887: Burgertory | Giant Bombcast

Hey everybody, it's Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025.

that's right folks we've made it past Easter weekend not only has the Lord has risen but he's high as hell because of 420 weekend I'm your host Jan Ochoa welcome to the giant bomb cast episode 887 that's right we're one away from 888 and what will we do then I don't know maybe we'll have a pizza party go ahead and pre -order your pizzas now joining me co -captain of the ship joining me as always jeff grubb close shut the jaws of your mouth i have a headache okay all right uh when you have a headache apply directly to the forehead your own turbo sean sean mcdowell nicky grayson shaved their mustache

and it took me a sod five minutes to figure out who had invaded their home on the oblivion stream this morning i was freaking out i was like who who is this darth maul looking you know assassin's creed person sitting in there sharing them that's nicky damn nicky it's nicky uh joining us uh bad boy of games media he's the anarchist of the website he's he's a uh endless well of negativity and doom mike minati wow i think things are bad are only ever gonna get worse thank you mike i needed that uh how's everyone doing today i'm doing i'm doing well you have a headache but yeah uh yeah steph steph

just left she got she's leaving and it's spring break so she didn't like leave me i'm not she's not like nobody thought that she didn't abandon the children um now she's got a work trip and so So I'm alone with the kids and it's spring break.

So that's really what the headache was.

It's like they right before the show started, they came down to like, I'm like, hey, I told you I'm going to do a show.

And they're like, well, can you turn on goat simulator?

Like, does that do you think this qualifies under the emergency conditions that we talked about beforehand?

They said yes. So I get it.

OK, well, you know, when kids need to play something, that's an emergency, right?

Otherwise, I get it.

Yeah. We speculated that you were invaded by home invaders for a second, though.

yeah what point you screamed what was that about it was concerning oh uh i think that i'm yeah oh i stubbed my toe i was running up the steps and i stubbed my toe okay mystery solved we thought that maybe you were being attacked no that'd be better than stuff stubbed my toe is like the most embarrassing injury i never like it yeah i i think it's like instant karmic payback for something thing right and then i think like oh crap what did i do what negative thoughts did i think about someone i can't believe you guys heard me stubbing my toe oh yeah upstairs well very specifically not the stubbing

of the toe the extremely loud guttural yell that you let out pretty loudly yeah i'm i'm i'm obnoxious is what it is when i get hurt or a sneeze you know i was gonna say i was gonna ask jeff grubb are you a loud sneezer i'm a loud sneezer i think i'm louder i think i can a beat you out that it's a competition no definitely that's that's a toxic masculinity though yes i've been shamed for every time i sneeze people go wow or kind of like look at me like what's your deal i bless you i i've had to have told this story before but i was at pax east in the journalism room and i i didn't want my seat and i

like to sneeze out of my mouth because it's like you know like get most of the force on the mouth so it doesn't cause like a nosebleed or something that's just kind of how i did it naturally to avoid issues in the sinus region and i just remember justin mcgrath like looking over at me and then a few weeks later on one of his podcasts i was listening to he's like people who sneeze loud in public you can control that you're just doing it for attention and i'm like no no i'm like oh no he's definitely talking about me sean have you crossed the threshold of being old and allowed sneezer because i

think i've gotten there i've always been allowed sneezer jan okay well i was i was in like elementary school i was an elementary school sneezed and a teacher from the other side of the school ran in to see what the problem was it's not a lot of a sneezer i did you stub do you stub your toe while sneezing that was the compound yes yeah fantastic fantastic wrestlemania can we all can we all do the face like the bomb on the overlay right now can everyone try to like look down and like can you can you guys ah look at that yay that could be the thumbnail there perfect great all right thank you everybody

uh luigi is waluigi or luigi's mansion too scary maybe um folks before we get to the video games that's new we got we got a little bit of an uh early breaking news segment but this isn't helmed by one jeff grubb this is a little announce announce from mike minotti yeah just anything over at games beat which is you know where my day job is but we uh we actually uh thanks to our new ceo gina joseph and dean takahashi who is the lead writer for games being now the editorial director of games beat um they were able to purchase games beat from venture beats uh so we are now a we are now independent

from so happy for you guys so it's just neat we it means we uh we are in control of our own destiny we get the a full say on what we are doing like for me personally you may have noticed I haven't really been writing reviews lately and that's something I can do again now if I wanted to um just in general I think we're gonna have some more fun over there and do some more interesting things so yeah um right now you're not gonna notice too much of a change but there are gonna be some coming uh just in terms of maybe the site in the format but yeah basically this is just good news for us uh start

of a new chapter over there and i am pretty excited about so yeah thank you uh everybody for uh the support give her a check out games beat thank you to uh you three for letting me vamp about that for a bit that's something that's been um something that dean especially has been trying to make happen for a long time so uh hell yeah appreciate it i think everyone just likes to hear that like okay people are still doing this work and finding out ways to like this is like you know a pocket of good news right they're sort of like this is what you guys wanted to happen you were able to make it happen

uh surrounded by a sea of like everyone else in this field is facing a lot of challenges so it's just nice that you guys were able to pull this off yeah it's pretty hard for traditional media out there and that's kind of you know was part of the challenge is being just part of this company one thing that games beat does have is we do these events and they're very b2b business to business but those do generate revenue so we are kind of of able to use that as uh the flagship for generating the money and all that stuff but we still have editorial and we can still take pride in that and hopefully

launching some other fun ventures over there and who knows who knows what the future may hold there if things go well but yeah exactly all sorts of bad news that happens uh in in the media gaming world these days so i'm very thankful that i still get to you know be a gsb loving of all of you too i'm very thankful i get to do both things and to be clear i am still going to be able to do both things so that yeah it was awesome nice to hear that your uh your new leadership team over there in addition to dean it was just like yeah mike you do your thing and kind of like we trust you to get your work

done yeah it's like oh that is the kind of thing you want to hear so i was just very like thrilled about that but they're in particular yeah yeah fantastic uh so yeah thank you for letting me share that sure i noticed you uh tried very hard to not say independent twice in a row when you were talking about i know i was like my my like so many things were happening i was trying to align all these social channels so then when i skied it about it i was like games beat is independent this is great for us because it means we have more independence and i'm like i write good me come to site where right

good happen hey i know a bunch of people that would probably just read articles like that instead said um mike have you thought about uh just putting gifs of subway surfers under all the every paragraph in an article oh that would be a pretty good move actually yeah but who would know how to accomplish that where could i go for this expertise let me tell you i i got some subway surfer recordings for you bud all right sounds good Wrestlemania weekend was this past weekend Daniel Riker is off an assignment doing God knows what y 'all want to talk a bit about wrestling before we talk about video games

Sean I know you're clamoring I didn't I actually didn't I wasn't in the mood for fun this weekend so I didn't watch it actually I watched night two it was nice watching it with my nephew and it was pretty fun except for the lame main event and then like Paul Heyman said said like more weird things and i'd always be a character but just telling like uh you know somebody of a certain descent that they're gonna get deported i was like yeah i don't think that's fun so i don't know uh yeah i don't need to talk about too much yeah uh night one kind of meh night two better paul hayman being weird not great uh

a lot of people were being weird from there this past week yeah i suddenly had the urge to uh punch roman reigns's veneers out um but hey we can move on from from that uh anyway i guess let's talk about video games okay okay let's do Do it.

Incest. A lot of new games coming out.

So, why don't we start with an older game?

We love Katamari. Reroll, Mike.

The Katamari train continues for you, and I'm so juiced about it.

So, let's talk about an older game.

Like, oh, crap. It's going to be one of mine.

Here. Yeah. Yeah, like I think last week I talked about how I played through the remaster of Katamari Damacy.

And then I picked up We Love Katamari Rerolled, which is the remaster of the second game, right away.

And was excited just to jump back into it.

I heard some people say that they liked this one more.

I think in the end, I didn't feel that strongly about it.

I still liked it. My issue with the game is that a lot of the levels are gimmicky.

And there's some gimmick levels in the first one.

Like, hey, roll up nothing but cats or something like that.

This one, there's like a lot of levels like, well, you can only roll up 50 things to see what happens.

Or you're rolling up clouds.

Or this one's like a racetrack.

And the gimmicks would always be fun.

Like, don't get me wrong.

It's not like it was terrible.

But I would be like, how about a level where I just roll things?

See how big my rolly roll can get.

So I was craving a little bit more of that juice.

But still, it was Katamari.

It was fun. it's goofy i loved all the vignettes with the king of all cosmos growing up with his dad and the turmoil and then the coming to terms and then the dad he dies the spoilers he dies and he becomes the king and it's all very kind of touching and weird and strange and all that offbeatness still is appealing the soundtrack is incredible i have the katamari song stuck in my head like everybody else in this industry has had for the last 23 years or whatever that's right yeah yeah so now i'm caught up there but no uh you know katamari was this weird blind spot for me and now it isn't and that's

great there's a part of me that maybe wants to go play beautiful katamari on the 360 i think that has maybe the backwards compatibility so that kind of sounds fun maybe i should even check out that mobile one that sean's been talking about yeah it's good yeah yeah of course i had like a three -month apple arcade trial laying around they didn't activate and then picked up Katamari and like wow, this is a good one of these.

I should do that. It's hardly like a mobile game, right?

That's just a real game that they put out on Apple Arcade, right?

I mean, you know, quote mobile games it's just video games now.

I know what you're saying, but yeah.

The quality is there across the board, but especially in Apple Arcade, yeah, this is just a whole ass video game.

It's not even presented like a mobile game, right?

It's not like you're going from node to node and getting three stars, right?

Or I guess if you are That's similar to how Katamari's always worked That's literally what it is Yeah okay well fair enough But it still plays like Katamari You know What we mean is how much like Candy Crush Saga Is it I know that's what you guys mean yeah Uh alright gang Uh continuing down the older Game train I'm curious as to Why you picked this up Mike Uncharted Waters New Horizons Um yeah Yeah, when I finished Tales of Graces F, and this was before Lunar came out, and I was like, well, I want to play something else till then.

Let's play something on NSO.

I like playing these old NSO games.

And I actually did play those new Genesis drops, ESWAT and Streets of Rage 1.

So I've done that. I was like, well, what else is there that I haven't really played before?

And like a month ago, Nintendo released all those Koei games on NSO for Super Nintendo.

And I always thought thought that was beyond even me right like that like these pc ports of strategy and sim games for the super nintendo i don't think i'd really like that but i heard people say uncharted waters is the best of them and it's something to do with the age of exploration which i think is kind of you know an interesting time period so i just jumped in you can immediately pick a character and they all have different campaigns like the one is focused more on piracy the one is focused but it's more an exploration I picked the one who's the merchant uh you know there's like a little bit

of a story but basically basically it was hey you have a very small amount of money in one ship uh we're going to tell you about this one kind of you know trading route you can do between Istanbul and some other city buy low here and sell high there and vice versa and it just became this very satisfying loop of sailing between these two places the Super Nintendo -ness of it was actually a big plus because it almost looks like some old 16 -bit jrpg with an overworld and you know the top down aesthetic and the very good music uh so all that was working the menus actually are pretty good i assumed

that was going to be a disaster on super nintendo you know like there are these story beats that happen like i just kind of had to sail uh around the entire coast of africa to get to a city in the middle east to do something so it's suddenly like okay well i made a lot of money and now i have a fleet so i'm able to have a lot of supply so i can do this it's sometimes some like interesting events happen like there's a storm so i need to maybe wait anchor by the coast and wait that out i had sirens come and uh some of my crew members jumped in so i had to replace them all sorts of interesting things

happen but just this core loop of sailing and discovering finding new ports seeing if there's anything there that i want or can interact with it's been surprisingly good and i'm like 15 hours into this weird game now um kind of may be approaching the end of uh this character's campaign and if i wanted to play again like these other characters have very different uh things happening i think they start in different cities they're from different parts of the world so yeah just uh you know i I heard this game was good, but I'm like, oh, this is kind of one of the secret, maybe not so secret people

know, but to me, secret best SNES games.

