906: Quesa-Dingo | Giant Bombcast

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Everybody, it's Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025.

Welcome to the Giant Bombcast episode 906 presented by our dear friends at MSI.

I am your host, Jan Ochoa.

Joining me, co-captain of the ship.

You can put him anywhere you want because he's got a green screen behind him.

You can put him in your pocket.

You can put him in a fun little cup of milk.

Jeff Grubb, i'm happy to be here.

Jan, thanks for having me on the show.

What the fuck man?

What is going on three day weekends, guys?

Uh, reporting live.

Uh, the day after from the, the land of unlimited milk for three dollars.

In record, I had no milk.

I can go over what I had, but I had zero milk.

I'll start with that.

Zero milk, all rage in the machine.

Jeff Bacalar.

That's right.

That's crazy.

That's the same thing that it says on the T-shirt I just bought.

Those words exactly.

No milk all rage in the machine.

That's right.

That's how he eats his morning bowl of cereals.

And speaking about cereals, he's throwing them out.

He's knocking down all the display shelves at the supermarket.

He's destroying the end caps.

He opens all of the seltzer waters after he shakes them up and he sprays it in your face.

The bad boy of games media.

Mike Minotti.

You get a life along those places before they kick you out.

Those people are dead inside.

They don't care.

Are you talking about supermarkets?

Yeah.

Hey, that's my family legacy.

Oh, it's really fun when you do it to the small, local, family-owned ones.

Oh, Joe Reichardt would chase you into the parking lot.

Bring it on.

You're talking about cereal.

I just opened this.

I was wondering if this was going to be gross.

Liquid Death has a new cereal criminal fruity pebbles.

I was wondering what you were talking about.

You were holding a can that looked like a soda.

I'm like, why is he talking like that's cereal?

It's Fruity Pebbles branded, and I just tasted it.

It is like carbonated Fruity Pebbles.

This is very good.

Now, that's good for you, right?

You like that.

Yeah, I think Fruity Pebbles is great.

It's really soggy really quick, but I think this is a way to sidestep it.

It's water?

It's seltzer water, but it tastes exactly like Fruity Pebbles.

This is fantastic.

I just tried it for the first time and it's incredible.

I wish it were an ad, I'll be honest.

I'm so ready to change my opinion on Liquid Death if they give us money.

I'm so primed to do that.

Is there any Flintstones branding on there?

No, does Fruity Pebbles still do that?

It's got the logo.

Fruity Pebbles is the whole thing.

Would be so mad if they did like brand agnostic Fruity Pebbles without Fred Flintstone or Barney on there.

That would be such bullshit.

Europe would be his Gamergate.

This would be my 9-11.

To be clear.

Because you're a Flintstoner, right?

Yeah, I love that.

I think about the Flintstones constantly.

Yes, we know.

Well, like plenty of brands use that descriptor to label flavors.

They say like fruity cereal.

They say like leftover milk, fruits like that.

I had ice cream the other day, but that was that.

Exactly.

Right.

They got they got around fruity pebbles.

So would you like to sue them, Mike, or do you want me to take care of it?

I think you would know more about the suing process than I would.

What are you trying to say?

I'm saying that you know a lot more about lawyers and whatnot recently than I do.

I thought you were making a Jewish joke.

Oh my goodness.

I thought we were supposed to be in bed together.

I thought we were supposed to be the pizza bagel connection.

Yes.

We're in bed together, but I'm the small spoon.

You're the one who has to sue the people.

That's fine, but do not break up the pizza bagel connection.

He was already in bed like 20 minutes ago.

Yeah, come on.

Look how much energy I'm bringing despite that.

Hey, gang.

We just had a three-day weekend.

I wasn't here for parts of last week.

I feel a little bit discombobulated, but I'm happy to be here with you four.

Yeah.

How was everyone's three-day weekend?

Was it restful?

Was it full of food?

I took care of house stuff, so I barely had time for anything else.

It sucked.

You can't.

You were.

I saw you this weekend.

Yeah, i got to hang out with mike and the monatis and his extended crew.

Yeah, that was fun.

Yeah, we had our fantasy football draft.

I got to wear a crown and my rascal shirt because i won last year, so i let myself be, you know, outside my wheelhouse and i was obnoxious about something, was it?

Did you provide your own crown?

Yeah, I bought a crown last time.

I won a few years ago from a Spirit Halloween.

Good stuff.

Yeah, and I didn't pass it on to the next year's winner.

I just kept it and held on to it until the next time I won and put it on again.

It was a new Stanley Cup, right?

Exactly.

He was wearing it like King Hippo wears his crown in Punch Out for Wii, which we should play more of Dan.

I want to see you continue.

Splodgy asks, what kind of man buys himself a crown?

Me.

You're looking at it.

I spent all day yesterday at the Minnesota State Fair and I've written down everything I ate.

All right.

By the way, I have not sat down in the bathroom since Sunday and I am expecting something to happen.

Wait, since Sunday?

Yeah.

Oh, see, see, this is why we went to the State Fair.

Sunday was a long time ago, i know, and the amount of stuff that is in my body right now from yesterday is you have the list, can you just like?

Let me?

Let me read it.

Like this is all cooking in there right now.

Okay, and if anybody wants to see what these look like, because a lot of them are crazy, just google it with mn state fair.

Okay, i started with the hot honey pizza balls with a z, which i thought shit right after that.

Actually, how was that?

I thought they were going to be small, like little, like pizza bite rolling.

They're like baseball size and they give you three.

Do you think he's blocked up?

He's blocked up as well.

For sure, jan.

I mean, come on, he's gonna need some sort of surgery.

Did you eat?

Oh, let me get down the list.

Hang on alone, or just before you.

Yeah, what i just want to.

I just want to put out there like i think you already went into it with the wrong attitude like you can't eat three baseballs of pizza out of the gate.

Here's what we did, because we always get one and then we split me and bonk would split the thing.

So we each had I had like a ball and a half.

She had like half of one.

And then I gave the third one away to somebody on a bench that I saw.

So uh, you know you gotta like and you gotta not be afraid to like.

If something's not really screaming out to you, you gotta be okay with throwing away part of it, because it's like there's just limited.

There's finite space in the stomach there.

So don't be afraid to waste food.

I mean, you kind of have to there or give it away if it's something that's not, give it away.

Believe me, there's a lot of people wasting food there.

Okay.

Yeah.

Next up was the croffle cloud I got, which is like a croissant waffle with a bunch of like banana cream.

I got the banana cream version of banana caramel cream.

And then it's got like a full chunk of like thick cotton candy on top of it.

I posted some pictures of this stuff to my Instagram story.

If you want to see the croffle cloud, you can't even see the waffle thing or the croffle underneath.

That was pretty good.

Like that a lot.

Hot honey pizza balls were definitely a highlight.

Then it was the case of Ratha.

Which is, that is in the International Bazaar section.

Right, that's what Han Solo stole in Force Awakens.

Yeah.

This is the cultural district.

No, they have a lot of awesome stuff there.

The Smalley Street Fries were there.

The Quesadilla is like a quesadilla, but it's tandoori chicken with like curry.

It's a quesadilla with like an avocado cilantro dip.

Holy shit, that sounds awesome.

That was pretty solid.

It was honestly not, it was a little less crispy than I expected it to be.

So it was good, but not the best thing I had.

Okay.

Then they got the raspberry soft serve beer, which is one of the new big gimmicks this year.

Huge line for it where it's literally beer that it's just looks like a raspberry ice cream cone.

It's not ice cream.

It's beer.

I don't know how the fuck they do it, but it's got alcohol in it and stuff.

So it's an ice cream cone that gets you buzzed.

Yeah.

You kept saying it's not ice cream.

It's beer.

Right.

It's raspberry soft serve beer.

It's just a liquid and a cone?

To be clear, it's ice cream and beer, right?

I don't know.

I saw there was a guy churning something back there.

Is it liquid or is it ice cream?

If you looked at it, you'd just say that's an ice cream cone.

Okay, I kept saying it's not ice cream.

But it's beer.

It's alcoholic.

Okay.

It's so hard to talk to you.

It's just so hard.

It's just so hard to talk to you.

I got this.

I saw Dan's story.

What am I being confusing about?

No, no, no, no.

I got it.

It's not a liquid.

Beer's not a liquid.

This beer is soft serve.

So it's ice cream, then it's beer in the form of ice.

He's being serious.

I think honestly, this is actually really good in in the spirit of transparency, because folks listening to this right now, this is just.

This is a regular ass tuesday here at giant bomb.

You should.

It is beer, it has content right, but it's not liquid beer.

No, it's in the form of an ice cream cone, but it's beer.

It's not in the form of an ice cream cone.

It's just the way you talk.

What if I do it wrong?

You're just not describing it the right way.

We know what it is.

It's not ice cream.

It is ice cream.

It's beer ice cream.

It's beer turned into ice cream.

That's like saying this isn't chocolate or this isn't ice cream.

This is chocolate in ice cream form.

What does that look like to you?

It looks like fucking ice cream.

It obviously looks like ice cream.

Right, but it's beer.

Okay.

Oh God.

Right.

You say it's not ice cream.

It's like an alien from another planet is constantly landing into giant bomb.

And we have to like explain what life on earth is like.

I'm not kidding.

Chat here is on my side.

They are not on your side.

Ice cream.

Okay, continue going down the list.

The beer in a cone was very good.

A lot of people were saying it doesn't get good once you get down and you're chewing the cone part.

But I thought the mix of the cone and the beer flavor was fine.

I have a question I hope you can answer with a number.

Do you know what the ABV on that is?

It was like 44 interesting okay, that's more than i thought it would be.

So that's uh, that's surprising, yeah.

Next okay was the land of 10 000 cakes, which is just a cup that has like a billion different cakes in it, and i swear to god, i ate the land of 10 000 cakes.

I've lived in minnesota for like eight years.

It wasn't until hours later, when bonk and i were going down the list, i was like, oh my god, it's like land of 10 000 lakes.

I love that for you.

I'm not kidding.

I did not even, I was just like, Oh, that's a fun.

Just wait till three years from now.

You understand why we're mad with you about the beer ice cream.

I'll get around to it.

Um, next up was, uh, Ooh, okay.

This might've been the best thing I had.

Do you know what a lumpia is?

Yes.

Yes, I do.

Okay.

Yes.

Is it Filipino food?

Yes, it is.

Yes.

Because they said it was a Filipino fusion truck thing.

It was a lumpia pizza.

Like it's like spring roll type thing.

It's like street food.

Yes.

It's like an egg roll.

Yes.

It's like an egg roll.

Okay.

Filled with like pizza stuff.

They also had like a ube banana version and everything that looked really good too.

But I got the pizza spring roll and that was probably.

I think Bonk and I both put that at number one.

That was fucking incredible.

That sounds great.

That's a win for my people, guys.

Oh my God, Jen.

It was incredible.

Shout out to the Caribbean.

Also a couple of classics that are.

You know these aren't new with the Minnesota State Fair, but the gizmo sandwich is fantastic.

It's just like a hoagie thing, filled with like beef and sausage and just covered with the most cheese you've ever seen in your life.

That's fantastic.

A pronto pup, which is just corn dog on a stick.

Had it with mustard.

That was very good.

And then some drinks I had, they got all sorts of gimmick beers and stuff there.

So I had mini donut beer, which tastes just like a mini donut.

They got cinnamon and sugar on the rim, which is super good.

That's nice.

An orange bliss beer, which is like an orange dream creamsicle type beer.

And then the pineapple upside down cake slushy, which I did not actually think was the best.

But yeah, it was a fucking successful day at the fair.

That lumpia pizza spring roll thing if you look that up, and the hot honey pizza balls those were absolute highlights for me.

So are there like attractions as well at this thing?

Or is it just like a calorie?

There's tons of.

They have tons of.

We did the air thing where it's like you get on like a, it's like a ski lift thing that takes you across the park.

And they do a weird thing where it's like on the roofs of buildings, everyone takes off their underpants and throws it on the roof.

Okay, i could see that being like a weird tradition.

Yeah, so there's like a billion bras on the roof of like, the dairy building.

It's like a ski lifts thing too.

They do on mountains yeah yeah, dairy building.

A lot of weird stuff at the fair, but they do have a million rides.

There's this whole like kind of kidway place and the mirror maze and the.

You know all the carnage and sometimes i do those.

But like i just went to valley fair, i just did the min max video and rode a billion roller coasters, like last week i'm just there to eat, basically like that's the, the main event there, and also the the, the right areas are just filled with kids and shit.

And we kind of wanted to avoid that.

So, um, yes, there is a lot of rides and stuff like that.

And like some of them are like 130 years old and it's a boat, boat ride that goes.

I actually thought about Monati.

I was wondering if Monati would like there.

Cause it's nothing but like theme park gimmick stuff from the food to the rides.

Yeah.

Our big fair in Ohio actually happened this weekend, too.

It's called the Canfield Fair, and it's pretty close to me.

I generally don't go to unless somebody's like to me like, hey, do you want to go to the fair?

I'm like, sure, maybe.

Otherwise, I'm good.

I've been to it a lot.

Oh, sure.

It's not themed enough for me, you know.

Sure.

I think this one is a special cause.

Like you know, I've lived in a lot of different States and, like I never hear people talking about the state fair, but like this is the big one.

And like they say, Texas is bigger.

It's the only bigger one in terms of attendance, but people were telling me in line yesterday they do a college football game at the fairgrounds.

Basically, it's tied around it and they inflate you know to kind of jazz the numbers up.

They inflate all the college football attendance into the thing.

So they say, if you remove the football attendance, this is the biggest state fair in the country.

I just think it's a bit of a problem, honestly.

All these childless adults going to the state fair, which is really a place for kids.

Fair adults, yeah.

I think you're trying to shoehorn another idea into this and I feel like you're missing the mark here a little bit.

There, Tolkoto.

These state fair adults.

Yeah, no, and then the animal stuff is great.

We're just walking around with frozen margaritas and stuff.

And there's just like, cause it's like the whole state and like all the, like the farmers and stuff.

So like there is a building that is just filled with like hundreds of rabbits.

Fuck yeah.

Like hundreds and hundreds of rabbits.

So we looked at a bunch of rabbits.

Yeah.

They do the awards and stuff.

We saw a bunch of big ass horses.

There's turkeys and stuff and ducks.

They're just everywhere.

Cows, all this, um, do they have like the pavilion where it's just like people submitted their baked goods and like he go and you look at them and like some of them have a ribbon they do we didn't find that because like there's one where it's like here's a whole building of like weird corn art and uh we couldn't find that this time and we didn't see the baked good stuff but uh yeah did you have any questions about the corn were you like did jesus eat this that's pretty good no i'm not there to learn mike apparently not what do you what would you estimate the size of this atrocity is like square footage or whatever you want however you want to measure the fairgrounds is this area in Roseville that is just like several like numerous blocks basically and it just stays that way like there's buildings and stuff it's not just tents and stuff so it stays that way year round So it's like there's huge buildings and stuff, big concerts and stuff that happen at the State Fair.

So I would say numerous blocks, I would guess.

Okay.

Is it the size of a football field or bigger?

Way bigger.

No, no, no.

So a couple football fields.

Yeah, several football fields.

That's awesome.

I'm jealous.

It's like the size of like a Six Flags or something almost.

Oh, so like an amusement park.

It's fucking huge.

Yeah.

That's great.

That's really awesome.

Yeah.

So every year it's the best i was.

I was at a small town, one probably the size of like maybe three quarters of an acre, for i was like a labor day one in jersey and uh, it was a town about 30, 30 minutes away and our friends who lived there took us there and it was fine, it was just like the normal.

It's always like uh, whenever you go to, a lot of these in jersey are like italian festival themes so you can get like a lot of you know, kind of exactly that kind of fair.

Um, but they had a couple rides.

Uh, they were scary because they were just sort of like this ride folded up and fit on a truck a second ago carny, you should.

Yeah true, the most carny as shit.

And uh, the way they were doing the tickets i found interesting.

So for ride tickets they were basically they were like throwing out these kind of like arbitrary numbers.

They're like yeah, this one's uh 58 credits to get on, And you're just like, why are they doing such a weird thing with the credits?

Like, and it's all this sort of scheme that you kind of meant.

I assume to like not have you realize just how much money you are spending on the credits and whatnot.

And the whole thing really rubbed me the wrong way.

But I did.

I did.

Who was it?

Heather and Keith stopped me to say hello.

So hello to you both.

That was very lovely meeting you.

Yeah.

And there you go.

Fares.

Chad looked it up, and I guess this is 322 acres, and attendance this year was 2 million people.

322?

Yeah.

Holy shit.

The cat food fair, 353 acres.

What?

You guys got all those acres, though, out there.

We're maybe not being as impressive with our usage of the acres, but there's more of them.

I don't know how big an acre is, though.

I don't think I do either.

I understood.

Look, i'm not making fun of you.

The columbus went 360 acres, so eat shit all.

Yeah there, you guys got acres.

You know how dumb i feel whenever somebody like comes here to my house and they ask me a question about like okay, so how much acreage is your?

I don't fucking know.

It's like okay, where's your property line go?

I don't fucking know.

Uh like, i just never know how to answer any question.

These people well, like you, don't know the square footage of your house.

I know the square footage.

I don't know the acreage.

But the acreage is surprising.

Yeah, but when you buy the house, you are made very much aware of the acreage of your lot.

Like that is surprising to me.

I'm sure it's in some paperwork somewhere.

But not for you, Dan.

Yeah.

It goes back to the pond.

I know that.

Like to maybe equate it to a measurement I'm familiar with.

Like is an acre a mile?

So one square mile is 640 acres.

