transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:02] If you've ever wondered how much of your favorite movies and TV shows really happened, head on over to basedonatruestorypodcast.com to find hundreds of episodes digging into the true story behind movies and TV shows. Once again, that's basedonatruestorypodcast.com.

Speaker 2:
[00:54] What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Remember The Game. It is my Retro Gaming Podcast, where every week a buddy of mine and I sit down and we geek out about the games we played back in the day. My name is Adam Blank. Thanks so much for listening to the show. And this week it is episode 373, and it's a big one, because we're talking about the game that slayed and overcame 63 opponents to take down the 2026 pre-March Madness Patriot Poll Tournament extravaganza back in February. Secret of Evermore for the SNES. And this is one of those ones that I have wanted to play through literally for decades since I was a kid. I used to rent it back in the 90s. I put four, five, six hours into it over the weekend. It'd be fun. I'd never come anywhere close to a complete run. So when this finally took down our tournament and I had a reason to play it, I was very excited. I would have bought myself a copy and I probably put 20 some hours into it over the last couple of weeks. If you've not played Secret of Evermore, you don't know what it is. It's an SNES RPG. It's from Squaresoft, which just that sentence on paper makes a lot of people like, oh, a Super Nintendo RPG from Squaresoft, you say. But it's not one of the heavy hitters. You know, it's not the legendary Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG, Earthbound, which I know isn't from Squaresoft, but the point is, I think a lot of people missed Secret of Evermore back in the day just because we were so over encumbered with quality RPGs in the SNES era. So in Secret of Evermore, you play as a boy and his dog and you get electrocuted, kind of, and then you travel around different areas. I'm not sure if it's the different time periods or not, like different areas, trying to get home. It uses the Secret of Mana engine for its menus and its combat and everything for both better and worse. It's a really great concept. Secret of Evermore is a great idea. The execution, have a listen to the episode this week. We'll tell you all about it. So Captain N from the Retrotopia Podcast and one of our Power Hungry Mods over in our Discord is my guest this week. And we both had some pretty mixed opinions. An old Secret of Evermore. Neither of us hated it, but we both thought it could maybe use a little bit of a spit shine as it were. Should this game remain a secret or is this a Super Nintendo game that everyone needs to experience? We're going to tell you all that in just a couple of minutes because speaking of things everyone needs to experience, it's time for another edition of the Remember The Game Infamous Intro. And if you're new to the podcast, welcome aboard to Consider This Your Warning. Our intros are kind of long. They're not that long. They're kind of long. We talk video games and stuff and you don't have to navigate like eight fucking mazes if you want to skip it. All you do is take your little slider thing on your phone, go to about the 30-minute mark. You should be in the Secret of Evermore talk. Cha-cha. No need to yell at us. Oh, listen to the whole thing. That's what I recommend. Including these plugs. If you just indulge me for a minute or two, let me get my plugs in. It's how I keep my bills on around here. I am intending to attend the Calgary Gaming Collector's Show at the end of May, May 30th at the Acadia Recreation Complex in Calgary. You can find information about that at calgarygamesshow.com. The other plug I have to get done is the lifeblood of Remember The Game Industries, and that is our Patreon. We publish up to four additional shows most weeks. None of our Patreon shows have any ads in them. Remember The Game, all 373 episodes are over there with zero ads and timestamps. You can skip around and all that kind of stuff. In addition to lots of extra podcasts, you can also write into the show, you can vote on the games we cover, you can join our 1,500 plus member Discord. I think that's what it's at now. You get instant access to hundreds and hundreds. We just published an expansion pass number 300 a couple weeks ago. So the second you sign up, you get access to all of those previous expansion passes, plus almost 300 game patches, over 200 rambling idiots, and 150 purple monkey dishwashers. It's fucking insanity. It's absolutely ridiculous. You get all those, and I stream Monday through Friday at 11 a.m. Mountain Time. And if you're a Patreon, you can check those out as well. And most importantly, in addition to all that other stuff, you get a shoutout. You get to hear me mispronounce your name. Like, I'm definitely going to do to a couple of these people a huge thank you. To our newest Patreons, TheBigK08, Lee V. Mediately. I get it. JinkyDGinny. Did I say that right? JinkyDGinny. Jack MihoffDaddy. That's an unfortunate name. Moises Perez, Cobalion, Devil'd Egg Hellfarts. That's disgusting. Egg farts are the worst farts. Wind Waker is Goated and Leo Bortolino. I definitely butchered a couple of those. Thank you all so much for the support and welcome to Remember The Game Industries. You can find all our Patreon information at patreon.com/remember The Game. There's some free episodes over there. You can check out to see how they work. Subscriptions start at $3 a month and if you sign up for a full year, we'll give you a month on to house. That's enough blowing myself. Let's blow some of you by blowing in some cartridges. It is our opening segment here on the show. I read a few comments and questions from our Patreons, usually gaming related, but not always. And we call this segment Blowing in the Cartridge.

Speaker 3:
[05:50] He blows all right.

Speaker 1:
[05:51] He blows big time.

Speaker 2:
[05:52] That's it, honey.

Speaker 1:
[05:53] Get into the spirit.

