[Music]
Welcome to an all new episode of Freeze Frames per second.
Sooner than expected actually because we sat on our inaugural episode that this would be like an occasional thing and we don't know when it would happen again because it's more of a bonus spin off podcast thing but here we are already again.
Hooray! Pacific reason for that because well first of all of course we also played some games we could talk about and you know just still got a bit of time until we need to have finished the next two anime
brand freeze episodes so we said like why not but also specifically John went to PAX East and you know can talk a bit about that so we'll start with that and then we'll talk a bit about games a bit of news even though they're not that many.
And then we'll have our newly named discussion one up for discussion section and yeah so John started off what how was PAX what what did you check out or like how was the general.
I don't know how many people were there was a tolerable or was was it like suffocating what was going on this year especially compared to previous years because I think you've been before right.
Yes this is the third time I've gone and I mean it's an easy trip for me because I get on a bus and I'm in Boston and like an hour and a half hour and three quarters so.
It's it's nice it's nice and easy for me and if I go when I go to anime NYC you know just get on a train and I'm there in a couple of hours as well so.
Yeah there I would say PAX East was very well attended as it usually is there so it's a lot of people there but that I usually go Friday Saturday Friday isn't quite as busy but then Saturday is like it could be a little overwhelming but I still don't think I don't think it's still like.
Out of control the way something like a comic con or an anime expo is like the longest lines you're going to be waiting in are going to be to try out different games and to some of the food lines inside of the convention center but how the food prizes these days.
I Friday night I just needed to get some to eat and sit down because I hadn't eaten since breakfast and I was like I should I should do this and I was like I'll get a couple of slices of pizza they were not very good slices of pizza it cost me almost $20.
So you know don't don't eat in the convention center there's thankfully a Jimmy John's and you're the Boston convention center so you can go there and eat slightly more affordably.
Jimmy yourself.
Yeah you've never been there when my trip to the US it's subway but not garbage.
Then again any then again any sandwich shop like a Jimmy John's like a Jersey Mike's like a firehouse subs is better than subway subway is the lowest the bark and be and I know there's that meme about oh and I think what's the same Gianni matra grano.
I did a voice diversion of the meme where it's like subway sucks my brother in Christ you made the sandwich.
But but doesn't help when they're ingredients are terrible so yeah I guess I mean I'm not I'm not the biggest hater of of subway but also I'm not eating there in quite a while so I don't know if the quality just went a lot better and with a lot of these it's also.
And then I'm not really dependent on like the kind of I don't know who's handling that particular branch of the franchise you know some some are have a better grip on that than others.
Usually they have like food trucks out in like there's like this courtyard on the trying to think in relative terms I think it'd be like the northwest side of the convention center but they had an unparked inside this year and the lines were a little out of control so it's like.
But it was a tolerable both in terms of you know number of people and food availability whatever that sounds yes sounds alright yes along with you then I was there Friday and Saturday and I left Boston on Sunday so.
I got there a little late on Friday the shuttle that runs from the hotels to the convention center runs from 8 to 11 I got to the hotel like 11 30 so it was like well either I walk 35 minutes when I've been on my feet all day or I'll just call an Uber.
So I just spent the money I was like I'll just take the Uber I'm going to be walking all day long in the convention center anyway.
There were a lot of games to see.
The one big thing in the middle of the forest band I am co was like hey come check out Elgin ring night rain and that they had just like giant blueish purple dome thing but you had to get a ticket to go in the tickets were gone real quickly and then you didn't even like get to play.
So Bob wolf on the YouTube channel wolf then he was saying about how you would go in as a group of like three or four people and then in Elgin ring quote unquote influencer would take the controls and play while you're watching and it's like well.
Watch footage from home and the game comes out in like a week and a half so it's just the whole concept behind it seemed really silly to me when I learned about it after the fact I mean technically we had that before I think just.
I remember going to games con before and I think it was still games convention back then I think there was still you know different was not in colona was still in life.
And they showed I think one of the newest trailers for metal gear solid for there and like line was like incredibly long for people just to see that see the footage of that.
And I don't know that was still very popular back then and like still a thing I feel like these days where it's even more accessible to get good footage direct footage and good trailers easily at home.
It has a bit that watching these kind of premieres at a con has lost a bit of loss especially when you have to wait so long to you know online to get out.
That's why I was more interested in trying out you know couple of smaller games couple of the games you probably can't try home like there are some games on my list that.
Yes I saw in someone who had playable demos with some of the lines were like so oh like a few days ago I was like well the games that I didn't get to try it there they have demos on steam I guess I'll try them now so then I can say a little bit about them.
But there are a few that I saw that were like I would have liked to have tried them but.
They can particular marvelous and exceed had a giant booth set up and I was like oh I want to try the new room factory that's cute no you're not.
Anything aside from night right maybe in particular where you would like wow everyone flock to that thing like that's where the hype was like everyone wanted to see this like anything in particular.
So directly across from the elder ring thing Pearl Abyss the dudes who made black desert they have a game coming out called crimson desert and boy it's just a souls like a different color.
Okay so you see like these two games directly next to each other it's like well you couldn't escape the dragons gays of bandai Namco but here we are.
Desert more of like a final fantasy 14 ish thing.
Yeah you know I never I never played it I never saw footage of it and it was it seemed like one of those sorts of Korean MMOs which you know it the trailer cuts really well but then it's like yeah yeah yeah yeah I get it.
Most of the substance and more flash than actually feast. Yeah in in MMOs you know they're real hit or miss and there are very few ones that actually manage to stick like especially in terms of longevity in content actually getting good content that keeps people interested.
I know I got into guild wars to for like a couple of days few weeks there and that Peter of so hard.
Yeah I play some of our friends we played guild wars to for a little bit then when one of our friends is like let's go do a jumping puzzle I was like okay and I was like I want to die.
So that was kind of the tipping point for me I played guild wars one for a while I wonder if my account even still exists I'd be curious to try it but you know maybe maybe.
The biggest MMOs that are going today aside from World of Warcraft and fun of fantasy 14.
I don't even know because I'm like never really invested in that space even 14 I haven't touched an ages so.
PSO 2 kind of still exists.
Does it? I've not since they did the transition to the whatever the new thing was called and got a Western proper Western release I've not really heard here anyone talk about it ironically so that's interesting.
I mean new genesis is sort of there there's elder scrolls online there's Star Wars the old Republic I guess guild wars two is kind of still there but yet the two big powerhouses are definitely wow and 14 like the other one sort of sort of they're there there's even one of our friends plays a lot of people right.
There's lost arc which also kind of exists war frame which is still pretty popular yeah yeah war frame yeah comes up once in a while which which once upon a time I thought about checking out but then I was like.
Okay which platform do I want to play it on just have cross progression if I want to start it here will I be so then I never really pulled the trigger on that but I hear it's good and I hear they done neat things with it so.
So have I but you know MMOs are like.
At least attractive not the least attractive genre but one of the least attractive things to me because they are and close and those endless games and you know I'd rather play something where I'm like okay this is a finished story and when I'm done with it I'm done with it and yeah yeah I get you that's why I only play the one MMO.
Yeah I only play the one mobile game it might become two next month we'll see how I like umamu suma.
We'll see I've been waiting to be able to try it in English so I want to at least give it a shot I'm aware I'm aware so I hope you have a good time with it.
Yeah about crimson desert is not an MMO though it is a single player action or okay and I think it's cool but so your dark souls you have your your dodge your drink your guard your parry your attack and your heavy attack and then so a couple of their variations in there right you know it's the combat is pretty basic but you know there are things.
You can do with it crimson desert has all of that and then it has so much more on top of it then I'm like well they want you to hit these buttons to do a grapple they want you to hit these buttons to do this type of attack or these buttons to do this and it's like a lot to try and understand and do in the moment and the bosses they had the demo were like oh you down the boss it has a second health meter oh you down the boss has a third health meter I'm like Jesus I was like Jesus great okay.
I like to say this but this is obnoxious all right so did you you didn't actually play it I did oh you did okay yes the line was very long so I had to wait in line for like close to an hour and then they were like okay we want to show you this like 10 to 12 minute presentation as like a primer on what to expect before you put your hands on a controller which was like okay you know they want to explain the systems and tell us some stuff about that's fair because
the level of complexity is maybe not in order of magnitude higher than a soul's game but it's still a little bit more so I kind of appreciate that they're like we'll tell you how to do these other things and then you can use these tools as you see fit so and then you got to play the game for about 15 minutes and again it was all right I don't really think I'd see myself buying and playing it though.
Okay anything that I don't know rock your boat we were like oh we're probably gonna get this so our friends that limited run games were there I have certain feelings about them but they had demos of a bunch of neat games they had shantae advanced and it's a shantae game.
Sneat cute it's got the platform it's got the Metroidvania in it's basically it looks like they took the sprites from the DS slash DSI game that they probably had those assets in place when shantae advanced was originally in development and we're like yeah this is just that visual style.
You know plays good looks good and the monitor that they had I was a little weird because it was screen tearing like a mother fudger so I don't think it was before I don't think it was the best way they could have shown the game off but you know I just I think we both are big supporters of way forward so I'm looking forward to that game absolutely yeah.
There was a game there called double shake which is like a fusion of like clenoa in mischief makers sort of we're platforming around your grabbing enemies and throwing them your grabbing obstacles and using it to like get height there is one enemy in particular we just keep throwing it over and over and over and over basically get infinite height and I think the one of the guys was like one of the lead devs was there who is answering questions seems really cool and it just seemed like a neat game.
And a lot of these so as a preface a lot of these games I threw on my steam wish list but I go to throw this one on there I'm like oh it's already on there I must have this must have crossed my path at some point cool all right good to know I was already interested.
They also had a display of earthian which is the game that use use the kosheros studio ancient is working on and it is just an old school freaking shoot them up and it's really good and it's really just gorgeous with the pixel art and the music is bumping and I am so stoked for it I've been waiting for it for so long so I was super happy to be able to put hands on it.
I mean there have been some retro style shoot them ups in recent years but this definitely looks like one of the few ones that actually captures the feel the style you know and also the quality just you know from outside perspective I haven't played it of course but you know that the old these old 16 bit shoot them up.
