transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:24] Hey, everybody, it's April 21st, 2026. Welcome to the Giant Bombcast, episode 937. I'm your host, Jan Ochoa. Joining me, co-captain of the ship, joining me as always, he's riding the twos and the threes, because I'm on the ones. Jeff Grubb.

Speaker 2:
[00:44] Yeah, I got the backup here. I feel, everybody, I feel bad for Jan Ochoa, because he does have to sort of captain this ship, and he tries to get us on task. And we all kind of like just, we goof off, but we also just like talking to each other, and we're like, Jan will tell us when it's time to go. And when he has to actually tell us it's time to go, you could tell he's like, I don't want to be the buzzkill guys, but we need to start the show. And he, it's hard for him, I can tell, and I appreciate it, Jan.

Speaker 1:
[01:07] It's like wrangling my own little group of kitty cats, and I'll do it every single week if I have to. Speaking about kitty cats, he's the coolest cat in town. Dan Reichert. That's me, hi.

Speaker 3:
[01:20] Hi, Jan, how's it going, bud?

Speaker 1:
[01:21] Great, fantastic. I have something to talk about the weekend, but I'll talk about that during the emails, actually, because we have the hater of all cats. Anything feline is not fine with him, Jeff Bakalar.

Speaker 4:
[01:40] Hey, what's up, Jan? I'm still stoned. Still stoned from 420, man.

Speaker 1:
[01:44] That's right.

Speaker 5:
[01:44] Send it, brother.

Speaker 2:
[01:45] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[01:46] We're going to green out today.

Speaker 4:
[01:49] It's a leap year for 420 this year.

Speaker 1:
[01:51] What does that mean?

Speaker 4:
[01:53] Goes into the following day. So everyone who celebrated yesterday is still stoned today. That's how it works every 420 years.

Speaker 1:
[02:05] Damn, just like Jesus predicted.

Speaker 4:
[02:07] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[02:08] He is risen and Jeff Bakalar is high. He's never getting high because he's grounded because he is the bad boy of games media, Mike Manati.

Speaker 2:
[02:22] Hi, I like you.

Speaker 1:
[02:25] And?

Speaker 5:
[02:27] I like you, like you.

Speaker 1:
[02:29] Holy smokes.

Speaker 3:
[02:32] Is that weird?

Speaker 2:
[02:33] Yeah, it got weird.

Speaker 1:
[02:34] Hey, if you're listening out there and you're listening on maybe YouTube, on a Twitch, maybe a podcast provider, why don't you just give us five stars? Why don't you just do a thumbs up? Why don't you subscribe? I like you too. I hear all these other podcasts talking about call to actions. I think we should have a couple more call to actions. Go like it and then go like another video, please. I think it genuinely does help us out. It would make Chuck very happy. It would make Sean very happy. It would make Will very happy. Every time, people don't know this, but every time a video gets liked, Will's mustache curls just a little bit more.

Speaker 2:
[03:13] Oh, that's all the motivation I need.

Speaker 1:
[03:15] Exactly, exactly. Every little like increases the millisecond that Chuck floats whenever he smells a pie. And don't you guys want to see that at home? Don't you want to know that you provided pie floats to Chuck out there?

Speaker 5:
[03:27] Likes for Mike.

Speaker 1:
[03:28] It likes for Mike as well.

Speaker 5:
[03:30] Come on, look at me.

Speaker 1:
[03:31] Likes for Mike. Look at this face.

Speaker 3:
[03:33] Look at that guy.

Speaker 1:
[03:34] Mike, I just liked two videos just now.

Speaker 5:
[03:37] Oh?

Speaker 1:
[03:38] Oh, I like four, I like four.

Speaker 3:
[03:40] The audio listener's missing out here.

Speaker 1:
[03:42] Holy smokes.

Speaker 3:
[03:42] He's doing crazy stuff.

Speaker 1:
[03:43] Oh my lanta. Mike, people just liked ten videos each. Okay. Folks, you can help support Giant Bomb, not just by liking, subscribing, recommending, sharing anything that we do.

Speaker 2:
[04:01] This face is making me sick to my stomach.

Speaker 1:
[04:02] I don't like it anymore. It was a lot. He's poisoning you, Grubb. But Jeff Grubb, how else can folks support us here at Giant Bomb?

Speaker 2:
[04:11] Go to giantbomb.com/join, become a Premium member. We're Independent Games Media. So when you do that, you ensure the future of Independent Games Media. So we don't need to take support from big corporations. We don't need to let go out there and be like, hey, will you buy us so we can keep doing our job? We get to keep doing our job because you're there at our backs. We really appreciate everyone who has supported us. It's going to get you ad-free episodes, going to get you a bunch of Premium shows. We really appreciate everyone who does support us. And if you can't, through monetary means, tell a friend, as Jan was saying. Also just show up, hang out with us, make it cool and vibrant over here. Go to the website. We see that. It means a ton. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[04:46] Use the forums. Use the wiki. We have a tier maker on the website that Mike used. Was it two weeks ago now? And then Dan, you used it as well. I used it. I guess, yes.

Speaker 2:
[04:58] Incredibly targeted.

Speaker 1:
[05:00] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[05:01] Dirtyed it.

Speaker 1:
[05:02] Now we don't have to talk about what we ranked, but yeah, that's on the website. Boys, gang, how's everything going? How's everyone doing? Good.

Speaker 3:
[05:12] Yeah, I did the Red Eye situation for a play. I tried an In-N-Out weekend for the first time ever. I'm just going to try to do 48 hours in a town and come back. And it's like overall, I think I'm positive on it because it doesn't feel it. I just went with a backpack to Vegas for 48 hours and it was great. But then you get back and you do the Red Eye thing and it's like, oh, that does kind of, it does kind of fuck you up, but it was worth it. I told, I was telling my debaucherous Vegas story to these guys before I went on the air. I was in a suite that had a free candy situation and I ate so many Sour Patch Kids and Skittles that I threw up and that was not tied to-

Speaker 4:
[05:47] You threw up?

Speaker 2:
[05:48] Did you really throw up? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[05:49] The next morning, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[05:50] You're like a dog.

Speaker 3:
[05:52] Well, I kept thinking I was, I really fucked up the whole food situation when I was in Vegas because I assumed-

Speaker 2:
[05:57] Sounds like it.

Speaker 3:
[05:58] Yeah, I assumed on night one, it would just be like they would have real food in the press box and stuff like that and they didn't for a couple hours. It was just pretzels and potato chips and Cheez-Its. So I kept grabbing bags of that. So I didn't eat anything all day. And I get there and I'm like, all right, gonna go nuts on some burgers and stuff. And it's like, oh, they're not out yet. I guess I'll just get a bunch of bags of chips. And then they didn't come out and I kept drinking soda and eating chips and everything. And it wasn't like alcohol. They didn't have alcohol up there. So it was just chips and stuff was all I was eating all day. And the next day I had a friend who had an empty spot at a suite, like a VIP suite thing. They had like an unlimited concession stand for free, including Sour Patch Kids and Skittles. And I just ate those the whole fucking day. And so my entire caloric intake for the day was Sour Patch Kids, Skittles and beer. And then I red-eye home and I woke up at like five in the morning just puking. And it was not like hangover drinky-puky. It was definitely my stomach is on fire because of how many fucking Sour Patch Kids I ate.

Speaker 1:
[06:57] Dan, did you realize you may have eaten too many Sour Patch Kids during the consuming process?

Speaker 2:
[07:04] You know what you're doing.

Speaker 3:
[07:04] No, I was on Cloud 9. I was on Cloud 9.

Speaker 2:
[07:06] No, he doesn't know what he's doing.

Speaker 3:
[07:07] And then as the show was wrapping up, I went to go pee. A lady that works at the stadium was like, better fill your pockets. They're about to end the show. It's almost over. And I wasn't going to, but then she told me to. She enabled me.

Speaker 4:
[07:18] Yeah, I think you could sue her. I think you could sue her.

Speaker 2:
[07:21] Was her skin red? Did she have horns pointing out of her hat?

Speaker 3:
[07:23] No, she was a very nice lady in a suit.

Speaker 2:
[07:24] Like is this Satan tempting you?

Speaker 3:
[07:26] Now, very nice lady in a suit.

Speaker 1:
[07:27] Follow up question about this lady's appearance. Was she maybe tiny? Does she look like she was made out of a jelly or gum and covered in sour crystals?

Speaker 2:
[07:35] Are you hallucinating?

Speaker 3:
[07:37] Oh, no, you had a sugar high. She was like a human adult woman.

Speaker 1:
[07:40] Oh, okay.

Speaker 3:
[07:41] She was an adult woman. And I wasn't going to get any more because I was like, I had too many Sour Patch Kids. And then she said that and I was like, I'd be rude not to. So I went up there and I just went fucking nuts and just filled all my pockets. It was literally like Homer in that Simpsons episode, like leaving just bulging shorts from fucking Sour Patch Kids and stuff. But then I didn't want to carry them all loose. So I had to get like a loose bag and I'm carrying around like a trash bag I got from a concession stand filled with candy through Las Vegas.

Speaker 4:
[08:05] You're the kind of person that I'm like, Dylan, don't go up to that guy.

Speaker 5:
[08:11] A stranger danger.

Speaker 4:
[08:12] You know, like in the bus station. You're like, I'll leave that guy with a loose bag of skittles alone in a Ziploc. I don't know what his deal is. They're going to name a fucking disease after you, man.

Speaker 2:
[08:22] Diabetes. Diabetes 4.

Speaker 1:
[08:26] Danebetes.

Speaker 3:
[08:30] I think I got most of it out of my system. I got a lot of sleep, so I think I'm on the uptrend. I'm starting to feel healthy again.

Speaker 1:
[08:35] But, Dan, your teeth. You were talking in the mic check about how you went to the dentist right before this.

Speaker 3:
[08:41] This morning, again.

Speaker 1:
[08:42] How, you know, the candy factors into that somewhat.

Speaker 3:
[08:46] Our lifetime. No. I realized from today, I was there getting the bite adjusted again because my teeth keep hurting, and I looked at my layout thing of all my teeth. You know, it's like, okay, this one has crown, this one has crown, crown, crown, crown. And then they had one that just had a big, like, cartoon crack in it. And I pointed at it because I don't remember having worked on that. I said, what's that? And they were like, oh, that's you've got a tooth with a fracture in it, but the other stuff was higher priority. So we'll get to that. So I got a big crack in it right now. So that's going to have to be a thing.

Speaker 1:
[09:18] You should just eat paste.

Speaker 4:
[09:20] You're sending not only your dentist kids to college. I feel like you're sending people on your dentist street. You're just sending to college.

Speaker 2:
[09:30] I think we could do like this could be a huge sort of service we do to the public where if we just clip that out and send it to people before they go to the dentist and be like, play this for your dentist. And then whatever they're going to say to you, you could feel better. Oh, you don't floss enough. Trust me. Nothing compared to this.

Speaker 3:
[09:46] Because I do floss and I brush and everything. I just do a lot of other real bad stuff to it.

Speaker 4:
[09:51] Yeah. Yeah, we got that. I think you, man, your whole like, I want all my teeth out and have like cyber teeth or whatever you wanted. I get it now. You're fully within your right to request that kind of ridiculous.

Speaker 3:
[10:05] The all-on-four procedure. They do it in Vegas. It's like $9,000 upper, $9,000 lower. They just take out all your fucking teeth and they give you these bionic teeth. I'm thinking about it.

Speaker 5:
[10:13] You lose a lot of sensation when you do that, though. Good. What? Tooth?

Speaker 3:
[10:17] What sensations do I have my teeth besides pain?

Speaker 2:
[10:20] I guess, yeah, if your sensations are mostly painful, maybe you would get like fun tickles.

Speaker 3:
[10:24] What do you get in your other sensations?

Speaker 2:
[10:26] It's like all of the sickle. It's all. Yeah, it's pleasurable, Dan. You don't have the pleasure teeth.

Speaker 3:
[10:33] What are you feeling in your teeth? That's fun.

Speaker 1:
[10:35] Oh, you know, when you crunch on something nice. Right.

Speaker 5:
[10:38] Yeah. That's what I was doing right here.

Speaker 2:
[10:41] Right in the molar.

Speaker 4:
[10:42] OK, Mike.

Speaker 2:
[10:44] The amount of tooth trauma Dan has, I don't blame him for feeling this way.

Speaker 4:
[10:47] He's been through a lot, but it makes sense.

Speaker 5:
[10:49] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[10:49] I mean, I don't know how much of it is self-inflicted. No one can know, but yeah, I feel bad. I feel bad.

Speaker 1:
[10:55] Well, Dan got peer pressured at the end there. Like the lady that forced him.

Speaker 3:
[10:58] They looked fine.

Speaker 2:
[10:59] We're just putting the microphones into our mouth now to make this podcast really sing.

Speaker 1:
[11:03] No, because like I know where this mic has been, and I know where that mic has been. Yeah. All right, gang, other than the teeth stuff, how is everyone else?

Speaker 2:
[11:18] Addie's actually having teeth pain. She was like, her molar is coming in, and it's like, this is one of those things where she's in a great deal of discomfort and some pain, and there's just nothing you could do about it. You're like, yeah, this is just going to happen. You need to just go through this. That's a rough position to be in as a parent. You're like, yeah, I guess here's some Tylenol, I guess we'll try that. Then I have to send her off to school, so I'm kind of waiting for the call from the teacher being like, she's been crying all day, come pick her up.

Speaker 3:
[11:43] Oh, man.

Speaker 2:
[11:44] Yeah, tea stuff's not fun.

Speaker 3:
[11:46] Oh, here's fun stuff. I got an idea. I got some marketing plans now that I learned over the weekend. Let's just in the middle of any conversation we're having, insert Snickers ads.

Speaker 2:
[11:56] Oh, okay. Does that work?

Speaker 5:
[11:57] Oh, cool.

Speaker 3:
[11:57] I think people like that. I think we should do that. I think we need to be doing like 30 times more ads and make them as intrusive as possible.

Speaker 2:
[12:04] Let's be sure to highlight their dental benefits while we're at it.

Speaker 5:
[12:09] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[12:10] In the middle of one of our very important game discussions, we should just flash like a Slim Jim ad instead.

Speaker 3:
[12:17] No, we need to cut it out, cut out the conversation. I don't think people should be able to hear the content. I think we should just do the ads.

Speaker 4:
[12:23] What is this a joke about? I don't understand.

Speaker 3:
[12:25] My WrestleMania was fucking bad.

Speaker 2:
[12:27] Their strategy for making more money from wrestling is to take something that was already pretty bad and make it worse in just about every way.

Speaker 4:
[12:38] How do you mean?

Speaker 2:
[12:41] You know how you grew up remembering all these awesome entrances from these wrestlers and it's like they were memorable and iconic? What if they paused in the middle to tell you about Snickers?

Speaker 4:
[12:52] Shut the fuck up.

Speaker 3:
[12:54] And Bakalar, here's where it gets crazy because we come from the old pay-per-view era where you pay, they get your money and then you watch a wrestling show, right? Here, it's all confusing. Now, it's a $30 ESPN app you're already paying. And then so the home viewer is getting a million ads. And the people who paid the ticket prices this year were fucking insane. We're talking many thousands of dollars if you're like anywhere on the floor or whatever. So and it's a two night thing. So if you're a family, imagine how much you're spending there.

Speaker 4:
[13:16] No families go there.

Speaker 3:
[13:17] What do you mean? Oh, there are a ton of families. It was like half families, I would say. Yeah, he was. And then like during entrances, like in the middle of an entrance, the guy's music will cut out. Snickers ads or whatever, Capital One or the General or whatever ads are blaring on every screen in Allegiant Stadium. And then they come back, they start the guy's music up again. He's doing his taunts in the ring. That's crazy. It was so fucking aggressive on top of all the stuff on the ring. Although like they had a fucking crypto guy, some crypto billionaire pay to sit at commentary for the Women's Championship match. And they didn't have him on a mic. So they just have him sit next to the commentators. Because he paid them.

Speaker 2:
[13:56] That's insane.

Speaker 3:
[13:57] The most aggressive, greedy bullshit. Like in an industry that has always been known for aggressive, greedy, carny bullshit. Now it is just like past parody. It is fucking insane.

Speaker 4:
[14:09] Yeah, I guess it's not surprising, right? It's not surprising.

Speaker 2:
[14:11] No. No, the current ownership. No. Yeah, I mean, the previous ownership was bad. And now it's worse in every way. I didn't watch a second of it, but all the stuff I was getting on social media was like, yeah, cool. Good decision to spend my time elsewhere, for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[14:25] Speaking about spending time elsewhere, I've been perusing the streets of San Francisco and Oakland, and I've been going to a couple more bars, not in a sad way, folks, at home, in a fun way where I'm like, oh, I appreciate the craftsmanship of cocktails once again, specifically a good martini. But let me tell you, gang, let me tell you, I absolutely adore eclectic, weird bartenders, and I think there was a period of time, specifically in San Francisco, where they were prevalent and a little bit too much. I think we have now reached a middle ground where there's still too much, but you're cool. Met a dude over the weekend, shouts out to Trick Dog. Go to Trick Dog if you're in San Francisco, one of the best bars. I think I got voted one of the best bars in the country, but I'm with my friend, the person I'm going to this bar with. They introduced me to the bartender. Bartender just holds his fist up, just goes, what up dog? I'm bones.

Speaker 4:
[15:30] Oh, cool.

Speaker 1:
[15:31] I'm like, yo, is that short? He's bones. I was like, yo, is that short for something? He's like, no, it's just bones. I'm like, yo, is that with a Z? He's like, no, but maybe it should be with a Z.

Speaker 2:
[15:45] Is his real name Dr. McCoy? I was going to say, this might not be as cool as you think. This could be a Star Trek thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[15:52] But what I do want to shout out is I like, flights are fun, right? A flight of beer, very fun. Yeah. It's like the sampler of alcohol. But the more fun thing is a flight of tiny teenies. Jeff Bakalar, I thought of you during this. We had a regular martini. There's one.

Speaker 4:
[16:15] Sure.

Speaker 1:
[16:15] Second one, big-ass blue cheese olive.

Speaker 4:
[16:19] Sure.

Speaker 1:
[16:19] Third, had some parm, a parm rind in it.

Speaker 4:
[16:24] Parm?

Speaker 3:
[16:24] Like cheese?

Speaker 1:
[16:26] Cheese. It was a dirty, cheesy martini.

Speaker 4:
[16:31] I thought of you, big dog. Were these all gin or vodka?

Speaker 1:
[16:34] Vodka. Well, I chose vodka. You could do either or.

Speaker 4:
[16:37] Yeah. No, I'm a vodka guy too. So the first one was just like a standard one with olives.

Speaker 1:
[16:43] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[16:44] And then like dirty, dirty though, or just like normal?

Speaker 1:
[16:47] Dirty. Dirty.

Speaker 4:
[16:49] Then one with blue cheese, which don't knock it if you've never tried it. I know on its face it sounds like, hey, what's this blue cheese doing in my cocktail?

Speaker 2:
[16:57] It sounds like a ranch soda. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[16:59] Yeah. But it plays. And then a parm rind.

Speaker 1:
[17:03] Wow.

Speaker 4:
[17:04] No olives with the parm rind.

Speaker 1:
[17:05] No olives. No olives.

Speaker 4:
[17:07] Just the parm rind.

Speaker 5:
[17:08] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[17:08] And then I had a pickle beer, which was crazy. Crazy delicious. It was good. Again, don't knock it till you try it. I'm not one for pickles too much, but I had it and I greatly enjoyed it. Anyway, I'm chalking it to the list of like, you know what, I don't know if and when any of the boys will be back in San Francisco, but I'm like, I want to take them to my special places. Speaking about special places, everyone is good in their special places over the weekend before we get to video games.

Speaker 2:
[17:42] Yeah, yeah, like I spent most of my time outside, which is nice. I have to say that, right? I have to say going outside is nice.

Speaker 4:
[17:50] Yeah, if you like it, don't lie.

Speaker 2:
[17:53] I do, but it's like reluctant because it's like every time I go outside, I'm like, yeah, I do feel better. This is stupid that it makes me feel better. I wish I could just still feel better laying down doing nothing, but no, going outside does work. It was like doing yard work and stuff still. My robot lawnmower saga continue where it's like it's working now, but it's not doing a good job anymore. I'm worried I'm going to have to start mowing my lawn the manual way again.

Speaker 4:
[18:22] Does it need maintenance?

Speaker 2:
[18:25] I'm like, okay, I need to replace these blades and I did. It comes with little razor blades you put in there. I replaced them and I think the grass got too long because the batteries were fucked to begin with, so I waited too long and I'm hoping it's like it just needs to get through a couple of good mows and then once it gets to a good baseline, it'll do a good job of maintenance, but we're not getting over that hump. It looks bad out there. It looks worse than when the grass was just long. It's patchy and weird. So yeah, I spent a lot of time trying to diagnose the problems with a robot that's supposed to make life easier, which is, I don't think the point of getting a robot for your birthday.

Speaker 3:
[19:03] How much is a lawnmower?

Speaker 2:
[19:05] What kind of lawnmower are you talking about?

Speaker 3:
[19:06] Yours. Are you going to replace or get a new one or something?

Speaker 2:
[19:09] So if I were to get a lawnmower, we'd probably be spending a minimum of 1,500 to get something that's going to be decent at this point.

Speaker 4:
[19:18] The robot mower.

Speaker 2:
[19:20] I mean, just kind of like, I would probably go all out and get a decent, maybe entry-level riding lawnmower at this point.

Speaker 4:
[19:26] Yeah, you have a big space. Yeah, a big yard.