This doesn't do anything for me.

Say that again?

Well, you know how long a mile is, right?

I do, but now I'm thinking of like, okay, well, how many acres is in that?

It's fine.

It's okay.

So like... A football field is one and a third acre.

So, like the the, the minnesota state fair would be a half mile this way and then a half mile that way, and then that whole space is filled up with shit.

Yeah so, and you can walk a half mile and what and what, like you know uh, five minutes, ten minutes and something like that.

So yeah, our friend from argentina christian, i think, is very upset about this.

No, I'm with my Argentinian brother Christian, here.

Yes, our form of measurement is brain dead.

Everyone knows that.

I want to defend the imperial system for a second.

Go ahead.

It's part of his anti-European team.

Go ahead fascist, go ahead measuring stuff.

This week and i was grateful to do i had a sit.

I actually have one that does meters and centimeters and i was like i'll do it in centimeters because it's like that's easier to work with.

And as soon as i started work with working with it, i was like, actually no inches is easier, because frequently i want to divide things by thirds or quarters and everything in the 12 inch system divides either into thirds or quarters, like you can.

Uh, everything's divisible by three and four, so it's easier to work with in my head uh, as opposed to the meters where it's like, very quickly, it's like oh, if i want a third of a meter, i'm like oh okay, now i have to like get 333.

This is a good argument.

When you're working with it as a human being it's, it's easier.

But the tens, but it being based on tens, is a more logical way to do it when you're trying to memorize things.

So i know how many bytes is in a gigabyte and all that stuff sure, But when I'm working with these things, when I'm measuring things, the imperial system is easier for me.

Listen, listen, listen.

I love all four of you.

Base 12 is superior.

That's insane.

I love the four of you.

You're kidding.

You're trolling.

I have never not related to y'all to this amount before.

This is amazing.

This is great.

Is it the fairs plus the imperial four?

No, I've been to a fair.

Was it the corn art?

Yeah, Mike, I didn't want to say it.

It was a corner.

Is it beer ice cream?

That's not really ice cream.

It is ice cream.

It's beer.

How was everyone else's weekend?

Everyone didn't get down to some funky business?

Grubb, Mike, you guys did a fantasy draft.

Mike wore a crown.

Yeah, it was good.

You know, it was nice to like kind of really hang out with Mike's friends.

It's been a minute since I've done that.

He's got nice friends.

Thank you.

Yeah yeah, i mean he's not, but everyone else was great.

He has great brothers too, by the way.

Yeah, great bro.

Yeah, like i got there, there was a bunch of food.

I brought some brownies and things like that.

We just hung out a food it was.

It was nice.

I couldn't hang out for long.

I i tried to go get a haircut.

Everywhere closed at 4 pm so i still have not been able to get a haircut.

I'm like at a certain point i'm like i think i'm just gonna go with it and stop trying to cut my hair.

Go to an airport brother.

Yeah, airport Jeff.

Jeff looks great.

Right.

Lately in person.

I'm like, whoa, grabs really thin.

It was.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, I also I was wearing my my man bag.

So I definitely had Zach Galifianakis in my house.

So much like newer Zach.

You look like Zach Galanakis from Lilo and Stitch.

Yeah, he looks good in everything.

All right.

I should just go and get veneers and really lean into it.

You and I should just like grow out our hair because, like my hair is like, this is the longest it's been in years.

Do you have like a plan for like what you're going to do?

Because I think I think I'm just I might get it cut on the sides.

I'm definitely not cutting any off the top.

Well, extra life is coming up, so you got to give Kayla something to do.

Oh, no bitch, i thought last time i cut it for like real, like a lot of cutting, that was it.

Yeah i, i was traumatized walking through seattle because i i was looking at the hotel.

I'm like, why do i feel like empty and hollow inside?

And then i realized it's because i left a part of me there and it's where we all piled into my hotel room and shaved my head.

That's right right um, i don't know if i want to do them all memories.

I'm just severely offended.

I'm sorry bacalar, do you want to give you some of my all the hair talk is that?

Oh my bad?

Yeah, i mean just like, respect your, your friends in the room, just like some people wish they had more, and it's like you guys just sort of flaunt it in a way that i just get a big beard.

No, I don't want that man.

Yeah, just pretend you took everything and went... Yeah, just shift it over.

Vertically in OBS.

Yeah.

Yeah, like one of those magnet toys where you like... Willy-Willy.

Willy-Willy.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The guy I grew up wanting to look like my entire life.

I do Wooly Wooly.

What kind of recommendation is that?

Oh my Lord.

I went up to Washington and I'll talk about what I went to go play in a second.

But I got to spend some lovely time with our dear friend Bailey Myers.

And let me tell you, Here's a fun fact about Filipinos.

All of them can fucking sing, except 10% of us.

I'm sorry, Michael Hyme and I, we're in that 10% that cannot sing.

Chastity Vicencio, formerly of GameSpot, formerly of IGN, now Ubisoft, Oh my fucking god.

Homegirl is like a legit pop star in how she can bring the house down.

It's fucking... It's so intimidating.

But with enough bevs and with enough like... If the vibe is right with enough people...

And then like, what also helped is that suddenly, like six people who I didn't fucking know came into this karaoke room and I'm like, oh god, I don't know anyone here.

Please, like, where's my support friend over here?

Came in, and then someone, and then here's where it all clicked into place.

Oh, also friend of the site.

If he had popped over, if he had put on some musicals and then he had put on Feed Me from Little Shop of Horrors.

Nice.

And I'm like, wait a minute.

I did that in high school.

I was Audrey, too.

And then he was like, oh, I don't have anyone to do the Seymour part.

I'm like, wow, normally I'm a bass baritone, but like, I'll just give it a shot.

And I had enough bevs at this point.

And then also, as the song was coming in, the fine, lovely people at the karaoke establishment were like hey, here's just like 10 shots of like Midori.

And then I hate melon liqueur.

But anyway, we have it.

It's great.

And then no one is singing the Seymour part with Ify.

And I'm like, you know what?

Fucking pass me the mic.

Pass me the fucking mic right now.

The Filipino-ness has been fully unlocked from the drinks at this point?

Yes!

Because I think I had something from the islands!

Ha ha ha!

I had my Moana moment.

Nicole, is it out there at all?

It's inside, Jan.

And then it got to a point where I'm like, I didn't think I could ever hit this high note.

Oh, my fucking God.

And then like three people across the room are like, oh, my God, why?

We sound so great.

I'm going to start recording this guy.

And then it was fantastic.

I felt like I could sing for the first time in my life.

Can we get that footage and put it up exclusively for premium members?

I bet that's like our biggest activation of the year.

Hear Jan sing.

I think Bailey has a clip of Ify and I singing Ohio is for Lovers by Hawthorne Heights.

Nice.

Okay.

I'll ask Homegirl for that.

But yes.

Oh, wow.

That brings me back, Jan.

Holy crap.

Yo, yo.

Also, there was a point where the one Andrea Bocelli song from Step Brothers.

Yes, where he's singing the... Oh, right, right, right.

I don't know if it's from Step Brothers.

I know it's not from Step Brothers.

The wine mixer.

The Catalina wine mixer scene.

There was a point where I was fully cognizant of what I was doing.

I'm just like, pass me the fucking mic.

And then I went for it, guys.

And then I was like, wow, I felt like I was a gay Spanish man that was blind singing.

Oh, yeah.

Problematic, too.

So there we go.

Yeah.

Anyways, it turns out go outside and spend time with people.

Yeah.

That's the takeaway for sure.

That is a takeaway.

Uh gang, anyone else have any other stuff they want to bring up?

Before we talk about video game, i'm playing a lot more sudoku.

Yeah hell yeah okay, that's good stuff.

I'm a look about you when you said that bacalar like do you think that this means something?

This says something about where you're at in life.

No, because I go through these like I go through these hot spots where I'm like super into it.

Yeah.

I like leveled up in my comprehension of it.

So you're doing the like, several levels deep inferences of like okay, this is this and this is that, and that means this has to be that.

And therefore, like that feeling is incredible.

Doing the doing the higher level strats that you are now seeing the board in a way that I previously was not able to see.

I'm not doing I'm not at the level like there.

Apparently, there's a lot of controversy in the Sudoku community, where people you know like there are solvable, theoretically solvable Sudokus with computers.

Right.

And that's bullshit, because it's like, who the fuck cares if you can't do it with your mind and you need, like computer assistance?

Well like, how is that fun, right?

Uh, so i, i sit on that side of the fence where i'm a some would call me a sudoku purist, but i don't want to go that far sure, but that's how i look at the game and um, you know, i always got a shout out uh, cracking the cryptic.

That is the best uh sudoku community online as far as i'm where.

What's the second best?

What's funny dude, i'm not joking.

Like it is a big, like everything else.

There's a big scene on youtube of people who are like no, i want to collect all of the sudoku freaks, because that's the thing, don't forget.

Like, sudoku doesn't isn't owned by anyone, right?

Like no one like has the rights to the public domain yeah, it's right.

So like, people are free to sort of cultivate exactly uh, people are free to cultivate their sort of like communities and and put, you know, plant their flags in the grass and say hey, i'm that uh community and whatnot.

But um, they get into way more of like all the the alternative sudokus where there's like a board with no numbers and just like arrows and, and they're just like oh, here's just logic rules that define the restrictions on this game, But I still do the regular old numbers.

But yeah, I'm back on my shit there.

So, yeah.

I should mention, I got first in the world on one of the Puzmo puzzles on the leaderboard.

No shit?

Yeah.

It was their circuits one.

Wow.

Now, I couldn't load the leaderboard.

It said I was number one.

I was trying to load it.

I was like, am I tied with like a thousand people is what I was wondering.

But I don't think so because it's like there's a lot of opportunity to like score faster.

That's impressive, man.

Good for you.

Yeah, i was like all right, i think the trick was i submitted, i didn't submit anything until i had them all put in there.

I submitted them all at the same time and i think it like gave me a bonus or something.

So yeah, pretty cool game.

Uh quick, quick question for y'all.

And this, this is me maybe uh, coming to terms with my identity crisis of maybe i can sing actually um, do i have a bay area accent?

No, i don't know what that would be, i don't.

I don't think so, i don't.

Yeah, i agree with dan here.

I don't know what that would be.

You could be on the news in ohio, which means that you have that neutral accent.

So i would say probably okay, because there was a point where uh i, as as maybe uh, the code switching was getting looser, where i, i was identifying how it was sounding, i'm like oh, this is i sound different than how i normally do.

Huh anyway anyway, video games games games, video games games, games.

Yeah games games games, Video games.

Let's get this out of the way now.

Folks, I went over to Washington to check out Magic.

Wait, real quick.

Okay, you already said.

I was going to say, do any of us know what he played?

Because I think all of us were like, why is Jan in Seattle?

And we couldn't remember.

Oh, no, I knew.

I remember.

He made a post that confused me today.

What was the actual phrasing of it, Jan?

Let's see.

He says, Code Jander MTG Nights on GB.

And I didn't understand any of that, except for GB.

Well, gb was actually games beat.

Um, i went over to uh, wizards of the coast to check out uh, some magic the gathering, because that's why i went over there.

Um uh lovely, lovely folks over there.

Shouts out to gavin uh, But yo yo, I learned.

It felt like I was in a college class because we started the day with a lecture about the color pie.

And like, Mike, you've played Magic the Gathering before, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Magic's fun.

You all familiar with the color pie.

No, i played magic gathering 30 years ago and i don't remember i didn't go to that state fair booth.

No, the color pie was so interesting and i, i i could tell there there were more people that have like uh, more experience playing magic the gathering, that were like all uh, kind of not glazing over it but like uh, i was just like my attention was like just peaked because uh, the color pie uh, it's like the five colors of magic the gathering white green red blue, black and then how they synergize or are against each other, like diametrically opposed um, and it was really neat.

But the the coolest thing of all gang my my, my interest in magic the gathering started a couple years ago with lord of the rings.

And you're asking yourself jan, i didn't know, you were into lord of the rings and you're right, i fucking hate lord of the rings, Except now Mikey, because I like it now.

Audio listeners, he looked really upset for a little bit.

Then he got very happy.

Yes.

And then with the Final Fantasy set that had come out, I really dove into it.

And now unfortunately, I've gone back and bought the Doctor Who packs, because I really like Doctor Who.

And the Avatar, the last Airbender sets are coming out.

And that's going to be great.

The part that I enjoy about this, and we may butt heads against this, Yeah, I hear it.

I know where this is going.

Let's hear it.

The Pokemon TCG has shifted from straight up playing it to now just being a collect-a-thon.

Which, if you're like me, you're almost unaware of the portion of the history where it was playing the game.

And exclusively know it only for collecting.

But sure.

And, like you know, I really enjoyed playing the game, but it got to a point.

And Bakalar, I'm not saying you are like this, but people in my area are getting into stabbing fights over Pokemon cards where it's like No, that's Bakalar.

Yeah, that is me.

Oh, okay.

Where, like yeah, i don't want to get associated with all this.

Also like, if i'm just trying to crack a pack, i don't want to have to line up outside of a target at 7 am sorry to barber jan, i can't do it anymore dog, but magic has just been so much more approachable and because there's like a such a wide history of different cards and packs, you can just kind of like make anything work.

Uh, but well, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I do think it's a testament to, like you know, with this licensing spree that they seem to be on.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

It's sort of diluted, that psychotic collection mentality where they're even more likely to make a lot of money with all the licensing that they've been able to do and avoid and step over the the the kind of like stabbing issue that they were possibly on the road to having.

Yeah i, i think like uh, i saw some sales numbers that the final fantasy uh packs had done like insane gangbusters.

It was like 200 million dollars in a day or something like that, which is would make it almost certainly like in a top five of biggest entertainment launches in the history of the world.

It's crazy.

Mikey just kisses Ishtola pack over there.

You keep that thing on a holding box.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, but I got to check out a couple of the new upcoming Spider-Man cards and uh, y'all know I'm a, I'm a Marvel freak.

And uh, I thought it was going to be like an interesting challenge to cause.

Like, how do you like Lord of the Rings set?

They like re-imagined a lot of the characters, right?

Like Aragorn is now black, which is dope.

Sick as fuck.

Uh, black like black black like you know land cards i'm like oh right right you know racially yeah racially yeah uh name of the podcast today um racially.mp3

But the Spider-Man cards.

They do such a neat thing of not only incorporating new art but also paying homage to the original Stan Lee comics, all of these iconic covers and character designs, which is really cool.

And something that I feel like has to be such a fucking challenge is when you are including all of these new, different IP like Final Fantasy Avatar, now Spider-Man and who knows what else is like down the pipeline.

Incorporating those mechanics from those IP into the game and making them work.

Because like, for instance, there is a venom card but the venom card starts as Eddie Brock And you can just summon Eddie by himself and then eventually flip him over to turn into Venom.

Or, depending on how you play it, you could just straight up go to Venom and then flip him down to Eddie.

So like the targeting and like the priority kind of changes the playing field, and then there's web slinging mechanics as well.

They featured a lot of like the iconic villains, if not all of them.

I feel like they also have like a lot, a lot of sleeper comic book entries.

They're like oh what the fuck?

You're here too, which is really neat.

But like, for instance, like Doc Ock, like you, I think you need eight mana to summon him, reach arm one for each arm exactly neat um, and then like as like a comic book freak and like a long time fan of spider-man, like it's, it's really like tickling all of my like peter tingles, uh of like, oh shit, this is sick as fuck.

I am crossing, crossing my fingers that there is a bone saw card.

That would rule.

That'd be amazing actually.

Um, and it, it part of it is really neat too if you're a fan of the comics, because they will have like a normal spider-man card.

But that normal spider-man card could also have like a different costume like, if you remember, the armored spider-man and not the Iron Spider.

Not the Iron Spider, but the 90s Silver Armor Spider.

That's over there.

Peter's flirtations with the Fantastic Four.

They have different iterations of that costume.

It's really fucking neat.

It's really fucking cool.

After chatting with some of the Wizards team, or the Magic the Gathering team specifically, you could tell these people... really really fucking care and it isn't just like like a cash trying to bank in on a cash cow of like well this this IP is popular let's just go try and make a bit a quick buck off of that like no no no we want to properly pay attention and like properly ease this IP into our greater thing and whatnot and I'm excited to see what they could potentially do that down the line with like other IP and Here's my pitch, gang.

I should have done this there.

You got like five colors, right?

For Magic the Gathering?

You know what else has five colors?

Fucking Power Rangers.

Oh, I thought it was going to be about the five of us.

I thought we were going to each get a color and be in Magic the Gathering.

Mike, you should get black.

Yeah.

I think Bakalar should.

Come on.

I think that makes the most sense.

Thank you, Jan.

Seriously, I bet Power Rangers happens.

I think that actually makes a ton of sense.

I think you're right.

I think every IP is going to happen eventually after the amount of success they've been having.

Except for Pokemon.

That'd be funny, though.

You joke, Mike, but Final Fantasy had their own trading card game that was kind of dog poop.

Back in the day, yeah.

It's like, actually, it's better just to put them into Magic the Gathering.

Clearly yeah, uh.

So uh, folks out there that are super into magic, the gathering, i need you to send an email in or like uh, blue sky me of what color or combination of colors you think everyone here on the team would be like.

Backlord would be black-blue from what I've learned from the color pie and everything.

Okay.

Don't worry.

This is all complimentary.

Mikey, I feel like you'd be blue-green.

No, blue, green, white.

You'd be three.

Yeah, thank you for including the white.

I appreciate it.

There used to be a Star Trek trading card game also, and it was never that great.