I would say the styles like a genesis yeah plus because at the end because it does some weird some are actually weird some really cool like 3d effects that the genesis clearly can't do there's no way absolutely no way I love it when they do that I guess you know some some retro style game just do that I always find it kind of a shame when they decide to click okay we're going to do as an exact replication often any S game in a way you know
the mega 9 and 10 kind of try to do that you know they had some bits in there that maybe we're like this kid is possible frame rate aside especially yeah I feel like 9 in particular that that and then 10 they were like you know we don't have to adhere quite as strong yeah and that's what I feel like shovel night is definitely one of those where you see animation the general style is hey this is definitely any S a bit ish right what it's going for late NES but also there are some
things in here that this is that system wouldn't have been able to handle like there's some animations in here there's some I don't know some backdrops in here that have too many colors or something like that too many colors too many layers yeah too many layers just like this like a parallel scrolling suddenly and something like that right so I always love that I love it I love it when they when the game goes for definitely the style from a specific console
era that is way past but then adds some nice sparkles to it from you know some seeing like okay this is running on something that has much more power and can show you some some nice fireworks but in that style so it doesn't feel alien or something like that I love that so I'm
like to hear that earthy and still in the same thing yeah I kind of feel like it's sort of going for the same thing that sonic mania did was more than a triple more than it more than a genesis game probably around like a Saturn sort of thing because the one big 3d effect in
earthy in which you you've probably seen the trailers is the plane or the jet that you pilot at the end of the stage it goes from being a sprain into a 3d model and then it flies up into the camera and it's like okay all right that's cool I don't
even know I actually have seen that I need to rewatch it is a very specific effect and when you see it when it then blends into the 2d art it's like yeah that's really cool cool when
is that coming this year most of these games are coming this year as far as I know I mean a lot of them you could see they have listings on steam is the ones that have
that have released states they have in there if they don't it's like it's it's it's coming yeah I'll try and rapid fire through the rest of these but there's this one like pixel art
platformer called giga sword where you you are wielding a gigantic sword quite literally and it's heavy and you're in you swing it slow and you can't jump very high would you
wielding it but a lot of the mechanic is behind it is that several puzzle platformer so you can like put the sword down and that slightly increases your speed and your jump height so you might need to
put it down somewhere and then like raise or lower a platform in order to take it with you to continue places and the sword can be used as a key and you get different powers in order to be able to open other doors and whatnot so you know it's just a
it's a very aesthetic game because you know it's the very very like much 8 bit 16 bit pixel art but it plays really great it's really fun I was playing it for a while and I was like
I should probably get up and let someone else trust it because I could be here like all day I mean if nobody's asking yeah I know they still didn't feel right just sitting there for so long
but it's nice that it like caught your attention and it feels good it looks like it's going for definitely more often an NS style or an 8 bit style and for 16 bit style at least you know in the general stages
because the color palette seems to be very limited looks to be Castlevania ish I guess it is very that is it's like one big level you're exploring is you know different past open up when you defeat different bosses and get different like at one point
I say oh your sword has the power of the emerald key now and then you can open different doors with it so that I also see some backdrops here and some bosses that definitely look more 16 bit ish and cool also
yeah it looks interesting that might also be up my li i'll keep it in mind
I try to game called neon inferno which is really close to being a contra game the sprites are like I'm huge and amazingly detailed and it's got this mechanic where you can like reflect bullets back at enemies
it's a little busy with some of the detail that's going on you can like into the background in the style of wild guns yeah so you know it's a gorgeous game it's tough as balls but it's really cool to look at
I think I've seen this before yeah I think it's something like that I think it's been in the works for a minute
yeah yeah but look definitely looks cool there's game called break arts three it's a it's a mecca action game but it's also a racing game I'm all ears
where you're building up a mech to go in like combat races obviously it's the third of its kind from the name but it's just really fast paced and like
there's a lot going on with it like I'm going to this doing a combat race I'm trying to maintain the robot from overheating because when it overheats it loses its structure and if the structure drops to zero
you get knocked out for a few seconds and I did that by accident I went from first place third place and I was like God man
so clearly I don't have my mech license yet but it looks like it's there that's definitely it's fast paced as fuck it's super fast and they they have the racing mode and then I guess there's just like a regular combat mode as well which I don't think the second game had which is cool to see it there sort of expanding into that a little bit yeah
let's say try to game called demon tides which is a 3d platformer that is most definitely about shmovement and I don't know if I have the brain for some of the stuff that they were trying to ask the players to do but it's but it's stylish and you can do you do like double triple jumps
jumps out of water jumps in the air hovers dash attacks in the enemies so it's kind of like a fusion of like Mario and Sonic trying to do both movement systems at the same time because you also have like your side flips that Mario has you have real grinding you have again your dash attacks there's all it's
looks like a speedrunner game yes so I think it's cool I don't know if I have the brain for a lot of what they want to do what they want what they expected to do then for some of stuff that I saw there but didn't get to try but the few things I did try and steam
where there's a corgi scosi hike we're playing as a little corgi doggo and you're fun around exploring the silent and you're just making friends seeing the sites and I think the money that they're going to get from that the purchases is going to partially go into like helping dogs and other pets find forever homes
different shelters so that's neat yeah absolutely support that there's this rogue like a twin stick shooter called section 13 where you you're one of those like oh you you died but you came back because we can't let you go so easily agent and there's zombies
everywhere and it's I don't know it seems all right but trying to actually build out a meaningful character seems really tough at least in the demos so maybe there'll be more options to do that sort of stuff when the actual game comes out I don't know I usually like twin stick shooters so I probably
might kind of check it out very enough yeah a skateboard night is the last one I actually put hands on and it's it's a it's a second auto scroller type thing where you're fighting enemies and you're a in you are what it says on the 10 you are a night on a skateboard and then you are going through beating up enemies collecting coins gaining experience leveling up and you need to you know
choose different boons upon level up and then there's like this big grid of levels at your traversing like a lot of levels so it looks like it's a pretty meaty game in terms of just like how many stages you're going to get out of it
it also you know can take specific past past games so maybe depending on what you do you end up with a different path or whatever yeah I'm not quite sure how that works but it's definitely in there so again it's a cute little game which just looks like you know it has some neat stuff going on and you
sets skateboard night I expect something along the lines of I don't know game boy version of skate or die or something like that but this looks like it's a bit different flavor yeah a little bit
uh then for the stuff that I saw but didn't try there was linked banner of the spark and just look like this really cool top down like sort of like recorder angle isometric action RPG I'm always up for one of those there's a game called
pip puzzle that was basically not puzzle fighter so that looks really cool there was this like 16-bit style RPG called beloved rapture that I think is available now and I just haven't bought it but it also looks like very very retro inspired and neat and then one of the last ones was this action game called
outwriter macho where you're like this delivery girl but also it's like this old timing super natural Japan setting and you know it just looked really neat so I'd be we want to give that a try as well but there's no
much of things to try at packs east and there's no shortage of video games they're coming out there's too many games yeah well but you tell me those were all the things I tried I've ended up buying a couple of older games from some of the vendors like I got
them I've been looking for a copy of super Mario world for a while so I'm not that copy of thunder force to and then apparently I sold it at some point and I didn't don't remember it so I just buy a copy of rogue galaxy because that's a great game to keep around
do you know just since I played rogue galaxy like do you do you realize to says I didn't remember level five kind of came out swing in with
their stuff on the PS2 because there was rogue galaxy dark cloud dark cloud to dragon quest eight there's all amazing games man and they're just like yeah we're just going to do a ton of really great work right off the bat which again going back to DQA I didn't realize until several years later that they were the lead dev on that game so remember that either until you
not mentioned it now but I specifically remember wanting to go get get a get rogue galaxy because the main character was voiced by Wolfry Dell who also voiced Batman beyond time of giant Batman beyond stand so it's like I'll get them this game also giving me a bit of sky so for Katie I've so I want to check it out and was a fun time yeah for sure yeah to great game yeah that that was packed east nice okay sounds like you got a good time yeah it was a fun time saw a fun time
saw a friend of a friend and we hung out and we went to a couple different panels one of which we'll talk about in the news bits I think but we saw this one that was about accessibility and gaming and it was this like actually pretty cool really insightful
panel that was really interesting I went to a panel on Friday evening called Jeff Jeff Spazar adventure yeah dual infinite burst ultra DX climax impact live
so that probably would have was also said then by super ipad wolf and Jeff baccala from giant bomb yes and and God for their names they were so Timor who sane and Lucy Lucy Johnson Lucy James I think Lucy James Lucy James yes and they were there so the description for the panel on the
PAX East website is in the spirit of the podcast the group will present a series of anime inspired video game clips to live react to and if there's time maybe some corkis improv in a podcast q&a that's not what happened I patch well for sake so we sort of flipped the script a little bit now that so Jeff now that you're an expert in anime we're going to present to you clips of different shows and you're just going to you're just
going to you're just going to tell us what these shows are and what they're all about damn guess how many guess how many he got right to zero well I don't even know if they watched more than
a daughter's bizarre venture on that podcast so I mean that's how it started out so maybe they've watched more stuff at this point but so they showed him clips of God what is
the show dragon ball he didn't know what that was I was like come on my God how do you not know like the scene where Goku goes super saying uh what else was there he showed him a clip of chrome artie high school well okay that's that that's kind of very
nice at this point yes but he should have recognized I feel like that's a big game is enough that oh well I'm having trouble remembering all of the other
things went through like five or six different ones yeah but um at the end uh I patch will say okay out of all those which one do you want to know no actually want to know about he picked
chrome already high school is like oh boy I guess they're doing that next maybe that'd be fun because that show is ridiculous I know I
mean I've never watched it but I've seen enough clips I'm like oh God damn it it's such it's just a giant goof fest mm yeah okay now for real that was
actually packed east and I'm looking forward to going again next year uh you see hit up a couple of their conventions during the year that I like to look for retro games at because I guess that's my mid life crisis shrug
uh there's one I wanted to go to in August but I'm not sure logistically I'll be able to get there but I'll see what happens but yeah
that was that and I guess we can transition into what games we have played recently in the play buffet yeah I mean we're already full on in it because you know technically the tax games count into that as well I would say but kind of but more directly to the stuff that we have in actually playing you know yeah let's do that um so
I last time we when we did our first episode of this I talked about near applicant which I had finished at that point and my mixed feelings on it and of course after that I checked out your automata automata depending on how you want to pronounce it
and I like that game much more as expected because it was also handled by platinum and the fighting system is much more closer to what I like it's your typical spectacle action
I'm not no surprises in there really like it definitely feels like an offshoot of bionetta or something like that or devil make cry a bit lighter maybe but you got your witch time stuff where you can evade on time to you know slow things down and you you got your
very and you know you get different weapons that you can use and can do your air combos and shit like that so it got all of that and it's very fast pace so I like that it looks very good yeah so that it had that going for it it had an interesting what I mean near applicants world was also
definitely one of its highlights even though it was kind of limited because of the kind of mid budget of that game and this felt a lot more a lot bigger lot more fleshed out it was interesting because of you know everything just mainly and Royce running around
the two main characters to be and nine s were pretty interesting and then of course it did the same thing that's a new record a replicate you had to play have to play through that game several times to get the full story it's the same in your
and I also like the story more in this I guess felt more satisfying like the themes were pretty nothing too special I would say it was some interesting thing going on with in regards to memories
and how they are differently perceived by different people in what meaning they have to the characters in in this story and that was pretty interesting and how the game played with that ha ha ha and yeah I like that
the antagonist were kind of all right like I mean I kind of got what they were going with it with it but they also were not that present actually in the story like you know the dd the idea the general idea and what is going for was the more important thing about it
and you know the like I said the central theme of memories and you know the the journey of these characters and what kind of role and rights play in this story especially when compared to humanity and the history of this world what happened to humanity what played part of this is very loosely connected to near
there are some references there but you can also complete without ever having playing near applicant yes there's one particular character well I guess three technically that have a cameo in this but also it doesn't really matter if you don't know who they are because they have a different role in this
and there's no real reference to the main characters from New Replicant or anything like that so that works and you know the world is kind of separate from that as well
because it's also far more in the future than replicant was so yeah it's interesting the music is fantastic I'm I love that a lot and yeah I enjoyed that game I don't know if it's going to be one of my favorites I feel like it has the same problem even though too much lesser extent than your replicant has as in it becomes a bit repetitive
due to the replaying thing like that being one of the main things you have to do in that game to get the full story and yes it's much less problematic than in your replica replicant because the story is much more different because you play different characters which in replicant only really happens in the very last play through kind of
and here you play you switch between like three different characters technically and there was one for each play through and then you get like a cap of thing I guess you play both depending on what anything you want to go for
and that makes it much tolerable but still you're revisiting the same this does a lot even though the characters play a bit differently and you know the hacking feature of 9s is pretty interesting but they also don't do that much with it like a fed like you could have done more
interesting public things and stuff like that it is interesting don't get me wrong like there's some interesting stuff they do with it especially it comes to actually learning about the inner
working of certain machines and stuff like that and 9s gets much more of an insight into that you to his acting for ability and stuff like that so that's interesting.
I mean using the hacking thing on bosses is kind of whatever but it's most interesting when you catch an enemy unaware and then you have more options and just blow it up.
Yeah exactly. You can always most of the time manipulate them into helping you and stuff like that but also sometimes you get like need little story bits or character bits for certain you know machine characters that were hidden from you when you played as 2p
so that's cool and you know same complaint applies to near automata that applies to near replicant but also too much less or extend in that it is very much reveling in its tragedy in certain parts which is like you isn't this all just fucking said yes it is.
At some point it gets a bit right when you just trying to hammer that home but I feel like your automata is much better about that then replicant replicant is really very it's very predictable here it's very much more selective and some of the big moments hit harder.
And also I feel like the ending is much more satisfying with what it's going for and everything and it has has a very nice thing that it does as the at the end where one particular part of the gameplay becomes kind of important especially in the credits part and everything music welling up in that moment and that that got me that was really good.
And then you get a final cut scene and everything and that was all very done very well and felt like satisfying and felt like a nice cap off point to the story like this nice bittersweet thing going for it and I felt it worked much better here than it did in your replicant.
So yeah I really like near automata I don't know if it will go into the olymp of my favorite action games RPG games or whatever I feel like maybe I got a bit parasited as in the game was too hyped up for me like everyone was raving about near rep not necessarily near replicant because not that many people have played that I think but everyone was talking about near automata especially when came out like I was like oh my god this is the hardest shit like this is the best thing I've ever played.
Also story wise it's got so many interesting things going for it and so many interesting themes that it tackles like very differently than other games and yeah there are some parts where I would agree but also there again these parts is like gonna go into that a bit and then I'm not gonna do that much with it or not as much as I would have liked.