Speaker 2:
[19:29] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[19:30] Riding lawnmower sounds fun.

Speaker 2:
[19:31] Yeah, that was the choice. It was the riding lawnmower or the robot.

Speaker 1:
[19:36] You all make me so terrified to try and own a home eventually.

Speaker 4:
[19:41] Because of the grass?

Speaker 2:
[19:42] I mean, some people like mowing their lawn. It's fine. Do you, Mike?

Speaker 4:
[19:47] What do you do?

Speaker 2:
[19:47] No, I pay people to do that. He pays to help, please.

Speaker 4:
[19:51] No, I get it.

Speaker 5:
[19:53] I don't like it, but it's fine. It's worth it to have a lawn.

Speaker 3:
[19:59] All right.

Speaker 4:
[19:59] Yeah, I would. I feel like I would prefer. I don't know. I don't know what's more environmentally friendly. I'm sure it's not watering a lawn for six months out of the year, eight months out of the year.

Speaker 2:
[20:10] That seems bad.

Speaker 4:
[20:10] Yeah. I would I would I would do like, I don't know. Is turf a thing that you could do?

Speaker 3:
[20:15] You can do it.

Speaker 2:
[20:17] Almost no way that the HOA would be cool with that.

Speaker 4:
[20:19] I don't have an HOA.

Speaker 2:
[20:20] I am. I do. And it's pretty chill, but I don't think they're going to let me put in fake grass. I don't I do like having the lawn. We don't have to we don't have to water it because there's a lake right over there. And that just it just happens. No one's got sprinklers here.

Speaker 3:
[20:35] Oh, no, no, no.

Speaker 2:
[20:36] Yeah, there's no. I just know I've never seen anybody like I don't have to water my lawn. And it's pretty much throughout all of Ohio. Sprinklers are really rare.

Speaker 4:
[20:44] Really?

Speaker 2:
[20:44] But yeah, but especially up here where it's like I am, you know, like I said, like 500 feet from the lake or whatever. And it really does just, yeah, my super green grass all the time, you know, we do a little bit of extra to it, but yeah, that's not too much of an effort. So it's like, hey, I can have an ice yard if I wanted to without having to worry about all the, like wasting too much water. But yeah, that springtime getting over the hump, it's like, oh, I do have to put quite a bit of energy into this to get into a decent shape in the beginning.

Speaker 4:
[21:11] For every year, every year, the sprinkler guy got to do the song and the dance with the sprinkler guy who wants to put new sprinklers in. I'm just like, what's wrong with the ones that are in there? And he's like, he's like, oh, they'll break, they'll bust and you know, you got to clear out. I'm just like, buddy, I don't want new sprinklers just yet until there's just like a pool of mud in my front lawn.

Speaker 2:
[21:30] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[21:31] He's like, all right, I'll put a pool of mud in your fucking front lawn.

Speaker 5:
[21:34] All of this.

Speaker 3:
[21:35] Would I know if I have sprinklers?

Speaker 5:
[21:37] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[21:38] So, so yeah, I feel like it's, you know, it's a nice thing to do to like keep it nice.

Speaker 3:
[21:46] I mean, but I think I might have sprinklers, but I'm not sure. Like there are like two like holes.

Speaker 2:
[21:50] Have you ever seen water being shot out from sprinklers?

Speaker 3:
[21:52] No, if I do have them, they've definitely never been on since I've lived here, but there are like things in the lawn that look like, what's that weird hole for, you know?

Speaker 4:
[21:59] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[21:59] Maybe it's for a sprinkler that's supposed to come.

Speaker 2:
[22:01] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[22:02] I don't really want to do this.

Speaker 2:
[22:05] We got to back or veto. All right. Moving on.

Speaker 1:
[22:10] I was going to say, taking care of a lawn sounds like a scam, and that's appropriate because during UPF, most of us were able to play Scam Lines. I just want to talk about it briefly. Very fun game. There was about seven of us there. Most of the crew, Bakalar was out on assignment, so we pulled in Bailey Myers to join us, and we had a great time, and I'm glad that our friendship and bonds are strong enough to sustain all of the lying that happened. The only type of community-

Speaker 3:
[22:42] Too bad about it.

Speaker 1:
[22:43] A little bit. I didn't lie once at all. It was obscene-

Speaker 5:
[22:47] You're lying now.

Speaker 1:
[22:48] How much Will was trying to manipulate everyone and turn everyone against us.

Speaker 5:
[22:53] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[22:53] It continues. Same thing with Sean. Sweet Sean was pulling the strings, the puppet master the whole time. Grubb, this is one of those games where you can only talk to people via the phone, and you can only talk to one person at a time during these minigames. So the games will range from social deduction and lying to each other. For instance, you will have a shape and you're supposed to help or maybe lie to the other person on the line to figure out what shape you both have.

Speaker 2:
[23:29] There's a lot of Prisoner's Dilemma stuff in there. There's a lot of game theory and it's all about working with or working against the other people and trying to gauge how willing they are to work with you or if they are lying. It's really smart because it's very quick games. It goes very fast. The point system is not out of whack where if you win one game, you're going to be super behind, you have a chance of catching up. So everyone felt like they were in it and it really did encourage everyone to play along. I watched that documentary that Bolding Ideas did about the Beast Games, which is Mr. Beast's take on Squid Games. Their game design for that game show is pretty bad, where they didn't give people incentives to lie in a lot of them. This does not have that problem. Everyone was eventually incentivized to sort of be in a bit. I'm like, we were playing the Prisoners' Dilemma 1, which is, hey, if we press the green button, we're both going to get three points. If we both press the red button, we're going to get one point. But if I press the green button and you press the red button, I'm going to get zero points and you're going to get five points. And I was starting out, like, let's just always press the green button, guys. Like that's, you know, do what's best for yourself. Then the other person, that's Beautiful Mind, Game Theory stuff. That's the best thing. Very quickly, you could see the scores of the people who were lying, mostly Bailey, just shooting ahead of everyone else. And I'm like, okay, we have to lie. And so Mike calls me up and he's like, hey, I'm going to press the green button. I'm like, oh, buddy, I'm sorry, but yeah, me too. And I press the red button and I got my first five points. I was like, well, that felt nice.

Speaker 1:
[25:09] Well, it's so funny you mentioned that, Grubb, because like in the first game we were playing, you were very adamant about, I'm not lying, I'm just letting you all lie to yourselves. And that quickly changed from game two onwards.

Speaker 2:
[25:20] Yeah, there's multiple strategies, right? There was one where it's like, I'm a bad liar in this game, people are telling. So I'm going to tell the truth, but I can gather information about when other people are lying and sow division among other people. So I'm like, tell me who told you that? Oh, they're lying to you. And I always told the truth on that. And it would cause people to go back and have these conversations and break their agreements that they had. And that also benefited me. And it's like, oh, this is a really cool way of getting people together in a different kind of multiplayer game. And I thought it just kind of boiled down to its most component parts and worked surprisingly well. I think we all had a good time, despite the fact that we were lying and screwing each other over for an hour and a half or whatever we did.

Speaker 3:
[26:01] I struggle because it'd be like Jan or Mike or whatever on the other line. And it'd be just so earnestly sounding. It's like, hey, OK, are we really going to be buds here, right? As much as I like to troll and stuff like that, I can't just lie to his face like that and screw him over. That hurt. But some of it was fun, like the ones that would mask your voice. Yeah. So you're trying to figure out through it. Because I've never thought actively about anyone's speech patterns or things like that. But somebody would start talking and be like, wait, that sounds like the kind of how Bailey talks. Or I think Jan does that when he says hi to me or something. That was interesting.

Speaker 5:
[26:35] I was screwed on that one.

Speaker 2:
[26:37] That one did not help me at all. Everyone immediately knew it was me. I don't know because my speech pattern is so recognizable, or the audio masking just was not enough for this distinctive voice. But everyone's immediately just like, Mike? I'm like, shit. Yeah, I said hello and so I still don't know who it was. I said hello and they're like, wait, that's Grubb just from hello? I could tell it's Grubb. Wow. So I started talking in a high-pitched voice trying to hide it, and everyone thought I was Mike.

Speaker 3:
[27:05] Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:
[27:07] So I'm like, this is really funny. I also tried using my goxler to hide my voice more. I'm like, I want to see if I could really hide my voice. That didn't work. It was definitely patterns and stuff. But yeah, the high-pitched voice did work.

Speaker 3:
[27:18] I tried to keep singing Under the Sea thinking people would think it was Mike.

Speaker 2:
[27:22] But it didn't work.

Speaker 5:
[27:23] Yeah, how far did you get in that one?

Speaker 3:
[27:25] Like the two, under the sea, like a couple of months. It's better when you're wetter.

Speaker 1:
[27:32] Yeah, we got to get Bakalar into scam lines. We got to run it back one time for the one time.

Speaker 2:
[27:37] Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1:
[27:39] Because Bakalar does these voices that I feel like could really fudge around with the whole man and everything.

Speaker 5:
[27:46] Yeah, just do that whole thing as one of your famous characters.

Speaker 2:
[27:51] Do it as Smeagol the entire time.

Speaker 1:
[27:54] No, but then we would know. We would know it's him.

Speaker 2:
[27:57] No, because he feels like Smeagol's here.

Speaker 4:
[27:59] We'll have to invent new people for this.

Speaker 1:
[28:02] Yes, we'll have to get Nicky. I feel like Abby would be very difficult to deal with. Yeah, speaking about lying and things tied to lying. Lying can lead to hatred, folks at home. So don't do it too much because Mike Minotti, you've been playing and I believe this is safe to talk about. Yeah, yes.

Speaker 5:
[28:23] Yeah, yes, it is. I see the reviews up.

Speaker 1:
[28:26] Okay, you've been playing Diablo IV Lord of Hatred.

Speaker 5:
[28:30] Yep, this is the second Diablo IV expansion.

Speaker 2:
[28:35] I got some early access to this one. Didn't play through it or anything, but was able to make the new class a warlock and check out the campaign for a good while here. I'm like kind of like okay with Diablo IV up to this point. I always have a good enough time playing it. I don't find it interesting enough to like stick with seasonal characters and dive deep. The combat kind of like devolves to me into just like, I don't know, you know that Moon Knight, the random bullshit thing. I feel like I'm kind of mashing buttons and a million things are happening. I know there's more nuance to that, especially at higher difficulties, but at least playing through the campaigns isn't as engaging as playing a Diablo II campaign or something like that. But in this one, I was having a pretty good time so far. The warlock is a really cool class. I was a little skeptical, like, okay, another kind of caster, you know, magician thing. How does this feel different? They have a lot of, you know, like fire spells and they summon demons, things like that. Even just beyond the aesthetics of it, some of the stuff it was doing was neat. Like one of my big spells would make a fissure and then fire would explode out of it when it clicked. So wherever I click, boom. But then the neat thing is if I did another one, like the old fissure would still be there for a little bit. So if I cast somewhere else, I would make a new fissure.

Speaker 5:
[29:53] It would not explode, but the old fissure would explode too.

Speaker 2:
[29:56] So I could kind of place these around and do a ton of damage over a wider area. Then another point, I was like summoning a demon head that was just shooting like a flamethrower kind of wherever I put it. So yeah, the moveset seemed pretty fun. The story was moving along, got a good pace there, has a very nice recap in the beginning because even I'm like, what happened in that last expansion in the main game?

Speaker 5:
[30:21] Something about a devil and an angel, right?

Speaker 2:
[30:24] Well, caught me up good there. You immediately go on a boat to a new city.

Speaker 5:
[30:29] The boat sequence was kind of fun.

Speaker 2:
[30:31] And then the city itself seems like really big, much bigger than a Diablo city has felt. And it also has a good vibe. Sometimes everything in Diablo is kind of just like, it's shitty. In this place, it's like, right? In this place, it's like, oh, it's like this kind of poor town. And like, you know, there's obviously a corrupt undercurrent, but it's pretty to look at for a bit. And the uneasiness comes in other ways than just showing piles of wooden boxes and sand everywhere or something, you know?

Speaker 5:
[30:57] So aesthetically, it looks nice.

Speaker 2:
[31:00] But yeah, I was having a good time with it. I bet I'll enjoy playing through that campaign.

Speaker 5:
[31:05] Again, I don't I don't know if this is like peak Diablo or anything like that for me, but I was into it.

Speaker 2:
[31:13] Mike, I want to ever want an animated short of Mike doing the voices for like Deckard Cain explaining the world Diablo. It's shitty.

Speaker 4:
[31:24] I love that, Mike. I just want to bottle that up and sell it at Nordstrom, you know?

Speaker 1:
[31:29] We should put that on a bumper sticker, actually, just Mike's face and then just going, it's shitty, it's shitty.

Speaker 2:
[31:37] It's pretty rough here. It's shitty and you'll die probably.

Speaker 1:
[31:41] That could apply to our real life place of residence right now. Mike, do you ever play these Diablo games like multiplayer or is this purely a solo-dolo experience for you?

Speaker 2:
[31:52] All my memorable experiences with the games have been me solo-doloing. I'll do some multiplayer stuff like do dungeons with my brothers. Honestly, most of that happened when Diablo III was a console game and it was suddenly a really good couch co-op experience. It just felt like a modern one of those gauntlet games. That was the most fun it's ever been co-op.

Speaker 5:
[32:18] Otherwise, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[32:21] I get into that stuff a little bit. But again, a lot of that is more almost end game-y. It's just a difference of how the game feels. Diablo II, Diablo I, the game was playing the campaign. That was the game. There's obviously a lot of post-game stuff too, for sure. But to me, that felt like the experience. In the Diablo III, Diablo IV world, the campaign is almost like a, I don't want to say tutorial, but almost feels like a prelude to the quote unquote, real game, which is the seasonal content and getting all these cosmetics and going up to torment level 15 to get your super delves or whatever all that stuff is called. So that they can become live service games. That is the model here. That is going to be the model than doing these big expansions like this. I mean, that is a nice thing to do. I'm glad we still get these big content drops and it's not just stuff slowly getting doled out in less interesting ways. We do get huge story beats here. That guy with the voice from, I don't know, he was Sid in Font Fancy 16. He's a major character in this one again. I liked having him back because he was kind of outdoing his own thing during the last expansion.

Speaker 5:
[33:30] So him being back was nice.

Speaker 2:
[33:33] Ralph Innocent.

Speaker 1:
[33:34] Oh, I love that dude. That dude's so-

Speaker 5:
[33:35] Yeah, he's got a good voice.

Speaker 1:
[33:37] Yeah, he's got a good voice. He was good in the Green Knight as well.

Speaker 2:
[33:40] Yeah, he's the Green Knight.

Speaker 1:
[33:42] Yes, yes. Wow, Mikey with a movie. Okay, cool.

Speaker 5:
[33:45] That movie had Seaman in it.

Speaker 1:
[33:48] Well, going from the depths of hell-

Speaker 5:
[33:50] Are you shoving up your ass?

Speaker 3:
[33:53] Okay, all right. Michael. Jesus, Michael.

Speaker 2:
[33:57] I didn't hear what you said, Mike, but you.

Speaker 3:
[33:59] Don't worry about it. Yeah, we'll cut it out.

Speaker 2:
[34:01] I got to go pick up a child who's not feeling well. I'll be right back.

Speaker 4:
[34:06] What else do you know, you wizard? Peek into your crystal ball for us.

Speaker 2:
[34:12] Bye, guys. We'll be right back.

Speaker 5:
[34:13] Bye.

Speaker 1:
[34:13] Okay, bye.

Speaker 5:
[34:14] He knew this was coming.

Speaker 1:
[34:17] Oh, he's not going to leave, leave.

Speaker 4:
[34:19] He's just- No, that's good. That's good. It'll keep the layout. Well-

Speaker 2:
[34:24] He'll be back someday.

Speaker 1:
[34:26] Someday, one day.

Speaker 4:
[34:27] Let's see. Let's time him. Go.

Speaker 1:
[34:29] Well, this is perfect because-

Speaker 3:
[34:30] Did you get on it?

Speaker 1:
[34:31] Oh, no, no.

Speaker 4:
[34:32] You've been in Las Vegas too long, sir.

Speaker 3:
[34:35] Yeah, 48 hours is too long. I agree.

Speaker 1:
[34:37] This is perfect because I think Jeff Grubb is still early in a game that I think we're all very far to, if not completed, if not on-

Speaker 3:
[34:45] Oh, shit.

Speaker 5:
[34:46] I want to hear what you thought about progress to being completed.

Speaker 4:
[34:47] Oh, you're talking about PMAGs?

Speaker 1:
[34:50] That's right. Pragmata, PMAGs, as it is known in the streets. Boys, gang, I think this would be a 10 out of 10 or a 5 out of 5 game, if it had one more thing in it.

Speaker 3:
[35:04] Okay. A motorcycle.

Speaker 1:
[35:06] No. No. I've since completed the game. I absolutely adore it. I like where the story winds up going and everything, a little cheesy, a little... It feels like it's like a popcorn, like blockbuster style game, but it doesn't overstay its welcome. Totally. The thing that I need this to do, because in the quick look, Mike, you alluded to, oh yeah, by the time I finished this game, I had like eight dashes or boosts. I was just zipping all over the place. And the way that the game futzes around with gravity, because you're in space, those dashes go a very long way. It's very fun how they mess with that and the verticality. It would be five out of five for me if they had given Hugh a ground pound ability.

Speaker 3:
[35:49] Ooh, a ground pound.

Speaker 1:
[35:51] If they gave him a butt stomp with his boosters, it would be perfect. Primarily because I think it would lend itself very well to the overall mobility of the game.

Speaker 4:
[36:03] Yeah, but what about What's-Her-Face? Deanna, that would like screw up her positioning, no?

Speaker 1:
[36:08] She's a little robot.

Speaker 2:
[36:10] Well, Yoshi butt stomps in Yoshi's Island and Mario's running on him and he's fine.

Speaker 4:
[36:15] Yeah, and he's got enough hardware on the back there where I'm sure it could modify itself to...

Speaker 2:
[36:21] Right, she doesn't have real knees, so she'll be fine.

Speaker 4:
[36:23] Right, that's the best part of this game is that she's not a person. You know?

Speaker 3:
[36:27] There's no escort stuff whatsoever. You never have to worry about her dying. Yeah, that is great.

Speaker 4:
[36:33] Yeah, and the fact that you don't have to really care about her well-being, you know? At least, Hugh seems to... I mean, I'm not... I've only finished that big boss in Times Square. That's as far as I'm in. But like, it's just... Yeah, she's just... It doesn't matter. She's her... You know?

Speaker 2:
[36:54] Disagree, disagree, disagree! She must be protected at all costs!

Speaker 4:
[36:58] Yes, faced with the same dilemma, I would also protect her. I think she's very funny and likable. I think that's everything about her is pretty cool. But again, you know, it's sort of just like at the end of the day, if it's you or me... Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[37:16] I can't throw her as a grenade if you could.

Speaker 4:
[37:18] I'll just make another one of you, you know?

Speaker 2:
[37:20] What if it was you or a random actual child?

Speaker 4:
[37:24] Oh, me.

Speaker 1:
[37:26] All right, well...

Speaker 2:
[37:27] Do you want to do this more of a dilemma?

Speaker 4:
[37:29] Yeah, I don't want to answer that. I don't want to do these thought experiments with you right now.

Speaker 1:
[37:35] No offense to a regular, decular child, but they won't be able to hack into a robot.

Speaker 2:
[37:42] They'll be of no use to you is what you're saying.

Speaker 4:
[37:45] Yes, that's what he's saying.

Speaker 1:
[37:47] That's what I'm saying. Yes, that is the hot take.

Speaker 2:
[37:51] Likes for Mike, everybody. Like this video, please.

Speaker 1:
[37:55] Like all the videos, even if it doesn't have Mike on it, please.

Speaker 3:
[37:59] Oh, baby.

Speaker 1:
[38:00] But holy smokes, gang. At the end, it's been a very long time since I've felt compelled to go back through a game and try and 100 percent it, or hit up a new game plus. But just the gameplay loop and just how it feels has me hooked in a way where I don't want to leave the world, I guess the moon yet with Pragmata.

Speaker 3:
[38:23] It just has me-

Speaker 1:
[38:25] Go ahead, Dan.

Speaker 3:
[38:26] I was going to say they make it easy if you want to do that. It's so easy to go back to like, okay, this place I have three out of five of these boxes, I'll just work back there immediately. It's a very fun 100 percent.

Speaker 1:
[38:37] On top of Diana and Hugh's relationship, I like that it doesn't get too muddy with introducing other characters, and I like that Cabin is just stuck there in your little shelter, and doesn't do too much. He's charming enough. Then when you get more training missions, you find the broken cabins in the world, I feel bad. My little screen boy.

Speaker 3:
[38:59] Yeah, when there's like sparks and stuff like that, and you seem to go, poor little guy. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[39:02] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[39:03] Feel for him.

Speaker 1:
[39:04] All right. Moving on from Pragmata, we have kept Jeff Grubb's seat open, and he is not replaced. But Jeff Bakalar, you have been playing Replaced.

Speaker 4:
[39:17] Yes, I certainly have. I owe it to myself to play some of this game, because I've been thinking about it on and off for what feels like the better part of five years or so. I mean, my gosh, when did they first debut this thing? I can't even remember. I always remember it was like an Xbox thing, like some sort of showcase or whatever it is. And obviously, it launched on Game Pass, so there's that connection following through. Replaced is finally out. It is on Game Pass, like I said. It is, and again, we can all agree, this game trailered real well. Like what? Sure. Not many games trailer as well as a game like this.