If they did Star Trek and Magic the Gathering, I'd enjoy it.

Even though I'm a little bit of a pooper, and I'm like...

I don't know, but these franchises don't actually have magic getting Magic the Gathering cards.

When they did Fallout, I was like, hmm, I'm not sure about this.

But also, I can get over myself.

Oh, good.

That was a lot of growth in that sentence.

The guy who woke up singing songs about himself.

Why is everyone taking this more seriously?

And to explain my skeet to Dan Commander is a form of, like a mode, let's say, of playing Magic the Gathering.

Oh, so cojander.

I see.

Okay.

Yes.

Great.

And we've had multiple talks.

And then MTG is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Yes.

Oh, I know James is a fan.

No, that's a Mike thing.

Sorry.

Yeah.

I wanted to pay homage to Mike's people.

Thank you.

But I would like to because I've been researching and Spell Table is a way that a lot of folks have been playing Commander with each other.

And a lot of friends of the site have been playing commander.

It's real popular with everything that I would love to maybe Wednesday nights or an empty night throughout the week to spin up spell table and play with like three other friends of the website.

I've been bugging Bailey to just like teach me, teach me, because I think I'm like absolutely garbo.

But we'll see Jan, I would try Magic.

Because the thing is, it seems like it's a game.

It's a video game in a way that I understand.

So was Thunderfolk or whatever the fuck.

That was a video game.

But my issue with D&D and stuff is I don't even understand how it's not just a weird improv group.

Yeah, yeah, that wasn't D&D.

What are you talking about?

I played Hearthstone when it came out.

I remember thinking like, oh, I get it.

This is kind of fun.

So I think I could enjoy Magic the Gathering.

I think this is why people hate you.

I'm offended that you lie to our faces like this.

You want to try new things back?

No, I think this is why people hate you because you enter things from like a position of like.

You're trying to come off as like authentic and kind of like wholesome.

And then you immediately will shit on this thing that we all know you will not like.

I genuinely think I could like it.

I genuinely think I could like Magic the Gathering.

It's not a joke.

No.

So, okay, here.

Dan, one of our very close mutual friends is also very into magic and him and I talk about it a lot.

I think we could ask him to build you a deck and then, like we just go over and explain what some of the things do.

Yeah, i think we do.

I need physical cards or is this like a online?

Do the digital version you can do it?

Yeah yeah okay i, when i'm playing the game, i rather do the digital version.

Right right right right um yeah i, i think you could get into it dan, because i especially like if i could just play it online and not like i don't really want to like have to buy a bunch of stuff or get a bunch of cards but, like i would play online, we could get your cards.

See, we're all just suckers.

We're just suckers.

I'm not buying this for a second.

There's no way.

Yeah, that was no part of it.

What about Magic?

The Gathering in my history of games says that I wouldn't like this if I learned it.

Well, it's a bunch of fantasy stuff and there's some complicated rules.

Yeah, I've liked plenty as long as I like the game.

Zelda's fantasy is shit and it's like my favorite.

But you like the tactics games and you lasted 30 seconds in Thunderfolk.

Did you think that was a Dungeons and Dragons game?

I don't know what I thought Thunderfolk was.

Was it because there was a polar bear walking like a human?

No.

There's that in Magic the Gathering for sure.

I don't... That's fine.

That's not disqualifying.

See, y'all are going to have eggs on your face because if you have six... I'll gladly.

Yeah, yeah.

If he proves me wrong, fantastic.

Yeah, you go.

You take this project.

I thought I could fix him too once upon a time.

Slay the Spire?

I know I can't.

Hey, I like Slay the Spire.

I think Monster Train's really fun.

We got this new game, this Dust Biters physical card game that Ben Hanson showed me.

That's really fun.

Me and Bonk play that now.

I can enjoy card stuff.

Uh, now.

Now here's the thing.

If you all thought dan and i were being annoying, every time we would greet each other saying like uh, bajanza badanza no, i love that, wait until i get dan.

Or or maybe we can get dan to play at least one or two games of commander and then we just go kajander kadander to each other.

I'm okay, i'm in.

The shirts print themselves yeah no, i'll play it.

I'll give it a try.

Definitely on the mount rushmore of hobbies.

That video game people are also into.

Right, it's wrestling f1.

It's like books, probably not even on the list right now.

I feel like there's like four people in games that watch.

I think too many people play video games for there to be like little.

I'm talking about our scene, though.

Like yeah yeah like clearly, it's wrestling and this.

You all like prestige TV a lot too, but maybe that's just everybody, I don't know.

Yeah, you're all wrong, though.

That being said, Wizards of the Coast, if you're listening.

Also, on top of the Power Rangers idea, send me back to the office.

I got ideas for days.

Get ready to cut the check wrestling.

Yeah, they should actually do that.

That would be fantastic.

Yeah, there are actual people who have magic in wrestling.

More people have magic in professional wrestling than in Fallout.

I don't like supernatural gimmicks in wrestling.

I think they're goofy and lame.

Chad does say Sunderfolk had a lot of talking.

I think that was the thing.

Magic has a lot of reading.

You gotta read how many hit points it does, right?

Yeah, but it's not story-ish.

There's more.

There's a lot of rules.

There's a lot of keywords.

I'm fine with that.

You know how many times I have to look at a card and be like all right, this is going to do, Or Monster Train has all sorts of.

It's very much like that.

It's very similar to... He's going to force himself now.

He's dug himself too deep and now he's just going to have to go through it.

Just watch, folks.

Dan and I are going to be invited as guests of honor to MagicCon in Atlanta.

Great.

If Dan does a Magic the Gathering podcast, then I'll believe it.

Mm-hmm yeah hey hey, would you all think snow bike mike got really into magic the gathering.

No, he gets into everything.

Yeah yeah, nothing surprised me about it.

He's so full of wonder, like that he'll like yeah, he'll do something we expect.

Like wow, this is great.

Like he really liked kingdom hearts in a way, dan could never.

There's no way on that one.

Oh yeah, i'm open-minded to a point.

Yeah no, i get it, i get it, i get it.

Uh, speaking about card games, mike manati, you've been playing slay the spire.

Yes actually, I started playing this game for the first time about a week ago.

This was the next stop on my 2019 apology tour.

First time, which is wild because I do like card games and I played a ton of Hearthstone back in the day.

Specifically, I was a big fan in 2019 specifically instead of playing good games.

So it was good for a while there.

And they even had single player modes that were a lot of fun.

I was kind of like this.

But yeah, like just like starting with this up immediately.

I was like, oh, this is all pretty familiar.

I get this.

And in fact this is kind of better in a lot of ways because I get to play this game without having to, you know, buy packs of cards every three months and all that stuff, which was fun for a while, that eventually became a money chore um, but gosh yeah, just the whole setup here with the roguelike elements of just starting with this very basic deck and making my way through and adding cards and sort of figuring out what build i want to do, getting really strong early on with builds where it's like okay, i can get block and that keeps me safe.

But also some cards turn blocks into attacks and That was very satisfying.

So, yeah, I kind of ripped through that one.

I beat it with the first three characters within that first week.

I had a great time.

All race, I'm like, ooh, I kind of want to go back.

Such a good alt-tab game, you know?

Yeah.

Right?

Even with Hearthstone, sometimes I would alt-tab it, but I had to listen for my sound cue when it was my turn.

Here, I don't have to worry about that.

It's always my turn.

The enemy turn doesn't take very long, and they sit there, and they wait for me.

So yeah, it was fantastic.

I understand why it took over a lot of people's lives back in the day.

I'm now very excited for Slay the Spire 2.

I think I want to check out Monster Train 2 now.

Monster Train 2 is awesome.

You'd really like it, yeah.

I'd enjoy it.

I also just like how different the different characters I could play was.

Like the first first one was relatively simple, then the third one.

It's like summoning different orbs of magic that have passive effects that I can kind of activate them.

This was getting more complicated.

Uh yeah, well-made game.

Slay the spire turns out.

I should have played it back in 2019.

Mike, did you ever play any other like those like combat card games that were inspired by slay the spire like uh, that steam world game, SteamWorld Quest, that's a good one.

Yeah.

No, I never played Quest.

I haven't played Inscription similar, right?

So I never touched Inscription.

Or Midnight Suns, the Marvel thing, which I forget a little bit.

Yeah.

Somehow I just never really played much of these.

So yeah.

Part of me was like...

I played so much Hearthstone.

I was maybe a little burnt out on digital card games in general for a while there.

That was a big part of my job at GamesBeat for a bit was I was the Blizzard guy in Hearthstone specifically.

It was fun being so into that because they were sending me out to events.

I revealed a couple cards, mostly because some other more important people were sick, so I had to slot in.

Still, though, I'll take it.

Oh, Mike, you ever play Inscription?

No, no.

See, yeah, never touch Inscription.

So I might have some more catching up to do here.

Got to finish up my 2019 Apology Tour.

It just has one last stop now.

I'm going to play Disco Elysium.

Then I think I am...

I'm good, and I am caught up on that game.

It's mostly about talking.

There's never been a game less for me.

I can be confident in that one.

Again, open-minded to a point.

Open-minded to a point, and I appreciate you for that, Dan.

Speaking about going back in time, Dan, you have a note about Chibi-Robo.

I do.

And I've talked about a little bit and I streamed a little bit of it, you know, not too long ago on the site and I was playing it last night.

I'm several hours into it.

I really do like the game and like, I like the loop of it.

And I just, it's one of those games.

It's very satisfying just to go and kind of clean shit up and get your happy points and all that stuff.

But there was a point last night where it's like you know how we get emails sometimes, where it's like I feel like we've had that question, where it's like what's a game, that you liked everything it was doing, but there was just one aspect of it that made it hard for you.

And I never can think of a great answer for it.

The answer is this.

The fucking text speed is and chibi robo is insane and it was like something i was pushing through for like several hours here and it wasn't too bad until last night.

There was a part in the basement area of that game where there's this like duck crab fortune teller thing or whatever and it's all it is.

It's not even like a big story thing, it's just like a betting game where it's like i'm gonna bet 100 moolah that your eye is gonna open or your eye is not gonna open.

This thing should take 30 seconds max.

It felt like 10 minutes of just like this text.

And then like you're jamming on A to get through it.

And it goes right to like, hey, do you want to do it again?

Like double or nothing.

And it's very easy to hit A again.

And then it's another fucking like.

It is the most inexcusable text speed unskippable, unbuttoned through thing I've ever seen in a video game.

And it's at that point where I'm just like I don't know if I can play this game because it is so frequent.

And like, I like it.

Like you walk into a room and it's like oh, there's all these like this weird egg army and they're all shooting at you and they talk and it's like it's all funny and good writing and stuff like that.

But it's just the most laborious text I've ever seen in my life.

I just... It broke me last night.

I was like, I don't think I can keep doing this.

Yeah, I wouldn't be able to do that.

This era was kind of bad with that.

Like, you would get these weird slow text crawls and I never understood it.

I'm like...

You know, we're testing video games, obviously.

How does this never come up?

Like, hey, it's a little annoying how slow the text scrolls.

That has to be the easiest thing possible for you to fix, right?

That's just got to be some value in some code somewhere.

I don't know if it's like, well, we wanted to match the speed.

If somebody was actually talking, this is how fast you would conceive the words.

It's so annoying yeah, and it's like every time you you plug in to uh, you know recharge, which you need to do a lot in chibi robo, it asks you if you want to save and, like you know, if you're hitting a to kind of get through the text, you're just automatically going into the save menu and stuff.

It's just there's so much of that in this game that like i want to keep playing because i think i like everything else it's doing, but holy shit, it sucks.

Yeah, people are saying dolphin and fast forward and it's like yeah, if i was going to play this game, that's how i would do it.

Yeah, i've just been holding off until switch 2 because it felt like such a great way to play it.

No, i get it.

This is like you should be disappointed because you specifically were waiting for this version and i heard i heard nikki on vgb's had the same complaint too.

It is like a very noticeable thing.

It is not just like oh, impatient me doesn't want to see the story, because i like the story and the humor of this game, but man, this sucks.

That's unfortunate.

Uh yeah, Speaking about going back and playing older games Dan, you checked out Gears Reloaded?

Yeah, I'm probably close to halfway through it with Kayla.

We stream all the Gears games together, and we streamed it over the weekend.

Turns out it's still great.

Even the first Gears is fantastic, but me and Kayla streamed the Gears Ultimate Edition, or whatever it was, that came out on Series X a couple years ago.

So we streamed that last year and we're streaming this now.

And it's like, it's not that different.

I mean, no, it's, it's even what they advertised.

It's like, this sounds like that backward compatible upgraded version.

They did.

Yeah.

It's just kind of like, you know, yeah, it runs at 4k.

It looks good.

It's on PlayStation now.

That's what's really different.

That is the thing.

It's like, it's the novelty of like, wow, press R.

R1 to active reload and I'm playing with a PlayStation controller and seeing PlayStation prompts and stuff like that's the thing that's.

That's the whole thing is that it's just on PlayStation now which, of course, I understand why that would happen, but it's just to say that it's not the most exciting thing.

It's not like they did another remaster of it like, or a remake it's not.

It's just it's on PlayStation now.

So still very, very fun.

So if you've never had an Xbox and you just want to see what Gears was all about, this game's aged very well.

I bet it's going to do decent on PlayStation.

I bet a lot of people are going to pick it up out of curiosity.

Yep uh, fantastic.

I'm still bummed.

There's no horde mode in that, but it's, it's okay.

Yeah yeah, that came about in two, i believe.

Uh god, i just remember spending so much time on that fucking beach and then like the big dude with the thing on his back, whatever.

Anyway uh, continuing to talk about older games that are new again, dan mike and a couple of uh us as well have played shinobi.

I beat it a couple days ago.

Me too.

What was the final runtime on that?

I got close to 100% at like 12 hours, I would say.

Oh, yeah.

Is that with like 100%ing all the areas too?

So I was doing that.

And then when I beat the game, it's like I had a few of those, like there's those rifts that you can go into.

And a lot of them are just kind of like longer platforming challenges with little to no checkpoints.

And I like the platforming in it.

But there was definitely some where it was like okay, I've died 15 times on this and I beat the game.

I've got over 90-something percent completion.

I've got other stuff I need to play.

So probably not doing the full 100% on it.

But yeah, you know a lot of talk obviously of Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi both being back and being good.

And I did play a lot of Ragebound.

I'm probably over halfway through that one.

And I like it a lot.

I think Ragebound is very, very good, but...

I feel like Shinobi on kind of all fronts is better.

Obviously the look is incredible.

Just, it's one of those games where it's like it gives you this ever increasing suite of abilities and stuff that you can do in combat and traversal and everything.

And it never feels overwhelming.

Like I would go into these like every time I saw one of those like elite combat challenges, I loved it because it's just like I love yeah, hit someone up in the air, jump up, use some nympho on them, do the dive kick and then hold in Y into the spin thing and everything.

The spin move is so good.

It feels fucking awesome.

And then like the boss fights are so finely tuned where it's like, you know, I would die several times on them.

I'd learn the pattern, just like a good boss fight.

And then I would kill it.

And it was usually close at the end.

And when you see the like execution thing above their head pop up, You do that and it does the cool Akuma-style kill where it kind of pauses.

I would cheer sometimes when I killed some of these bosses.

It is a tremendous game.

Yeah, it's really good.

It feels so good.

I think the difficulty curve is nice.

I kind of like there being a little difficulty spike at the end of the game.

That might throw some people off, but yeah, there are definitely.

Some of it is optional stuff, these optional platforming challenges, some of the optional kind of monster closets, whatever you call them.

It's funny.

The game reminded me a lot of like a 2D Doom Eternal and a lot of pause in some negative ways where I think levels are very long in this game.

Like just doing a single level could be like 30 minutes to an hour.

And you know the level design is, It's a lot more like OK go here and I'll fight a wave of enemies and we're going to pop up and less like we're placing enemies throughout the level and just kind of like you know, the level design with the enemy placement is super important.

There's a bit of that, but it is kind of much more just about using characters.

It's a very combat forward game, first and foremost.

The platforming stuff especially.

You start getting the claws that let you climb on stuff and it recharges your double jump and dash.

Then you get the ninja hook and stuff.

There's definitely some... The platforming gets better by the end.

It's always good.

There's some Ori influence later on.

You get this kind of cloth thing and there's even a flooded section where you're escaping some water.

But yeah, gosh, the game does just look so good.

And there's kind of like an amazing visual element to that final level that just looks awesome.

You know, I've liked the old Shinobi games a lot.

Just having this here is great.

Even though like, it plays quite a bit different than say, Shinobi 3 or, you know, Revenge of Shinobi where, you know it's largely just about throwing ninja guitars and kunai.

This is much more about getting up and they're doing these big combos and you still can.

You know you have the ranged weapons and that's largely for taking care of armor things like that.

But boy, it is really sad.

So it does kind of remind me of that prince of persia lost crown combat, where there's just all these tools and you're juggling you're, you know you're building up special meters and spending those at the appropriate times.

Uh yeah, the bosses.

Again, that's another highlight.

I i've seen some people wonder if like oh okay uh, do i need to like?

How much do i need to know the shinobi series whatever?

I've never played a shinobi game.

You gotta read the books.

Yeah, you gotta read the books first.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

So i, i have there's zero percent nostalgia here.

Uh, it makes me curious to go back.

I have no idea how that never like crossed my path.

I was a genesis kid and that's what i have.

Awesome game gear.

Shinobi is also awesome okay, and i saw shinobi 2 and 3 are on switch online.

Yeah, it's Revenge of Shinobi 2, but Shinobi 3 yeah, play Shinobi 3.