So again I liked it a lot it's not like a take down of this and I liked it a lot more than near replicant overall if only because of the play style the game design and the fighting system but you know there are games RPGs and action games I enjoyed more and then this one and but you know it was it was it was
it was it was still fun and cool character designs and everything and a cool world and I liked that it was like a nice cap of thing which replicant was also with not much room for just a emphasis sequel or something like that and that's that's also good like have a finished story in here and tells some interesting side stories and everything and have some interesting games again it the only thing that is
a major downside to these two games in my opinion is the one of the main hooks as in play the game through the game multiple times to get the full story and does leading to repetitiveness which is which is funny because I'm gonna talk also about a game that kind of does the same same thing but maybe because it says a very different tone to it and it's much more lighthearted it doesn't
work on you that much while you being bombarded with bad and tragic and horrible shit all the time and having to play through that like three times and getting different variations of horror and sadness and tragedy all the time might like
over might make the game overstay it's welcome much faster than if you play in just super light hearted RPG but I'll get to that this is gonna be the last game I'm gonna talk about but yeah overall I really enjoy
the game I feel like though if you if you're not looking to 100% the game you can just sort of blast through a kilometer yeah if you're insane like me and you want to get the Y ending and spend an extra 50 hours doing it you can also do that but
I never intended to do that I only wanted to main story endings and those are pretty easily to get you just play through the game that's it with all different characters I'm going to assume that at the end of all things you
you lend your your power to the next person yes it I mean I cheated a bit I looked at what was recommended to get the best ending technically or the internet ending and of course that's what I did and you know it
have what happened I expect it because new replicant does the exact same thing
was there were you confused in particular by one line of dialogue in the game one particular one I'm not sure one that made one that wage you wonder about
if you were thinking how much you want to to be that's I mean it's been a while now so I don't know exactly what you're referring to but maybe I was at the time so
there I forget when exactly it happens in the game but nine as is having this inner dialogue and someone says something so like you're thinking about how badly you want to
oh it's blanked out in the first and when I saw that line when I played through the game I was like what do you what do you mean what do you mean I felt like it's very obvious what they're talking about
now I added no I feel like that was that was also surprising that the game was actually tacking you know actually tackling the topic of sexuality in certain parts what I didn't expect it to I mean the game has like has certain in jokes when it comes to
tackling sexual themes especially when it comes to its main character right with to be in everything is that one line when they hit you with it was like I feel like if
tarrow wanted to say it he just would I but they but they don't I mean depending on what the age at what age that game was playable in Japan they're probably needed to
leap that thing out and they didn't have in the US so I feel like they I doubt the translation team changed something there that wasn't
changed the dialect to something that wasn't intended there I feel like your guitar was enough input on his games that he would have not wanted that and would have like stop that from happening and I feel like there is
enough in that game especially when it comes to these kind of topics you know the topic of love the topic of sexuality I mean they're they're you know these
these little machine in the machine village in the desert that you go to the first and there are some machines there that just fuck right that is in there they
did are trying their some machines that are trying to ape humans so it's not like the game is really hiding that it's partially talking about these kind of topics but you're right that line was like so very explicit in a certain way that yeah sure can catch you of guard I don't think it did catch me of guard that much I was like oh
okay you're just out you're saying it all right but I feel like subtextually that already was in the relationship between 2b and 9s so I wasn't surprised that the the antagonist was bringing that up to
throw 9s off balance so it felt like that was something that made sense so I don't know I don't know what like your guitar said about this or would have like if anyone asked him about this
but I would be very surprised if that wasn't the initial like if that wasn't the intent of that dialogue line maybe it's more explicit in the western version than in the Japanese version because they had to
leap it out in the Japanese version due to the age limit of the game but who knows not sure I would have to look that up but it was interesting yeah it looks like the trading was lately lower in Japan so it was 17
plus to suppose there were also 18 yeah and I mean what would be do big difference but you see I feel like we have seen that also an anime a lot where it's like you see the characters actually you know what they're saying like they're actually really cursing
hard there and there's actually a bleep or you get this intentional I don't know pixelate the thing in front of their mouth or or there
the you know I don't know their fingers or something as a as a to hide the vulgar gesture or whatever they're saying and they played at maybe as a joke and the subs the official ones just say the word right they don't even hide it so I feel like this could
have been a situation like that where it's very clear that that is what it was intended but they just couldn't do it because of how the age rating works in Japan so again not sure could also be different
could also be different could be that the that the localization team did a bit more than was intended by your guitar but yeah would be interesting to look up but yeah great game play it if you've never played it before again you don't have to play
near applicant I thought these games would be more connected I mean I wanted to play near applicant anyway to get like the full picture because I've never played it before but if you if you don't want to check it out because whatever you heard about it or what I said about it maybe
is like the sounds like it's a bit maybe also whatever you don't have to play it to play near automata but also maybe depending on your taste your sensibilities or whatever you maybe also might like near
applicant more I don't know I don't I think we know at least one person who does so sure check out both these games but I like near automata more so let me know whatever you think
John whenever you manage to get to near applicant or get back to it yeah I'm still at the literal halfway point so then you're well at the actual part where the game actually starts I guess okay so another game I mean I could barely talk about it or there's barely any need to talk about it by I restarted the blasphemous zero series which is like the I guess
revamp like remake thing of classic sunsoft or Hudson yes I was sunsoft yeah I mean the first one is definitely a remake and then the other ones are yes I mean that was only one blasphemous again for the NES
and they kind of redid the story for that with blasphemous zero into creates it and then they did also blasphemous zero two and three I've played both one and two
I haven't played three so you know to get into the groove again I replayed blasphemous zero one is still a lot of fun it's just a neat action platformer slightly Metroidvania ish thing and also when you earlier talked about a gigasort that is kind of also employing something like that because you are in the tank mobile tank thing that looks more like a buggy with a giant gun or something like that
it really does yeah so for you are three but it's you know it's a perfect can do some cool things it can hover can you know some maneuver on the wall at some point but you have to unlock some of these capabilities there's different shots different weapons different sub weapons and so on that you can use with different ages so that's cool
you can drive up walls at some point and something like that you have some puzzles in the stage but you can also leave the tank you have to leave the thing at certain parts to have like these mini dungeons that you need to investigate mostly to get sets new a quiet features to move further through the game
and yeah then if you're outside the game the tank you of course more vulnerable you have fall damage and stuff like that but that makes the game kind of varied and it's cool
and yeah I finished Blast semesthi 0 1 pretty quickly I'm gonna play 2 next I remember liking Blast semesthi 0 1 more than 2 mostly mostly because the weapons in Blast semesthi 0 2 absolute shit
yeah I still haven't finished 2 but yeah I feel like it's not as strong as one was I feel like they were trying to make them more evenly powered so that people would
use all of them instead of just upgrading to the strongest one and trying to keep that all the time because the strongest weapon in Blast semesthi 0 1 is the best and you should keep that on you all the time because it's really really good
and I feel like in 2d didn't do that as a compensation they introduced like the new counter system, parisystem, whatever and that is kind of fun
and you have to employ that a lot but also in general I just felt like 0 2 just didn't feel as connected because you're traveling to different planets you're not on the same planet the entire time
so it feels much more like separate levels than a metroidvania thing which I don't mind but in this case felt like okay you're doing something very different
you have to go back and forth between different planets because you're again on locking capabilities but still I feel like I enjoyed 0 1 more
I have not played 3 yet so I'm very interested to eventually check that out but I have to play 0 2 first again I mean I don't have 2 but I want to
and I remember there was one particular boss fight that was pretty cool and had your standard in T thing where it's like everyone comes together and you have music playing a kind of a role in it and everything
and I'm looking forward to that because I remember that was a pretty cool epic moment so yeah blast the master 0 if you like cool retro platformers
it's definitely a serious you should check out bigger of retro platformers so if you are maybe not that dialed into the emulation scene I guess
recently someone there was a breakthrough in porting I guess Xbox 360 games you know yeah there's a big long explanation about the difference between
re compilation and decomplation that I'm not knowledgeable enough to give but yes you directly ties into the game you want to speak about yes so someone recompiled sonic unleashed
to make a playable on PC which game does has has existed on the PC up to this point and they technically just grab the Xbox 360 version
upgraded it remastered it and put it out on PC need to have to a version copy of the 360 version and rip that to be able to play it and apply the patch technically but once you do that
you can play in very much upgraded super remastered version of sonic unleashed because when that game came out on Xbox 360 didn't run that great
yeah it was rough it was even more so on the ps3 yeah so and in the game that's all about speed that's a problem even though at least half of that game is god of war just with sonic but where it's not all about speed but I you know since I recently upgraded my PC I was like oh this seems like a good idea to check this out
and I did and it's a very mixed experience for me anyway it was I like parts of it I feel like I think the game looks fucking spectacular I mean they did some polishing off course aside from the frame
right like I it's now running in for full K if you want to make that happen right and I did that and look it's just the style of the game is colorful as ever as you expect from sonic and now it just looks just very pretty in high resolution in a very good
frame rate and yeah the good frame rate can work against it in a couple of spots yes I guess there's one spot in particular one of the rooftop run stages where you have to lower the frame rate to 49 or less
in or I think I don't know if it's one of the main stages or one of the DLC stages but if it's running 50 or higher you miss this one trigger in order to get to the end of the stage which is like
and I think that's a leftover artifact of um the FPS boost on the series X because the same thing happens on actual hardware when you run it over 30 FPS so interesting I didn't run it in the game
so interesting I didn't run into that but also I didn't play out the optional stages so maybe it was one of those yeah that was probably that yeah yeah so for you who for the people who haven't played this who don't know about sonic unleash the game is split technically in two different playing sections like
half of the stages are day stages the other half are night stages in the day stages you play the normal 3D sonic from a like
oh I guess behind sonic perspective and just run through the through the levels in this most some sometimes some what third person perspective sometimes in a 2D perspective and you have to get to the end reach the goal
and the other half the night stages you turn into a war hog and and just battle enemies got off war style with different with combos and everything and yeah then you have to battle boss or whatever and that's the game yeah you know that's more or less it yeah people I think when the game I came out a lot of people
played about the god of war stages like the were on stages because it's not what they associate with sonic is not fast at all like it's very slow paste and some of these stages are very long especially when compared to the very short and breezy day stages where you just run you know quick through
a couple of minutes and then you got the nice stages were just very long very dragged out fights and everything I learned after the fact and a lot of it a lot of the night stages you don't have to like fight all of the enemies so you know that would have been useful knowledge in retrospect but if you're going into it now with that knowledge then it's good knowledge to have
but you know I thought every enemy that came across my path because you know that's the fighting system is not bad it's very basic it's like babies first got off war babies first have my cry whatever very simple combo system you unlock new moves and that's like most of the stuff I did with with my upgrades because you know everyone says like you can play the game through the game with only three moves at your disposal you can do the same three hit combo all the time
why the fuck would I do that that takes all the fun out of it why would why would the hell you go I never understood that you go into the FAQs and you're like well you don't need to upgrade the moves because you can just win the game with all with the basic three hit combo like what I mean why yeah I get it from both sides firstly you know it's not like why don't you want to have fun exactly why don't you want to have fun like like string together long cool combos and just having a
being able to annihilate the wave of enemies with one long combo and the big swoop that also looks pretty cool it's like may you mean to tell me you're gonna sit down play devil may cry and not do a stinger into a million
stab into a launcher into a high time into a spike you're not gonna do that you're not gonna have fun with the toys they give you I mean if you have trouble doing that then that's another discussion but like if you're
somewhat capable in these games I feel like why would you bar yourself from that just to maybe get a bit more health or you know being able to or a bit more strength just I guess to get through it quicker I get that but also I feel like that would make it more feel it even more direct up because you're doing the same thing over and over again always the same combo again and again and again and I didn't want to do that so I upgraded my moves that mostly so and that was a good decision because that kept it at least
varied enough to feel the make the stages not feel as stale as they could have felt but still some of them felt pretty damn long and yeah but I didn't hate them I rather enjoyed some of them I enjoyed some of the boss boss fights I think I had more problem with the day stages and in general the controls of Sonic when he was in speed mode because he felt completely uncontrollable to me in the scale
like I don't know if it was as bad in Sonic generations and I don't remember that anymore but I felt like a fucking pinball in this game like I was just hitting boundaries all the time and suddenly I'm falling into into water and dead immediately because that's the other problem of this game it's like you technically have a health bar with the rings and everything but everything there's so many things that kill you immediately
and you since you I don't feel like you have good control over the character you fall in or I fell into drops a lot like fell off buildings fell into the water like ran into spikes I don't know it was just it was I don't know if it was too fast for me but sometimes I just felt like the character wasn't doing what I told him to do and that felt frustrating
and that is okay if the stage is very short and you know you get your standard five lives if you don't manage to do it you can just restart the stage again and it's fine
I managed to do most of them on the first try without having getting a game over so that was okay the problem is the very last stage which is Agmanland
just terrible there's no two ways about it and that broke me that was like because you get to a point where there is just sudden death all around you
and the character controlled so badly and randomly in my opinion that I felt like the game was just killing me and I couldn't do anything about it
and also wasn't my fault because I just like I jumped I pressed jump I did jump and for some weird physics buggy physics bullshit reason now the character just bounced off this wall and just died again
and then do speedrun stretch forehead yeah I guess and then you know you have to start over again and the problem is this stage is super long
like you have to go from the very beginning again and the stage is like I don't know how long is it ultimately like one hour John or something like that
my first time finishing the game back in the day I remember distinctly my run of Agmanland took like 40 minutes
I don't know well I know the speedrun time it's like under two minutes now because it's unleashed is so busted yeah but I don't know what the mean average of runs on Agmanland
with the okay there's a video here speedrun without any of the skips eight minutes and 47 seconds so that is pretty fast
that's ridiculously fast yeah but it didn't feel like that to me definitely I remember seeing the timer say over 40 minutes and I got the worst rank and I was like
