i played a couple of games on the games on the gameboy like on the big
gameboys of friends i remember playing of course a lot of tetris because that's just came with the thing
the the three super mario games that came out for this my favorite probably being either super mario
brothers super mario land two or super order or warrior land i don't know which of those two i
would prefer probably warrior land i think i play through that more often when i borrowed that from
from a friend and uh what were some other big ones ones think do you have play through the first
guy girls quests i think so yes i think i i recently revisited that even i played through quests and
and adventures or goggles quest two and demons crest so yeah so those and
the last big one that is not super obscure i guess mystic quest so the first second in zz2 game
uh definitely play play through that as well so i think the name adventure in the us i think right
they were so confusing with the names on those yeah and like the i'm still angry at square i mean
obviously this was early days but it's like you could have a little bit of faith in your branding
guys like even because like the final fantasy adventure of why didn't you just call it the final
fantasy saga so then there would be the line between like oh that's what this was
and it got even worse when i liked it uh another thing on the super internet had the same name
over here it make those sense whatever but uh yeah that's that's i think for the big haters for me
the Kirby streamline of course as well but i think i didn't play that much more on the game
i played a couple of games with obscure scuro ones with my friends like i think a version of
wwf raw for some reason because we were big into wrestling back in the in that day and i played
skate or die which was on the game by more of an arcade game than a sports game because
you were fighting enemies with your skateboard that was fun and spider man game the first spider
man for the game boy a game for the game for that was also fun and Batman the animated series the game
for that that for the game boy so yeah those were the more obscure ones but that was it's pretty much
my history for the game boy is john i assume for you was a lot more because you're old one right
yeah and right i still have my game boy and i actually bought him a mod kit for it because i
want to install a new screen and put it in a new shell to make it seem a little bit more modern
but that i have all the pieces i need for it i just need to actually sit down and do it um
yeah i remember getting i think i got the package that came with super mario land two
i think that was the one i got and i played the heck out of that and you know then
got tetris and i played all of the mega man games on there sure those i of course all
well not really though i played one at five i think i skipped all the other ones because i didn't
own the thing and five was the only one that was different so of course i played that uh but
i assume you had all of them at different points yeah i mean the i mean the game boy and mega man games
are weird there's a whole history behind that but you know uh those those are all really fun
cool times so please i can't put the heck out of them um and i even ended up buying some
rebying some games that i one point had and then end up getting rid of got a stack of game boy games
over here i'm not gonna grab him and have him follow all over the place but yeah i played my game boy a
ton of you know again Kirby's dream land mine aren't got for me when i was very young and i didn't
when i was young i was real stupid stupider than i am now and i thought every video game was like a
mario game and then you just that you just stopped on an enemy and ran to the right and i it took me
a real long time to go oh no you just you eat them and then you just you go and you do the thing and
sometimes sometimes into the going right you go up or you go left what is this what the sauce is
for you sometimes you go down but down is bad but yeah i had a heck of a game boy library and then
i got a game boy color in a bunch of games for that i don't know if we want to save that as a
discussion for another time but i i was stupid in my youth and ended up selling my super NES in a whole
ton of games to get a game boy color thinking oh this gonna be the new big thing and then i was like
why did i do that i'll say but i have started to use when you're a kid let's just i started
rebuilding my super Nintendo collection a bit and you know it's i do have an s and s and like i
said i have the poly mega which will play a whole bunch of other stuff too so i have tried to rebuild
but you you you had a good time with the game boy oh yeah for sure like in spade of not being
able to see that thing even in direct light do you have a favorite i don't know vacation
memory or something where you took the game boy along because it's a mobile gaming device
oh man i honestly i'm not sure i do because you know i just i had i still have this big gray carrying case
so you could put the game boy and like six or seven cartridges in it had a spot for like an
adapter so you could plug it into a wall and i had like one of those stupid accessories where you
could plug it onto the top and it would magnify the screen and it had a light on it and it didn't