Speaker 2:
[05:59] Let's blow. Our first blower this week is Jo LeBlanc, who said, Bonjour, Adam. If you had unlimited resources and creative freedom to develop a video game and Molly was going to be the main character, what kind of genre would you choose? I'd love to hear all about the concept. Feel free to share as many details as you'd like. I probably get asked, at least somebody else asked this week, if you were going to make a Remember The Game video game, what would it be? I get asked that very regularly. For the record, the answer for a Remember The Game video game is one of those business simulators, like podcast simulator. But you play as this character that doesn't know what the fuck they're doing and you have to somehow make a podcast out of it anyways. But a game about Molly needs a little bit more shine. I thought about this for a little while and I was like, do I go with a dog simulator? I could do the business simulator thing where she's the CEO. But you know what I would do? Maybe it's a weak answer. I would do a Secret of Evermore sequel and just make the dog into Molly. Is this one the boy is obviously the main character, and then the dog is your sidekick? I would make the dog having to save the boy. Maybe Molly recruits Millie. There you go. So both of my dogs, and they're out to save me from who would kidnap me? Uline. Yeah. So my two dogs are teaming up in an action RPG, a Secret of Evermore, Secret of Uline, and they need to save me from Uline. I'd sell at least three copies of that. I'd buy three copies. That'd be sick. Jesse Morin says, Hi, Mr. Blank. I spend a lot of time sitting for work, commuting and playing video games. What would you recommend for getting more exercise in for those of us that spend most of our day at a computer furthering the PC cause? Nice pull. You gotta further the PC cause. We're all about furthering the PC cause. You gotta remember the game industries. I'm not one to offer a lot of fitness advice because I look like a half of a melted pear, but you know what, honestly, because I do sit a lot between these podcasts and playing video games and just blatant laziness. You know what my go-to, if somebody was like, I need one exercise, what do I start doing? Try to start going for a walk a day. You're obviously listening to the podcast anyways. Throw in a podcast or throw in an audio book and just go for a walk for an hour. That's my favorite thing to do. Like my favorite thing. I try to do it every day. I haven't the last couple of weeks cause I've been having some health problems, but normally I try to go for a walk every day, just for an hour, just put on my headphones. I just base out music, podcasts, audio books, YouTube, doesn't matter. You'd be amazed how much an hour of just walking. Like you don't even have to go super fast, just enjoy a nice walk, get some fresh air, get the sun, go after dinner, whatever the fuck. Makes a world of difference. I'm telling you, you'll be amazed. You'd be amazed. I love walks. I miss walking. Oh man, it's good time. Especially nice now that it's finally not 30 below out anymore. That's what I'm all about. Agitated Intern says, Mr. Blank, I'm a huge sucker for sales and deals on video games, especially these days. Over the last month, I randomly booted up a little indie title bought from the Steam winner sale Fallout 4. This was my first venture into the Fallout universe. I had no idea what was waiting for me, but it all instantly sucked me in. I haven't been able to put it down since. I feel like I made a huge game or error by sleeping on the Fallout series when they initially released, but better late than never. So I have to ask, have you ever slept on a game series at the peak of its popularity or release, only to buy or rent it later and find out it was a banger? If so, what title was it for you and did you get immediately obsessed with it as I did Fallout? Love listening to the show. Thank you very much. Very much, Agitated Intern. Don't sound that agitated, so I appreciate that. There's been lots of series that I've discovered for the first time since I launched Remember The Game, but you know, the one that jumped to my mind immediately when you asked this, that I slept on during its peak and everyone, everybody, I don't think I've ever met someone who was like, these games suck, but I still kept waiting to play them for some reason was Portal. And I really, really need to give Portal a, like there's been other games that I've discovered since I launched Remember The Game that I liked better than Portal, I will say, but I don't know if I've ever seen or heard people talk about a franchise longer than that before I finally played it and then just been like, oh yeah, no, you're right, these are immaculate. Portal One and Portal Two must play, if you're listening to this and you haven't played Portal One and Portal Two, don't make the same mistake I did and wait so long to play them, they go on sale all the time on every system for like three bucks, scoop them the next time they're on sale, enjoy them and be thankful later that you played two of unquestionably the greatest video games ever created by a computer or a human or whoever it is made them, Portal, those two games are fucking sick, that's the answer for me. Captain Bang Your Mom says, this is a wrestling related question, but EOSky and Oscar were not on the WrestleMania card and relegating them to the middle of the Backlash card instead was a travesty. I agree, for the record, I'm going to get more into WrestleMania on the Rambling Idiot this Friday, I'll drop my review and my thoughts on how it went and all that kind of stuff, but I agree, dude, with the fucking two and a half hours of ads we got over the weekend or three hours of whatever it was in combined ads, you can't convince me with all your shitty seven-minute matches, you couldn't have carved out ten minutes for EO Sky at Asuka. I agree, burns my fucking hide. One of many things that burned my ass, well, this is WrestleMania, those two ladies should have been on the card, it's fucking ridiculous. Master Chief Wiggum said, hey Adam, I feel like that needs to be a Wiggum voice, hey Adam, I got a PS5 recently and I'm having fun trying out new games. I'm a couple hours into The Last of Us and while it is a great game, I'm waiting for it to hook me. Did you have that specific moment in The Last of Us that hook you? Not a great Chief Wiggum, my voice is a little weird today. You know what? I'm going to be honest, I'm a full-fledged Last of Us homer, so those of you that hate The Last of Us are probably just going to roll your eyes at this. But I was hooked on The Last of Us from about an hour in. The very, very beginning part before the explosions and the virus really goes crazy is good. But then there's a very early part, I don't think this is a spoiler, because it's all in the first hour of the game. There's a very early part where Joel and Tess get, they meet Ellie, and they basically have to escort her. They're escorting her in the rain, and you're out in the rain in these sewer pipes in this destroyed city. And by the time I was done that, I was like, this is something. And then it just, I love those games so much. I fucking love The Last of Us. But that is a part that stands out to me. So, The Last of Us is, ah, Masterpiece. Masterpieces. But those aren't like Portal. I didn't wait to play those. I played that day one and was like, this is maybe the greatest game I've ever played. And I stand by that. Hello, Mr. Thompson. Said, if you were to go back in, if you were to go, it says back twice. I'm assuming typo, but I'm going to read it as written. If you were to go back, back in time, right? So right before your very first podcast, what would you tell yourself? Anytime I see back, like back, back, back, back, back, a home run derby. If I could go back to right before episode one, what would I tell myself? You know, there's a lot of things I would change, but the number one thing I think I would go back in time and do is I would stay anonymous. When I initially started the show, I mentioned I was a comedian from Edmonton, blah, blah, blah. Admittedly, my hope was like, hey, if anyone ever listens to the show, maybe it'll help me get an extra comedy booking or two. But now that I've tapped out of the comedy world and I'm just focused on doing this thing where I yell into the microphone every day in my underwear, if I could go back in time, I would just be Mr. Blank and I wouldn't say, I'd say I'm Canadian, but I wouldn't say what part of Canada, what my last name is. I would just keep things a lot more anonymous. That's if I could change one thing. And I wouldn't have included every single benefit of our Patreon at the lowest tier, which it was for a very long time. But the biggest thing is I would stay anonymous. Yeah, I'll go with that. BoiledToast64 says, hey Adam, which video game from this generation do you think will receive the recognition that it truly deserves decades later like Earthbound has? Dude, that's a great question. That's a tough question, but a fair one. The problem, Shadow of the I think the issue is that games, I don't think games go as under the radar today as they did back then. You know, like Earthbound, if Earthbound came out today, I feel like it'd be like Sea of Stars and people would just give it its flowers right away. But back pre-internet, games didn't all get the love. If they didn't catch on, they didn't catch on and they just died and that was it. So it's a tough question because it's like, what's a game today that's really, really good that nobody fucking knows about? Because I don't play a lot of the hidden gems anymore. I play, I think there are games that people will look back on in 20, 30 years as masterpieces, like a Celeste or an Astro Bot or a Last of Us or, I don't know, like Mario Odyssey, for example, your Elden Rings, your Expedition 33s. Like, what's a banger that's being slept on that years from now people will look back and be like, that's a great fucking game. Hmm. Is it, is it crazy to say Sea of Stars? Like, I know that Sea of Stars has a lot of fans and people know how great it is. But I also know there's a lot of people out there that only play the big AAA titles. And so the smaller indie titles kind of sneak through. And I feel like Sea of Stars is genuinely one of the greatest RPGs ever made. I'm looking up to see how many copies Sea of Stars has sold. I was played by over 6 million people. That's a hard answer. But it was on Game Pass, so that's where a lot of people were playing it. I don't know how many finished it. I guess I'm going to go with Sea of Stars because that's a tough answer today. Because everything is, everything is known. A game goes so virally popular and everybody knows it. I do think that Sea of Stars is one of the greatest RPGs ever made, and I don't feel like it's listed in that conversation often enough, especially with Expedition 33 coming out last year and really taking the spotlight away. So I'm going to go with Sea of Stars. If you haven't played it, for the love of God, play Sea of Stars. Jesus Christ, that game is good. Finally, before we move on, it's letter time. It's letter time. Devin Collins wrote in and said, Hey Adam, long time since commenting. Hope you're well. I'm doing all right, buddy. Still keep it up with your shows. Great work. Thank you. My question to you is about the state of gaming. Would you consider our hobby a luxury or is it still possible for younger generations to enter our gaming world despite the economic shape the planet is in? That's a good fucking question. That's a really good. I feel like that could be an expansion past topic. That's a good question, Devin Collins. I, because I think there's two ways to look at it, right? On one side, I think gaming is more accessible than it's ever been. When you look at the number of quality games that you can play on smartphones and tablets, and I know that those are kind of luxury items as well, but it also feels like everybody under the sun has a smartphone or a tablet. So on one hand, gaming has never been more accessible because you can get your Fortnites on there and your Roblox is on there. For the love of God, if you have kids playing Roblox, look out for what they're doing. But you know what I mean. And those are free to play. Anybody can get in there and play them and enjoy them, and they're just right there to go and it's good fucking times. But on one hand, it's like no, it's not a luxury. It's more accessible than ever. But then on the other side of the coin, consoles are going up in prices. They're getting more expensive than ever. And the simple fact is it comes down to your individual position, right? Because up here in Canada, a Switch 2 will cost you I think 650 bucks. And I guarantee you, there are people listening to this podcast that are like $650 is like whatever. Like yeah, I don't even have to think twice about it. I want to switch, I'm buying a Switch, here's my $650. But I also know there are people listening to this that are like, buddy, I'd have to save up a fucking year to just drop $650 on a gaming console. And no judgment is being passed by me because I've been on both sides of that coin. I've been fortuitous enough that I'm like, if I want to buy a video game, I buy it. And I've been to that point where I'm going to EB Games and seeing what's in the three for $20 bin because I have no money. So I've been on both sides. I do think at the end of the day, people go on about how Nintendo is ripping us off and PlayStation raising their prices or taking advantage of us and screwing us over and all that kind of stuff. And you're welcome to those thoughts. But I can't agree because it's like this is a hobby. I guess it is a luxury in the sense of like your quality of life won't really change if you don't have video games. Like, sure, video games are fun and you'll miss playing them. But like you don't like when a when a when a when when fucking, I don't know, when your landlord raises your rent by $600, it's like, fuck me, that's that's brutal. And when when a bottle of water is suddenly $6, when you're at like a hockey game or something, I feel like that's fucking brutal. But those are things you kind of need. Water and food and clothes and shelter and gas and that kind of stuff. Video games are like, hey, they're expensive toys. You know, like I'd really like to get into archery. Like archery is something that has always intrigued me, always intrigued me, but it's not a cheap thing to get into, right? I'd like to get a new car, but a new car, I drive an old car because I don't want to spend the money on a new car. So I mean, you can, anybody can pick up a smartphone or a tablet and play a video game and enjoy it. And you can get older systems for pretty cheap these days. But if you want to play on the newest equipment and play all the newest games and have the big 4K setup with the headphones and all that kind of stuff, you want to be a PC gamer for the love of Jesus. I do think it's kind of a luxury item. It is something that not everybody can afford to do. I think we're in a position now where we're fortuitous that gaming is just available to everybody. Growing up, I had friends who didn't have an NES or a Super Nintendo or a Genesis because their parents just couldn't afford to get them one. So they'd be so excited to come over to my house to play Nintendo. And obviously, I was a lucky kid. I didn't realize it at the time that I had an NES and 10 games because it didn't seem like I had anything to play, but I had 10 games and an NES. So I guess it's all subjective. I guess I know I'm answering and I'm sitting on both sides of the fence and it's kind of a bullshit answer. I do think gaming is a luxury and I do think as the things go on, people will be priced out of the latest and greatest gaming. But I don't think gaming will ever become something that not anybody can play. Everybody's going to be able to afford something to play on, right? Well, not everybody, but a lot of people will be able to play something. And if you want the best and the biggest, you're going to have to pony up some dough. And I know it's irritating to people that the cost of consoles and games keeps going up. I don't want to pay as much as I have to pay for them either. But they're clearly selling because they keep raising the prices and they wouldn't keep raising the price. You don't raise your... If people aren't buying something, you don't raise the price. I mean, Xbox fucking does, but most companies don't, right? So clearly there's a market out there for it, and people are willing to pay this. I guess that's why it's an interesting discussion. Like it's hard for me to answer in a three-minute answer. I feel like I could do a whole episode about that, but it's it is an interesting debate. The cost is going up and I do think some people are going to be priced out of the newest, latest, and greatest. But then if that's the case, then just play your old stuff, play cheap stuff. You know, I know it's easier to say than to do, but just play the old stuff. Anyway, good question, Devan. We'll maybe we'll do a deep dive into that on an episode of expansion Pass Down the Road. But we still have more segments to get to here before we talk Secret of Evermore. And I'm pretty hard on trying to get to my, pretty hard on getting to my 30 minute timeline where people can skip ahead to listen to the show so they don't yell at me. So let's switch things up and get to our smash it segment, Official Game Show of Remember The Game Industries Play One Remake One Erase One. And a huge thank you to Classic Concentration from the NES for unknowingly providing us with the theme music for the show. The rules are simple. Every week, I give our patrons three retro video games. They can play one as it was released, remake one as a modern game, and the third as a race from time forever. As always, there are no wrong answers, but there's a right one. We'll get to that in just a minute. This week, we're talking Secret of Evermore, so I went with three of the SNES Mediocre President RPGs, and that is Lufia II, Illusion of Gaia, and The 7th Saga. And a whopping 35% of you voted to play Lufia II, remake The Illusion of Gaia, and erase 7th Saga. Easy for me to say, Jesus Christ. Let's see what a few of you had to say here, and then I'll tell you what the right answer was. Leydon Hozer said, Quick and easy, I went with the top of the order. Play Lufia II, this would be Lufia, I feel like Lufia sounds better. Play Lufia II, this would be a first for me. Remake Illusion of Gaia, I'll do all the remake-y stuff and add the original version as a bonus, which will let me play the OG, because I haven't done that either. And then I'll erase 7th Saga, because I thought it was 7th Guest, and well, now I won't have to get the two mixed up anymore. That is the worst logic I have ever heard. Like in plays, I guess. There is no wrong answers, but fuck me, there is a right one, and I don't know if you had it, LazyNoser. But I like your logic, I like it. I like the way you think. Bloodborne in the USA says, are we sure there's no wrong answers here? This one is easy. Play Illusion of Gaia, graphics, music and gameplay still hold up beautifully, and it's one of the best premier adventure RPGs on the Super Nintendo. This one needs an RTG episode. Remake 7th Saga, a super unique RPG that could really benefit of quality of life changes and minor tuning of the difficulty of mechanics, and then erase Lufia II. It's a decent enough turn-based RPG, but the SNES is packed with this style of game. Many of them did it a lot better than this one. Sorry, but it's got to go. I will argue that I don't know if I've played one with better puzzles than Lufia II. I will argue that, but I get the logic though. JinkyDjiny says, I will play 7th Saga, as I never have. I'll remake Gaia, had a lot of fun playing it back in the day. And unfortunately, I will erase Lufia II. It was a fun game, but I have more feelings for Gaia. See, that's nice you're not cheating. You're like, this is what I love. I like you, but I love her. I get it. All right. JNasty15 wrote in, and for the record, Mike, both the Mathis brothers wrote in and had the same order, and I couldn't read both, so I read the one that I saw first. JNasty said, as Lufia II, expert and fan of the other games, the answer is play Lufia II. Despite the glitches, it's still a vastly underrated SNES RPG that combines puzzles and role playing. It's highly playable. Remake 7th Saga, a very unique RPG with two characters in your party that was weighed down by heavy amounts of grinding. Tone down those elements and add some crispness to the game and graphics. It'd be great. Erase Illusion of Gaia, unfortunately. We still have Terranigma and Soul Blazer from the trilogy, so sadly, this is the one that has to go. You know what, JNasty, I... Never mind. I was about to give you double secret probation for taking this game too seriously and coming up with all this like real logic in air quotes, but Millie just looked me in the eyes as I was about to say it and she saved your ass, so you're safe. But Mike, your brother, double secret probation for not getting red. Sorry, Darth. The rules are the rules. Jim Wiltshire said, Play Illusion of Gaia. It still holds up to this day, and that SNES nostalgia has me in a chokehold when it comes to this game. Remake Lufia II, an over... I don't know what I'm calling it anymore. An overlooked gem of a JRPG on the SNES, maybe updated graphics and controls, not that they were bad, could bring it to the top of the attention span again. Erase 7th Saga. It was unique in the fact that you could pick your starting character and different paths open up depending on your choice offering replayability. But to find another companion in game that could cover your weaknesses could be a chore. The controls were cumbersome and the story was bland. It won't be missed if erased. Man, you RPG nerds are a passionate bunch. I'm going with 29 percent. 29 percent of you voted the way I would. It was the runner up option as did Torby Fledersen who said, Play Gaia. I love playing it as a kid, but I haven't revisited in years. Truly underrated with lots of memorable moments. Remake Lufia II with some quality of life improvements like improved inventory management and bug fixes. Unfortunately, erase 7th Saga because even though it has some interesting features, it's too grind heavy and I don't enjoy it as much as the other two. Different reasoning, same order for me. I'm going to play Illusion of Gaia because I never have and I'm intrigued. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter. I'm intrigued to see what this game is all about. Then I was torn on the other two because I don't like erasing ones I haven't played and the only of these three that I have played is Lufia II. That said, I am going to burn my remake on Lufia II because it is a really cool game, but it is genuinely, legitimately broken and anyone that even likes it will be like, there are parts of that game that ship that genuinely don't work. So let's remake it and just make it good and not broken. And then I am going to race 7th Saga. I don't have anything against it, but I do not have time to catch up with six previous sagas. So I am just going to play it safe and cut the head off the snake at 7. Thank you everybody that wrote in and played along as always. What have I been playing over the last week? And then we are diving into Secret of Evermore. I have been playing Secret of Evermore, which you are about to hear about, so I won't say any more about it. I have also been playing, I got some questions in blowing in the cartridge I didn't read, but people asked me about Pragmata and Mouse PI for hire. I am playing both of them right now. Love it. Fucking loving Pragmata. Liking Mouse PI for hire. It's not without its charm, but Pragmata is fucking pretty incredible. So I am playing both for those asking, and I do have intentions of reviewing both probably in May on Expansion Pass. Seros, the upcoming game from Housemarque, from the Returnal Studio, I am planning to play that one as well. So all three of those will at some point get Expansion Pass reviews. I'm playing Mouse and Pragmata right now, and then I'm still chipping away at the Elder Scrolls Oblivion for a someday episode of RTG. I think that's it, puppy. Yeah, that's it. Okay. So here's what's going to happen. We're going to take a break. I'll play an old retro video game ad. I'll let a sponsor in to do their thing. And when we get back, it's all about Secret of Evermore. Remember The Game will return after these messages.

Speaker 3:
[27:27] In a new action adventure game for your Super NES comes an exciting tale, The Secret of Lana, from Square, maker of the world's greatest video games.