Speaker 1:
[40:05] For folks at home, this is like the 2D cyberpunk Blade Runner looking game.

Speaker 4:
[40:10] That's right. It is a 1980s sort of alternate history, cyberpunk sort of pixely side-scroller, where you play as the body of a person.

Speaker 3:
[40:29] Jesse Ventura?

Speaker 4:
[40:30] No, no, no.

Speaker 3:
[40:31] Oh, okay.

Speaker 4:
[40:32] Stay with me. You play as a body that is being controlled by an AI after some sort of military experiment goes haywire, and I believe the world is left like irradiated.

Speaker 3:
[40:51] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[40:51] And that's the setup. Like you say, it's like that 25D side-scroller, so it's a 3D world, and you're sort of only moving through a single plane in it. You do get to go up and down stairs in the foreground and the background, which adds a little bit of dimensionality to it. But that is the sort of the broad strokes of the gameplay. I'll say this before we get into like what I actually think about. This is one of the most visually strikingly impressive games I've seen in many, many years. It, nothing looks like this. A lot of games try to do a sort of visual storytelling kind of thing, a visual style that that chips away at this. But this is the most realized and well executed hybrid of that pixely with tilt shifty with like real world assets as well, or real photorealistic assets as well. Incredible stuff. Nothing looks like this. Again, art direction is superb. The character designs are super compelling. It is truly like unlike anything I've really ever seen. There is combat. It is basically like Arkham, Arkham style, right? Where you are dodging some attacks, countering others. There is not a combo counter, but you do gain the ability. You find a weapon and that becomes like a, it's a gun, but you use it as a baton until you unlock the ability to like use your attack, melee attacks, to earn the right to shoot one bullet, right? So like your combos don't get counted, but they are used to sort of fill up this gun icon. And once you max out that, your character can shoot. And it's a pretty devastating blast when you, when you, when you earn the right to shoot. So here's, so that's, I think the combat is, well-executed enough. I find that enjoyable. What I'm struggling to really stay jacked in on is the kind of expositional, draggy storytelling that this game is doing. And I wish, I wish the storytelling delivery matched the, the chops, the visual chops that the game is sort of has. It, in my opinion, wastes time very slowly dragging through unskippable dialogue. And you have to read a lot, and that's okay, but there's no way to advance it. And the game seems like it wants you to really, you know, really make a meal out of every dialogue interaction that's going on. Some dialogue is fast-forwardable and kind of skippable, which you will want to do because you can read much faster than the words are appearing on screen. But like I said, it is, yeah, it's a little rough, and there is a pace to it that is just, I don't know, it's just a little too sluggish for me. I wonder if that's a thing that they maybe kind of patch in, and I don't know, maybe a little bit of feedback. Who knows? Again, it's the developer's decision to kind of like position it that way. So I think that's fine, right? And that's what they want, but it does feel like a bit of a slog. But again, like visually speaking, like there's, it's an incredible, the animations in the game are really incredible because the characters themselves, they're not a lot of pixels, but they have this realistic sort of flow and body movement to them that are, that is really, really cool. So the AI is named Reach and your body that you play is named Warren. And there is a lot of like self-dialogue between your character and Reach, the AI, and it's mostly the AI talking to you and you just sort of listen. And the AI is controlling you. So like you'll, you know, you'll murder like a bunch of gang members and the AI is like, I'm sorry, Warren, I had to do that. We had to kill all these people. So there's that. But yeah, I think, you know, I think the story is, the story is not really grabbing me, but I do think the way it is presented and the kind of like, all the other things that make up the parts of this game are probably what's going to keep me hooked in and kind of see it through to the end. It's got incredible sound design, like really, really awesome detail, attention to detail there. Such a really intoxicating energy to the whole thing. I just wish the story was a little bit more kind of special, a little more important, you know? Sure.

Speaker 1:
[45:37] Bakalar, so it's not like a Metroidvania style at all. You're just like going from level to level or is there any kind of open world?

Speaker 4:
[45:45] As far as I can tell, there's not much of that mechanic there in the game. There is a couple, you do eventually reach this sort of like dystopian refugee town and you're meant to go around and kind of ask some of the people in there like, hey, what's your deal? Can I do something for you? There's a couple fetch quests peppered in throughout that experience, but it is just, you know, and like so, you know, the first 90 minutes or so, you know, you're just doing the left to right sort of thing for what feels like forever. And none of that gets really impressively complicated or fun. The puzzle is very, very, very light puzzle solving to the extent that you're just sort of like move. It's that same like move this to the edge so you could climb up to the wall. And it's like you're just going to have to start off with something a little bit more cerebral there for me. But again, I think the style, this thing is dripping with such distinct and impressive style that it's probably enough to get me all the way to the end. It is opening up where I'm at now and you do need like kind of interesting characters. I think the characters are definitely stronger than the story overall. This one dude, Tempest, who's sort of this like 80s, you know, hair metal dude, who drives a sort of like Mad Max creation that rides on rails. And you have to, you know, do some missions with this guy. Yeah, I think all the points were just sort of dumped into the style of this game. Maybe some were not pumped into the kind of moment to moment run around. So we'll see how it goes. I do feel like I'm going to finish this. I've heard it's not incredibly long. So that's definitely a plus at this point for me. But yeah, that's replaced, you know, a little bit of a disappointment, I think so far for me. But again, it's honestly worth the price of admission just to see what this freaking thing looks like because it is tremendous.

Speaker 1:
[47:53] Speaking about Tremendous, this Tremendous father right here already back on the podcast.

Speaker 4:
[48:00] That's fast.

Speaker 1:
[48:01] Jesus H Christ.

Speaker 2:
[48:02] School's not far. She's back. She's chilling.

Speaker 1:
[48:05] Grubb, we talked about Pragmata very briefly. You did a launch look last Friday. Anything you want to share about Pragmata or if you dug deeper into it?

Speaker 2:
[48:14] Yeah, I played what I played on the launch look. I had to play some other games. But what I played there was excellent. It is just a well-crafted game. They knew what they were going for. They deliver on it. It's got a ton of style. I do love the characters, their banter, their conversation, their relationship, very authentic, feels very real. And then it's not just feels real. It's like, oh, it's also interesting. I think that the rewards that they give you, sort of the loop of, hey, go to this next checkpoint. And once you get to that checkpoint, you can return to the hub. And we're gonna give you a chance to upgrade and get some cool goodies. And those goodies also have their own related upgrades associated with them or currency. It's just, yeah, it's a video game ass video game that has all of the extras stapled on top of it in terms of style, character storytelling, music, just general vibes that elevates it above just being a video game ass video game. Not that that would be some shame. Yeah, just another Capcom win. I'm just so, I'm really infatuated with what I've played so far.

Speaker 1:
[49:21] It makes me nervous for Onimusha because then it would just be like one of the best years for Capcom, right?

Speaker 2:
[49:28] They gotta kill it. I mean, it's getting great for my fantasy critic.

Speaker 3:
[49:31] Yeah, have they said a month or anything with the Onimusha?

Speaker 2:
[49:33] No, just this year, so probably later.

Speaker 3:
[49:34] Okay. Probably later this year.

Speaker 1:
[49:36] Well, let's keep things in the Capcom world because Mike Manati, you have been playing Resident Evil 2. Is this the remake you've been playing?

Speaker 2:
[49:44] No, sir, this is the PlayStation 1 original. Oh, yeah, yeah. Been in the big Resident Evil mood lately, obviously, since Requiem came out. I know I played Resident Evil Zero. What's so funny, Jan?

Speaker 1:
[49:58] I just see Kayla just booing in the chat.

Speaker 2:
[50:01] Sorry.

Speaker 5:
[50:03] It's incredible.

Speaker 2:
[50:05] But yeah, there's a few of them I haven't played yet, and one of them is the original 2. I played the remake a couple of years ago and loved it. 2 is supposed to be an all-timer game, just something at the time I didn't even consider playing because I was a coward. The games always seem to be timid. I always assumed that they were the hardest games ever for some reason as well, right? So it's fun to go in there and finally dig into it. Started with Claire, did the Claire playthrough, then the Leon playthrough, and boy, it's just still awesome. It's still so freaking cool. It's so much more approachable than I thought it would be. If you're weird about tank controls, boy, that immediately just feels good in this game and makes a ton of sense. The RPD, the pre-render backgrounds, that stuff still looks awesome. And it is like the AB stuff is cool. And it's a bit more intricate here than even was in the remake in terms of, okay, you're going to do stuff in the A playthrough with Claire. And then Leon's going to have a different experiences or kind of see the repercussions of the things Claire did. You're not going to have the same boss fights necessarily even. Yeah, it's like it's weird playing a game after almost 30 years of hype. And I'm like a big 1998 in gaming guy. If you ask me, like, what's the best year for video games? I'll be like, 1998, we had Half Life and Awkward Time, Metal Gear, Solid, Grim Fandango, and I'll go on and on. And this is one of the games that is brought up. And I'm like, and that one that I didn't play yet.

Speaker 5:
[51:37] And now I have played it.

Speaker 2:
[51:38] It's freaking cool. Even like, it's funny, because the voice acting is definitely better than Resident Evil 1, but it's still pretty cheesy. And also, like, bizarrely Canadian.

Speaker 5:
[51:48] So that part of it is awesome.

Speaker 2:
[51:50] I think the one guy goes, yeah, yeah, there's a famous, some guy goes, sorry.

Speaker 5:
[51:54] Kind of like, oh, I know these.

Speaker 3:
[51:57] It's Mr. X.

Speaker 4:
[51:57] Yeah, it's Mr. X.

Speaker 5:
[51:59] Even Mr. X, right?

Speaker 2:
[52:00] Because in this one, Mr. X only shows up in the B playthrough, which is interesting. So that's like a different wrinkle there. The game's got me a couple of times, especially the first few hours when I was playing as Claire. I just walked by a window and some plants reached out and grabbed me and I freaked out for a moment. Then there's the, I don't even know how I forgot about this. I feel like I knew about this, but you're in the interrogation room with the one-sided mirror. I'm in there, then all of a sudden a liquor jumped through it and I lost my shit. I freaked out there for a moment.

Speaker 3:
[52:34] That's the dog window moment of two, I think.

Speaker 2:
[52:36] Yeah, it's classic. But even just like the tension because of the survival horror stuff, there was a point where I got my inventories limited and had to carry a couple of these with me. So I was like, I'm just not going to take a healing item this time. It's going to be fine. Then of course, I get beat up a bunch and I have no health left. If something tickles me, I'm going to die and I'm like, okay, it's going to be a safe suit and I'm going to be fine. Well, sure enough, here's a cutscene and now Mr. X is on this fucking narrow bridge with me and it's like where I need to go. My strategy with Mr. X every time has been just let him hit me once and then I'll get by. It's okay. I'm like, well, shit, that's not going to work. So I'm like, take control juke it, which you can only juke so much because of the lack of strafing. I just start going right and I go left and I pray to God. Somehow Mr. X decided to do the longest wind up ever.

Speaker 5:
[53:31] And I just kind of squeeze right by there.

Speaker 2:
[53:35] That's fun. And it was exhilarating.

Speaker 5:
[53:38] Yeah, the game is still so freaking fun. Yeah, definitely still just one of the best Resident Evils.

Speaker 2:
[53:44] There's a lot of really good Resident Evil. I don't like it quite as much as the remake. It's because the remake has better puzzles. The puzzles in this game are kind of simple. There's a lot of very simple block pushing puzzles, things like that. And you know, there is something about actually being able to aim at a zombie's head or leg and do stuff with that. Even though the tank control shooting stuff, it feels fine, it feels good. It works in a game designed for it, for sure. And pre-rendered backgrounds. I mean, come on, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 5:
[54:15] Pre-rendered backgrounds are so fucking cool, man.

Speaker 2:
[54:17] It's awesome.

Speaker 3:
[54:17] I feel like I'm due for a replay of two remakes. I only played three once because I never played the original two and I love two remake, but I did it as Leon. And is it a significantly different thing as Claire?

Speaker 2:
[54:28] It's well, it's again in the remake.

Speaker 5:
[54:31] Yeah, good enough.

Speaker 2:
[54:32] But also you kind of get the sort of true ending when you do both of them back to back.

Speaker 5:
[54:36] There's a little bit extra at the end there and it's worse.

Speaker 2:
[54:39] And that's the case here as well. And I was kind of a little surprised by how much it was. And I was just, I don't know, it was still exhilarating, man.

Speaker 3:
[54:46] Still fun, really freaking cool. I wonder if the Steam Cloud still has my save from that long ago.

Speaker 2:
[54:51] I bet it. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. Yeah, it probably does. Mike, remind me, PlayStation 1, one campaign on one disc, another campaign on the other disc. Is that how it works?

Speaker 5:
[55:00] Yeah, that's right here.

Speaker 2:
[55:01] Well, my one's in there. But yeah, here's my Claire. Claire's on disc two, so I tried to put disc two in first. Play as Claire. Then Leon would have been here. Leon's in my PlayStation two right now.

Speaker 5:
[55:10] Backwards compatibility.

Speaker 2:
[55:11] Is there anything better than these PlayStation cases that can hold more than one disc?

Speaker 5:
[55:16] Maybe it's so freaking good.

Speaker 2:
[55:18] The big thick boys, yeah. Like, oh, I had this really weird moment where I was playing the game and the disc looked pretty good, right? I had no issues, no stuttering. Then I was in a cut scene and the camera was just stuck on this one character. And then mid sentence just stopped.

Speaker 5:
[55:34] I was like, oh, that's not good.

Speaker 2:
[55:36] And like the music's still playing, but she just wasn't going to her next line.

Speaker 5:
[55:40] She's just kind of standing there like, all right, I guess I'm part of the reset of the game, but let me try taking the disc out and looking at it.

Speaker 2:
[55:46] As I took the disc out, I kind of wiped it. As I wasn't looking and I was streaming this, the character just moved her head.

Speaker 5:
[55:55] And then everyone in my chat was freaking out.

Speaker 2:
[56:02] So I put the disc back in, but I'm getting ready to restart the game.

Speaker 5:
[56:05] But just putting the disc back in, the game's like, and next line, and the scene's just going, and nothing happened. I was like, okay, real hardware.

Speaker 2:
[56:13] All right, we just loaded in the next line of 1 and 0s, and we're good to go again.

Speaker 4:
[56:18] What are you saying? Those black discs, man.

Speaker 5:
[56:21] Yeah, right.

Speaker 4:
[56:22] But how can anyone see anything?

Speaker 5:
[56:25] So really good.

Speaker 2:
[56:27] Still got a few classic Resident Evils. I got to play the original three. I got to play Code Veronica, The Revelations, and Dex.

Speaker 5:
[56:34] And then I'll be like-

Speaker 2:
[56:35] Have you played any of those?

Speaker 5:
[56:38] Uh, no, I don't think I've played Code Veronica.

Speaker 2:
[56:42] Code Veronica is interesting. Like it's not going to hold up. But at the time, I remember really enjoying it on the Dreamcast. Yeah, to me, that's one of those Dreamcast games that people loved and heaped praise on that people kind of don't like anymore. It's an echo defender of the future, like. I bet you're going to like it. Because with all the context and with all the real, I mean, yeah, with the realization of where that series goes. Yeah, it's going to just be a fun little bit. Oh, we got another one of these.

Speaker 3:
[57:10] Would you do the Dreamcast version or they made that PS2 one not long after?

Speaker 5:
[57:14] I have the, I have the Dreamcast version.

Speaker 2:
[57:17] My brother had that game.

Speaker 5:
[57:18] I still have his copy. So I kind of just want to play that.

Speaker 2:
[57:21] And for Resident Evil 3, the original, I have the GameCube version of that.

Speaker 5:
[57:26] So I'll probably play it on there.

Speaker 3:
[57:27] Oh, weird.

Speaker 2:
[57:28] That's like, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[57:29] Right, people forget that's a thing.

Speaker 3:
[57:30] Those are rare, right? With the GameCube 2 and 3?

Speaker 2:
[57:33] A little bit more expensive.

Speaker 3:
[57:35] I feel like I never see those, yeah. It was just weird, because the GameCube was so much more powerful, but it's like, it's not a remake. It's just the old one.

Speaker 2:
[57:41] Right, because they remade one, then they're like, and now we're just going to port 2, 3, and Code Rocket X made sense. It was technically that generation, but I mean, disc only RE2 on GameCube is like $100.

Speaker 3:
[57:53] And they have just been printing so much money with that series in so many different ways since the beginning, basically. I don't know, put them out again on GameCube. Sure. Whatever.

Speaker 2:
[58:01] And it's weird, because this isn't a series I had much affinity for. And when I had to review Resi Lake Village, you know, a few years ago, whenever that came out, at the time, it's like, no one else is able to do it. I'm not really a Resi Lake guy, but I guess I'll review this one. Kind of like, since then, I've slowly just been crawling my way through it, and it's been a ton of fun. So I don't think it's going to be too long before I jump into OG3. Yeah, it's just like one of my favorite series now. I'm even trying to think, can I name five video game series that I think are better than Resident Evil?

Speaker 5:
[58:32] I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[58:33] Welcome to the party, pal.

Speaker 3:
[58:34] Yeah, hell yeah. What's the hell, do we try?

Speaker 5:
[58:37] Good shit.

Speaker 3:
[58:37] Do we try?

Speaker 2:
[58:38] Do you try right now?

Speaker 3:
[58:40] Ones that are better. Mario, Zelda, Metal Gear.

Speaker 2:
[58:43] Mega Man, Final Fantasy.

Speaker 5:
[58:44] I know you don't agree about Final Fantasy. Might be better than Metal Gear.

Speaker 3:
[58:48] Might be better than Metal Gear.

Speaker 2:
[58:50] It's better, it's more, yeah, it's more consistent.

Speaker 3:
[58:53] No.

Speaker 2:
[58:53] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[58:53] Metal Gear, every Metal Gear game is an incredible game. Metal Gear never had six or even five. Like every number of Metal Gear solid is incredible.

Speaker 2:
[59:03] That's true. That's true. Good point. But yeah, it's close. It's close between Metal Gear and Resident Evil. But there's more Resident Evil.

Speaker 5:
[59:10] There's a lot more of them, which is nice. It's nice to have more of them.

Speaker 3:
[59:15] That's the three that come to mind right away, which is Mario Zell, the Metal Gear, I'm struggling.

Speaker 5:
[59:18] Metroid, even though it does recent fumbles aside. What? Don't worry about that.

Speaker 1:
[59:26] Mystical Ninja Goemon, right?

Speaker 2:
[59:28] Oh, shit. I forgot about Goemon.

Speaker 1:
[59:30] What?

Speaker 5:
[59:30] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[59:31] It was the Dynasty Warriors, of course.

Speaker 1:
[59:33] Oh, of course, of course. Well, we can ruminate and marinate on this more, but let's stick around this time period, because Jeff Grubb, you are ready to blow past spring, because you have been looking at Summer Cart 64.

Speaker 2:
[59:51] Yeah. So Summer Cart 64 is another one of these Flash ROM cartridges that you can put in your 64 to read stuff. I have a... Dan, what's the other one called?

Speaker 3:
[60:01] Everdrive.

Speaker 2:
[60:02] Everdrive.

Speaker 3:
[60:03] Yep.

Speaker 2:
[60:03] I had an Everdrive, and it works great, especially in the Analog 3D. After it got an update, everything worked, but the Summer Cart 64 is the preferred one now. I could tell, first of all, that it's open source and relatively affordable, but it's open source, it's constantly getting updates, and it has pretty good 64DD support, which is not something that I have ever really messed around with, especially on a real N64 hardware. So I got that Myriant shut down recently, which was the big repository of all these ROMs, and people were downloading stuff. We've heard. Yeah, as I've been told by nefarious individuals. Criminals have told us, yeah. Criminals have told us. So I talked to those criminals, and they had me some translated, patched N64, 64DD ROMs. And I got that loaded up on the Summer Cart, and it was really easy to get that thing patched up and updated to its most recent stuff. That also gave me an excuse to update the Analog 3D to its most recent firmware, which supports the Nintendo Switch N64 controller, which is fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[61:06] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[61:07] So yeah, got all that going, booted up Doshin the Giant, messed around with that for a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[61:13] As you do?

Speaker 2:
[61:13] Booted up, yeah, SimCity 64, which is a 64DD game. Yeah, and it's like, this is like, it was great. I booted up SimCity 64 for the 64DDD, DDD, that's a different character. KingDDD! Yeah, 64DDD! And the first character that pops up is Mr. Right, you know, the character from the SimCity for Super Nintendo, and he shows up in Link's Awakening and stuff like that, where his friend does.

Speaker 5:
[61:37] Mr. Left does.

Speaker 2:
[61:38] Mr. Left does, that's right. And it was like, oh yeah, this is one of those things where as a kid, the 64DD was this mythical thing that was gonna change the 64 that I loved so much, and it was finally gonna deliver on the promises of what people are getting with CD-based systems, and it never came out. It got canceled, it came out in Japan, but it never came out here. And I've never, after all these years, after looking forward to it for so long, never really messed around with it, and getting to see it's like, yeah, these are pretty much just still Nintendo 64 games. There's some stuff happening here, but none of the promise was really delivered on because the thing just didn't take off. It didn't have any support whatsoever. So there's like seven games, and yet it's like, oh yeah, you could see the glimpses of the future of these games eventually coming out on GameCube, like Animal Crossing or whatever, and getting a completely different take on it. I don't think Animal Crossing was a 64DD game, but yeah, still. Yeah, the Summer Cart is very well made, works really well, very basic, but everything's presented very well, it's, here's a simple menu system. It has a ton of customization features that you can access from the on-screen display, the on-screen menu, so you don't have to do stuff on your computer and then take it back over there. It's just really well thought out, and I see now why people recommend it as the go-to cartridge if you want to just have all your N64 games on one thing, it's really well done. So yeah, highly recommend.