I think Shinobi 3 is great.

That's the one.

You'll probably see more of the influence here, although again, it's going to be a bit different.

Okay.

Now, is Joe Musashi one of the coolest names for a ninja ever?

Yes.

Cool name.

Joe.

That's right.

Joe.

Yeah.

Classic.

Sometimes I think about just throwing Jan out the window and just going by my initials J-O.

Just by Joe.

I feel like that doesn't quite work.

We'll see.

I'd embrace it.

All right.

We'll see.

Speaking about games that look absolutely stunning and gorgeous, but maybe this is causing a point of frustration, Chef Grubb.

You are continuing your journey through Expedition 33.

Yeah, yeah, I want to just check in and get some pointers from people.

I mentioned this to Mike and his brother and it just sounds like I might be underleveled for the area I'm in.

It's telling me to go to the Pinterest.

I did that and now I'm in that area right after that first encounter with her, and everything is one-shotting me.

And I was like level 38, 39 when I entered it and I've started grinding to just deal with that.

Like i'm, you know, i'm getting through fights because i'm i'm parrying and all that stuff.

So yeah, that's fine.

But when i get hit dead just in one shot every time grub, i think i i was kind of running into some of that and like that is a great time to like, are you?

I think you're at the point now to where you can pretty easily traverse the uh over?

Yes, i think i got most of the stuff to traverse the overworld.

Then that's a good time to just kind of go around like all these, like nooks and crannies you know, follow rivers around, see if there's any little like landing zones, optional things.

You can kill some of them will one shot you.

But like this is a good grinding time.

I did fight the axons.

I fought both that, both axons.

Okay, there's at least one really big optional dungeon.

And when i did that i remember like almost i kind of the opposite experience from you in that dungeon where it was like oh, this is almost kind of too easy okay um, so there's a saying i was i'm uh 10 to 15 levels lower than he was, i think i i think that's what it is.

I think i'm just like severely under, which is fine.

I probably just i probably did skip some extra stuff that would have helped.

Um, i'm grinding and you know what that means.

I get to do the uh the, the battle system, which i continue to love.

I, i like and i was telling this to my i have like not obsessed over my pictos, but i've been minding them.

I've been like kind of tending to them to a certain degree.

I'm definitely not optimizing that.

Do that.

And then also the, the sub level picto luminous, is that what they're called.

Yeah uh god, i've been thinking about luminous lately.

The green things, the green things yeah luminous, maybe something like that.

Yeah yeah, i think it.

And you... It took me about half the game, maybe a third, before I was like, oh, what am I doing?

Like, I can take advantage of things I'm not taking advantage of.

Pictos have stats.

I didn't notice that.

Oh, so that's the important thing, yeah.

So make sure it's you know, put on a new pictos and then learn it right?

Yeah, you're definitely doing all that, but then make sure you just have the highest level pictos equipped on people.

Is there an easy way to see what pictos i don't have?

I haven't learned, like i just like looking at that thing.

Yeah, when you look at the whole list, i think the ones that you have learned have color to them.

It'll be like okay, i figured that's probably what it was, but it just wasn't super obvious.

And you're afraid of your weapons right, and all that shit.

Yeah i'm yes, i'm upgrading my weapons and i'm using the good weapons.

Now that that did help?

Um, i think that i.

I think it probably is this thing with the pictos of.

I'm not optimizing that enough.

I probably was just like that is where your defense that actually comes from.

Largely, I did switch up my strategy now and I'm using a lot more shield spells.

So I'm putting in like physical shields that will completely negate all damage for a hit.

That's made a huge difference and stuff like things like that.

But I was just like wondering if this is normal.

It sounds like it's normal if I didn't do a lot of the side content.

So, okay.

I just wanted to make sure I didn't do something super dumb.

I think a lot of your experience with this game mirrors mine.

Yeah yeah okay and, like to be clear, none of this has actually been a problem, because i'm still having fun.

Like, i'm like having fun even when i'm getting one shot because, like they, they updated it so if you lose a fight, you just restart the fight right there, you don't go back and run to it, and that has made it super smooth.

So yeah, kind of no complaint.

I just want to make sure i wasn't gonna like, oh right, because you would have to like watch a cut scene again right, like that you'd have to like go from like yeah, you'd have to like run back to the fight.

Yeah, you don't have to do that in anymore.

Oh, there's one where there's like a real long run.

You're just like, what am i?

17 seconds of running before i get to this fucking thing.

Um i, uh.

There was an area that i got to, i think around the part that you're describing, where you are just sort of inundated with, like you know, trio after trio battle and you're just like oh, this is, this seems imbalanced in a weird way, where you know you're just meant to kind of.

You know the way i kind of calculated it was like oh, the game's just trying to like get you prepared and maybe get you a little more leveled before you face something real gnarly.

There's like some of the uh, those systems for some of these characters requires like a couple extra turns before you get to do the really fun stuff.

I think they're trying to enable that.

So, and i'm fine with that, because that's been fun too.

It's a good game.

Yep.

Good game.

Yep.

Very good game.

Well, I'm glad, Grub, that that has not derailed your enjoyment.

No.

But you have been unrailed, too.

Yeah.

Actually, we should talk about this and Major Arena, which we played on UPF.

People should go watch that if they haven't.

Train week.

Yeah.

Yes, we did our mini train week on just Friday of last week.

We played Unrailed.

This is the game where it's...

Is it like overcooked for building trains?

Is that like a fair way of describing it?

At a certain point, I feel like not every four-player co-op game is like an overcooked-like.

But Overcooked is super popular.

So it's just like a good shorthand.

Yeah, no, that's like repo lethal.

Yeah, that's I just like saying friends.

Yeah, that's good.

You just love slopping with friends.

It is like that overcooked in that everyone has a job that they should be doing.

And it's like it's a division of labor game.

Like everyone, there's a chaos that feels like overcooked.

I could see that where it's like you're all kind of yelling at each other hey, i need trees, i need trees.

Yeah, i can see that.

Yeah uh, but i i thought it was really fun, like i had a really good time playing.

It was so.

It's a game where there are trees, there are rocks, you need wood and you need stone to build rails for the train that is moving.

You have to go add new tracks to the beginning so it doesn't run out, and you want to connect the train track to the station to end the level.

And then there's a bunch of other complications of, like you could upgrade the carts on your train to produce assets faster, or so that they're invisible so you can walk through them, because things could get in the way and things can cut you off.

And now you're screwed, or you're in a situation where you have to like, move very fast or else you're going to fail out the level.

And it's a four player co-op game, so everyone can take their job and do their thing.

And then occasionally someone's not doing something and everyone yells, hey, we need that done.

And then someone goes and takes that task.

And that means they have to leave something else behind.

It's a good division of labor game.

I really enjoyed myself.

I like that the kind of upgrade system isn't so much about your character but about upgrading the train.

Yeah.

Adding more like, you know, trains to it or just upgrading specific sections of it.

And it's like, oh, now we have this part of the train, you know, making brake pads.

All that stuff was satisfying to me, yep.

And then uh, we played majorina.

Oh yes, the rock voice activated spell casting multiplayer.

Uh uh yes, a competitive game.

And we did 2v2.

Christian hopped in on my team and it was mike and dan and you start off with a book of spells and you can look at the spells.

It's fireball, magic missile.

And you just say in your microphone magic missile, and it'll pass the magic missile.

It has to.

You know it's got to build back up and then you can cast it again.

That was.

I had a really good time with that as well.

That was very fantasy as well.

And I liked that.

You're a hero.

I'm a big boy.

Thank you.

It was really funny.

So the best part for me was anytime I would get near Dan.

Dan would hide behind a tree and giggle because it's prox chat and I'm trying to kill him.

It was like, it was like a cartoon.

It was like living in a Tom and Jerry's.

I'd throw lightning at you and then giggle and run away and hide behind a tree.

Yes.

And you did very well the first time with that.

The second time it was hilarious.

You had one kill and seven deaths.

It was a really long match too.

And I could tell Dan was still having a good time and entertaining himself.

I was entertained.

I think Prox Chat is just like.

I'm always going to find it either very funny or like a really interesting mechanic.

I love Prox Chat.

I think it's hot right now for a reason because it's always awesome.

I think every time we've done one of these, I've had a good time.

It's great for content.

And this one was like legitimately interesting, like the gnomes, where that you can go trade them stuff.

I traded traded them my spell book twice because I was like, what's the button?

And the second time I hit it again, gave my book.

But that time they gave me a pretty decent upgraded spell.

And that's when I like came around the corner and Dan was trying to capture our flag.

And I just cast the right, right at him.

And he blew up in front of me.

It was great.

And there's something incredibly satisfying about like sticking up with somebody, hearing them talk to themselves.

They don't know you're there.

And you're just like fireball.

I spend like half the time just trading shit with the gnomes.

I'd have like a stick or something.

I'd be like, please, I want the good spells or whatever.

And then one time I went to them.

And Grubb, I think you and Christian had just been there.

And you like slaughtered them accidentally.

And it was just a bunch of gnome corpses.

And I was like, no.

I had all this stuff I wanted to trade with you.

I think I was Christian trying to salt the earth to stop you from getting upgrades.

That's smart.

It's dark, but...

It was like I learned there were other spells, because I would hear all of a sudden the rock from like 15.

I'm like, what the?

And then a giant rock exploded underneath my feet and threw me into the air.

One time, Dave was just trying to talk to me about that spell.

And he's like, yeah, I got this rock spell.

And then a giant boulder came up because he said the word rock.

It was great.

I mean, proc sop, give it to us every time.

I'm going to have a good time with it.

I'm with it.

Very happy that y'all wound up checking that out.

Oh, one thing I didn't put on the list I do want to mention, though.

I watched a good amount of Hell Is Us last night.

And I played like three hours of it at that event.

And it's out for like early access now.

That's a really interesting game.

And that is one of those games that like, if you look at the reviews, are kind of polarizing.

You'll see like tens and sevens and stuff.

And I think it's interesting in that way that the things it's doing I think some people will fucking hate and some people it will be 100 percent their shit where it's like no maps, no quest log, no objective markers.

It's all diegetic stuff.

The tone of it is awesome.

It's very Annihilation, if you've seen that movie.

It's a really, really cool game.

I'm kind of fascinated by it.

I enjoyed what I there was like there was a really surprising puzzle thing that they did in that demo.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

With like you go to like a castle and you're on the roof of a castle trying to like, understand shapes and stuff.

And I'm just like, oh, I wasn't expecting this game to give me that.

I don't know.

I think, part of the intrigue for me.

I thought it was going to be a little bit more like Satan focus, which I can, you know, kind of look over.

But I was surprised.

I think part of the mystique and mystery for this game for me is like, what even is this?

Like, what even is this world?

Yeah, so I'm looking forward for sure.

And it's cool just having to have like a mental log or taking notes of, just like why was that fucking woman screaming in the cave?

I can't forget about her.

What's she doing there like interesting something?

That's like i have to note that like i need to figure this out later.

What this thing is it?

You know, i got a little worried where i was like oh, this is just like you know, throwing all like cool imagery in a blender and seeing what happens, right and like sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

Uh, like you know, i was reminded of a lot of stuff.

Obviously, the fun annihilation thing is something that always comes up with the stuff that we like.

But I think... yeah i i really want to see how they kind of connect all the dots here um instead of like the in-game map or whatever it's like literally like like you'll meet a character and they give you a hand-drawn map with an arrow and it's like you gotta like you're here and like yeah it's just you know a lot of you know looking at signs in the environment or like a character is like hey i hid this thing in the woods or whatever like i marked the trees with you know uh white markings or whatever so follow those or follow these wind chimes and it's got yellow paint all right no wait and then there was like an area where you like go underground and you fight like like monsters oh there's monsters in there monsters monster dudes yeah there's like fucked up weird faceless hole in their body monsters right weird geometry coming out of their souls and like where's this game at let's go let's play this game it's a cool game i'm not acting excited because i have it on fantasy critic that's that's really like the idea of a game that's just like self-contained and like throws you in there lets you figure stuff out so then i'm gonna check this out because of that hell yeah let's go uh and last game on the list here before we head to bricky break very actually thematically related to hell is us kirby and the forgotten land uh the nintendo switch 2 version cut from the full name okay kirby and the forgotten land nintendo switch 2 edition plus star crossed worlds thank you thank you grub um so i just played a couple levels last night just to see the performance and stuff and uh it did the thing where i went to the the world map and i saw that cut scene of the star coming down and stuff so i just loaded it up to see the performance stuff i did not know about the added stuff so like what is that how substantial is it Yeah.

So it's star cross worlds is mostly remixed levels, uh, that add different things you do in, in levels with like the sparkly star theming from the DLC.

Uh, and you have to find three, three new starry characters hidden in the map.

And then there's all of the bonus stuff that you could do.

Like, Oh, you found five, you opened five flowers on your things.

You get another starry and then you get the end of the level and you get three starries and you sort of two starries in each level.

Yeah.

It's, it's, Right.

It's just like the Waddle Dees.

And these are stars and not like the soda, right?

Exactly.

Yes, exactly.

Big star guy.

Big star guy here.

It is, but it's mostly just Kirby and the Forgotten Land again.

And like I said, mostly remixed.

And I am finding it pretty entertaining still.

One part of it is the game does look phenomenal.

It looks fantastic.

It runs great.

Yeah.

And like just the textures of the characters really pop with the higher resolution and everything.

I'm really impressed by the way the game looks.

I don't know if it's, you know, $20 more on top of $60 games that worth it.

$80 is a big price tag for this game.

Jesus, $85.

Well, $80 for the whole, yeah, it's just $20 for the expansion.

Right.

If you're starting it for Nella.

You don't get new Kirby abilities.

You get new mouthful modes.

Mouthful modes, yeah.

It's interesting because, you know, I haven't played this game since I was a kid.

I'm sorry.

I still can't believe they called it Mouthful Motes.

They got new Mouthful Motes.

Did you guys see Doug Bowser's joke?

He said the name of the title and it was like, that's a real mouthful.

Am I right?

Yeah.

He's laughing with us.

Yeah.

But it's, you know, I haven't played games since it came out.

So these levels, part of me is like, how remixed are these?

How many of these parts are new?

Because I haven't, you know, I don't remember.

So it's kind of a bonus if they are super just kind of reusing stuff.

I can't really tell.

I think that's going to be the case for most people.

Now I wonder what it's going to be like for someone who is buying this 80, goes through the whole game and then plays the Starcross World stuff like alongside it.

But the way that they mix things up is there will be the critical path That was the vanilla level.

And this will often add a thing where it's like you found the star crossed world flower, hit that thing and it'll open up this new path that just got created by the star path off in this other direction.

So it's not like, oh, it's just changing the paint on the pathway that was here before.

It's often introducing new branching paths with new challenging platforming puzzle stuff in there.

Again, I think that this has done a good job of using what's there and adding new stuff in a way that I have no real complaint about.

Like I don't think this.

This doesn't feel like a lazy DLC because they're reusing stuff or something like that.

I mean, largely, I just like Kirby and Forgotten Lands so much.

I'm excited to play more of it.

It really does make me excited just thinking about what that full blown sequel is going to look like when that comes out someday.

Yep.

Overall, though, it's like, yeah, this game is still fun.

It's still a good time.

I think the DLC I've heard a bunch of times.

I think I'm pretty close to finishing it.

I've heard it's like three-ish hours.

It's like a one sitting thing.

So again, $20, is that worth it?

I don't know.

I think there's more to levels than just like they added those star paths.

I think the geometry might be newer and something again.

It's weird, it's hard to tell.

Yeah yeah there's, there's quite a few changes to it, like that's one like the star paths take you in different directions you weren't on before.

So they would have to introduce new geometry and things like that.

Yeah, and i was happy to see because like, i got pretty far in that game.

I was in like the desert world um, and i just kind of fell off or something else came out and uh, i downloaded it here.

It just seamlessly, just like had all my stuff, you know, switch one to switch to and out of the dlc, with like one little cut scene, so very easy for me to hop back in and finish that game.

Yep, of all the stuff they've done with Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, of the ones they've charged for, this one earns that 20 the most.

Better than Mario Party.

Yes, significantly better than Mario Party.

I wish they would just put the camera stuff in there and not charge the extra money, because I like the camera stuff in Mario Party.

But here it's like no, this feels like a real expansion, even if I think a lot of people would be like 20 is a bit much for what's here.

I don't.

I paid for it.

I don't feel that way.

So yeah hell, yes.

Well, that about does it for video game talk.

But real quick, I just wanted to give two special shouts out.

Shouts out to the homie, Michael Ruiz, different Michael that I met out in Washington, but also yo, you know what's hella fucking sick.

What's that pink gorilla game?

Yes, oh yeah, it is great.

Yo, like i uh i, i got the chance i had some time to stop by the shop.

It is a baller ass store y'all.

Yeah, it takes good care of their shit for sure.

You go into a lot of like used game stores and it's like various shitty cases and some of them are reproductions and stuff like that.

Like no, pink gorilla is always awesome.

It was super dope.

I think Kelsey Lewin was probably occupado setting up the Pink Gorilla Games booth at PAX proper.

But like phew, that store immaculate.

Folks, we're going to go take... Real quick, just sorry.

There is one other game I've been playing.

I can't talk about it yet, but my kids have been playing a ton of it.

Do I have to explain embargoes to my kids, or do you guys think I'm safe?

Um...

Don't take food off our families because your kids have loose lips.

Are they on social media?

They're not.

Is recess still a thing?

I think there's a recess.

They don't ever talk about recess, so I don't know.

It was like the main thing in school was recess.

I know, right.