I'm liking it a lot.

Yeah, I did start this up after you told me about it because what you describe and you knew when you were telling me very much a Jeff game.

And I didn't know that the different characters did have different campaigns.

So I think the guy I picked, I think he is more combat focused.

I haven't got too far into it, but I was like, I'm going to try to do the trading.

And I'm like, I'll figure it out on my own.

I guess Mike stumbled into this.

so i'll figure it out now that i know it's like okay i'm gonna go back right restart with that other character uh who you said like he like is from istanbul or something he's from istanbul i think his name's ollie something and you know there is like a whole combat thing to this game where there's like fleet battles and you can get fight one -on -one versus the captain you have equipment and i have actually not had to interact with any of that in my 15 -hour playthrough because again i'm i'm a merchant right i'm doing more of that i think if you're an explorer you can do do that now there's still

like the threat of piracy i think i have sort of measures that protected me against that i haven't been attacked yet but it's something that could happen but yeah you could do the pirate campaign or the maybe like naval campaign where it's focused more on that stuff i think i was uh the the pirate campaign because it's like i got a letter from the king or something saying you have the right to do piracy in the name of england i'm like oh is that how it works all right it did yeah yeah it totally is yeah i i did not realize this but people in chap pointed out horizons gate is a game that came out

a few years ago that i played a little bit is a game inspired by this game and it's like oh horizons of course yeah so uh it's a steam game that has a similar look to it they're like actually trying to mimic the super nintendo rpg look to it uh yeah i'm i'm very excited to try this game i love the idea of like economic systems being modeled in a game and buying low selling high and arbitrage and all that stuff it's a very cool concept i you know sid meyer's pirates nailed that for me forever ago go this is definitely on that same wavelength yeah i think it's pretty comparable to that there's a genesis version of pirate

school that i think people actually like a lot i bet that's maybe a similar experience somebody in chat is saying it's istanbul not constantinople and uh yeah it's still istanbul here why did constantinople get the works that's nobody's business but the turks hey there you go we got it yeah thank you thank you yeah you're welcome them uh i really love when uh you'll get a game or play a game and it's like very simplified graphics but the box art is so elaborate i was just staring at the box art for uncharted waters i'm like this looks gorgeous let's see what the game looks like yeah late 80s yeah

90s yeah yeah like there's production values here right like this i don't know it's a very pretty game it seems very elaborate but yeah i guess that makes sense if it was on um it looks let's say, Japanese PC platforms and then get poured to the Super Nintendo Genesis.

Right, and I think it's actually the second game in, like, that series, right?

We didn't have it over here because I don't know if we got the first one, but yeah.

Yeah, this one, it has a subtitle, and I was like, this definitely has sequel subtitle vibes to it.

Yeah, I think this is, yeah, this is number two, and there's one that we didn't get before it.

Okay, okay. Last week, there was the Galaxy's Gaming Showcase that Tamor, Kurt, and Jake Decker talked over, and one of those games caught my eye and it turns out it's been on turbo sean sean mcdowell's radar for quite a while and that game is unbeatable yes uh this was uh i think first i can't remember the exact origins if it was a kickstarter i think it may have been a while back it was first on my radar in 2021 i think it was when they put out their first initial demo for it uh and oh man man y 'all Jan you asked me the other day what's a Sean game yeah and I tried to like give you some examples

you know like persona and stuff like that this is Sean game this is Sean game this okay no joke since it got since it got on my radar back then like four years ago probably my single most anticipated video game I am so in for this thing it's hard to even describe bribe what it really is like the elevator pitch is i would say i i know i know this is a big thing to claim but it's like vibes fully coolly the game like not necessarily okay oh yeah not necessarily subject matter but like uh the vibes of it definitely uh you're like they haven't revealed the full story yet but basically uh it's a world

where uh music is outlawed and you play as this girl beat who's in a band so you're naturally outlawed it's a footloose adaptation it's exactly like footloose for all the 50 year old men in the house yes but it's visually very striking it's a hand -drawn anime style animation almost paper mario -esque because it's 2d cells on a like 3d rendered background or anything the gameplay itself i guess you'd say it's kind of an adventure game you're sort of like walking you around talking to people getting the story progressing the story and everything and the gameplay beyond that is it's all rhythm game

so the combat i guess you could say because sometimes it's uh you know you're having an inner struggle in a dialogue and you're like fighting imaginary uh creatures sometimes you're punching cops because you know you're an outlaw and the entirely revolves around this two lane rhythm game system it's very simple uh but it hooks you in because because it's just two buns and then they play with the two buns a little bit like you know you know you know uh you need to punch like the creatures on the beats and then sometimes like the creature will like get hit up to the other chart and you have to like

alternate between the two with the rhythm of the song uh it's very interesting and then scattered throughout the world there's it's almost rhythm heaven the way you'll have a rhythm minigame they don't tell you that they don't explain it to you but it'll just start happening like you'll just uh stand uh last night i was playing the demo and you stand next to a vending machine you just look out over the ocean and just these circles start enclosing in on the view and you start like rhythm rhythmically tapping the bun and then like a um a chart like sheet music starts like being overlaid on top of the view

and you your goal is to just hit the buns in time with the rhythm so it's uh they're doing some interesting stuff here there's also like you go to the batting cages and you know that's self -explanatory you need to you know whack the balls in rhythm you need to like as many home runs as you can very rhythm heaven that way uh it's fantastic i yeah like i said i love what they're doing here they're saying that it is coming out this year and i'm really looking forward to this because uh this demo is fantastic and by the way i have a i have a screenshot there in the chat This sums up everything you

need to know about the tutorial.

Yeah, I've been looking at things on Steam.

This game looks cool as hell.

There's a moment where the character, like, jumps on top of that subway train as it's going, and it's like the 2D Paper Mario cell animation mixed up with the 3D...

It looks fantastic.

Yeah. Go ahead, Mike.

Sorry to interrupt.

I love that style of, like, the...

2D assets still always look so good to me.

I love hand -drawn stuff.

stuff i some ways will almost always prefer that depending on the game but yeah i love that look of doing it in front of um the 3d world still it reminds me a little bit of demon's turf from not too long ago like i really like the look sure of that game uh this is doing something different because it's not as even retro inspired like this is just hand -drawn art without trying to make it look pixely or video gamey so yeah i get those rhythm heaven vibes for sure and there is some There's a little bit of persona for here with the vibes, too, but it's just because it adds a little bit of that suburban Japanese

aesthetic, right? As opposed to the big city stuff.

Yeah, I definitely want to try this.

I neglected to even mention, this game also has an entire other half where you can just play the songs as a rhythm game.

They call it Arcade Mode, and so it's just a whole ass rhythm game with all the songs that you play throughout the story mode.

It's awesome. People have been like trying to set high scores over the past few years since the initial demo and stuff it is great right is that initial demo the there's demo tapes and white label demo tapes i think is the music from white label that you can download that makes sense okay yeah the white label is you know from 2021 yep and it's got overwhelmingly positive reviews 8 000 people reviewed it like this thing really popped off back then play stack is publishing this game now uh who did bellatro so So I think, you know, look out for this thing.

It's probably going to pop up.

Unbeatable. Yeah, go play both demos, really.

I'll run Steam. Why not?

Yeah, this game looks absolutely gorgeous.

I really dug the Scott Pilgrim anime from, gosh, was that two years ago now?

I think so. And I would have loved, like, a redone game in this style because this looks gorgeous.

relogists we talked over the Oblivion Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion remaster earlier today you can go ahead and tune into that later don't tune away from this podcast don't turn it off turn both on at the same time there you go but that's not the only remaster we got here on the docket Jeff Grubb this is a little bit of a surprise to see from you I'm sorry if that's an assumption no I get it yeah Lunar Remastered Collection what?

Yeah, I've always been curious about Lunar.

Okay, okay, hold on, hold on.

First, Dan is playing Ys.

Now you're playing Lunar?

What's going on? What's next?

We're gamers. What do you mean?

What are you talking about?

No, you've been replaced with pod people or something.

Listen, I've always wanted to like RPGs.

Just because I don't always doesn't mean I don't want to be one of you.

I think you all are very cool people and good taste.

There's nothing wrong with RPGs.

What are you people?

yeah one of you people i i've always been like eyeing this franchise being like man that looks pretty cool uh when it first showed up as like a sega cd game and a playstation game and it had all the anime cut scenes and obviously the sega cd ones were pretty limited and cut down but still it just like looked like this magical thing i'm like oh my god that's anime inside of a video game and it looks so uh mesmerizing and eye -catching and i you know i would talk to people for years and every once in a while someone would be like you know no my favorite game is a lunar silver story right is that the name

of the first one i think so and um okay all right well that i've definitely been curious about it so now these remasters are here and they are the remasters they are the those same games and i think this collection does include the original versions as well which i might actually go back and maybe start the original versions the remasters are very very much um let's like take those anime cut scenes and run them through a a smoothing filter and i i i feel like maybe some of the charm is lost and it's like got very like bold black lines around the characters now that just like looks a little unnatural

um and that's definitely what's what's been sticking with me so far and then it's like you know you're playing the game and it feels like an rpg where they're still figuring out a lot of the rpg stuff like the moving the character around the the screen feels like almost like controlling a cursor with a d -pad where it's just like kind of flipping over everything and it doesn't feel too tactile um and and then i i got some combat and i'm like okay this is pretty standard rpg combat but i do think it's it seems pretty fun um there it seems there's like positioning elements to it um where depending

on like how you have your characters ordered uh the enemies will attack kind of who's out front first at least that's how it's been in the early game and so it's like okay there's a little bit more of you know just a tiny element of strategy here that i can think about and i can actually set up my initial positioning whenever i go into a fight and tell a character hey no you have the range attack and lower health so clearly let's get you in the back and let's put these other two up front so they can kind of tank some damage and that just having that little extra on top does give me something to

work with but i do get the sense like if you were playing this game at that time of course it became your favorite game it's like was so different and so like bold in terms of we're just gonna put the anime stuff in here and it was a game of its time it's gonna be a little bit harder i think for people to go back and see what people saw in in that moment but i i still think that there's nothing like wrong with it and i'm i'm enjoying myself so far i can't believe you i played this before i did but i actually just actually just didn't uh get a code yet so i'm trying to fix that i've been excited

for these i have not played these games but i love jrpgs i've heard a lot about them but i also love like that era of early cd games and the kind of there's some awkwardness with the way that they they were so excited about full motion video and a lot of that was live action footage but since i always got was like well we have that here but instead of live action footage it's anime cut scenes and there's a charm to that just like the fmv games the live action fmv games the cut scenes a lot of them are an anime character just talking directly to the camera just like in the live action fmv games

and it's it's like really that's such a time and place thing because no one else did that after this like it was that was gone very quickly they're like no we're just gonna have little movies and it's here like no you're in the game so the anime characters are talking to you and say okay well Well, something about that feels so 90s and nostalgic and weird because it's just, it's awkward. Yeah, it's just like this and Yeez 1 and 2 on Turbo CD that kind of had that vibe and there's just something magical about that still.