okay the stage is done let's just take me to the final boss let's go I don't even give a say I after the first stage I gave up on ranks like I was like okay I got E who gives a shit I got D I don't care
whatever I don't even know I think I got maybe two or three S ranks and I was like that that's good that's nice I think I got like one yeah or two S ranks and some A ranks but everything like a lot of these
of the D of the daytime stages especially were like super bad for me so because I felt like I don't know what I can control the character the way I want to do
all the people out there who have gone through and gotten all A ranks and Sonic Adventure 2 like Jesus Christ yeah yeah what's weird like the the the the lights be dash no not the lights be dash
the light switch dash was doing what it's supposed to do but the normal dash like did sometimes was executed when I didn't want it to and I don't know it
and I think that is also has been confirmed that it acts differently in this game than in the other Sonic games that instead of adventure and in Sonic Generations and something about that was apparently the thing that just didn't work for me because I just felt frustrated a lot in this game sometimes also in the
night stages because they were like jumping puzzles like if you wanted to collect the emblems and stuff like that to get to the next stage with the sea which is the other part of that you need to collect a certain amount of
emblems from a certain from stages there are two different styles of emblems nights emblems and daydamp sun emblems and moon emblems and to unlock the new stages and not only
optional stages but main story stages you have to have a certain amount of these emblems and some of these collecting some of these is just bullshit like there's some jumping
parts in the night stages where it's like how the fuck did I die here that's not fucking possible and then you have to go a really long part to get to that stage again and indeed to get to that emblem again and on the other side of things
it's in the day stages some of these are just you have to have the reaction time of God to get them on the first try and if you don't well then either you can let yourself get game over go
game over and try from the last checkpoint again or you try the entire stage again and you know playing that without fucking FAQ video or something that that felt kind of like okay all right so eventually I switched over looked at YouTube
like where do I get these emblems and you know looking for them felt like like it would like who would really make me really mad because sometimes I
looked at how many emblems are supposed are there are supposed in a daytime stage like where were they I didn't see any of them the game is too fast where were these emblems like I said no I fucking idea where to go so that's like that yeah so I looked up YouTube is like that's where it was and eventually I got enough emblems but that didn't save me from
the Eggman land and so I didn't finish the game that rarely happens like I might go back to it and feels like there's one stage where you can just stock up on lies which is also weird thing like if you make if you have a games with some game with so much
sun death and such a brutal final stage just give me a good way to either stock pile lies which apparently did or there are shops in this game what just let me buy
for Fox sake I mean but the yeah but there's other things you can buy with your rings instead but yeah there's defying life replenishing things but it doesn't do you any good if you just die yeah it's yeah I know there is one stage in particular that
gives you like three or four extra lives I don't remember it which one it is but it does exist so there's one overworld stage and
I forgot what what it's called that big beneath the initial stage go near yeah where you can stock pile it get like five lives or something like that and that's probably what I would
do if I ever go back to it but also I'm not super motivated to do so I might just look yeah check I want to fight Eggman kind I want to have that final boss fight and I hate leaving games unfinished I rarely do that I always finish my game
always always always always like there's so very few games that I didn't finish so this is kind of annoying on me so I kind of want to go back to it at some point and finish that final stage but it's also so it's really trying to keep me from doing that
so I don't know if there's a cheat I can apply was like yeah you just unlimited lives maybe it's out there somewhere that I can make maybe some cheat engine thing that also would work on the recompile version of this I don't know I need to look it up
because you know there's no real difference there if if I stockpile it and just waste a bunch of hours on that or if I just activate the cheats like well now I have unlimited lives so that doesn't make the game really any easier but it's alleviated
alleviates the horrors of maybe getting to the final boss but then with one life dying there and having to do the stage all over again stockpile the lives all over again so I don't want to do that so I'll probably gonna look into if there's a way to cheat there
because this is a single player game and I'm old and I don't give a fuck so yeah that was my experience with Sonic unleashed like I said pretty game and it's really nice that we now have a
through the hands of very capable people and fans and everything have a chance to get great ports great updated ports of 360 games like there a bunch of games that I would like to see great
a graphically updated upgraded with higher resolution better frame rate version of a certain 360 game for example lost Odyssey like give me a really good port recompile port of the 360 version of lost Odyssey
lost Odyssey blue dragon just like both the big mist walker games like I mean mist walker I mean blue dragon is I have said for us again it basically just wants to grow up to be dragon quest but still a fun game
yeah like give me that there a bunch more on 360 that I would like to have like a good PC version of that to rights retribution the old I'm probably the only person who still remembers that game
quite a lot playing that the police guy with his dog shadow and playing there's not enough games waking wake you can play a cool police dog and have him do style sections and being able to take out guys from the shadow which is his name so I said I really I really like actually like the dark sections of this game a lot more and I'm not that big of a stealth guy but that just
just did it for me was really cool playing like a cool police dog there who was able to take out these bad guys the where you play as owner is a bit very basic like shoot third person shooting and fighting sections but the dark sections were cool so I would like to see that franchise revive that will never happen but maybe someone will some weird fanboy will do or recompile version of that will see would be nice
I see a few games on my shelf here that I'd like to see either get ports or get like backwards compatibility update him though I guess Microsoft is apparently done doing that on Xbox one a series X which is stupid but I've better
you want to be a recon pile thing going I figure you want to get as close to 100% back compare as possible but you know what do I know you can still only play Halo 5 on an Xbox one you can play
Halo 5 on an Xbox one you can still only play Gears of War 4 on there you can still only play projects still feed on Xbox 360 like come on man.
Is there no PC version for for Gears of War 4?
No, oh, the okay.
The only PC versions for Gears of War are right now 5?
Yeah Gears of War 5 Gears tactics who cares there's remake of Gears 1 coming out and for the wood which is cool that that's finally getting a port but what if there's a new game in the worst called E day what about 2 3 and 4 you idiots you can still only play those on 360 and Xbox one in series consoles.
I mean if they do a remake of one chance might not be super low that they do one of two and three at least.
That means nice.
And I'm one of I mean I feel like I'm one of five people on the face of this green earth that liked Gears 4 I still think it was a cool game.
I'm always interested in checking it out I mean I like want one to pre well enough and I always wanted to check out 4 and 5 I don't know if the new story with the new characters actually finished after 5 they always felt like okay it's gonna be another trilogy right and everything for Gears 6 yet.
I mean maybe no E day is pretty cool.
Yeah definitely about the emergency day so whenever we're gonna get 6 and I also don't know maybe the stories finished after 5 I haven't played it so.
Yeah I still have not gotten to it but I'm also one of those weirdos who really like Halo 4 and 5 I don't know I get that people don't I get that people really don't like 5 I was like the game was okay but letting it just have rotten Xbox one seems like kind of a shame because what how many years has
the master chief collection been out come on this is a no brainer just like when they were like oh yeah so the master chief collections 1 2 3 oh that's neat and then later on they're like oh also 4 and then later later on like oh also ODST which is like yeah okay so we have all the greatest
tits just give us the whole thing yeah brown nice oh you can play Halo 5 forge on PC I don't care about forge making maps and then not be able to do anything
what Jesus yeah that's weird I mean it maybe eventually they'll be a collection or something like that who knows I feel like collections there they just have to add one more game to it.
And nobody cares about Halo or say our friend of ours who's a big Halo thing he was like no so Halo or can go it's like all right yeah like the same situation is a new Capcom fighting collection wise Capcom fighting jam in there.
No one wanted that game. Why did you pick that like you had a bunch of wise wise fucking tech romance or not in there that would have made much more sense.
I mean maybe that'll be in fighting collection listen I can't wait you're saying the games preservation is important at the like at this point.
Listen listen at this point square has a re-released all of the saga games except for unlimited saga and that's the weird one like the really like saga as a whole is weird unlimited saga is like what is this game.
But it deserves to be preserved so people can see what it was all about. That's freaking how there's like some statistic that like 87% of games are no longer available to purchase that's a problem.
I agree I totally am about game preservation I would give like the you know the center stage to floor to the good what games first and then you can take them if you the city what's.
And okay fine but we've gotten a bunch of really great games and fighting collection one and two so I feel like it's fine like okay here's the weird one yeah sure and then and then we can sort of us surpass like at least they didn't put SVC chaos in there at least that's off on its own really.
Probably only because it is still on by S&K and they can put it in the Capcom collection so.
But I think that really got a re-released in it yeah I mean I don't think it was published but okay no it was published by S&K it was worked on my code mystics so.
But yes yes.
Alright reboot reboot.
But anyway my copy of CVS 2 yeah that that too of Capcom fighting collection as shipped and I'm looking very much forward to playing especially project justice and a plasma sword again because those games are weird and I love and two bits and I'm looking forward to jingling.
And of course the big ones like CVS 2 and power stone as well.
And then the game I think on their twitch channel like they were running a big tech in seven tech in seven tech in eight tournament Jesus all weekend long and they had this thing Saturday afternoon where it's like oh we're gonna have a big power stone to exhibition and up on stage were unruly.
From like your video games you press the in mind like max million dudes videos but.
Exeive your woods was also there because you know he's also big into games all up up down down so there and I got there late but they were I guess at one point bringing people in from the audience to play a lot of time they were doing like 2v2 matches and then later on they had I think.
They had a couple other streamers under I think what's his name Chloe Chloe Thompson or Chloe Thomas I think yeah Chloe Thomas a Cleo Thomas Jesus Christ and then one other in there as well they were going they were playing power stone to and they're having a good time and.
Kenny was showing off this belt that he has and saying like I'm like this is my game this is my game you can't take it from me and then and then at one point who walks out on to stage but Kenny Omega a very nice and he in Xavier would start having a stupid wrestler beef of course and they go back and forth and they're playing power stone to one teams and.
Kenny is definitely holding Kenny back because he's so bad at power stone so Kenny unruly is just like winning 2v1 so at one point it's just like Jesus Christ y'all are awful there's one good person on this stage so then they switch over to CVS 2 and they do a bit of that it was it was a great time that was super fun to watch live so.
Yeah yeah it was obviously a big promotion piece but they're also like hey play video games is their good and they're fun yeah I'm just glad that that these collections are back I kind of missed my window on a fighting collection one because I didn't pay much attention to it because it didn't have much many games in it that I was interested in I never got into dock stalkers it's like maybe get this eventually and there's like oh shit now it's super expensive.
So I want to have a physical copy of that oh the physical version yeah yeah that's staying up and went up then yeah but at least I got a physical of Marvel vs Capcom collection and and now the fighting collection 2 which has at least the games that I definitely want to play in there and I'm looking forward to doing that soon whenever that arrives here but the last game
that was already here and I actually played and I referred to earlier in terms of having to replaying the same shit again not too but wanting to.
It's the trials of mana remake and that game has somewhat interesting history and you know the it's the sequel to secret of mana technically or the third game in the second that said so franchise
and that never technically came out in the US as far as I'm aware until the mana collection recently.
So played is really funny because people found you can rip the game out of there and just played on an MU player.
It makes sense and that is how most people probably played it the first time so did I played it on an emulator with my friend Alex who you also know and yeah we had a fun time back in the day playing that on super Nintendo emulator.
It's a bit different than secret of mana it's a bit slower in certain parts but what's interesting about it it has different story also different story path we have like six characters and technically all of them have individual story lines which is very cool like technically you always have a team of two characters I mean your party eventually has three characters but two of them are kind of connected in a story path.
But the third one is kind of always just an add-on to that and halfway through the game the third character story kind of ends or is forgotten about until the very end and the main drive or the two your two main characters that you pick and you should always pick the ones that kind of belong together.
So a Durand and Angela Kevin and Charlotte and Hawk Eye and Reese those are the teams that kind of belong together in the third characters whatever whatever you want to pick and then you have depending on which character you choose as your main character you also you know have a slightly different story there and it's pretty cool and pretty fun.
It's a very light hit friendly action RPG and that stays the same in the remake now the remake is of course not the typical 2d somewhat isometric but not really view that the you know a secret of mana also had it's fully 3d and the sad thing about it is it doesn't have multiplayer which was always the main drive which I like the most about the about secret of mana.
And also the original tries of mana which it didn't have that title because it didn't come out in the west until recently which is second is that so three.
Or see that of mana to someone just change that like when they did the emulated version of that like fan translation everything but now tries of mana see official name even say that with the in the Japanese stop.
Say again say so three trials of mana.
Which is cool.
But yeah so it's fully 3d now and the suit reverse the world and.
More interest you know all a bit more stuff they put in there you also have a bit longer of a post game and everything you have more character classes.
That you can upgrade to which is probably the coolest thing about this game I haven't played that many games that actually have you like.
Where your character classes are upgraded at a certain point and that in this game you just get to think first is level 18 and then level 32 you can upgrade your character to a new class and with that comes you know.
Do have an extended combo you get new moves you get a different outfit and the you can always choose between light and dark path and depending on what you choose you get later fully light.
You know code a character fully dark or a mix between the two.
So light light light dark light and dark dark and different skill sets of course that come with that and that keeps the fighting system even though it's very basic rather varied in terms of what you're.
What moves your character have at the disposal and also makes it very interesting to experiment with different character party setups right because depending on what class you choose down the road it might be a better support class it might be a better main character class it might be a classic damage dealer or more of them.
You know more of have like buff and debuff magic and stuff like that and that's very cool and I like that a lot and that's still present in the remake version of the game even more so like definitely have more things and especially the post game you get one additional character class one final fourth class that you that you didn't have before and that's also pretty neat.
And yeah I really enjoyed this game like you have an upgraded soundtrack soundtrack of the SNS version was already fucking spectacular what a main theme and everything in there it looks sounds great but now they also ploy full orchestra for a lot of the songs and everything.
Like there's more budget in the game that I would have expected.
I forget I started playing this game I didn't finish it. Do you have the option to toggle between soundtracks yes you can play with the classic contract.
I love when games like the super Mario RPG remake that does well like that's a good choice.
Absolutely please always give the players more options and like I said the original soundtrack is already fantastic but I played at least in the first two runs that I did I played with the redone soundtrack because it's really good like when they did the secret of mana remake which was definitely more low budget than this.
I put a lot more budget into this one they also remade the soundtrack and that was much more experimental and on a lot of tracks I felt it felt like Kikuta was just letting the other artists do whatever they want with his original tracks and that sometimes worked out and sometimes it definitely didn't.