work very well but it was i still had it and i used it and i contribute that to probably using
that a lot to my declining vision which i am now i now have to wear glasses so but you know
young and dumb and i still liked that thing and it sat alongside my game gear which we'll probably talk
about at some point too but i didn't have near these many games from my game gear but you
it was color whoa the game boy didn't have color at least a lot to later
but the game gear screen was also terrible because it was ghosty and awful and got that
version got that version of sonic 2 on there was so bad but yeah early early portable gaming days were
weird and you know obviously it evolved from there of the game boy color and the advanced and then
all the weirdo stuff that didn't release outside the Japan outside of Japan like i was always
curious about the wonder swan but i never had one and all of the other things like Nintendo was
trying they had like that pokemon mini thing like sure guys okay but yeah i had a game boy and
with probably too many games for it i'm pretty sure you know i had played through most if not all of them
but then i ended up losing my old gb at one point and most of my game boy library so i had to end
up doing some rebuilding but you know i think i have most of what i wanted to recover like my most
prized game boy games that i still have a copy of mega man 5 and that's probably one of the best
games on there so sure sure i'm glad that we recently got a remake and color on that for that
no thanks to capcom yeah remember the promise of mega man main and that was supposed to release on
gba and all the games are in color now and then that didn't happen in that mega man world dx 1 through 5
you just and you could just go play them and they're great yes really glad that that fans actually got
to that because it was one of the things that definitely was missing from the game boy games
but yeah fun time and also have some memories of take borrowing a game boy from a friend and playing
that one of my good friend i think that was actually david who was with us on the gunner episode
recently on anime brain freeze who lent me his game boy when i when i um
tore my ligaments on my right foot during basketball in school
like a triple tear and and i was in the hospital for a while and he brought me his game boy and i
think that's actually where i played um musiqués less final fantasy adventure oscillation second
that's that's who uh for the first time so not not necessarily a happy memory on the side there but
that was a good part about that just i had a lot of time playing game boy games there so and yeah so
there there there's that uh but yeah last couple of for last five minutes or so let's just quickly
talk about early pc experience because i didn't really own a pc myself but my dad had one for work
but also for gaming so i actually got uh he also played a couple of things but he was more into puzzle
games and stuff like that and some like the the thus era i'm still glad that i know the basic
does commands because of that because my dad introduced me to all that shit and i was you know
taking a long uh because he was watching me uh on on been during the summer vacation or whatever
summer holidays and that's when he for his new um uh workplace he took some courses on pc because
that stuff was kind of new i guess but uh he you know that that way i got to experience the birth of
windows like the windows was two point oh whatever
and then three point on three one and what and i i got i got to witness all of that shit
and with that came of course a couple of games and even before that on does so commander keen was my
first big pc game playing in out of that i'd really love to see a good new commander keen game i think
we recently got one mobile one but i don't want that this just was a really good size scrolling
a commander keen game again yeah wasn't it like a port of commander keen four or was it something else
i think we had something else as well there was a new one but that wasn't the poor a port of four and
i don't even remember four was particularly good but i would just one would like have a remaster of all
all those one all because i only played the first one and the first one and the fourth one
and i liked that and the first that my dad was weird about violence in game so i didn't get to play
all this standard stuff like the the very first two d size scrolling new new game games
i didn't get into play for a long time because when my dad found out that they were on the pc
he just fucking killed them let's just uninstall them and i couldn't reinstall them anymore because i
didn't have the the the disk for them anymore and there was some other stuff command share which was
like this this helicopter shooter thing i was also was only allowed to play the first level where you
blow up oil tanks but i wasn't allowed to actually fight against other people so against other
helicopters or or airplanes or tanks i did that in a sneaky way anyway though when he wasn't around
sorry dad but uh yeah that was some of my first experiences and uh yeah after that just a couple of
more uh windows windows games i guess there was uh indica i played one of the indica racing games