Speaker 2:
[27:40] This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. I don't know about any of you, but there are many aspects of adulthood that have caused me more stress over the last 25 years than money. When I was in my 20s, I looked at a new credit card like it was a bonus, and I dug myself a pretty deep hole that took me years to climb out of. Financial stress can keep you up at night, impact your relationships in a negative way, and mess with your mental health. A therapist may not be able to help you manage your money better, but they can help you manage the stress, shame, or anxiety that comes with financial issues. They can help you build better coping strategies and relationships with money and feel less alone in the process. If you're thinking about giving therapy a try, consider BetterHelp. Fill out a quick questionnaire to let them know what's on your mind, and they'll set you up with a therapist that you can meet with online. And with over 30,000 fully licensed therapists on their roster and over 12 years of experience of matching people and therapists, you can be confident they'll find the right fit for you. And to sweeten the deal, if your pairing isn't working, you can switch therapists anytime. BetterHelp has served over 6 million people globally, why not give them a shot? When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/remember the game. That's betterhelp.com/remember the game. Alright, let's talk some Secret of Evermore. As always, I like to let you nerds sound off on the game we're covering before my guests and I hog the microphone. And we only had a couple dozen comments on this one, which I expected because it's kind of a niche game. But the passion, the passion is some of these comments was made it hard to choose to read. Let's rip through some of these. Joey Jojo says, Iconic boss on the box made the game instantly recognizable and a real classic. Probably a better game than Secret of Mana. I agree. The bizarre section still sucks as it grinds the game to a complete stop. Whoa, we get there. We will get to that fucking bizarre. You're not the only one that wrote in about that. Normal Normie said, I love everything about this game almost from the setting to the battle system, the music to the story, the larger than life bosses. I ate up everything Squaresoft in the SNES and PS1 era. Sorry, Normie, I am going to cut your comment down here a little bit. After a couple of bosses and entering the third timeline, you run smack dab into the bizarre. The way this part of the game works is you can't proceed the story any further until you come up with a long list of ingredients through grinding and scavenging, standard game lengthening fare disguised as a tutorial on how to make consumables that are meant to make the late game easier to handle. I had a notebook full of recipes written down to help me keep track of everything as I checked them off. I had never encountered a time sink as long as this in a console experience that I wouldn't get until MMOs. Sadly, this is where my memories of this hidden gem end, even with a physical copy of the game and a working Nintendo, I have yet to bring myself to overcome this misstep of design choice. I actually, to spoil, I actually mentioned in our review, I think I put the game down for a couple of days when I got to the Bizarre. It's not a horrible segment, but it's way too long and grindy, I agree. We'll talk about it in a minute, I agree. Some of you didn't even mention that part though. Josh Gould said, hell yeah dude, this is my favorite game of all time. It wasn't at first, I thought it was decent after my first run and it took two or three playthroughs before I realized I enjoy playing more than any other game. I don't think it's one thing on its own, but everything combined, the four main locations, the music that goes with them, I like the different weapons, and I like leveling them up despite the grindy nature of it, the spells, the markets, the changing dog, it's sniffing out ingredients, it's all super charming and it is the ultimate comfort food game for me. May not like this episode, Josh. No, it starts out rough, but I promise you, it gets a good score, stick with it, it gets a good score. Idahoju said, it's finally happening. I've been waiting for this moment since I became a hot dog. Childhood favorite and as a kid, I may have stayed home sick from school a few times to hang out with my dog and play this until my folks caught me. Aside from a couple of blemishes, it's a gem that needs to be more readily available. Agreed. Holmes said, I absolutely loved this game as a kid. I remember a few key story parts vividly to this day. I have such fond memories of it that I actually decided to bust out my copy and play it with my son, who's of similar age to me when I first played it. He of course finds it a bit boring because he's spoiled with his Pokémans and Nintendo Switch Swatch and what have you, but he still humors me and keeps me company while I play through it and regale him with tales of the good old days. Fuck, this makes me feel old. Well, that's because you are, Holmes. That is because you are. As am I, as is Captain N, as are some of you. It's time to talk another thing that's old, and that is Secret of Evermore. I'm going to cue up some of that music. And when it stops, Cap and I are going to take you back to October 17th, 1995 and talk Secret of Evermore for the SNES. Enjoy the episode, everybody. Here we go. All right, joining me to be the blank phone on a Monday afternoon, the most energetic afternoon of them all. To talk secret of Evermore is the secret of RTG, and that is one of our power hungry mods, and host of Retrotopia podcast, Captain Ed. Buddy, how's it going?

Speaker 4:
[32:49] How are you? That's good. Yeah. Don't take away the power hungry-ness of Monkey and Keegs there.

Speaker 2:
[32:54] No, no, no. You guys are like the three stooges. The three stooges if they managed to get to the point where they had the keys to the store.

Speaker 4:
[33:00] Oh, okay. If we're the three stooges, which one of us is which stooge?

Speaker 2:
[33:06] Oh, I consider all three of you curly. Fair enough. It's just three curlies fucking running in circles. I love the three stooges.

Speaker 4:
[33:15] They're so great.

Speaker 2:
[33:17] Buddy, we're talking Secret of Evermore this week, which has been a game that I've been talking about for years on the show that I wanted to cover. I rented this one as a kid because I do think it's got some of the best box art on the Super Nintendo.

Speaker 4:
[33:30] Yeah, that bug on the front of it is really nice.

Speaker 2:
[33:33] Yeah, you're staring down that bug, which turns out is the first boss of the game. Yeah, so it's not as intimidating as you would think, but that's cool. You get to play as a boy and his dog traveling through time fighting enemies. I'm like, that all sounds fantastic. I always rent it and I'd play it like five hours. I wouldn't get that far. I'd take it back. Then I finally won our 2026 pre-March Madness Patriot Bowl Tournament extravaganza. I finally sat down. I played it. I came very close to beating it. I'll explain why I didn't in a minute. And you know, I got to be honest, dude. It's not that it's a bad game, but I didn't like it as much as I was hoping I would.

Speaker 4:
[34:09] Yeah. See, I first played it because, well, first off, it was Squaresoft and I was playing anything Squaresoft at the time. But the second is because I really like Secret of Mana. And just from the first look of this in Nintendo Power, this is a Secret of Mana follow-up. And that's the reason I jumped aboard it right away. Do I like it more than Secret of Mana? No. But do I hate it? Also, no. It does have some stuff that I find annoying. But overall, I actually do really enjoy this game.

Speaker 2:
[34:38] See, I think when they boil down to it, I do like this one better than Secret of Mana. But they're pretty close and they both have the same formula. Like, obviously the same engine.

Speaker 4:
[34:55] Absolutely. The only difference between this game and Secret of Mana is this game was developed in Square, Washington or wherever it was in the United States and never came out in Japan. It was kind of, I guess, their turn to make an RPG. And since Secret of Mana just had success, they got to use that engine to build this game off of.

Speaker 2:
[35:17] Yeah. And it obviously didn't release. Because everybody knows the Super Nintendo is like an RPG fucking beast. Yeah. I was like, what's the word I'm looking for? Beast will work just fine. Yeah. You got your Final Fantasies. You got your Earth Bound. You got your Chrono Trigger. You got your Mario RPG. You all know the heavy hitters. The list goes on and on. And this is one of those ones that I think kind of gets a little bit forgotten.

Speaker 4:
[35:43] Well, it came out right around the same time Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger came out. So it's easy to forget this one in comparison.

Speaker 2:
[35:51] Yeah. Like you don't hear a lot of people talk about this one. And I only knew of it because my buddy Robbie told me about it when I was a kid. And and yeah, like like finally sitting down and playing it. It's I really like how it's again, like if you're not playing Secret of Mana, it's the same thing. It's it's not turn based RPG. It's. Actually, I don't know what you call it. Like it's it's very, very slow action.

Speaker 4:
[36:15] Yeah, OK. That's fair.

Speaker 2:
[36:17] Because like it is action. Like when you run across an enemy, like there's no random encounters. You can see the enemies in the overworld. When you see an enemy, it just transitions into like a fighting screen. It doesn't even transition. You can just no walk up to them and hit them with your weapon. Like link to the past style, really. But like it is just it's very, very slow when you swing at an enemy, whether you land or miss, then you got to wait for your stamina to refill.

Speaker 4:
[36:40] That's one of my problems with both this and Secret of Mana.

Speaker 2:
[36:43] Yeah. And it just takes fucking so long. And then God forbid, if you need to do one of your your charge shots where you like get you level your weapon up and then you can. So then you swing your weapon once, then you have to wait. I don't know the exact time. I would guess it's three to five seconds.

Speaker 4:
[36:58] Yeah. Anywhere between one second and three years. It feels like forever sometimes. Oh, especially when you get hit, you end up pausing the charge. But luckily you don't lose a charge when you're hit, because you get hit a lot in this game.

Speaker 2:
[37:12] Yeah, you do, because it's very hard to play defense. The only real defense is moving.

Speaker 4:
[37:16] Yeah, that's pretty much it. And just the luck of the draw, and that dog just takes most the hits possible. How often did you have the dog dead on any given fight?

Speaker 2:
[37:26] Constantly.

Speaker 4:
[37:26] It wasn't even worth bringing them back to life until you absolutely needed it.

Speaker 2:
[37:30] Yeah, constantly dead. Because you're not playing it. You play it as this, I don't know how old he is, like a teenager, I imagine. But this boy and his dog. And they get pulled back and like they go to the alternate universe and they go to all these crazy places. We'll work our way through that. And then yeah, you're just trying to get back home and you're going through areas fighting enemies. And like you can play it two player with someone controlling the dog or you can swap between the boy and the dog and the computer will control the other one. And the dog does way more damage. Like the dog killed more enemies than I did, but the dog also died way more than I did.

Speaker 4:
[37:59] Yeah. And the dog has no sense of self-preservation. I think you can go in the settings, you can dumb down its aggressiveness, but then it becomes useless because now you're taking on everything on your own while the dog just sniffs around for ingredients in the ground.

Speaker 2:
[38:14] Yeah. Yeah. I just left it. I finally got sick of it. I just left it maxed out. And I was like, go get them, boy. Like I'll heal you at the end. But yeah, so you hit an enemy and then if it's not strong enough to kill the enemy, then you have to wait for your stamina to go back up to 100%, which probably takes, like I say, three, four seconds to get to 100. But then if you want to do a charge attack, then you got to hold the attack button for another three or four seconds per level and there's a couple levels to charge it and you can't kill per weapon and you can't kill a lot of enemies without charging up your weapon. And so it just, I love that it's not the same old, because I've been pretty vocal, like I'm not the world's biggest JRPG fan. I get bored of the combat where it's just mashing A and going through the motions. So I like a more active combat system because it keeps me engaged and I'm not just going through the motions. But I don't know if I like this combat system because it takes so fucking long that it's almost I almost would have preferred the turn base at times because it took forever.

Speaker 4:
[39:06] So in theory, the stamina is supposed to do a percentage of your full attack. So if it's at like 95 percent, you're doing 95 percent of your full attack. Problem is it never was implemented right. So when you swing your weapon at 95 percent, you still only hit them for one hit point because it considers it pretty much zero.

Speaker 2:
[39:27] Yeah. So if you're not strong enough to kill a guy in one shot, then you hit him once and then you got to wait for it to fucking fill up.

Speaker 4:
[39:35] Oh, you got to move around as well because as soon as it starts recharging, you're vulnerable now and then the enemy can hit you where it seemingly shouldn't be able to hit you because it'll just throw up the claws or whatever. And next thing you know, you're being knocked back there with the very slow animation of being damaged. But yeah, and if you're charging a weapon, like I said, it pauses it and takes a little bit longer. And if you're in a boss fight doing that, it becomes very annoying, especially when you have like the spear where you have to throw it and you have to actually aim where you're throwing the spear. And then just as you're about to throw it, an enemy knocks you back and you miss. And you have to go through that whole process again.

Speaker 2:
[40:11] Yeah. Oh, so annoying, dude. And like, and I use the spear because you can get a, you have speared swords and axes and you can, as you play through the game, you'll get different, like better, more powerful ones. But, but every time you get a new one, it starts out on level zero and you got to keep killing enemies to like grind it up to make it to where you can do the charge attacks. And I know I'm being really negative on it. There are parts of this game I really like, but this is why I think there's two main parts that disappointed me. Number one is the combat, because I love the concept of the more actiony combat, but just waiting and waiting and waiting for these fucking attacks to charge and then you get a new weapon that's more powerful than any weapon you've had. So you're like, well, fucking day, I want to use my new powerful weapon. But it's like, oh, but you can't use any of your powerful attacks with it until you kill like 50 enemies with it, charge it up. But killing the enemies takes fucking forever because you can't do your more powerful attacks.

Speaker 4:
[40:58] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[40:59] Yeah, near the end of the game because I use spears pretty much the whole game because I like how you can charge them up and throw them.

Speaker 4:
[41:05] Yeah, I was an Axeman personally.

Speaker 2:
[41:07] Well, you're a manlier man than I. I feel like the type that would stay at a distance and throw shit at people.