Yep, I think that people who are super into RPGs, this would be a good way to like go back and find, find out what these games are all about finally.

Because I do get the sense even from among people People who are massive fans of the genre have not all played this one.

So now here you go.

It'll be an easy way to do that.

No, this has always been a blind spot for me.

It's always been like, I see the ad in the magazine and money's tight that month.

So I'm like, can't get that one.

Yeah. Yeah. It was like, I feel like it was advertised in magazines for years, but I'm sure that was just my kid brain not being able to tell time.

My plan is beat it, turn it waters.

Then this collection will tie me over until the Switch 2 release, I expect.

respect I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys think about it you guys should give it a shot yeah I think I might give it a shot as well uh speaking about anime and sean games and what is also a jan game it turns out um this uh the embargo review embargo popped off for this game yesterday and it has been nothing except super positive reviews 100 line last defense academy academy jeff grubb you're talking about getting anime you're talking about getting anime in your game what if your game just starts with an hour of anime at the top yeah where they don't let you touch anything i'm just like

88 now on open critic oh i can't believe you just exciting to me i also put money on it too he doesn't even know what it is okay uh i don't know what it is that's my question here's what i've heard it's uh anime even more anime fire emblem it's is that what is this game it's it's danganronpa fire emblem and i mean that literally that's what i said it's from the people who made danganronpa it's from the studio that was founded by like i think it's the creator of the uh nanari game series so 999 and all those games and the creator and some key people from danganronpa so naturally when they team

up you get a game like this where it just looks like danganronpa you know those visual novels and everything like that it's a lot of story because that's what they do these games are not explicitly you know video games the way you expect them they are visual novels first with uh you know like some element to them as well like danganronpa is very ace attorney so you get like that story dump and then you have to go solve the puzzle and everything like that that's what you have going on here where it's a lot of story very anime and then the gameplay this time is fire emblem it's a grid -based tile

-based tactics uh that's how you get a jan and sean game you take the anime you take the tiles you put them together uh jan how you feeling about this one um i'm digging it a lot um it is very anime heavy very dialogue reading heavy at the top so you know if if that is not your bag word of warning there but once you actually get to the gameplay the the combat at least i really dig it you control a squad of four of your sean is it like eight people i want to say uh i'm only a few hours in i don't know what the max is okay uh well you control like a squad of four and then each uh you You have limited

AP points per turn, so limited actions per turn.

But once one character attacks, they enter a tired state, but they can still move.

And with some characters, after they enter that tired state, they get a whole different set of actions.

So the tactics element there is neat.

neat um also a big thing that i like is um some of the characters just have like a wide sweeping attack yeah so instead of having to target just like one at a time waste turns doing that and get rid of like a whole line or like a whole cross section of enemies in one go the different characters definitely feel like they have different um little things intricacies popping off one of the first characters you get to control is a dude riding a motorcycle and for each space he moves he gains like a little pip of armor which is neat so you can just send him zooming across the map you get this one cool

lady with an axe that is definitely stronger than most of your other characters I'm liking it a lot the Duncan Ropa franchise has always been for series has always been something that has eluded me and I've been told I would really dig the crap out of it yeah everyone who everyone seems to love those games and i still don't know what they are just visual novels right yeah yeah like i said it's very ace attorney it's you know detective adventure puzzle games with yeah a lot of reading so it's got visual novel elements yeah and for folks out there uh you know sean since you're more familiar with with that series

um and and fire emblem the box is this was ticking off for me in terms of familiarity is that this was feeling a lot like a 13 sentinels aegis rim in terms of like gonna ask yeah in terms of how it's blending things together yeah in terms of how it's blending things together like here's like this gigantic stacked cast uh a pretty interesting story from the from the jump i'd say um and then like the combat not necessarily taking a backseat but like being a second element to the game yeah but you're a lot of people are gonna tune into this this game for the story definitely yeah i think just like

how i was that's the main yeah like like with danganronpa and like with a similar game so yeah like a 13 sentinels i think you're right about that uh when this game first got revealed it was in nintendo direct i remember looking at this i was like is that like tower defense what are they doing here and so yeah like jan mentioned with uh having being more about like large sweeping attacks hitting multiple tiles rather than focusing that's sort of the vibe because there there is a tower defense, uh, like inspiration to the combat where you're trying to, you know, protect the Academy that you're

at, uh, the, you know, you last defense Academy.

Uh, and so instead of being about like a small squad invading you and fighting more one -on -one, it is about more waves of really weak enemies.

And then using your big sweeping attacks in order to take multiple enemies out at the same time, which makes it feel kind of like a different type of strategy game because that's more about positioning your characters to hit as many enemies as possible and clearing them out to prevent them from getting to basically your tower and trying to take it out so it makes you think about the strategy in a different way which i think is fun yeah i it's a it's an interesting twist and i feel like i have kind of been broken by strategy games or tactics games like Into the Breach where I need a pretty fast

response time but this is different enough where it is scratching that tactics itch but like okay we can kind of slow it down we do need to protect the tower but these turns are moving fast I'm interested to see how the game will get more complicated because there is a pretty fat stack of characters that you're introduced to at the very top yeah um some of uh some tropes i think we should drop from games altogether um that's the baggage of the danganronpa series is they are you know similar to say like persona uh of the past they're sort of like stuck in the past a little bit with their writing

in some ways some tropes yeah we need to get away from i i can't help but look this this character with the heart tattoo and and the blue ponytails and she i think that's a to sundar ray or something like that right sundar that's a sundar and i don't i don't know about them lightning in the sundar yeah exactly yeah yeah that's right where there's lightning in the sundar that's my favorite imagine dragons lyric um but yeah needless to say if you don't know about the other franchise that we mentioned like um danganronpa and stuff despite being colorful it is a very dark subject matter wise game

like yes if like yeah it gets right into it from the get -go which you know again danganronpa is like a mystery revolving around a killing game if you didn't know that these people like to do dark stories uh that that's what you're gonna get here i mean like you all of your characters basically have superpowers they get that by stabbing themselves in the chest with a sword and then your blood turns into like superpowers so like yeah i don't think that's how swords work no not the swords you're familiar with jeff and all the katanas on my wall sure yeah i did laugh because uh that blue haired character

that you mentioned mike did say the word isekai and then like i popped a little bit of like no yeah it's hilarious they literally it's uh dan reichert's definition of an isekai we're like this is an isekai right it's like well you're We kind of just say a different place, so I'm not sure I would call it that.

Like, literally our conversation from the RDA.

You're just in Pittsburgh.

Like, relax. It's not in Seagate.

Pittsburgh is kind of in Seagate.

And then, you know, we have another frontrunner for Little Freak of the Year with C -Ray or Sir.

Yeah. The entity that brings you into the Last Defense Academy.

The Not Monokuma. Yeah, exactly.

That's the Black White Bear.

The bear from Danganronpa, yeah.

This takes an egg. Kind of.

if anything it reminds me of the egg people from jimmy neutron um and that's a reference that is lost upon and he talks like your grandpa who doesn't know that world war ii is over jamie neutron's incredible because i think like somehow jeff and i are too old for it and then there's other people who are too young for it yes that's correct oh god i'm having a brain blast right now those are good those are good i'll go watch all i'll go watch all of jimmy neutron right now i'll be right you know just watch the movie just watch no just just watch it on gba card i think they release them there okay

um last game that i have here and i learned all about fatal fury cry or city of the wolves gang from watching wrestlemania this weekend because it's smack damn in the middle of the mat sean mike you two have been playing this yeah yeah i just played i I've only played a little bit myself, just kind of got a flavor of it.

And, you know, like I thought with the beta, I think it's pretty fun.

It's definitely a good one of those.

I like a lot of these kind of games.

Sometimes I think there's one or two mechanics too many, but they're, you know, it's not like an Arc System Fighter that goes way overboard with that stuff.

But, you know, it's like Just Defend and Overgage or whatever, and the drive thing and a million other drive things.

um but uh it does seem fun so far i even kind of like what they're doing with the single player mode where it's it's you know one of those kind of rpg things it's a little bit like what street fighter did with a world tour but doesn't have quite as much filler to me i feel like i'm fighting people more often of course that means that you are just navigating menus instead of actually running around a 3d world part of me doesn't necessarily miss that but um sean i think you You maybe probably have more to say on this one.

Yeah, I guess I do.

I was debating if I really even wanted to talk about this one at all because of the issues surrounding it.

And I realized that people just may not know about the issues with this game.

And so I thought maybe it would be good to address that a little bit just so people know, because like I was thinking, I was talking with my friends the other day and one of them was lamenting, man it's like it's weird that max hasn't talked about the the issues with this game at all like i know he doesn't get into that but it's like it's weird max a million dude is a popular fighting game youtuber and streamer well fighting games get announced here's the thing um max addressed it on stream the other day where he's like oh see i didn't know like and i that that's what like uh flipped the switch

of my brain where i'm like yeah not everyone's as plugged into a lot this stuff as we are.

So maybe they just don't know the issues with, yes, SNK is now owned by I forget the name.

I forget the name of the organization, but it's Saudi Arabia.

And it's under the savvy thing, which is their big diversification initiative.

And that's why they have the money to put the logo on WrestleMania.

I'm not saying that this looks like a cheap game, but they have definitely spent more money on advertising it.

It kind of looks like a cheap game in some ways.

That's some of the problems here, because, okay, Like when when SNK got bought by these guys, they were like, oh, no, that's not going to influence the way we make games at all.

Fast forward to 2025 and we have we have Cristiano Ronaldo who plays for their soccer team and Salvatore Ganacci, a DJ you probably never heard of, who play shows for them in the game.

not as cameos not as like skins not as dlc characters base roster playable characters in this what yeah the uh it's gross the problem is like the problematic soccer guy who you can do some googling about why ronaldo's problematic and then the yeah the dj who likes to play for them it's it's a weird situation and that's what things that has people up in arms is because those characters are taking up slots that could have been other s and k characters is it the whole thing that the the dj is like mbs's friend like mbs likes this dj so there's like let's please put him in the royal family yeah like

and so that's why it's crazy that's yeah that's like the short abridged version of what's going on here and why a lot of people are like i don't really like what's going on here and i kind of want to stay away from the game i think um you know some of our friends who have done interviews have like mentioned this in who have i've done reviews have mentioned this in their reviews like uh jason did one for game spot and uh i've never had to pronounce his last name uh will borger uh over at uh digital trends uh did one that is excellent and kind of popped off over a weekend uh will's a great guy man i

met evo and yeah he came up with a great review that explains why we don't like this shit in the fgc we actively avoid this shit and so it's weird to have a fighting game that we've been looking forward 2 for years and years and years um yeah anyways i just wanted to get that out of the way and then talk about yeah the game itself it's yeah what's up i don't know it's weird with this dj because i see a lot of people in the fighting community actually be like well we don't mind this guy for some reason again because they don't know yeah and it's real yeah you should know a little bit yeah i mean just

to run it down it's like okay so saudi arabia is basically they have of the a massive corporation that gets the oil out of the ground so they have tons of money that's all owned by the royal family and the royal family right now mostly controlled by muhammad bin saman who's mbs who had a journalist killed and has also done a lot of other terrible things but just like unrepentantly had a journalist killed someone that was just trying to find out what's going on in his own country was reporting on it and and then since then uh saudi arabia's invested a ton more in games they're invested in all kinds