i played the game for uh that was called stunt island that way you had to recreate like shots from a
movie in a specific way to succeed it was very fun uh flight simulator definitely a big one uh for
me and the first mist game and yeah those just the just the early pc game days for me uh that i
can remember the games that i played before later when i got my own pc i got into more of stuff like
unread tournament but that that was way later down the line uh so but yeah early dust games they were fun
they were weird and there was a lot of weird shit happening and i not any manuals or anything i
didn't know what to do in half of these games oh one more i forgot that i really loved one must fall
which is this robot fighting game yes twenty ninety seven let's go great great open a great
theme music and also very fun to play actually even with a keyboard like head street fighter command
thingies with quarter circles and whatever and back and forth but it worked also very customizable
robots and everything which i always like uh customistic carlers and head in the adventure mode
and an arcade mode was really good i wish they would do a re-release of that i mean they tried to
do a remake of it with uh battle grounds and it was sort of me at the end of the day which is
unfortunate but uh them back in the day john what did you play uh
your earliest pc gaming memories my earliest pc i remember it had a you know
probably the same as you the the family computer as opposed to you know
had a monochrome monitor was running was it one those three point oh or three point one
one of the two um a lot of the stuff that i ended up playing with then was like
the the adjutainment stuff like i had this this weird game with you was called like clowning around
it was like this numbers game did you have lemmings no i don't think i did that's also uh just
remembered but yeah i had a lot had a lot of those like learning company games like operation
Neptune and midnight rescue and outnumbered mario is missing i had mario teaches typing
ah wait did i have mario's i think maybe i had mario is missing as well yeah there was mario
i think i did right that was also one no there was mario's time machine that's what i had okay there we go
because there was like a huge difference between the pc and the super Nintendo versions of that
game and i think mario was missing it was slightly different as well but yeah mario's time machine sure
was a game you could play i don't know how much i learned from it probably nothing the pc version
was materially different because it was like oh well you can make as many mistakes as you want
trying a piece to go so you could just like click on everything until you figured out a puzzle whereas
in the super Nintendo game was like oh you made three mistakes we got to go back to bousers castle
and then you have to go on the surfing thing again we have to collect enough mushrooms to actually
do the time travel and it's like this sucks it sucks i hate this
it felt jank and bad and you know but there was that and then you know when like real windows iE 95
started rolling around you know that was when the actual gaming started and i remember wanting
the pc version of final fantasy seven but the computer i had at the time definitely could not run
it so the one thing i wanted was a graphics card for it and i ended up getting a
2-3-3,000 to put in that thing uh-huh for those you can remember glide powered graphics cards none of
this g-forcer rx stuff out there sheesh god that was the wild west of video and audio drivers
but yeah i mean i didn't do as i mean i obviously had the pc but didn't do nearly as much pc gaming i
had like an eos and my super NES so yeah absolutely i like for myself i didn't get it a pc until
was about graduate about to graduate high school and i was mostly for work for and then only later like
you know i got uh i got it for like games on there actually so
mmm took a while so these these first experiences were all thanks to my dad and because he
needed a pc and was like the kids got to play something so it was nice even though he was a bit
restrictive about what i could play but i found some ways around that so all's good yeah i mean
my parents were like that with certain games like you're not gonna play mortal combat i go over
to a franchise being fire up mk the reason to it yep yep as i if i wanted to play in your
games and stuff like that i just went or or whatever game i could just go over to my friend
Alex house and we'll talk more about that actually in the next episode because that i already talked
about when we talked about any s because they had a modded one and already they also had a
modded super Nintendo so that's gonna come next time uh we return to this merry little show we're
gonna do super Nintendo we're gonna do Genesis probably game gear and see what was up with
that uh that because that's that those there were a lot of games on those consoles and a lot of those
i played oh yeah for sure all right then that's it for this episode of freeze frames per second sorry
we rushed a bit at the end there but we had we had a lot of games to talk about and uh yeah we're
gonna have a lot of games to talk about probably the next time uh i hope you had a fun time and we'll
see you again on the next episode take care everybody bye everyone
you