Speaker 4:
[41:12] Where's you go in Swing? Axe, Chesty, Pit to Chest to Pit or whatever. Do you remember that from the 90s?

Speaker 2:
[41:19] No.

Speaker 4:
[41:19] When Axe Body Spray was like the big thing to douse boys in there like on TV commercials or just always trying to make it cool.

Speaker 2:
[41:27] Axe Body Spray was and still is the worst invention of all time. I hate it. It smells horrible and people just think they don't have to bathe.

Speaker 4:
[41:36] For men who say they get laid but don't.

Speaker 2:
[41:38] That's exactly what it is. I hate Axe.

Speaker 4:
[41:43] I was always the Axe guy because the Axe busted down certain walls there. I just ended up just keeping it because like you said, they're the ones that leveled up and it takes so long to level up the weapons. There's no point running through the game until you get the weapon leveled up to where you need it to be because you can't. I just end up going back to the spear so often. So I end up grinding so that I can level the weapons up just to carry on with the game before I move forward. For me, that was a little bit of pacing breaking there because I really should be able to level up the weapon. Or if I get a new weapon, it should be strong enough to hold its own until you level it up.

Speaker 2:
[42:22] Yeah, I agree. You get a new weapon and it's basically worthless until it gets leveled up a little bit. And it's just such a slow, fucking tedious grind to fucking level up these fucking weapons. I finally just got to the point where I think it was my lance spear. I got it to the max level and just used it the rest of the game. I was like, it's good enough.

Speaker 4:
[42:41] Well, that's the same thing with the alchemy too though. You have to level that up. You didn't secret a man and you level up the magic by using it. In this game, you level up the alchemy the same way. And again, you have to find ingredients and you run out of ingredients so fast that it becomes almost impossible to really level up your magic to the top level. It happens late in the game when you can finally afford to buy the ingredients for those spells you got back at the beginning of the game.

Speaker 2:
[43:08] Yeah. If you've never played the other half of your combat other than your melee, like you say, is the spells. And the spells are very, you know what? I think like the phrase, in theory, communism works. In theory. I feel like that applies to every single aspect of this game, because like in theory, this combat should be more fun than turn based for somebody like me. But I don't know if it is. In theory, I should like this magic system, because I never use my magic in RPGs, because I always want to conserve my magic points. And in this one, as you gain new spells, their formulas, and then all you have to do is pick up ingredients, and as long as you have enough ingredients, you can use the formulas as much as you want. But for the first half of the game, you have to ration your ingredients, I found, for any of the good spells. And like you mentioned, one of the things you can do with the dog is set it to look for ingredients instead of attack. But that's only useful for like, I don't know about you dude, after about five hours, I'm like, he would sniff somewhere, and he'd be sitting somewhere sniffing, and I'd be mashing B trying to find it. And then I'd get like one ash from mashing, and I'm like, it, I'd rather just fight a bunch of enemies, level up a weapon, and get enough money to go buy ingredients.

Speaker 4:
[44:13] Yeah, that's pretty much how it was for me as well. I first like follow the dog, because, you know, I want to really immerse myself in this game. But after about an hour, it's like, go fucking, fuck yourself, dog. I am not going to go sniff that area, or I'm not going to that area you're sniffing, because it's just annoying me. And then you'd run and he would sniff so goddamn often.

Speaker 2:
[44:32] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[44:33] And in the middle of a fight, he would stop and start sniffing the ground. You're like, kill the guy.

Speaker 2:
[44:38] Yeah. And in the early portion of the game, his looking for ingredients is handy, because it's like, like you've all played an RPG. You know, in the early going, when you go in looking for treasure chests, and you find a treasure chest with like a basic potion in it, and you're like, oh, fuck yeah, because you don't have any supplies yet. So you're like, that's nice. But by a later point of the game, you're like, oh, this doesn't even matter anymore. And it just got to the point where I was like, I have enough ingredients for the like five spells that I give a shit about. Stop looking everywhere. But again, on paper, that should work. And so that's that's my issue with this game was I every I don't think there's a concept in this game that I don't like, but there's very few executions that I loved of them.

Speaker 4:
[45:18] Yeah. You know, like, like you're absolutely right. Like on this is just theoretically the greatest idea of a game you can have. Everything works in idea. But for some reason, once it was put to practice and I have a feeling this is another one of those. We hit the deadline sort of game. We put out what we put out, because I know they did cut a level out of this. But it just feels like it could be polished just a little bit more to get rid of these little I guess I don't know what the word to think of the little inconsistencies with the idea of what they were going for. And combat is definitely one of the big ones is you get into the habit of doing the attack, run away, circle around once you get back to 100% attack again, circle around. Or if you're on a boss, attack, hold, charge, attack, hold, charge, attack, and you just get into that gameplay loop. And it can get very tedious after a while of just repeating this sort of thing, especially when you have to go through the same areas a couple of times. Oh, but the nice thing is eventually you do get up to a level with your weapon where you can just smoke an enemy in one or two shots. And that actually speeds up the game a little bit, but that takes forever to get there sometimes.

Speaker 2:
[46:32] Oh yeah, dude. I had entire sessions of this game where I would just put on a YouTube video or something. I was playing up here in my office, and I put on a baseball game or YouTube or something, and then just grind to level up my weapon. Because once you're leveled, like you said, once your weapon's leveled enough that you can one shot most enemies, now it becomes like... And that sucks too because it's like, well, now the exploration part of the game is fun because I can look around this area because when the enemies pop up, they're not going to take me three minutes each to fight. But it's like also now the combat almost becomes meaningless because I'm just killing them in like one shot.

Speaker 4:
[47:07] That's where somewhere this game could use one of those. If you kill the enemies in an area, they don't come back. There is like another game called Illusion of Gaia that uses that kind of formula. So it's an action RPG and you go through every area and you kill the enemies. And once they're gone, they're gone and it lets you just go back and kind of explore everything and it's a rinse and repeat formula again. But this game could have used that as well because if you accidentally go to the next screen you're like, oh shit, I'm not supposed to be here and you go back, well, every enemy is back on the map.

Speaker 2:
[47:37] Yeah, dude. And the other and so like, I really do understand we're being really negative. I do have some nice things to say about this game, I promise.

Speaker 4:
[47:45] Oh, I love this game.

Speaker 2:
[47:47] But you got to get the venting out of the way. Not only do the enemies fucking come back every time you leave a screen and go back, but my other major gripe with this game is just maze after maze after maze. And I don't mind a maze for a little while, but from the swamp to the sewers to the fucking, the volcano caves with the air vents that shoot you up, to the futuristic part near the end, there's so many times where you go into these fucking mazes, the underground caves in the dark with all the teleporters, and you can just run and, dude, I finally, I don't like to do this until I have to. I finally just hit my breaking point and looked up a walkthrough and wasn't using it religiously, but I used it to help me through, because I was like, dude, these mazes have run their fucking course. Like there's so many of them. Pardon?

Speaker 4:
[48:42] I had a walkthrough going as well. Yeah, there's some spots you just can't figure out without a walkthrough. And I guess if younger days were, you know, I'd come home from school and start playing video games, I'm not sure I had the time, but I don't have the time today to screw around like that. So a walkthrough is not a bad thing to do.

Speaker 2:
[48:56] No, no, no, no. It made it so much more enjoyable to me to just... I would give it an honest try. And then when I was like, okay, I've seen this room eight times. Where the fuck do I have to go? Oh, what part was it? Then I looked it up.

Speaker 4:
[49:07] I think it was in the pyramid or like where you get the two jeweled eyes there. You have to run across a bridge and the bridge collapses behind you. And you're supposed to get like a special item there, like an amulet of something that lets you go faster. And I never got that amulet. And I was running across the bridge and I would always fall at the second last bridge plank that would fall down. And I would have to go back to this cage, fight my way out and go try it again. And I managed to make it across only to turn around and accidentally walk off the cliff again and have to repeat the whole process. That's almost where I threw down the controller and gave up. I was going to call you and say, like, find somebody else.

Speaker 2:
[49:46] No, dude, I agree. There were so many fucking instances. And then every so like you get stuck in these fucking mazes. You know what fucked me was the forest between the two keeps.

Speaker 4:
[49:56] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[49:57] I got lost in there for so long. And then it was like there are these tiny little screens, like some of them don't even move or they barely move. And then you go left, right, up or down, and then it loads up another screen. And then you're like, oh, no, this is a dead end. Go back to when you were just in. But every time you go back, every fucking enemy is back. Until you're leveled up enough to kill them in one shot, then it's, you either, you have two choices, either grind out the combat to level up your weapon or run by them. But if you run by them, then your weapon never levels up and you'll never get good enough to beat them. And it just, like, again, I like the concept of it, but the fucking mazes, why is there so, why is every fucking area of this game a fucking maze? And they're not fun mazes.

Speaker 4:
[50:34] No, and that's kind of a weird thing because Squares is really good at their level design and this one just felt kind of amateurish in comparison.

Speaker 2:
[50:42] It was awful. Like, it felt like they couldn't come up with a way to make an entertaining because, like, the levels themselves are, like, the pyramid is cool. The forest was fine. The spaceship was cool. But when you make them into these fucking boring ass mazes, yeah, it ruins them.

Speaker 4:
[50:57] Yeah, just like you have to randomly figure them out. You don't have anything guiding you. Like, there's no signpost or no hint. Even, like, Super Mario Bros.'s RPG has that endless maze where if you don't go the right path, you just end up repeating screens. But even they had a fun way to figure out how to do that.

Speaker 2:
[51:14] Yeah, like, unless I missed something, I never found a fucking... The only... No, no, no, I didn't, because that didn't work out in the end. There was not one maze where I found, like, an indicator or something to help me.

Speaker 4:
[51:28] No, and that was one of the bigger problems with this game, is unless you started recognizing the part of the map you're in, like, especially, like, the pyramids and that other pyramid-adjacent level you have to do, you got lost so easily. And I can't remember which level it was, but you ended up, like, looping back to the beginning from another direction, and that confused the shit out of me. I didn't know where to go.

Speaker 2:
[51:52] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[51:52] I just ended up running the gauntlet for about an hour before I figured out that I had to leave that area and go to the other side because a door opened.

Speaker 2:
[51:59] Yeah. Yeah. I found... I guess it's a fucking... It feels like we're probably feels like talking out of both sides of the mouth. I'm like, I don't know. I don't hate this game. And then I'm like, the combat fucking sucks. And the mazes fucking suck. I don't... When I'm not fighting or trying to find my way out of somewhere, I really like this.

Speaker 4:
[52:19] Before I hit that load screen there, yeah, it's a good game. Yeah. That's the thing about this game. As much as we're griping about it, in the end, you really did have fun with it. Like, I had a ton of fun with this game, even though there is like when you're in that market there, you have to do all the trading. Well, you have to wait a real life 15 minutes for the game to progress forward. And I didn't know that right away. So I saved in the middle of it. And I had absolutely no idea how long I had left on that thing. So I was like, what the fuck am I supposed to do? And I sat there and I put the controller down, look up a walkthrough and all of a sudden the game moved forward.

Speaker 2:
[52:55] Oh, I didn't know that. I just because I tried to. Yeah. So there's a second one that's not as bad. But there's one part where you get to this fucking market. And when I first got in there, I was like, fuck this. I didn't come back to the game for like two days. And then when I finally did come back, I'm like, I'm just going to suck it up and get it done. And I grabbed my notebook. And there's like because you have currency in the game, but you get to this one market where there's like half a dozen like little like stands at this market where they're selling like bags of rice, jars of spice, beads, perfume, these types of things. And there's only one or two merchants that will take currency and everybody else just wants to trade. So like think like Settlers of Catan maybe. Like so you go and get a bunch of rice, then you go and trade the rice to the guy for the beads. And then this other guy has an item I want and I need three jars of perfume, eight beads to trade for him for this item. And I finally just sat down with a notebook and wrote down how much everything cost, how much everybody wanted for everything, and just grinded my way through. And maybe I just hit it at the right time, but I never realized that there was like a 50. Because I was in there for a while. I never realized it was like an artificial timer. Yeah, maybe just didn't land it when I just, I just happened to go at the right time, I guess, because it just worked for me.

Speaker 4:
[54:07] Well, one of the, I think you don't have to leave the area at the 15-minute timer. I think when the 15-minute timer is up, it triggers the next event. But when I went in there, somebody said they're going to start the Gladiator event or whatever was going on in 15 minutes. And then after that, I just like I found the save point, I saved the game and I came back. And I couldn't find anybody else who would tell me how long. And every time I walked around the town, nothing changed until all of a sudden, like I said, that 15-minute timer was up. And then a message popped up saying that the next event was open. Oh, you got to fight that guy in the little wheelchair there, with the combat wheelchair?

Speaker 2:
[54:46] Yeah, yeah. That was like the easiest boss fight in the game, too.