Other than school, played through astrobot like early and finished it before before and, like i said, i'm like just don't talk about this at school.

Like i legit said that this one is not like a name brand that people will recognize, so i think they brought it up.

Everyone's like what is that?

But uh, i'm looking forward to talking about it because the kids are super into it.

What the fuck it is yeah, i'll mention to you guys in discord.

Okay, We're about to be offline here.

You can tell us in voice in a second here.

Yeah, good point.

There's no way to know.

No way to know.

And maybe you'll have to tune in next week to figure out what Grubb was alluding to.

Oh, I think I know.

Actually, two weeks.

Oh, two weeks.

Well, there's also a game that I can't talk about for two weeks also then.

What about that?

Oh, shit.

I'm going to tell everyone at recess.

Folks, we're going to have ourselves a quick little recess.

We're going to play some four square, maybe some tetherball and just trade little snack packs.

And then we'll be back with the news right after this.

Jam, my computer's sick.

I've decided it's time to start building a new one.

I just don't know where to start.

Grub.

If your computer is sicky-poo, you gotta start with MSI, which just dropped something big in its brand new Z890 and B860 Intel motherboards.

Are those the motherboards that unlock the power of the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 CPUs?

Yes, sir.

These mobos, as we're calling them on the streets, are powerhouses for gaming, streaming, and whatever intense tasks you need to throw at them.

Okay, but Jan, you know me.

I'm scared of tools.

That screwdriver's so sharp.

It's okay, bud.

MSI made them Jeff-proof and maybe Dan-proof as well, which means they're easy to work with.

No more wrestling with tiny little screws or confusing manuals.

We're talking easy debug LEDs that tell you exactly what's going on.

Toolist installs for your M.2 drives and GPUs or GPUs.

We're calling them GPUs too now okay, hell yeah oh, okay.

Yeah, MSI has that modern BIOS as well that looks like it was actually made for humans to use, not some relic from 2003.

Give me more of that.

Yes, that's right.

It's gonna be so easy to get secure boots on the ground.

It's like PC building on easy mode grub.

And here's the best part giant bomb cast listeners.

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They allow you to do that.

MSI's got ongoing promotions that's potentially going to score me up to $120 in Steam codes.

It's basically free games just for upgrading.

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This is Jeff Grubb with our news.

He's gonna share some news.

Jeff Grubb.

That's right.

I have some news for y'all.

Let's just start here with the as-is tradition.

Nintendo Direct could happen very soon.

We've heard these rumors a bunch now.

There are more rumors to add on top of that.

A new Nintendo Direct is rumored to be held in September, possibly on the 11th or the 12th, aligning with the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros.

Leaker Nate the Hate also has added this, suggesting a Red Dead Redemption 2 port for Switch 2 might also be announced.

Weird.

Nintendo has a history of September Directs.

They just didn't do one last year, but that was because Switch 2 was coming.

I think they were in a weird spot, so do expect them to get back onto this regular schedule.

Um i yeah i, i buy this.

I think a direct's going to happen this month, i guess.

Uh, the the one thing that some people who have been rumoring, making rumors about this have been saying is this is the big one.

You've been waiting for it.

Who knows what that means.

I guess the question would be what would that mean to you guys?

Like, what would you want to see in?

That's the big one.

I mean there's, there's no way we get a direct.

I mean, i guess there's a way it but boy, if we got a big direct and we don't get a metroid prime 4 release date, that would be weird alarm bells.

Yeah yeah, but i really, you know, i want that and i really want to hear about metroid prime 2 and 3 remastered.

I want to be able to play those games before war comes out in one way or the other, on my switch too.

Yeah, I mean, for me that would be the ideal.

Is Metroid Prime 4 release date?

It is for later this month or sometime in October, whatever.

And then today, Metroid Prime 2 and 3 are available to purchase at a decent price.

Go play them now.

That would be awesome.

I don't know if that's going to happen, but I think it could.

Is there anything still with the Zelda remakes?

Does that look possible at all?

I mean, like always, I heard that they were done and they were up on the shelf and Nintendo was going to pull them off in a year when they didn't have any Zelda project.

But they've had a Zelda project every year, and now they have NSO GameCube.

And they've already put Wind Waker on there.

They could just put the Twilight Princess version of the GameCube version on there as well and say there you go.

That's where we put them.

That would be dumb because the HD versions have a bunch of differences and they could make a lot more money from selling them again.

So I expect them to do that at some point, but there's no reason to assume it would happen now.

It could, but there's no reason to assume.

Yeah.

I mean, they also got to announce some stuff and I imagine relatively soon here is when they can announce the big 2026 game, whatever that is.

They could announce the new animal crossing, right?

You know, the game that's going to come out at some point next year be a big deal and it's why you're going to feel so good about getting a switch to this holiday, because you're going to also look forward to that.

Yeah, do you think there's any reason to think and I'm with you, Mike but is there any reason to think, with Tomodachi, Life and what is the other Rhythm Heaven, Switch One games that they're like that's maybe filling out that slot for now, and we'll get to Animal Crossing later?

Do you think they're thinking that way?

No, I think Animal Crossing is a pillar upon itself.

Yes, okay.

Maybe it's not Animal Crossing, but whatever their flagship game is for next year, we could hear about that.

I continue to think the timing's right for Animal Crossing next year, but we'll see.

I'll put my money on Animal Crossing.

Usually Smash Brothers is the big year two game for these consoles, but almost yeah, somehow it doesn't feel right.

I mean...

A Smash Brothers Ultimate Deluxe, I think, does happen.

Something, yeah.

Maybe something like that.

It's like, they're bringing tripping back.

But I mean, you know, you could just be like, yeah, here's five more characters.

That'll almost be enough for me.

Maybe do some other interesting single-player mode.

I don't expect them to bring back Subspace Emissary with all the you know wild CG cutscenes and stuff like that.

You know, basically like distill what would have been a fighter's past into just a single upgrade, and you know, with some of the visual uh changes that can happen with that, that that would be almost all i would really need from this.

And they keep selling dlc characters too.

I'd be fine uh, i just want yes, what you said, and then the camera faces to be added to the game.

So yeah yeah, in there, when you knock me off the course Well, they should have, instead of like the me's, or put it on top of the me's, just replace the face with the camera thing.

Yeah, that'd be pretty good.

You know we've talked about this part of it a bunch now, but you know it is lining up with the 40th anniversary of Mario.

Because if it does do that, if that's the way it goes down, I do expect them to have something.

I just don't know what that would be.

Well, they have that stop motion thing, right?

They have the young Mario stuff.

Yeah, they're doing a bunch of... I was waiting for you to do that, Dan.

What's that motion thing?

Yeah, what is that?

There's like a...

An initiative by Nintendo to appeal to younger, like very young, like toddlers with Mario stuff.

And as part of that they have like this interactive or what looks like an interactive Mario face right.

Is that what it is?

Like the 64?

Kind of.

And how do you engage with it?

An iPad.

I could send that mobile app.

Yeah, just an app weird.

I think they're doing actual shorts too with stuff like yeah, i think video shorts uh yeah, there's a whole thing.

But video game wise i mean there were the rumors about the in the title new super mario brothers games.

Uh, we could, i could see that compilation happening.

Yeah, otherwise people were saying that that was like a fake, but i could still see it happening even if it was a fake.

But yeah, it still kind of makes sense, though the reason why we all believe that The new 3D Mario game just feels like that's a bit off since we got Donkey Kong.

It seems unlikely.

As much as I would love to have a Mario Galaxy 2 port, I don't know if they're going to do it.

I mean...

They didn't do the Switch 2 version of Mario.

I said we just got a free update.

The free update was pretty good though.

I'm not really sure what I would want from a big update.

I almost don't really want an expansion for Odyssey.

I just want you to get working on the sequel to Odyssey.

So yeah gosh, it's kind of weird to imagine, you know, they could do like another Mario 35 kind of gimmick here, Mario 40, whatever that is.

Didn't.

The last time we talked about this we were sort of fantasizing, or at least we were going through what was sort of due up in the remastered kind of hopper right in the queue.

And I don't know if we, like, landed on anything.

Yeah, but... I mean, a new Super Mario Bros. collection feels like the most obvious one there.

I mean, they are... So what would that have?

So that's 1 and 2.

1, 2, and then Wii.

And then they did U And Luigi U, So we already have U and Luigi on there, so they probably wouldn't include that.

They'd just be remastered as the other three.

Well, so we never...

We never got 3D land, right?

I don't know.

I would like to have that.

I would take that.

Yeah, it looks weird in HD, so they would probably have to do some extra work to it, because I've seen people mod the 3DS version.

It's like, oh, this looks barren when it's not on a 3DS.

Couldn't you see them doing something where it's like every Mario game ever? it's 40 is a big one like super all-stars yeah like you can't you can't they're not gonna sleep on 40 even though you know he's due for a prostate exam now he's like he's getting up there right like they gotta go they have to do it i i it seems like they would do something quite large for 40

I don't think Mario Maker 3 is off the table, especially with all this mouse stuff that we have on this system.

I just don't want to get my hopes up.

That would be the dream for me.

Somebody doesn't really care too much about Mario Maker Mario.

That would be a dream for me.

I will make that a nightmare for all of you if that is true.

That would be a dream for me.

I love that.

I'm not so close to it that I'm afraid of getting my hopes up.

To me as an outsider, it just seems like a logical thing to do, be like a hard thing to like, spin up again, right?

I don't know, i feel like they.

I think the reason i'm skeptical is i think they had a huge plan for maker stuff and then maker 2 sold like 5 million copies, significantly less than a regular 2d mario does.

And so they're like well, if this is the ceiling for Mario Maker, like what are we going to do here when we like try to do this with anything else?

So I think to me, I think they gave up on working with those kinds of tools, the tools that people can use.

And they're just kind of sitting back there on Mario Maker 2 untouched by them.

You know, I could be completely wrong, but that's me being pessimistic.

Dan, you're probably more familiar than I am.

Didn't they make it a little harder to share levels in 2?

There was something different from 1.

The thing that made a lot of people not get super into 2 is just the stylus.

It was huge.

I spent dozens of hours making levels on the first one.

The second one came out and it had some new fun things you could do and everything.

But you know, I bought all these different styluses and stuff that Oh, capacitive like this, should work.

And it never felt quite the same.

So like, I think that was the problem with two.

And I think you can get around it with the mouse controls if they do that.

So I would be all the way back in on Mario maker if they had mouse controls.

Yeah i um, we'll see.

I mean, even if they updated mario maker 2 with mouse controls and like one new uh tile set, that would be, i would go bananas.

I mean, it'd be mario wonder.

Right we, probably.

I would like mario 2 as well but yeah, it would be mario wonder.

Well, they put mario 2 in there as like a mario like you could get a certain mushroom and yeah, you get a mushroom.

But it wasn't like across like yeah, across the board, like enemies and stuff, like you know, with the, the potions and the doors and all that.

Like, i'd love full mario too.

Yep yeah um, we'll see.

I i, i'm back a lot.

I don't know if the whole it's 40, if they're gonna go big is is, is real, i think when you say it's like yeah, that does sound right nintendo, why would they let an opportunity go by?

But sometimes they're just not ready for it and so like they'll manufacture it.

If they have something to go like year of luigi happens because they have some luigi stuff happening, so let's just do that.

Um, I don't know.

Is it too early to maybe have like a Mario 2 movie teaser?

No, not that time.

That actually does feel like that could happen here.

And I hope there's another moment that makes me break.

I just cannot wait to see who the voice actor for Yoshi is going to be.

Uh-huh.

It's going to be Chris Pratt's mom.

Is Yoshi going to be talking sentences, you think?

I tell you what, I wouldn't be surprised.

It's going to be Joe Rogan.

No.

God, fuck no.

I feel like...

I feel like it's Illumination doing the Mario movies, right?

Yes.

The minions don't actually talk talk.

They just do gibberish.

It's gibberish.

They could just do that for Yoshi.

They could have pulled that trick for the Toads if they really wanted to, though.

Do that with the Pikmin, though.

Make Pikmin movies like that.

There's a chance he just says Yoshi stuff for sure.

But I wouldn't be shocked if Awkwafina is the voice of Yoshi.

I have no problem with that.

Yeah, I like Awkwafina.

Why does Mike know that reference?

Because he doesn't like Awkwafina because she's a woman.

Awkwafina was in like four animated movies in one year.

Oh, okay.

Oh, sorry, Mike.

Wow.

I think that her voice is kind of annoying.

Oh, really?

That's so weird.

Would you like to expand on that?

I just think it's a little pitchy.

Yeah.

Oh, wait, was this because you didn't like her as Raya, the dragon?

No, yeah.

Dragons don't sound like that.

Dragons just sound cool and boisterous.

Do an impression of a dragon.

What should they sound like?

I'm the dragon Tokoto.

Fear my dragon fire.

Why does this dragon sound like a cup?

All right, let's move this news along.

Fair games loses its game director.

Uh, haven is still hiring for new roles, though.

That's the developer, that's the studio.

So they lost jade raymond.

They've now also lost this game director, whose name i didn't write down for whatever reason but uh, he went to wb montreal or whatever they're working on the live service dc superhero game because they're making another one of those whatever.

That's wb.

What are we doing, folks?

I don't know, it's crazy.

Uh, the company that made suicide squad's gonna do it again.

Um, but that's a different story over there.

Uh, fair games, uh well, last time i checked, a couple weeks ago, Not canceled.

And it's definitely one of those situations when I ask the people about it, they're like yeah shit, I don't know.

I can't believe it's not canceled either.

So, yeah, but they're still hiring for it.

I don't know.

I'm definitely of the opinion that they're just kind of biding their time and will still cancel this.

They're biding their time?

They're biding, Joe Biden, their time.

I mean it's wild because, like You know, usually it's like well, the game's so close to finishing, maybe they just released it.

But with live service games that happens all the time because just maintaining these things is so expensive.

Right.

So part of me, like, look, you know, I don't want anybody to lose their job or anything like that.

But if this game's not going to come out...

Like, every day you don't do this is expensive, right?

Yeah.

I just don't know what these internal dialogues are about fair games, where it's like well, you know, who knows?

We didn't think Helldivers 2 was going to be this massive success.

Sometimes it just happens.

We got to at least spin the wheel here and see where it lands.

A lot of people are like, the wheel...

Is broken.

The wheel is not going to roll.

There's no point spinning this particular wheel.

I don't know.

Fair Games is just already a punchline.

I just can't imagine how it does.

On top of that, I know that the job search is very dire out there, especially in game development.

If you see this on the walls for Fair Games, I can't imagine you'd be enticed to apply at all.

Yep yeah, oh yeah, you're right.

Like yeah.

If you see like jade raymond's left uh, this director's left, and now you're gonna go there and with the stench of death surrounding this project yeah that's, that's got to be rough.

I mean when it says like haven is still hiring for new roles, like that's the kind of thing where it's like can you even trust that?

Like there's like a, an app operat or an apparatus at these companies that just like hires people.

Are they informed about the state or the future of that game?

Likely not.

There's also like that like rumor, not rumor.

But like the reporting about ghost job listings, where it's like companies put out a bunch of job listings they never intend to fill because it makes them look better to investors investors like they're hiring.

What a cool and not gross at all.

Everything doesn't that suck.

That sucks so bad.

I guess it's not a lot.

You don't have to hire someone just because you have a job listing.

Maybe there should be, maybe you should make that law.

Oh, it sucks out there.

So I wouldn't take that as like a sign of anything.

In fact, I would like completely ignore it.

In fact, I might going forward when we're doing this kind of this kind of reporting.

Did they lose the dollar sign?

I don't think they lost the dollar sign.

I'm not in the mood for it, so I'm not acknowledging the dollar sign.

There's no way to lose the dollar signs when they release the game.

Yeah, there you go.

Oh, wow, Mikey.

Wow.

That's what you get.

Capcom says Nintendo Switch 2 sales were better than expected.

Capcom's CEO.

Expected by who?

I don't know.

They don't make the Switch 2.

What?

Yeah, who's asking you, Capcom?

It does go in comparison to the other story here that we'll follow up with this about here in a second.

But yeah, Haruhiro Sugimoto, Capcom CEO, commented that Monster Hunter Wild sales, which were huge during the game's launch period and trailed off somewhat.

He's kind of talking about that.

He said when asked about the barrier of entry.

He unpromptedly spoke about the Nintendo Switch 2 and said that sales of the console were better than the company had anticipated.

Perhaps Capcom is having regrets about not getting the latest Monster Hunter up and running on that.

And he doesn't hold back.

He immediately said Capcom's president.

This is the second headline.

Capcom's president says high price of PS5 has contributed to low sales of Monster Hunter Wilds.

Now that makes me go, hmm.

Yes.

Because, look, a lot of people already have the PlayStation 5.

Yeah.

And that game, you know, just seems like it should just sell regardless.

It's on PC.

It's on a bunch of places.

Like the last one did really good on Steam.

I think it might be Monster Hunter's fault that Monster Hunter Wilds is not selling so well.

Yeah, I will say it's like boy if they're priming people up for hey, Switch 2 is going to be the lead platform for this franchise going forward.

I think that's fine.

I think trying to make Monster Hunter Wilds, this super heavy, graphically impressive thing that runs like shit on pretty much everybody's PC, was a big mistake.

Yeah, not having some Switch 2 version of some kind.

I wonder how many people are going to start doing this.

Because it is going to, you know...

Using that as an excuse for Monster Hunter Wilds is pretty dumb.

The high price of the PlayStation 5.

But there's a lot of people who are like, well, Switch 2 is selling really well.

Why are we making high-end PS5 Pro or PC games and then trying to reverse engineer on Switch 2?