Speaker 3:
[63:01] It's got the fantastic colors, I got the blue, it's fine. Yeah, because I got it because initially with Analog 3D, the EverDrive wouldn't work on it.

Speaker 2:
[63:08] And that's why I bought it.

Speaker 3:
[63:09] And like, yeah, immediately they had it work, but it's like, well, now I just have this thing. And it is a solid one. I like it for sure. The DD stuff, I remember when they were first showing Madora's Mask screenshots and magazines, and they were calling it like, like Zelda 64 2 or whatever. And they were just, yeah, you're going to have to buy this new thing. It's like a $200 add-on for the 64. And I would look at these screenshots and it's like, it just looks like Ocarina. Like what the? And they'd be like, well, no, it's got this whole clock thing and all that. But then it just worked on 64. So what were we trying to do?

Speaker 2:
[63:39] Right. I remember like one story about it, and it must've been like talking to someone at Nintendo. You know how these products get like blown up. The idea was like, you could have persistent worlds where you pick up an object and then you drop it on the ground and you come back a year later and it's still there on the ground cause the system holds it into memory so you can rewrite to these disc cartridges instead. I'm like, okay, that sounds cool. And it's like, I don't know why I was so excited about that, but I was.

Speaker 3:
[64:05] But then fast forward to like Breath of the Wild and you still have to do a blood moon thing to take care of that, you know? Yes, exactly. It's still like not dead yet.

Speaker 2:
[64:11] 100%.

Speaker 1:
[64:13] Lovely, lovely. Well, boys, I'm almost ready for the summer because I just wanna like kick back, go to a beach perhaps, you know, befriend or, you know, hang out with y'all on a beach, maybe run into the likes of perhaps Hihachi, Apollo Creed, maybe go to Cocaine Mountain and visit James Brown.

Speaker 3:
[64:41] And his ghost?

Speaker 1:
[64:42] And his, right, right, not his ghost, but his ghost friend.

Speaker 3:
[64:46] His friend, his little ghost pet, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[64:47] Yes, his little ghost pet.

Speaker 3:
[64:48] Jeff Keely's pet pizza, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[64:49] Yeah, Uwu Pizza. Jeff hasn't been able to stop tweeting or posting about Uwu Pizza, just him. Just going, again, scanned all over the place. Folks, we're talking about Tomodachi Living the Dream, and we're specifically referencing Dan's Island, and we had a very fun, quick look. I suggest you go check out. But Grubb, you've been playing it. I believe the gimmicks have also been playing it a bunch. I've fired it up. Just happy fun times, gang. It's just so fucking goofy.

Speaker 2:
[65:21] It is, I think it might be a perfect game for kids. 7 to 11 in that range, especially so. Emmy's 9 and because of her vision and some other issues, she struggles with reading. And this game is such a good tool for that specifically because everything that she puts into the game, it can read back to her. Oh, it's like if she gets the spelling wrong, it's like, oh, what's going on here? And she's not at she's almost asking for no help playing this game whatsoever. I'll have a lot of games like this where like, okay, they're going to really be into it. And then a lot of it is, and this is Minecraft, this is everything. It is every 20 to 30 minutes, there's something else they need help with. These games are more complicated than you would think. They want to figure this stuff out, but it's just out of their grasp in a lot of they don't have the built-in fundamentals of playing games for 20 years that we all have. That is not Tomodachi Life. Tomodachi Life, they have both of them at seven and nine, have been playing pretty autonomously for the last four or five days, almost as much as they possibly can get their hands on it.

Speaker 3:
[66:24] Are they sharing an island? Because it's not like you're not playing. So they each have their own islands.

Speaker 2:
[66:29] I'm in for two copies, Dan. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3:
[66:32] Oh yeah, because you can't do the family thing because you can like lend, but then you couldn't play at the same time.

Speaker 2:
[66:36] Only one person at a time. So they will sit next to each other and both have their own islands. And they're kind of just doing their own things, but they are using every available feature. They're going into the palette houses and making stuff. They've made little pets for their characters. They're using it all and I'm just kind of blown away by like they've needed very, very, very little help here.

Speaker 3:
[66:59] Cool. Have they done any of the, because there is not a lot of online stuff. There's like not any real sharing or anything. There's not really online play, but there is that local, you can like share items you've made, me's, things like that. Have they messed around with that at all?

Speaker 2:
[67:12] So they just discovered that this morning or maybe it was yesterday. And so they haven't, but on the school ride, I was taking them to school this morning, they were talking to each other and it's like, I made rainbow surprise, which is one of the desserts that she made, which is just a cake that is colored like a rainbow. And Addy's like, I want that. And she's wanted that since they started playing the game. It's one of the first things Emmy made. And he's like, I'll send it to you when we get home from school today. Addy's so excited. So yeah, they're using every single feature here. And I've been paying attention to the Tomodachi Life Reddit, which is surprisingly popular. People have been on there for a long time, thousands of users all the time. And there is a little bit of a disappointment of some of the features that are missing, some of the musical aspect. There's some other stuff, like quirky questions. There's things missing that were in Tomodachi Life for the 3DS that aren't here.

Speaker 3:
[68:05] But you can see those features on Marry Me Tomodachi, a premium show we're making with Abby Russell. We've seen a lot of quirky questions and stuff on that, Jim.

Speaker 2:
[68:12] Exactly. We've seen a lot of that stuff. It's like, oh, yeah. So I mean, is this one of those times where Nintendo's kind of like phoning it in? And I don't think that's what's happening here. I do get the hunch that they have a lot of this stuff lying in wait and they're going to update it, but that's no excuse. What is here is a really solid game. I think the worlds feel very alive. The Miis are like much, they have a lot more internal lives of their own, where they are just deciding to do stuff and you don't have to force everything and they can mingle out in public where that's not really a ton. There's not really a ton of that in Tomodachi Life for the 3DS. And I think that aspect of it has just made them be like, yeah, this is exactly how I want to play a game and Tomodachi Life Living the Dream facilitates that at every turn. So I've barely been able to play it myself because they are nonstop on it.

Speaker 3:
[69:00] I was really impressed by like the island builder part because like I kind of assumed it was going to have more requirements in terms of like currency and stuff like that. You do need to buy like, okay, I unlocked the bench now I have to use this money to get a bench. But like you don't have to buy a lot of stuff and you're also constantly getting money in that game. So at any point, you can just go into that island builder and completely reshape it so easy to just like, I'm moving this house over here. And that's something now that it's out is like, when I was playing it for review, which you can read my review on the website, I would make tweaks and stuff like that where it's like, all right, I'm going to make this a stretch of beach that Apollo Creed can live on, or I'm going to move this over here. This will be the shop district over here. But then I've started seeing more images online of people have completely changed the initial layout of this big central island. It was like beach roads and stuff like that, and whole sections of town. And it's like, oh shit, okay, I guess you really can go nuts with that. I want to explore that more.

Speaker 2:
[69:54] It's also really intelligent about it, where when you are building these new houses, as you build new me's and they move in, or let's say they move in together, and now you've got to build a bigger house so that they have space to live together. So it's like, okay, I've got to have this bigger house here, taking up more space. It's kind of made my road system a little bit weird. The me will just be like, hey, you want to build the roads in a way that just looks right and doesn't look bad and you just pay a nominal fee in the game and we'll just have it done? And it's like, yeah, you click one button and suddenly it builds a nice gridded road system that just looks natural and it's, oh wow, the kids didn't have to figure that out. The game is ready to meet them where they're at and kind of keep things looking professional and right. Oh yeah, I'm just impressed by it.

Speaker 3:
[70:37] It shows you a preview, it's like, here's kind of what I was picturing and it's like, there's the road system. It's like, just hit this button for 40 bucks and you're good. That's awesome.

Speaker 2:
[70:45] Yeah, it's fantastic. So yeah, just very happy with it. And again, it's exactly how they want to be playing games.

Speaker 1:
[70:50] Yeah, I've recreated, I had to rewatch Marry Me Tomodachi episode zero. I think that was a creation episode to kind of replicate how Abby lovingly crafted all of our me's because I'd like to just post the different social tableaus that happen on socials. If y'all have any suggestions for other me's you want on the island.

Speaker 2:
[71:13] Osama Bin Laden.

Speaker 1:
[71:15] If you guys have any other suggestions for me's you want on the island.

Speaker 4:
[71:19] Was that the first one?

Speaker 2:
[71:23] I tell you what, I haven't been able to play yet. My island, you know the scene from the beginning of Naked Gun, where Frank is undercover and he beats up all of the evil leaders of the world. I don't want to make that scene up, but maybe with Mimberber instead of Frank Drebin.

Speaker 3:
[71:38] Okay, I'm listening.

Speaker 2:
[71:39] Yeah, that's my dream.

Speaker 1:
[71:42] Okay, okay, okay. Actually, you know, everyone gets a me. Dan, who would you like to join GB Island?

Speaker 3:
[71:49] Osama Bin Laden.

Speaker 2:
[71:56] Chance of regretting this bit. Start the episode over, here we go.

Speaker 1:
[72:04] Hey, everybody, it's Tuesday. Jeff Bakalar.

Speaker 2:
[72:11] It's funny, because the kids don't do any of that. They don't do the famous people, they don't do, they don't do Ben Laden, not Gantt anyhow, Gilton Conn. It's all just like their own creations. Like they just have, yeah. Mike is very muted. Mike, you okay?

Speaker 5:
[72:25] I'm just muted was all it was, that's fine. I had nothing to say.

Speaker 2:
[72:28] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[72:29] Bakalar, who would you like on Giant Bomb Island?

Speaker 4:
[72:33] I would like John Cusack.

Speaker 2:
[72:39] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[72:40] All right, Mike Menotti.

Speaker 2:
[72:45] He's thinking.

Speaker 5:
[72:47] Bosama Ben Laden.

Speaker 1:
[72:51] So, do we have?

Speaker 4:
[72:52] He can't help it.

Speaker 1:
[72:53] Do we have three different?

Speaker 5:
[72:56] No, I want seven of nine from Star Trek Voyager.

Speaker 2:
[72:58] He changed my mind. There you go.

Speaker 4:
[73:00] Three people all chose Osama Ben Laden, and I chose High Fidelity's own John Cusack.

Speaker 2:
[73:10] A terrorist in his own right, for sure.

Speaker 3:
[73:12] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[73:13] Wait, there's nothing problematic with John Cusack. I thought you didn't hear about Cusack.

Speaker 1:
[73:19] Oh, Oh, boy. What did he do?

Speaker 3:
[73:23] Did you hear what he was saying?

Speaker 4:
[73:25] He's not making any movies anymore.

Speaker 3:
[73:28] There's a reason.

Speaker 4:
[73:29] I love his sister, too, Joe Cusack.

Speaker 2:
[73:32] Can I make a me look like the Twin Towers?

Speaker 1:
[73:36] All right, we're going to go take a quick bricky break, maybe a longer one, and just examine things that we've said today.

Speaker 5:
[73:44] Jeff may not be back.

Speaker 2:
[73:47] Go pick up your child again. Go for round two.

Speaker 4:
[73:51] Bring her back to school.

Speaker 1:
[73:52] Yeah, bring her back, have them call you. We're going to go take a bricky break, and maybe we'll be back with the news after this. Before we get to the news, I also just wanted to bring one more thing, a little show and tell. I bought these headphones. I don't know if I like them. They're the Koss Porta Pros. I got some cool pads on them.

Speaker 2:
[74:16] Are they wireless?

Speaker 1:
[74:17] Yes, these are wireless.

Speaker 2:
[74:19] I didn't know they made wireless Porta Pros. I'll tell you what, Porta Pros were the first. It was $50 when I first got them, and it was the first time I realized audio could be really good to the point where I was hearing things in Pink Floyd songs that I'm like, oh, I've never heard this instrument in this song before. I'm like, oh, I should be investing in better headphones.

Speaker 1:
[74:37] If folks at home can help illuminate me on what particularly makes a good headphone, I would like to know because I'm still on the fence on whether or not I like these.

Speaker 4:
[74:47] Swaggy. The wired ones are like Grubb said, they're very highly regarded.

Speaker 2:
[74:53] Yes, especially at the price point.

Speaker 4:
[74:54] Exactly.

Speaker 5:
[74:55] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[74:57] Anyways, let's get to the news.

Speaker 2:
[75:08] Thank you, Jan Ochoa. All right, let's get into the story that broke right before we got started here today. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Price Update. Starting today, this is a blog post over there. I'm just going to read the blog post for everybody so we can all be caught up. Starting today, Game Pass Ultimate drops from $30 to $23 a month. Ooh, what a deal, right? PC Game Pass will also drop from $16.50 to $14 a month. Prices may vary by region. But beginning this year, future Call of Duty titles won't be joining Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. New Call of Duty games will be added to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season, about a year later, while existing Call of Duty titles, already in the library, will continue to be available. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will continue to have access to hundreds of games on Xbox Console and PC, including current Call of Duty titles, in-game benefits, blah, blah, all the other stuff. It's just they're taking Call of Duty out and they're charging less. I think that this is gonna be effective in this moment because that last Call of Duty, I'm checking for what scientists call it, sucked shit. And that is gonna make it kind of a pretty easy decision in this moment for people to be like, okay, this doesn't matter. And I think a lot of people who do show up for Game Pass, Call of Duty either doesn't matter or they're already getting Game Pass so they have online play on Xbox and then they were gonna buy Call of Duty anyway. So I see why this all makes sense for Microsoft from a positioning Game Pass as best they can. But this does sort of break the contract, right, of you're gonna get all of Xbox's first party games in Game Pass Ultimate no matter what. And now there is an exception. So it's like, okay, what is this thing really? I guess how much does that matter? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[76:58] Yeah, it's kind of like, how does PlayStation call it? It's like Instant Game Catalog or something.

Speaker 2:
[77:02] Yes, Instant Library is what it used to call a camera.

Speaker 3:
[77:04] Yeah, something like that where it's like, it's not saying it's this comprehensive thing. But that was the thing, Game Pass, they used to be able to say that and now it's like, it's something else.

Speaker 2:
[77:12] And there's a tier of Game Pass that is like that now. Yeah, it's like a select games and it's like a tier down from what was $30 and it's now $23.

Speaker 4:
[77:20] Yeah, I mean, not to mention, they seem to have gone through quite the bit of trouble to acquire a big old gigantic company just to decouple the thing from Game Pass. I mean, look, you're right, Grubb. You could not have chose a more strategic moment to decouple Call of Duty from Game Pass because it was so bad last year. So I think that's a much easier pill to swallow. I don't know. Yeah. And I think your assessment is spot on about like most normie Game Pass people not really giving a crap about whether or not their thing comes with it. They're going to, the Call of Duty people are going to buy that thing and it's not really going to matter to them. So I think it really, what it nets out is like, this is probably how it should have been the whole time, maybe. Right.

Speaker 2:
[78:15] Well, it's kind of a weird thing. Right. I think maybe Call of Duty was sort of that last chip to play of, well, let's see if this grows Game Pass in a substantial way. And it kind of didn't. And now you're retreating from that. It's nice to see the price go down. It's novel, especially these days to see the price for anything go down. But it does feel like an admission that Game Pass is never going to grow again. And they're going to keep it around. They're going to make the money that they can from it. But it almost feels like the end of the road in some ways. Also, it's temporary, right? It goes down in price now. And we know it just floats back up naturally over time. We're talking five years here, maybe, before this thing is $30 again. It may be longer than that. But at some point, it's going to be $30 again. This is a temporary reprieve and a solution to a problem. But it's not a solution to the problem of Game Pass, which is people do not want to engage with their game purchases in this way necessarily. They do still want to own stuff. Getting a Steam collection is still way more appealing to more people who engage in video games than having this sort of Game Pass rental idea. So yeah, it's yes, the price going down is going to help for some people. I'm sure it will make some difference, but this is not suddenly going to change the fortunes of Game Pass. I think that's pretty set in stone at this point.

Speaker 4:
[79:43] Yeah. All right. So there was an internal memo, right? That leaked. Was it last week?

Speaker 2:
[79:49] In the last couple of weeks, yeah. They were having serious conversations about doing this exact thing.

Speaker 4:
[79:55] Right. So I don't know. It does seem... I wonder where along the sort of line of thought this was decided, right? Certainly this is not a thing you'd figure out in a week or two.

Speaker 2:
[80:09] I mean, I do think it was accelerated because new boss. Asha Sharma was put a stamp on things. So it's like accelerated. But you're right. Now, this is a conversation that I bet has been ongoing for a long time. And Asha Sharma comes in and puts her foot down. Right.

Speaker 4:
[80:20] Yeah. And like you said, it's obviously Game Pass can't be like the future of this business model. Right. So like everything every every time something like this happens, a large grain of salt is just sort of floated along with it because it's like, how long is the is this a mechanism to just keep this thing floating along for a certain amount of time? What is the real sort of big picture here?

Speaker 3:
[80:43] I don't know. Yep.

Speaker 2:
[80:46] Well, kind of we'll see how it does. I mean, I think it was Jordan Midler on Blue Skies. Like, now watch this year's Call of Duty is going to be awesome. Right.

Speaker 3:
[80:53] Right. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[80:54] Now it's going to be fantastic.

Speaker 2:
[80:56] Are leaks saying what that's going to be this time around with Modern Warfare 5? I'm sure they are, but I can't remember. I do not care.

Speaker 5:
[81:04] Black Ops 8.

Speaker 2:
[81:06] Right. This one is supposed to not be a Modern Warfare or Black Ops 2. I think you're right.

Speaker 5:
[81:12] Just 2. I don't know what it would be. Go back to the numbers.

Speaker 2:
[81:14] There hasn't been a Call of Duty 6 yet, right? Just call it that. Was there Call of Duty 5?

Speaker 3:
[81:18] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[81:19] Call of Duty 5 World at War.

Speaker 3:
[81:22] No, I don't think the 5 was on the box.

Speaker 5:
[81:24] I don't think it was.

Speaker 3:
[81:25] Call of Duty, colon, World at War, Mike, look it up. I don't think it says 5.

Speaker 2:
[81:30] I played a ton of that game. I don't remember the 5.

Speaker 5:
[81:31] I reviewed that game.

Speaker 3:
[81:32] I don't remember typing a 5 in that headline.

Speaker 4:
[81:36] Do people still regard Game Pass as the value proposition of that whole thing? Is that still delivering in a meaningful way?

Speaker 2:
[81:44] it is.

Speaker 4:
[81:48] You gotta pick your battles better, Mikey. Come on.

Speaker 5:
[81:50] One of these had a goddamn 5 in it?

Speaker 2:
[81:52] No. No, they didn't. No, I think you might be thinking of Vanguard, which has a V at the beginning.

Speaker 4:
[81:58] Yeah, that's 5.

Speaker 2:
[81:58] I could have sworn there was a 5 there.

Speaker 3:
[82:00] I didn't even think Black Ops 5 had a 5 in it. I think it was just Cold War, wasn't it?

Speaker 5:
[82:04] They don't like the 5.

Speaker 3:
[82:05] There's no 5, no.

Speaker 5:
[82:06] Where did I make up this fucking 5? Wow.

Speaker 3:
[82:09] Well, you're hallucinating.

Speaker 2:
[82:10] It is the fifth one.

Speaker 5:
[82:12] Shit!

Speaker 2:
[82:13] Bakalar, to answer your question, the meme of the best deal in gaming, that is flatlined. No one talks that way anymore, because for one, you look fucking corny if you're still saying that, but in the other one, it's just not true. It's just not true. But it is definitely still one of those things where people can sit down, do some math, and be like, I think Marino was doing some math in chat a little bit ago, and he was saying it wasn't worth it to him at around $240 a year or whatever it was. But some people go, okay, I'm buying enough games in this ecosystem that that does make sense. That is still happening to a certain degree, but it's not in the growth user acquisition period of they have clearly underpriced this thing to get more and more users. They hit their ceiling of 30 to 35 million subscribers. It's not going over that. Years ago now, Phil was saying, when he was still the boss, that it's a 15% chunk of our business or 30% chunk of our business, some percentage of our business, it's always gonna be there. So he was already saying that it was flatlining. So yeah, that's changed. Cool. That's like, oh, Mike was thinking at Battlefield. I wanna be clear about what I was wrong about. And I was wrong and Dan was right. Dan was right, Dan was right. Go ahead, put in your fucking soundboard, son of a bitch. No, I just thought that Call of Duty World at War, which is the fifth Call of Duty, I thought it was Call of Duty 5 with a V.

Speaker 3:
[83:33] There was like the big red one. There were other ones. It is the fifth in the mainline series.

Speaker 2:
[83:38] Yes, yes, for sure. Maybe magazines were just calling it Call of Duty 5 for so long that I thought that was the thing until it got a real name.

Speaker 5:
[83:45] That's definitely possible, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[83:48] We'll make a clip of that. I think that will be very funny. Don't worry.

Speaker 3:
[83:51] Are you being right? Yes, you can be. Yeah, let's get on that.

Speaker 5:
[83:54] Let's do something else. Let's do the Osama Bin Laden thing. How about that?

Speaker 1:
[83:57] We just don't have to reference the Osama Bin Laden thing again.

Speaker 2:
[84:01] We had a big HR meeting during the break. Osama Bin Laden? Single player spinoff, Splatoon Raiders comes to Nintendo Switch 2 this summer.

Speaker 1:
[84:10] And you won't believe who's in it.