And this feels like a much more straight forward upgrade of that soundtrack which is better instrumentation and everything or maybe not even better but just higher quality I don't know you know more instruments more more complex whatever.
So outside of that the tracks are just completely recognizable and sound kind of the same just you know upgraded remastered remade and it's just great and so is the whole game it's like I said the story is the game is very basic it's very much intended for a younger audience it's not complicated you got your ring menu you got your thing you know you let your characters do you can control all your three characters you can switch between them.
And if you don't control them yourself the AI controls them the AI is dumb as dog shit so that can cause some problems because you have some bosses and enemies that have your typical like area of effects for their moves and you know how to evade those your AI bodies necessarily don't there's one particular boss in this game which is the demon wall which fucking has has it is AOE effects every time.
And you need to dodge role constantly and those stupid AI bodies of mine the first time I thought this they rolled into every fucking attack.
It even makes more sense to just play with one characters like the other to die and and finish that thing of yourself instead of trying to revive all the other characters and keep them alive all the time because it's just micro management to up the wazoo it's ridiculous.
But outside of that it's a very basic fighting like concept mostly just one one one combo technically you have I mean you can do different variations of that one combo but you only have two buttons one light attack one strong attack and you can't do that much with it depending on when you do the strong attack you have a slightly different attack that you end the combo with but outside of that it's not much.
It becomes much more interesting when you go into the magic and when you go into the special moves and when you go into the different buffs you can upgrade different characters stats and with each stat you upgrade you also get different.
So you have to make a decision there like you can pick you only have like two slots per class upgrade so the you know the first basic class you get two slots where you can equip special skills on then with the next upgrade you get for with the one after that you get six and so on and depending on what you choose there your character becomes more suitable to be a support character or to be you know to be a tank to be a damage dealer to be a healer whatever.
And so that's very cool and it just plays very well it just plays very breezy and easily and it's just a very laid back experience most of the time some bosses are a bit tough on the first run through if you don't know what you're doing like I said the demon walls from the many example here but if you just don't evade battles too much which you can do in a lot of cases but if you just normally fight through the game you very quickly become very powerful.
And then if you also upgrade to the right class depending on what character constellation you have you have good character synergy like Doranus can be leveled up to be a very good tank and he has a skill where he can just provoke the enemy so they all just dog pile him instead of instead of you and then you can just take the main damage and he you can raise his HP a lot and stuff like that so classic tank behavior and you can focus on damage dealing and so on.
So I always kept him as a third character in my party because he's the only character who can do that and that can so I can focus on actually doing the damage and throwing out giant as spells with Angela and stuff like that you have an element system which is very basic but also works really well and yeah it's just a very fun not to complex system and some very interesting varied worlds you haven't
but the world map that you later can travel through first with a giant as turtle and then with you flammie the you know the the the main mascot dragon of the Mana series I would say that you can could already travel around on and secret of Mana and now you can do in this one as well and you know that's fun and you have a bunch of different styles was you have an ice world fireword of code your desert you have you have
a ton that is where it's night all the time and stuff like that's a giant kingdom you know and then little areas in between that you have to travel to is just a nice game with a cool journey the journey aspect is also very enforced in this and yeah it's very nice you have cool characters in there very basic not like they don't have deep
character stories or anything at all it's a game from the super Nintendo era like games with a bit more flashout characters like a chrono trigger and stuff like that were far few and far between so don't expect too much it's just very basic and the top I think is also not great if I'm from what I heard I played it with your Japanese
stuff of course and especially a lot of people were complaining about charlotte because she has this very baby ish way of speaking and you already still see that in the text where it's like this
there's some some were letters in that it shouldn't be in there in certain words and she would like oh this little little thing all right you know she talks like that all the time and that I assume that can get annoying but in
in Japanese it wasn't as bad and remember people having thoughts on that yeah so but you know that that can that can be a circumvented so I just had a good time and once you're done with the game like I said you have the post game which is just pretty much you upgrade
to your new character classes but to do that you go through like a little post main story little character a quest that kind of nice cap of point for each individual's character character story so I'm pretty glad they added that so that was fun like that that that's really cool
the not so fun part is what comes after that because it's just a giant as dungeon that is very long and we just fight all the enemies that you kind of know and it's just doesn't end it's very long you have a pretty cool boss fight at the end of it but I was like I'm not going to do that again but these little character stories that you can do after the fact to be able to get the the make up in item to upgrade to your final class those are pretty cool like they are very nice cap of points for the
individual character stories that you actually don't get in the main game that you didn't get in the in the old version of the game so it's nice they added that it felt very satisfying for a lot of the characters all of them pretty much to have that added on so that's it's a nice thing that's something that I want to see in remakes like that was like hey maybe get a bit more out of the characters for this and they did that and I'm glad they did that
and yeah then you have new game plus and you can play the entire game again just with different characters which is what I did I first played with a team of Angela to ran and Reese and then with Kevin Charlotte and to ran again and then the last thing I'm going to do is play with Hawkeye
I reason to ran but I've gotten to that yet but that's really like all I can say about is just a nice old school Lee very basic very easy to play action RPG that doesn't demand a lot of you in most cases especially not a new game plus because you can you're so overpowered at that point especially if you collect all the little
cacti mini game you can find these little cacti characters in the game and they give you additional boons and one of them is like 300% more exp constantly and that raises you to an absurdly overpowered level in the new game plus so quickly
you're just mopping the flow with any every enemy which also makes it much faster to play through the game again then is a given a new game plus because you are already over leveled at least with the character that you played before the problem is you want to play with the new characters and those are not leveled up yet so you ideally you keep one character around that is already you know level to the maximum and then the new ones you can buff up with that with that pool
and I buff I said before with the 300% thing but you play through the game very quickly and even more quickly on the second on the third round probably but yeah I enjoyed my time with trials of mana remake it was just a really nice
relaxing experience for like hey okay done with work just want to play some play something relaxing maybe have something running on the side on the on the third screen or second screen or something on the side or listen even to a podcast sometimes
and that game enables you to do that is just it's not very demanding for some people this might be boring or slag
this is too easy or whatever or to say but it was exactly what I needed and it just felt very satisfying and fun and just was a breezy time
and I can recommend that game to anyone who's into slightly old-schoolish action RPGs that are a bit on the lighter side and don't demand you to read into it too much
you maybe should look up party constellations like what makes the most sense but most of the characters are pretty self explanatory in terms of if you look at their skill set at least once and then okay this is this character should be used mostly as a buff character
but again you can level the characters up in different way you can go the dark part you can go the light path you can do a mix of both in two different ways and depending on what you do
you might have a different gaming experience so it's really nice that the game gives you that option and yeah I had a lot of fun with it and I'm gonna have a lot of fun in the last run through I'm very sure of that
and lighthearted fun tries of mana remake highly recommended and I did not expect to like it as much as I did but here we are really really fun time
so you also played two games I mean my list isn't quite as long and I haven't really finished any things since then but I checked it out so I did start
well so I've been running through my second playthrough of Final Fantasy 16 at a very labored pace
because in order to get the platinum they expected to finish the game two times in full because they decide to lock hard mode behind finishing the game which is kind of stupid to be honest but
the last boss I was fighting I was sort of having a little bit of a crash out because I was getting really frustrated
because even though your levels are higher it doesn't feel like it scales the way it should so I'm there at level 70 fighting this boss and it's like I don't feel like I'm level 70 anymore man
like it doesn't feel like the numbers are going up enough for me to be like yeah I'm doing the thing and I'm
like the game but I'm really wondering if it's worth doing this maybe I'll just go back to my end game safe from normal mode and play the DLC that way because both of the DLCs have trophies for finishing them on hard mode and it's like
the DLC's worth it worth it have you heard anything about it apparently they're really good so I mean I had no really any intention to go back to 16 I felt a bit I don't know mix on that on the story and everything I don't
felt about it when when the story was said and done yeah I mean surely was a final fantasy story but yeah I don't think it was I don't think it was bad by any means but I sort of walked away from it like yeah okay it
was trying to go for a bit more of a serious route right it was definitely inspired by game of thrones in certain parts and I like that I love the presentation in that game
it's fucking incredible it was just I felt like by the end it was I felt like it was missing something and I can't even fully put my finger of it I talked about it with another friend of ours where it's like you always feel like it's the game is pulling itself back in certain parts of the story where it's like okay it's trying to go for that and then it doesn't and the ending felt like that to a bit where it's like what are you actually
going for here what are you actually trying to do aside from being a tragedy under quite resolved his mommy issues the only thing left to do is got to go kill God yes I mean I'm sure that it was like the final fight was a blast but it's still like story wise I felt like it's it left
to be desired and that was a bit of a bomber I had a fun time with that game fun enough but it was not like I didn't feel the urge to go back to it but if you say the DLC is supposed to be really good maybe I showed
it's weird because I don't feel like the bosses were the slogs in normal mode that they are in hard mode like the last big thing I did was fighting Titan
I feel like that took like twice as long compared to normal mode and it's like then what's the point of giving us 50 extra levels if you're just going to double the health pool of every boss fight and make it last even longer man it just
doesn't feel good I mean that's one approach to heart mode but also when I'm not a fan of gift the gift the bosses different moves that I
maybe more hard hitting it makes that difficult that some of them do have that okay but boy when they hit it's just like I guess you're spending at least two to three potions and it's I've gone through my hard mode run with the experience
but accessories on it because I want to get as much XP as possible so then I don't have to grind as much short end game because it's like well I'm going to have to get to at least level 90 probably all the way to level 100 at the end of the game if the level numbers are about the same as I think a lot of people I saw playing just playing streak through the game not doing any grinding because I did a lot of grinding because I was like well I want to fill in
the skill grid I want to get everything in that lead to me getting the level 50 that lead to me getting about 600,000 gill so I don't have to worry about money in my second play through which is nice
but from what I saw a lot of people were finishing the game around level 47 so by that metric you're probably expecting to finish new game plus on hard mode between like 90
4 and 96 which is still a ways off and I'm like two thirds of the way through the game and I don't think unless I'm actively grinding XP that I'm going to naturally get there
plus because I also want to get you know the best sword in the game which means you have to do all the side quests again which is fine because they're the second playthrough of this game is a lot faster because of skipping all the cutscenes
but that means having to do all the hunts again and some of the hunts are terrible like especially I don't remember the name of it but the the S rank one the dragon that one isn't awful to fight on normal mode so I can only imagine how terrible it is on hard mode
so I'm just like I'm just like do I want to do this to myself so I kind of put the game down and I've been having to think about it and I'm like you know if I go back to it I'll just load up my end of the game normal mode save and just do the DLC that way
this game if proper like new game plus if you just want to play through it on normal again I'm not sure I haven't actually tried and also not that I'm thinking about it I'm not sure if hard mode starts you at level 50
I mean I guess it would make sense considering everything because if they show you at level one boy that's an uphill climb.
but I mean I don't dislike ff16 but it makes me want to just like reconsider what I'm doing with my illness.
Hey welcome to my son I got least experience.
Yeah I'm sorry.
So how did you feel about the other game?
But yeah that's not the only 16 I played the other 16 I played was doom 2016 and I'm not done with it I'm like four out of like 13 missions into it and I don't know if you knew this and I might be a few years late to the party but
you know that game is pretty cool yeah I just I like that it's fast and frantic but it's not too fast I feel like I can still sort of keep up with what's going on without losing myself in the extra because you get into some wild fire fights in that game.
But they give you so many tools and so many weapons like I think I think was some of the secrets I found I have found some weapons weight earlier than I should have like I found I think the plasma rifle and like the second mission and I was like I don't think I should have this but they're giving it to me so yes I will take it.
I feel like the gameplay loop in that game is just pretty well thought out where it's like hey okay you use your guns if you're law on ammo you use the chainsaw you get back your ammo again you if at a certain point you can unleash your whatever it's called unlimited attack.
Glory kills yeah yeah so all of that just works very well like chains very well into each other so that's that's pretty good.
I really appreciate when they give you the chainsaw I was like yeah well every time I want to use this I'm gonna have to open up the weapon wheel to pull it out and that seems a little.
A little clunky but then they were like no just the X button I was like oh yep oh that's a smart choice okay so that you use it all the time because yeah yeah sometimes I forget it's there but when I do I'm just like when I'm gonna look at my ammo constant sounds like alright.
Let's go baby yeah it just feels so good it's so this or all like I'm not super all about like disgustingly violent games which you know that is doom's pedigree but you know and I've been wanting to play this for a long time so I finally decided well doom the dark ages is out.
Maybe I should play one of the old and I'm probably gonna go back and play more I'm probably gonna go back and play more of it tonight in this week because I was having a really good time the one of the first things I did was I got enough pray it or upgrades to just be like alright show me where show me where the items are on the map and then I'll explore and find the secrets after I feel like that was the good choice and then everything else can come after.
Yeah I had a lot of fun with that game when I played it played it twice I bounced off eternal the first time I played it because it feels very differently but I'm gonna get back to that eventually as well because I feel like the gimmick with the hook sounds very interesting and dark ages look pretty cool and everyone says is rocks so eventually I'll get picked into the difference.
I heard that dark ages is even more different comparison but that it's still a good game so it sounds like it's much more melee based than 16 and eternal.