Why don't we just make games look good on Switch 2?

And then they look a little bit better on these other consoles.

Great.

That makes a lot of sense to me, especially with the rumors of that PS.

Like I didn't include this in the news.

I guess we could talk about it here.

The PS6 is going to have three SKUs, one of them being a handheld that can be docked, the second one being a PlayStation 6S, because at a certain point... much more power do you need and you need to be able to reach the audiences so they're going to do the xbox series s thing and offer up an alternative solution this is all reporting who knows what actually ends up happening um but yeah if if you are going to have these lower powered skews out there you probably should just start making stuff for those first and the switch 2 being the lead platform it makes sense to me i bet there's a lot of developers who are like no there's a reason we don't do No one is going to have the money to get any SKU of a PS6 in a couple years.

Yeah, the PS6S, the more affordable one, probably still going to be like 500 right, 500 for the s, 600 for the ps6 handheld and 700 not work for xbox.

I mean recently yeah, but i think that was more an xbox problem than an xbox series s problem.

I think i think it will work for the playstation, because it's.

If people were like i just want to play fortnite and i want to be on playstation with my friends where they're at, i think a playstation 6s will be just fine for them.

But i don't know.

Speaking of ports and stuff, we kind of forgot to talk about this, but Red Dead Redemption 2 on the Switch 2, what the heck is that going to look like?

I mean, that's a 2018 game, right?

Who knows?

It's a 2018.

What was Hitman, right?

Okay, look.

Good point.

Yeah, so it's just like these things are just all over the place.

I don't know.

We'll see.

Got me diagonally.

All right.

But real quick, a grub to bounce off of the Capcom and Monster Hunter thing on the Switch.

I've been seeing a lot of people stream Monster Hunter Rise because I think for some people that is huge.

It's getting the shine right now.

Yeah.

For some people that's closer, I guess, to what they want out of a Monster Hunter game.

It sold really well.

Yeah, like it didn't like outsell Wilds, which is how I read it at first.

I think it sold really well.

I think it's aesthetics, but it makes it much easier to get kind of in and out of hunts.

Like the whole open world design is actually somehow a barrier.

It actually makes it more of a bother to get fighting monsters, even though it's pitched as the opposite.

I don't know.

Rise was a big disappointment for me this year.

I'll be honest.

Rise was?

Wilds.

God, I can't keep these things straight.

I know, I can never remember the name.

Worlds, Rise, Wilds.

Worlds and Wilds even sound like the same word.

The Rock.

In certain accents, they would sound exactly the same.

Monster Hunter Wilds.

No Man's Sky sees its highest Steam player count since launch following latest update.

I'll add also Hollow Knight had its most players on Steam ever in this past week, which is crazy.

People are very excited for Silksong.

But yeah, No Man's Sky.

It did its most recent free update, of which there have been dozens i don't know how many there's, maybe actually around a dozen at this point, i don't know.

I have the exact number, uh but it had 212 000 concurrent players at its peak uh, in this past week.

That is a crazy number, it's a huge number.

But you know what happens here is people bought no man's sky in a sale years ago, never actually played it.

And then these updates give them a reason to jump in now.

And then, so there's like, that's happened a bunch of times.

And so there's always people like, you know what?

I will check it out.

It's got these ships.

Now you can build and bring your friends in there and everyone can have a job on one ship.

That sounds awesome.

That's the way I always wanted this game to work.

And now it does.

So I think they've continued to prove that this is a model that has worked for them.

I don't know if it's replicable by anyone else, but yeah, Having huge sales of a disappointing game and then updating for free for years has worked for No Man's Sky, at the very least.

Yeah.

I don't think I've checked this game out since Vanilla.

I really need to go give it another go here.

We should try it.

I think that this is one that I would like to try out multiplayer and have us all on a ship together.

It supports that now.

That sounds pretty cool to me.

Hollow Knight Silksong.

We started talking about this, but the release timing and the price have been revealed.

We'll get to the price first.

$20.

I think the first one was $15.

So essentially with inflation, they didn't raise the price at all.

It's right in line with what they did originally.

A lot of people surprised by this, because this is a game that Could get away with 30 40, even like The Witness.

But $20, and I bet a lot of people are going to buy this game.

I bet it's not going to hurt for only being $20.

This feels like NFL 2K5.

Yeah, a little bit.

We know this is a really good game, but we're going to do this really aggressive, bold pricing thing.

That's pretty cool.

They totally could have, with all the hype and time said 50 60 whatever, and people would have bought it.

But that's cool.

Yeah.

That game's going to really blow up, huh?

It's going to take over.

I'm going to get Mary to try it.

I really think Mary would like it.

I can.

She glazes over when you start talking about it.

I refuse to be a part of this gimmick.

It's so wild that other indie games have gone out of its way.

That's kind of cool.

It really is the GTA 6 of indies.

I get it.

I'm surprised by how it's really broken through a sort of normie contingency.

In my wildest dreams, in the hockey locker room, I would never be asked about Silksong.

And yet here we are.

Yeah, it really, it really did break through.

That first game was a massive hit and you're right, i'm part of me always doesn't understand why i like it a ton, but you know i couldn't tell you why that really popped off in a way that ori didn't even.

Is it the best-selling 2d metroidvania game ever?

Oh yeah, so more than any metroid around factors?

Yes, sold more than any metroid yeah, but it's older.

Five five yes, it sold five times more than any metroid's ever sold.

It just got this magic sauce where it's just able to like permeate through for some reason i don't know if it's it's some kind of accessibility thing i, i don't know like it just has the magic sauce.

I mean, people are nostalgic for flash games, you know, now shut the hell up.

Well, definitely not it.

I mean with like how popular Souls games have gotten, like that's translated to like difficulty and like maybe 2D is more palatable for some people.

Yeah.

I think, yeah.

I think it's just there's a lot there, right?

I think it's a game that you can really, really sink your teeth into.

And that's even more so than the few souls mechanics that are in the game.

You know the way you get the currency you have to, like do run backs to your corpse and whatnot but just the fact that this is this big game that has lore, if you really want to care about that, has this giant, interesting world that you can explore that has all these kind of secrets and hidden areas um, a little bit like undertone sense, like if, if you want to be, this can be your game.

I'm seeing chat and mentioned like sales numbers and stuff.

I didn't realize Metroid never sold well.

You know, it's, you know, what's the barrier?

But it's never been something that's going to sell 10 million copies.

It's never.

I think it's only ever sold over 3 million once or twice.

Dread just got just over it.

And the original Metroid did better than all the rest.

I think yeah, that's right.

Prime, like one on the gamecube did like fine, but yeah, yeah it feels like it's gonna be one of the biggest gaps in terms of just like importance and and legacy and stuff and actual sales.

It is held up there with like mario and zelda.

You know, like 90 of the three million people who play these games are game developers and are making games.

Now i was gonna say that they're over 35.

Right like that.

That's what it's got to be.

It's not broken through anyone under 30.

Yeah, it's a game developer-esque game.

Game developers love Metroidvanias because of Metroid.

Yeah, it's not popular in Japan.

That's a big part of it.

So Nintendo doesn't push it in Japan and it kind of becomes a vicious cycle.

It's kind of all you got going for you, Dan, with the fantasy critic thing.

That's the only thing you got going.

Maybe they just cancel it because they don't care.

I have Soap Song.

That's going to do well for you, I bet.

We should worry about fantasy because we don't have a full league anymore.

Well, all of us are in it.

Look, I think we should worry about it because there's still a chance I could win.

I won last year, so I should buy myself a crown from yeah, we did look at this remember, we did look at this.

We looked at, we almost got like princess diana's tiara.

Oh yeah, we did say we were gonna do that.

We went that far yeah, and then i made a diane joke.

Yeah, anyhow.

Um, let's see here the okay september 4th.

I'm sorry, why isn't japan like metroid more?

Come on, that's a fair question.

I think that's a fair question Mike, finally taking it out on the Japanese.

Go ahead and tell them how you really feel.

Well, Julia Morrissey had horse ears.

Is that what it is?

I mean, how do you unpack this?

I don't know.

But what is the reason?

Does anyone have an educated guess?

Sean points out that Metroid is very Western sci-fi.

Do they not like Alien over there?

I don't know.

Maybe they don't like Alien.

Yeah, I guess like...

Japanese sci-fi more like Gundam our sci-fi.

Oh more, but what if Lady Gundam a mix?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Like, I guess I don't see the glaring and maybe should be obvious detail about Metroid that me I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's super obvious.

I think it's just like one of those things that fell through the cracks Culturally and and so it's kind of been riding on its cultural cache in the West a little bit.

Yeah Hey, you know what?

We finally caught on to Monster Hunter.

We're better at Dragon Quest now.

Japan, you should get on board of Metroid.

You know what they get on to instead, Mike?

American high-quality television.

Shit, no.

They like our prestige dramas.

Throw that in the garbage.

They love that.

That's bad.

That's going to ruin you like it ruined us.

You're all going to get depression.

What?

Dude, can you make a four-hour YouTube video on why you're stretching out your theory there?

That'd be great.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, sure.

You know what?

Just say it causes autism, too, and that'll really do it.

I think I'll do that.

No, thank you.

You've got a cabinet position with that shit.

Oh, man.

So the game's out Thursday for most of the world.

It'll be out Friday for Australia or whatever.

But 7 a.m.

Pacific time and 10 a.m.

Eastern for the United States is when it'll launch.

And then like 11 a.m.

Brazil, 3 p.m. in the UK, 4 p.m. in Western Europe and 11 p.m.

Japan time.

And on the website giantbomb.com, I plan to be playing a lot of Silk Song on its launch day.

Say what you're going to call it.

Yeah, it's the Hollow Knight Soak Along, everybody.

You can soak along with me.

We are going to start...

Yeah, we're going to start that maybe 5 p.m.

Eastern at the latest, and then I'm going to try to play for like four hours, basically.

Do a really big chunk there.

Does Silk Song Along sound better?

Silk?

No.

Silk Along.

Silk Song?

Insider Gaming says... Wait, you're right.

It is supposed to be Silk Song Along.

I blew it.

So that's way better.

There we go.

Soak song along.

Insider Gaming says Rayman is progressing incredibly well.

Plus Rayman 4 is in the planning stages.

We learned a few months back that Ubisoft is currently developing a AAA Rayman video game.

Fast forward to today, and we've learned that the project is currently progressing incredibly well.

According to those familiar with the game's development, ubisoft has the new rayman project scheduled for a late 2026 release.

Insider gaming also claims that ubisoft has already made preliminary plans to develop rayman 4, though it's not clear how far along those plans are.

I don't believe them.

These are two separate things, and there's a triple a rayman game And then a Rayman 4.

Right.

So does that mean this would be like Rayman 4 would be like a 2D game?

Because Rayman 3 is 3D, right?

If you number it like that.

Rayman 2 is 3D, right?

Right, 2 and 3 are 3D.

When they went back to 2D, it was just.

You know, Rayman Legends and Rayman Universe, whatever those are called.

Right.

So, yeah, I mean, Rayman 4 to me implies 3D, but you say AAA Rayman game that also implies 3D.

People don't usually refer to 2D games as AAA.

Yeah.

Origins and Legends.

That's it.

Thank you.

So, yeah, that's confusing.

Unless the AAA game is a remake of 2 or something like that.

Maybe.

I don't know.

I could go for some Rayman.

Rayman 2 is actually a really good 3D platformer.

Yes.

I'd love to see something in that style again.

It's kind of trouble, but yeah, it's all right.

Of course, of course.

Yeah, this is all coming out of Ubisoft, Montpellier, and Milan.

Yeah, I guess they're going to just keep making other games.

There's also over insider gaming.

They did a whole rundown of everything that ubisoft is making.

You won't be surprised that it's the stuff they have been making more ghosts recon, most more assassin's creed.

I guess that splinter cell remake is still happening before the end of 2027 or fiscal 2027, as well as that prince of persia remake.

How do you guys feel about the Ubisoft stuff that's not that core trio that they pushed over to that Tencent version of Ubisoft?

Did they bring up Beyond Good and Evil 2?

They did.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 is also on this list.

Wow.

I can't believe they still either believe or want us to believe that's a real video game.

Yeah, i mean to just like read off the rest of this list so people know what we're working here with.

There's project over, that's a ghost recon mainline title.

Project hex, the assassin's creed title.

That's set in the holy roman empire.

I talked about that before.

Project north, that's the splinter cell remake.

Project blackbird, the new mainline far cry.

Project maverick far cry extraction shooter that you guys have all been clamoring for.

There's a Far Cry extraction shooter.

Is that separate from the fucking Division extraction shooter?

Whatever.

Cool.

Project Altera, which is Ubisoft's Animal Crossing style game.

Oh, boy.

Okay.

Great.

Project Crest, a World War II extraction shooter.

Oh, boy.

I'm going to do a shot.

If you say the word extraction shooter again, I swear.

Damn it.

All right.

And then Beyond Good and Evil 2, Project Obsidian is the Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake.

And then Project Invictus, Assassin's Creed multiplayer.

Should we try to do like a UPF or a stream where we just play an extraction shooter together?

Yeah, definitely.

Yes.

It seems like it's a thing or something.

I think what's the big one?

Tarkov?

Tarkov is going to be on Steam soon, I heard.

Or we could do Dark Raiders.

I've had two experiences.

One was when it was just a mode in Division.

I was like, whatever.

Then I played that Marathon Alpha, and I couldn't believe how boring it was.

Really?

I couldn't believe how much of a nothing burger that experience felt like to me.

Jeez.

Maybe there was a marathon problem.

I don't know.

We should know.

Yeah, we should know.

I mean, Christian loves those games.

He can be our Sherpa.

Yeah.

Yes.

Either we wait for our creators or we do Tarkov when it hits Steam.

I think one of those would be our move here.

Okay, let's see here.

We did Hollow Knight.

We did this.

Sony is gunning for the Switch 2 with the handout.

I did put this in here.

We talked about this a little bit.

Then let's hit this last one.

Capcom settles it.

No, Pragmata isn't a secret Mega Man game.

Mike, what do you have to say?

You got to believe that?

Come on.

We know how deceptive Capcom has been recently.

I know it wasn't technically a lie during Summer Game Fest, when they're like we'll have more to say about Resident Evil in the future.

Then like 20 minutes later, we saw the trailer.

But, of course, they're not going to admit it.

It's supposed to be a surprise.

It's like, well, you got us.

I guess we have to come out and tell you it's a Secret Megaman game.

Now, at the same time here.

I hope everyone realizes that.

I'm having a little bit of fun.

I thought you were always having a little bit of fun, and then the last 30 seconds sounded dead serious.

To the point where I kind of wish this was your conspiracy theory thing that you kind of wrote into the ground.

So if you could keep doing that, that'd be great.

I think there's a 10% chance that Pragmat is a super bad game.

That's high.

Which is pretty high.

That's too high.

You put a gun to my head.

I don't know if I actually think that's going to happen.

The more exciting thing is that everybody seems very excited about this game when they play it.

I'm pumped.

I'm so pumped.

I just think it's such a good idea for kind of keeping gun combat interesting in a game.

Alright, Mortal Kombat 2 movie was delayed.

They didn't really say why and I don't know if we've heard any reporting, but it's moved from, let's see.

I think it was supposed to be out next month and now it's coming out in May of next year.

That's, That's what it is.

There were posters in my movie.

There was the Johnny Cage trailer that was really well received.

People really liked that.

I thought it looked good and I hated that.

I think this movie is probably done.

I think this is a logistic delay.

Do you think that they saw the positive feedback where we could do even more?

Or do you think there's a problem?

You don't think those test screenings went really poorly?

When was it supposed to come out?

Like october or november?

So it's like a seven, six months six, seven month delay.

I don't know, you can't really.

I guess you could do a decent amount with a movie man, but i don't know.

I it just seems more logistical than technical.

It might be yeah, it's just.

It's a boy.

That's a big pivot to do this late again when all the promotional like toys are going to be coming out for this thing.

Right, you can't put the brakes on a lot of that.

This is a Warner Brothers joint.

Warner Brothers joint.

Is this Warner Brothers just being funky again with their movie schedule?

It could be tax reasons.

It could be Hollywood accounting.

It's a weird fucking company.

Just bad at what they do.

Okay.

Michael R O'Leary says they were quote trying to avoid a busy calendar, but they had zero competition for two weeks when the movie was supposed to come out.

So obviously that's bullshit.

Just weird.

It just seems weird.

Weird.

Did they realize they forgot to put reptile in it?

That's probably it, yeah.

The pit wasn't deep enough.

Yeah, that's right.

Disappointing pit.

Everything else was good.

We've heard rumors about this urbex.

We've got to investigate. uh last story here david kelly pioneer of large format cinema i'm yes i said keely right okay yes it's david keely he's a son yes yeah jeff keely's dad died at 77 uh and he was yeah very instrumental into creating imax uh and and like they were him and his wife actually both really important to the imax company um so yeah that is a shame shout out to david keely i almost just said kelly even though i didn't try to say that the first time uh and rest in peace absolutely condolences to the family yeah absolutely reptile was in the first mortal combat movie i have no memory of that for like five seconds um about that yeah back over to you jan Folks, we're going to take another quick break and we will be back with emails, YouTube super chats, and maybe a couple more bands.

We'll see you right after this.

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Terms apply emails.

Uh, during the break i aged 20 years listening to my lovely co-owners talking about old men, i think, and old men who was the old guy that went on fox news and said that he kept himself young by masturbating?

That's all of them, but they won't say it out loud.

That was me.

I'm actually 78 years old.

I don't know.

That's weird.

They're like, what's the key to staying young?