Speaker 3:
[84:14] Is he a squid? Is he a kid? Is he Osama Bin Laden?

Speaker 2:
[84:19] It's got tentacles behind that beard. Yeah, I was working out in the gym this morning and I was like looking at my phone and I was like, what app is this giving me a notification? I was like, oh, the Nintendo Today app. Splatoon Raiders gets its date. It is coming July 23rd. They announced it on the Nintendo Today app, something that they are want to do for some reason. This is the single-player focused Splatoon Raider, or Splatoon game. It's unfair to call this the single-player game because all of them have had single-player modes, but this is focused on single-player. I watched that trailer and I was like, is it my ADHD, my processing, or is the trailer just not getting across exactly what kind of game it is? I bet it's the former. Do you guys have any idea what kind of game this is? It looks open. It looks open world.

Speaker 1:
[85:05] Oh, I didn't get the vibe that it was open world.

Speaker 2:
[85:08] There was a fog of war opening up on that map. I liked the Splatoon single-player campaigns a lot. They've been really good.

Speaker 1:
[85:15] They're good.

Speaker 2:
[85:15] Yes, they're very well done. But they've always been like, go to this level, and the levels are usually like cubes floating in space, and it's very structured levels, linear, do your low-pulse, do your shooty thing. Here, it was big open areas. There was a map and things on the map to see. That was the vibe I was getting is that there's maybe not open world, but there is a much more openness of some kind going on here. I'll read this brief description. In this fourth installment of the series, players take on the role of a mechanic raiding the Spearhalite Islands for treasure using mechanical gadgets and ink-splattering weapons to fight Salmonids. The game will feature returning characters, blah, blah, blah. There's a new amiibo, blah, blah, blah. Splatoon Raiders also supports online and local wireless multiplayer for up to four players in cooperative play. And it will be part of the July release alongside another July release, Rhythm Heaven Groove, which of course is a Switch 1 game. This is a Switch 2 game. OK, yeah, I think we still have yet to get the full rundown from them on what the moment to moment will be. But yeah, it does look like it has open zones. I bet you do kind of go out on raids and collect resources, come back and upgrade. That enables you to go further out into the open zones. But are they making an extraction shooter without the kind of fun part of the other people being in the matches? I just wouldn't be surprised, Mike. I wouldn't be surprised. I want to be optimistic because, again, I like those Splatoon single player campaigns a lot. This is clearly a bit different from that. I hope there's still something. It's interesting because we already had them add another single player campaign to the three with side order. It's almost like the roguelite mode. That's like the more roguelite-ish one. It feels like this almost could just be another one of those, because it's those characters again, and it's big man fire and shiver. But yeah, is this a standalone $50, which is budget title these days, $50 with prices? No multiplayer component, aside from the co-op, along with it. So I'm curious. They update the multiplayer for three when they do that, right? Like when they put this game out, they probably have an update for three.

Speaker 5:
[87:31] I mean, they updated three when they did a Switch 2 edition of it a little bit, but I don't know what else you update it with.

Speaker 2:
[87:36] And again, like new content. Yeah, this isn't necessarily coupled with that, although maybe you unlock things here, you can then access in there.

Speaker 5:
[87:42] I'm not sure.

Speaker 2:
[87:43] Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 5:
[87:44] I'm not a liar, excuse me.

Speaker 1:
[87:46] Yeah, I had assumed that this was like another one of those roguelike modes, but I guess I'm wrong.

Speaker 2:
[87:51] I mean, it being a standalone $50 game to me, it's just it's got to be building on that in some significant ways. But I don't know. I think we are, while they are talking about this in Nintendo today and giving it a date, they have this, they have Groove, they allegedly might have a Star Fox game coming out even maybe before these games. So there's got to be at some point where they kind of maybe talk about some of the stuff and tell us what to expect from all of them. It's strange because at some point before this game comes out, you think there's going to be a direct of some kind. But yeah, we have just sort of been getting these Nintendo today drops in the meantime. And there's not been a full real Nintendo direct, a traditional Nintendo direct since September. A mainline direct, as they say, since September. And there's like, you know, and again, like Splatoon Raiders, your Yoshis, and your Rhythm Heavens, Tomodachi, that's all well and good. People are going to want to hear about what the big game is this year. If it's that Ocarina of Time remake and or more. We got to kind of have something to look forward to here soon. Well, I mean, on that note, a bunch of Switch 2 games are on the way and haven't been announced yet. There was a recent flurry of rating board updates for both first and third party Switch 2 titles. One of those games in the ratings flurry was Splatoon Raiders. It got a PEGI 7. At the same time, Fire Emblem Fortunes, we've got a PEGI 12. So it's all right, that's ready to come as well. Though I think we can probably expect that later in the year. But then there was a bunch of like third party ports in other games that got announced one way or another, whether that was through the THQ Nordic website with a bunch of unannounced games pages that we don't know what they are. A lot of them probably are ports. And a lot of other ports that did get rated, including like Hell Is Us, Devil May Cry 5, Hunter's, yeah, Devil Hunter Edition, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, which will now have maybe a native version instead of the cloud version, Diablo IV Lord of Hatred. There's a lot of stuff. These are the kinds of ports that could easily just get announced anywhere, but there's enough of them sort of being held back. These games, none of them, I don't think have been officially announced in any way. That does feel like a lot of these companies holding them back from yet another partner direct, another mini direct, maybe a full direct. Yeah, it's piling up. So I think we can expect one soon. Is it separate from a big direct in June where they kind of have their traditional E3 timeframe where they do kind of go all out and announce what else is coming from them this year? Maybe, or maybe these all just show up there. Or maybe they don't show up in a direct at all. It's hard to tell. But it does feel like Nintendo's overdue to begin giving us more information about what we can expect from them later this year. All right, let's see here. Capcom says Pragmata is off to a strong start with one million sold in its first two days. Capcom's new sci-fi action adventure, Pragmata, has sold over one million copies. Despite being a new IP, it just took two days to do so. Capcom credits the success to early marketing initiatives like releasing a playable demo and a day one launch on the Nintendo Switch 2. They did say that and that is curious because it's like, oh, did the Switch 2 contribute that much to it getting over a million copies sold in two days? Sounds like it might have. So that is them already maybe building momentum off of the positive word amount they built with Resident Evil Requiem, which didn't seem to destroy the world on Switch 2 in terms of its sales, but it did well enough. It seems like it runs great though. It runs great.

Speaker 3:
[91:24] It's a surprise. Is it RE Engine for Pragmata?

Speaker 2:
[91:28] It is. It's the moon engine, yeah. So I think people are now starting to believe, hey, when Capcom puts one of those games out on the Switch 2 at launch, you can have faith that it's going to run well instead of having to walk on eggshells and wait for Digital Foundry to tell you it's all right, although they were right there doing that right away.

Speaker 3:
[91:45] That's a good reputation to get. That's awesome.

Speaker 2:
[91:47] Exactly. I think it's the kind of thing where it's like that, if they keep delivering and there's no missteps, that stuff builds up over time and it benefits all these third-party games, but especially Capcom's, which Capcom has said explicitly, one of their strategies for this next generation, for the current generation we're in, is to support the Switch 2 a lot more. This is them paying that off and it came back toward them as well.

Speaker 1:
[92:09] I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[92:10] The more thing about- Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1:
[92:12] I was just going to look at Capcom's other stuff. I didn't realize that Monster Hunter Stories 3 came out on the Switch 2 systems other than the Switch 2 or the Switch. I don't know why I assumed that that was locked to that, but I guess it's everywhere else.

Speaker 2:
[92:26] Monster Hunter is traditionally, not traditionally, but often a portable first one. Yeah, that's the kind of thing where I think it does have a strong association with Nintendo at this point. I think that one did do very well on Switch.

Speaker 1:
[92:38] Yeah, because that's one of the Capcom games that have come out this year that we haven't really checked out and it's intriguing me more and more as the weeks go by.

Speaker 2:
[92:46] I would love to hear what you think of it. Yeah, somebody complains about the production values of modern Pokemon games. This thing seems like it has production values. It looks beautiful.

Speaker 1:
[92:54] Yeah, yeah, it's gorgeous.

Speaker 4:
[92:57] You guys like me where there's something going on when you play this game that I, every now and then, will just, I don't know why. I mean, maybe you can help me understand why, but every now and then I just hear, I just see the Lost Planet title screen.

Speaker 3:
[93:13] I several times while playing it thought like, oh, this is like if Lost Planet was fun.

Speaker 4:
[93:17] Yes. I think that's what I'm getting at, right? It's like, how close were we to like Lost Planet being this and good and fun?

Speaker 2:
[93:29] I bet there was one pitch from somebody or one conversation like, why don't we just call this game Lost Planet? And like, they had to kind of fight against it. In the world that brought you that game is called Prey, why? Like, I'm a little shocked they didn't just call this. Maybe the fact that it didn't take place on a planet saved us.

Speaker 4:
[93:49] How about this? How about this? I know I'm reading the description of the story you just reported on, Grubb. When I read young development team, are we talking like young people or a team that was assembled recently?

Speaker 2:
[94:05] I think it's a combination of the two. I think they were young when they started development on this.

Speaker 4:
[94:09] And now they're old. It's the game that made them old. I wonder if Lost Planet never existed. Does this game exist in a weird timeline? I think so. Yeah. There's something, again, we all seem to can't exactly put our finger on it other than saying the word vibes. It's like, what is it? What is going on?

Speaker 3:
[94:34] See, there's a lot of big boss fights, a lot of mechanical enemies and things like that. You're in a big chunky spacesuit thing.

Speaker 4:
[94:40] Yeah, there's chunkiness.

Speaker 2:
[94:41] Yeah, and then the circumstantial aspect of it, of like, Capcom has their core franchises that always do well. And the last time that they were making original IP was that Lost Planet time.

Speaker 3:
[94:53] Dark void era.

Speaker 2:
[94:54] Yes, and they did a bunch of those. And then that sort of fizzled out, or in some cases crashed and burned, and they retreated back to all their core things. And now they're reintroducing that concept of new IP, and this one's like, the last time I felt that way was Lost Planet.

Speaker 3:
[95:09] But I feel like I'm not hitting so much more now, like even like Konnetsugamani and stuff. This is a cool little side thing.

Speaker 2:
[95:14] It's just better.

Speaker 3:
[95:15] Yeah, everything they're doing is working right now.

Speaker 4:
[95:17] You fixed me, Doctor, thanks. I think I'm all better now. They made fucking three of those games, huh?

Speaker 3:
[95:23] They did some.

Speaker 2:
[95:23] Yeah, they did. It's like Capcom's lost generation now when you think about it, right? And they did better than a lot of people because they had early hits like Dead Rising and Lost Planet, and by the end, it's like Resident Evil 6 and the Bionic Commando Reboot.

Speaker 5:
[95:38] People don't remember and weird shit like that.

Speaker 2:
[95:41] I mean, people get sensitive about it, but Japanese companies were figuring out the HD era, and Capcom, to its credit, tried a bunch of stuff and some of it worked and some of it didn't. But I think it really hurt when it did it because when it did not, because those games were relatively way more expensive than the previous generation to create. And so it's like, I think they got a bad taste in their mouth and they pulled back. And now they've spent so much time building up their tech and their know-how for their own engine and made it so versatile that it can work in all these different kinds of games that they've built a business model where they can attempt those things again and it really helps that when the game comes out, it sells a million copies in two days. So it's like it's hitting and it's probably more business friendly to them at the same time.

Speaker 3:
[96:25] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[96:26] Those Lost Planet games did some in. I remember the first one specifically had a motion blurring kind of thing going on.

Speaker 3:
[96:33] There's a lot going on there. It was very much like 30 frames a second era. It's also when I think of games that do like egregious, obvious boss weak points, Lost Planet is the first one I think of because it was the most glowy, orange, pustule on something's back.

Speaker 5:
[96:48] Yeah. How's the bloom?

Speaker 4:
[96:51] How's your bloom?

Speaker 2:
[96:53] CyberConnect 2 is a Japanese developer that they sold their tech to all these other studios and it was just like, we can add bloom to your game and all these games have the exact same bloom. I'll take one bloom. I'll take side order of the Havoc physics engine, please.

Speaker 5:
[97:11] I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[97:11] We'll figure out what we're going to do with that. Just throw it in there. Just have it.

Speaker 5:
[97:14] We need it, though.

Speaker 2:
[97:15] Every game needs to have Havoc. Have Havoc. All right. Next story here. SNK is releasing a modern NeoGeo AES, the Advanced Entertainment System, console with unrivaled authenticity and 70-pound game cartridges. We think it's going to be $90 game cartridges in the United States. This thing is pretty neat. It's $250 or if you're Mike Minotti, $1,000 and it's... Two cubivores. Two cubivores, that's right. It's a recreation, a reissue of the original NeoGeo hardware. Now, it is a different chip, but it's not an FPGA exactly, and it's not an emulation box, just a PC that is running an emulator. It is an ASIC chip. They haven't really said exactly what they mean by that, but it's a specific chip built for this purpose, and we'll have to see how authentic it's going to be in terms of, oh, is it cycle accurate and all that stuff. But for now, it seems pretty promising, and one reason to believe it's going to be pretty accurate is the games that they are reissuing as well work on original hardware. They'll work on here, they'll work on original hardware. It's all just kind of a NeoGeo. People have been pretty excited about this. Obviously, SNK fully owned by MBS, almost like MBS himself basically owns it, not just Saudi Arabia, but MBS does. Personally? Personally, there's the Public Investment Fund for Saudi Arabia. And then there's MBS Industries, which is like MISK. That's the thing that owns SNK. So yeah, it's basically him personally. And that definitely rubs people the wrong way because they have slavery in Saudi Arabia and he had a journalist killed, and I frowned upon those things. But it's one of the situations where if like... You could try to hurt SNK and try to hurt MBS by not purchasing SNK, and I don't blame anyone for doing that, but it would only hurt SNK. MBS makes all this money because you buy plastics, and he owns the petrochemical industry and the oil industry. So it's complicated, it's nuanced, and I don't blame anyone for being sick to their stomach about this stuff. But I think this thing looks pretty cool, and I cannot help that I feel that way.

Speaker 3:
[99:31] It is cheaper than every time I ever saw NeoGeo, which was just in a magazine in the back for an ad for some weird import place, and every game cost like $600. So always looking at it like, this has to be a typo every month. There's no way this game cost this much.

Speaker 2:
[99:45] Did you ever, like, for me it was like, I want this thing, of course, but I'm never gonna entertain the idea of actually ever owning one, because I'm never gonna be able to save up that amount of money as a kid, and I'm not gonna ask my parents. I don't want them to think that video games could be that expensive. I don't even want them to know about the NeoGeo.

Speaker 3:
[100:03] I didn't think I could be in the same zip code as someone who owned one of those things.

Speaker 4:
[100:06] Grubb, what you just said unlocked some repressed memory, like, where, like, you hit a certain point where you're just like, oh, mom and dad don't want you to know, don't want you to know this thing that I know, but if you know, I'll be embarrassed about the cost of it all. It was probably around, like, a PS2 where I was buying it, right? Where it was like, this is not what I want for my birthday. This is a thing that I'm going to have to, I think it was maybe $300, right? Or whatever it was. Wow, what just happened to me? I feel like I'm in therapy. What just, something just happened to me?

Speaker 2:
[100:44] I mean, like, when you go from, like, having every political conversation with your parents, like, of navigating their willingness to buy you stuff, to trying to, like, shift to you buying the stuff yourself, it's a weird sort of transition.

Speaker 4:
[100:59] Right.

Speaker 2:
[100:59] It's almost traumatic. Like, okay, I guess we gotta get to work so I can buy a GameCube.

Speaker 4:
[101:05] Yes, it's like a loss of innocence in a way, too, where it's like, I have agency, I'm going to spend my money on the thing, and I don't need your approval on the matter. Thank you very much. Also, don't look at me. I'm scared to admit I'm paying.

Speaker 3:
[101:21] It was so scary every fucking time, because the only way I could get new consoles is if I traded in everything I had of the previous generation. So it's like, I wanted a Sega CD, and I traded in my NES in every game, and it's like, all right, well, hopefully the Sega CD is going to be better than the NES, and it was not, and I really regret that. So it's like, you had to do so much research, and you were so worried, like, PlayStation or Saturn, which one's going to be the better one? Like, here, I'll go with this, because I'm trading in my Super Nintendo and my Sega Genesis for this, like, scary.

Speaker 2:
[101:47] Yeah, God, I was so dumb doing that stuff.

Speaker 3:
[101:50] Yeah, I regret it every time.

Speaker 2:
[101:51] I know you're right. Yeah, it was nice. For NeoGeo, there's a lot of ways to play those games, everybody. So yeah, if you don't want to get this thing, get a Mr. I have all those NeoGeo games on my Superstation right now, and they work real well. So you have a lot of options out there. The collector's market is pretty excited about those games getting reissued, though they were expensive to begin with, and there's not like there's a ton of them out there to the point where people are like, just get the arcade boards instead. And there's a way to like rig those up to work on NeoGeo's. I'm like, that sounds pretty in-depth, but people are out there doing all kinds of crazy stuff for NeoGeo's. Yep. All right, MindsEye Studio, the saga continues, everybody. MindsEye Studio staff takes illegal action, saying management installed invasive surveillance software. Basically, the story here is that the IWGB Game Workers Union is working with employees at Build a Rocket Boy, which is the MindsEye Studio, to basically sue Build a Rocket Boy for installing this software, which is called TerraMind, without fully explaining all of the data it was going to be keeping, which if you're aware of European regulations, big no-no. That's a big problem. You got to tell everybody what data you're keeping. They have to agree to it. And this is the kind of thing where it's like, oh, is this the sabotage you're talking about? Self-sabotage of you just being a bad company? Yeah, the story around MindsEye, way more interesting than the game itself.

Speaker 3:
[103:24] You know, you're going to regret your words and deeds. That mission comes out. I want to do a stream. Every one of us. We all get a fedora. We're all wearing a fedora, and we're going to get to the bottom of this, and we're going to find out.

Speaker 4:
[103:35] I want to do that stream.

Speaker 1:
[103:37] If we can expense a fedora, sure.

Speaker 3:
[103:39] That's all it takes, fedoras, to get to the bottom of it.

Speaker 2:
[103:42] MindsEye Noir. That mission is never coming out, right?

Speaker 3:
[103:45] Oh, you're going to regret your words, indeed.

Speaker 2:
[103:47] With the proper legal names of the people he suspects from his illegal in-office monitoring.

Speaker 5:
[103:55] What the are we talking about?

Speaker 1:
[103:57] Do you think he didn't realize that he was doing the corporate infiltration?

Speaker 4:
[104:02] Yeah, no one turned the mirror back on him.

Speaker 2:
[104:04] He's delusional. Of course he is. You got too many people telling me it was the greatest thing ever because he made GTA Online and got a bunch of money, so now he came in fathom failure. It's got to be other people's fault. Everyone's out to get...

Speaker 5:
[104:17] It's a classic, everyone's out to get me.

Speaker 4:
[104:20] Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2:
[104:20] He's going to prove it, and we're laughing at him. That makes him more mad, but he'll show us.

Speaker 4:
[104:26] He is going to show us. It's going to rule.

Speaker 2:
[104:29] I know how crazy people work.

Speaker 1:
[104:32] Now, imagine if this man had a fedora on, though.

Speaker 2:
[104:36] Yeah, I would buy it. Mark Gerhardt, who's not Leslie Benzies, but he's the CEO, and he works closely with Leslie Benzies, who was the guy that was at the Grand Theft Audio, worked at Grand Theft Auto and all that stuff, and sued Take-Two and sued Rockstar, and there was a big falling out there. The suggestion has always been that Rockstar and Take-Two were interfering with MindsEye. And Gerhardt was saying, yeah, organized espionage and corporate sabotage. That's a direct quote. Those are the terms that he used. And as Dan and Mike are alluding to, there's that mission that they're going to put out that has the names of the people responsible for the corporate espionage and sabotage.

Speaker 3:
[105:17] Oh, you wait. You're going to have egg on your face, journalist scum.

Speaker 2:
[105:21] The mission is called Blacklist.

Speaker 5:
[105:22] What is he thinks going to happen? We're going to be like, well, there it is.

Speaker 3:
[105:25] Oh, we were wrong. We got to get your directions.

Speaker 5:
[105:27] I apologize.

Speaker 2:
[105:28] Do you think when this goes to court, a fucking judge is going to have to play this mission?

Speaker 3:
[105:34] Hell, yes.

Speaker 2:
[105:36] That would be the dream. That would be amazing. He has to stream it on Twitch.

Speaker 5:
[105:40] I would love it. He's not as good as going on. All right.

Speaker 2:
[105:43] So bad news, bad news, bad. Here's some good news. It sounds like the cult N64 shooter Buck Bumble is really coming back. Argonaut Games, the studio behind Croc, is hinting at a revival for its cult N64 shooter Buck Bumble. That came out in 1998. Recently, Argonauts, they reissued Croc. They did a collection of Croc games that's also theirs. And then about a week ago, someone was like, hey, people are doing all this stupid stuff. You should just go emulate Buck Bumble. Just go get Buck Bumble. And Argonauts is like, no, we own that, not Ubisoft. That would hurt us. And everyone's like, what are you talking about? It's not like we can go buy that right now. And then they got kind of quiet. And a week later, they started putting out teases of like black and white Bumblebee colored stripes dancing around to different music. It's like he's back. And the he, the bucky, the reference in here might be Mr. Buck Bumble himself. Wow.

Speaker 3:
[106:37] God, it's so weird. Like we joke about the theme song and stuff like that. But like, when that game came out, there was nothing there. It wasn't like, oh, this is good for its time. Like, no one cared when it came out.