Yeah I guess you always have the shield and you can do like round trips with them like you're a devil may cry character but it's like okay that's that that still sounds cool.
I didn't realize I thought doom 2016 was like a lot more straight in its mechanics I didn't realize there was like there's different upgrades you can get there's weapon mods I was like oh so they were like just they were cooking with this one because you can do all sorts of stuff with like use a shotgun that fires a grenade you can use it to fire a three round burst and then I get the super shotgun and I'm like oh let's go.
I was like okay I need to look up what is the best upgrade path for each gun because I don't want to put any points to the wrong one so I was like I was so afraid to choose the wrong one but yeah the arsenal in that game is fucking ridiculous.
I mean honestly it doesn't feel like there's a wrong choice because like I was messing around with the grenade mod for the normal shotgun and normally when you get it there's like I don't know maybe half a second before the grenade is ready to shoot.
There is a very clear first upgrade to choose on that one so it makes us that your grenade shot is really instantly the moment you pull down the left trigger and I was like this is a good I like this.
The soundtrack is also great in that game.
I'm a Gordon shame that there was such a falling out and drama on the second game and kind of got the soundtrack got kind of fucked up in the process but in this first one it's fucking ridiculous it's very very very well done and adds a lot to the frantic pace and combat situations it's really cool.
Yes, I look forward to playing more of that I want to try and work on it this week I have a few days off later in the week that I'll try and put some time in so yeah I.
I've been trying to get away from playing just ff 14 but you know so always easy what you're getting to it so.
I'm trying, I'm trying, yeah I'm trying man one game at a time and I guess that's it for the play with buffet we're gonna then so we're gonna move over to the few new spits we have.
And now ladies and gentlemen, a bit of news.
Yeah, alright we got a few new spits here not not too many not not too big stuff because we're already running very long and we want to get to our discussion section but yeah last time we talked we just watched like the announcement trailer for the.
For the switch to and since then there was an actual direct with some games and you know some more details on the specs and all of that so.
Won't go into all of these really in detail because it's been a while since that was announced I feel like that is a bit moot but.
John general impressions you still excited for the switch to what what is the the the thing that you're most looking forward to with that system.
Looking for the games not running at like 10 to 15 FPS but and a lot of games are confirmed to get free upgrades which is nice like.
No there's been some noise about the games that have paid upgrades and for a couple of those like yeah okay like the Zelda's you probably shouldn't have to pay for an upgrade I think that's a little ridiculous.
At least with Kirby in the forgotten land you're getting a significant chunk of new content so I look at that and I'm like okay alright I feel like I can justify this.
A couple of our friends and I were going back forth I'm like they're making all these they're making some mechanical changes to Zelda and it's like do I should I go back in and play it.
And they were like no don't do it and I'm you know say yeah thanks for talking me down so I don't think I'm gonna.
Do that but I mean Mario Kart World looks looks really fun I mean I feel like it's sort of a little hard to get excited for Mario Kart anywhere because you know like eight was around for very long time.
When did it release on the Wii U don't forget it was a Wii U game how could I it really Mario Kart 8 had a almost 11 year long cycle at released in May of 2014.
I mean so the content upgrades for the first which were not substantial.
Yeah I mean they released how many extra tracks some Jesus no it was like 40 well I mean they released with 24 or 24 on the Wii U version and other 48 on the switch which is knee.
So at least the game had a very long tail but you know people are also complaining about the about the tracks being ported from Mario Kart Tour oh they look lower detail this that the other thing.
Okay you go in and see if you do a better job upscaling a mobile game assets then like I'm not gonna sit here in defend Nintendo I'm not going to sit here in defend big Corpo but you know.
It is what it is you want more Mario Kart well a finger on the monkey's paws gonna curl up yeah and I mean it was still fun stages.
Yeah sure perfect or be as varied as the other ones in terms of track design whatever I enjoyed it I love Mario Kart 8 the likes whatever just fun time always a game you can throw back in with some friends and you know play.
You have a good time and I assume that will be the same with worlds just gonna be a much bigger version of that I'm really just to find out what would how that will actually manifest when it's actually.
When I'm actually playing it if there will be some repetitive parts like getting.
We're not paradise style getting from one part to the stage to the next one and don't fall behind good luck and this is a instant retry I hope so and it looks very interesting like a lot of characters not of cool new gimmicks and stuff with the costumes is nice it feels like they added a lot more belts and whistles this time.
I'm just interested to see if the actual selection of tracks is there and how much the open world has actually to offer for you in terms of.
Hey there's some cool shit here that you might want to find and look for maybe because we will get a new costume through it and stuff like that.
So I'm really interested to see how that is all like gonna pen out.
Yeah of course I'm looking forward to mitrate prime free. That's no secret and.
No that's still technically announced for the normal switch.
The switch to version is gonna have a much upgraded graphical mode and they got to play it on the weekend believe in there like oh yeah it's 120 Hertz variable refresh rate screen is like.
Yeah but they recently have a conference that is only for the portable version right the VRR was a mistake.
Yeah yeah no no no no on their end it's not gonna you won't be able to have that in dock mode you only will be have to have that mobile mode which a lot of people are playing their switch like that.
So they probably will be able to experience and there's no like there might be a patch later on that enables that for the docked version of the game so.
There's that and yeah just I'm just like one of the highlight games I've been waiting for for while and I kind of want to revisit one.
It's not metrat prime three it's metrat prime for actually and I kind of want to revisit the first three so looking forward to that and eventually I will get to that a new donkey con game.
But that's a looks really fun great title it looks like a lot of fun yeah so yeah there's a new version of you there's a new version of Yakuza zero coming out.
Yeah I mean I won't play that but which I wonder if they'll I do wonder if they'll backport that to the other versions of the game or just like I guess do another big re release which I feel like would be.
Well unfair to people have already bought the game on other platforms but you know who knows maybe Sega will pony up to patch the other versions of the games.
Yeah that was it.
One game that really excited me was the HD remaster of briefly default.
Because that's been stuck on the 3ds that deserves to be free on other platforms and it's a great game that lots more people should play.
I will just check that out then because I haven't played it on 3ds so.
Yeah it's I think it was the.
This team has done some experimental stuff like I think one of the games they did was on the 3ds was called like I think it was called a final fantasy for heroes of light.
And it was like.
A little different from what you would expect from a final fantasy game that they don't remember exactly in what ways but then they kind of were like hey.
We're just going to make a big boy game now also we're going to bring in Revo to do the music and that game soundtrack slap.
But yeah there's there's a weird moment during the stream where it sort of like cut out and I wanted to see footage of enter the gun shooting to and it was like mm mm you have to go to another stream idiot.
Also finally details on Damon X Machina titanic sion which you know that's the old giant robot game.
It was really surprising to see some of the other ones in there like they were like I'm second off silk song.
Which I was waiting for and then we're what you just gonna put it in like that what the fuck my heart goes out to fans of hollow night is I don't really have a dog in the race.
So I hope they're able to play silk song sometime before the heat death of the universe.
It was cool to see stuff like cyberpunk and ff7 remakes.
Repider 6 that apparently looks better than it does on a series s.
Uh oh really.
Yeah like some people were showing some differences in the level of detail and like on some of the macro shots or some of the characters.
It looks better on switch to interesting.
Yeah.
Well, I yeah this is definitely some definitely some stuff I mean not all of that is coming at launch so I don't know how much.
It's weird that they're putting their Nintendo lands.
I don't know whatever thing let to promote the console.
You know what actually having explaining the console to you and the different things you can do with it be like paid.
That should come with this is dumb very weird choice and I'm interested to see how many of the features actually.
Get put into certain games like the mouse stuff for example like how many games are they gonna be that actually make use of that and everything but.
You know all of that.
It looks like a very solid system I'm looking forward to getting my hands on it eventually whenever that will be I don't know I'm not gonna be able to get it at launch probably but we'll see maybe.
Later this year or next year or whatever and by then probably a couple more games will be out I mean think Mario Kart na a world is gonna be at launch and but not as gonna come sometime in summer and then I don't know when Metroid Prime for is coming so.
Let's see but by the time I get to it there probably some games I'm gonna check out and looking forward to to it and the only weird thing other weird thing that.
Introduce this game card system for sharing games which seems to be not that well thought out actually.
Yeah I mean you can do it on switch one now I guess like that just downloaded a system update the other day and it was on the home menu and I'm like.
All right yeah can't wait to share games with.
Myself mm-hmm it sounds but it sounds like they downgraded that by introducing that new system it was apparently before or you could.
Do it more game sharing at least inside of the family or whatever and now that is not possible anymore without the game card so it's.
I don't know that sounds like it kind of there would be back words there but let's see but yeah it looks like a system there's also the game key cards for the game is like not really on the cartridge which yeah that's what I'm here.
Oh okay oh yeah let me to be fair that's not new there's a lot of games I switch one that do that but.
And like I want to buy briefly default physical even though it's not technically on the cartridge but though the game key cards will at least retain resale value so long as the game is still downloadable so that's why I'm like yeah I'll just.
Buy it that way I guess I mean it's not the case for all the games right it's just a lot of the party developers are using it because it's a cheaper version than using the four 64 gigabyte cartridge or whatever the other option was that Nintendo provided them yeah there were like two whole options for cartridges yeah like 64 gigabyte one and then.
Shut up key cards right so yeah they're going for that because it's easier manufacturing for them and that means only the Nintendo games are probably going to be on proper cards and all the other ones are going to be key cards mostly except for some for some companies who can afford it or want to afford it so that's going to be an interesting situation and it's probably going to be discussed much more in the future let's see cool that there's a new Kirby air right like the really.
Really baited that when I was like there's no way they're forcing soccer right to do another smash brothers just the way that the teaser started out and then when they were like oh Kirby air raiders is like oh this is this is the game soccer I just wanted to make for a real long time so cool still hoping for that get it goes uprising port slash remaster he had been hinting at that for a very long time so maybe shrug it would be nice like.
Like I always felt like the game in terms of presentation deserve to be on a bigger screen and higher quality graphics and so on so maybe we'll get that and with better controls yeah I mean that's also something that my depending on how the most controls actually work might actually be able to make use of that properly so I don't know let's see we'll see maybe soccer will do it eventually but yeah also to be fox just I know we're saying hey.
Chapter three and four Delta Roons both are coming to the same time like I think the collective internet lost it on that one is I guess the big meme is Delta Roon tomorrow and well there is.
Yeah looking forward to that you gonna get it that launch I have a pre order on Wal-Mart will see if it actually stays if not then I'll figure it out but I mean you know me I'm stupid and I want to be on the idiotic bleeding edge I mean I'm not going to this whole game chat thing to me is like dumb and I'm no I'm just not gonna use it.
I'm not gonna use it. I have zero desire to buy a camera or to buy like I mean the switched to pro controller looks nice as it got the buttons on the back even though I don't ever really use those but I mean I have a third party controller now that I really like some maybe I'll eventually buy when it comes in a neat design because I have what pro controllers I have the Xeno blade one I have the smash brother
is one so you know I am mostly in the habit of buying a neat looking controller if I need it not because oh here here's a new one.
Just wait for the one with the pretty colors like that I know there's some real ugly ones in in years past so you know.
I would say I mean there's gonna be another Xeno blade game eventually so let's see but apparently the switch one pro controller seems to be working with the switch to us.
Yeah that's cool.
Yeah I mean there's the whole thing about the joy cons but you should be able I gotta imagine you'll be able to use them wirelessly.
Yeah yeah probably.
So what else we got? So flare obscuring expedition 33 kind of blew up.
I don't think we know what the developer's magic number of sales is but it's over 2 million now.
So it's it's doing really well for itself.
I mean it got a lot of positive reviews and also you know from not only from from from I don't know online magazines or whatever
but also from everyone who played it is as the real deal this is absolutely spectacular like so much fun such a good sister gameplay system and everything and I haven't heard anything about the story actually like if it's really good or not I don't know.
I didn't want to get spoilers I didn't look into any of that so but yeah it sounds like we got a really good Jorpige out of it and yeah stop.
So I will definitely play that game eventually I'm looking forward to it but it's gonna be a while probably.
I guess one of the devs is talking about all the games that inspired them and like went at the top of this was lost Odyssey and looking at this game and say oh no yeah come on dude.
And then you look at the menus in battles and say well that's just that's persona 5 like it's clear it's very clear we're getting a lot of it's cues from and there's it's not that is not a problem because you know it's a very well regarded game so.
You are very allowed to wear your inspiration on your sleeve as long as you iterate on them in an interesting way and it seems like they also did their own thing and that very very well.
So yeah seems like is one of the good ones and I'm glad to pace off in terms of sales numbers and of course now the expectations for the sequel are through the fucking roof.
I would imagine and everyone is gonna be like oh my god when when is that gonna happen I don't even know how much how long they worked on the first one.
I mean there just it doesn't even have to be a sequel so you know I don't even know if the story allows for it or let's say they everyone is probably gonna look forward to the next game from that studio now.
While before that they weren't really on anyone's radar but now they're on everyone's it's like I mean this is gonna probably be one of the big contenders for game of the year so.
We'll see what happens this probably gonna win best RPG at least best role playing game this year because I don't know what else is coming out in this year that might actually be able to challenge it.
So let's see it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting and I'm looking forward to eventually playing it.