of games including nintendo and all kinds of other company so that it's unavoidable to a point but it's like them having an eight percent investment in in nintendo and then them going to snk and be like we own you put my favorite dj and this guy who's accused of sexual assault in the video game because he's on our soccer team this is where the line gets crossed for a lot of people yeah thank you right um yes it makes it it just yeah it just makes it worse and i'm you know like sometimes i wish that i i could take a harder stand sometime time but even this it's like yeah this is i don't know i

feel about all this this is just making it kind of hard to it's bad game it's just bad because if it wasn't exactly see like there are s and k fans who are bummed out because like well you know some people that we love you know past characters could be in this game instead it's basically you know influence from higher ups saying nah you should put our you solve our favorite real world people in this game that's messed up it would be even if it was cool people right like if they put Bob Ross in it like that's better but it's still kind of stupid yeah it's it's them basically you take that back

it's like the fortnight thing is what they're trying to like sure here to be it just don't come off that way when you have a small roster of characters where every little thing that every little bit of the character matters to the balancing of a multiplayer game you know it's yeah bizarre that's um yeah and then some some people in chat were like how could you possibly not know about stuff because unless someone tells you that there's an issue with these people you're probably just gonna think oh yeah it's a call of duty thing it's a fortnight they're just putting random real people and like how

many more people on earth know ronaldo then yeah but yeah yeah they just know him from playing soccer that's what everyone's assuming like oh ronaldo's in there because he's like one of the most famous football players in the world that's of course they're gonna put him in for advertising and then you know someone needs to tell you no don't you should go do some googling about what that yeah past right just like this you know latest maximilian video about the djs people like well i heard this guy's an snk fan and ha ha his moves are silly and he looks like max that's great it's like yeah uh anyways

that being said i yeah to talk about the game itself and what i've played of it uh i do think that the shame of it all is that there has there's actually a pretty fun fighting game underneath and that's bummer is because i would love to play is people have been waiting like 25 years for a sequel to fatal fury and they made a good one they it's very street fighter uh the two series have always been intrinsically linked like uh one one of the key people who made the first street fighter went over to s and k to make fatal fury as like the next thing after street fire so two have always been linked

and then this one is very street fighter six there's a lot of street fire six isms like mike was sort of saying about the way the the fighting mechanics were canceling moves and everything managing a meter and all that it feels pretty good but the rest of the package i do think feels pretty cheap which doesn't that's not super out of place for modern s and k you look at like kof 14 kof 15 samurai showdown there's yeah the vibe there that they didn't have a lot of money to work with and so that's how you get like the characters looking great they're very self -shaded and well animated but then you

look at the backgrounds it's like unreal engine 4 forest with like semi realistic textures and it looks bizarre and then yeah the worst thing is that train level cause it's like you know the background elements are running at a lower frame rate than the game which kind of makes sense save space there but there's a train level with a scrolling background and that scrolls at a lower frame rate and that sucks to look at it's giving people motion sickness yes um and then yeah you mentioned the story mode that's in there that's basically 3506's world tour mode but it's all menu based it's all just

like jpegs and text boxes on a 2d map this game feels like it was made on a very small budget which would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that's getting so much damn money in marketing where you have everything from like influencers making videos like i saw there's a mega 64 skit or whatever it's like okay that makes sense but then yeah scaling up to it's in the middle of the ring uh this weekend uh was it wrestlemania yeah it's like front and center in the ring they had some graphics on screen there's this giant boxing match that's apparently really important that's called like the fatal fury

match they had this super elaborate like seven minute trailer or something that's made the most elaborate trailer fighting games i've ever gotten it's wild how much money is going into this game and then look at the game and it's another kind of low budget snk game so the whole situation is bizarre it feels gross because of some people involved and it's a bummer because i feel for the snk fans who have just been trying to you know prop up king of fighters and prop up these games that they love for so long and then it's there's a shadow cast over it by all the the ick factor of it all you know

yep yeah i definitely was like kind of getting in the mood for this game and then like i because i just was compartmentalizing all that stuff and then as i was loading it up and then thinking about it again it does just kind of put me in a mood of like it's harder to enjoy this game that's where i go right like something yeah exactly like i i think i was able to compartmentalize it up to a point but it really is like looking at that character select screen and just seeing their soccer player and dj in the roster like it's too much it's too much yeah yep it's too much i need to take a break guys

and then we'll be back you don't have to play it okay thank god uh i can only play as so many djs there's the one and street fighter and then the hero i guess and that's about it i'm gonna go the the the the oldest daughter and family matters i mean house excuse me and the rock dj from the robbie williams song rock dj i was gonna say like lucio from overwatch but these are good and relevant references guys thank you shut up dj stephanie michelle all the tanner girls are here you got got it dude out all right uh well we're gonna cut out this whole section of the podcast for later and then when you're

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when your daughter's learning how to drive and says but can i drive you say here we go but what you should say is something that helps protect your ride like a good neighbor state farm is there and that's where state farm comes in to help you choose the coverage you need so you can relax until you hear can we pick up my boyfriend wait like a good neighbor State Farm is there State Farm Bloomington Illinois breaking news everyone we've replaced Mike Minani with a square block of bubble wrap and surprise dilly dallys your zoo dads Mike why don't you why don't you show us your your autographs this is pornographic

you sick undressing the zoo dad these are this is big bubble wrap the big bubble wrap um are the bubbles themselves actually big they look like big bubbles it's like it's like this unbroken chain wave of bubbles it's a little hard to tie things like the ones like a mattress pattern yeah yes it's a a mattress Mike you could make a cool puffer jacket out of that oh that's true or I could suffocate someone to death oh I mean alright yeah alright there's two of them there's two oh god what wrapped around each other too uh they wrapped this thing better than my computer I swear to god for folks that don't

remember Mike Monati won an auction at a zoo for two autographed game prints right two separate options I won what once Mike Tyson's punch -out the other one is marion pippin I think I can't remember I kind of wish I was Mary Pippin it's Frodo and Sam okay lesser hobbits for sure oh my gosh almost there almost I'm almost there.

I want to be gentle, because this was quite an investment.

I don't think that I got this for some kind of deal, because it was at a zoo auction.

That is where I normally go for deals, personally.

Zoo auctions. Yeah.

I think my certificates of authenticity are online or something, is what the thing said.

I mean... The signatures are authentic?

Okay. Yeah, it's authentic.

Sure. Okay. You ready?

You ready? Ready? I'm ready.

Watch Mike accidentally doxes himself still.

Yeah, he'll find a way.

Wait, why did Mike Tyson write my address on here?

There we go. That's cool.

I like that. Yeah, it's nice.

Audio listeners, it's a screenshot from the video game with Mario saying TKO and there's this goofy signature.

That's cool. Yeah. No, Mike did not buy NFTs, folks.

There we go. They're non -fungible.

How come Gollum didn't sign it?

Yeah, I guess they couldn't get Andy Serkis that day.

Look, it says the thing in the Dark Elvish.

One ring to rule them all.

One ring to find them.

One ring to party rock.

And sorry for party rocking.

That's what they said.

And when he kicks the helmet, he breaks his toe.

It says that in Elvish right there.

So there you go. That's what happens when you have too good of a time with the zoo.

You get a little carried away.

i want to go to my local zoo now and see what auctions they got going on yeah right i got you know besides for those two things it was all like stealers and pirates and penguin sports memorabilia made so much more sense and there's this two nerd shit that apparently only i was interested in one you should have low -balled it mike yeah i gotta figure out where this stuff's gonna go actually i could probably just right there and there in my office that should be good enough i think yeah put it in your car on the outside yeah on the outside on the outside on the outside all right yeah no just like

block your back windows with both of those prints like left and right side yeah you don't need those was that such an eventful day at the zoo i bought this crap i got the icy dipping dots i saw that sea otter eat its ass for a minute straight and then i got spaghetti yeah we got lost for quite a while before we could leave for like half an hour that was fun too good stuff god i want to to go to a zoo with the minotti family now sounds like a ball of a time it was pretty good it was pretty good pittsburgh zoo is pretty nice you know what i've heard is also pretty nice pretty good elder scrolls

4 and it turns out they remastered it jeff grubb i'd like to know more yeah i got some news here for you everybody let's do it air quotes yes elder scrolls 4 remastered is the official title that's what they're calling it i think well a lot of us would consider it a remake make but they revealed it and it's out now they it was a shadow drop it actually did come out at like even as they were announcing it was already up on xbox and and uh steam it's on game pass it's also on playstation 5 uh they put it out everywhere i think the playstation version should run better in honor of old elder scrolls

games just never working on playstation i agree with that uh it is massive it's 120 some odd gigabytes says here 128 in my notes so i'm gonna assume that's right uh a lot of that's just gotta must just be 4k assets because uh you know that's the whole bulk of what they're going for here uh and i i wouldn't be surprised there would be a lot of assets in this game it's a massive thing it's 50 on steam there's a deluxe edition that's 60 dollars i think that comes with the horse armor uh and some other stuff perfect uh it also gets you like an art book and and and soundtrack app i think they called

it i i i'm never gonna open that thing so i'm not going to be able to help you on figuring out what that does um but yeah the game's open the nintendo app um yeah that's what it just opens the nintendo app on your phone starts playing oblivion music go ahead 82 000 concurrence on steam and this is the game again that's available on game pass so there's plenty of people playing it that way it just makes sense though i mean skyrim was such a big deal and you know essentially in a lot of ways this is the the first new Elder Scrolls since that we had.

Yeah, so we had that weird mobile game, right?

But I think this is what a lot of people have been waiting for.

At least it's the next best thing before we get Elder Scrolls 6.

Yep. It's... It looks pretty promising.

I'm downloading it right now and we'll probably check it out.

So looking forward to playing this.

Do you think Post Malone is excited for this at least versus a new Elder Scrolls?

Yeah, I think if you put this in front of Posty uh he's gonna he's gonna be very happy uh he'll spill this is gonna be his thing on the tour bus other than being in gambling ads like he was in a lot of gambling ads last year where he was betting on the Dallas Cowboys I know we talked about but boy fallout 3 seems like a relatively sure thing but I hope you know they do New Vegas also right yeah that'd be great that'd be great and I kind of hope they could do Morrowind at some point too that'd be fantastic yeah I I mean I think this This puts them on the path to kind of doing all of those.

If they can do one of these every two or three years going forward until they're kind of caught up and everything's updated, I thought that would be fantastic.

And that gives them plenty of stuff to, you know, filter in around whenever Elder Scrolls VI comes out and then eventually one day a new fallout from this team.

Yeah, I'm a big Oblivion fan, so going to be trying this out.