Speaker 2:
[106:48] It was another 30 years later.

Speaker 3:
[106:50] It's like, oh, hell yeah, Buck Bumble's back, brother.

Speaker 5:
[106:52] It kind of wished it was Glover, which is sort of a sad thing.

Speaker 2:
[106:57] Look, Buck Bumble's better than Glover.

Speaker 3:
[106:59] The best case scenario was bad.

Speaker 5:
[107:01] Is it?

Speaker 2:
[107:02] Yeah. When they reissue this, it might be, you know, if they fix up the controls, it's not like some terrible game. It's like a weird descent clone kind of.

Speaker 3:
[107:14] Make it VR.

Speaker 2:
[107:15] Yeah, there we go. Make people sick with Buck Bumble. Have that music playing the entire time. Good association there. PlayStation has started telling UK and Ireland players to verify their age by June to keep certain features. Sony is notifying PlayStation players in the UK and Ireland that mandatory age verification starting in June 2026 will be required to continue using certain features like messaging, voice chat and broadcasting. Players can verify their age now via QR code using Sony's service provider, Yoti, with options including mobile number, facial scan or ID. If age verification is not completed, communication features on PlayStation, the PS app, web and Discord, as well as broadcasting to platforms like YouTube and Twitch will be blocked. This is a trend across the globe. It's happening more and more. Everyone's like, hey, every time you do this, it feels like one of these third party verification companies you use gets hacked and takes all of our data. And we blame you company who forced me to do this. And they're like, it's not us, it's that company. So we're, hey, wash our hands of it. It's kind of a shitty situation. Definitely, I deal with some of this in Ohio. I was showing Mike how I have my Blue Skies like, hey, can't read your DMs unless you send us your ID. I'm not going to send you my ID. That is crazy. I've been using the internet for 30 goddamn, for 30 years. I'm not doing this now, but it's coming. And it seems kind of unavoidable. And it just feels like it's going to keep spreading. And these are the kinds of headaches it's going to introduce.

Speaker 3:
[108:43] I'm sure you said for Blue Sky, you had to for your DMs.

Speaker 2:
[108:46] I can't read my DMs unless I do use a bunch of workarounds. Why? Is that a state then? There's a state Ohio, there's Ohio state law about certain platforms and platforms interpret it in different ways. Blue Sky is interpreted as as long as we don't let you communicate directly through DMs, we're in compliance unless you send us your ID and verify your age. And I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 3:
[109:09] Whoa.

Speaker 2:
[109:10] I mean, it's like, look at what I'm posting. You could tell I'm a 40, 42 year old man, 43 year old man. So just, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[109:16] 44 is in chat.

Speaker 3:
[109:18] 44 club, 44 club.

Speaker 2:
[109:20] Drop the 44s there. Yeah, this stuff is going to, I mean, there's laws like this all over different states. I know Mississippi has them. There's a handful of United States states that have this already. And that that patchwork is going to make it even more annoying. They're just going to do at a certain point, the lowest common denominator and whatever state has the most draconian laws, they will comply with those and apply them across not just the United States, but the world, because it will be easiest for these companies. And that's going to be, again, huge headaches.

Speaker 3:
[109:47] Is this Gabe Earns fault?

Speaker 2:
[109:49] I think this might be Gabe. Yeah, what he did with the driver's license.

Speaker 3:
[109:53] OK, moved on to Discord and stuff. OK.

Speaker 2:
[109:55] Yeah. Yeah. The spread of Gabe. All right. Let's see here. Ubisoft confirms Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake reveal. They were like, hey, you know this coming, but we're going to tell you more about it. Anyhow, on April 23rd at 6 p.m. Central European Standard Time, I never know what that is. Maybe summertime. But yeah, 9 a.m. Pacific Time. They will be telling us more about Assassin's Creed Black Flag. I we've mentioned this so many times at this point. I'm just kind of following up so people know that it's actually real and actually going to get announced. Although, I don't know. Occasionally I do get in the mood for Assassin's Creed 4. It's a decent game.

Speaker 5:
[110:32] It's a great game. Yeah, I liked it a lot back then.

Speaker 2:
[110:34] Dan, shaking your head no?

Speaker 3:
[110:36] I mean, I didn't like any Assassin's Creed back then, but I super didn't like Black Flag.

Speaker 5:
[110:41] Really?

Speaker 2:
[110:41] Yeah. He hates shanties.

Speaker 3:
[110:43] The shanties were annoying. There were a lot of stealth missions where somebody spots you and it ends the mission. Yeah, it's everything I disliked about Assassin's Creed plus like bad sailing.

Speaker 5:
[110:52] That's okay. Sailing is good.

Speaker 2:
[110:56] I get the other things until bad sailing. The sailing is fun.

Speaker 5:
[111:00] I like good sailing.

Speaker 3:
[111:01] I'm not anti-sailing. I like Wind Waker. Assassin's Creed is no good.

Speaker 2:
[111:05] Look, I can't defend Ubisoft a ton here. I'm already in trouble because of the freaking NeoGeo here.

Speaker 5:
[111:10] I'm on stand. I felt the vibes real bad on that one. I got my mouse shut.

Speaker 2:
[111:17] Shuhei Yoshida says he was fired from his role at PlayStation as studio president because he didn't listen to Jim Ryan. He wouldn't say what they disagreed about or what he was asking him to do that he didn't do. But if you remember, Shuhei Yoshida was the president of PlayStation Worldwide Studios, and then one day he just wasn't. He was in charge of indie games and indie relationships at PlayStation. That always felt weird. That felt like a demotion, and he's suggested as much before, but this is the first time he basically said he was fired from that role. And this is a reminder, as always, that the internal politics of the higher corporate echelon within PlayStation has always been a pretty tough political game. And you think of Shawn Layden one day just announcing that he's done and leaving the company, and they didn't have a successor announced. Probably a similar situation. And that was him. People surmise in a power struggle with Jim Ryan, and Jim Ryan winning out there, and then now that kind of having an effect on Yoshida. Yeah, look, Jim Ryan's legacy does feel like he got power, didn't know what to do with it, made a bunch of live service games, and now PlayStation is paying the price. And stories like this certainly make it feel like, oh, that was a mistake in a lot of ways, because Shuhei is beloved, and it did seem like his instincts on games were mostly correct. And it feels like had he not been fired, I can't remember the timeline, we might still have Japan Studio, and it seems like PlayStation could use at Japan Studios these days. Sure it has. All right, last story here. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 plus 4 developer lays off 90 employees or up to 90 employees. Iron Galaxy put out Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4. They've worked on a bunch of other stuff. They worked on Metroid Prime 4, or excuse me, Metroid Prime Remake. And now they are saying, hey, because of the global climate of making video games, we are going to have to lay off up to 90 employees after they laid off around 66 last year. And I think I would point to like Bluepoint getting closed down by PlayStation as if Bluepoint doesn't make sense, all of these other United States based work for higher companies that do ports and do remasters and do remakes also probably don't make a lot of sense. And the reason for that is, you could point to AI, but also these big companies are just going to studios in other parts of the world that are more affordable. And even if Iron Galaxy finds a million ways to reduce their costs by laying people off, they're still going to be less attractive. Excuse me, then like a Virtuos that can do the same project at what is likely a fraction of the cost. So that's the global climate. A company like that finds themselves and they're just kind of trying to reel and make it work. They're not shutting down, but the future of a studio like that based in, whether like they're mostly based in Chicago, I think they work for hire or work from home. Yeah, I don't see how that continues to work right now with the way games are going.

Speaker 5:
[114:25] Ah, man, I feel so bad for this.

Speaker 2:
[114:26] I mean, they just, they've done a lot of great work. I liked the Pro Skater 3, but it's for a lot. Rumbleverse was great, which the shame they could, that couldn't work. They did good work on Thor Instinct. Yeah, as a support studio, all these giant, like successful games that they worked on. I mean, God, they worked on The Last of Us Remasters for Corning Out Loud, Crash Bandicoot 4. Yeah, if this doesn't make sense here, it's just rough because the quality is good and that's not what's being rewarded. Yep, absolutely. It's a shame. Rumbleverse is that one where it's like, man, that just, Epic, who paid for that game so they could do whatever they want with it, the thing they should not have done with it is kept it exclusive to Epic Game Store. Had it been on Steam, I think we'd still be playing Rumbleverse today. Okay, that does it for the news. Jan, I'm handing the show back over to you.

Speaker 1:
[115:21] Folks, we're gonna take a quick bricky break and we will be back with emails, Super Chats and Grubb, another installment of Grubb Guesser. Oh, shit. Right after this bricky break. These are the emails for the show. Emails, bombcastgiantbomb.com is the email address to send your emails to. You can write in about any and everything. You got a fun quiz, you got some fun, nice words to say, you got just a question, or you need a recommendation, reach out to us over here at giantbomb.com, bombcastgiantbomb.com email address. Gang, I say this every week, and it happens every week. We've been getting lots and lots of emails, so much so that I can only fit so many in, but I am still incredibly appreciative of those that come in. First email comes from Mike from Loveland, Jan, parentheses and the others. Tournament of Champions 7 is over, the champ has been crowned. What is the niche competition you were deeply invested in? What is a niche competition you have entered? Love the show, love you all, Mike from Loveland. Now, I don't want to spoil anything.

Speaker 2:
[116:34] I know you wrote that one in so you could talk about Tournament of Champions.

Speaker 1:
[116:38] Now, I don't want to spoil anything for folks that may be behind. Tournament of Champions is the ultimate cooking competition because you take the top contenders from Top Chef, Chopped, all these other ones, and you throw them in this, in a battle dome of sorts against the randomizer and against each other. The final four this year, ultimate Cinderella stories. People that have always been the bridesmaid, never the bride of cooking competitions. I don't want to spoil the final four because there's a big thing that come out of it. Also, the ultimate winner, Holy Smokes, finally, finally getting their due. I like the Food Network too much. I think it's because it's replaced the WWE in my brain.

Speaker 2:
[117:25] How do you watch this show? Is it on cable?

Speaker 1:
[117:28] Max, the one Max formerly known as, or HBO Max formerly known as Max, the one to watch for HBO has them on. Because the thing is, gang, you need to start from season one of Tournament of Champions because there is drama, not actual drama between the chefs. There's stories that are organically unfold. I love how every chef has their little tagline, their fight name attached to them as well. So it's great. It's fun. Any niche competitions y'all really dig?

Speaker 2:
[118:05] What's that Japanese strong person show? It's like Strong 100. Physical 100, is that what it is?

Speaker 4:
[118:12] Oh, right. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[118:14] I've only seen clips of that, but that's the one I'm most interested in. That seems like a good time. Just a bunch of strong people who seem very friendly, and like supportive of one another, like that's the energy for me.

Speaker 1:
[118:23] Yeah. No other competition?

Speaker 5:
[118:27] I'm trying to think. Yeah, I'm not.

Speaker 2:
[118:30] I think the last time, it's weird because it's like college football, which is not niche, but I only care about the Pop Tarts Bowl. That's the only like single one that matters to me, and like who wins it.

Speaker 5:
[118:43] Yeah, the Pop Tarts Bowl.

Speaker 2:
[118:45] You got to know about this Bakalar. You ever saw the memes of the Pop Tart mascot going into the giant toaster and getting eaten by the winning team?

Speaker 3:
[118:55] They kill Pop Tarts and eat them.

Speaker 5:
[118:57] Yeah, they're real happy about it.

Speaker 2:
[118:59] The first year, the Pop Tart mascot with his stupid face put up a sign that says, dreams do come true or something. Then he got lowered and then came out like an actual Pop Tart, and the winning team just dug in like Midsommar style or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[119:14] We really need the very online show to come back sometimes.

Speaker 4:
[119:18] Yeah, that would be helpful. And this is during college football?

Speaker 2:
[119:22] Yeah, it's a bowl game.

Speaker 5:
[119:23] It's a bowl game. It's one of the big ones.

Speaker 2:
[119:25] I think Notre Dame said, we're not doing that.

Speaker 5:
[119:29] It's one of them.

Speaker 4:
[119:30] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[119:31] It's to make them stronger.

Speaker 4:
[119:33] Right.

Speaker 5:
[119:34] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[119:35] I did get invested. When I used to go to Royals games growing up, they would do the thing where it's like the ketchup, the mustard and the relish thing would run around. Anything where you get assigned, like, hey, this is your representative for your section. Medieval time style. Medieval time style, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[119:48] Yes, I agree 1 million percent. If someone's like, I'm told I am in a tribe and this is your tribe leader over there, I'm like, I love that man. I'll buck these other tribes.

Speaker 3:
[119:59] Yeah. It's bad. Makes me uncomfortable about myself.

Speaker 1:
[120:05] I don't know how, gang, but I need to wind up on the food network somehow. I don't think I'm the best chef by any stretch of the imagination.

Speaker 2:
[120:12] I mean, look, I'm not taking anything away from your culinary ability, but it seems like they let all kinds of people on that network, Jan. I don't think you're going to have a problem.

Speaker 4:
[120:22] I mean, don't they do gimmicks all the time? Wouldn't there be an episode of one of these shows where they bring on the familiar chefs and be like, all right, this time the inspiration is video games. Here's our guest judge, Jan Ochoa from Giant Bomb.

Speaker 2:
[120:35] We're only using fish juice, Jan, it's your time to shine.

Speaker 1:
[120:40] Gang, I shit you not. I have crafted, I mean, we've all probably crafted our own strategies for game shows, but I know the ins and outs of fucking guys' grocery game so fucking bad. I know how those aisles are designed. I know how to do this. Here's the thing, people don't tell you. Me becoming a better gamer, I think is also just conditioning me for a clean sweep at guys' grocery games one day.

Speaker 3:
[121:11] What are you going for first? What's the first item going into your cart?

Speaker 1:
[121:14] Baby, you got to go for the proteins.

Speaker 3:
[121:15] Okay.

Speaker 5:
[121:18] If I have a bunch of supermarket sweep knowledge and strategies, would they translate to guys' grocery games at all? Like just fill in a cart with turkeys?

Speaker 1:
[121:26] At the very end, they'd be like, hey, this is like an alternative sweetener used in alcohol. That's a primary ingredient in tequila, and it'd be like agave. So you would have to find out where the agave is in the grocery store.

Speaker 5:
[121:41] Got it.

Speaker 2:
[121:41] Hide in the agave.

Speaker 4:
[121:43] Is there a video game that's like guys' grocery games? Like a cheap friends' club game on Steam? I would love that.

Speaker 3:
[121:50] So yeah, it'd be fun. So it's so hard when games try to stimulate the idea of judging cooking, right?

Speaker 4:
[121:58] Sure. Yeah. I guess I'd mostly just want the challenge of running through a grocery store. That's mostly what I want.

Speaker 2:
[122:04] See, I don't want to be on the show. I want to host the show. I want to be Ryan Seacrest and be allowed to tear into contestants on Wheel of Fortune.

Speaker 4:
[122:14] Oh, you would be really good at that.

Speaker 2:
[122:16] I want to be able to just go completely uncensored and tear these people limb from limb. That's what I want. Deep down in my heart of hearts, so badly. Oh my god, I fantasize about it almost once a week.

Speaker 4:
[122:36] Bakalar, in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to try to sit you down with me on a Discord call. We should watch an episode, maybe even like an infamously bad episode of Wheel of Fortune. I just want to put out that content.

Speaker 1:
[122:50] No, no, no, no, no, what we need to do that for like American Idol and Bakalar.

Speaker 2:
[122:57] No. So I used to watch a lot of American Idol and I didn't feel good about making fun of people who didn't realize they couldn't sing just because it felt like-

Speaker 5:
[123:12] There's a meanness to that.

Speaker 2:
[123:14] Yeah. Like it just seemed unnaturally mean where it's like, I want to be mean to people who make very bad decisions and mistakes. And like just, yeah, the list of things you can do to upset me on Wheel of Fortune knows no bounds.

Speaker 1:
[123:31] So they should- Why don't they have a game show with multiple hosts? Because that's-

Speaker 5:
[123:38] I mean, Wheel of Fortune kind of does.

Speaker 1:
[123:40] I mean, no, no, no, like at the same time.

Speaker 2:
[123:41] Vanna has not said a word in 43 years. Yeah. The one time they let her host was like when Wayne left Garth in Wayne's World 1. Where her head seemed like it was just going to explode.

Speaker 5:
[123:57] What about Legends of the Hidden Temple? You had Kirk Fogg and Olmec.

Speaker 3:
[124:01] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[124:01] Perfect show.

Speaker 3:
[124:03] Olmec was more of a supervisor, I would say.

Speaker 5:
[124:05] Okay. What about Guts? Michael Malley and Moe?

Speaker 3:
[124:08] Moe's the referee.

Speaker 2:
[124:09] Let's go to Moe. Yeah, Moe was just a cop. Moe was just a complete cop.

Speaker 4:
[124:13] You don't say that about Moe.

Speaker 1:
[124:14] You don't say that about Moe.

Speaker 2:
[124:19] I didn't see Michael Malley disqualifying people from the aggro crag because they stepped over the line.

Speaker 5:
[124:24] No slander here.

Speaker 3:
[124:26] We have rules, Bakalar, all right? We can't just do whatever we want up there on that crag.

Speaker 2:
[124:31] Just saying Moe is the cop of Guts.

Speaker 1:
[124:37] I can't believe this is what ends us and divides us.

Speaker 5:
[124:40] We've never heard anyone say a bad word about Moe. That's insane.

Speaker 2:
[124:44] Anyway, let's walk it back to me going completely nuts over idiots on Wheel of Fortune.

Speaker 3:
[124:51] All right.

Speaker 2:
[124:51] I guess we could do it. Yeah, it sounds like we could do something like that, Grubb. I would love that.

Speaker 4:
[124:59] Okay. Fantastic. I'll put it on your calendar.

Speaker 1:
[125:01] All right. Moving along. Next email comes from Daisy. Hey, dude, how the hell do I play games with my husband? My husband isn't much of a gamer, but we do enjoy playing games together, especially when we can be in the same room that isn't our shared office, both work from home. The problem is, I'm more of a console gamer and we don't really have multiple gaming setups. We've already played all the expected ones like It Takes Two, Split Fiction, A Way Out, Mario Karty, Mario Party, Blank Orbitals. I don't know what they meant by blank. Orbitals is already on our radar. I've heard PC might be the place to be. Having almost no experience with PC gaming, are there many couch co-op games and decently affordable ways to get a setup going in the living room. Love from the 707, Daisy. PS, for context, we're rocking one PS5, a Switch 2 and Switch 1, two MacBook Pros, one big TV in the living room, one small TV in the guest room, two monitors in the office, an old Xbox One, a Wii with a couple GameCube controllers, and a Nintendo 64.

Speaker 3:
[126:07] Yeah. I mean, there's definitely more co-op games out there. Look into some beat-em-ups.

Speaker 4:
[126:13] There's not that much more, though.

Speaker 3:
[126:15] I would say, hey, maybe try play single-player games together, actually, especially if you're in a room.

Speaker 4:
[126:20] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[126:21] Grubb and I just played through all of Bully for the Adderence run. And I know a lot of people who kind of play through games like that with a partner or a friend or just on the couch. Maybe you pass the controller around every once in a while, even just one person's controller. It's kind of, I don't know, it's fun to watch.

Speaker 4:
[126:36] I mean, that's how we play this. I feel like I've played the Mists games because we were all working together on that stuff.

Speaker 5:
[126:41] Until Dawn, like those games are great for that. Everyone can take a character or whatever, like, okay, I'm these characters, you're these.

Speaker 4:
[126:48] But some of the Telltale games are like that as well, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[126:51] Bonk and I Slay the Spire 2 has been like, I really thought it was going to be more of a gimmick, side mode or something like that, but it's like, you're just playing the full ass game with someone, so it's fun strategizing, like trying to get your builds to complement each other. Like that's been very surprisingly fun.

Speaker 1:
[127:04] Yeah, if there's like a story that maybe appeals to your husband, Daisy, like y'all could sit back and enjoy that together. Like I've heard of a lot of couples playing through Expedition 33, because their partner or significant other isn't into games, but really likes the look of it, really likes the story, so maybe dive into something like that.

Speaker 2:
[127:24] Just don't do, it takes two.

Speaker 1:
[127:26] They already did it.

Speaker 2:
[127:28] They did.

Speaker 1:
[127:29] They had what it took.

Speaker 4:
[127:30] They're still together.

Speaker 2:
[127:31] Okay, I glossed over that fact. If you survive that, your marriage can survive anything.

Speaker 1:
[127:39] All right, Travis and Fargo writes in every week, sends in five questions. I choose one this week. Travis writes in, from, how's it going? To, are video games art? What questions are you tired of answering?

Speaker 3:
[127:53] Oh, boy, I kind of like a how's it going. I'm going to be honest. That's fine. I'll tell you. If you're interested in my life, I'll tell you about a little bit. That's okay. Games art thing, sure. Super tiring. Hot dog sandwich, right?

Speaker 5:
[128:08] Sure. Die Hard Christmas Movie.

Speaker 4:
[128:10] Yeah, those are dumb.

Speaker 5:
[128:12] I feel like any wrestling fan has faced a lifetime of, you know, it's fake, right?

Speaker 3:
[128:16] Yeah. I am. My least favorite. And it doesn't come up as much anymore. But if I told people about my job, they'd maybe be like, so PlayStation or Xbox? And I'm like, I don't care, actually. They're both good, I guess. Or they're both bad, depending on the day. They're often in equal sections, like whatever. It's their boxes that play video games. It's fine.