Speaker 4:
[54:48] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[54:49] Just step aside and then hit him in the back.

Speaker 4:
[54:52] That's how I deal with the real handicap.

Speaker 2:
[54:54] Yeah. Jesus Christ. Send your hate mail to Captain N. But no, it's funny, too, because when I got into that market, I was... Because I hate that in RPGs. One of the things I hate the most about RPGs is every time I get... I hate getting into a new town and then having to do the thing where you go to the armor store and the weapon store and the item store and sell you shit, buy new shit, equip everybody. I know it's not a big deal, but I've never enjoyed that part of RPGs. I'm like, come on, I just want to play the game. So when I got to this one, because you don't do a ton of armor buying in this one. There's only half a dozen times in the game even where you buy new armor, it's really not a big deal.

Speaker 4:
[55:32] Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I never thought about it that way.

Speaker 2:
[55:35] But when you get into this one where you need to trade for these things, I was like, this is going to take forever. And it wasn't that bad. And I actually enjoyed the little puzzle of it by the time I was done. I got everything and I was like, that's pretty rad. But I was like, I hope there's no more of those.

Speaker 4:
[55:50] I ran out of money right away.

Speaker 2:
[55:52] Pardon me?

Speaker 4:
[55:53] I ran out of money right away and I couldn't trade for anything. So I was like, screw it, just walk around the town.

Speaker 2:
[55:57] Oh, dude, I had so much. Maybe it's from grinding up my weapons. I had so much money. About halfway through this game, I had so much money that money was never an issue for the rest of the game. I had like 200,000. It must have just been from grinding my weapons, trying to level them up.

Speaker 4:
[56:12] I kept having to buy healing items and stuff like that. Dog biscuits to revive the stupid dog who'd die every five minutes.

Speaker 2:
[56:18] Yeah, the dog does die a lot.

Speaker 4:
[56:20] That's where most of my money went into that and upgrading my armor when I could and buying ingredients in bulk and trying to level up my alchemy. My alchemy would never level up and finally said, screw it and I had a super strong fireball that's all I ever used.

Speaker 2:
[56:34] Oh, I used a crush, the big fist. That was my ace in the whole magic spell. I think part of the reason I had so much money too was because I did play about the first half of the game without using a walkthrough at all. And so I spent so much time walking around that swamp, bro, that swamp right near the beginning.

Speaker 4:
[56:56] I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2:
[56:57] I must have been in that swamp for three days. Like, I could not figure out where to fuck. And then finally, accidentally, I walked under this lily pad and then a bridge popped up. And I was like, where the fuck has that been the whole time? Like, I was standing right there.

Speaker 4:
[57:13] Literally the exact same thing happened to me. I got stuck in there in the exact same scenario. And I'm not going to repeat it because it's not worth repeating. But just verbatim exactly happened to me as well.

Speaker 2:
[57:24] Fuck me. Okay, now that we've shit on Secret of Evermore for 25 minutes, let's take a break. We'll let a sponsor in so I can keep my bills on. I do have some, as I'm imagining Cap does as well, I have some nice things to say as well. So we'll be a little bit nicer when we return after these messages.

Speaker 3:
[57:46] Okay, kids, show me what you got. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2:
[57:52] Next.

Speaker 4:
[57:54] Yes. Next.

Speaker 2:
[58:03] Next. Next.

Speaker 3:
[58:06] Next. Final Fantasy III. Do you have what it takes? Final Fantasy III from Squaresoft.

Speaker 2:
[58:16] Okay, I know we were pretty hard on it there for 25 minutes. I know I already dropped the classic Simpsons in Theory Communism Works line once, but that really does apply to this game because even though we talked about the kind of grind of leveling up your weapons, and it's nice that you can collect these magic spells, but it's a pain in the ass that you have to have enough ingredients to use the magic spells. Oh, one other gripe too. Having to find somebody to... There was a part near the end of the game where I needed Levitate, and I had unequipped it, because it doesn't do anything else to fucking game. And you can only equip nine spells at a time. And then I needed Levitate, but I unequipped it because I wasn't using it. Then I got to this dungeon and found out I needed Levitate, and then I had to hoof it all. You can't just fucking bring up your menus and change the spells you have equipped. You got to leave and go back and find somebody that gives you the option to switch your spells. I hate that fucking system.

Speaker 4:
[59:07] Then he tries to whore out some product to you as well. Like, oh, you like what I did for you? I don't buy stuff.

Speaker 2:
[59:12] Yeah, like, I fucking, I genuinely don't. I get what they were trying to do with the combat. I get what they were trying to do with the mazes. I get the alchemy system. I don't even hate that system.

Speaker 4:
[59:24] No, it's actually pretty good.

Speaker 2:
[59:25] Yeah, it's a cool idea. But like, why not just let me keep all my spells equipped?

Speaker 4:
[59:29] You know what? I wish you could hot button your favorite spell to like the L or R button on the controller. Yeah, because going into that ring was nice in the fact that it did pause the game for a second to let you catch your breath. But at the same time, it was another thing that really slowed down the combat.

Speaker 2:
[59:47] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Secret of Mana was the same. If you've not played it, the menu system isn't like a classic Final Fantasy pause and then use the arrow to pick what you want. You bring up like a wheel around your character and then you can rotate to different wheels. So it's like if you want to use spells, then you need to bring up the wheel around the kid, then fucking scroll through your wheels till you find the spell wheel, then scroll through the wheel till you find the spell you want. And it really, considering it's trying to be an action RPG, that those menus really slow down the flow of the game.

Speaker 4:
[60:18] It does so badly. And I don't know why, but if you close the menu, you're always supposed to be able to open it up on the same one. But it always felt like I'd open it up on to the one I didn't need and I always hit the wrong direction to go to the spells. Yeah, yeah, it was, it's not game breaking for me. Like, like I said, I really do enjoy this game and the alchemy was a lot of fun. I just the leveling up of the spells was what I didn't like about the game. Actually, I didn't like the grindiness of this game in order to just become slightly useful.

Speaker 2:
[60:52] Yeah, there's like grinding is just part of classic RPGs, but the grinding in this is just so slow. It's more, I would argue it's more, what's the word I'm looking for? Like it's a little bit more entertaining as opposed to like JRPG grinding where it's just like tap attack, tap attack, tap attack, wake. But it's so slow, it's such a process. And I agree, those menus aren't game breaking, but they are just, they're just annoying menus. Like why not just let me pause? Like just let me pause and go to like a menu with arrows instead of those fucking wheels. I hate that, I hate it in Manitou, I hate that magic system. But I do like the spell system. I like the idea that as you meet people, like you don't level up and learn new magic spells. As you meet people, they give you formulas to different alchemy. And it all comes down to how many ingredients you have. And like, if you have enough ingredients to cast a spell over and over and over, there is no magic points. You can just keep casting the spell over and over and over. And I really thought that was a cool take. And in the beginning, when you don't have a lot of ingredients, and you've only got like the hardball spell and the flare spell, I think, or some shit, every time you find a couple more ingredients that give you one more casting of your spell, like, it feels like a big deal. And I really enjoyed that concept.

Speaker 4:
[62:07] Yeah, it definitely made you kind of ration it a lot. And I did like getting your new spells from talking to people that really encourage you to go around and actually talk to everybody in town, because some of the most random people will give you the next spell. And there's a couple of ones you had to find to move forward. Like, there's the reveal spell to find the path across the pit. And then, like you said, the levitate spell. So I really wish those ones were along your path. I think the reveal one was, but I think the teleport or not, sorry, levitate one, you had to kind of veer off and talk to somebody you probably otherwise would not talk to. If I remember.

Speaker 2:
[62:44] Yeah. Yeah. That was a little bit of a nuisance. And then, like we said, you can only equip nine formulas at a time, which I don't understand because you want to use your nine, your spell slots for stuff like attack spells, healing spells, like that kind of stuff. But there's these other spells which like, like I'm playing Pokemon Leaf Green right now. There's a couple of spells in this game, which you can equate to like your HMs in Pokemon. Like you're not going to use them a ton, but you need to have them at certain times. And I would get to the point where the combat's getting tough, so I would swap out my spells and drop a couple of those like spells that just are used to reveal hidden bridges or lift up big boulders. Then when I run into a place where I need the spell to reveal a hidden bridge or lift a boulder, I basically can't pass until I walk back, leave the dungeon, go back to... And it's not like you just leave the dungeon, can switch your spells. You literally need to find a village that'll let you switch out your spells. And not every village even has someone that'll let you switch your spells. And it's like, why, like you mentioned, if not a hotkey, just let me pause and pick nine of my formulas to put on the wheel and I can rotate those in and out.

Speaker 4:
[63:46] Yeah. And did you ever use the call beads to call in the main characters here, like Elizabeth or Horace and all them?

Speaker 2:
[63:52] I forgot I had them till right near the end of the game. And then I started using them.

Speaker 4:
[63:56] Same like they give it to you and they show Elizabeth, the first one, Fire Eyes there. She explains to you what you're supposed to do with it. It was the same way. It's like, OK, this is great. And then forgot about it right until the end, because it's not like the call bead is just right in your face. It's inside of like one of the wheels and you have to go inside of items and you got to use it.

Speaker 2:
[64:16] Oh, it's just that fucking menu system, man. It's so ridiculous. So we said we're going to be nicer to this game. But like, OK, all the things we've just dunked on being said, again, in theory, I like the ideas. I like the alchemy idea. I like the active combat. I like all that kind of stuff. I think when it comes down to it, my favorite thing about Secret of Evermore is that it's just about a boy and his dog. And that's just such a pure party for an RPG.

Speaker 4:
[64:46] I love how he constantly quotes like these fake B-movies as he goes through. It's like Command or something and the adventures of Command or something. And it's just like that is pointless, but that is just so great.

Speaker 2:
[64:59] Yeah, it's got some humor. Like, I really don't know how old the kid is. I should have looked it up.

Speaker 4:
[65:04] He's probably six.

Speaker 2:
[65:06] I don't think he's that young.

Speaker 4:
[65:09] No, but he's a teenager for sure.

Speaker 2:
[65:10] Yeah, like he's a, you know, he's definitely not like an old man. Yeah, he's like, I would guess he's like a 12 or 13 year old teenager. But anyway, it's literally just him and his dog for this whole game. And very early on in the game, they basically get pulled into this alternate dimension, and they're trying to find their way home, and they're slowly running into other people from their home that have been pulled into this dimension. And it's really, I think it's one of the stronger points of the game is the writing and seeing this kid interact with these people that find him odd but still deal with him. And then the whole time, your one serious friend is your dog. Your dog is just always with you, and every time you go to a new area, your dog transforms into a different kind of dog. And I think that's such a great concept.

Speaker 4:
[65:52] That was an outstanding concept, especially with every time the boy explains it to somebody else, he's just like, he's not feeling himself today. It's just like the constant running theme with the dog. And yeah, he starts out as like, we go prehistoria, then you go to the Roman times, and you go to the medieval times, and you go to the future. I think those are the four levels.

Speaker 2:
[66:11] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[66:12] If I remember correctly. But yeah, he starts out as like a big wolf, and then he's like a Jack Russell, not Jack Russell. What's those really skinny looking dogs?

Speaker 2:
[66:21] Like Santa's little helper.

Speaker 4:
[66:22] Yeah, Santa's little helper. And then what is it? He's a poodle, which I love. I friggin love the poodle.

Speaker 2:
[66:29] He's a pink poodle with like the poofy hair and everything.

Speaker 4:
[66:32] Yeah, and he keeps standing on his back legs and walking away off screen with people because he'd always follow somebody else.

Speaker 2:
[66:37] Yeah. And then at the end, he's like a robot dog that can fly and shoot lasers, which is fucking awesome.

Speaker 4:
[66:43] Yeah, I was outstanding. I ended up finishing, well, not finishing the game, but I ended up fighting the last boss with laser back dog, and he had like the full charge, and that thing, that hit hard.

Speaker 2:
[66:52] Oh, buddy, by about the halfway point of the game, I found that between how long it took me to recharge my weapons and just the fact that I would charge up, oh, would it not be frustrating when you charge up a weapon and then go to attack and miss, and you'd be like, God damn it, now you gotta wait.

Speaker 4:
[67:06] Yeah, it happened to me so often. The first time I got the spear. Yeah, the first time I got the spear, I got to level one on the spear, and I had to fight that swamp monster, the one that poked his head out of the swamp in three different locations, and I would run up, and I would throw the spear and completely miss him, and I was just like, fuck!