Apparently it's Steam Deck Verified, which, you know, it's on real engine 5 so yeah we'll see about that we'll see about that it doesn't mean much anymore it's especially for big open world unreal engine 5 games um if you wanna i'm we'll try it if you want to see the game in action now the game spot crew is streaming that uh playing through that right now uh would be remiss because grub and i talked about this last week on game breaking news but uh bethesda underneath the microsoft umbrella uh and there was the bds movement call to boycott microsoft so this uh one of those opportunities folks

for you know uh boycott with the dollar protest with your dollar uh maybe wait a bit uh before picking this up uh if you can uh yeah i make a little bit of this is a microsoft game just like the bulk of the industry now absolutely uh all right uh nintendo brought back paul rudd for a switch to add uh this was pretty pretty fun uh i sean like were you you're aware of that paul rudd super nintendo ad right because it's just got to be kind of a oh you weren't okay yeah like that paul rudd did a super nintendo ad for its launch back in 1991 not as like superstar superstar paul rudd just as a commercial

actor and he just walks up to a dark street and there's thunder going off and he just slams a cartridge in the in the super nintendo and then mode 7 graphics blow his mind yeah it was fun uh they have have basically recreated that with the switch to but what this really is hey switch to marketing has begun pre -orders are happening tomorrow night essentially uh they've kicked everything into high gear and it does really feel like this thing is here now uh i'm i'm getting excited about switch to oh yeah i'm like oh i can actually pre -order this thing get my hands pre -ordering it tomorrow night how

are we getting Sean dressed up as Paul Rudd from this commercial he kind of has the hair he kind of has if i just wear what mike wears to sgf i'll basically look like him all right there we go there you go a little bit of a blazer yeah uh speaking of nintendo uh hey that donkey kong bonanza game we're all pretty sure that the mario 3d mario team is involved in some way in that but what about a new mario game they're gonna want to make a new 3d mario at some some point well uh doug bowser was asked about that and the two words that kind of got people to get up some hope was he said stay tuned he

said some other stuff basically he's like you know we're gonna eventually have everything on the system don't worry but you know stay tuned to me makes it feel like of course we're reading into this too much but like hey is something gonna happen sooner than we realize and i'm trying to like figure out like what would have had to have happened or how would things have had to have gone down for us to get a 3d mario from From that 3D Mario team quickly after Donkey Kong Bonanza.

And it feels possible.

It's possible. I don't want to read it to stay tuned too much. Stay tuned for three years from now.

I think we're definitely not waiting eight years for this game.

It was eight years between Odyssey and Bonanza.

It's not going to be like that.

There could be a multitude of factors.

Maybe that team got bigger.

Maybe Bonanza's actually kind of been done for a while.

Right? right or maybe some other people are coming in to help with one or both of those games so yeah maybe the 3D Mario game is just a year two away maybe just three I think still expecting to get one this holiday is really out there I wish cause I have a fantasy critic but it's not happening I think stay tuned is just sort of a no shit statement he's like of course there's gonna be a Mario we'll let you know when it's ready I think that's what there is to to it um i was gonna say on the topic of who's making donkey kong uh uh andy brought this up over on the vgc podcast um i thought it was an interesting

point of there being a little cagey about like who's behind it which is generally a thing that they do when it's not entirely nintendo internal when it's grazo or something like that yeah i think that's a good point is that maybe it's like uh partially developed internally partially externally or something like that and and that's why they're being weird about it.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's definitely a possibility that the support studios and Nintendo software technology and 1UP, who helped with Bowser's Fury, could have been incorporated into this in some way and are either helping a lot with the Bonanza or maybe they're helping a lot with the next Mario game, and so the division of labor has been split up so that team, EPD5, that is the 3D Mario team, could actually do both relatively quickly.

like i i wouldn't be surprised by that nintendo's gonna want a 3d mario game before too long they especially with a new movie coming out next year so yeah yeah i i could see ways to make that make sense and in the meantime you could do odyssey switch to edition right you could do maybe a better 3d all -stars you could even give us galaxy 2 somehow maybe it's more of a bespoke special release there's there's other things they can do to tie the gap a little bit but not a ton They don't have as many options as, say, Zelda does.

Mouse controls for those pointer controls.

That'd be good. Yeah, maybe.

I would do it. Mouse controls in a Luigi's Mansion could be neat.

Be different. They kind of had that figured out pretty good with Luigi's Mansion 3, though.

That game was feeling nice.

I'm sorry, what? I said nice.

Xbox is hinting at Indiana Jones sequel.

Well, I think this is another no shit statement.

We think there's life in that franchise is what Phil Spencer said.

The first game seems to have done pretty well on Xbox.

I think it did pretty well on Steam.

It's now launching on PS5.

I feel like they're going to want to stick with this franchise at least for one more game and likely for an entire trilogy.

That's kind of how these things go.

That's when you like really sort of make your money.

It's when the third game also hits and we've got that engine and that technology on lockdown and we know how to make these games it becomes a lot easier to get the third one out yeah that's it's good to hear because with xbox and the way game pass is and they don't report a lot of numbers sometimes we don't really know how they feel about the performance of a game until they talk about wanting to make a sequel so i'm like okay indiana jones probably did well enough and you know i was a little concerned because that last movie didn't do well a lot of people don't seem to care about indiana jones

as much so i'm glad that they seem happy you know sometimes sometimes Sometimes Microsoft says things and then sells an entire studio that made that game that they said did well anyways, right?

They have done that.

Yeah. So this isn't some guarantee that we're going to get the sequel, but I'm hopeful.

I did like that game a lot, and I would like to see more adventures of Indiana Jones and Gina be good.

Should I watch Dial of Destiny?

Yeah. I like it. It's not terrible.

Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, do you care about Indiana Jones at all?

Not at all. You don't need to watch it then.

Yeah, you're fine. Just go watch Raiders again Get a good opinion about Raiders First and then we can worry about Styles of Destiny It's better than Crystal Skull It's better than Crystal Skull for sure Definitely Alright let's see here A classic GBA Fire Emblem has been added To Switch Online's retro library The tiles sickos Are just absolutely losing their minds Sacred Stones Originally a Game Boy Advance game from 2004 Has been added to the Nintendo Switch Online's Game Boy Advance app, which is the expansion pack, so the $50 a year version of Nintendo Switch Online because it's a GBA game.

Yeah, this is an early Fire Emblem game that we got here in the States but it's one of the good ones, just like most of these Fire Emblem games are.

Sacred Stones is cool because I played that first one that was just called Fire Emblem here this was the second one we got here, so it's the third GBA one they released because we didn't get that first one with Roy in it.

It's like 8 overall or something.

Yeah, but I really I liked this game I liked the way those GBA ones look with the really good looking pixel art and the very fluid animations in the battle so I liked this game quite a bit I never did finish it so it might be fun to go back to this yeah it was a toughie if I recall correctly from my time sitting on the bus playing this game yeah it was definitely harder than like the modern awakening and post era ones for sure did it have like the full quality of life stuff of like hey hey, you could see everywhere where the enemy team could potentially attack you?

Did they have like that sort of thing?

I don't know. I don't think so.

It didn't have the whole, hey, you can play it without the permadeath mode.

You had to play it with permadeath, I think.

And it was just the weapon wheel was a bit more strict and rigid, critical hits.

I think you just pop off and kill a person.

A lot of the quality of life stuff that we now associate with Fire Emblem came about in Awakening.

Yes. Awakening kind of solidified a lot of that stuff.

Hey, but not to scare anyone off.

it's on nso go try that these games are right some people are saying like oh i i think it's maybe one of the easier ones so even without that quality life stuff might not be as bad as some of the other ones so yeah okay take a look at it it's neat okay all right uh let's see here let me get back to where i was in oh boy what's so funny jan what's so funny what is this new story oh right oh hell yeah let's go there you go now you know what's going vertical an OutRun movie is being made by Michael Bay and Sidney Sweeney a live -action OutRun movie is in development at Universal with Michael Bay directing

and producing and Sidney Sweeney producing Mike are they just doing this so they can replace that Fast and the Furious ride with an OutRun thing no because they're just built they're replacing it with like another Fast and Furious ride was what really is happening with that thing yeah um oh hey you know what I think this is a good idea Yeah, go ahead.

Give more details if you want to.

Jason Rothwell will write the script.

They called it the very popular video game, which, hey, it is in my life, I suppose.

And then Sega's Toro Nakahara and Shuji Utsumi will oversee the project.

So they're basically going to be like Miyamoto overseeing the Mario movie to make sure that Outrun is treated right, I guess.

If it's just like a Smokey and the Bandit sort of thing, I mean, why not?

I didn't mean to make the oldest old man reference.

I'm sorry. I don't want there to be any drama.

It should be like the game.

It should be all vibes.

All I'm going to say is what is the script for an OutRun movie?

It's just driving forward. You just drive with a pretty person in the car.

Look, they got Cindy Sweeney.

You got that. You got Michael Bay.

I bet the car's going to be fast. I think we're good to go.

Turn him into a robot.

Yeah, we'll be fine.

I mean. I don't want any drama.

I don't even the Michael Bay Explode stuff they can kind of happen in the distance they can look at it but like that's nice but I just want them to drive just chill music Sydney Sweeney driving a really cool car and nuclear bombs going off in the horizon there we go that's already better than most movies I have to listen to you all talk about guys guys it is gonna be an American adaptation of the Japanese movie Drive My Car and it's just It's going to be Sydney Sweeney driving your car for like hours on end, talking about life and having like a, I don't know, going deep into psychological and emotional

trauma. It's going to be like Lost in Translation, but in a car.

I think there's a whole genre of drive cars across the country movies, and they're just going to make one of those without running.

That's completely fine.

Tooby, give us the movie to do that or the money to do that.

we'll make the movie call us oh to be not to be the character from uh near automata no by the way where's your movie huh oh dear automata so popular eat shit here's outrun that's right a real video game right uh you know say let's bring it back all these classic franchises they have not brought up outrun but uh they're supposedly making a movie you think think maybe we'll get to that because uh gosh yeah original outruns good outrun 2 is fantastic i would love a new one uh outrun uh 3d for the 3ds is always the one i recommend it's it's outrun one but it's it's just a really good version of that arcade

game done by m2 who did really good jobs on all those ports okay there's like precedent for weird old seemingly forgotten video game movies doing well he's talking about rampage everybody rampage which i think is still Still, technically, one of the highest -grossing video game movies.

It did really well.

That was at the time where The Rock actually was just a bankable, can't -miss star.

Yeah, that's what it was.

All right. Jason Rothwell, whatever your name is, here's the after -credits stinger now.

Sidney Sweeney gets out of the car because the vibes have ended.

You're done driving wherever.

And then she looks on her phone and she goes, oh, wait, I got to get somewhere.

somewhere and then like you just hear like an engine purring in the background and then like pick it up pick it up pick it up and then just scott starts playing and it's the crazy taxi movie yeah let's go yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah perfect all right i'm down i'm in i'm in crazy taxi versus outrun yeah that definitely universe we'll get that gran turismo nerd in here we'll get the the Breaking Bad guy from Need for Speed.

We'll get the Hornet from Fighting Vipers.

It's gonna be great.

Yo, and instead... I did not know you were gonna pick up Need for Speed into the cinematic universe.

It's gonna be great.

This movie already sounds fully loaded, so we need Herbie.

We'll get Samoa Joe to beat Sweet Tooth or the guy who drives Sweet Tooth's car, whatever his name is.

It'll be great. Needles.

We'll get Needles in there.

Needles McGee I think is his name.

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah all right retro games industry is in panic as trump tariffs threaten hobby hey trump's tariffs are threatening everything including our economy we're in a recession everybody welcome uh but grub i just need to hijack this real quick please do this motherfucker i said this i'm sorry for cussing all right this person i talked about this a couple weeks ago on game breaking news i think when it was formerly called game miss mornings the price of my coffee is going up and i'm going insane yeah my bag of beans this weekend was four dollars more than it

was before oh god they got jane's coffee they're getting grubs chinese handhelds it could be getting radicalized they got my handouts and my retro tinks recent u .s tariffs on chinese imports are severely impacting the retro gaming handheld market companies like like AmberNIC and Retroid Pocket, are facing challenges.

That includes halted shipments and increased prices.

Retro gaming enthusiasts are panic buying devices before prices surge.

Ayn, who does like the Ayn Oden, I guess just announced today, they are also joining in on this.

They are no longer shipping stuff to the United States from China.

The tariffs classify video game consoles as toys, not technology, making them subject to high levies.