No, it wasn't.

What's Ernest Borgnine?

Whispers right into the microphone.

I masturbate a lot.

Ernest Borgnine.

Ernest Borgnine, yeah.

That's the most old guy name ever.

Yeah.

Ernest Borgnine is up there, but yeah.

Yeah, but Ernest Borgnine's got him.

I remember I was listening to daytime radio once and it was just like a classic, like hey, we're talking here.

How do you stay up on a long drive?

And then someone calls in, and it's like, Hey, first time, long time.

You know, I'm a truck driver by trade.

Sometimes I'm just jerking it.

In a moving vehicle?

In a moving vehicle.

And if you're a truck driver, you don't need two hands the whole time on that thing.

And the hosts were like, oh shit, did he just say jerk in it?

Oh shit.

It was great.

Anyway, emails.

Please type your emails with both hands, please.

Bombcastatgiantbomb.com is the email address to send your emails to.

Write in about any and everything.

We say something funny on a show.

Or the podcast?

Write in about it.

You got a fun quiz?

Write in about it.

You got, I don't know, you got a question?

Maybe you got a compliment.

Write in about it.

First email comes from Brad in Sioux Falls.

Sioux Falls?

Sioux Falls.

I don't care.

It's not that I don't care about you, Dan.

I just felt rude.

He doesn't care about the Sioux people.

Yes.

We heard him.

Hey, Jan, you mentioned ear candles on something recently.

I'm sure you've gotten a bazillion emails about this, but don't do it.

In theory, it's supposed to pull earwax out of your ears into the candle.

But in practice it's a funnel covered in beeswax that melts down and just looks like the grossest earwax ever.

Also, if you're unlucky, some of that melted beeswax will drip directly into your eardrum, which probably sucks pretty bad.

If you have any earwax issues, please see a real doctor, not a chiropractor or some other homeopath.

I can say that because my sister is a chiropractor.

Yours in earwax, Brad from Sioux Falls?

Sioux Falls!

That's sweet.

They're saying it's like it's completely gimmicked, that it melts down and the gross stuff is in, there to make it feel like you got stuff out.

But it was like a work the whole time.

That's the kind of snake oil that I love.

Straight up snake oil.

Yeah yes like um, there was these like foot pads that like got the toxins out of you.

Yeah, like if you just get them, if you just get them wet, they look dirty and that the toxins are already in there.

I'm like yeah, anytime people say the word toxins, i start crooked my eyebrow, you know?

Yeah exactly, I had to get my dad to help with my earwax recently because I did this stupid thing.

It felt a little heavy in there, and I got the cotton swab.

You're not supposed to put it in there.

I actually just couldn't hear it out of the ear anymore.

I had jammed it in there so bad.

Yeah.

So I had to go to my dad, and he got in there.

He got basically like a water gun and was just squirting.

Water pick.

I love that.

Such a relief when it finally just felt like crack.

Go to that ENT.

They have a vacuum now too.

Lately they've been using the vacuum instead of the water.

It's like a little tiny thing they put in there and it actually just goes on your eardrums.

You just hear it all sucking out.

That sounds amazing.

I want that.

You know how people go to a chiropractor to get that cracking feeling?

I just want to go to an ENT to just get that cracking.

Yeah.

Are the hoops okay?

Because I got those from like a Walgreens.

It's just like a little circle.

You put it in, you throw it around.

I think those are fine.

I did get a little blood last night.

I'm no expert.

Well, maybe you went too hard.

You go to an ENT.

I spent a lot of time with ENTs with my surgery last year.

And it's just like a lot of those gimmicks and stuff.

Like Kayla got me some things she found on TikTok.

That was like a camera that goes in and you can scoop your own wax out and stuff.

And I would bring it by my ENT and they'd just be like, just come here.

Just go to the doctor, it turns out.

Yeah.

Nick from Australia.

How do I find a doctor?

Daddy.

Nick from Australia writes in.

Hey, Bombers.

I just found out that earlier this year Taco Bell Australia's owners announced they are closing down the chain and will sell any individual restaurants if they can find a buyer.

This is the second time Taco Bell has tried to get a foothold in Australia, after opening some stores in the 90s and also having to shut down the chain.

The major US restaurants that have succeeded in Australia, like McDonald's KFC, Hungry Jack's, Burger King's Australian name and Domino's, have all made big changes to adapt to the market.

Taco Bell and the struggling Wendy's and Carl's Jr have not adapted, but rather just copy and pasted the US menu and business model over to Australia.

I thought it'd be fun, given Dan is a massive Taco Bell mark if he tried to figure out how to change the Taco Bell menu and business model to suit the Australian market, despite having no knowledge of what does and doesn't work here.

Yeah, I was going to say do we have any info about how they changed these other restaurants changed.

Maybe they said that.

I will, on my own research, what the McDonald's Australia menu looks like.

So the question, so Dan, how would you make Taco Bell a profitable growing chain in Australia if you were made CEO? quesaroos it's uh kangaroo quesadillas oh come on this is like hope oh he's not just gonna suggest they eat kangaroos at least right quesadilla okay oh my god oh this dingo ate my baby yeah or or or the dingo the dingo replaces the taco bell chihuahua okay why are we allowing all this spanish With an Australian accent?

Yeah.

And now I'm really on board.

Yeah.

I think we got something.

Yeah.

I'm not saying too much different about this McDonald's menu.

Besides for the Brekkie McWrap, and a lot of things ain't Brekkie and generous.

Well, did you ask AI?

No, I went to their website.

I'm doing my own research.

Yeah.

I do like the name Brekkie.

Brekkie McWrap.

It's like a wrap, but with ham and eggs in there.

Some other gross looking stuff okay, it's uh, crunchy hash brown, perfectly cooked egg, rasher bacon.

What cheese and ketchup?

They just put ketchup in it.

Yeah oh, what's rasher bacon?

Do you think that's what they call canadian bacon?

I think it's like, is it not ham?

I don't know what that is.

It looks like a canadian bacon ham.

Right yeah fat, back bacon.

Oh yeah sure, but yeah, this is back bacon for sure.

Absolutely yeah, back bacon.

Worse bacon um, but yeah, otherwise i don't know.

They have those cookies that look pretty good.

I think we had these cookies when we were in england too.

Oh, you could just get.

Oh, you just have sandwiches.

Oh, you could just get like a ham and cheese tomato sandwich.

At australia mcdonald's they call them toasties.

You could just get a grilled cheese sandwich it's called a cheese toasty and a ham and cheese pocket.

Okay, this menu's getting weird.

The further down you go, you get Earl Grey tea.

That's terrifying.

There's a lot of shakes.

There's a lot of drink options here.

They have ranch.

Australian kebab.

They still have McGriddles.

They still have the essentials, so it's looking fine.

Oh, it's like shawarma.

Okay.

Yeah, I guess I just don't know if McDonald's can make it.

I don't know why Wendy's is struggling, especially if they have a Burger King equivalent doing well.

Because Burger King is just embarrassing these days.

Well, they said that these other ones made changes, and Wendy's didn't.

Yeah.

Wendy's is fine now.

Well, they used to be fine.

Wendy's is kind of gone.

What's the RV situation like in Australia?

I don't think it's doing well.

I'm going to say that.

Damn.

Darn it.

Sorry.

You said something bad about Wendy's and we all just like...

I don't know.

I loved Wendy's a lot as a kid.

I think it's a me thing.

I don't think it's Wendy's fault.

I love the chili.

I'm pretty sure it's a Wendy's thing.

No, Mike, you're right.

Wendy's has fallen off.

Really?

If we're talking about the burger, we're not putting it in the same category as a Five Guys or something like that.

No no no, no.

But i'm just saying like donald's and in wendy's, wendy's was definitely like up there with like all those stuff, like people would be like in and out it's like no, wendy's is just as good and now it's like i don't know.

Now you know like i'm not getting a fast food cheeseburger very often anymore and if i am, it's like i think i'll, i'm gonna treat myself, i think i'll go to mcdonald's.

Okay understood, We have something called Swenson's which is like a drive-in thing.

So that's a very good fast food style burger.

I actually went there last night.

It was like, it's a holiday.

I'm going to Swenson's.

They have the Galley Boy, the special double cheeseburger they have there.

It's got two sauces.

It has this kind of like sweet barbecue sauce and has a tangy kind of little relishy something.

Something there too.

Do they actually put like an olive on it?

Yeah.

I take that off and I throw it in the garbage, but they put an olive and a toothpick on top of it.

They were doing deep fried olives on a stick at the state fair, and that did not sound good to me.

I'd fuck with that.

You would?

I'd fuck with that, yeah.

Are you kidding me?

100%.

That did not sound good to me.

All right.

Moving along.

Simon from the Netherlands writes in.

Hey, crew.

It's pretty cool that I can listen to a podcast or music anywhere I go these days.

It wasn't like that growing up.

Dad, is that you?

There were way more limitations.

What was your first personal audio device?

Walkman?

Discman?

What was your favorite?

Best regards, Simon from the Netherlands.

Walkman, for sure.

Some knockoff Walkman.

I had a CD player Walkman.

I might have had something before that, but I definitely remember my Walkman CD player fondly.

Hit Clips, baby.

Hit Clips.

You get a minute of a song, not even the full boombox.

That didn't play cds, it just played at two cassettes or maybe one thing.

But it didn't advertise this.

But it could record stuff and there wasn't like an obvious microphone, it's just you would hit, play and record and talk into like the speakers, i guess.

So like.

I mainly used it to play wrf raw on genesis and that was my way before they did the wrf, the music things right where i like record the midi version of sean michaels theme by holding my boombox up to the crt while i played sexy boy, so then i could hear wrestling entrance music anytime.

I've got a ton of cassettes somewhere i assume it's in my basement of me playing the dj with record, because i because you said i bet there might have been a little dot somewhere on the front of that boombox that said mic, because that's, That's how I remember it.

Yeah.

Mike that stood off or anything.

Exactly.

Like that's where, where you were meant to speak.

And I would just like record off the radio and do my own.

I would call in to the radio stations and it would be busy.

So you'd call like 20 times to request a song.

And if they, if you got it through, it could take two hours.

So you're just sitting by the fucking boom box waiting to hit record when they play.

You know the chronic and And that's an insane way to get music.

I didn't even have a boom box.

It was like a little tape deck thing, like just like a little skinny thing, but it was kind of long.

I mean, it makes it sound like it was small, but it wasn't.

But it was like meant for recording or taking notes or something like that.

And I would use that to play music and record stuff off the radio and record my voice and things like that.

I just found a picture of the Walkman CD players, and it activated me in a way I wasn't expecting.

Yeah, some of those yellow Sony Sport Discmans, those are really cool.

The anti-skip technology?

Yeah, like seven seconds.

I'd shake the shit out of that thing and be like, it's not skipping at all.

This is amazing.

So wait, wait. so wait what was your guys's favorite like personal audio device before cell phones oh probably that disc man where like i have i didn't ever had the actual disc man but it's a portable cd player you know yeah i liked my ipod but i do i think my mp3 cd player where i could burn mp3s onto a disc so i could have hundreds of them on there that's cool sure that was pretty good and that's because the files were so small they could all go in memory so there was no skipping yeah my In high school, the head unit in my car was an MP3 player that could read CDs, and that was game-changing.

AJ, are you listening?

What was that weird early MP3 player you had?

That thing was cool.

Rio Diamond?

That sounds right, honestly.

The first iPod I ever had was the one with the four red buttons, the capacitive red buttons on top.

I think my first one was the first with the click wheel.

Yeah, they were cool, man.

Those were fucking cool.

My favorite portable music player was one of my favorite phones growing up.

It was the Motorola Rocker E1.

Oh, nice.

It had iTunes on it, which was apparently weird for any other phone.

It was like a cousin of the Razr, right?

Yeah, because they omitted the last vowel as well.

Right.

It's crazy that as recently as 2008, I had a Windows phone.

Wow.

Yeah.

I got a Windows phone around then, and I turned it into an Android, actually.

I swapped out the OSs.

My God.

The worst experience imaginable.

Yeah.

I love when I meet like a Windows phone diehard in real life.

I'm like, you are a true psychopath.

Yeah.

Like you're just lying to yourself, buddy.

There was no fun to be had using that thing at all.

And it had sort of like the sidekick thing where it didn't flip around and corner out like a boomerang but it just sort of like lifted up.

Yeah oh, what a miserable, miserable thing that was.

Are people still buying like dedicated mp3 players and just like the hideo kojima's of the world?

Yeah, he's got like a sony walkman mp3 player that like has special decks in them and things like that that you know, maybe they could play og of orbis files and shit like that.

Uh, i There's definitely something to be said for when I did have that iPod and I used my Koss Porta Pro headphones with them, which were like the first decent headphones I'd ever used.

It's like, oh, I actually am hearing stuff in this Pink Floyd album I had never heard before.

It was like, oh yeah, having good quality stuff does make a difference for audio.

Definitely, uh.

All right, moving down the email thread, danny from bun young, bunny young, bunyan young uh writes in hi team.

Over the years i've often heard tales of dan's legendary soul caliber skills and i've always wondered has dan ever won an official soul caliber tournament?

If not, would you be willing to accept the challenge?

Thanks heaps, love your work.

Danny from bun and young.

Yes, i would accept that challenge, specifically if it's a soul caliber one tournament.

That's the one that i really spent the time learning, like every character on.

I am good at the other ones.

I'm nowhere near like confident with like with two i did.

When it came out, i was in the dorms and i printed up flyers and i put them on the elevators in every dorm at ku.

In fact, if desky fam is in the chat uh, desky fam partook in this tournament um, and it was like a five or 10 entry or it was like 10 and you could buy back in or something.

And so, yeah, I got a ton of people together to do one.

I brought a big whiteboard into the lobby of my dorm and I won.

So I basically put the whole tournament together and took everyone's money.

So you could win.

Absolutely.

I did the same thing in the neighborhood with like Mortal Kombat on Genesis in like the early 90s.

But no, the first one.

I have not.

But I would 100.

If we were at some event and there was some Soul Calibur tournament, I would super enter that.

Let's just make one.

You like to do the 8v8 random characters.

But you don't need that, right?

So if you entered a tournament and you had a main, you would be fine, you think?

I would try it, but I really do think my skills in that game shine when it's like I can take any 8 random characters and I know my stuff I do with everyone.

It's definitely the game I think I'm best at.

Okay yeah uh, kenny writes in.

Jan, i thought you'd like to know.

Anthony mackie stole.

Cut the check.

Uh, they provide a youtube link.

Please make sure you take it back or invite him on to the dump truck.

Kenny, I'll just you know what.

I'm fine being the Anthony Mackie of Giant Bomb.

I'm cool with that.

Always have been.

Yep.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Tom from St.

Catherine's writes in.

What's up, Bombinos?

After talking about it for years, and a little inspiration from Mr Grubb, who's looking snatched as hell lately.

I finally started eating better and exercising.

Over the last two months, I've dropped around 25 pounds.

In between bouts of dieting, I've built in what I call I've been calling debauchery days, where I just do cocaine and see a bunch of exotic dancers.

No, they don't write that in.

So I was like, wait, what?

So I thought I'd turn to the food crime extraordinaires.

If you were to build your perfect day of takeout slash garbage food, what would your breakfast, lunch and dinner look like?

Thanks.

Love ya.

Kissy face emoji.

All from St.

Catherine's.

Sent from my iPhone.

I think breakfast would be air fried leftover Taco Bell from the night before.

A whole lot of quesadilla, a couple burritos, and stuff like that.

You meal prep.

Absolutely. uh yeah because i don't like the actual like if i go to taco bell and it's just like breakfast stuff i mean it's fine but like i want the breakfast is gone i think they're already done with that no they do that they do the break we had it uh oh a month ago misinformed then he's he's whining to me the other day about how it's gone oh no no his taco bell yeah leftover taco bell uh for breakfast Lunch, I think getting a big, like going to a barbecue place in Kansas City.

That's not really garbage food, but like, you know, just go nuts on some burnt ends and fries.

And then dinner, boy, I'm big on the Jets pizza now.

Yeah, I had it recently.

I'm glad I converted Dan to the Church of Turbo Crust.

An eight-corner Turbo Crust.

Oh, my God.

Those are just the most substantial pieces.

Ah, I love it.

Yep.

Yeah.

Probably doing McDonald's breakfast, getting my sausage with muffins.

That's my favorite breakfast.

Lunch at Arby's, beef and cheddars, maybe some mozzarella sticks for dinner.

I think I just want a like large stuffed crust barbecue chicken pizza from Papa John's.

No onions, please.

I'm not trying to eat vegetables today.

Beef fast.

Oh, you go ahead.

No, yeah, I was mostly going to be similar to these guys.

And then throw me in a big burrito in there somewhere.

That's probably my favorite food.

Well, there we go.

I'm going to skip B-Fast entirely.

I'm sorry if that breaks the rules of debauchery day.

Go for a stacked mission-style burrito.

Hell yeah.

For lunch, and maybe that leaks into dinner.

And then for dinner, got to do wings, boys.

I agree.

Wingies, yeah.

Girth just been thinking about this for like 45 seconds now.

Um, in in this case yeah, in this case no, smoothies are not debaucherous, they're not going in the menu.

Uh, in the, in this, you know, fantasy sort of world where like no, uh consequences, and i can, or exist, and i can physically handle the amount of calories and and sort of intake that we're we're dealing with here.

I'd start off with like a very large, like bacon, egg and cheese on a biscuit, like not mcdonald's bullshit, like a proper homemade country biscuit, you know, like a big boy, one the size of like a coaster, you know, maybe a little bit, maybe a little bigger than that.