I mean I see how good it is I don't know if I'm interested in playing it myself but you know maybe eventually I'll see I mean I've got too many other games to play anyways.
I don't know if I'm always like if there's a really good kind of JRPG is thing that is happening and I also like I said I need to find out if the story is actually good or if people are just raving about the actual game play if it's just the gameplay itself that is so much fun and having everyone being addicted to it I don't I just also want to want a good story out of my RPGs please if possible.
I don't know if it's good or bad but I will look into it try to not get spoiled but yeah for now I have other games to finish.
I mean there's one streamer I watched and they've been playing it and I'm like keep watching or strike like actually sit down and play this and like I don't know I'll figure that out.
Yeah the next new story is not a big one but it's one that was relevant I thought was relevant to my interests because there was this band I Namco MMO called Blue Protocol that was it had been out in Japan for a little bit.
And Amazon was like oh well we're gonna do the worldwide publishing of it and they had a close technical test last year yeah last year.
And then band I Namco was like oh well never mind we're gonna shut the game down and then Amazon after was like well I guess we're not publishing it anymore so that kind of stunk is like I thought the game was actually pretty fun.
But then a couple days ago out of nowhere Blue Protocol star resonance was announced by a different publisher and like the game gets to live on I guess.
Yeah so that's cool and I'll definitely be there to check it out and see you know if it's if it's like what was there before or if they're maybe doing something different with it.
But you know that's that's cool enough that it gets to serve that it got to somehow survive so I think that's neat.
Not only TV series are getting rescue not all sorts of games.
What a world.
Yeah weird.
In other positive news or potentially negative turn positive news we talked about someone from giant bomb before but there was a bit of a kafafa thing happening of maybe a dem or dem being sold by their previous owner of fandom.
I think a similar thing was coming up for polygon I'm not pretty I'm not sure how that it pent out there and what actually happened but for giant bomb it turned out due to certain this the the the path of fate now the actual people who comprise giant bomb like people like Jeff grab like then like then record like Jeff Becker.
Now own a giant bomb they own actually the site the IP whatever and our independent now which is one of those things that never happens kind of like or feel like it never have I think it happened to some other I think game informer also went I'm not sure if they went fully independent but they recently got revived and I think but also by this by some of the original people that worked on that so.
Like a lot of games media is going more independent these days which I think is a good thing and yeah looking forward that or I'm very happy for those guys because I've been following giant bomb forever like even before days.
I think I listened to the giant beast cast more than to the giant bomb cast and their next lander now but you know the new crews also pretty cool and I always not every I don't listen to every episode or watch every video of this but there's always something there that I occasionally check out and it's very entertaining and they have been through a lot of stuff over the years in terms of you know different owners and everything and it's glad to see that this is now ending up in the game.
Now ending up in the hands of the people who are actually doing the content and bringing the cool shit and you know actually responsible for this still being a thing and surviving for so long so I wish them all the best.
I hope they're gonna be around for a lot longer for for many more years and gonna do some more cool shit and apparently they did at packs.
Yeah the announcement was crazy because my friend and I we were I'm not super I followed like giant bomb very loosely not quite as close as you have but they were going to have a Blake Club panel and Jeff grub Jeff back our Dan Ryker and Jan Ocho take the stage and they were like yeah so this was supposed to be a play.
It was supposed to be a Blake Club panel but we wanted to talk about you know what's going on with giant bomb lately and the say has new owners and you're looking at them and there's just like this massive pop so everyone was got off got up on their feet and was cheering and clapping and that was really great but a friend and I went there for one thing in particular and we ended up leaving about halfway through but it was nice to hear the news that giant bomb gets to you.
Yeah I think even they were surprised how big the pop was I think Dan expected the pop but not that big of a pop because the people were giving standing ovation and everything and everyone was very happy.
After the new state came because I like it would be they would be in dire straits or whatever and now it's it's a for like I posted on blue sky in response to this for once in this rotten decade we're actually living in the best timeline so this that's was just the nice uplifting thing that happens and like I said happen and like I said I'm wishing them all the best and I'm happy to get they get to continue to do what they do and are now not beholden.
To any weird expectations outside the ones of their fans and what's the.
There are some negative things we could go into because you know tariffs shit is getting more expensive and there have been more layoffs for a lot of companies I don't even remember all of them because there's so many so
yeah shit is still dire in other parts but I want to focus on the positive stuff here so let's just keep it at that for the news bits and yeah let's move on over to the final section one up for discussion and talk about our gaming history.
Yes so this is our editorial whatever goes section where we put anything game related in here that we want to talk about and since we haven't done this for the gaming spin off before we did it for a bf we did we did like in the very first episode of that we talked a bit about how we came to an
m a as a medium and what were some of the shows that got us interested in and what we what we enjoyed about it so I'm with that hey why not do this for games as well and since you know we started pretty early because we're
old there are a lot of gaming errors to talk about with you know that that we've experienced during our story lives so we thought hey we start out at the very beginning because we also don't know all the details about it just like with the enemy I was surprised to learn that
John kind of got introduced to enemy with the through the same series it as I did when we talked about it so we'll see maybe we'll learn something new about our personal gaming histories in this section as well we're not exactly the same age
John I think you're like three years younger than I am or something like that yeah, I believe younger than that about three three and a half yes something like that so but it's comparable so we're probably going to cover roughly the same errors and that means we're probably I mean not really I mean do we want to start with the first consoles we
don't want to we want to start with our first experience with video games because then we have to start a bit earlier and since we're already running very long and I don't want the podcast to be much longer than three hours we're probably only going to do like one or two console generations or you know me also play PC but we're going to talk about that but yeah for me I kind of feel like the start point in the first experience with games is going to be
one in the same really so because flashback to a much younger John junior in 1987 88 when my parents got me in NES for Christmas there was the
forget the name of the package was the one that came with a zapper like the original gray zapper before they reissued it in orange you have a duck hunt in super Mario brothers on one cartridge and what was the third one was that third one that one as well no there was one later on that I think was Mario brothers duck hunt in Tetris no I think it was maybe like there was the power track and field game yeah that could be it and I think in the power
region of was super Mario brothers it was Tetris and it was an Nintendo World Cup so yeah that's probably different for you ask because I don't even know if you've gotten to World Cup
here we go yeah there was a cartridge or thinking you as super Mario Bros Duck hunt world class track me yeah but yeah I never had them I just had the two in one yeah
going thinking back on it now having two games on one cartridge is wild but I mean there were other games that did that later on in other eras I mean I was collection spots back in the day that was something special I mean there was like a Sonic collection on the Genesis that had more than one Sonic game on it and like that wasn't like emulation or anything
like several it must have just been several banks of roms on one PCB but whatever look at to that yeah so super Mario brothers was my first real big experience with video games and then basically destroying my zapper by holding it too close to the TV and understanding how the photo sensor worked in it oops
yeah now now I understand how the technology worked but back then I was just like well you just push it right up against the screen you shoot the ducks were that right well that works until you know the photos sensor gets blown out oops
um I didn't have a ton of games on that my NES it because you know back when you're a kid obviously the only times you're realistically gonna get games are Christmas in your birthday yeah any other time is like a bonus
so the big way to experience games in this is obviously we're both dating ourselves with this but the big way to experience was going downtown to the local video store renting a game for a weekend that was an option but that came in for me later in a later era I would say starting with playstation
yeah we had in the NES era in the NES era it was more of like going through the local mall or something like that and then they maybe would have a kiosk or something where they would advertise in you NES game or new super Nintendo game that you could play there on on an NES and that's how I would get more games than I had at home and also friends of course but I get into that once you're done with with your NES talk
yeah that video store was there for a very long time and went there even like up through the PS1 era renting stuff so the one that I used to love renting all the time was super Mario brothers three
that game was great and is still great to this day so but I remember one time going down there Mario three wasn't there well what if I rent then I don't know what this game is I guess all rent it's called megaman three I don't know
so get it home I get it home and I'm trying to play it like a Mario game because every game every game is Mario right you're just running and jumping you're running and jumping on enemy what what you mean I can't jump on enemies what's going on I have to shoot them what is this and I didn't I didn't understand it and you know I was a stupid child but then when I kind of came to grips with oh it's like you're just running and shooting and jumping and climbing and sliding
then I was like yeah hey you know what this is pretty cool actually and still waiting on the new megaman game since megaman 11 but you know that became a lifelong big love of mine so
I had some other weirdo games like there's some weird like movie tie-in games like my parents got me of all the movie tie-in games in the world the hunt for red October
and I'm like weird ones in there I think I got top got at some point yeah and then there was you know then you had the more standard stuff like I had Zelda I had Kirby's adventure both great games Zelda two pisses me off to this very day but I had it
there was this game I think what was it called in Japanese it was called like ninja jamaru koon or maybe it was something else it was this capcom size scrolling platformer
and that it didn't make its way to the US under that name no it got put under a different license and re-release under a different name with a different product line tie-in called
yo noid and it was a promotional vehicle for dominoes pizza yeah I heard about that um and you know boy boy that game exists I don't know whether or not the original game is better or not but it you know it was trying
to be a weirdo platformer with some stuff going on oh you man okay that that's what was called in Japanese it was called hanamaru the mask ninja so definitely a much more generic name but he had a he had a
a bird that he would like launch an amy so attack them so would that get replaced with the new noid got replaced with a yo yo because yeah
doing it stop tropics style oh but you that's a game I never played man but I always heard it was really good so I'll talk about it yeah yeah I didn't have a whole ton of games on the NES back in the day but then
stuff like the virtual console on Wii and Wii U was able to experience a lot more stuff so yeah there was a lot of a lot of games on the NES and there's a lot of good games there was a lot of weirdo trash but there was a lot on there yeah I
agree there was a fun time I I got into the NES pretty late I think it was 92 at that point the superintendent was already out technically but I didn't even start with the NES and also the reason
why I got it so late is because I before that I played games mostly my friends video games I convinced my parents pretty late that it would be wise to invest a lot of money in a video game console or Taylor games as they were called here Taylor
whatever but no I started I think the first time I came into contact with video games properly was the friends house and he had a nuttary 2600 I think you know with the classical pitfall I think he had the pop-up game he had he had some one other one that we played a lot of the frogger I don't know something along those lines
and there was the end of track and field game as well here's the through line and I remember playing that and liking it but it didn't really like
it didn't really spark an explosion yet in my mind I think was there is a joy that's enjoyable and interesting and so on but don't quite get it fun enough but you know
but I wasn't like addicted or anything to that and then two friends of mine one of them again mentioned before likes and his brother day at the fortunate benefit of having a dad that was traveling a lot internationally
and also you know I had enough money to buy them in any S early the problem is you know there weren't that many games in Germany yet so what did you do he actually bought a modded NES console which I believe must believe in these days was a fucking rare thing.
Yes so that they he got him them a modded I don't know if it was a modded European console or a modded US console but it was able to play European and US games through a flip switch at the front fucking crazy and if it was flipped up I think you would play US games if you flip the down you could play German games.