You might remember, weren't there exceptions?

exceptions those were for apple because tim cook is the guy that trump wishes he was so when he comes when he comes to the white house he's like well i need to be good at business still and trump's like oh okay i'll you know let you have your stuff but everyone else pretty much screwed here so prices are gonna go up uh for everything and really this is the only choice if you're shipping from china is you just can't do business in the in the united states anymore and none of this stuff is going to get manufactured in the united states we've said that before but let's be clear like that's not that you

say like oh we couldn't do it like this entire industry of these retro handhelds and the retro tinks and the fpga consoles this is only possible because there was this manufacturing in china in the first place the people the ideas looked at what was possible due to the capacity of manufacturing and worked backward from like i have a good relationship with this one manufacturer what could we do and they were like oh we could actually make this stuff cheap enough that it becomes a commodity and we could just put these out a ton a ton a year and it's been a really great thing and now it's just getting

completely nuked um and yeah i mean this is just like one tiny aspect of it of course the uh this is really having a major drag on the economy overall overall and uh yeah it's just gonna keep getting worse until something breaks and this is just one of the many things that are breaking yeah the analog 3d that they haven't shipped that yet, so it's screwed. They've already taken pre -orders on that.

They're gonna have to cancel those essentially or charge more money, one or the other.

Knowing analog, they might just charge more money.

They'll probably just charge more money.

Exactly. Respawn reveals gritty Clone Wars story, Star Wars Zero Company for PS5, Xbox and PC, tiles free.

Actually, I don't even know if this one has tiles, but it is a turn -based game.

Implied tiles is fine for me, baby.

Implied tiles, yes.

Electronic arts uh revealed star wars z -com or zero company a turn -based tactics game by bit reactor and respawn entertainment set in the clone wars era and releasing in 2026 for pc ps5 and xbox series x slash s it is x -com with star wars it's made by people who have made x -com a lot of former for x people who worked on x -com they also worked on civilization but now they're making a star wars game and they showed this off at star wars celebration lucy james uh actually She moderated the panel.

Great job, Lucy. Good job, Lucy.

I hope you enjoyed Japan.

And yeah, I think this looks really promising.

Yeah. So I'm looking forward to it.

Someone should let Grubb and I host a Star Wars thing.

Yeah, for real. This man loves Andor.

I love the Mandalorian.

I'm so excited tonight, Andor.

Oh, my God. Plus tonight.

Tonight's the night.

Tonight's the night, I think.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it'll be.

But it'll be when we're starting our podcast, Mike.

So I'll be in a bad mood.

Don't worry, buddy.

they put those on the internet now you can watch whenever you want no i don't think that's how it works i miss it i miss it you uh gritty star wars fans are eating good though between uh these two things yeah i i do wonder like the gritty star wars or gritty clone wars is actually how they're describing it i you could kind of see that in the key art where they're not none of the characters there's a lot of variety of characters there's a mandalorian there's someone with a lightsaber there is a Han Solo stand -in uh none of it's too silly like the sort of like Fortnite side of Star Wars we get a lot

of right now which I have no problem with yeah but I do occasionally appreciate it when someone's like hey we're gonna take this seriously this is you know military sci -fi is the genre that's uh that Star Wars is in for me a lot of times when I'm thinking about it and so kind of like yeah yeah it can be a little bit closer to you know a Gundam than something else I'm like like yeah i'm i welcome that i'm happy to see it which is funny that you say that because the newest gundam is just the most bright and colorful thing you've ever fucking seen gundam also can do everything as well yeah they're

very they're actually very similar in terms of how they approach military sci -fi yeah you weren't kidding i looked at the gameplay here that's at the end of the trailer it's just x -com just straight up waist high like every level you go in there and there's a ton of waist high cover right yeah i got okay next was cool i yeah i i kind of wish midnight night suns just stuck to uh the x -com model and then maybe it would have just i don't know succeeded better because yeah you know people love playing that game but the cards scared away a bunch of the audience that just hates anything that has cards

in it and it really was that simple it's fine even though i have like i don't really have any love for the prequel films there is something still about the aesthetics of it i see these super battle droids and i'm like i kind of like the way those things look i see a clone trooper i'm like yeah that's kind of neat armor so yeah I think I could go for this what is the likelihood that we're gonna get a controllable Gungan in this game with those blue balls yeah I would yeah I love a Gungan's blue balls yes absolutely the power orbs come on everybody uh yeah I think that like that's something that they

like definitely introduced like later in the game or maybe even maybe even as dlc they kind of a gungan campaign right if it's the clone are they adding like darth jar jar to fortnite they are adding darth jar jar fortnite's getting it's a full star wars like season something that's never really actually had before it's that star wars stuff but it's now it's having a full star wars season and they are including darth jar jar is this right that's darth jar jar oh my god that's messed up Anyway, I wish HK -47 could just be in this game.

I don't know why, I'm just thinking something like that.

I mean, Greg, correct me if I'm wrong but there's a pretty big modding scene for XCOM, right?

I think so. There's definitely a modding scene for it and really there's this kind of thing where if there's a modding scene probably one of the first things that happened was a total Star Wars Conversion mod.

So I bet there's a lot of people who will be like, I'm going to jump on this and add all the stuff I want to see.

Okay, yeah, because I need from the jump, I need someone to suggest character classes for the bomb cast or the giant bomb crew, and I just want to play as us.

Grub, I'm going to assume you want to be a bounty hunter.

You want to be on solo?

Yeah, a scoundrel, sure.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll be a Wookiee.

I wasn't going to say it.

I was going to say Sean should be the Wookiee since he's super tall.

Well, there you go.

What is it? Everyone loves you.

The rest of you are Wookiees.

There you go. Okay, fine.

Yeah, three grubs. Wait, three Wookiees and a Grub?

Exactly. Benati, I was going to make you a droid.

I would like that, actually.

Sorry, I have to be a Mandalorian.

Jandalorian just rolls off the top.

I get it. What if you make me C -3PO and Mike R2 -D2?

Oh, my god, that's so good.

That makes a lot of sense.

Can we just get that art and do it in the Star Wars holiday cartoon style?

Perfect. Sure. A holiday special style.

That or the style of that weird Saturday morning droid cartoon show.

Yeah. Oh, the droid cartoon show.

Yes. That'd be great too.

There we go. Oh, man.

Darth Jar Jar has now overtaken chat.

And with that, I must hand this show back over to Jan. That does it for the news headlines.

Oh, gosh. I feel like Anakin in episode three.

I just want to wipe out all of these emotes.

Not think of the children.

Grub. manati sean what if we uh we're gonna go to emails in just a second right after this quick breakie break but i feel like uh i've been in the mood to do some film in 40s what if we just did the prequel trilogy i love that no now mike's right we have to do angels and demons it's about electing a new pope okay all right all right okay the catholic agenda will not be impeded You promised me it's going to happen.

Come on. It's topical.

This is the viral content that certain people crave apparently.

Come on. Folks, hey, you know what?

Yeah, the pope died, and there's like a small contingent of people that think the next pope could be Filipino. You know?

It could be a win for my people.

When are we going to finally get an Italian pope?

Representation Damn it I'm sorry Mike the Italian has got to take a seat for this one You can sit next to Stanley Tucci Alright folks we're going to be back with some emails right after this Quick A new era of power has arrived with the Alienware Area 51 gaming laptops Intentionally engineered to push more power to the CPU and GPU for maximum This otherworldly power, paired with the game -changing AI capabilities of Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 -series GPUs with DLSS 4, amplifies performance and image precision for ultra -smooth, stunning gameplay.

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emails bombcast a giant bomb yes i have an email uh this is from jeff grubb a giant bomb uh do you guys really think it's a problem for uh expedition 33 that oblivion's coming out because i don't i mean i'll say that with big rpgs i do generally like to play through one before i start start another one now when it's so close like this jeff like i don't know maybe i'll start both of them and see which one i really want to play through a problem i don't know but these are big long games but maybe this is a me thing but for me the oblivion style rpg and the clear obscure style rpg those are those

genres are so different to me they're different worlds it may as well be be like uh first person shooter and yeah if someone says to me hey i like persona i am not gonna assume they like oblivion style rpgs as well they might but i'm not gonna assume because they're so different i don't think it's a problem in the sense of them being like similar games like because they are very different rpgs i think in terms of the marketing cycle though oblivion is like sucking all the oxygen out of the room to the point that people might not notice this smaller game coming out right we'll see how small it

is yeah we'll see how the reviews treat it though let's just wait and see yeah okay it's really i want to play the demo so maybe it'll get really good reviews and then some people play it and not like it to get really mad about the review well it's just you know i'm saying like it's not the it's not the really big bethesda game that's out right now it's a smaller joint so like yeah they could use all the like xbox marketing that they would get out game pass and stuff maybe some of that is going to be dampened a little uh Speaking of someone in that camp that Grub specifically mentioned, I have no fondness

for Oblivion. I don't have any nostalgia for it.

I feel no drive to go play it.

But this RPWi, woo -hoo -hoo!

There it is. Slap my beret on and get a baguette from my patisserie.

Jeff, I told you, being racist is bad, but it's kind of funny to do it with the French. You're right.

let me I'll send you the five francs I told you Lord making croissants is so damn hard I can't fucking do it and it's killing me it's pronounced croissant I'm sorry yeah there was also like I think I posted I was making chocolate croissants the other day and then someone was like oh that's not a chocolate croissant it's a pan au chocolat and I'm like get the fuck out of here dog I can't stand these goddamn damn weebs did you kill them no I did not I did wow you like conviction that's right that's what I'm always telling myself when I look at myself in the mirror you lack conviction but you have plenty

of emails bombcast giant bomb .com is email address bombcast giant bomb write in about any and everything weebs that is a good joke it plays better on blue sky you kind of have to write it out yeah 12 podcast points for you Jeff alright first email comes from Simon in Saskatchewan with some more trivia.

Simon, thank you for being a steady source of trivia these last couple of weeks.

You're kind of like a Snapple cap, and I don't drink Snapple anymore, so I've been lacking in fun facts.

Hello, Bombcast. When living overseas, I noticed a weird difference between our battery mascots, which led me to look into it.

In Canada and the US, and apparently Turkey, we have the Energizer Bunny, but everywhere else doesn't.

Instead they have A Duracell pink bunny That dresses like a sprinter Most places have an Energizer Mascot called Mr. Energizer That looks like a creepy Battery with arms and legs The Duracell bunny came first by 15 years But Energizer won due to an Interesting trademark Dispute The court case shows how marketing, defending IP Branding and trademark are so important Much appreciation for all you do Simon from Saskatchewan They both have bunnies Well, here's the thing.

The Energizer bunny.

I feel like a lot of our audience knows what that looks like.

You know, he looks like a toy, but with glasses on.

So kind of cool. The Duracell bunny is just like a mascot bunny.

You know, he looks like a sonic freaker.

He's not as good. Let's be honest. I don't like him.

Now describe Mr. Energizer to me.

I'm very curious about Mr. Energizer.

Yeah, that's the real key to all.