Yeah, start things off there.

For lunch i'm gonna keep it a little more uh, in the ground in reality, with like an oversized lobster roll, just a real big cat.

You know, i'm gonna ask for some of that brown sugar, like the ones we get in boston, that there's something special about those up there.

Uh, but warm, we're doing butter, we're not doing cold, we're doing warm.

Oh, that's the move Yeah, and then for dinner we're probably going to do some kind of chicken salt and bokeh.

I want the fried chicken cutlet, and then I want prosciutto...

Then I want mozzarella and then I want like salt butter, buttery garlic pasta and just get all that going on the top there.

Like that's I think kind of that's what I want.

That's like the perfect day.

That's one day.

I could do another day, but that's hey.

Hey, next time we see each other.

What, if?

What about we all have four debauchery days in a row where no one person determines the menu?

We can't, we'll die.

We'll just die.

I'm not ready to die for that.

No oh, you know how the um in in weddings recently, like the cup, the groom's cocktail, the bride's cocktails, become a thing.

Yeah yeah, I've put a lot of thought into mine.

Would y'all like to guess what mine would be?

Yeah please, is there any coffee in it?

No, no coffee at all.

Lumpia that you can't shoot lumpia?

Well, maybe you could.

Is it beer, ice cream?

But it's not really ice cream.

No, we can't relitigate this.

Look it up.

Check the super chat.

Calm down.

It's coming.

Wait two minutes, Dan.

You all acted like I was a fool.

We'll get there.

Oh, we'll get there.

We'll get there.

We don't act like it.

We know this.

This happens a lot.

Just because a random asshole on the internet says you're right doesn't mean you're right.

We'll get into it.

Dan, what's in your cocktail?

I can't guess.

I don't know.

Two shots of Hennessy.

Two shots.

Exactly.

You go up to the bar and you're like, oh, can I get the gin?

It's like, oh, I just want one shot.

No, no, no, no, no.

You have to take both.

All right.

No chase.

Two shots of Henny.

Oof.

Two shot.

That's rough, buddy.

Because anything's possible, baby.

I understand, but like, man, the days of just like raw dogging liquor like that, like, I don't know.

That's rough.

Yeah, I'm with you back.

You're not raw dogging liquor when you're with me, baby.

I guess you're right.

I can sip some bourbon or scotch, but I'm not shooting anything anymore.

You are the something sweet that makes it go down a little more smooth.

Am I right?

Jan Jan, I'll take it with you.

Fantastic, i've learned i can't refuse a shot anyway.

Uh, there's a certain point of the night where you should be refusing a shot.

If you're rude though, if you had to make me guess a personality trait of yours, it would have been that you don't refuse, that you're incapable of doing it.

I would have said a shot of espresso.

I didn't know about any, though I'll shoot anything baby.

Last email of the show.

Once again, the email address is bombcastatginebomb.com.

Last emailer writes in, Mike from Loveland.

It's time to open a new front, the Revolutionary War.

What is everyone but Mike and Dan's opinion of the objectively successful Smash musical, Hamilton?

Love the show.

Love you all.

Mike from Loveland.

It's fantastic.

I love Hamilton.

I'll watch that probably once a year.

Yeah, it's extremely good.

I don't think it...

It probably doesn't register in the top 10 Broadway stuff for me, but I can appreciate it.

I think it's very, very good.

I absolutely love Hamilton.

It made me feel more comfortable in my skin as a person of color.

But also I said this over the weekend to our dear friend Bailey Myers.

I think it is a cultural 9-11.

A cultural 9-11?

No, I actually think the real 9-11 did more damage to our culture than Hamilton.

Experts are still debating.

All right.

Mikey, hit me with some super chats if we got any.

We sure do.

Thank you so much, everybody, for sending those in.

That boy Jerry says, y'all start late because Dan pooped his pants again?

No.

I haven't pooped since Sunday, and I've never pooped my pants.

I was going to say, he's famous for never having pooped his pants.

It's my main thing.

In fact, he's told us multiple times today that he's constipated, if anything.

I know.

Honestly, that's more of the issue.

Yeah.

KittyCatMan93 says, did anybody do miniature boy Mitch Tokoto yet?

What the hell is that?

It's capitalized, Miniature Boy.

I don't know if that helps.

Is that a thing?

I'm not going to Google Miniature Boy.

I don't know what this is.

Hang on.

Chat says you haven't pooped since Sunday.

That's not the weird thing.

It's...

No, that's weird, bud.

I am pooped since the state fair, but like I didn't poop for like a week not too long ago.

What?

Are you okay?

That's real bad, man.

That's not good.

Did you tell anyone about this?

Did you not feel good?

This was a while ago.

Yeah, I didn't like it.

Okay.

But now it's like not pooping in two days isn't the craziest thing.

I think the fact that I did the state fair yesterday and ate all that shit.

If I'm a doctor, which I'm not, and you came in for a physical and you told me that it would make me perk up.

I'd be like, excuse me?

Does your tummy hurt?

No.

Then it's not a problem until your tummy hurts.

I'm good.

Not a problem until your tummy hurts.

Are you burping a lot?

You go poop when you have to go poop.

If you don't go poop, you don't go poop.

I got a lot of reflux stuff.

I don't know if it's not really burps.

If you legit seven days...

This was months ago, but yeah, it was like seven days.

No, seven days is a problem.

I'm not trying to be hyperbolic.

That's real bad, man.

My dad went longer a couple years ago.

I don't care.

And they were like, you are literally filled with shit. yeah i get it haha but like yeah constipation's bad like what i thought we were talking about like a day of not pooping still okay yeah the seven days that's a problem that was a while ago that's just like being constipated stuff's like i'm an er nurse working on my doctor at three days is the point where you get worried seven days is a all caps problem yeah and again yes we're at like a couple days now in the seven days i got passed so yeah i assume so yeah yeah yeah Martin Hollis says, had Dr. Pepper flavored at my birthday night out.

Does it say Dr. Pepper flavored what?

Well, I'll just get it again.

It was 8%.

It just tastes like Dr. Pepper.

I think it was beer.

I think it was cocaine.

What's the most dangerous, easy-to-drink booze?

In fact, I mean, most tiki drinks are like that.

Yeah, the pina colada, the Miami Vices, all that shit where it's just primarily sugar and you're just going nuts on whatever the fuck it's mixed with.

That's trouble i forgot to mention.

Uh, i i made a quick stop which was a very long stop actually, to disneyland this weekend.

Uh, and i went to oga's cantina and my party was uh, they it's like generally most of the places bar standing seating or whatever yeah, and the group sitting next to me uh, the lady looks over at me like nods her head and was like you, trying to drink.

I'm like yeah, that's why we're all here, right.

Yeah, but it's two max per person.

And my friend, she's not going to drink, but I'm going to have her drinks.

So I'm going to get four.

I'm going to get four drinks.

Who's telling you this?

This is like 10 a.m. also.

Hell yes.

Did you hang out with them for the rest of the day?

You should have.

No, but I cheers her four times.

Yes.

It was great.

Oh, my God.

Incredible.

How many jet juices did she have?

The last time I got sick drunk was at Oga's.

That's a very funny thing to say.

This sentence is going to sound really bad.

But she asked if she could take a sip of my yub nub and I told her no, I don't know.

No thanks lady, I'm spoken for.

Actually you can't let a stranger touch your yub nub.

Minotti's Fruit Emporium says here at Minotti's Fruit Emporium we would like to recognize our favorite employee.

Jan does so much work.

It would drive someone bananas which are currently 299 a bunch at Minotti's Fruit Emporium.

You got a fruit emporium.

No.

Says here you do.

Actual shouts out to Sean for holding everything down while I was gone.

Shouts out to Sean.

Alright, now everyone just calm down.

Should you save that for last?

No, it's too late.

It's too late.

We've got to get into it.

We've got to get into it now.

I have to say this.

The beer ice cream is simply beer in a non-liquid form.

It resembles ice cream, but it is no way actually ice cream.

Dan was right.

This was not the issue.

Yeah, this was the issue.

Once again.

Wait a second.

Once again.

I then did my own research while peeing during a break.

There's no dairy products in this product, apparently.

Right, but is it soft serve or not?

Yeah.

It looks like soft serve.

So, yeah, that's what we were talking about.

Exactly.

Soft serve beer.

It's not ice cream.

But when I asked if it's a liquid or not, you're like, no, it's beer.

And like, that's why I was confused.

I was confused, by the way.

My story hasn't changed.

You never said beer in soft serve form like that.

You would say it's beer or it looks like ice cream, but it's not ice cream.

It's beer.

And I'm like, okay, it looks like, right.

Okay.

That's all I was asking.

We never got what I said from the beginning.

Check the tape.

No, you just have a terrible way of talking sometimes.

And that's why I was, that's why you said they weren't literally making it by churning it.

And then you're like, there was a guy doing a thing.

There was a guy doing a thing.

Why can't you understand me?

There was a guy doing a thing.

If we rewound the conversation and we started again Dan, would you say it's closer to like a slushie than ice cream?

No, that's a good question.

Never mind.

It's a lot like ice cream.

It's a lot like ice cream?

Got it.

It looks like in a police lineup, you would say that's ice cream.

Yeah, but what about when you put it in your mouth?

The mouthfeel?

It's like raspberry beer.

Right.

Mouthfeel-wise?

It feels like beer?

It feels like ice cream in your mouth.

That's what I just asked.

I was just confused about the state of its organic matter.

I said it.

Right.

I was like, sauce or ice cream?

And you were like, no, it's beer.

No, it's not.

Ice cream implies dairy, you fool.

Soft serve can have dairy in it.

Yeah, and there's also non-dairy ice cream.

You're a fucking idiot.

There's non-dairy ice cream.

Not ice cream.

I was just confused about its state of matter.

Yeah, exactly.

And I was like, is it liquid or is it like ice cream?

I said soft serve.

And you just kept saying it's beer.

And then he brings up this non-dairy shit as if that's the thing that everyone was thinking about.

No one cares.

Soft serve from the beginning.

No one cares.

Dan, you looked at it inside.

What are you thinking, buddy?

Oh, what's the next super chat, Mike?

My next super chat here is from TheDupiousFood.

Which I think TheDupiousFood is this ice cream or not ice cream?

GB, my prize is sticky poo, and I think I need a new one.

Oh, don't worry.

I got a backup way for you, boy.

You're going to like him.

Is what a sicky poo?

The prez.

It's prez.

Oh.

I hope he fucking falls down a flight of stairs.

Yeah.

Well, then who's Dan going to vote for?

Oh.

Poip says congrats on Bombcast 906.

906 is the area code for the entire Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I'm from.

And this Saturday is 906.

Cheers.

Well, cheers to you, Poip.

Upper Peninsula Day.

Yeah.

All our Upper Peninsula Michigan friends.

Thank you.

All 12 of them.

Yeah.

Ryo Raku says, as Mike heard of the YouTube channel Defunctland not even a big Disney guy, but those videos are rad.

I think they'd be right up Mike's alley.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I know.

I knew Defunctland before he was popped, before all the Norbies found Defunctland.

Yeah, good.

Do five minutes on that.

Let's do that.

No, no.

His stuff is very good.

It is interesting because he has reached a more mainstream audience.

A lot of people.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

He did, like, that great video just about where did the Disney Channel jingle come from, right?

And it was great.

So, yeah.

I like Defunctland.

There's, like, a lot of Defunctland imitators, and a lot of them are actually pretty good, too.

So, yeah, I like that whole genre.

I actually don't watch as many of them as I used to.

I kind of did get to a point, not to sound obnoxious, but it's like, I already know this.

I already know this.

I already know that.

If you saw a Disney creator in real life, who's the one that would make you fan out?

Probably AJ from the Disney food blog, even though we only got a face reveal very recently because she just released a book.

She just released a book, so she finally showed her face to promote the book.

I thought you were talking about your brother and your brother had a side thing.

And you've never seen your brother's face.

This is a different AJ.

Maybe Molly from formerly of All Ears and now of Mammoth Club.

I don't know.

Molly was more camera forward, so I just recognize her face more.

Legitimate question, Mike.

How much beef is there with Disneyland and Disney World content creators?

There must be.

I know there's some.

Amongst the Disneyland and Disney World types, there's beef between the content creators.

There's some beef with, like i i've i've heard from certain people that some of those content creators people uh, are not very nice, perhaps the people who work at disney, so there's what's all over the place.

I know that, i know that.

I know jenny got some beef for her uh, the star wars hotel video from other creators who like, took that money.

Well, there's a lot of yeah, a lot of them.

Yes, jenny is very good and very popular, so a lot of people are gonna be mad at her for stupid reasons, for sure.

Yeah, I love that shit.

I want to say, I'm sorry Backlark couldn't join us, but the day that I had with y'all at Disneyland, one of the best trips I've ever had.

That was a really great time.

We had to, you had to twist that knife for no reason.

Dan had to leave early too.

He missed out a little.

Look, hey, I'll go to Disney whenever you guys want.

You tell me which park, you tell me what day I'll be there.

I actually think, dude doesn't know this, but I think I'm going back.

Just you?

Next year.

Oh, yeah.

Steph wants to go, too, next year.

Let's go.

My annual pass lasts till May, and I think, and you know what?

Maybe I'll renew the thing.

I like getting a lot of use out of it.

I've been going to Orlando a lot more recently, too, for reasons.

Maybe we take a family trip, all of us together.

Who knows?

It could be fun.

It seems like it's probably going to be hard to make happen.

We've got other things going on, but I did want to do Halloween Horror Nights at Universal.

I know.

That would have been fun.

But, busy.

Mikey, is that it for Super Chats?

That's it for Super Chats.

Thank you so much, everybody.

Really appreciate it.

Kisses on the mouth to all of you.

Thank you so much for all of that.

And thank you for your emails.

And thank you for listening to the Giant Bombcast.

Gang, what do we got going on for the rest of this week?

Gay Mess Morning's popping off Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Tomorrow, though.

Actually, later today, we're going to redo Myst because we missed it yesterday.

Mikey's also going to do Wegaman tomorrow evening, but Mike Minotti begins a brand new season of Blade Club.

Right.

Yes, the Saturn is all primed and ready to go.

Did your costume arrive?

It should be there today.

I haven't looked in the front door yet today, so I'll check in a moment.

Yeah, I bet it's here.

What do you think your costume's going to be?

I mean, I assume I'm dressing up like a knight, and I'm going to be called Sir Mitch or something.

It's either that or one of those inflatable, like what Jeff had, but I'm a dragon.

Might be that.

I think, honestly, the way you guys are reacting, there's a very good chance I'm a dragon.

Hmm.

I have a fucking jacket.

I don't think you're dressing me up like the princess.

Moving on to Thursday voicemail dump truck popping off.

Mike Minotti is going to do the Hollow Knight Silk Song Along.

In the calendar here it's Silk Song Along.

I fixed it, don't worry, And if you are a premium member, we're going to be having a Discord town hall.

So come through.

We'll answer some cues.

Whatever you got about the website, about us, whatever miscellaneous things you got going on, we got going on.

Please tune in for that.

Should it be Silk Singalong?

So it doesn't suck to say song along is fun to say song along, sing along wait no, but you can play soak song for four hours straight.

You don't like it for some reason?

Uh, and to end the week we were going to have on professional fridays, as always, current plans are to play friends versus friends.

Uh, but hey uh, card subject to change gang.

Anything else popping off that we want to talk about you?

Yeah, just you mentioned it.

But yeah, we're doing Monday mornings Miss with Mitch on a Tuesday here playing more Riven.

We're doing that at 4 p.m.

Eastern.

So excited for that.

We were in the midst of a very deep and involved puzzle at the moment, which we have solved last time.

So excited to pick that back up.

And I'll try to fix Sky's Arcadia so we can get it working again.

And I'll do a few more episodes of that.

Lovely.

I shot some footy while I was out in Washington.

I'll try and piece that together.

I did intend to do a hot dog tour, but then my tummy hurt after the first one.

We'll also have a Metal Gear Collector's Edition unboxing going up tomorrow, so keep an eye on YouTube Shorts and TikTok and all that.

Yeah, we also may have a best of Jeff Passer in the works right now.

Yes.

Coming out Trey soon.

Trey soon.

Folks, that does it for the Giant Bombcast.

He's been Jeff.

He's been Mike.

He's been Dan.

I've been Jan.

And you at home are doing the damn thing.

Take two shots of Hennessy right now.

No, no, no.

That's right.

I'm advocating for it.

Let's do it.

Pour it up, baby.

We don't advocate excessive alcohol consumption.

Kadanza.

Folks, we'll see you next week for another episode of the Giant Bombcast.

Until then, goodbye.

Drink responsibly.

Yes, fine.

Okay, whatever.

Chances are you've been to the doctor recently and you probably handed over your insurance, your ID and even your social security number.

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[Giant Bombcast Episode 906: State Fair Feasts, Magic: The Gathering, and Card Game Debates]-[906: Quesa-Dingo]

📋 Summary

Giant Bombcast 906: A Mix of State Fair Culinary Chaos and Card Game Obsessions

Minnesota State Fair Adventures

The "Magic" of Licensing and Card Games

Nostalgia and Technical Frustrations

News and Closing Thoughts

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Giant Bombcast Episode 906: State Fair Feasts, Magic: The Gathering, and Card Game Debates]-[906: Quesa-Dingo]

📋 Summary

Giant Bombcast 906: A Mix of State Fair Culinary Chaos and Card Game Obsessions

Minnesota State Fair Adventures

The "Magic" of Licensing and Card Games

Nostalgia and Technical Frustrations

News and Closing Thoughts

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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