Speaker 2:
[67:25] Oh, it felt like it gave me flashbacks to XCOM, like the amount of times I missed my fucking attacks. I was like, that should have it, but your dog just turns into such a beast, and so very early on in the game, even my dog got powerful, and I would always just set my dogs, because you can set their attack level at zero, one, two, or three, how much you want them to charge up. I would always just set it to the highest number, and I would just set it all the way to attack versus look for ingredients or attack, and he would just kill everything. He was just my MVP. My goal was healing the dog, and just letting him do all the heavy lifting. And you mentioned it, dude. I think one of the greatest things about this game is when you're in a village or wherever you are, your dog goes off and smells things on its own, or will lay down and take a nap, and it really does feel like you're just a kid and his dog walking through this town or this game. And I've never played another game where I had a dog as cool as the dog in this one, I don't think.

Speaker 4:
[68:19] Yeah, outside of the dog dying all the time, I mean, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having the dog around when he fights. Like you said, he gets powerful. Oh, so it's just kind of it's great when you're sitting there swinging at an enemy and like you miss. And all of a sudden the dog comes in and finishes them off and you're just like, fuck, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[68:35] Yeah. And that you share XP.

Speaker 4:
[68:38] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[68:39] Like the dog will kill people. And then it'll be like because I named the kid Hoju, of course. And so and Millie was the dog. So Millie would kill somebody and they'd be like, Hoju gained a level. And I'd be like, oh, fucking hey, good job, Millie. The only problem was that when you were trying to level up your weapon, that's the one time I'd go into my dog. Like there was one part near the end of the game where you're going between the two castles where I got a hold of the lance, my new spear. And I was just grinding against the mice trying to like level it up. And it was I killed the mice in one hit, but I kept missing them. But then Millie kept killing them. And I finally had to turn Millie's like thing down. And I was like, would you just stop eating mice? Like, I need these for experience points, buddy. Let's get out of my way for two minutes.

Speaker 4:
[69:18] I go sniff your ass. Yeah, I don't have anything to add to that. The dog is literally the best part of this game. And the relationship between the dog and the boy is really good.

Speaker 2:
[69:31] Yeah, it's very pure. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. You mentioned it earlier. I like the boy's sense of humor. Like he's always referencing like, this is just like these stupid scenes from these stupid movies and stuff like that. And I enjoyed that. I thought that was really cool.

Speaker 4:
[69:45] Yeah, that was really good writing.

Speaker 2:
[69:46] It was really good writing. And the way that some of these people would interact with the boy and the dog and just be like, you guys are fucking weird. And they would just blatantly call it out. Oh, I already mentioned in the intro, spoilers are on the table. Dude, about three quarters of the way through the game, I go into this fucking inn at this old castle and it's Cecil is the. And it's straight up Cecil from Final Fantasy IV.

Speaker 4:
[70:11] That's not even hinted at.

Speaker 2:
[70:13] No, just straight up admits it's him. Like mentions Rosa and everything.

Speaker 4:
[70:19] And it's from Baron.

Speaker 2:
[70:20] And it's like, yeah, that got me. I was like, oh, sick. That kind of pop.

Speaker 4:
[70:24] If you acknowledge him, he gives you a discount on the stuff he sells you.

Speaker 2:
[70:30] Yeah, I thought that was so fucking sick. That I really maybe I'm maybe I'm overthinking it. But like you mentioned, this was a North American developed game. And I, I can't help but wonder if part of the reason the writing is so solid in this one is because there's no translation issues like there normally is.

Speaker 4:
[70:50] I never thought about it that way. But when I was reading the wiki earlier, it said it was a young team that was developing the game. So I kind of wonder on a different side of that, if it was just like a bunch of young people passionate to make a game that would stand out. Could be.

Speaker 2:
[71:05] Yeah. Like it's, it's, it's almost got just like a, just a hint of Earthbound to it, just with the humor and some of the writing and stuff like that in it. So I really enjoyed that. I love seeing it with the dog. I will also say graphically, the game looks incredible.

Speaker 4:
[71:23] Amazing. Like this is one of the best games on the Super Nintendo graphically.

Speaker 2:
[71:27] Yeah. It's, it's the classic sprites, but they're like more along the line of like Chrono Trigger, obviously Secret of Mana sprites. They're much bigger. They're brighter. They're colorful. All the characters did very detailed. All the characters were super detailed. The backgrounds, the environments, even the enemies. Like, I thought I'll hear an argument that maybe the enemies got a little bit too. When you fight, when you fight those flying skeleton bats.

Speaker 4:
[71:52] Oh, I fucking hate those things.

Speaker 2:
[71:54] Me too. Me too. And it's like, OK, I've fought about 400 of you. Each area has like three enemies. So you do get sick of seeing the same enemies. But to their credit, the sprites for each of those three enemies look fantastic.

Speaker 4:
[72:05] Oh, absolutely. And then when they're killing me because they're flying and they're hard to hit, and especially on that chessboard area and by the forest here talking about between the two castles, it's fucking trying to run through that. And you got like four of them swarming you. And you're trying to swing at them and you keep missing, which means keep having to let your goddamn sword recharge to 100% so you can swing again. And then you try to run away and then whoops, that knocks that down to 0%. So now you got to wait for that to recharge again. Oh, man. Another point, I almost threw the controller in the garbage and walked away from video games.

Speaker 2:
[72:37] Yeah, I agree. That was really frustrating.

Speaker 4:
[72:40] But that was that one specific part. I don't want to qualify that that's not something game-wise. That was just literally that one specific part. That's why I'm shitting on it right now.

Speaker 2:
[72:49] For sure. And while we're talking about the sprites and stuff, I'll give a massive tip to the... I got to say, I found most of the boss fights very boring. Like I would keep my distance and just keep using magic for the most part. But the bosses, like the bosses themselves, obviously, or at least in my opinion, the coolest looking one is that giant red spider thing from the cover of the game. I remember its name now.

Speaker 4:
[73:13] You fight him twice, right?

Speaker 2:
[73:14] Yeah, you fight like an evil purple version later. But like I thought most of the bosses in this game looked really fucking cool.

Speaker 4:
[73:21] Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:
[73:22] Like they're just so bright and colorful.

Speaker 4:
[73:26] Yeah, no, actually none of the bosses... I'm trying to think of the one I like the most. Which one was it? You know, you better talk for a minute here while I think real hard.

Speaker 2:
[73:36] Well, I really liked that red spider thing at the beginning. I thought that was such a cool looking boss. And then I really liked the serpent you fought in the swamp. I thought he looked awesome. The only problem with that was dog was almost useless. Dog basically just killed the fireballs he'd launch at you. Well, I'd run around and charge up my spear to fucking throw at him. But I thought he was a pretty cool boss too. And then that fucking dragon you fight at the top of the tower is a really great fight until about the 20th time that the dragon picks you up. And it doesn't even hurt you. It just picks you up and drops you off the side of this tower. And then you have to hook it back up and fight it more. And it like, fortunately, its health doesn't like reset every time it drops you or anything. But like, it reminds me of in Link to the Past, when you fight that giant snake, and it bumps into you and knocks you down a floor, and you just have to hike back up. And after about the 20th time you've been knocked down, you're like, this is you're not even killing me. You're just doing this to irritate me. Like stop it. So I do like that boss too.

Speaker 4:
[74:36] Yeah, that one knocked me off that tower a few times there. And eventually I just got frustrated. But luckily, it doesn't heal unlike the boss from Legend of Zelda. It doesn't heal when you get knocked off.

Speaker 2:
[74:46] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[74:47] So you can just like you motherfucker and climb back up the stairs all huffy and stuff and take a few more hits off him before he does it again.

Speaker 2:
[74:55] Yeah, you just keep you just keep wearing them down.

Speaker 4:
[74:58] Yeah, it just basically like Sideshow Bob walking into the rakes.

Speaker 2:
[75:01] Yeah, spot on. Yeah. The one boss that gave me trouble, I don't think I've talked about this yet. I should probably mention the reason I didn't finish the game. I think at this point, most of you that are listening to the show, you've never listened to the show before, welcome, and thank you for listening. I don't always finish the games for the shows, but I do my best. If I don't finish it, I at least eat, I eat enough that you're like, okay, you can leave the table, you ate most of your dinner. I eat a lot of it. I play a lot. I got right to the near the end of this one. But the last area you're in in this game is this futuristic, I don't know, lab, spaceship, I don't know what the it is.

Speaker 4:
[75:35] Space station, they call it.

Speaker 2:
[75:37] Yeah, space station. It's another one of those fucking mazes where there's all these tunnels you have to go through, and then there's all these hatches you can go in that'll take you underground. You got to find the right hatches and the right tunnels and keep going. And you can't save anytime you want in this game, which is a drawback to playing retro games, especially I played this one on my SNES. Like I have the physical cartridge for my collection. I can't just save whenever I want. I got to save when I find somebody who's like, do you want me to record your progress for you? And dude, once I got to the space station, if there's a save point in there somewhere, I never found one. I never found one. And I played for almost two hours and then got to this fight where I had to fight these two skull heads on two pillars. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 4:
[76:21] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[76:21] And they killed me because one of the things, I didn't die in this game very often. The dog can die all they want. The boy dies, it's over. I didn't die very often because a lot of the time you'll get hit by something and then all you need to do is bring up your items and then either use a healing item or cast a healing spell. You're invincible while you're using it. Then I have enough health to weather another attack and it's fine. But these two fucking skulls happened to hit me with two or three attacks in a row. It killed me. Then when the game reloaded, I wasn't even in the space station yet. I was back an hour and a half of progress. This was yesterday. This was Sunday because we were recording this on Monday. I have enjoyed my time with this game, but I was like, this is it. I'm not spending two hours to get back here to try again.

Speaker 4:
[77:05] Yeah, it definitely breaks me. I was using save states because I was playing on a ROM, but that's my only saving grace because it took me a couple of times to run through the space station there to get to the end. Then I finally got to the final boss and the butler robot guy you have to fight. I was using the dog and I was doing pretty good. Then he wiped me out and I was just like, you know what, I'm satisfied. I've had my fill and YouTube exists, so I'm just going to go watch the ending. Not much more I can do after killing that boss, except for see what the ending is.

Speaker 2:
[77:36] Yeah. Same. I got very close. Then when I died, I was like, dude, I don't have time for this. I'm good. I like this game, but obviously, the kid and his dog are going to make it home. You know what I mean? It's not that the story is bad, but this isn't Final Fantasy 6, where you're near the end and Kefka's destroyed everything, and you're like, I got to see what the fuck happens. This is just a guy and his dog trying to get home.

Speaker 4:
[78:03] Yeah, and I do like the story there, since we're going all spoilery and stuff. All four of the, well, I think I have three out of four because the fourth one's the doctor that got to transport it there, but three of them, they all have robotic twins created by the evil butler, and they're the ones trying to cause the demise of the people from Podunk, which is the town the boy comes from. I lost my train of thought here all in a second. It's back on track. All right. So as the evil robots try to take over the land so that they can become part of, like, you know, they take over Evermore, at the end of the game, after they're all gone, Evermore starts destroying itself and you have to go back and grab. Well, you don't have to. It's a cut scene, but you go back and you grab the three people from Podunk and you take them back with you to stabilize the whole thing. And that's how the game ends.

Speaker 2:
[78:56] That's a cool ending.

Speaker 4:
[78:58] It was a great turnaround because it's not really a happy ending if you think about it because all these people who go to Evermore and the different worlds you're in are based around the imaginations of like Fire Eyes or Horus, the guy who loved Egyptian stuff or the fat lady who wanted to be queen. And now that the world is being destroyed, they lose all their dreams of a world that they created out of their minds. So it's not really a happy ending. As they go back to a podunk, they don't remember.

Speaker 2:
[79:30] Oh, OK.

Speaker 4:
[79:31] Because if you remember, the whole game starts like, if you watch the opening cut scene, the whole game starts in the past, like let's say 1950. And then by the time the boy comes around, it's 1980 something.

Speaker 2:
[79:41] Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Man, maybe I should have fit. Well, you know what? I would have finished you if you hadn't fucked me with those two heads and cost me two hours of playtime. And you know what? I want to make it clear when we put a score on it, I'm not going to take any points off for killing me and me losing those two hours. All that is, is I've been spoiled by modern games with my checkpoint every three seconds. It's harder now. Like as a kid, I would die like that. I would turn it off. And then the next day I'd be like, well, this is the game I'm playing. I'm going back.

Speaker 4:
[80:09] Yeah, I can't afford any more games, so might as well.

Speaker 2:
[80:12] Yeah. Yeah. But like nowadays, I'm like, I don't know. I don't have two hours of patience anymore. You've had a that's it. That's your last straw. But but that's cool, though. I like I like that. And again, like the story. Like, could the story have been deeper throughout? Yeah, probably. Because at the end of the day, it's basically like a fetch quest game. Like go and get the two crystal eyes for us. We'll help you get home. Go and get these parts for the ship. We'll help you get home.

Speaker 4:
[80:36] I think the story was deep enough for what they're trying to go for. It kind of like the way the boy talked. You expected kind of a cheesiness to the story, and it really delivered on that. It was done very well.