So that's fucking not so every time he went on you know business travel to the US you would bring them new games that weren't out in Germany yet so they got like the hot new shit that got super Mario brothers three because that was on German shelves before that was on German shelves so that was fucking crazy and I was in the very beneficial position to as a friend to experience all of that with them right and that extended through the super in tender area actually because he actually
actually got them an adapter to play US super in tender games on a European console so that was really cool like got to experience super Mario brothers of course we played that shit like two new and ice climbers as Nick Rettlenroll we played a lot
oh god what else was I mean super Mario was to super Mario was three of course all of those and darkened we definitely played over there I think we played Dr. Mario Tetris over there is what else so we're in the tender world cup we played the shit out of that I remember that and yeah was a really fun time really enjoyed it a lot and then eventually 92
to a system my parents cooked up in when we went on vacation they were like hey you got a budget of five Deutschmark every day and you can either spend them on snacks or you saved them up and then after the the vacation you can get yourself maybe a bigger treat
so I actually did that I only get like me well one teaching your kid about money the the interesting way and saving up for the future so I you know I only used like one you one
one Deutschmark or each Deutsche Mark each each day for an ice cream or something like that and safety other for so by the end of the vacation I had pretty sizable like allowance whatever saved pocket money saved up and my grandma added a bit to that and I was able to get myself a nice NES
with Super Mario Brothers and the first contra contra and for people are not aware in Europe of course that was called Pro Protector and the reason I bought it was the sick as cover for a
protector for the year which is much better than the cover for contra no contest in my opinion because it has fucking pet labor styles max on it like the Pro Protector max and it looks so fucking cool and I saw that in my local mall or whatever supermarket that also sold video games I was like I need to have that little did I know that that game would kick my ass
so hard but thankfully I think through the ten o'clock club magazine or whatever quickly found out that you could get like 30 lives or ten lives and was I was actually able to finish it with that but not the
novel way because Jesus Christ contra one is a tough game but yeah I so my experience with contra is limited and I'm interrupting just because I think this is a funny story
about my friend and I went to a convention that wasn't exactly local it was like a little out of the way and there was someone there representing another convention and they were like hey we do retro game stuff if you can beat the first
level of contra without dying you get a free pass to go and I was just like well I mean I've never played the OG contra but I guess I'll I've seen enough of it I guess I can give it a try
so I kind of played it and I took my time through the level and I somehow managed to do it and I want a free pass so I was like alright yeah
so and I don't think I've ever played the original contra beyond that first stage I think without the cheat code I made it through stage
for five stage five the ice stage it's where always like and that was then it did that's most of the way through then no it's like this is what like seven eight stages
yeah that included I think it's three three more stages that I would have needed to finish but I wasn't able to and then okay you can do the
economic code the famous one up up up up down down left right left right B A or A B and start and then you get ten lives for on each
continue and with that I was able to do it but yeah still that took a while until I actually got to that code in
the beginning so God this is so hard I need a new game so talked about this the most ways you would get games in these
days were Christmas or birthdays so but I also wanted I wanted more and so I kind of since I already had technically earned the
console and the game myself by saving up I asked my parents what else I could do to get more games outside of
Christmas and birthdays and was like well you could do certain chores and we would just give you extra allowance for that and then you can use that to buy
you yourself some games I was like okay let's do that and you know I do just shit for them just groceries cleaning cleaning the cars or whatever
right and that's how I would finance my gaming addiction habit so the first game I was able to buy through that
measure and here's our overlap once again John was of course a little game called megaman three because I went through
more with the money and hand is like okay which game am I gonna buy and I just saw this sick as cover I think the
again the European cover for megaman three superior because it's very close to the Japanese one there's always some slight
differences I think the megaman looks more metallic and whatever but aside from that it's pretty close to the Japanese one and I don't
know if I would have bought it if it had the if it had the US cover but it looked super sick and of course he had a dog in that game and I
recently got a dog myself and it was very happy and said oh man this is me with my dog I'm gonna buy this game so I played it and fell in love and
I was like holy shit this is amazing you get new powers every time you beat a boss and it's super cool and the
levels are super cool super tough but it's also really fun to play and yeah I'm also out of school
mate who also had the game and told me like the special trick how to beat the final boss because I couldn't
know how to how to do it and yeah I I fell in love with that little guy called megaman and that hasn't changed and
that's also how John and I got to meet for the first time because we were we both were in a in the IRC
channel for you kids out there who don't know what that is that's basically old discord and that's where
cages yeah there were one there was one an IRC channel for this megaman fanpage and we both ended up in that and yeah
well that's where it all started folks so yeah definitely megaman the origin or one of the parts of
the origin for gaming habits and also for video game not career but you know history and also for this
podcast because without megaman there probably wouldn't be any my brain freeze there also wouldn't be free
for a second so there you go that's that's where it all came from the good old blue bomber and yeah of course I
I bought the other megaman games that came after that I bought four specifically I think for cleaning my
parents car several times I remember that and then I bought a megaman five of course was looking forward to
that you know the information of when games were coming out were very sparse back then you basically
stumbled across them when you went to to your shop or like you said your your video rental space
or place or something like that which I didn't do back in the day not until like n64 PlayStation era so I was like okay
megaman forest been out of this gonna be another megaman and then you know the other big information source was
magazines so in a plot magazines and we had one that kind of entered into the same area just was a bit more beefy
what called the fund vision and that was focused on it up solely in ten of games as well and in either one of those
they had a spotlight for megaman five and was like just circling that with my pen this my next game this my next game
and it was and of course through birthdays and Christmas I got a couple of other ones I think I got the original
Metroid game I got Kid Icarus never got foreign kid Icarus a game is tough as an else to but I play the game
in a Detroit game and some other ones as well I also didn't have too many too many games like I said some
weird ones that were just in the bargain bin that my mom got from me which was Metroid Kid Icarus top
gun some I got from friends and also through birthdays through them what else was there there was this
weird driving game not road blasters but something else where you had to collect these weird bubbles and could also
shoot I think but I forgot its name road not road razor something else but I had that yeah I'm not I'm
no idea excited bike which was fun creating your own tracks but I also played that at my friends first and you know
I didn't don't think I got any of the Mario games for myself outside of the first one I played all of the other ones at my friends house
because they got them first anyway and I mainly focused on a mega man games and yeah but that's another
weird off-killed a game or two that I got around to playing the first one and we recently talked about it
we talked about that in our first frames first frame freeze frames per second episode actually was a shadow of the ninja
blue shadow which recently got a remake and I played that and there was also tough it as I never finished that game
but I liked it I like the soundtrack I like the design so that was definitely one of that that stuck with me and that I remembered
and I don't know weird one was fucking banana prince which is this weird ass game from Takara that I don't know if that even came out in the US
but I came out in Europe I'd ever played in a prince yeah banana prince I need to go back and play it again I think it was a pretty fun
platform RPG adventure-ish thing pretty easy because I think I was able to fit play through it and finish it like several times
but I remember having a fun time with that that definitely stuck in my mind and the second Gargol's quest game definitely played that also for the NES
found that at a local used game store and yeah there probably were other ones now that I don't remember because I had a couple more that I picked up here and there
but the main ones always were the Mega Man games of course two I got after three or even after four I think I picked up two pretty late
but I got two three four and five don't even know if six came out here but I never saw it so I never picked it up I think even to this day I haven't played through six all the way through
the select-is-the-re-remember-the-re-remember there is a thing with six where Capcom didn't want to publish it outside of Japan in Nintendo kind of took up the mantle themselves
but I don't know how that worked out over in Europe
yeah I might have not even been out here and by the time I got into the console Mega Man 1 wasn't available anymore
so I never picked it up not a big Mitch miss really because yeah Mega Man 6 is kind of to me but you know yeah and 1 2 like 1 and 6 are like I mean I like I said I haven't really played 6 so I eventually will but
do you want me to hit you with a Contravert Philippe in yes please go I don't really like Mega Man 2 really oh okay I never I never did
like I I have played through it a few times and you know I respect that you know that was the big game in yes you know but I never really liked Mega Man 1 or 2
like I to this day it shocks me that that series got past its first version
absolutely like it really I was really surprised you know revisiting it that the Mega Man 1 didn't like wasn't the nail in the coffin for that franchise
because that's a very flawed game and it's not really fun like I mean the ideas are there but the actual gameplay is the woof
like it doesn't look particularly good like it's very it feels very unfinished when you compare to the later game
the jump from 1 to 2 is fucking incredible and from 2 to 3 even more so but yeah I guess a lot of people just started with 2 technically
and it blew them away and I mean there's a lot of great stuff in that game and I feel if you play it in the US and the U.P. version
you get like an easier difficulty setting and maybe because it was so it was very easy to play back in the day
nobody played the difficult setting in the beginning it was a good point of entry and that maybe because a lot of people were able to finish it
it stuck with a lot of people in their minds as one of the best games and you know soundtrack is legendary
the bosses are cool and everything but I also can see the argument it not being not being someone's favorite
if you say soundtrack is that you're I think that one wildest age team is probably the most remixed one on O.C. remix
that is the mega man theme beyond the main theme from regimen 2 these are the two themes that everyone knows
like I love the soundtrack from mega man 3 but you know 2 is just the thing that gets remixed so much and everyone knows it
and it's just the thing and yeah I don't even know if 2 is it's probably isn't my I like to play it because it's super breezy and easy
like you can play through it so quickly all the other ones have more wildest ages and so on it takes you a while longer to get through them
but I think maybe 5 might even be more my favorite than 2 and 3 is just unfair because it has that big nostalgia bonus for being the first mega man game
and one of my first video games ever so 2 be fair 3 also has a lot of flaws but you know it's obviously it's the first one that both of us play
so it has a special place but you know like looking back on it's like yeah someone with a stage design is weird
you can tell there's some stuff that shouldn't be going on with this game but in spite of that you know it's still a really strong really good game
like I mean you look at the stage select what is with that one glitched line of a shadow man why does it do that
and I guess there's a technique and I guess there is an actual technical explanation for that with like one of the mappers a mapper chips being weird
but you know it's just like you back in the day you look at you're like oh that yeah that's normal
what's making me already able yes he was already able to look to into the different corners of the stage selection in that game right
yeah that started with 3 just one of those super neat details right where it's like you don't have to do that
but it's really neat that they did that but yeah there's some weird graphical box like glitches in there that are not really that don't understand
and then you get to dock robot stages which are just like this weird super hard redance of stages you've already done
so it's got this weird middle part where you're like didn't really need to be in here like why did you do that
and so like the least fun part of the game I feel that game would be stronger if you left out the dock robot stages
and just went from the proper 8 bosses to the wily stages or you know have the break break meant fight in between
but yeah it's still fun game and I feel like the other games iterated on that like a lot of people say well the game got progressive games got progressively worse and less interesting
and I totally disagree with that I think 5 is still a standout entry in that series and they say like they all look the same
also absolutely not true like Mega Man 5 and 6 looks so much better than 1 and 2 and even 3 to an extent
so I think my yeah I agree with you know that I think my only misgiving in particular on 4 is it's a much slower game
like the screen transitions and how long the the ladders life meters take to fill it's like oh you're sitting
it like interrupts the music for a solid like 5 seconds which is why now with rom hacks and patches
you can fix those things and it's great yeah that is that is cool that I agree
but yeah I think like Mega Man 4 has gotten to be like higher up on the list for me but there's an asterisk next to it
because of the patches that I think and you know it's not like
anything that affects gameplay it's just affecting you know the speed and you know how quickly you can get back to playing it
that's my one misgiving about that most of the other games are cool I have gone on I think I've gone on record I was saying that
Mega Man 9 feels like Mega Man 2 2 yeah absolutely if that makes sense like that they took out the slides
you know what I don't have a problem with that I have a problem with it being like well everyone likes 2 right so we're gonna lean so hard into that
come on man yeah yeah it's not the game you wanted up to lean into no I get it
still fun game though and I'm trying to think of other NES games that were kind of formative like oh yeah start
trapex you said you never played it I did I didn't get super far I never finished it because that game is also tough
as nails but it's got an interesting atmosphere which I liked and never played the second one
but the first one was really fun I just remember the big thing was with the note inside the instruction manual
he had to like wet it down to see the information you needed I just got that information I think I was out of the club magazine
because I just I didn't know that I would have to do that I mean but that's the to neat though yeah that is absolutely that's a Kojima S thing to do
oh yeah that's so that feels like something he would have cooked up but but yeah that's fun and Castlevania
definitely another franchise that I dip my tone pretty late though I think I played Simon's Quest first
and then I played the original one later I yeah the total games I'm big fan I mean the first one is you know it is what it is
but I was very late to both of those franchises so yeah again got a lot of contact with a lot of them with with my friends
I think I yeah I played the first I don't even know if three came out here like the Manhattan project or whatever it was called
but I played one and two at their place and I love one was who but two I loved and I got that for myself later down the road
as well because I love the port of the arcade game for the NES so much still love the soundtrack
and yeah so definitely check that out Castlevania one and two I definitely played never played three recently
I recently remedied that game is super hot but I enjoyed it so yeah a lot of games in from that era that stuck with me in one way or another
and probably being of course the biggest one sadly that you know franchise hasn't seen that much love in recent years
I mean a lot of the older ones don't anymore they get collections which is nice
Castlevania got a lot a couple of collections and Mega Man of course got also all pretty much except for legends
and Star Force all these are available in collections now at least the bigger the big ones
Star Star Force isn't the battle network at least is yeah that's what I meant aside from Star Force and legends
we got all of them in the collection there I feel like and I know you're not big on V tubers
but there have been some V tubers lately diving into playing like Mega Man X stuff lately
so there's eyes on this in recent years so hopefully this will create some sort of buzz that Capcom will no longer be able to ignore
we'll see please but yeah you know Mega Man X is something that's then probably gonna come up the next time we talk about this
because like I said we're already running pretty fucking long so we're gonna keep the next iteration of this discussion of this talk about our gaming history for the next time
and go into the Super Nintendo and Genesis area and that's gonna be very one-sided for me and probably a bit more diverse for you
but lately but yeah the the last thing about Mega Man for me is you know I played I played the heck out of three
then I ended up not really playing a whole lot of it until X came out weird
yeah what we'll talk about that next time maybe but like I kind of played Mega Man back in the day in bursts
and it wasn't until much later that I was able to fill in the gaps because of like the collections and this that you have been in and
the bad words but yeah it took me some time to fill in all of the gaps but you know I knew I loved Mega Man and I knew I wanted to play more of it but the difficulty came from you know how do I get the games I don't have the money I don't have the means
and I discovered you know what emulation was and I was able to do some of that but yeah yeah yeah
yeah we'll talk about it next time but I had a little I dipped my toes a little bit into the Genesis side not as much as you might think but it was there so yeah that's probably then gonna be next time Genesis Super Nintendo Game Boy which you know one of those I had but the other two I didn't but I came into contact with it in one way or another
so it's gonna be very interesting to talk about that looking forward to it but that's it for this episode of Frames Per Second I hope you enjoyed your time and we'll join us next time whenever we do the next one of this like I said no strict schedule for this
you know it's very different from what we do with anime brain freeze so we don't know when we'll do another one of this and when we'll have played enough games to actually warrant talk about this
I'll try to play more games for next time I'm sorry take your time you know we got two episodes of anime freeze brain freeze we need to do first anyway and then we'll see what happens next season
maybe we'll do another episode of this or maybe we'll we'll have wait another season until we have enough games to talk about we will see but until then have a good gaming time and see you soon they care everybody
you
(upbeat music)