Speaker 5:
[128:39] You could be my physical therapist back in New York. They would say, Halo or Mario? Which one's better? I don't care. Shut up.

Speaker 3:
[128:46] That's a weird question. What are you talking about?

Speaker 2:
[128:52] Yeah, back in my scene at time, it was always like, what TV? And I would just say a brand. I wouldn't even, I would just be like, Samsung. Yep. It's just Samsung. It's just them. And they figured it out. And that's the one to buy. And I'll tell you a different answer tomorrow.

Speaker 3:
[129:14] Hell yeah. It's only, it's like LG. No one knows what the LG stands for, but that's good.

Speaker 1:
[129:21] Looks good.

Speaker 3:
[129:23] Looks good. Let's get them. Let's go. All right.

Speaker 1:
[129:27] Yowie Bunga writes into the show. Always a fantastic name. I always love to hear from you, Yowie Bunga.

Speaker 4:
[129:33] That's very fun.

Speaker 1:
[129:34] Hey, Bomb Boys. I got that new Super Station Mr. made by Taki Udon, so it's finally time to play all the games I've missed out on. Parentheses, I do not own any of the consoles it covers other than the N64. So I need help. What games am I missing out on? I'm open to big well-known ones, the obscure or fan translated. Whatever you think is worth visiting, I feel like there are a lot of cool or weird games that have just been completely fallen out into the dustbin of history. It would be great to experience a few of them. Thank you for the help and great show each week.

Speaker 3:
[130:10] Yowie Honka.

Speaker 5:
[130:11] Rising Xan, Samurai Gunman for PS1.

Speaker 3:
[130:14] Yeah, that one, Incredible Crisis on PS1. You may have seen us play that along with Gamera on PS1.

Speaker 4:
[130:22] Yeah, Gamera 2000.

Speaker 1:
[130:23] Ooh, yes, yes.

Speaker 3:
[130:25] That's an absolutely wild one.

Speaker 4:
[130:28] Power Shovel, I played that a few weeks back on the same.

Speaker 1:
[130:31] That was the Heavy Machinery one, right?

Speaker 4:
[130:35] The Heavy Machinery one that's an arcade game. So it's like very pick up and play. I was digging up all the currying, put it on the plates and stuff like that. It's really fun, actually.

Speaker 5:
[130:43] Tale of the Sun.

Speaker 3:
[130:45] Tale of the Sun. Yeah, sure. Some other, yes.

Speaker 4:
[130:47] Colony Wars, Red Sun. There's a bunch of Sun games.

Speaker 3:
[130:49] But play Silent Bomber. It's like Metal Gear Solid. Yeah. Bomberman.

Speaker 4:
[130:54] That's awesome.

Speaker 3:
[130:55] That's a PS1 game. Yeah, just PS1 alone has so many amazing, really weird eight out of 10, or maybe sometimes even surprising nine out of 10 games that are really, just play all the Kix games.

Speaker 5:
[131:09] Two, two, go back to another one and two.

Speaker 4:
[131:14] Should I buy this power shovel controller from Taito for $200? I can't.

Speaker 5:
[131:20] Man, I had to do the thing with that Super Station because everyone for the last four months has been posing, oh, got mine, got mine. And I still like, I keep emailing them, like, when's mine coming in there? Well, you chose to bundle your thing with the SuperDock, so you had to something or other. And I finally like I have to pay two shipping costs now so I can get it now. I have to do $35 for the dock and $35 for this and whatever. I just want to get the fucking thing.

Speaker 3:
[131:40] Yeah, I regret some of the time and now I'm just like, I'll wait. Apparently, the operating system isn't even there yet or something.

Speaker 5:
[131:47] Mike, how else are we going to play PlayStation games?

Speaker 3:
[131:49] I know. It's a big problem. I got my, I have my PS2 plugged in like an idiot right now.

Speaker 4:
[131:56] It's embarrassing.

Speaker 1:
[131:57] Oh, you can't have that.

Speaker 3:
[131:58] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[131:59] All right, moving on along, Darian from Toronto. This goes out to the Midwesterners. Quad City style pizza. Have you had it? Any good? Cheers.

Speaker 5:
[132:10] Quad City style.

Speaker 4:
[132:12] Quad City style pizza.

Speaker 3:
[132:14] Apparently not. I don't think any of us have had Quad City.

Speaker 4:
[132:17] Iowa, Illinois, a hand tossed malt flavored crust, spicy sauce and toppings, especially fennel laced sausage placed under a heavy layer of cheese, all cut into long, thin strips with scissors. Why fucking scissors?

Speaker 3:
[132:32] Why does it have to be? Guys, the pizza roller will do this too. That seems way less convenient than the pizza roller.

Speaker 4:
[132:40] There's a picture of someone here cutting it with scissors.

Speaker 1:
[132:42] What the fuck? I love how this upsets you.

Speaker 3:
[132:44] Yeah. So this is some like...

Speaker 4:
[132:47] It's probably good.

Speaker 3:
[132:47] Southern Illinois. I see why it's a quad. It's where these four states meet. Yeah, I've not had this. I bet it's fine, although some of these pictures, boy, that cheese could use some more browning. Maybe that's Wikipedia's fault. I don't know.

Speaker 5:
[133:00] I could be there in five and a half hours if we want to do that today, if we want to taste test it.

Speaker 3:
[133:03] I don't want to do it today.

Speaker 4:
[133:05] Near me. Let me see if there's any Quad City style pizzas near me.

Speaker 3:
[133:08] I like that apparently there's just a sausage layer and it's like a fennel-y Italian sausage.

Speaker 5:
[133:15] Oh, so I heard LAIR too.

Speaker 4:
[133:18] Yeah, me too.

Speaker 5:
[133:19] Sausage layer?

Speaker 4:
[133:22] Sponsored by pizza, welcome to the sausage layer.

Speaker 3:
[133:24] That's not what I meant. No, no, like a layer, you know, there's a layer of sauce and a layer of cheese. There's a sausage layer. I don't think they just sprinkle it on like cowards.

Speaker 5:
[133:32] Like one big ass circle of sausage?

Speaker 3:
[133:33] Yeah. Oh, that's, I mean, that's what I mean. How do you do that? I mean, when they say layer, that's just too much. The sausage is typically a thick blanket of lean fennel-fleck Italian sausage, sometimes ground twice and spread from edge to edge. So that aspect's winning me over.

Speaker 4:
[133:51] Fennel's like an herb?

Speaker 5:
[133:53] It's like a bulb.

Speaker 1:
[133:55] It looks like an onion.

Speaker 3:
[133:56] It's almost like a seed. Fennel, it has a little bit of that anise flavor. It's very nice. It's what makes Italian sausages taste like Italian sausage. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[134:05] It's got like a little licorice taste to it.

Speaker 2:
[134:08] Yeah. I put it with caraway seeds, right? It's like, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[134:13] Fennel, huge in cooking competitions.

Speaker 3:
[134:16] It's true. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[134:17] And for that, I'm out.

Speaker 1:
[134:20] All right. DW from Seattle writes in, Hey Bombers, what do you call the genre of games where the goal is to go up? Like Ice Climbers, Getting Over It, Baby Steps, Cairn, et cetera. May I offer two suggestions? Up'em Ups or Uppies?

Speaker 3:
[134:37] Call them Struggles and Pores.

Speaker 4:
[134:38] Up'em Ups is really good.

Speaker 3:
[134:40] Up'em Ups is good.

Speaker 4:
[134:40] I think I just call them Vertical Platformers, honestly. I mean, Ice Climbers was a Vertical Platformer.

Speaker 3:
[134:45] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[134:46] I like Vertes.

Speaker 3:
[134:47] Vertes.

Speaker 4:
[134:48] Vertes.

Speaker 3:
[134:48] You're going Vertical. Yeah. Vertes is good. I was getting mad at genre names. I finally saw Project Hail Mary this weekend.

Speaker 4:
[134:58] Yeah. I liked it a lot.

Speaker 3:
[134:59] Oh, you did? It was great. It was fantastic. I thought it was the first movie I saw that made me feel things in a while. I liked that. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[135:08] What does that mean?

Speaker 3:
[135:10] I go to a lot of movies. I'm kind of just numb at the images.

Speaker 2:
[135:14] Well, you hate them all.

Speaker 3:
[135:16] Happening at me.

Speaker 2:
[135:17] It's because you hate them all.

Speaker 3:
[135:18] Yeah. Well, all of them are very good. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[135:20] Right. No, that's fair too. I'm glad you felt something.

Speaker 3:
[135:24] I did. But there's a part of me that still feels disenfranchised because this is just a movie and it's a bit uplifting and it's kind of the happy ending. And then everyone's like, it's that's a hopecore movie. And I'm like, back in my day, man, the movies that were sad were like called grim darkest. Now we have a special name for the movies that just don't make you want to go hurt yourself after you see them.

Speaker 4:
[135:46] I the part of that is like we're always just colonized and stuff. So like new like new people come along. They're like, I just discovered this thing. And yes, you just ignore that.

Speaker 3:
[135:58] I'm shocked by how some of the stuff I assume is online lingo is actually real life. I was at the subway and like some like high school girls came in and they were just talking about like, oh my god, you were rage baiting me so hard. I was like, oh, oh, oh, this is a popular thing that like high school kids say is rage bait.

Speaker 4:
[136:18] It's not just. If it's on TikTok, it's their lingo. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[136:21] Man. OK.

Speaker 2:
[136:22] And the Internet's popular.

Speaker 3:
[136:24] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[136:26] They have it on computers now.

Speaker 2:
[136:27] They have. That's the one with the email.

Speaker 3:
[136:29] Right. It's like, but like rage bait used to be such like that's such a 4chan thing. And now that is mainstream. You don't know.

Speaker 2:
[136:36] You don't hang out with a lot of young people, it sounds like. But that is I do.

Speaker 3:
[136:41] They're like younger than that.

Speaker 2:
[136:42] Yeah. I mean, everything, all vernacular is online terminology. There's no there's no separation, actually.

Speaker 3:
[136:50] Is everything. Everything's blank bait and blank core. And they are maxing, maxing.

Speaker 4:
[136:56] Oh, yeah. I'm neck maxing, guys. Look at me.

Speaker 3:
[136:58] Oh, what was it? We like there's a picture of us with the actual models at that one thing at PAX. And people are like, oh, you guys are getting so mugged, mugged, we're getting mugged. And I look at that as like, yeah, yes. Yes, the professional models are more attractive than us. Good call out, everyone.

Speaker 1:
[137:16] I don't know about that, though. I mean, see this cow, a kid of studs over here.

Speaker 3:
[137:23] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[137:25] Are you aware of Michael Manati?

Speaker 1:
[137:27] Yeah, you see this walk down.

Speaker 3:
[137:29] Michael Manati. I mean, likes for mics.

Speaker 1:
[137:31] You see the fucking jovial nature of this man. You see how much of a bad boy he is.

Speaker 4:
[137:37] He's Jovi Maxx. Can we call that Jovi Maxx?

Speaker 5:
[137:41] Jester Maxx.

Speaker 4:
[137:43] That's when they actually have Jester. That's like if you're entertaining to people.

Speaker 1:
[137:48] It's so Jovi.

Speaker 5:
[137:49] So I've been Jester Maxxing?

Speaker 4:
[137:51] Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2:
[137:53] It's just, yeah, OK.

Speaker 5:
[137:54] It's like Clash Clown type stuff, right? Jester Maxxing?

Speaker 4:
[137:58] Jester Maxxing is like if your attempt to impress people is to like be charming. If you're not winning people over by simply being the alpha, you're a Jester.

Speaker 5:
[138:09] That's the only two types?

Speaker 2:
[138:11] There is a tryhardness connotation. There is a tryhardness connotation, right?

Speaker 4:
[138:16] Right, yeah. Exactly. That's what they're trying to say. It's like that's trying to... you're debasing yourself. You should just be reading medical studies to make your jawbones destroy or something.

Speaker 1:
[138:26] Mike Manati, you have a question.

Speaker 3:
[138:28] What's going on with this Resident Evil Code Veronica ad, Jeff? Oh, did you see that? Oh, yeah!

Speaker 4:
[138:34] Okay, do you want to describe it to the audio listeners?

Speaker 1:
[138:40] Mike Manati, are you scrolling through the internet while we're podcasting?

Speaker 4:
[138:45] No, no, I put in our chat here.

Speaker 3:
[138:47] Oh, the audio is just flying out there now. Oh, my God, I'm unengaged. I know I'm a piece of shit, but come on, show it, Jeff.

Speaker 4:
[138:57] I'm trying... man, that sucks to show people, actually.

Speaker 3:
[139:00] Yeah, I will say this. On the top, it says, Day 1, little black book. Black is bolded. Claire is checking her makeup, sitting on a person. And there may be... And I'll tell you...

Speaker 4:
[139:14] A person is a person of color.

Speaker 2:
[139:17] But why? Why is this happening?

Speaker 3:
[139:19] Yeah, right?

Speaker 4:
[139:19] That's the pertinent question, but why? And this is a photo... I think this is a shoot photo shoot for this magazine. I can't show you guys the magazine because I might give away some stuff for the game we're going to do. But I opened this up and I saw that, and friends, I was confused by this image of Claire Redfield doing her makeup, not acknowledging the fact that she is sitting on a black person.

Speaker 5:
[139:46] But this is like that PSB ad.

Speaker 3:
[139:49] Yeah. But the ad's calling to it by bolding black.

Speaker 4:
[139:54] Buddy, this isn't an ad. This is editorial.

Speaker 3:
[139:58] What?

Speaker 4:
[139:58] This is a magazine doing this.

Speaker 3:
[140:00] What?

Speaker 5:
[140:02] Oh, you know what? This is Insight. Okay. That actually, I looked at the bottom, that actually makes a lot more sense. I have that issue in my house. I subscribe to that magazine.

Speaker 3:
[140:12] I subscribe to Insight. What is Insight?

Speaker 5:
[140:15] So let me tell you, Insight was a playing word. Some exec obviously had the brilliant idea of like, all right, what if we took these nerdy game magazines, but we put superstars on the cover like The Rock and the girls from Son of the Beach. Basically, yeah, yeah, the Rock, I think was on the first. It's The Rock holding it in 64 controller. I subscribed to the first episode or issue. I think it lasted definitely less than a year because I got a thing in the mail saying, hey, we're going out of business, so we're just going to make this an EGM to subscription.

Speaker 3:
[140:47] Right.

Speaker 1:
[140:47] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[140:48] The whole deal is like, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[140:50] What's with the racism?

Speaker 4:
[140:53] I think that's that's just a happy circumstance for these people. It's like, we could just do that.

Speaker 1:
[140:58] Is this in an American publication?

Speaker 5:
[141:01] Yes, it was. It was. Yes. It was awesome. It would literally be like, we interviewed these six women that are on Son of the Beach about Dead or Alive Beach volleyball. Like, what's it like having boobs? How would that be in a game? Or it's the dumbest shit ever.

Speaker 1:
[141:15] Folks, it is not a latex suit, if you look closer. It is just a dude in shorts.

Speaker 4:
[141:22] Yeah, it's a dude in biking shorts. And he's looking away. And there is no other word other than objectified. This man is being turned into an object by this photo shoot.

Speaker 1:
[141:34] All right, well.

Speaker 2:
[141:35] That's crazy.

Speaker 1:
[141:36] You know, it's crazy. giantbomb.com is the email address. Send your emails too. Write in about any and everything. Ask questions. What is, what am I seeing there?

Speaker 4:
[141:47] That looks like this is the ad on the back that I will make you guys guess because it's kind of it's an advertisement for video game review.com. It is a woman in a towel who looks sad in the doorway as a man looking away from her holds his hand down. Be like, I don't have time for you. I have to read these video game reviews.

Speaker 5:
[142:03] That was a whole genre of video game ad in the 90s. Yeah, it's like my hot wife won't have sex with me anymore because I'm playing too much bubble bobble or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[142:12] Yeah, and it's tenable.

Speaker 1:
[142:14] We can solve all of these problems, gang.

Speaker 2:
[142:16] Been there, brother.

Speaker 1:
[142:18] All right, bombcastgiantbomb.com is the email address. Send your emails too. Thank you everyone for writing in. Apologies if we didn't get to your email, but I'll appreciate all of the effort. Speaking about effort, Jeff Grubb, what time is it?

Speaker 4:
[142:33] It's time for you all to guess a video game ad. We call it Grubb Guesser. I have two for you guys because I think this first one again might be pretty easy. I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I think you guys will get this first one pretty quickly. Close chat, everyone. Yes, close chat. Let's just go for it. So I will describe it for audio listeners. This is an advertisement with a man who has a, looks like a broken nose. There's a bandage on it. And in big bold text, it says, real effing fans.

Speaker 5:
[143:02] Now, can we ask some questions, like, for instance.

Speaker 4:
[143:06] Well, let me throw out real quick, just for audio listeners again, that that's it. I blocked out the rest. It's black and white. What video game is this? Sometimes I'll ask publisher, I'll ask something else. This is a video game ad.

Speaker 5:
[143:19] Now this has a guy with like kind of like a black eye and a nose thing, like his nose got busted. Let me ask, is this deceiving? Like, is this a thing where it's like, this is for a fighting type of game, or is it like, oh, this is for a Kirby or something? You know what I mean?

Speaker 4:
[143:34] I would say it's a combat style game, yes.

Speaker 5:
[143:35] Ready to rumble boxing?

Speaker 4:
[143:37] It is not ready to rumble boxing.

Speaker 1:
[143:39] Real effing fans.

Speaker 3:
[143:42] Yeah, I'm trying to think. I'm always like, I always feel stooped because Jeff's always like, oh, this will get me really easy. Then it's like a picture of a circle and it says like Summer never dies. And I'm like, I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[143:55] I mean, look, I just think you guys collectively will get this one. Virtual Fighter. It's hard to say. This is not Virtual Fighter. This is not Tekken.

Speaker 3:
[144:06] What does the fans have to do if anything?

Speaker 5:
[144:07] Yeah, that's in front of you.

Speaker 3:
[144:09] Is it wrestling related?

Speaker 4:
[144:11] This is wrestling related.

Speaker 3:
[144:14] All right.

Speaker 5:
[144:14] No mercy.

Speaker 2:
[144:14] Oh, so then it's ECW.

Speaker 5:
[144:17] Oh, yeah, you're right. ECW Hardcore Revolution.

Speaker 4:
[144:20] This is ECW, I think, Hardcore Revolution. ECW Hardcore Revolution.

Speaker 2:
[144:26] ECF and W, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[144:27] I believe...

Speaker 3:
[144:28] She was right. It was easy.

Speaker 4:
[144:30] Yes, it's easy. It's ECW. There you guys go. There you could kind of see it there a little bit.

Speaker 5:
[144:35] Yep, yep, yep. All right.

Speaker 4:
[144:35] There's some other ones. I can't remember who that one's supposed to be because I think these are actual wrestlers. There's like several pages of ads here.

Speaker 5:
[144:43] That's Francine and Don Marie.

Speaker 4:
[144:45] Yes. And then, again, I can't remember who that first one's supposed to be. Maybe someone will know. Here's another one after this.

Speaker 5:
[144:50] That's New Jack.

Speaker 2:
[144:51] Oh, it's New Jack.

Speaker 5:
[144:52] Is it Sandman? New Jack and Sandman?

Speaker 4:
[144:54] There you go.

Speaker 5:
[144:55] I saw a lot of these people at the horse.

Speaker 2:
[144:56] Wow, they bought the whole magazine.

Speaker 4:
[144:59] Yeah, there was three pages in a row. OK, so then here is the next one. All right. Can you guys tell me what game this is an ad for? Oh, there is a passage there on the right. Let me open it up for myself so I can read it for people. But the big sort of draw, the thing that's going to draw your eye is a big close up on an eyeball. Someone's eye right there with eyelashes and everything that's right in the center of the page. And then, there is a description there on the left there that says, Prespiration, dilation of the pupils, trembling, nausea, loss of appetite, dry mouth. Kinetica. So it's not Kinetica, it is not Wipeout.

Speaker 3:
[145:39] Is it Parasite Eve?

Speaker 4:
[145:41] This is not Parasite Eve.

Speaker 5:
[145:43] This is not the ad also that was around all the time with the eye, with the eyelashes ripped off and the blood coming down. It was like photorealism.

Speaker 1:
[145:50] It was awful.

Speaker 3:
[145:51] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[145:51] You guys can see here, it's a mature rated game for the PlayStation 1.

Speaker 1:
[145:55] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[145:56] I feel like I almost approach these, like their Jeopardy clues now because I'm not going to know the game, but I'm going to use the context clues in a way that like, well, obviously the ECW thing. But look, the dilation of pupils is in red. I wonder if that has any sort of like interesting.

Speaker 5:
[146:18] You are not ready.

Speaker 1:
[146:21] Right.

Speaker 2:
[146:22] There was that.

Speaker 1:
[146:23] Fatal Frame is too early, right?

Speaker 3:
[146:26] Fatal Frame is too early.

Speaker 4:
[146:27] This is not Fatal Frame.

Speaker 5:
[146:29] Fatal Frame is PS2.

Speaker 2:
[146:31] There was another horror thing from that. So look at the PlayStation 1, I'm assuming, right?

Speaker 3:
[146:39] Yeah. That's a good point.

Speaker 2:
[146:42] What was the game? It was a game, it's a horror thing. Clock Tower? It made me think photo. It's not.

Speaker 4:
[146:49] This is not Clock Tower.

Speaker 3:
[146:51] You're thinking Fear Effect because there's no lesbians on this ad.

Speaker 2:
[146:55] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[146:56] We don't know.