Speaker 2:
[80:49] I don't disagree with that. The story did its job. I mean, when you compare it to, say, a Chrono Trigger or a Final Fantasy VI, it's certainly not layers of storytelling, but it's fine. It gave me a reason to keep playing. And at the end of the day, I love dogs, and there's a boy and his dog, and I was like, all right, I want to see these two get home. And despite the fact that I do feel like I've dunked on this game a lot, I really did enjoy my time playing it. So if you've not played this one yet and listening to this, maybe has you intrigued or anything.

Speaker 4:
[81:21] If you haven't shut off the podcast yet after we shit on it for 25 minutes.

Speaker 2:
[81:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you like RPGs, it's definitely worth a try. If you like Secret of Mana, I can't recommend playing this one enough because they're twins. It's definitely very... And like I said, I actually like this one. I like the setting more than Secret of Mana. I like the boy and his dog more than I like the three characters of Secret of Mana. There was a lot of aspects of this game. That's what I have written down here. You know what the big note I have written down here in the circle is? I almost like everything about this game. But there's like every single aspect of this game has one crack in it. That I just am like, that's the part that bothers me.

Speaker 4:
[82:00] Yeah. And it's just like we've been saying, like even though we're dumping on the game, for some reason, this game is a ton of fun. Like I always found myself wanting to go back to it. Even after I got frustrated, you know, you turn it off, you walk away for an hour or so. And it's like, am I really done with it? Then you go back and you play some more of the game. You get past that part and you get that little dopamine dump and you just carry on. The game is just pure fun, even with all of its little bumps and nicks in the gameplay.

Speaker 2:
[82:27] Yeah. Where it shines, like where this game shines is, this is as good of like put on a podcast, preferably Remember The Game, but whatever show you want, like put on a podcast or a YouTube video or like, I was playing it in my office on my CRT. So I had my computers here and I had like, I'd put a hockey game on or a baseball game on or whatever. Because there is a lot of mindless grinding at parts. But as long as you're like, the good thing about it is that like that combat loop isn't when you're not going on a streak where you constantly miss and everything, like the combat loop is fine. Leveling up your magic spells is fine.

Speaker 4:
[83:01] You start to figure out patterns as well.

Speaker 2:
[83:03] There's not a ton of, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I found, and this is a pro in my book, not a ton of exploration.

Speaker 4:
[83:13] No, every area is pretty much open when it needs to be. Outside of trying to figure out little things like using the dog to jump a bridge and bring back the platform in that one part or something like that, it's pretty much cut and dry. You're headed to this area, go through this maze, get frustrated at the maze, get through the maze, carry the story forward, go through the next maze and so forth and so on.

Speaker 2:
[83:34] Yeah. There's not a ton of, like a hidden floating island of monsters to go fight, get big summons and like that kind of stuff, you know? It basically tells you where to go. Like Eli said, it gives you a reason to explore and talk to people because you'll find some extra spells and things, but there's nothing too crazy to find.

Speaker 4:
[83:51] There's a couple off the beaten path areas you can go to for sure, but it's not mandatory to finish the game.

Speaker 2:
[83:56] No, no. So like, that's what I mean. I liked the combat, but I did find it a little bit slow at times. I liked the spell system, but I found it in knowing that I couldn't equip all my spells at once and I'd have to walk back and get different ones. I liked the different areas very much, but I found the constant reliant on mazes so annoying. Every part of it, I liked like 80% and then there was just one bad apple in each bag. And at the end of the day, what it boils down to, I think my biggest gripe with this game is the mazes. It's just nonstop. And the only thing I can think of is that they were like, if we don't make all these different areas into mazes, then someone's going to beat this in like six hours. Like you almost, the game almost requires you to walk around the mazes lost and keep fighting the same enemies to make sure you're not underleveled as you go on through the game. Yeah, like it almost forces you to grind without just because you don't know where else to go.

Speaker 4:
[84:48] Yeah, that's inherently not a bad thing, force you to grind without letting you know you're grinding because you think you have a goal in mind.

Speaker 2:
[84:55] Yeah, it just it does hit a point and that fucking forest or that fucking swamp at the beginning, it does hit a point sometimes where you're stuck in some of these mazes and you're just like, all right, I want out of this fucking maze now. Yeah, like, where the fuck? Please let me out of here.

Speaker 4:
[85:08] So especially when you're running around the same area and you've actually killed all the enemies in the area and you're like, just where the fuck do I go? And then it turns out you have to go back to where you started to carry on.

Speaker 2:
[85:18] Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, 100%. Oh, fuck me. Or you'd like or bad or you'd kill a bunch of enemies. And I don't know if this ever happened to you. And then you get hit by one enemy. And that kid would do that massive knockback that he does. And you get knocked out of a fucking screen.

Speaker 4:
[85:34] Oh, God. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[85:35] And then have to like come back into the screen. But now all the fucking enemies are back. It's like, God damn it.

Speaker 4:
[85:41] That's why I always made sure my back was not against a like a screen changing area.

Speaker 2:
[85:47] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[85:47] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that was number one tactic for me right there. I take a few hits to get on the other side of an enemy if I had to.

Speaker 2:
[85:54] Yeah, because fuck, it would be so frustrating when you get knocked out of one. Oh, my God. Um, I don't know. I think I think I would probably have made it sound like we like this game less than we do. But every single aspect of it. Oh, dude, sorry. A couple more quick ones. Why can't you carry more than six of a fucking item? Yeah, you can carry six dog biscuits which revive your dog. But once you're out of six dog biscuits, better hope you've learned the revive spell or else your dog's just not helping you anymore and then you're just. Why can't I carry like why six? Like what an odd number, six. That's not very many. there was one other thing I was going to vent about. Now I remember what it was. It doesn't matter. I do like the game. I know I vented a lot. It's just like before we score it, I'm not a big RP. What were you saying?

Speaker 4:
[86:45] I do have actually something like we didn't talk about the music here and it's something really neat I found when I was again looking through the Wiki. Do you know who Jeremy Soul is?

Speaker 2:
[86:54] No.

Speaker 4:
[86:55] He's the guy who did the Elder Scrolls music from 3-5. He did Cotor as well as a bunch of Harry Potter games. This was his first game. He's actually pretty famous for that Dragonborn song.

Speaker 2:
[87:07] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[87:08] So yeah, he made the music in this game because he was still in high school. They hired him and he did the music in the way he did it because he was just so tired of music not being very atmospheric to what the game was trying to portray.

Speaker 2:
[87:23] I really like the music in this game. It's good.

Speaker 4:
[87:25] It's fantastic and Jeremy Sol is one of the best composers in video games today.

Speaker 2:
[87:30] Yeah, it's tight. There's a lot of areas where you are going to be stuck in areas like going around in circles. I never found, admittedly, sometimes I'd put a podcast on but it wasn't because I was sick of listening to the music. I needed something to keep my attention while I was grinding, that's all. But yeah, the music is very good. It's very polished, it played well. I never ran into any game-breaking bugs, it never crashed, it was never broken. What was that fucking RPG? Lufia II? Lufia II?

Speaker 4:
[87:57] Oh yeah, Lufia II.

Speaker 2:
[87:59] Cool game, but broken as fuck. And this one, as advertised, everything it did, it was what it was supposed to do. It's just there was a lot of like, we'll never get a remake. I don't even think Square acknowledges that this game exists anymore.

Speaker 4:
[88:17] It never came out in Japan, and if it doesn't come out in Japan, it's gone to history.

Speaker 2:
[88:21] Yeah, and it's too bad because this is one that could really use. I don't need a Final Fantasy VII remake, but just like the remaster and just a lot of those quality. So many Final Fantasies and stuff have had the little quality of life improvement things, and if you give me the chance to save whenever I want and just clean a couple of things up, this game is like, it's a really fun, it's a really cool game that most people haven't played.

Speaker 4:
[88:43] This is a perfect game for Square to pluck on to like the Nintendo Switch Online, because it's not popular enough that they can do a remake and get big numbers out of it, but it's popular enough that if they threw it on there, they would draw some eyes to it.

Speaker 2:
[88:56] I agree. Yeah, I'd love to see this one added to Switch Online or something, because if you're listening to this, this is one of the Super Nintendo RPGs you haven't played. I don't consider myself all that knowledgeable when it comes to RPGs, certainly not as knowledgeable as old Cap here. I know the heavy hitters, your Final Fantasies, your Chrono Triggers, your Earth Bounds, your Mario RPGs. I don't think Secret of Evermore is as good as any of them, but I think this is one of the higher end mediocre presidents. Like one of the lesser Super Nintendo, guess that reference. This is one of the better, like lesser known RPGs on the SNES.

Speaker 4:
[89:33] Yeah. This is one you saw in the rental store and you just saw the Squaresoft on the bottom. You're like, yeah, why not?

Speaker 2:
[89:38] Yeah. I do recommend giving it a chance, particularly if you've heard or if you've played mana and liked it. If you like mana, I can't imagine you wouldn't like this one. Maybe not quite as much, but like I said, I liked it a little more personally.

Speaker 4:
[89:51] Yeah. But just be warned, this is not a Secret of Mana tie-in or sequel game. It's its own story using the Secret of Mana engine.

Speaker 2:
[89:58] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[89:58] Don't get caught like I did.

Speaker 2:
[90:00] No. We're just saying like exact same engine with those stupid circular menus and the real-time combat and stuff like that. But it's fun. I'll thank everyone that voted this through to win the 2026 March Madness Tournament because this is one that I've been wanting to do for the show for years and years. Because I played it as a kid, never finished it and always wanted to go back. I bought myself a physical copy to have in my SNES collection. I don't regret buying the physical copy. I could see myself firing this one up again. I put this one, it's much better, but I put it in the same category as Dragon Warrior 1 on the NES. That game is one of my all-time favorite games when I just need to shut off, because I just grind and just listen to music. I feel like that's what a replay of this would be. That's not a bad thing. I'll be keeping it. I'm happy it's in my collection. I enjoyed it. Despite the fact that I spent most of the episode, there wasn't one aspect of this game that I genuinely hated. It's just every aspect of it had something about it that I hated.

Speaker 4:
[91:00] We're always hardest on the ones we love the most.

Speaker 2:
[91:02] That's right. It's a cool game. I liked it more than I think I let on in this episode. Are we good to score? Are you okay?

Speaker 4:
[91:10] I think we are, and I came up with an arbitrary scoring system for you.

Speaker 2:
[91:14] I love it. What do you got?

Speaker 4:
[91:15] So it takes 64 kills to level up a weapon to level two, and 128 to level up from two to three.

Speaker 2:
[91:21] Okay, so out of 64, 128 or three?

Speaker 4:
[91:27] Out of three. It's good, it's okay, it's bad. That's your three choices.

Speaker 2:
[91:34] I'll give it a two out of three. It's pretty good.

Speaker 4:
[91:36] I'll give it a 2.87956.

Speaker 2:
[91:39] Yeah, let's go at 128. I like that number.

Speaker 4:
[91:43] Yeah, it's a good and bad number to use. Am I going first or you?

Speaker 2:
[91:48] Guest always eats first.

Speaker 4:
[91:49] Okay, okay, okay. All right. So I'll just find my score here. I guess everything we've said is pretty much valid. But I don't know, every few years I get a little itch to play this game again. And every few years I get to that first bug boss and I forget how to beat himself. It feels like a new game all over again every time I play it. I'm going to score this pretty high. I'm going to give it about 115. So it's not the perfect game. It's definitely not like right at the top of my RPG list, especially for the Super Nintendo. But it is definitely something I've really enjoyed playing. I think I played about four or five times now and beaten it once when I was young. But it is just pure fun. And that's the only way I want to describe it because everything negatively said is just something that you really let marinate after the fact, not while you're playing it.

Speaker 2:
[92:44] Yeah, I agree with that. It's ironic that we're always hardest of the ones we love. Kind of genuinely is true because there's not a single thing about this game that I hate. I just don't think there's anything it does perfectly. And because I like the concept, I want it to be perfect and it's not. I'll give it a 105 out of 128. It's very good. If you're like, yo, I've never played an RPG on the SNES, is this where I start? Absolutely not. Like go and play Earthbound and Chrono Trigger and the Final Fantasy and Mario RPG. Go and play the heavy hitters. But once you're through all the all-time classics and you're like, I need more, this one's worth giving a chance. I don't think this is one that'd be for everybody. I could see a hardcore JRPG are not enjoying this one as much, but I quite enjoyed this one. It's cool. 105.

Speaker 4:
[93:35] Yeah. If you're in the turn-based combat type of JRPG, this definitely isn't for you. If you like the action games like Zeldas or Illusion of Gaia or stuff like that, where you have the RPG elements, but you still have the action elements, then this definitely is right up your alley.