It sounds like in the Simpsons joke about, oh, yeah, Mr. Energizer lives on the moon in the universe's presence once a year.

he has an ass he has a human ass like like a bear ass baboon wearing shorts he's just like athletic shorts i'm looking it up he's a giant battery with human arms and legs with shorts and shoes on okay and imagine they ripped off the arms and legs of the we fit fit people and slap them onto a battery yeah okay it's like that this is bad he's yoked yeah too much definition there I don't like this um alright next email comes from Joe in Michigan Bethesda has a history of not fixing even game breaking bugs in successful ports of their games do you think we'll see meaningful changes to bugs and mechanics

with a separate studio working on this or is it just a visual improvement Joe in Michigan i think there some bugs will be fixed there will be some new bugs i think that's that's my expectation i mean if it really is like such a quote -unquote remaster that we are largely replacing assets you think that it wouldn't be as buggy as a normal bethesda game but you know they're not just replacing assets they are changing a lot and it's also an entirely new engine they move the game to uh like it might not be starfield launch levels of jack but i bet there will be some jack and for some people they'll

like that yeah i have i don't know if they've talked about officially now that's out out but it is it what we thought where it's the original engine underneath and then ue5 just doing visuals on top i don't know if they they definitely didn't say in or they didn't explicitly say in the thing that we talked over and then i don't know if that pr is out there and i you know and that rumor's gone back and forth now a couple times where someone said it was the original engine with unreal engine 5 on top and one said no they're remaking everything in unreal engine 5 so i don't know uh but them calling

it a remaster to me does suggest that the underlying technology is still creation engine or cambrio one or one of the other I can never remember which one it was yeah um we got a lot of fun emails in a lot of them very nice emails so thank you all for sending very kind words I try and relay them to the gang special shout out to you I just put into our own discord here are the specific email that very visual and I i just want to get a pop uh will not read that one out loud but thank you for that discord that's good that's good i like that well don't we have to describe it for people i'm popping

off pretty hard here all right uh jeff grubb why don't you do it you know what i'll do it i'll do it okay all right a kind emailer I believe Ryan wrote in no subject email just reads the Bacalar family reunion is held every year in the and then they send a picture of what I believe may be a break room that is just called co -worker room perfect no no wow sorry for Stace and Dib catching strays there man the whole family the whole damn family all right Tim loves it all right next email come from comes from Matt from Murfreesboro Tennessee hey guys Blueprints is a really cool game respect the hell

of it but the randomness of the rooms soured a little on the experience Portal is amazing and The Witness is easily a top five game of all time what are some other games that have all the first person mystery of Blueprints with clues and puzzles and all that if Blueprints was just a weird mansion with all all these mysteries to solve.

It just might be a perfect game to me.

Thanks, Matt from Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

I mean, Oprah, Dan, right?

Yeah, there's a lot of think I'm ups for sure.

Yeah, I've heard of MISS.

Yeah, MISS. I'm going to try MISS.

I'm going to try the MISS remake.

Is it like they remade it so you can walk around and it's not like a slideshow anymore?

Is that how it works?

It's not a slideshow anymore.

Part of me is like, I might want the slideshow.

I don't know. Totally.

Yeah, Outer Wilds is a good one for sure, yeah.

I'm glad this was brought up on an episode that I'm on. I actually wanted to ask you guys about this.

So is that sort of like the conversation point now that we're a little removed is that people don't like the randomness of it?

Some people don't for sure.

And you know, then like there's people like Jeff and I who are like, you people are weak, right?

Well, you guys say no matter what.

And they find us obnoxious.

We find them like, you know, pathetic.

Wow. But there has been tension a little bit with Blueprints.

Yep. okay but it's different for you Sean you're like you don't like the these puzzle games in general it's not your speed yeah this is yeah I don't even know how to classify them but yeah I like physics puzzles you know like a portal like right or you know like breath of wild something like that yeah something about this like first person logic puzzles it's not really it's escape room which is how I was trying to describe it initially yeah yeah I think that's fair I don't know about about the random element though because i was thinking about this uh like i'm a competitive tcg player i don't

get mad at pokemon because there's a random element because it's a card game like that's like you i feel like you kind of have to meet the game on its own terms a little bit there and that if the developers set out to do something i think it's fair to critique it but i'm not sure like some of the way people have been talking about is the most fair in the world world where it's just like oh this sucks because of it well that's what the devs want to make so i yeah i don't know i just don't think it can be the game it is without it exactly definitely that's 100 true yeah i think that you're right

sean to a certain degree where it's like we can criticize it if it's not your thing yeah uh but i i definitely think that it is part of the charm and part of the magic of the game and i think i you know for me it like makes these two things fit together even better where uh i think i pointed out like oh the story elements of hades helped introduce a lot of people who didn't like roguelites to the idea of a roguelite and that got them through there here it's i think the rng uh roguelite random stuff that's happening here kind of is a good gateway into the puzzle elements because it gives you a chance

to be like well if i didn't get exactly what i wanted this time that's not my fault so what can i make out out of this run and it might lead you to discoveries you wouldn't otherwise have i think i think it's a good like channeling mechanism for getting you to what is really magical about the game which is all this other stuff that's happening at the same time i think it's pretty fun to get good at the rng and i feel like it's part of what makes the game unique you know and i totally get people don't like it and that's where you get into you know some of the more subjective elements of game criticism

is like well is this thing that i don't like bad or is it just you know not a thing that I'm into.

I feel like enough people like the roguelike element of it that maybe it's just nothing for you rather than it's just empirically a bad portion of the game.

It's always tough to make that call for sure.

I have put more and more time into Blueprints and I didn't want to put it on the run of show today.

Same. It's still really when I'm primarily playing.

There was a moment where I was just sitting here at my desk just jaw on the floor of just like and oh getting very close to weeping of like oh my god i think i love this game because i started thinking about it more and oh my god maybe i want to be a prince but the blueprints not the red prints not the red prints not the red prints just the blue one um and hey like yo i am a sucker for any kind of fortune teller in uh movies or games it's a good one let me tell you fucking head straight to that goddamn rumpus room and have it go get the rumpus room and talk to talk to alzara that has coins in the room

just put one of those in there yeah that cat scene's a trip yep god i yeah i actually don't like the movie big that much uh even now it's a weird movie it's very weird um yep all right uh okay uh email mail this comes fresh into the bomb cast email address nikki in los angeles what should i have for lunch uh deciding that too i've been eating today really nikki i'm gonna say you should get like an italian forward sandwich mediterranean food of some kind you know so if you want if you have to go with italian food go with it but go a little more middle eastern maybe some turkish shawarma that's

what i'm leaning on what i want to do that i haven't had a long time so at mcdonald's oh i want to go oh god i eat mcdonald's so often because of the kids see i don't i don't have that excuse but what do you like for some reason i feel more guilty about mcdonald's and other fast food i don't try it out of course too much fast food for me it's like you know maybe for my next special fast food thing like i should just go to a mcdonald's and get some fries what if you got nikki's favorite and staying you got whopper in place of uh i think i talked about it here but i have a burger king very close

to me and its state of disrepair is astonishing yeah it is the most disgusting rotting excuse of a restaurant it's i know i said that the blueprints rng compliers were pathetic i excuse me the state of burger Burger King right now is pathetic.

Look, we have all these fast food restaurants.

They can't all be around forever.

And burgers are out and chicken is in anyways.

Something's gotta go.

And it better be Burger King, right?

Like, give Wendy's a pass.

McDonald's, of course.

The fun weird ones like Hardee's or whatever and Rally's, they can stick around.

Get Burger King out of here.

It's done. The rodeo burger was like 30 years ago.

Move on. no kings only mcdonald's um i still like burger king i think you're right though that like the whopper specific the what yes the whopper whopper jr is actually i think you just you just have associated warm fuzzies with sneaking well that too for sure and i and i worked there i don't know that doesn't actually make me feel warm and fuzzy places that you work for yeah it's actually pretty pretty impressive.

You still like Burger King, honestly.

Very true, yes. I feel very similar to you, Mike.

I don't really have a fondness for Burger King, but goddamn.

Could I go for a long chicken sandwich right now?

Maybe that's why I never actually had the long chicken sandwich. Maybe that's my problem.

That's what would change, Mike.

It is astonishing how it's always the Burger King that is the shittiest restaurant in your neighborhood.

It wasn't going on there.

Just clean it a little bit.

I get it. It's in purgatory.

It's in purgatory. Oh, fuck.

All right. There actually is a chain here called Burgatory.

It's pretty good. God, that threw me for a loop.

I don't know what to say anymore.

Yeah. Email. Go to hell, Burger King.

We let Hardee's die.

I guess we can let Barney die.

No, Hardee's is fine.

But we got a new Hardee's.

It's not. It's not fine.

I wouldn't say it's fine.

I don't know. I went to the Hardee's, our new Hardee's that's attached to the Love's gas station.

I had a great time.

That's it. Exactly.

a hardy's might still exist if it's attached to a gas station like long john silvers right like gas station i love car nights i'm just saying that hardy's is not fine because it's like the little guy on the side of the dude in uh what's that arnold schwarzenegger movie where he goes to a total recall the little total recall quantico guy on the side of loves gas station i love loves it's a problem i uh i'm starting to like try to find my way to get gas at the loves since that's what i do with sheets yeah she's just like an exit away but i don't even really get anything else there i don't get any

food i just like to go in that store and it's really like clean and pleasant and every once in a while the loudspeaker tells a trucker where they can go shower yeah i like hearing someone's showers ready just being outside pumping my gas but uh and it's like a robot voice too i'm like oh my god they have robots telling them the showers are ready all right just like we all will soon that's right once we all get to the camps or the farms I should say all right a question from Travis and Fargo anybody watching Andor tonight I can't wait real quick Nikki and Chad said they say white people don't have culture

yo okay actually I thought about this this morning y 'all really cooked when you came up with the phrase big whoop oh thank you probably pretty good yeah i'm like wow big whoop and then like i just think of y 'all and then i put my sunglasses behind my head and i turn my cap around so thank you yeah here's what i'm here's what i'm wondering jeff because when andor season one happened it seemed pretty low key and it felt like oh they weren't maybe super happy with the viewership blah blah blah since then they had some star wars shows that had really bad viewership and i think a lot of people have I've

caught up with season one of Andor and like it a lot.

I feel like season two is going to maybe pop off a lot more.

I hope so. The thing that they really like that happened with Andor is its viewership growed week to week.

So like the finale like did better than the like second episode, which is kind of what you want.

So I think as long as this one also continues to grow, but there's definitely a chance because it's the one that people still talk about.

It's getting really good reviews too.

It's like a 98 % on Rotten Tomatoes.

So boy, I'm excited.

Hey, after this podcast ends, y 'all listening, watching live, go watch fucking Sinners.

Jesus Christ. I cannot wait.

I wanted to go see it over the weekend, but I couldn't get to the theater.

It seems good. I forgot what 4DX meant at my local Regal Cinema.

Are you okay? Did you hurt your back?

No, I politely asked, can I exchange my tickets for a regular movie theater?

Because since this movie takes place in the 1930s, 1930s and they have like an old like jalopy style car he would just rumble all the time while Michael B.

Jordan was driving with Michael B.

Jordan is the movie about killing the KKK is there any of that in there I don't want to spoil anything but it's okay it's a good cathartic time all right that's all I needed to hear okay yeah I need one of those all right last last email from the show is a big one.

This one comes from Ogto.

Shouts out to Ogto.

Hey, gang. Ya boy Ogto here.

Ideally, Grub, Dan, and Mitch would be there for this email.

Sorry. Dan's in Japan hanging out and getting his face scanned.

I compiled a dumb list of Blight Club games and movies based on video games.

In order to answer the ultimate dumb question, would you rather play a bad video game or watch a bad video game movie?

General rules to give the comparison any kind of juice.

Number one, you either marathon the game in a normal Bly Club setting with the other two chuckleheads, or you watch the movie an equivalent number of times it would take you to beat the game using Bly Club playtime.

If you pick the movie, you're raw -dogging it.

No phone, no company, no distractions, just you and the movie for X number of times.