Speaker 4:
[146:57] This is lesbians because this is Fear Effect, everybody. That's two for two for Bakalar today, by the way.

Speaker 2:
[147:08] Look at me go. With an assist, I think Mike and I have seen that.

Speaker 3:
[147:14] I said it's not Fear Effect. I don't think I'm lying.

Speaker 4:
[147:18] Because I was thinking Fatal Frame. One of the things I blocked out here was symptoms of fear. These are the effects of fear. Then it has all the images here on the other side of the page. But yeah, that's an ad for Fear Effect. One of the rare ads for Fear Effect that does not focus on lesbianism.

Speaker 3:
[147:37] That was the trick.

Speaker 2:
[147:38] That was like stationary camera stuff too, right?

Speaker 4:
[147:43] That probably had a fixed camera.

Speaker 3:
[147:46] Yes, that game looks really good still.

Speaker 4:
[147:48] Very good art.

Speaker 1:
[147:50] You know what? Shouts out to lesbians, huh? Absolutely.

Speaker 4:
[147:53] I mean, it worked in the advertisement, but just cool people across the board. Absolutely. All right. That was Grubb Guesser. Thanks for playing everybody. We'll look at you guys again next week.

Speaker 1:
[148:02] Fantastic. Thank you, Jeff Grubb, for that lovely little game. I get all my fashion advice now from lesbians. I don't trust dudes.

Speaker 4:
[148:11] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[148:12] Anyway.

Speaker 4:
[148:12] If they don't like it, I don't like it.

Speaker 1:
[148:13] Mike Minotti, hit me with some YouTube Super Chats, please, if we have any.

Speaker 3:
[148:18] We do. Flobletron says, Jan and Dan should really play The Warriors. It's a great brawler with fantastic atmosphere. It has shoot, couch co-op, and a 2D side score brawler. Game within a game. My game is Game of the Year 2005.

Speaker 5:
[148:31] I reviewed it. I liked it a lot. I thought it was a really cool thing. I would have liked to see more cult classic movies turn into modern video games. It's a cool idea.

Speaker 2:
[148:38] I mean, for sure. I would love to just play a die-hard one game. You follow every scene in Die Hard 1. That seems like that would be a lot of fun.

Speaker 5:
[148:47] I review. I gave it an 8.8. I'm looking at my review right now.

Speaker 1:
[148:50] Neat.

Speaker 2:
[148:51] I like that.

Speaker 3:
[148:52] Martin Hollis says, Pragmata, more like Swagmata, Game Pass, style. Yeah, it's a good looking game.

Speaker 1:
[148:58] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[148:59] I like it a lot.

Speaker 1:
[148:59] I love Chunky Tech.

Speaker 3:
[149:01] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[149:02] But fast, Chunky Tech.

Speaker 3:
[149:03] Fast Chunky.

Speaker 5:
[149:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[149:05] Just like-

Speaker 4:
[149:05] That's me.

Speaker 3:
[149:06] My shit. Zombie Porn says, you guys know what there is to do in Denver. I'm going there tomorrow apparently. Good luck with the whole getting poisoned thing, Grubb.

Speaker 4:
[149:20] No, Denver's a great city. There's a lot to do. I guess there's the 16th Street Mall. I think that's right. That's like an outdoor area. It's really nice. They've really built it up. It gets kind of busy, hectic. I don't know what you're in the mood for. If you like Pepsi products, there's a lot of that. It's a Pepsi city. I was telling Michael this the other day. There are Pepsi cities and that's one of them because I think they have a headquarters there.

Speaker 2:
[149:43] It comes out of the faucet.

Speaker 4:
[149:44] It comes out of the faucet. You could smoke a lot of weed in Denver. They made that.

Speaker 3:
[149:49] Send it, brother.

Speaker 4:
[149:51] Send it and then there's a lot of breweries as well. So get fucked up, I guess, is maybe what I'm saying.

Speaker 3:
[149:57] Daniel Bradley says, tuned in late, so sorry this was already addressed. But if I rate the Giant Bomb podcast five stars, does that mean it's only as good as Metroid Prime 4? Or can I like the podcast more than that? You got us there. The fans' favorite joke.

Speaker 5:
[150:17] The original, which is the best part.

Speaker 3:
[150:20] Migsie says, excuse me.

Speaker 5:
[150:22] They cough.

Speaker 3:
[150:23] Migsie says, Jeff Grubb, will you ever go back to ArsZett?

Speaker 4:
[150:28] God, did I not finish it?

Speaker 3:
[150:29] The Jewels of Faramore.

Speaker 4:
[150:32] I have the controller for it and I always meant to go back to it. Let's do that. Yeah, I'll find some time to do that for sure.

Speaker 3:
[150:38] That's one of those games, every time I see it, it's on sale on Blue Sky. I'm like, repost, more people play ArsZett. It's good. Brandy Brandy says, I finished Resident Evil 6 this weekend, all four campaigns finally done. It sucks real bad. You've got to play it. I'm going to play a game eventually. It's going to be the last one I play. Look, maybe we'll make content out of it, but if I get to it where it's my next one, I'm going to have to just play that game on my own at some point.

Speaker 1:
[151:01] No, Mike, save it. No, you have to save it.

Speaker 3:
[151:04] Let's get it going. Let's get to the Resident Evil 6 thing moving here because I want to play the fucking game.

Speaker 5:
[151:09] I'll play. We got to figure out what our teams are.

Speaker 4:
[151:11] Let's do it.

Speaker 1:
[151:12] We should draw names from a hat.

Speaker 5:
[151:14] Oh, which campaign and which partner we have.

Speaker 3:
[151:17] Oh, yeah, that's pretty fun. Yeah. Migsie says, Jeff Grubb, Mike Minotti, where do I find the Giant Bomb bully pay through? Nowhere yet. It's on my hard drive. Yeah, we have we have uploaded it. We have uploaded it to a server. It still needs to be edited. So that's where the Endurance run everybody, which means every weekday, a 30-ish minute episode will go up of us playing through bully. You'll know when that's starting. We'll make a big stink about it, but not yet. Not like in a couple of weeks yet. More time than that still. But yeah, pretty soon there, that will start uploading. And that's not gonna be like a premium exclusive thing or something. Everybody will be able to watch the bully.

Speaker 1:
[151:56] Everybody.

Speaker 3:
[151:58] Yeah, yeah. Amy Winehouse of Leaves says, if you haven't seen Resident Evil 2 mod, Mr. X gonna give it to you. Do yourself a favor and look up a video. Uh, guys, much love from St. Paul. Thank you, Amy Winehouse.

Speaker 1:
[152:13] Shouts out to Amy, huh?

Speaker 3:
[152:15] Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:
[152:15] What a name. What's your name, by the way?

Speaker 3:
[152:18] Good. Because he says, does Jeff Bakalar any fiber in the hood yet?

Speaker 2:
[152:25] No.

Speaker 4:
[152:26] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[152:26] Fiber in the hood?

Speaker 3:
[152:28] Like the internet fiber, not like, oh, hell no.

Speaker 2:
[152:30] I would have been on that yesterday.

Speaker 4:
[152:32] Any of us got fiber that didn't have fiber? You fucking people wouldn't hear the end of it. We'd be so excited. It'd be all we would be talking about.

Speaker 5:
[152:39] Check every week. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[152:40] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[152:40] Yeah. I mean, it continues to just get worse and worse over here. I don't understand what's going on. No, there's no fiber in the hood yet.

Speaker 1:
[152:51] Sorry.

Speaker 2:
[152:52] Thank you for asking, though.

Speaker 3:
[152:54] Maybe.

Speaker 1:
[152:54] It's moving with will.

Speaker 2:
[152:56] Maybe.

Speaker 3:
[152:58] It says Jan Ochoa, can Osama Ryker join in the island?

Speaker 1:
[153:03] Huh?

Speaker 4:
[153:05] Remember when we were talking about Osama Bin Laden a lot on this podcast?

Speaker 2:
[153:08] That was years ago.

Speaker 1:
[153:09] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[153:09] Years ago. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[153:10] We were just kids. They set that in then. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[153:12] Oh, OK.

Speaker 4:
[153:13] And then there's because your beard looks like his.

Speaker 5:
[153:15] But on the island?

Speaker 4:
[153:16] They're kind of...

Speaker 5:
[153:17] The Tomodachi Island.

Speaker 4:
[153:18] Tomodachi Life.

Speaker 3:
[153:19] That's what we're talking about originally with Osama Bin Laden. That's right.

Speaker 5:
[153:23] That's right.

Speaker 4:
[153:23] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[153:24] Blame it. It also says Buck Bumble. I don't know why it's like every time Buck Bumble to Kevin's Back Jack.

Speaker 1:
[153:33] Was the bee not named Buck Bumble?

Speaker 3:
[153:38] Buck Bumble to Kevin.

Speaker 5:
[153:40] The bee.

Speaker 4:
[153:41] Yeah, Kevin the Bee.

Speaker 1:
[153:42] No, that's the Cheerios Bee, right?

Speaker 5:
[153:44] Right.

Speaker 3:
[153:45] What's that fucker's name?

Speaker 4:
[153:46] Diabacalar. It's your Die Hard game right there.

Speaker 5:
[153:48] Yeah, we have the trilogy.

Speaker 4:
[153:49] The Die Hard game right there.

Speaker 5:
[153:50] Yeah, I love Die Hard trilogy.

Speaker 4:
[153:52] But there's trilogy 2 for this one, actually. It doesn't follow the movie. You're still right.

Speaker 2:
[153:57] No, I'm saying because I never played that.

Speaker 5:
[154:00] I had one, two, and three, and it was three different genres. The first one was a third person shooter. Second one was a light gun game that you could use the gun con for. And the third one is this insane fucking violent crazy taxi for Die Hard with the Vengeance. It's awesome. I love Die Hard trilogy.

Speaker 2:
[154:15] So like in New York City, like the third one is a movie?

Speaker 5:
[154:18] Yeah, and it's just vehicular manslaughter, like nonstop, like wiping chunky blood off the thing with like a bad Sam Jackson impersonator. And there's like a it is a weird fucking game. I honestly one of my favorite PS1 games is Die Hard Trilogy. OK, they made a second one too called Viva Las Vegas that was set in Vegas and obviously not tied to the movies. But Die Hard Trilogy, that's what this one is.

Speaker 3:
[154:38] That's my thing. It's like I don't even I didn't know Die Hard Trilogy 2 existed until like five years ago, and I had the first one and liked it a lot. And I still don't really understand what it is. It doesn't sound like it's the three different gameplay modes thing again.

Speaker 5:
[154:50] It's it's a totally different thing. Like I'm reading the reviews and be like, this is not what I want. But there's also Die Hard Arcade, which is done in my deck. I don't like that. I remember that a lot of like early QTE stuff like pre Shenmue QTE stuff.

Speaker 3:
[155:02] Yeah. All right. Mick makes these back and says, Dan, when will you bring back Jason to any of the Giant Bomb Podcasts? It'd be cool if he part-timed in Giant Bomb though.

Speaker 5:
[155:12] Bring AceTriker onto something?

Speaker 3:
[155:14] I think so.

Speaker 5:
[155:15] I'd love to. I love AceTriker. I'd love to catch up with him. Yeah, he's awesome.

Speaker 3:
[155:18] Mick says, Jan, do you have a hot dog code for us?

Speaker 1:
[155:21] A hot dog code? Just like we wouldn't shut up if the fiberless members of the team had fiber. If I could get you a coupon code for hot dogs, you would have known 12 years ago.

Speaker 3:
[155:35] All right.

Speaker 2:
[155:36] For hot dogs, though, those are basically free, aren't they? I mean, at Costco, right?

Speaker 1:
[155:43] The only other word out of my mouth that I say most frequently, other than the random bullshit, is just dog. Why don't I have a hot dog code?

Speaker 4:
[155:51] That's a good point.

Speaker 5:
[155:51] I had a Nathan's hot dog in Vegas, and it was the first time I've had one in a while and still pretty good.

Speaker 4:
[155:56] That's good.

Speaker 5:
[155:57] Yeah, good hot dog.

Speaker 1:
[155:58] Yeah, that dog is good.

Speaker 3:
[155:59] Zombie Point says, the local news person here was talking about people taking breaks from their phones and calling it digital raw dogging.

Speaker 5:
[156:07] Is that weird to say on TV?

Speaker 3:
[156:10] The local news person here was talking about people taking breaks from their phones and calling it digital raw dogging. Is that weird to say on TV? It doesn't even make sense.

Speaker 5:
[156:20] Digital raw dogging is not being involved with digital.

Speaker 2:
[156:25] No, that's the thing. What this is demonstrating is that the hellscape in which we all currently occupy dictates that everything must have a funny fucking phrase about it.

Speaker 4:
[156:37] You can't just put down your phone. It has to be digital raw dogging.

Speaker 2:
[156:40] Yeah, everything has to have a quip.

Speaker 4:
[156:42] I know it's bad.

Speaker 2:
[156:43] Yeah, but it may be involved. Jan, careful there, buddy. Someone might accuse you of being old.

Speaker 4:
[156:49] No, because raw dogging means you're doing the thing without protection.

Speaker 3:
[156:53] I know.

Speaker 2:
[156:54] Oh, you don't have to break it down to me. I understand and I share the frustration.

Speaker 3:
[156:58] You're holding the raw circuits.

Speaker 2:
[157:00] Yeah, I share the frustration with everyone. It's like, oh my God, you sneeze without a... You're raw dogging sneezing. I get it. I understand what's happening. It's fucking dumb as hell.

Speaker 3:
[157:15] It feels kind of funny when we said raw dogging flights, right? That was kind of funny, but like...

Speaker 4:
[157:19] Yeah, that was a good time.

Speaker 3:
[157:20] This is so many steps removed now.

Speaker 2:
[157:22] But Mikey, what it is, all everything is now is everyone trying to be the one to be the funniest about the things.

Speaker 3:
[157:30] Yeah, it's just like the fucking Hope Corps movies now.

Speaker 2:
[157:33] Exactly.

Speaker 4:
[157:33] I like Hope Corps, though.

Speaker 2:
[157:35] Because our society has valued virality in such a way that it forces everyone to just compete with language and vocabulary.

Speaker 3:
[157:45] I am home.

Speaker 2:
[157:46] I'm home raw dogging. It's awesome.

Speaker 3:
[157:49] Likes from Mike. Likes from Mike. Please like this video and all other Giant Bomb videos.

Speaker 1:
[157:55] Yeah, that's right. Just load up the video tab.

Speaker 3:
[157:56] No tabby touchy.

Speaker 1:
[157:58] Just scroll that bad boy. I think phone raw dogging is not using a case or having a screen protector.

Speaker 4:
[158:05] Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3:
[158:05] That makes more sense.

Speaker 4:
[158:06] That's exactly right.

Speaker 2:
[158:07] That makes keep it in your pocket, your raw dogging, your pixel.

Speaker 1:
[158:11] All right.

Speaker 3:
[158:11] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[158:12] We got a cover on my mic. People say I'm raw dogging my mic. No, this is a cover, bro.

Speaker 3:
[158:15] That's a cover baby. You got that? I got this. But I guess don't break it now.

Speaker 2:
[158:21] I don't do that. Don't do that.

Speaker 3:
[158:23] That's trying to pull this thing off.

Speaker 2:
[158:24] I guess it's like seven bees with the condom off are horrifying to look at. You don't want to see it.

Speaker 3:
[158:29] OK. Just it's like a gaping mouth in there.

Speaker 2:
[158:33] It's gross. It's so gross.

Speaker 3:
[158:35] One more here. Christian says, hey, Grubb, thanks for the jokes. He was a big fan of a certain kind of humor. You were going out there for a bit.

Speaker 4:
[158:44] Those weren't jokes. It could be anything. I couldn't keep a straight face.

Speaker 3:
[158:50] Got one more here. JTitch says, one like equals one mic. Oh, shit, we don't want more. OK, no more likes than actually got. No, no, no, no, no. Don't listen to him. I mean more. Give me more likes.

Speaker 2:
[159:00] We're mic-maxxing.

Speaker 3:
[159:02] Yeah, this is the mic-core.

Speaker 1:
[159:05] That's right. He is the Ryback of the team. Like Me More.

Speaker 3:
[159:10] No. Like Me More. Yeah, yeah. likememore.com. Beast mode. Activated.

Speaker 1:
[159:18] All right, Mike, is that it for YouTube Super Chats?

Speaker 3:
[159:22] It sure is.

Speaker 1:
[159:23] Fantastic. That brings us to the end of the show, gang. What do we got going on the rest of this week? Monday, or not Monday. Well, yes, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Game Mess Mornings, Pop and Alf, right, Grubb? Yes.

Speaker 4:
[159:36] We'll be back Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Speaker 1:
[159:39] Beautiful, beautiful. Speaking about being back on Wednesday, before Dan heads to space, Sean and I are opening up to get your morning workout, get in where you fit in. Pokemon Day and Night Combat roles right after Game Mess Mornings, straight into space. Because Dan Reichert, the Blightening Round continues.

Speaker 5:
[160:00] God, I forgot. There's a whole fucking rocket-skate maze.

Speaker 3:
[160:06] Don't worry, you have to play that hard video game for like 40 minutes before you get to that part that you need to learn. Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[160:11] That's fun for everyone. Yes, that's great.

Speaker 3:
[160:14] He's going to really push us all like, well, it's just bad content, so we should just skip it now thing. Everybody's still having a good time. Dan, I want to be clear, you have not played as much of this game yet as I had to play a Virtuoso.

Speaker 5:
[160:26] All right. I hope people like those 30 minutes for the summer.

Speaker 3:
[160:31] The Summer Virtuoso line. You better get good, buddy.

Speaker 5:
[160:34] I have no promises on that.

Speaker 1:
[160:37] I heard on a show somewhere that someone said, it was like a post-game interview, it was Tournament Champions, and they asked one of the cooks, how do you feel after that battle? And then they had said like, man, I'm just a bundle of nerves. And then I looked at no one else in the room.

Speaker 2:
[160:53] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[160:54] So we did it in my monitor. I'm like, he's referencing Virtuoso.

Speaker 2:
[160:58] He's doing it.

Speaker 1:
[160:59] Only to realize, no, that's just our unique bubble.

Speaker 5:
[161:03] That's a good point. Rich in the chat says, Dan is chief content officer, should be able to pull the plug on a season of Blight Club.

Speaker 3:
[161:09] That go over real well. That'd be great.

Speaker 1:
[161:14] Speaking about great, we have a great guest lined up for the voicemail dump truck.

Speaker 5:
[161:19] Sorry to interrupt. WB, I'm legit getting sick of that game. Wouldn't be mad if Dan chickened out and quit. Wow. Geez. Look at all this. Wow.

Speaker 4:
[161:26] People say that about every Blight Club game because they're bad games.

Speaker 5:
[161:28] People are clamoring for the end of this. Wow.

Speaker 1:
[161:32] It's one or two clamors here. Because we have Mike Manotti, please introduce our special guest for this Thursday. We have brought him to you.

Speaker 3:
[161:43] Ladies and gentlemen, we got my strategy of just screaming, bring me Matt McMuscles on content has finally worked out. Matt McMuscles is going to be joining us for the dump truck. I have never seen a fella more excited to dump in my life, everybody. So yeah, I'm super excited to be on a show with Matt. I think everyone's going to love him. He's a fantastic person, makes fantastic videos. He just did a video about the Virtual Boy over on his YouTube channel. So check out his What Happened with the Virtual Boy. Very excited that Matt is going to grace us with his skeleton presence.

Speaker 1:
[162:23] Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And then after voicemail dump truck, the hottest dating show continues with Marimi Tomodachi, Friday Gang, UPF. I believe we got a grab bag going on. So we'll have a variety show of goodness for you. Boys, anything that I missed out on?

Speaker 5:
[162:42] I guess we can just say, I'm fine saying this now. We are halfway through recording of something, an emergency demo derby that we are recording. Somebody brought something to my attention from a demo derby. And so we immediately pulled out the old PS1 and that'll be up in the near future. Maybe this weekend or so if we can record that.

Speaker 1:
[163:03] Hell yeah, yeah, yeah. Quick looks potentially dropping left and right. Folks, we'll let you know when those happen. Oh, we have two new Super Chats. Mikey, can you hit me with them real quick? One's from Christian, one is from Rogue702.

Speaker 3:
[163:19] That's right. Rogue says, hey Jan, Jollibee is doing a collab with Final Fantasy 14 starting today. For sure, check it out and get some merch before you start playing Final Fantasy 14.

Speaker 1:
[163:29] Oh, man, I gotta get the wheels rolling on this show then, huh?

Speaker 3:
[163:33] Yep. Christian says, I'm super tired of Dan having to repeat parts of that game all the time.

Speaker 5:
[163:39] Interesting. Many people are saying I've heard.

Speaker 3:
[163:42] Dan, Christian has so many bad opinions.

Speaker 5:
[163:46] I really have to start liking this Christian guy more and more.

Speaker 3:
[163:48] We don't have to worry about what Christian thinks.

Speaker 5:
[163:50] I think he's got great opinions. I like this guy.

Speaker 3:
[163:52] We don't have to worry.

Speaker 1:
[163:53] Folks, that does it for this week. That has been another episode of the Giant Bombcast. He's been Jeff, he's been Jeff, he's been Mike, he's been Dan. Shouts out to Chuck, shouts out to Sean, shouts out to Will, I've been Jan. We'll see you next week for another episode of the Giant Bombcast. Until then, good bye.

Speaker 4:
[164:11] Smart Marks don't drink juice.

Speaker 3:
[164:13] Antonio Morales says he's free to start Space Fiends anytime, penis.