Speaker 2:
[93:51] Sure. Yeah. Well said. I agree. Good. Very good game. I feel glad to finally have it done. I feel like this has been 30 years of me wanting to play Secret of Evermore, and I finally have done it. So yeah, holy fuck, October 17, 1995. So it is, holy fuck, this game will be 31 this year.

Speaker 4:
[94:09] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[94:09] Jesus Christ, we're old, buddy.

Speaker 4:
[94:11] And there's no 30th anniversary release. God damn you.

Speaker 2:
[94:15] No, I swear, this is one of those games where I'm like, have you ever heard the rumor? There was a rumor for a long time that Capcom lost the master files of the Game Boy Mega Man games.

Speaker 4:
[94:27] Don't think I've ever heard that.

Speaker 2:
[94:29] Yeah. There was something like that going around because they were going to, I remember there were advertisements in magazines for a legacy collection of the Game Boy ones and it never came out or something. It was like everyone thinking rumors that they had lost the master file. Now obviously they're on Switch Online, so maybe they did lose them and they found them. I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[94:44] Maybe they just downloaded a ROM.

Speaker 2:
[94:46] Yeah, they downloaded ROMs and yeah. What did that be funny? Yeah, I don't want to, that would be very funny. But that's almost what it feels like with this game with Square. It's like, you know what though? it kind of feels like that with Chrono Trigger too. Like how Chrono Trigger has it been? I get not putting on Nintendo Switch online because you can sell it. How that game is not for sale everywhere. I have no fucking idea.

Speaker 4:
[95:10] No idea. Yeah, I know. It's like a slap in the face to anybody who's a Chrono Trigger fan.

Speaker 2:
[95:15] Yeah, I don't get it. Whereas this one, I think they genuinely maybe did lose the man like I just because they just have decided this game doesn't exist anymore. It's just dead.

Speaker 4:
[95:24] Yeah, they don't even acknowledge it.

Speaker 2:
[95:26] No. So you're either going to have to emulate it or buy yourself a copy. It's not the most expensive game on the SNES. It's not free, but it's not like earthbound prices or anything.

Speaker 4:
[95:36] And you got to be careful if you emulate it because a lot of the ROMs don't work halfway through.

Speaker 2:
[95:41] Yeah, and that's something I wanted to mention. With the disclaimer of like, if Adam says something doesn't work on a computer, there's an above average chance it does work. And I just don't know. But I did, I've tried to play this one and emulate it a couple of times. Because this is one of those ones. My stance on emulation is if the rights holder is not selling it and my only way to play it is emulate it or buy it at the flea market, then emulate away. Because I'm not taking any money out of the owner's pockets. I tried to emulate this one and I could never get the ROM to work properly. So to hear you say that makes me feel a little bit better.

Speaker 4:
[96:15] It took me a long time to find an actually stable working ROM. I had to look all over the internet. Some places I don't even want to mention live on a podcast.

Speaker 2:
[96:24] Yes. Yeah, don't sue us. It's selling these days for between 60 and 70 Canadian. So like 50 bucks American. And yeah, I probably spent 60 bucks on it. I have no regrets. It was $60. It was fun. I enjoyed it for 60 bucks. Good shit, buddy. Thanks for doing this as always, Cap. You talk lots of games, so I'll just lay out and let you tell people where else you talk.

Speaker 4:
[96:51] We do talk lots of games. I am part of a podcast called Retrotopia. I'm actually part of two podcasts, technically. One's called Retrotopia. We do the same thing as you do. We find old video games, the three of us talk about them, follow the formula that you've laid out for many, many of us who followed in your footsteps. And I guess we're just talking about a different slot of games than you've talked about. So it's fun to check us out. We're just down the road wherever you get your podcasts. It's Retrotopia. And I also started another one with another friend called Retro Bytes Neo, where every month we just pick a topic and we just kind of have a round table on it. And it's fairly new, so it's still working out the bugs. But you can find that wherever you get Retrotopia. We've combined them together so that it's not hard to find. But please check us out wherever you can. We appreciate the listens and the feedback if you ever want to give it to us.

Speaker 2:
[97:42] Do it. Good shit. Yeah, check them out. Links in the description of this, assuming I remember to put them in there. Cap, appreciate you chatting, buddy. Thanks for your time and enjoy the rest of your Monday night.

Speaker 4:
[97:52] Yeah, you too. Take care, buddy.

Speaker 2:
[98:19] And that is going to do it for this week's episode. Cap, thank you so much for giving me a call and talking some Secret of Evermore. And to every single one of you nerds listening to this, whether it's your first Remember The Game or your 373rd, thank you. You chose to fly with Remember The Game Airlines, and we will never forget that. So thank you for listening. I appreciate it. If you didn't hate it, leave us a good review. Not quite sure what they accomplished, but I know the other shows asked for them, so damn it, we're going to do the same thing. And I read them, and they make me feel nice. The bad ones hurt, but the good ones feel very good. So thank you for leaving those. You can leave comments on Spotify. Feel free to weigh in on the show, weigh in on me, tell me that I sold out because I hate Hulk Hogan apparently, or all the other weird comments, fucking people leaving there, fucking crazies. I appreciate that. And if you want to support the show, patreon.com/remember the game. It starts at three bucks a month. It's not expensive. You'll get tons, literally hundreds of episodes, but new ones most weeks. I am taking next week off altogether. No shows next week on Patreon or on Remember The Game. I'm going to just spend a week playing with my dog and catching up on some stuff. Visiting family and doing the things humans do away from their computers. But don't worry about that. After that week is over, we're back. It'll be May. We have tons of new episodes coming up. If you are a Patreon, this is a big fucking deal, man. Beginning Friday, May 1st, it's our inaugural Royal Rum Poll. Two video games will start out on our poll every day until we get 30, so 28, 29 days, 28 more days. I'll be adding a new game to the poll every day. Every day, any game that didn't have at least 15 percent of their total votes is eliminated and will whittle it down to one champion and they will get an episode of RTG. I'm very excited to do that, so probably no better time to become a patron than right now, so you can vote in the Royal Rum Poll beginning May 1st. Next week, it'll be, remember, I'll dig something out of our Patreon archives and put it up on the feed to keep you busy. In May, we're hoping to cover Pokemon Leaf Green and Fire Red. I'd really like to do an Adventure Island episode, one of them, and then maybe Oblivion. If I can get Oblivion done in time, I'd love to cross that off the list, but no promises. We'll see how things go. I'm going to thank some Patreons to get out of here. Appreciate you all listening. Thank you so much. Go Habs Go. Talk to you on the next one. Cheers so long. Goodbye. Remember The Game is brought to you by our Patreons. I couldn't puke up all the content I churn out of a week without all of your support. The following people are the Senior Executive Vice President level or higher on the old Patreon box, and as such, I'm contractually obligated to say all your names as quickly as I possibly can. So a huge thank you too. Remember The Game Hall of Famer, Slick Motherfucking Rick, Makeshift Mellow Magic Money, Shironic, JNasty15, Jork King Kegs, Dissect That Dan, Chris Flurry, Andrew Wright, Jordan, Eldest, Millennial, Lilbunny, Fufu89, AngryTix, Dave Thompson, No One Cares, Scott Brooks, Aaron Lawson, JSK Fusick, A-Town Morgan, Zayn Donovan, Ryan Kinchin, Mike Maloney, G9PSX, Wolfgang Darren, Andy Hudson, Doogie, WolfMagic21, Johnny from Virginia, Squintz, Dean Donian, Titan420, Jeff Bergeron, Randy Barridge, Just a Fish, Adam Blank still hasn't reviewed The Lord of the Rings, that's true, Holmes, Zach Shepard, Captain Black, Silver, Triple 3, Chucker 22, Elijah Burns, Discount Syop, Madame Nutsitch, DBXJ, Jamir Williams, Steve Dolk, Bitch-Ass Brian, Mizuru, Jurist Dr. Mario, Tyler, Phil Lencher, Joe the Sandman, Northern, Jake Carter, Bitty, Growlywog, Beaver Boy, Thomas Smith, Leroy Westridge, Rush's Dog Walker, Stud Steel Smash, Matt Babineau, Gabe, Fuzzy99, Decoyman, a dude named Adam, Wyatt the Surgeon, who isn't a surgeon, Ro, Blaine the Hoagieman, Scary Terry, Storm Beagle, Archangel Otaku, Earl, Haga Waffle, High Plains Drifter, Jimothy, Iroku Saki's Gardener, General Fury, I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General, Max Legroom, James Wan Francesco, John of the Adult Children Podcast, Drugs Abed, MK., Sam Carpenter, Donny the Dude, Walter, Sleeper Hits, Squeak Nuts, Isaias Hits Meals, Timmy the Exuberant Turtle, Caveman Lance, Christian Gabriel, Maverick Marty, Musty Beetle, Graham Kennedy, Timothy Sobrinsky, My Left Nut, Beef Dingleberry, Quiet Place Queen, Christopher Britt, Xamatos, Big the Cat, Tadpole, Lugnut, T-Bear 87, Maverick, Brandon De Zeba, Kea Pup, Monstrously Boner, AB Killin Works for Me, Mild Oatmeal, Ted Explosion, Ryan Perry, Alex R, Please Refrain from Tasting the Knob, Scotty J, Just Car Prank, Zombie X, Bartman Forever, Dar Skywalter, Postman, Nick Kreacher, Adam Martinette, The Big Deal, Ryan 4664, Kevin Monroe, Can't Destroy Her, Pee Wee Squitters, Nordak, Lord Palmerstein, Fears of War Because 19, Infinity Rage, Marcus Mendoza, Lord Longrobot, Virgin Dom II, Roger Staubach's Pool Cleaner, Lucas Schaumann, Frosty Bear, Sour Goat Face, Fated Sufferance, Chris Hillers' Gag, That Could Be Anyone's Ass, B Money, Penguin Milk, Fallen Snow Kiku, The Supreme Chozo Rizo, You Son of a Bitch, Why? Tell Me Why, E-Man Trucker, Eddie Dean 19, Mark Snead, Christopher Lee Williams, Agent Booty Pants, Shoeboxers, Adam Blank, Still Has Interviewed Mario Galaxy, Jay Callahan, Robbie Air, Brian Richmond, Mr. Blobber, Blobberstein, Smith, Bula, Too Much Karma, Mopi36, Cesar, Fill Up My Mouth With Farts, Liquor Like Luigi, Cody Thompson, JR Bob Dobbs, Mr. Scorpion, Mr. Jabroni, Big Daddy Randall, Idyll Yellow, Yes Yes Yes, This Rocks, Flinny123, Lotus, A Fridge Too Far, Tobio P, Scotty McGee, Alex McIntyre, SpiderCat, Muffin Man Jr., Adam Blank, Still Has Interviewed Crash Team Racing, Eric Hopewell, Darbles, GenericName238, Newman, David Schroeder, Moncal, Diablo, Spartan, McCracken, Wilco, VOS, Rager, Derek Caron, Brother Retro, McMadgear, Conebread, Ocarina of Tim Rocks, Daniel Cook, You Heard About Pluto, Dazeraith, SuperSci, and Seferioth, SavageBouche, MrHelloMrThompson, MacGyver88, Travis Sanders, LordSalazar, FlatorFlav, EroticOnionRing, Captain AsperryJuice, DoogieBowserMD, ShutUp, TopherLove, ThunderLeaps, LegendBarry, Jinxy425, AkirisNetwork, HorrorWarsPodcast, Jeff Leppard, Rob Lindsey, GameBoyGannon, FancyStoreBotDirt, SteamingWoolie, BotFocker, Mikey Hag, Shane's World, Devin Collins, Cannon Potter Games, ExoticChaotic, JustJames, SpookyDookie, Frank Preeves, The OkayestOfMuffins, Land of Turquoise, Zigfried, HandsomeMajorAngus, Mxonga Westquire, DixonMiaz, Sailorman82, Jonathan Brier, RedLineArrow, George, GeorgeSwan, KingTikiTiki, The $100KidTedMichaels, Chris Nethercutt, DavidFeath, CarlNotGarl, Amanda HuggingKiss, DarkyFrost11, Tim Maverick, QueerAlYankerdick, SelfHi5, AdamIsNotPatrickWa, PlowedSlurmAddict, Cody Donaldson, BetterMouse, TrapGuitars, The Maritime Musician, Miles P. Pants Davis, and Jason Hoish. That was a good fucking batch of shout-outs, buddy.

Speaker 4:
[104:21] Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:
[104:23] In fact, I'm going to do it again. Come first or last. Jason Hoish, Miles P. Pants Davis, The Maritime Musician, BetterBet... No, I'm not. Take it easy, everybody. Thank you for listening. Does anyone make it this far? If anyone made it this far, you get the secret bonus pin number for my bank card and that is one nigh-