Ranked the games slash movies using Metacritic or whatever was available, sometimes nothing.

thing uh for the player of each game has to watch the equivalent equivalently ranked bad movie for x number of times without further ado here are your options jan can you use the sheet if uh you can use the sheet that's fine uh mike yes would you rather play moral combat mythologies or watch Watch Dead or Alive, DOA, Dead or Alive, the 2006 movie, 11 times.

11 times, guys. Look, I can beat Mythologies in like 50 minutes now.

Well, probably not right now, but yeah, I think at this point, I figured that game out.

I will say, I like the way that Dead or Alive movie sucks, and it sucks pretty bad.

It is definitely so bad it's kind of fun to watch Territor, which a lot of bad video game movies are.

I used to watch a ton of them with my friends.

We watched all that UE Bowl crap.

And Dead or Alive, it was...

It's the only bad fighting game movie that actually incorporated health bars into a scene at one point somehow, so I thought that was really funny.

But yeah, I'll take Mythologies.

Grubb, would you rather play Daikatana...

watched borderlands 2024 15 times what the fuck mike's was so much better i would love i would let me play mythologies and watch doa 15 times that's easy okay hang on hang on yeah i got lost here somewhere in the shuffle is the idea that they need to watch the movie the equivalent length of the playthrough of the game yeah yes yeah and you can't just pick the movie because like well that's short at least and the movie and the game have a similar rating yeah i think that's what's happening okay uh okay so it's daikatana or the borderlands movie god a friend of the side janina's in it you know and that's

true i i did see borderlands the movie in theaters and it was one of the most aggressively bad things i've ever seen that it and that does me and it made it like like worth it for that one watch but i don't know if i would call it a fun bad movie um in fact it's just painful i i think i have to go with daikatana actually okay yeah man uh can i can i install the patch for daikatana no no no no auto saying that i have to play mythologies for as long as my original playthrough i think i'll still take mythologies over yeah i'll take daikatana um I love emails like this, by the way.

Grub, would you rather play Bubsy 3D or watch Postal 2007?

Six times. Postal does have a lot of 9 -11 jokes and a lot of child shooting jokes too.

So I know how much you love those.

Yeah, right. Well, cool.

That's a tough one then.

Yeah, I think I would.

Bubsy 3D. Give me Bubsy 3D.

I don't need that much Postal in my veins.

all right we're gonna skip over dan's maybe we'll say uh we'll just give it to sean okay sean i'm gonna be shocked if the answer isn't the game jan but yeah hit me uh would you rather play sonic 06 or watch wing commander 1999 14 times i don't know this any movie i want to watch it's the game yes even sonic 06 because I just do it once alright Mike would you rather play Alone in the Dark or watch Blood Rain 2005 six times I'll take Blood Rain God he hates the Wii yeah I'll take Blood Rain on this one actually God I hate it Alone in the Dark alright turbo Dan Sean would you rather play Terminator 3

Rise of the Machines or watch Street Fighter the Street Fighter colon the movie of wait sorry or watch Street Fighter colon the Legend of Chun -Li oh different story three times Terminator was like seems like a decent game actually Dan got off easy on that one so Terminator all the way uh Bludge of Chun -Li is one of the worst movies I've ever seen though It's terrible.

It's rough. It's so bad.

We should have Blake Club goes to the movies.

Yeah, definitely. All right, a couple more here.

Grub, would you rather play Blues Brothers 2000 or watch Silent Hill Revelation 2012 four times?

Oh, four times is not too bad.

Yeah, it's not too bad.

Blink and you'll miss it.

Yeah. oh man that's terrible um yeah i i think i'll go with silent hill four times because that mostly because i don't know how bad that movie is i'm not familiar with it so this is probably me walking into a buzzsaw your blinding round game was four movies long you got four movies long yeah yeah all right uh mike would you rather play robocop or watch far cry five times oh another yui bowl huh yeah i i remember almost nothing about that movie except uh clint howard was in a boat at one point i think uh oh oh again there's something about those yui bowl movies that is so bad i can't stop thinking

about them but if it was um his house of the dead movie i would would like rather watch that 20 times than play a good video game i love that stupid thing i think i'll go with far cry actually i don't know anyone in this movie uh yeah i remember the uh the main the main character the main hero was such a like very schlubby normal looking dude who did not seem like a movie star or a hero yeah i think so is it he's the guy from slc punks right the german guy or am i thinking of something i'll tell you what he's definitely european tail schweiger yeah he's an inglorious bastards right oh yeah yeah

he is he is he is oh good for him good for him yeah yeah seems like a strange choice for maybe the lead of your like yeah i think i think he's just friends with uva bowl i think it's actually with that right you german of course yeah that'll make sense uh mike another one for you yo mike would you rather play mortal Mortal Kombat Special Forces, or watch In the Name of the King, A Dungeon Siege Tale, three times.

Three times. That movie is pretty rough.

That's funny because they gave Uwe Boll a budget.

The stupid jerks. Oh, my God.

Special Forces was so boring.

Yeah, but Special Forces does have Ben Kingsley.

Does it have Ben Kingsley or John Rhys -Davies or The Beekeeper or Burt Reynolds as the king?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

the name of the king story all right turbo Dan Drake the 99 dragons and Superman 64 and or both well I'm just combining the questions I was just do Drake 99 dragons first or watch house of the dead four times oh I would go house of the dead yes that's correct that that movie as I've only what I've never seen the whole thing I've I've seen snippets that people post that movie really seems like it might be so bad it's funny oh it's all right okay it's like it goes the room right which is the iconic then yeah house of the dead for me like oh i love it it's so bad and stupid easy answer all right

uh grubb would you rather play batman dark tomorrow or watch tekken five times that tekken movie man uh i'll go with batman dark tomorrow that one's not too bad in terms of being of length it's bad in a lot of ways but I bet I can figure it out more quickly this time oh god this movie look at that huh alright alright two more you know what I'm gonna save that I'm gonna do a little switcheroo here we can all answer for Lucy here so Lucy's gonna be subjected to what we choose for Lucy or the entire room if she's absent would you rather play Skull Island Rise of Kong or watch Noobs 2012 2012 five

times i'm not watching noobs another second no no no no this is lucy not us i'm not subjecting someone to that no well i've been there everybody shut up and let the expert answer please i've been there and uh and i wasn't five times it was one whole time by myself in a room where i couldn't do anything else to talk to anybody else which i think was one of the stipulations of this, and that is a war crime, and we're not doing that to Lucy James.

Sorry, buddy. Sorry that happened to you.

If the social team could just flash noobs in a sepia tone behind me while I'm doing this.

I want you to know that at the time, it may have seemed like I was laughing and pointing at you, but I was actually really distressed and sad.

It was the highs of winning Mario Party and then immediately getting that thing to send me in there for the entirety of noobs because I won Mario Party.

all right and then Ogto shout out to Ogto for doing the work in this they also attached a spreadsheet here with some review blurbs maybe we'll share that later and we can all answer for Dan what was the Superman one oh well this is the last one oh and well we can put Dan into the situation here okay Dan would you rather play and we'll answer on behalf of Dan sure Superman 64 or watch Mortal Mortal Kombat Annihilation 10 times.

10 times. Annihilation is pretty bad.

It is also kind of so bad it's good.

That's a loot back around.

But 10 times? It should be a Mystery Science 3000 movie.

10 is a lot. It's a lot.

Can you imagine even that first time that movie ends, it's like time to watch it nine more times?

That feeling alone would kill me, actually.

What's the game? I'm sorry.

Superman. That is one of the worst. It's one of the worst ones we've got.

Let's send him into the movie 10 times Dan actually deserves it Well we'll send Dan to the movies He loves movies You hear that Dan you have to watch Mortal Kombat Annihilation 10 times Now it's binding The flight home is probably About that long Throw out everything Every other game console you brought with you You're loading up Mortal Kombat Annihilation Get your pal Kojima to watch it with you He loves movies Ogto finishes thanks all love the site stay strong in the face of all the bullshit going on you all we all deserve better your boy and colombo aficionado octo thank you octo all systems

go coup forever you know what yeah uh all right gang that about does it for emails this week bombcast a giant bomb dot com is the email address to send all your fine and lovely emails to uh hey right uh right into to the bomb cast i appreciate any and everything and you know while you're at it go to wherever you're listening to this put up a review give us a thumbs up tell a friend about the giant bomb cast tell your mom about it tell them that your best friends on the internet have a podcast i'm gonna go i'm gonna go read the recent reviews if you put up a new review if you have a good one i'll i'll

read it on the podcast yes we'll read your reviews uh at the very end of the podcast there'll be the new email segment lots and lots of stuff popping off on the power block today as I mentioned the GameSpot crew is playing Oblivion Remaster tomorrow until Friday, game breaking news popping off Wednesday Thursday, Friday right Grub?

that's right are we doing a are we doing a Delight Club or something tomorrow?

no because there's a bunch of new games popping off so we filled up the schedule with god i can't even remember but marathon well claire comes out tomorrow marathon and claire obscure expedition 33 kind of happen back to back so that'll be most of the day after game breaking news tomorrow and you know dan's out of town so that we were gonna miss play club anyhow yeah yeah the game spot show popping off this week as well as a voicemail dump truck then i also wait real quick the wednesday night uh i will i will probably get a stream going up on giant bomb where i'm just hanging out trying to pre

-order a switch to you are doing the same thing feel free to hang out with me it's midnight eastern right midnight eastern yep so probably start around 11 yep all right i may be never mind it'll be your evening no i know it would be the evening but i was yeah anyway uh game spot after dark on friday and then upf to end your week we're We're gonna be checking out a bunch of games, but the first hour will probably be Overwatch 2.

Turns out that game is good again.

They did it. And then I believe we're planning on checking out some other games as well.

Maybe we can show off 100 Defense Line Academy.

Forget what the game is called.

Just the combat, at least. It's not a stream, Game Jam.

Come on. Just the combat, at least. Yeah, just a quick UPF check -in.

you want to show a battle fine uh we can show off a battle you know show some other games as well should me and nicky stream that game no yeah stream it just from the beginning of all the cut scenes and and wonder when it becomes subway surfers okay you were sharp when does it become super sharp no that's the last thing they all should do oh i disagree heavily i don't know if i've ever disagreed with you more in my life oh gosh all right uh folks that about does it for the podcast did i forget anything else popping off i have a new professional email mike at gamesbeat .com if you ever want to pitch

me on something my my venture beat email became a mess it was hard to see things there this is your best chance to pitch me on something right now putting on the bomb cast is the best way to ensure this one also becomes a mess so many dumb emails dude yeah but i also need people to know because yeah there you There you go.

All right, gang. That about does it for the podcast. I'm going to hit this button now.

We'll see you next week.

Hey, I'll pop on Kind of Funny next week to talk about Blueprints.

Do a spoiler cast. I forgot.

Oh, cool. That's awesome.

They're right there.

Go brag that the GB crew destroyed them in Monaco, too.

we'll see you next week for another episode of the giant podcast he's been shot he's been mike he's been grabbed by the gen and you at home have been lovely we'll see you love you good blue sprints challenge blue sprints we should we should do that yeah we should 100 do that all right we'll see you next week gang love you

[Giant Bombcast 887: Remasters, Rhythm Outlaws, and Industry Shifts]-[887: Burgertory]

📋 Summary

Industry Shifts and Independent Growth

Retro Gaming and Remaster Fever

New Titles and Genre Blends

The Impact of Tariffs and Market Realities

Star Wars: Zero Company

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript