Forza Horizon 6, Petscop, Phonopolis | Noclip Crewcast

Musik Musik Musik Musik Musik, Musik Musik.

Hello and welcome to the Noclip Podcast.

Episode 281 of the Noclip Podcast.

We're coming up on Simpsons-level numbers of this podcast.

Hopefully we're not turning into zombie Simpsons where we all become... pastiches of our old selves.

I'm afraid to watch old episodes and find out if that's the case.

I'm lucky enough to be joined by two lovely people.

We're down two people, but I like to look at it as glass half full.

We're up two other different people.

Frank Howley, how you doing today?

I'm alright.

Yeah, it's always like a miracle if I'm going to wake up in time for the podcast when I'm here and I'm charmed by yeah Jeremy, and No Caps.

I'm like, yeah, I'm alright.

Good.

I'm glad to hear it.

No Caps, how are you doing?

I'm doing great.

There's nowhere I'd rather be.

Hell yeah, that's what I like to hear.

It's sort of like a weekly part of the cadence of my life.

Now to just hop on here and wax poetic about video games as long as we possibly can.

And I would like to thank some lovely people who enabled us to do this every single week our Battle Pass holders.

I think this is the second time I've ever gotten to read this.

It's a fucking honor.

We got Charles Atkinson, Brian Brew, Lil Toast, Yutt Dwayne the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Passateri, It's-a-me Ferrario.

Senator Armstrong, Reed Regg Harry Flanagan, Joosh Arno, Matt Pearson, Mark Rojas.

Quote Tucker Morgan.

Let me do Tucker Morgan again.

I'm sorry.

Tucker Morgan.

Tucker Morgan, that was like three times.

David McGarry Goddison, Sven Huster, Pez Bone, Mold John Akers, Ewan Nate, Tim Robinson, Forrest Pruitt, Dark Insanities, Jonathan Kremen, Eric Hamilton Schneider, Christoph Batui, Grizzly Mug.

Cameron Ladd, and Zachary Snader, and Alex Gouchet, and oh my god, there's a second page.

I said and like it was ending.

George Zerkotis, Jacob Godserb and Theogen James Med and finally Rison, who I loved in Breaking Bad when he killed that child.

Spoilers.

Wait, maybe we should delete that.

Jesse, maybe delete that.

That's a spoiler for Breaking Bad, um.

We're not here to talk about breaking bad though, and spoil it uh, unless unless i missed a memo about what this podcast was about um, but instead we are here to talk about a few video games and uh, one sort of like video game adjacent thing that i want to talk about.

That's not really a video game, but uh, But I need to talk about it to somebody, and so you guys are the only people I have who will listen.

But we're also going to talk about Forza Horizon 6 and Phenopolis from Amanita Designs?

Amanita Games?

Is that what they're called?

No caps?

All right, cool.

I feel like...

You guys both played Forza Horizon 6, and I feel like it's the hotness right now.

I feel like we should start with that.

Frank, you wanna take the lead on Forza Horizon 6?

Yeah, so Forza Horizon 6 is the newest game by Playground Games.

The people did the Forza series.

It was announced that the new one was going to take place in Japan.

I feel like at the very beginning of the year, or maybe it was a game award thing.

I don't know.

Ever since I got it.

Now, it was the number one game I was looking forward to, and then, closer to the launch, they announced like oh, there's the premium edition where if you pay like 60 bucks more, you get it early.

So I did that and I've been playing since, I think Friday, whenever it was available and yeah, it's great.

It's kind of neat to see where like, it was kind of met with like

Like there's definitely, like there's stuff I hate about the Forza Horizon games, but like unanimous praise, like everyone's liking it.

It seems there's a lot of people playing Forza Horizon for the very first time.

It launched on Steam and Xbox.

It'll eventually come out on PS5.

But yeah, it's like it's kind of exactly what I wanted and I can't really say I'm disappointed by it.

It's Forza Japan, and it's Japan, like, squashed down.

You're in, they call it Tokyo City.

There is, like, Tokyo.

There is Akihabara.

There is Shibuya.

And then there's, like, mountain trails and more, and cherry blossom trees and everything.

And, um...

I've been playing on a race wheel and I still have to figure out my settings, so I keep oversteering.

But I'm having so much fun that I'm not too worried about it.

You make progression, it's very easy going.

But No Caps has also been playing Forza Horizon 6.

Is this your first time in the Horizon world, or Forza in general?

But yeah, how are you enjoying it?

Yeah, it is my first time um playing a forza game.

I really did.

I didn't know what to expect.

I wasn't planning on playing it, but then i saw like the reviews come in and everyone was liking it.

So i was like okay, i'll give it a shot.

But um, i love that.

It's the open world.

Part of it is my favorite thing is just to drive around and like smash the like signs and like collect the um, The mascots and everything.

But yeah, there's just a lot going on, like so many cars and so many missions popping up and everything.

It's kind of overwhelming, but I like the free roam the best.

And some of the races, I don't really like the off-road stuff, but I'm having a good time.

Are there like different cars for the off-road stuff?

Because I always picture Forza as like street racing yeah, so it's like you have so many variety of cars like they.

They do even lean into like there is like a rally series and they will be like oh, the super team dominated in the 90s, you know, like they'll kind of talk about that stuff.

Um, but yeah, i have issues with like the off-road and rally and like the, the dirt races too, because yeah, i want to, i want to race across tokyo, i want to race on the freeways, but the problem is like they make this open world game and so they're like off-road races are, it seems, so random the map designs and they'll have like I don't know how real, I don't know they'll have barricades, but it's like you're just jumping in monster trucks and doing jumps and the game does in the story missions they'll do like these lame slow motion things.

They get overused and like it's fine, but anytime like

The way the game works is like every horizon is like oh, there's a big car festival in whatever country, and you have, like you know, like the easy tier of missions.

You do all those, and then you do a big horizon mission, and then it unlocks the next tier.

And the dirt races, the rally races, the off-road things are always the ones I like do last.

Because, again, like, wherever, however my settings are on my wheel, it's, like, not good for that.

I keep oversteering and messing up, but... But, again, it's, like, not bad.

It is, like, if people want that arcadey experience, it is very arcadey.

You can be in, like, big buggies or whatever.

You can also kind of pick...

Generally, it kind of lets you pick a wide variety of cars.

You can buy new cars per mission.

Some missions you'll be like oh, you need to race like a Japanese series, that stats are like rank B or whatever and you can buy or adjust your car to it.

But

Yeah, I don't like it when it's too over the top and silly.

I do like all the.

Any races that are on roads are so much fun, but as soon as you're jumping off mountains and there's jets and stuff running by, it's like this is too corny.

It's like a Tony Hawk mission.

Yeah yeah yeah, that is bizarre.

It feels like um, it feels like you would think the fact that your wheel feels over or under tuned for a different set of races feels like.

It's sort of like a weird outlier, like a side mission thing.

Um yeah, that is kind of a bizarre choice, is it like?

Because if it takes place in tokyo, where are the?

Where are the rally races?

Is it like rural japan?

Yeah, so it's like it's like outside the city and there'll be a few freeways that get you.

Like there's mountain areas, there's even.

The one thing that's kind of cool is like the north part of the map is all snow stuff and you can even like change the snow tires.

I'm like oh, that's kind of cool.

But yeah, it's like mountains, like it's almost like indistinguishable from like.

I think the previous one was mexico and the one before that was like i don't know, But all the off-road stuff just all kind of feels the same to me.

But yeah, it's like out in the distant.

But I feel like I've spent the least amount of time doing those missions where I'm like, oh my god, let me just get back to the city.

Or the other stuff.

Are you guys big car people?

I always figured these games were for people who are obsessed with tricking out their dream car in real life.

Or are you just both really into racing?

I'm not a car person.

I'm not against cars or whatever.

I just don't know anything about them.

My girlfriend does drive like a 2006 Impreza, like not a WRX or whatever.

But seeing that like equivalent in the game was like kind of cool to be like.

Oh, I've like been in that car.

So I get that like how it would work, really appeal to those people who are like super car heads and like into all that stuff.

But even as someone who isn't, it's fun to just play around with all the different toys there are.

Yeah, my perspective with it is like just in like the last, like I don't know like six months of like researching all the car games, like I think it's a Toyota Celica like, which is like a rally or racing car that you can get the like Castrol GTX vinyl wrapping, which is the exact same car that's in like Sega Rally.

So for me I'll see it like I even like you unlock like a, is it like a?

I don't know if it's a nissan or a honda again, i'm pretty bad with it but like the mrx 7 and my instant thought was like oh, that's the car in common rider black 1986.

So it's like my references to cars are other movies, like there's like all the fast and furious cars like there's the dodge challenger or the, the one that uh, paul walker drives or whatever like.

So it's like my my, my context for vehicles just comes from other media, but but like most of the cars are in here i there's still no racing game where i can drive my kia soul, but i'll find like other cars are like and then All the games do this, and I'm waiting for more like skins to get people to make their skins.

But like you'll buy a car and then you can browse like the uh, I don't know what they call it in the endgame vinyl or livery designs and you can see people making like anime skins or like other other you know other creative skins.

So, like I usually will just prioritize what car looks the coolest, or the or like has the most outrageous anime design or whatever.

But even then, I don't like driving anything too modern.

I'll always usually try to pick Japanese cars.

I kind of like the designs of how 80s and 90s cars look.

I don't care about cars older than that.

I don't care about contemporary stuff.

But I feel like, yeah, if it was in a PS1 game, I'm like, oh, that's a cool-ass looking car.

But that's my context for it.

That you're describing my exact taste in cars in real life.

It's 80s and 90s, nothing too modern and Japanese.

The only cars I would buy.

Also, I feel like your relationship to cars being through video games is like my relationship to to firearms, where I know a disturbing amount about guns but I have shot them.

I've shot a gun like twice in my life and I have no real interest in guns but I just have like through video games I'm like oh, guns are cool.

But then if you, if like a gun guy, came up to me in real life and was like you want to see all my guns, I'd be like not really.

That sounds fucking kind of like weird and terrifying.

Yeah, I don't know.

It is an interesting thing how you can find an inlet into these subcultures through just their presence in media.

They're interesting in relation to games or movies.

Well, that's cool.

I mean, it sounds like fun.

I don't really play racing games that much, but this game looked cool and I saw a ton of people playing it, so I might actually give it a shot.

Any final thoughts on Forza Horizon 6?

I'll keep playing it, I really like it, I'm sure.

I think like the one thing I know they did with previous Forza games is like they would have seasons.

I mean, I guess all games do like, even Call of Duty, but like, literally like, the season will change and then they'll have new events.

So I'm curious what, like, the long-term support of this game is.

Because I bought the premium thing, I think I get, like, two expansions and all this extra stuff.

So it's like, okay, so it'll be an interesting game to keep chipping at.

I'm still waiting for someone on Reddit or whatever to post like here is the best wheel setup for the Logitech.

What I did is I found someone who had like a wheel setup for like the last, for forza horizon, and that's working pretty well.

But again, these games the forza horizon more so than like the motorsport ones are meant to be arcadey, so it's like i don't think they're not.

Like they probably pay way better than a controller.

I'm probably handicapping myself by playing with the wheel, But when I'm playing with the wheel I'm sitting there for hours and it's genuinely so fun.

Even if I'm oversteering, and thankfully you can rewind on this.

So it's like, oh no, it's the kind of thing well again, Jeremy always talks about the friction of like even me struggling.

It's like, oh no, this is so much more, I'm sure.

It's like with mountain climbing games or anything.

It's like it's so much fun trying to figure this out that it's like oh, this is cool.

Whereas if I...

If it was maybe too easy, my brain deactivates.

But by playing with the wheel and trying to figure out the settings like I'm learning about steering, linearity and all this other crap it's like oh, this is really good.

And then yeah, no caps mentioned.

Like a very delightful thing is like um, there's like so many an absurd amount of collectibles on the map.

So like one of the things are like these little mascots, which is like a very clever, fun thing is like in japan, everything has a mascot and and every forza game they come up with some collectible equation.

You know equal.

But here there's like these little, just like mascot heads that you can just knock over.

So it's a thing you'll be driving along and you immediately see a mascot in the distance.

And for me I'll just drive over a mountain or drive through villages just trying to get this little collectible.

And it's so satisfying.

And then the game has leaderboards for everything.

So you'll always see your friends like, oh, this person has 10 more mascots than you.

So it's like, it keeps you engaged without anything feeling like, I almost said annoying.

The story stuff is always super annoying to me.

And you can turn off radio, DJ voice.

I hate all that stuff.

But overall, it's very delightful and fun.

So yeah, I'm just going to keep playing, chipping at it.

But yeah, it's really good.

I had no idea that there was going to be a story.

But when I opened it up and they started talking, I was like, this is the worst thing ever.

Corporate dialogue.

I don't even know what the story is.

You just go to a festival in Japan and then...

Everyone's just like a college student basically vibes and they're somehow collecting all these cars and getting these opportunities to I don't know.

It's really cheesy.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's college kids with infinite income buying cars.

No, the premise of it is like so every Forza game is this is like oh my god, the Horizon Festival's moved to Mexico.

Hola, amigos, in Mexico.

We like, it's almost, where it's like, it's not, it's, it feels offensive by how like, I don't know, the tone of it is so weird.

So in Forza Horizon 6, it's like, konnichiwa, we're here in Mexico.

Japan!

Look at the cherry blossoms!

Like and it's like, it's just like just let me race so you don't have to sell.

I don't need like, I don't want this in my game.

I don't want this, I don't, and you can't skip the cutscenes.

So I'm just sitting there like mashing the square, but like, and I will say, I feel like they've toned it down.

I feel, because 5, 4, they were so unbearable.

They've toned it down, but like the story missions is like, my cousin's starting a drift club.

You should drive around with him and learn to drift, and then maybe he'll show you more racers.

And then you're like in this, you're, It's not a race because it's just like a scripted event.

You're driving with someone.

They're like, hey bro, that's Daikoku Plaza.

That's where all the real drifters meet.

Maybe if you're good enough, I'll introduce you to people.

Ha ha.

It's just like that.

I don't want this.

I don't want this at all.

But you have to do some of the story events to progress and to unlock more events.

They're pretty quick.

They're not that bad, but it's just like, like usually what happens is it's why I stopped five.

I like this game enough where I just have to suffer through it, but like you have to do the missions to get the other things unlocked, but it's just like oh, this is like the lamest thing.

I just want to do races where no one's talking to me.

Like that's my ideal racing game.

Yeah, that's rough.

It's like I'm putting myself in the position of the people who made this game and trying to imagine if you made this game.

That was so much just about the cars and the racing and the mechanics of this.

And you're like, what the fuck are we going to like?

What do we talk about? in the story.

Probably about cars in Japan.

You just have to reverse engineer a bunch of placeholder people to talk about these things.

That's bizarre.

I didn't know Forza Horizon had a story.

Well, cool.

It sounds like fun in spite of that.

Also, the idea of you mashing X while you're holding a wheel to try to get through the cutscene.

It's like I picture you just like slamming the wheel side to side.

Awesome.

Well, thank you guys.

This might be the first racing game I play in like 10 years, other than just replaying Diddy Kong Racing on an emulator over and over.

Can you play Diddy Kong Racing with the wheel?

Does the wheel work with everything?

Yeah, so like if the best way of doing that would be opening it up and like i guess, like whatever retro arc or whatever.

I have like a specific n64 emulator for like retro achievements i think it's called project a64 or something so i would do that configure like joypad or whatever, have it, detect the wheel, and then i would just have to sit there and be like What is steering on Diddy Kong with the analog stick or D-pad.

Do you remember?

I usually use the joystick.

I don't know if you can use the D-pad.

So I think if it's joystick, you would bind like joystick.

So I think it's an axis.

So then you would tilt the wheel.

You'd have the wheel.

Left and right be the thing.

The one thing you'd have to figure out is the vertical axis.

Because if you're doing planes and moving up and down, then maybe you could set that to one of the thrusts.

There's a way of doing it.

You could basically bind everything.

So there is a way of potentially doing it, but...

Yeah, because that was my experiment with the Dreamcast.

I got a Dreamcast emulator under the wheel, and I was like, I think I can do this.

So, it's a hurdle, but you can figure it out.

You can buy it to do anything.

So, yeah.

And again, you might not do as well, but the immersion, the trade-off is worth it.

I know, it just sounds like fun to me.

I don't know.

Having bespoke controllers for specific types of games, there's something interesting about it.

Every time I play a first-person shooter, I imagine for a moment buying a House of the Dead cabinet and putting it into my house someday.

Something about having a bunch of plastic guns to shoot in my house sounds like fun.

Alright, cool.

I'm debating whether or not we talk about Phenopolis or the fucking wormhole I went down.

Can we talk about Petscop for a minute?

Yeah, I'm genuinely curious about it.

I know a little bit about it, but I don't really know.

Frank, do you know about Petscop?

I googled it for a minute yesterday to see, and I was like, oh, this sounds neat.

So I stopped and was like, okay.

So I know maybe the elevator pitch, but that's it.

Cool.

All right.

So I was curious, because this is something that I had heard about and kind of like.

So I'll explain what it is and then I'll explain my relationship to it.

It is a sort of like fake Let's Play series that a guy put together.

Tony Domenico, I think, is his name.

I'll confirm that.

And it's basically like he made a fake.

Yeah, Tony Domenico made a fake PS1 game called Petscop and then did less plays of it.

I think there's 24 of them of varying length.

I think the total runtime of the entire series is like 200 something minutes.

So it's like a movie and a half, two movies.

But it's like a it's like a sort of.

I guess it's like creepypasta horror, which is why I kind of wrote it off when I heard about it.

It's like a let's play series that devolves into a sort of weird lynching and horror narrative.

And I had heard about it but it kind of didn't.

I didn't go sort of like seek it out, because to me it was the kind of thing that people watched like theory videos about and didn't actually watch the original source material, which is actually pretty accurate.

The theory videos about Petscop have like 18 million views and then most of the Petscop videos have, like you know, half a million to a million.

So to me this was like the way people relate to a lot of internet horror, to like to like backrooms and i don't know like the way that you know, five nights at freddy's has more fan art than there could ever be five nights at freddy's games.

I kind of thought it was this thing that had like more of a robust fan community than it was like an original source material um, but i was Completely fucking wrong.

I don't know why I decided to just start watching this.

The name, I think I saw someone post about Petscop recently, and I was just curious about it.

And so I just sat down and watched the whole series.

And it was fantastic.

I thought it was so, so good.

So I won't spoil anything from it because I think people should legitimately go watch it.

But it's basically this dude starts playing this game called Petscop.

That's like a sort of like lost PS1 media game.

And it slowly goes from.

It starts as like a lovadelic sort of like Onion Games cutesy weird, like pet collector game.

And then it slowly gets into these like areas beneath the game that hold all these like horrifying, dark, terrible references to like horrifying, insane shit.

Yeah, and it it does so many things with like.

The thing i think is so interesting about it is is that when you make like a so the guy, tony dominica, who is the let's player, also is the guy who made the game and made all the art for it, made all the music, um And when you're making a game that is only played by yourself and recorded in these sort of bespoke sessions, it allows you to do incredibly specific things that would never work to a real player, because a real player would have to understand how this works and stumble into these like incredibly bespoke sequences of secrets that they would have to sort of like cascade through in order to figure it out, and people would just get stuck and frustrated.

And so there's this interesting thing that happens where the game Petscop that he's playing.

It feels like this, bizarrely like it feels like a game that if you played it and figured these things out, it would be like life changing.

Like it would be like I can't fucking believe a game pulled off these weird secrets.

I can't believe a game has this level of sort of detail and esoterica within it.

I will give one example, because I feel like I just don't want to just sort of be like, oh it's awesome.

Trust me.

So in old games when you run them on the title screen, you know how they go into like demo mode where they start playing themselves.

There's a really interesting sort of like subplot in Petscop, where sometimes it will be in demo mode and it'll be the game playing itself, but it will do things that you haven't seen in any other episode of Petscop.

And so it's sort of this like I don't know.

It gives this feeling of like, Like you're watching something you're not supposed to, which I think is a really unique feeling in horror.

That it's sort of like forbidden or like like haunted games is kind of what this makes me think of.

Like the old post about like Pokemon Black or whatever.

That like a kid died playing Pokemon and his ghost was in Pokemon or something.

It's basically that, but done on like a David Lynch level of quality.

And so demo mode will kick on and it will just be the game playing itself and just in areas that are not in the game, doing things that you haven't seen in the game, engaging with mechanics that you haven't seen in the game.

And, I don't know, it's just like...

There's something really interesting about it.

I can see why people do like endless sort of theory videos about this and are still talking about it.

Because it's just like the narrative is interesting.

It's just murky enough like Mulholland Drive, where you kind of watch the whole thing and you kind of have to like collect yourself and take stock of what actually happened.

But yeah, I don't know.

There's something about it that I just found like It's I don't.

It's like a medium that I didn't like.

Theoretically, I knew like a fake let's play could exist, but I think I didn't really recognize why or how it could work until I watched this.

And there was.

You know, what it reminded me of is I just watched.

I just watched the Blair Witch Project for the first time in my fucking life.

I've never seen the Blair Witch for some reason.

And I thought it was fantastic.

I always thought The Blair Witch was kind of like shitty pop horror and instead it's like a John Cassavetes horror movie.

It's so real and human and because these people are so visibly stressed out on camera, I'm sweating on my couch watching this and horrified, and my heart rate is elevated.

I feel like...

Petscop does that where it's like... I don't know.

Maybe Petscop being the John Cassavetes of Let's Plays is like a fucking insane claim.

But there was something about it that felt very real and human to me, as this person is getting stressed out and seeing things in this game that reflect their real life and just having this experience.

I think it was like a really...

A really interesting fictionalization of what someone's relationship to games could be.

I thought it was great.

I thought it was really interesting.

The art and the sound and everything about the game itself, the fake game itself.

Petscop is so authentic and i think that's part of what makes it work is uh, i imagine when i didn't do too much research because i didn't want to spoil myself on everything, but i imagine when this was airing uh, people probably thought it was like real i.

I assume that's sort of my take on it.

I don't want to watch like a bunch of theory videos on it now because i don't want to just like fuck up the experience i had.

But uh, But yeah, it's really cool.

Anyway, you guys should check it out.

I think it's awesome.

You've sold me on it, for sure.

Yeah, it's like... I don't know.

It's so hard to explain why it's interesting, too.

Because there are...

I mean, this is true to watching Let's Plays in general.

There are down moments, but I think that's what's kind of interesting about it.

I think one of the videos starts in the middle of a sentence, and so there's this feeling of being a voyeur to it, which I think is really fascinating.

Not only does it sometimes feel like you're seeing things you shouldn't, but it also feels like you're just watching like yeah again, like Blair Witch, where the whole the sensation around Blair Witch when it came out was people were like, oh yeah, these are like tapes that they found in the woods and you know, kind of like everyone knew it was bullshit.

But there was this super positioning between you like want to believe it's not, it's real.

But, like you know, it's not real.

But I imagine if I saw Blair Witch in the theaters I would have been like holy fuck, this isn't real, is it?

And then you kind of like get cut, you forget it's not real, even though your cognitive like processes were obviously landing on it's fucking fake.

Um, think i had the same experience with this where i was like even watching it so late after the fact, because this is from like a decade ago or like i think it was like seven years ago was the last one.

Um, obviously it's like you know, the the dude has come out and said yeah, i made this.

It's like a fake thing, and and obviously it's just like by the time you get to the end, you're like there's no way this could be real.

Um, but uh Yeah, I don't know.

It's just something really, really compelling about it.

I've not seen anything like it.

And I checked out some of Tony Domenico's other work and he's done other things that are just like.

There's one that he did more recently about a screensaver of people on an island.

And this one is just like linear fiction you click through, but it's...

It's a story told through screenshots of this game, of this screensaver, of these people on an island.

That's like a simulated community on an island.

And the story is told through forums.

So it's a bunch of people on forums being like oh dude, if you leave it running for like 10 hours then, like this character, you'll see their like shirt change color.

And that means that this is happening.

And it's like, again, it's like sort of a haunted media thing.

I literally just played that.

Oh no shit, did you really?

I played that at like 1 o'clock.

No way, that's awesome.

I just played that game.

That's fucking wild.

Yeah, what did you think?

Because we're the same guy.

Yeah.

What was the name of it again?

Great, 3D Workers Island.

3D Workers Island.

I didn't know, like, I had no idea what it was, but someone...

I had it saved because someone recommended it.

But yeah, literally it's just screenshots, which I didn't realize at first.

So I was trying to like, Because you can move your mouse around, so I was trying to like click on things and it just kept clicking through.

But yeah, reading through like it starts off with you downloading this game and it's like explaining what it is on the website and then the game itself is just like screenshots of this island and like the care, like roblox, lego island, characters like moving around and then looking through all the forms and you start to see people's like theories and people like oh, that's not real, like I've never seen that happen.

But then other people are like oh, but like you don't know, like there's this whole thing, like this whole rabbit hole you could have.

But I thought it was really cool.

Yeah, that's a bizarre coincidence that you just checked it out.

Yeah, it's like I don't know.

There's something about all of his work that feels very authentic to the experience of growing up on the internet, I think, and that's what makes it feel real and lived into me.

It has this cultural texture to it that I think captures the characteristic of, Sort of like, the early Internet.

I've talked about this on the podcast, but not a really long time.

There was a website that I went on as a kid in the late 90s when I was playing Ocarina of Time, and it was someone's fucking GeoCities page with all the animated GIFs sparkling on it about how to get the Triforce in Ocarina of Time, which is not a real thing.

But it was this like theory site about all these secret, the secret process of things you could do.

It's like go talk to this NPC and then do this, but make sure your inventory has like this and make sure you have like 65 rupees but no more.

Like all these very specific things.

And the X-Files music was playing the whole time you were on the website and And so it was like, even though it was fake, as a kid obviously A, I didn't know it was fake and B I was a child, so I was just terrified.

There was this real feeling of this game might hold some sort of weird, creepy secret to it.

And it's a feeling that I look back on fondly as a relic of childhood, a thing that is very difficult, if not impossible, to recreate as an adult to will yourself into this state of believing the mystery, enough to be terrified by it.

And I think Tony Domenico's work captures that really effectively in a way that I haven't really seen other media do.

So, yeah, it's really, really cool.

He's done a bunch of other stuff that I've not checked out.

I've only played, or read, interacted with Three Workers Island and Petscop.

Um, But yeah, if you like 3D Workers Island, please go watch Petscop.

It's fucking awesome.

I will.

Cool.

Don't watch any fucking theory videos.

I mean, maybe like after.

They're probably good.

I don't know.

I feel like I need to watch some theory videos to parse everything.

But anyway.

Cool, well... Oh, I wanted to mention one other thing.

Let me make sure this is the case.

I think, Was it?

Liz Ryerson did a.

I think they had a screening of Petscop uh, in new york petscott uh yeah, the spectacle theater, this was 2024.

I think this is what put it back on my radar a couple years ago, and then it's just been stuck in my head that uh, they did a screening of every episode of petscott in one day at a theater, which i think is fucking awesome.

That is awesome of just like a bunch of people sitting in a theater watching like 280 minutes of fake let's plays is like it's fucking, it's like the coolest thing i've ever heard in my life.

Uh, so thank you.

I i was trying to remember where i heard this.

I feel like liz ryerson is the one who put pets got back on my radar, so i just wanted to to pay, to pay credit, to pay homage, um Cool.

All right.

Well, that's all I have to say about Petscop.

I would actually, if you do watch it, I would love to do like a follow-up where we just like spoiler, talk about it.

I don't know.

But...

I also to people who are listening to this.

I'm curious, like to me I can't tell if Petscop is something that everyone has heard of but no one's watched, or like everyone has watched or no one has heard of.

I really don't know how much reach this thing has, so I will be curious if people want to leave comments and let us know what your relationship to Petscop is.

I am genuinely curious.

That's not engagement beta, that's research.

Alright, cool.

Well, that's enough Petscop, because I'm on the verge of spoiling things that I don't want to spoil.

So, Nocaps, do you want to tell us about Phenopolis?

Yes, I do.

So this is the latest game from Amanita Design.

It came out today, Wednesday, so it will have been out a couple days by the time this episode airs.

But it's basically 10 years in the making point and click adventure game as they make.

But this one.

Everything in it was made like all the props and characters and backgrounds were made with like cardboard and paper and paint and pencil and then scanned in and animated in 12 frames per second.

So that's probably a big part of the 10-year development time.

But it's absolutely gorgeous.

Each scene is just so like the lighting is amazing and and all the textures and um, they released a documentary, like a making of documentary alongside the game.

That went into stuff like sound and visuals and everything, and how like They use like sandpaper to make like all these textures that you just would have been so much more difficult to do digitally.

So in some ways, like doing it physically was easier to like achieve the kind of effects that they wanted.

Yes, it is a puzzle game.

You play as this little guy named Felix, who is a garbage collector in this dystopian city ruled by this evil authoritarian leader.

Where basically controls the whole city by spewing out this propaganda on loudspeakers everywhere.

So every time the thing turns on, everyone has to snap back into work mode.

It distracts them, I guess, from thinking about like their existence in this place and like how on, how like unequal it is, like all the workers like live at the bottom of the city and then the next layer is the bureaucrats and then the avant-garde, like upperclass at the top, and so Felix finds a pair of headphones that he can use to tune out the loudspeakers and basically he just gets into a lot of trouble and he's like running from the cops and like sneaking in places to try to stop the leader from playing the absolute tone, which is supposed to like free the people or or something, but it sounds very ominous.

Whatever the the absolute tone is like, it's just gonna like completely like switch your brain off and put you into full mind control mode or something like that.

Um, so it's really interesting like this Really cutesy, like handmade art style and then like all these themes of like this corrupt government and inequality and like all the bad stuff that goes on with that.

But then the main thing you're doing are, of course, puzzles, which are kind of like.

They're very tactile, which makes sense because of everything being made physically out of cardboard.

But there's all these buttons you push and things that you slide and levers that you flip and everything.

And a lot of the puzzles are kind of they're less like logic puzzles and more just like experimenting with like what does this button do?

And what does this do?

And then what happens if I do this and this?

Um, so it's just like really, like really playful.

The puzzles, I would say like all, everything is animated.

So like um, It has so much charisma and personality to it and everything's kind of just over the top and cinematic and it's really like an animated film that you can interact with.

But I think some of the puzzles are...

Really, really fun.

And I would recommend this game to anyone who's played any of their other games or if you just like art and puzzles.

First of all, the art style is fucking gorgeous.

It kind of reminds me of Jack and Talia Co, who made Machina and are working on that horror game about being in a new age therapy group.

There's something about game assets made from physical things that I think it creates such a unique feeling.

I don't know.

There's something about it that's like i don't know how to explain it.

It's not that digital assets are sterile, because i obviously have a lot of love for uh for, like you know, purely like 3d modeled stuff um, but it feels like, it feels like alive.

It has like a weird like essence to it that um, That gives it life.

And it is interesting how it cuts in two directions where I feel like things like this and Machina are cuter because of their sort of like tactility and roughness.

And then Jack and Talia who are making that therapy game.

There's something about that tactility that's also like really unsettling and terrifying.

And I feel like maybe that's why the old... God, is it Laika who did the stop motion stuff?

I don't know if Laika were the ones who did Coraline and stuff like that.

I always forget.

I think so.

But it's like that weird superposition of unsettling and cute that I think is really interesting.

And these little toy worlds are like.

I feel like Phanopolis looks like a game where something really fucking scary could happen, even though it's really cute.

Is it very open-ended or are you doing a lot of exploring?

Or is it more working through these puzzles in a linear fashion?

No, it's pretty much all linear.

There are a couple times where it opens up into this little city street and then you might not know exactly where you're supposed to go, but you just click on a couple buildings until you kind of figure out where it actually lets you go.

But then

The puzzles all go with the story beats, so it's very linear in that way.

Cool.

I don't know if I've ever played any of Amanita's games, despite their name being a reference to a specific beautiful mushroom and me being a fucking mycology fiend.

Actually, wait, no, I think I have played Machinarium like a million years ago.

What other games of theirs have you played?

I actually played through all of them earlier this year because I made a video about it.

Oh, cool.

So this was like perfect timing for me to kind of like finish out the whole collection.

But this is, it's really hard to say like When is the best?

Personally, I think, because I never played any of these as a kid, which a lot of people have that nostalgia for.

But since I didn't, I feel like this one is.

Potentially the best.

Just because of it feel like the production quality is just like off the charts, like you can tell that they were working on this for 10 years and they didn't cut any corners.

And some of the other games I had difficulties with, just like parsing, like what the puzzles were and like

Just figuring out what was part of the puzzle and like I would miss something that you could click on, like it wasn't clear or like it does the adventure game thing of you have all these things in your inventory and then you have to figure out like what goes together and then where that goes in the world.

But this one is like a lot more streamlined.

That it's causes less confusion in the puzzles.

Yeah, that's cool to hear.

I feel like there.

Whenever i see a game this beautiful, there's always a part of my brain that's like are these people just like incredibly talented visual artists or do they actually have uh, sort of like a game design chops as well?

Um, because i have.

I have played some games that are were like the most beautiful thing i've ever seen, and then i'm like oh, this is just like a, you know, like a match three puzzle.

Um, But no, this looks awesome.

All right, I'm adding this.

I'm buying games on Steam while we're recording the podcast.

I'm adding this to my cart.

Cool.

Any closing thoughts on Phenopolis?

It looks awesome.

No, I think I covered it all.

It's...

It's just like a really high quality experience is how I would describe it.

Like the audio, the visuals, the puzzles, the story, like everything just works very well together.

And I would highly recommend it if it looks interesting to anyone.

All right, well, it's interesting to me.

I've purchased it live here on the air.

Breaking news.

Cool, well, that's all the games that we have for this week.

It was sort of a light week for games.

I played a couple other things, but not enough of them to talk...

That much about them.

I played just to plant them in people's heads if they want to check them out too.

I checked out Demon Dust, which is really interesting.

I just didn't play enough of it too.

Oh my god, Demon Dust is also the name of a dry energy powder with the devil on the bottle.

It's not the demon dust that I haven't been snorting fucking energy supplements.

Demon dust is a... It came out in February.

It's a survival horror dungeon crawler is what they describe it as.

It's sort of like a...

I don't know, it's like a whimsical horror maze that you control.

It doesn't have mouse look, and so you're controlling it with WASD and Q and E to strafe and pivot and turn.

And then you're using the mouse to click on and interact with things.

And it kind of feels like a.

I guess, in keeping with Tony Domenico talking about his work, it feels like a haunted screensaver is how I would describe it.

It's very interesting.

I've not played enough of it to speak on it in any sort of detail, but that and then...

Panthalassa was the other one just if people want to check this out I think is the name of it I keep forgetting yeah Panthalassa um which is like a point and click game about a uh a like a sentient AI uh that uh is trapped under the sea um which has a really nice visual style but again I've played like 30 minutes of it uh And, yeah, so, anyway.

Do you guys have any other games you want to talk about, or should we do some emails?

I did play through Guitar Hero Metallica.

Oh, hell yeah.

Yeah, I pulled out all my Xbox 360 games to kind of start organizing them, and...

Yeah, I think we were talking about having peripherals for every game.

I have my DDR pad for Step Mania, the race wheel for all the racing games.

I have a DJ Hero pad.

I have all my Guitar Hero stuff.

But I was looking at the Guitar Hero games and thinking like, oh yeah, what are some achievements I haven't gotten yet.

And I never played Guitar Hero Metallica because I always had the perception like oh, metallica probably has the hardest guitar solos, that's probably the hardest guitar hero game.

There's no way i'll ever beat it.

Um, but uh yeah, i went like i'm not even like a metallica fan, like to me, like I gotta say this before I forget like how I word it, but it was like Metallica's always been kind of lame to me because, like I don't know, I mean like I like when I was growing up it was like alright Slipknot, like the new metal had taken over and Metallica was like boomer metal at that point.

It was like, I don't fucking care about Metallica.

Like...

But also, I think it also relates to the pinball stuff.

Every fucking, like, 70s and 80s band has pinball.

There's Kiss, Pinball, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Rush.

Wait, there's a Beatles pinball band?

Yes, so the Beatles pinball machine is cool because it's designed to look like a 60s pinball machine.

So it's very basic.

It does like the elevator dings.

And so a lot of like pinball machines will kind of mirror the band.

And there's the Metallica pinball.

And what's cool is like you can pick the different songs.

But I don't know most of Metallica's music.

I know like, you know, it's so weird to say their hits, whatever, but like.

So I don't know, but, so like, I'm playing all the band's pinball machines, I was like, oh shit, it's the same thing as Guitar Hero, there's Guitar Hero Van Halen, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, there is an Aerosmith pinball machine that's actually surprisingly pretty good.

But I was like I was playing Guitar Hero Metallica and I was like wait, I have guitar or sorry, I was playing Metallica pinball and there's two different versions.

There's like an old version and then a new, whatever.

So anyways, I play Guitar Hero Metallica and yeah, I was able to beat the career mode and get the achievement for completing it on expert.

I only feel like maybe one or two songs, but also, you don't have to beat every song to beat the game.

And the thing I like about Guitar Hero Metallica is like there's other bands on the disc, it's not just Metallica.

It's like I watched a video with Lars and he's like yeah, we picked some of our friends to be in this game too.

So there's like Danzig, there's like System of a Down, there's Motorhead.

There's like other bands that are cooler than Metallica.

Like, so I don't know, so it was a pretty fun experience, and then playing it, you have like cheesy 3D motion caps, like metallic, and they look like, the art style of Guitar Hero is like the ugliest art design.

It's so, and it does not age at all.

Like, Guitar Hero's art design is so ugly.

Same thing with Rock Band.

Like, it's like, I feel like everything almost kind of looks like Incredibles.

I don't know.

Everything is just blocky.

It's like Fortnite before Fortnite.

This ugly, ugly art style.

But playing the game was extremely fun and I think because I'd spent the last year uh, playing rhythm games, i think i'm way better at reading notes on rhythm games now and even like preventing myself from getting overloaded, like i'll drop combos.

But i don't panic anymore.

It's like okay, just just focus on it.

So i'm do, i'm finally able to do all the fucking hammer on pull off stuff way easier because i'm just not, i'm not concerned about hitting every note.

It's just like all right, just just just try to do the best you can.

But um yeah, it was, it was really fun.

And so now i ordered guitar hero van halen off ebay.

Um there's, i never played guitar hero warriors of rock, which was guitar hero 6.

At that point there were putting out like a new rock band and guitar hero like every two months and the market crashed.

So I think a lot of the late rhythm games are kind of expensive because not many people bought them and they didn't maybe not do second pressings.

But I kind of want to keep tracking down all these 360 era rhythm games and then getting achievements on it.

But Yeah, I was delightfully surprised by Guitarro Metallica and I was like damn, that was really cool.

So I still might play the campaign as a basis.

But yeah, I'm waiting for guitar hero Van Halen to come in and then I'll have a review of that.

That's awesome.

I didn't even know that they made band-specific guitar heroes.

There's a fucking lot of guitar heroes.

Holy shit.

There's also, like Beatles, rock band, Beatles sorry, I almost said Beatles rock band, Beatles green day.

There's a rock band Beatles, there's a rock band green day.

So like they started doing, yeah, there's, it's so, there's bands here.

I mean I have like my pile of games over there, but it's like yeah, it is so insane and like no one talks about these.

It's like it's like it's like been forgotten, like all the ET games buried, like it's just like a whole generation, like I love the 360 generation because you can still get achievements and that's why I kind of like Forza Horizon being a hit for Xbox, even though it's on Steam too.

It's like

Man, I never stopped playing Xbox games getting achievements.

So it's like now I'm going to book-offs and thrift stores and buying cheap 360 games and then still inflating my gamer score.

But I'm playing games that are fun.

But yeah, so it's kind of cool. because it's also hard.

You have to fucking get an Xbox.

You have to get a guitar controller, which those are expensive, and same thing like DDR mats.

People have made custom ones.

You can order stuff, but yeah, it's fun.

It's fun like, I don't know, just hooking a bunch of random plastic shit up to play video games.

What's your gamer score?

That's a great question.

It's like 102000 right now.

Yeah, after i hit a hundred thousand, i took a break.

I was like okay, i'm done.

And then i'm like i should want to keep going.

So yeah, i'm around two thousand.

Yeah honestly, like if i can live long enough, i think.

So yeah, at that point they send you like a xbox plaque to hang in your room.

I i i twitter, xbox's twitter did reply to me when i got a hundred thousand, but i do feel not that i deserve it.

But it's like I feel like with Noclip we're in the games media.

I've never had any contact with like Xbox or anything.

But it's like I feel like someone on Xbox's PR team should know there's a.

I literally have an Xbox chair.

I love Xbox.

I like...

And even the new president is doing some good PR moves.

But it's like yeah, can I get a free control?

I mean, I don't know, whatever, but it's like, I don't know.

I feel like I've been carrying the Xbox flag and many Xbox soldiers have perished, are gone to other sides or whatever, but I've been holding that flag since 2004.

Yeah damn, I don't know.

At the same time, I like keeping myself humble amongst all other Xbox gamers.

We don't need PR platitudes or free gifts.

We'll spend our money.

Thankfully now it's $22 a month for Game Pass, not $30.

But yeah, it is interesting how it's like dude, if anyone at Xbox you know hey, let me know, let me know hit this band up yeah, if xbox ever goes down, you'll be like the uh, the guy on the island who didn't know world war 2 ended, you couldn't get him off the island because he thought it was a trick.

Uh, it'll be that, but for xbox, um what?

Uh okay, if you could pick a band to have a guitar hero about, that doesn't exist, what band would it be Like?

It's the same thing with like, pinball.

It's like, misfits is, like, so funny and corny.

There's like Danzig, like he has such an insane ego that like that's the reason he's so picky about his depictions and other stuff.

All the people in misfits hate each other.

But it's like, there's something about, like, the...

Oh, spooky zombies!

That is so lame and awesome.

It is so corny, yeah.

I love it.

And that would fit the art style.

Yeah, so I think that would be cool.

Slipknot, corn.

I feel like you could just do a nu metal thing and have them all.

Or do...

Someone said this, like, having an Ozfest pinball machine, where it's, like, it's all the bands, like, together, so, like, and Dark Tower Metallica's almost that, but, like, I guess Warriors of Rock probably is, but it's, like, yeah, I feel like you could have, like, Slipknot, System of Down, Korn, all kind of in the same gate.

I mean, they literally toured together.

I think it.

I forget what it was called, but it was like.

It was like the Dysfunctional Children Tour or something like 2001.

But it's like, have that era of nu metal as a single thing.

But yeah, Misfits I think would be so sick.

Release it on Halloween.

There's a song by Misfits called Halloween.

But yeah Misfits, anything would be super sick.

Yeah, they should.

Uh, i'm surprised there aren't like.

I'm surprised there.

I feel like this era from 2005 onward, when they were making guitar hero, i feel like pop punk was really big.

I'm surprised there isn't like a pop punk guitar hero or something.

Yeah, I mean, Blink-182 would have been amazing.

I mean, they've done like song packs, but yeah, they did Green Day.

I mean it's a weird thing where it's like previous generations, like no one actively buying the Guitar Hero games.

I feel like the gamer demographic...

Like teenagers, we're not gonna buy Aerosmith, Van Halen.

Even Metallica's a stretch.

Yeah, it's kind of like Green Day rock band.

I rolled my eyes, but I'm like, oh, that makes sense.

Like I love their I mean I love their older pop-punk stuff.

But it's like, you know, what is it?

American Idiot Beyond.

It's like, oh, it's a different band.

But the old stuff is on there, and it's salt, you know, it's alright.

But, yeah, we didn't get Blink-182, like...

But yeah, it's so And like I think they're working on a new Guitar Hero and everyone immediately was like this art style sucks and I don't know if that will come out anymore.

But yeah, I don't know, there's something... Again, it's just like pinball, where Guitar Hero and Rock Band, all that, again, because it's... you're you're you're clicking stuff it's so much more satisfying um that it's like you know it's what's old is new again but it's it's been really fun and satisfying just like playing through it and also like the way licensing stuff now is like because people have the perception and maybe it is true but like there's so much money in video games people are so like It's so hard to nail stuff down, but it's so funny that 15 years ago, Metallica was like, yeah, whatever, put us in this game, who cares?

And you have 3D Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield and stuff.

Yeah, I am surprised that they did like old bands with this instead of it being contemporary acts.

Like you would think that they like if they fucking did like a Guitar Hero Jane remover two years ago or something.

Like I'm surprised there aren't new sort of like relevant.

That sounds really harsh.

But I'm surprised there aren't like relevant Guitar Hero bands that they did Guitar Hero for.

Well, fuck.

These games always seem fun to me.

The only time I've ever played a game with a guitar peripheral was in high school.

I just got super high at my friend's house and we played Beatles Rock Band and ate ramen and it was a great experience that one time.

I had a great experience, so that's a positive review from me.

Only once?

That's kind of crazy.

Literally one time i've ever held a guitar controller in my life oh yeah, i don't know, i just i was so good, i was like i i'm just i'm done with this, i'm walking away on top.

Uh, no caps.

If you could have a guitar hero game made about one musical act, who would it be?

I mean, when you said that originally the first thing that came to my head was polyphia, because i've been listening to them and i'm like oh, that would probably be really difficult, so hard, that'd be like the hardest guitar.

Yeah, i don't really listen to like bands, you know.

Yeah,

I was thinking similarly of if they had a midwestern emo guitar hero.

It would be insanely difficult because it would just be all fucking insane tapping rhythms.

Algernon, Cadwallet, or Guitar Hero.

That's a reference for maybe one person who listens to this.

Cool, well, thank you Frank for keeping us up to date on the world of insane peripherals.

Your room must be full of different types of controllers at this point.

Oh, it's insane.

It's like, I mean, you know, my room looks like a store in Akihabara.

Like, but yeah, it's a lot.

But that's why I was decluttering stuff and I was like I was specifically trying to find Guitar Hero 3 and I felt crazy.

I was like, I can't find it, I can't find it.

So I just had to take out every single Xbox 360 game, put it on a shelf and I was like oh yeah, I sold Guitar Hero 3.

So I didn't have it.

But then I saw Guitar Hero Metallica and all these others.

So, yeah.

And then I went to book off in Garden Grove like a week ago, and maybe it's still there.

I saw Guitar Hero, Aerosmith for like 15 books and then I looked at all the other bands and I was like eww.

So I was like, I don't think I'll touch Aerosmith.

Aerosmith is so lame.

I do not like Aerosmith.

Like, I started playing the Aerosmith pinball machine and it's just like, dude, look like a lady.

It's like, this sucks.

This is so lame.

It's so lame.

I do not like Aerosmith.

But then Japan loves Aerosmith because Itagaki he had Aerosmith.

Do like original music for Dead or Alive 4.

It's crazy.

So it's like, it's the inversion where Aerosmith is like USA rock.

So it's like Aerosmith, I don't know, but it's just so gross to me.

I don't know.

That's bizarre.

Japan loving Aerosmith is very funny to me because I feel like it's like when I watch a movie in Japanese I'm like wow, the acting is really good in this.

And it might be terrible, but it's like I don't speak good enough Japanese to parse if it's bad.

So I just assume it.

I'm reading the text.

I'm like, wow, they're really fucking nailing it.

I feel like... He's like, yeah, I can see.

Yeah.

That's what they think of Aerosmith.

It's like these guys are doing fucking a great job and it's just like no no no, you guys, come live in America for 35 years and you'll understand.

They're dog shit.

That's like, I started getting, I don't know, I started playing Samson, and then what I would do on stream is we would play Kiss music, and then pretend like... oh yeah the game has kiss on the radio so we just listen to like every kiss song and every kiss song in the 70s is like rock and roll rock and roll and like making out and it's like and it's like 10,000 combinations of that like rock and roll limousine or pick you up in the middle it's just every song and it's like oh in the 70s you could have written a song about anything and gotten away with it because there was just 10 bands doing it Like, it's like, it's so, and so just every iteration of that.

Van Halen.

I'm like, I'm like more.

I'm looking forward to Guitar Hero Van Halen because I feel like it's a little bit more tongue-in-cheek.

It's still like, like, I feel like now we're in the 80s.

It's like, okay, cool.

But, God, Aerosmith is just, yeah, I don't know, that's my stance.

I won't touch Guitar Hero Aerosmith, unless it's like 990, if I get a good deal on it.

Or, if anyone has an extra copy, you know.

I accidentally have two copies of Guitar Hero World Tour.

I don't know how that happened.

So it's weird having multiple copies.

So I can barter with.

It's like trading cards.

Get deep into the community.

You inspired me a little bit when I went to that game shop in Salem that I mentioned on my time off.

I was thinking last night that the next time I'm down there I want to go in there and I want to just like, like not look at my phone, just pick a game, just any a game that I have not heard of for a old console that I actually have the physical hardware for, and just buy a game like, not an expensive one, just a game that's like under 30 bucks, and just like pick it out, like when I did when I was a kid, and just like look at a game and be like oh, that that has cool art on the cover, and then bring it home and I feel like, Because I will have gone through the ritual of going to get it not knowing anything about it and then bring it all the way home and paying fucking physical money for it.

I'll be like, so this game has to be good now.

So I feel like I'll engage with it in a different way.

I want to do an experiment and see if that's still still possible to buy like a 5 out of 10 game and have a 10 out of 10 experience with it.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

Just seeing reviews of stuff and already knowing what other people think about it, whether you want to or not, before you go into a game or whatever

I went to a bookstore and I'm trying to get back into books, so I don't really know what the books are that people like.

But I just picked up something random and then I was midway through reading it and then I just decided to look it up and people would be like oh, I don't like this.

I don't like the way that the author is like this.

And I'm like, yeah, you know what?

I don't like that either now, but like I didn't have a problem with it before.

Yeah, it sucks.

I do the same thing.

It's like our brains are so malleable to being like, exposed to things that are it's.

It's like when, if you pick up on someone, has like a vocal tick and something you're listening to and you don't notice it at all, and then you'll read a comment that says you know why does this person say like every other word?

And then it's all you can hear.

It like corrupts your fucking mind once you hear things like that.

Yeah, I want to just like live in a fucking bubble.

I wanna like live in.

I wanna fucking lock myself in a retro game store for 10 years and turn off the internet and just play like Earth Defense Force 3.

Uh, on physical hardware um, but uh Yeah, if either of you are ever in Boston you should take the train up to Salem.

I'll meet you there at this retro game store.

I actually someone in the noclip discord.

I talked about this game or this game store.

I think it's game zone.

I should know the fucking name.

Um, in salem, and someone said that they were featured.

Yeah, it's game zone salem.

Uh, they were featured in a documentary about retro game stores that had like, kelsey lewin in it, from pink gorilla and a bunch of different uh people we've talked about.

So uh, i was glad to see game zone salem getting their flowers but uh but yeah, shout out, game zone.

It's fucking cool in there.

Um, They do not have Silent Hill 1 no.

I will save you the trip if that's what you're looking for.

I was looking for that, and they don't have it.

Awesome.

Well, thank you, Frank, for the update.

I always like to hear about.

You have like passion for types of games that I find so interesting to hear about but never seek out myself.

So I feel like I'm living vicariously through you in all of these experiences.

We got some emails.

You wanna read us an email, my friend?

Yeah, if people do want to write to us, please send us an email to podcasts at noclipvideo or on our Discord podcast chat channel.

Once again, that's podcasts at noclip.video.

Our first email comes from Joey.

He said.

On a recent episode, Jeremy said he wished more games looked outside of games for their inspiration and cited AAA's reluctance to do anything less than derivative.

It reminded me of a short interview I saw where film director Gareth Edwards mentioned his film The Creator was partially inspired by concept art for Blade Runner and Star Wars.

This struck me as an oddly cannibalistic approach to design and signal a bigger problem with art direction within entertainment.

My question is which are your favorite games that are inspired or influenced by things outside of the medium?

I recall enjoying Kentucky Route Zero for its nods to contemporary art, theater, and poetry.

That's a really good question.

I feel like I need a minute to think about it.

Do either of you have any examples that spring to mind of this?

My first reaction is GTA Vice City, because that is entirely inspired by 80s films.

When they were designing Vice City, Sam Houser, and this could have just been BSPR stuff, but they said they basically just had

Miami Vice, the TV show, just on loop on VCRs in their office.

Because it was just like, that was like the key inspiration.

And there's like Scarface and other stuff, but like, yeah, like, you know, it's a video game.

It's a non-licensed game that's entirely inspired by, like all the films and shows of the early 80s.

And then it was funny like that was my first, like I played Vice City before ever seeing Scarface or any Michael Mann film except Heat.

So it's kind of funny like that way.

I feel like this is the obvious answer.

But Zelda was inspired by a childhood in rural Japan, going into caves and wandering around.

And I feel like that was my relationship to games as a kid, was...

Like going outside all day and wandering around in the woods and talking to my friends about games and then coming home at night and playing games.

And those games felt like an extension of wandering around in the world.

They were all sort of just this, like seamless, childlike curiosity about like worlds, digital or otherwise.

So Zelda sort of like the OG on that.

Yeah, no caps.

You got any examples of this?

What sprung to mind for me was just like literally movie tie in games, like playing so many of those as a kid, like Wii, 360 era.

Like I don't know if they're actually good, but I have fond memories of, I think, the Ice Age Ratatouille and just playing as the characters that I loved from these movies that were just super culturally relevant at the time.

Yeah, I didn't even think about movie games.

I really liked the Rockstar Warriors game when it came out, the old PS2 game.

I don't know if it's just because I thought the Warriors was cool.

I don't know.

Frank, didn't you stream that game?

Yeah, I played it within a year ago, and I was impressed by it.

I only did one run of it, but I should load it up again.

It was like a beat-em-up that had a little bit more going on with it.

I can't recall much, but the tone of it was like, damn, this is gritty and cool.

But it felt like they were generally respecting the movie.

They weren't trying to satire.

So much of Rockstar's stuff is like, Oh, it's gritty, but it's also dicks everywhere.

You know, like with the Warriors, it was like, oh no, let's genuinely like they really respected Walter Hill and everything.

It was like, oh, let's really try to, like, flesh this out.

And it was a beat-em-up that was, like, pretty cool.

And, yeah, maybe for the time, like, the group AI stuff was impressive.

But, yeah, when I played it, like, a year ago, I was like, damn, this is really good.

The PS...

They did a thing where it was like the PS2 port is available on PS4 but it cannot be emulated properly on the PS5.

I tried playing it on PS5, and it is just super glitched out.

So it's like you can't play that.

So the best way to play it is probably emulating on PS2 or just authentically with a PS2 disc.

And then...

Again talking about movies.

Dead Rising just straight up being Dawn of the Dead, the video game, so much so that they had to have a disclaimer on the box that said this is not officially a Dawn of the Dead.

They had to put some legalese on the box.

Yeah, yeah, Dead Rising...

It's like not an adaptation of Dawn of the Dead or something like that.

I just see what it said.

This is just the AI response.

I can verify this after.

This game was not developed, approved or licensed by the owners or creators of George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

That's it.

Yeah yeah, that's fucking wild.

I did not know that that's.

That's crazy too, because it's like keep chatting, i'm gonna find the boxes just over here.

Okay, cool it's.

It's so different than that movie like, in terms of its uh, content and tone and things that happen in it.

Uh, I wonder what was the straw that broke the Campbells back to make them have to put that on there.

Like someone saw it and was like, uh, excuse me.

They were clearly worried about it, but it's just like I could make an indie game about zombies in a mall and no one would sue me.

You know what I mean.

Like, I don't know.

That's weird.

That's like putting zombies in a house and being like.

This is not a Resident Evil game.

Just because there's a residence in it and the zombies are evil, it doesn't mean that it's affiliated in any way.

Yeah, that's weird.

I wonder where the line is, where it's like...

Where would you get into legal trouble?

If you called it something of the dead, clearly that'd be a problem.

If there's any lawyers watching, let us know.

Although I don't know why I'd be watching this.

It's inverted.

Can you read it off?

It says this game was not developed, approved or licensed by the owners or creators of George A Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

Trademark.

That's so awesome.

See, that's what I love about this era of video games.

God, it's so cool.

I still have my Sam Goody receipt in the box.

Holy shit, dude.

I bought this.

I didn't buy it.

My dad bought it for me because I was a kid.

It was...

On a vacation in Hawaii at the Ala Moana Shopping Center, which is in Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth.

And it was... Man, remember back in the day when new games were $60?

Ha ha ha!

It was $59.99, and I remember at the time, you can barely see it, it came with a free DVD.

Here's the funny thing you can't see it but it's not approved by George Romero.

But at the time Sam Goody had a pre-order bonus where it came with a DVD of Day of the Dead.

Oh, no shit.

That's crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

So you got a free zombie movie with it.

That must have been like a peak day of your childhood to be in Hawaii and you got a copy of Dead Rising.

I can imagine that being like one of the best days of your childhood.

No and like, and that was the thing that was like a, like a, like a tradition my dad would do anytime we'd go to Vegas.

And I, this is very like privileged, but it's like my dad would, we would go to Vegas or Hawaii.

My dad knew how much I fucking loved video games and to kind of like appease me.

Of just like, all right, you're not going to play games for two, or however long we're out.

You're not going to bring your consoles, you know, blah, blah, blah.

But like, but I'll buy you a game as a present.

Because he would always like, oh, we're in Hawaii.

You want a gift?

You want a coconut?

Whatever.

No, I just want a game.

And so every trip I would like get one game and I'd buy the game and sometimes I'd buy the strategy guide.

And that whole vacation, I'd be reading the strategy guide.

Oh, yeah.

I'm like, oh my god, the graphics, I can't wait.

And then I remember, like on a road trip, I got Def Jam Fight for New York no, the first Def Jam wrestling game on PS2 and I had the strategy guy.

I didn't know who any of the rappers were, but the strategy guy had like oh exhibit, like all the information and just reading the strategy guide.

And as soon as i got home i would load the game up and i'd know how to play because i read the tutorial and the strategy guide.

But like every trip, i'd have like some video game.

I remember also on another hawaii trip i got resident evil code veronica x, which came with the wesker files dvd.

Um Yeah, a lot of like god damn pre-order bonuses.

Just straight up were DVDs.

That's so cool.

Yeah no, it's funny because, to bring it back to Pat Scott, that's sort of what it reminded me of too was when I was a kid.

I would stay with my grandmother and she would take us to Funkoland, which is an old game store that got bought out by GameStop like every other game shop.

And we would just buy like a fucking random, she would just be like, yeah, just like pick one out.

And I wouldn't, you know, I didn't have like a phone to pull out.

So I would just pick like, that's why I joked about Earth Defense Force earlier.

I bought like Earth Defense Force for the Super Nintendo.

I had no idea what it was.

I didn't play like shmups at all as a kid.

I just like, it was like, it was like a cool plane on it.

But I obviously wouldn't bring my Super Nintendo to my grandma's house to stay there for a couple days.

So I would just open the box and read the manual for days.

I would just sit on the floor reading these manuals when i would go to my other grandmother's house in upstate new york.

I obviously wouldn't bring a bunch of consoles with me.

We'd go up for like two weeks in the summer and i would just bring like the last six nintendo powers that i had gotten in the mail um, or like pc gamer or whatever, And I would just sit up there in like upstate New York in the middle of fucking summer just like reading about like Kirby superstar before it came out.

And I feel like it was this, this like magical relationship to games that existed outside of actually playing them that made that like enhanced them a lot for me.

It wasn't that like just sitting down and playing games was always magical.

It was like, um, They were just like a container for imagination, for like possibility.

I was constantly like thinking about games and like drawing little diagrams and pictures of like creatures that could exist in these games and stuff.

I feel like, yeah, I don't know.

I feel like The loss of physical media is like there are like intangible losses that come along with it about sort of like the imagination that goes alongside these things.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

Maybe that maybe I'm being too cynical.

Maybe those things can exist if you're watching like an IGN preview of a game before it comes out.

I don't mean to write off a thing just because of the medium, but yeah, I don't know.

Not looking at a screen and just sitting in a field somewhere reading about Kirby Superstar.

I feel like it allows you to daydream about it in a different way than watching a 4K trailer of this game or whatever.

Well, that's how it is.

Like browsing the game stores, like picking up the Japanese games and being like what the fuck?

Like just looking at the box art, but seeing it as opposed to like yeah, just something that someone on Twitter is saying this game is this, and it's like well, you've already made up my mind about something where it's like, oh shit, what the hell is this game, you know?

Like yeah, it's that, I don't know.

Yeah, like even me literally just being able to pick through all my Xbox 360 games.

Which, like, ten years ago, I kind of didn't have the same reverence for.

Now it's like, oh my god, this is... Look at this fucking copyright warrant.

It's like... Yeah, and same thing.

It's why I love going to book offices and just browsing stuff.

But Yeah, it's very And same thing.

I remember going on a trip to Russia and I brought like five issues of Game Now magazine which was like

EGMs, they called them sister magazines back then.

It was like Expert Gamer, which was all codes and walkthroughs, and they folded that and made Game Now.

But Game Now was specifically made for a younger audience.

So, like at the time, I always wanted to read more edgier stuff like EGM or whatever, but it was like I was probably like a 10 or 11 year old kid reading a magazine meant for like 12 year old kids.

And I was like, oh shit, Game Now is like, this is pretty good.

And so I just would read the same magazines over and over and over again.

But then that's why I have the reverence for like that era of video games, because I know so much about all those games without having played any of them.

Yeah yeah, i even like going back and reading those magazines.

It's like there's a part of it that you go back and you're like oh, a lot of this was just, you know, like marketing, like a lot of the effusive praise and these things was just like.

You know, two page advertising spreads that are like this is the craziest game ever.

And you're like six years old.

You're like oh, my god, this is the craziest game ever, like you just fucking uncritically accept it.

Um, But there is, I don't know.

There's something.

It's not to say that you should just be a sucker for fucking marketing obviously.

But there is something I think like useful or like magical about just willing yourself into a state of like being open to a game being the best thing ever, as opposed to seeing all the reviews and being like oh, this is like a seven out of ten, maybe i'll like.

Maybe it's like a good seven, maybe it's a seven that is like catered towards me.

Um, Having every game be potentially a 10 out of 10 is a very beautiful.

That's also why I'm weird about spoilers and shit, because I just like to go into something completely blank slate and not even know if it's going to be terrifying or action-packed or good or bad.

It kind of just lets you have these radical moments of surprise that I think are really important when there's so little mystery in games.

Someone in the Noclip Discord was talking about this with the Star Wars Galaxies doc that is coming out soon that this was like could you have a game where i Star Wars Galaxies?

It was like becoming a Jedi.

At first no one knew how to do it and so all of these internet communities were, you know, hypothesizing and postulating what if you do this, maybe you do this?

Blah blah blah, and literally just no one had figured it out.

Um, And that's like you don't really.

I feel like you don't really see that in games, like not only now, but like even back then, it was rare in games to see a mystery that was so important, so crucial and like central to the identity of a game, but also like still a complete fucking mystery.

It wasn't like you could look it up and, you know, a hundred people had figured it out.

It was literally like Jedi is like the core fucking fantasy of being in the Star Wars world and literally no one had done it.

Like, that's a real fucking mystery.

Again, that's like if the Triforce was in Ocarina of Time, and no one had found it yet.

That would be crazy.

People would go nuts for that.

But it's a it's a difficult thing to do in an era where, like every world of warcraft, patch gets data mined before it drops and people are like, oh yeah, this is like the optimal strategy for that.

You got to do this build and like make sure you respect into this and um yeah, which i understand, like i get the.

I get the urge to um, to optimize and min max and stuff.

Like uh, there is a certain type of fun that you get from just being very, very skillful, like being at the top one percentile of whatever skill, uh expression for this game.

But it's like I don't know.

There's something cool about just being shitty at a game and getting your ass kicked and slowly refining a strategy in a vacuum, rather than participating in this space race, this arms race to solve everything as fast as possible.

Yeah, you're definitely not the only one that feels like that.

I had an experience recently, somehow.

I've never played Cuphead.

It's always been on my list, but I was in this local bookstore and they had an art of Cuphead book and I just got it because I love the art.

I'm like, oh, I could play the game, whatever.

But I was just looking through it and just reading about all these characters and stuff that I don't really know anything about.

And then I read about three or four boss fights and I'm like okay, I'm going to stop reading it because I don't want to read about all the boss fights before I play the game.

But I don't know, that's definitely like a rare kind of thing these days, especially like working in this industry and just like kind of having to know stuff and just stay in the loop with everything.

But I also like.

When you're talking about the becoming a Jedi thing and the whole secret aspect, that when no one knew how to do it and how.

It's like this magic moment in time that can never be recreated with certain games like these, you know Metroid Brainiac, Animal World type games that are just completely built around the secrets, basically like If you play the game when it comes out like for me, the big one was animal, while like just being part of that community during that specific moment in time is like not something that you could get unless you were there when it happened.

But yeah, just like special stuff like that is. cool yeah yeah animal animal well is a great example because i feel like it's um as opposed to being sort of an individual mystery that a bunch of people are all coming together being like how do i solve this how do i solve this animal well was so brilliantly designed as a communal mystery in its endgame um where it was like it it necessitated community collaboration uh I think that that's like a cool example of game design adapting to this sort of media landscape understanding that people will inevitably work together to solve these big questions and then just being like fuck it like why not make it so that you have to do that I think that's a really I feel like there are other games that have done stuff like that but I'm struggling to think of other examples off the top of my head Probably like Noita.

Yeah, Noita is a game that has a lot of mystery in it.

Like, has stuff that's still not solved yet.

Yeah, I feel like I had that experience with Spelunky to some extent as well, just because I was not plugged into that community.

That felt like a game that had a lot of weird depths and mystery to it.

But yeah, I think that that is like...

One of the most interesting things in game design in general to me is how to create a sense of mystery in an era where people will instantly solve everything, where the internet is this decentralized mystery-destroying machine, because it's like.

You know, if you tell someone there's a mystery, what you're saying to them is like solve this mystery.

So if you say that to 10000 people, obviously now you've created the perfect machine to destroy the mystery.

So it's like, how do you...

How do you create a breadcrumb trail that is both satisfying to follow and not just like immediately hoovered up by people who are hungry for mystery, which is a thing that I, you know, I understand and relate to because it's like when I when I play a game that feels truly mysterious, all I want to do is obsess over it and kind of like turn it over in my brain until it's until I'm done with it or whatever.

So.

Anyway, Frank, we got another email?

Yeah, Kieran wrote in and asked...

Hi, Noclip.

Early this year, I finally made the move from console to PC.

While I bought a few games on Steam, I've actually been using Xbox more as Game Pass and Play Anywhere.

Give me access to many games I already played.

As a Steam agnostic, I've been curious about its place in the industry.

Its 30 cut of sales and effective monopoly on the PC gaming market are both seen as a bad thing elsewhere in tech, but it seems to enjoy goodwill and has easily fought off challengers like Epic.

What would you need to see from a rival platform to make a switch from Steam?

Or does the size of people's libraries built over decades and loyalty to Valve mean that it is untouchable in the space?

That's a really good question.

I don't know.

What would you need to see from a rival platform to make a switch from Steam?

I guess, like I kind of feel like it's impossible at this point, unless there was something that started now and slowly grew to sort of like equal cultural relevance where, if I had an equal sized library on another platform,

But that would be very, very hard to accomplish and like a very longitudinal project.

Yeah, I don't even know like sure you could make something that's like the tech side is there and like the games are there and everything but like to get people to actually switch to it.

Like I've only had a Steam account since 2019 and Already I'm like there's no way like I have all my games on here, you know like yeah, I don't know.

And Epic tried to do get people to switch there by doing the exclusive thing.

And then everyone just hates that.

So that not that approach.

Definitely.

It's tough.

Yeah, I can't even think of what it would take.

I think it would just have to be something that was as good as Steam and was around for the next 10 years, being as good as Steam.

Which is like, god, you better have a lot of fucking capital to burn if that's your goal.

Yeah, I don't know.

Frank, what is it that like?

I feel like there's probably some sort of intangible quality that you enjoy about, because a lot of games that are cross-platform, I think you choose to play on console.

Is it like sitting in front of a TV with a controller, or?

Yeah, it's like just the ease.

A big part of it too is for me as a streamer.

I like having a separate, dedicated box I just plug into and I don't have to mess it up.

If I play a PC game and stream it, I'm fucking sacrificing something.

Whereas the PS5 I can play and it's full fidelity on my TV.

It's also the ecosystem.

I wasn't a... I didn't have a gaming PC until like late high school.

Like World of Warcraft made me start playing games on PC.

So I spent the first, you know 10, 11 years playing console games.

So I was just already in the Nintendo ecosystem, PlayStation and Xbox ecosystem and kind of talking about the Steam library.

They kind of kept you fed.

Well, because it was like oh, all your PS1 games will work on PS2.

Oh, all your PS2 games will work on PS3.

Xbox.

Oh, some of your Xbox games work on 360.

And then it kind of shipped away.

But even Nintendo did a good job.

Your GameCube games work on Wii.

So you're kind of like, oh no, this is good.

And then there was a... Before...

PS5, Xbox Series X.

There was like a definite gap, or even between PS3 and PS4 where, like I think 2012, I bought like a solid gaming PC.

Or maybe it was 2016 where I was like, oh shit, all of a sudden I can play games in 60 frames.

So for a few years I was like damn, I'm getting everything on PC, because before I was streaming.

And then the new systems whether it was PS4 or PS5s came out and it was like oh, we can do 60 frames here, that's good enough for me.

So i think it was just like i don't know if it was arms race but just having to like.

You either had to like, choose to like, spend thousands to upkeep your gaming pc or every few years, spend what would equate to thousands on new consoles.

But yeah, i've just always been in the console ecosystem.

A lot of my friends trading physical games was a big part before covid.

Before i switched like all digital.

Like I would make deals with friends like okay, I'll buy this game on PS3, you get that on Xbox 360.

Once I beat this, I'll trade it with you.

We were trading games, we would rent games from Blockbuster, so physical games was a big part of it.

And then yeah, now it's like I just like having the trophy ecosystem on Steam.

Achievements are so like you can hack that so easily.

It's kind of doesn't have the same like um for power prestige.

It sounds so dumb, but it's, everyone makes their own reality um, so yeah, i just like.

I just like my, my like right, i have my xbox and playstation, even switch i don't really mess with because they don't have achievements.

I know it's so insane playing the game itself, the achievement i get it, but just like I don't know.

Xbox and Playstation is kind of enough for me.

If somehow Playstation wanted to do like boom alright, you can play your games on PC.

I would still just play on Playstation.

But like it would be funny to see if Playstation ever fully decides to do like a PC-dedicated app.

They have remote play, but it still requires a PS5 thing.

But if all of a sudden PC games had trophies and was in the trophy ecosystem, that's so goofy that i'm like oh, i would try that.

I don't think i would um, but yeah, i think i'm just, i'm happy with console stuff and like, even for me, i like, having seen, because there's a bunch of weird games i want to play, I'll do emulating stuff like retro games and RetroChem is kind of its own system.

But there's a lot of other games where, if it's not within the Steam launcher, I'm going to forget about it.

I'll install it, but then I won't see it.

Whereas Steam has your most recently played...

If it's out of sight, it's like virtual clutter.

I don't see it, and so it disappears.

Whereas having the console stuff, having the limited hard drive space on the consoles forces you to be kind of conscious of what games you have installed, what you're playing at any given time.

And then again, yeah, it's like the friend ecosystem is like...

Now it's like all digital spaces feel very lonely because, like I feel like I'm not in contact with as many people as I used to be, but like I still have, a lot of my friends are still kind of on consoles whereas, like my Steam friends are, like it's like, not as many people I know.

So...

That said, if there was any third part, like, what would it take for me to switch?

Like I know, there's like these legendary Steam accounts which apparently they stopped doing where it's like early on.

It's like if you're in Gamespress you could have like a Steam account that just gave you every game for free.

If Epic or whatever the hell gave me a thing where here's every game for free, awesome.

But that's like, that's like luxury.

You know that's not like a like a thing for every person, but yeah, so it's like i don't really have moral scruples, i'll take shit for free, i don't care, like i'm glad you know, like um, so yeah so, but i'm yeah, i'm just kind of happy with consoles.

Yeah, i feel that the only time like, the only thing that i can think to add is that uh, I really don't want to switch to, but I really want to play the Duskbloods from Soft's weird PvE, whatever game.

But I don't want to pay like $800 to play it or whatever.

I don't know how much a Switch 2 costs, but I imagine a Switch 2 and that game would cost...

Somewhere between $200 and $1000, somewhere in that range.

And I don't want to spend even that much.

But like that fucking sucks because it's like I've played every FromSoft game post, like Demon's Souls.

So I think that like yeah, i don't know.

I mean it's kind of a truism that like strong exclusives are what sell consoles or whatever, but like it's, i just want to play the dustbloods.

I just i'm gonna have to like go over my niece and nephew's house and, you know, take mario kart out of the switch and just borrow their switch 2 for a while.

It's just like the streaming services like you want to watch some show and then you don't have this and then you switch to that platform like Hulu or Netflix or whatever, but none of them are good.

I don't want any of them.

This doesn't make sense.

It made sense in my head.

No, no, it does make sense.

But it's cheaper than having to buy a PlayStation and an Xbox and a Switch and then be on Steam and then like whatever.

There's something smarter to be said there, but...

No, you're right.

Steam, I guess, kind of has the most options out of anything.

So it's kind of the place that I landed.

Although Itch.io also has become a big part of...

Like, you know, how I find games and stuff.

So maybe there's room for like someone else in between those, but I really don't think another Steam type thing could ever take hold the way that Steam has.

Yeah, itch has like a, I've never used it, but doesn't itch have like a launcher of its own?

Does it?

I feel like it might.

Maybe I had a dream where that happened.

Well, if they don't, they should make one.

Yeah, there is an app.

I feel like I've never seen that pop up until right now. um i've wielded into existence uh i i feel like itch having a better rev share for people as well as like i don't know maybe that's like another incentive for people to switch is uh if a game is on itch and steam sometimes i'll buy it on itch because i know a larger percentage of the money goes to the people who made the game um i think if if you were to try instead of saying like we're better than steam i think another approach could be like we're uh more dev friendly or uh things like that there are sort of like other angles of approach that uh yeah but uh but i that to me that's that is like a tough selling point for consumers because it's kind of like you know this is like ethically sourced local chocolate that wasn't you know it's like not made with horrifying conditions and stuff and it's like yeah if you're in a position to pay 10 bucks for the chocolate bar that's great but uh i think most people are just like i'll take the The slave labor Hershey's because I'm exhausted and I don't know anything about like chocolate sourcing.

Anyway, that was an extended metaphor, but hopefully it makes sense.

That is all we got for emails, I believe, right, Frank?

Yeah, that's it for now.

Feel free, please send emails.

If you've sent an email and it wasn't read, feel free to send them again.

Sometimes we either have too much or run out of time.

The more the merrier.

This is another way of saying we're out of emails.

I need help, please.

Please send emails.

Podcast.video.

Podcast chat channel.

Let us know are two very good conversation and i like that.

Any question will will like spur off so many conversations.

So thank you so much.

Like i'm happy i got a chat about consoles.

Big part two is the physical collection.

That's a big thing.

I like literally having like oh whereas, as again, the digital clutter is a big reason why, like the pc stuff, i just forget about it.

Whereas, like my god, these like xbox 360 games and it's crude green is like oh, this is so nice, i like it, i can.

Yeah, When I went to Game Zone in Salem seeing all the big box PC games on a shelf, it made me feel an emotion that I've not felt since Circuit City went out of business.

It took me back.

I had a fucking dream the other night that you just reminded me of that they brought back physical releases for pc games.

Like every game that came out on steam that was like a bigger game had a physical release.

But they were released in like um, like little plastic bags instead of boxes.

Like you know, when you buy like a hundred like plastic flossers, they come in like a little plastic bag.

Imagine if, like world of warcraft came in like a little plastic bag And everyone was so pissed.

And all the companies were like, yeah, but you love physical media.

I don't understand why no one likes this.

And I don't know.

I don't know what that dream means.

I don't know if you're a Jungian psychoanalyst out there.

Let me know.

But it was a frustrating dream.

Anyway yeah sorry, i don't know, there was a game that came out that it was like a steam game, i can't remember what it's called where, like you could, just it took your library and then made them into little boxes and you had a room and you just had all your steam games.

It just came out a couple, couple months ago i don't remember what it's called.

Like it was like a digital room full of digital boxes.

Yeah.

That sounds cool.

Is it called, is it Game Quest The Backlog Battler?

Box Room.

Let me check this out.

Oh, it didn't come out yet.

Okay, it comes out in five days.

Box Room.

Oh shit.

So there you go.

Hold on, I gotta check this out.

Oh, we have Box Room.

Allows you to define, design and decorate a room, a sanctuary, for your Steam library, and then revel in the organization of your game collection.

That's actually very, very clever.

This is what the people have been craving.

Physical media.

But in a digital, you have to go into a Steam game to look at all of your Steam games.

Oh my god.

I don't know if I would play this, but I really like the idea of this.

I feel like this is one of those things where I would psychoanalyze myself.

I'd be like I'm going to fire it up and I'd be like, why don't I just fire up the game?

Uh, but you have to just get a bunch of giant monitors that take up all four walls and then project it.

So it's like in a fucking room yeah, like vr looking yeah, or just never take off the vr headset.

You, it's like a therapy exercise, like i like the idea of something like that, where i'm like oh yeah, i can visualize it because, like again, the effect i have just taken all my xbox 360 games like informs is informing.

Like the next month of stuff i'm playing, it's just like yeah, it's like.

It's like like i don't know, i can see, like the, the tranquility and the revelations that come from it.

I was like oh, that's a fun exercise.

Also, there's a poster in one of the box room images for Blake Manor that says Eldritch House on it, which I did not realize was the original title of Blake Manor.

That's a cool poster.

That is a really cool poster.

I would love a physical copy of it.

This is just making me want this room in real life.

I don't want a digital room.

It's just reminding me how much I value the physical.

Someone needs to do a video essay on playing box room and how it's like eating the menu at TGI Fridays instead of ordering food.

I promise that makes sense if you think about it.

Anyway uh, that's all that we have for today.

Uh, i let's hold on.

Let me pull up the list here i wanted to talk about a little bit.

Uh we, i kind of explained what it was, but the star wars galaxy's documentary is basically dunzo.

Um, it is up for producer tier.

It's up for some tier of Patreon which you can verify on the Noclip Patreon.

And I'm really glad.

It's something I recorded like...

14 months ago or so.

I think I finished editing it last April.

So just did the stand-ups for it and Danny helped sort of organize it into those two videos that are going to come out on the history of MMOs, told through Raph Koster's experience with them and the Star Wars Galaxy's sort of like Jedi game design problem that we alluded to briefly earlier.

But I'm very proud of it and very excited about it.

And so, yeah, look forward to it.

Danny is out of town right now.

And when he gets back, I imagine we will get it up for the remainder of the non-producer world.

So keep your eyes peeled for that.

And...

Yeah, I think that's kind of all we've got to promote right now.

We'll have some stuff on Noclip 2 as well.

We're working on a bunch of cool stuff.

I've been thinking about another little mini documentary, kind of like the derelict one, so hopefully we can make that happen.

And I had a bunch of developers reach out to me after the derelict documentary came out and were like oh man, if you think that's crazy, you ought to hear about our fucking bullshit.

And so now I have a list of people who want to tell me interesting and or tragic stories that their games have been through.

So, yeah.

Yeah, so let us know if you guys see videos that you like or us talking about ideas that are interesting to you.

Let us know what is of interest to you and we will try our best to make it happen.

Yeah, what do you guys got going on this week?

Anything?

I need to force myself to more pinball places.

So last Saturday I went to like a four hour.

So I've realized the trick.

The real best way to like A, get better at pinball but also just immerse yourself is like I've started going to like free play places where you pay a fee to get in and you can just play as much as you want for a certain amount of hours.

So like a week ago...

I went to a place in Long Beach called I Need a Miracle Pinball.

Originally it's called I Need a Miracle Tickets and Pinball, and it's the weirdest place.

It's in Long Beach.

I recommend it.

Half of their business is they're like, Not scalpers, that sounds cruel.

They sell tickets.

They sell sports tickets, concert tickets, whatever.

And the other half is pinball, where it's $10 for all you can play.

So I did that, played a bunch. but I also didn't know what I Need a Miracle meant.

The place is covered in Grateful Dead stuff and I think that's what it was back.

Just like with Phish concerts is like people, would you know, get to Phish Grateful Dead concerts and have a sign that said I Need a Miracle, meaning like, can you help me get a ticket?

So it's so like we're talking about Kiss and all these other old bands, but it's like oh, that's like a thing of oral history, like it's gonna be lost to time.

But now it's like, oh, that's kind of a cool fact.

But there's like Jerry Garcia bobbleheads and it's like the most goofy-ass place, but there's just pinball machines everywhere.

So that place was cool, and then...

Saturday I went to this place where this guy is like a full-time like arcade auctioneer and he just has a showroom that's all his pinball machines, and so it was like 20 bucks for four hours.

So that was amazing.

A lot of footage.

Now the next thing I need to do is there's a game, there's two machines in Southern California called Winchester House, and The developer lives in Riverside, like maybe an hour away from me.

So he's down to be interviewed, but first I need to play his game.

So I'm going to go.

I need to hunt down this machine, play it, get a bunch of footage and then schedule an interview for the pinball project.

So I just gotta force myself out.

And then separately, there's a movie theater, I think in Riverside, that has a 2010 Dark Knight pinball machine, that has Joker action figures and stuff all over it.

And I wanna go to this movie theater and get footage of this pinball machine.

Does that mean I have to buy a movie ticket?

I don't know, but I'm like, oh, that in itself is kind of a good thing for the video.

So maybe I'll go see Mortal Kombat 2 just to get footage of this Dark Knight pinball machine.

We'll see, but that's kind of like the stuff on my brain right now.

That's awesome.

I love that.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you end up doing with all of your pinball footage.

It's again, it's like a world that is so alien to me that I'm just like fascinated by.

So thank you for being our like on the ground correspondent for all of these niche subcultures that I have no idea what's going on in them.

No caps.

What you got going on this week?

Um, I'm supposed to go to this botanical garden place, but it's gonna rain all weekend, so I might be going to the garden in the rain.

But that would be a nice break from the heat, at least.

Get outside finally.

Yeah.

It's been extremely hot here as well.

It's like... I don't know what it is.

It's 88 right now.

It was like 95 here yesterday in thunderstorms.

But I welcome it.

This was my first New England winter in 12 years.

So it was like...

It was rough on me as a 12 years in California coming back to like five months of frigid tundra.

So I would rather sit here sweating it out than freezing any longer.

Alright, cool.

Well, thank you guys.

This has been a pleasure as always.

And thank you to our listeners for listening every week and hanging out.

Yeah, let us know.

Like I said, we're doing a bunch of cool stuff with Noclip 2 that we haven't talked about yet.

So I imagine once Danny is back from his vacation and then work travels and personal travels and all these things will sort of be sort of alluding more heavily to secret things that are coming.

But if i feel like this is a, this is what i'll say, this is a good time.

If ever there was something you wanted to see on noclip 2 that hasn't happened, or happened in the past and hasn't continued to happen or happens now and you want to continue to happen uh, let us know what uh, what your, your wish list is, so that we can take stock of no good too because uh, there might be some cool shit happening.

I mean, there is some cool shit happening, but it might be some different shit if you let us know uh.

So that's it.

Thank you all.

Thank you for uh hanging out, so it was a good time.

All right, peace.

[Forza Horizon 6, Petscop, and the Tactile Beauty of Gaming]-[Forza Horizon 6, Petscop, Phonopolis]

📋 Summary

Gaming Horizons, Digital Mysteries, and Physical Media

Forza Horizon 6: Arcade Thrills and Cultural Context

The Haunting Authenticity of Petscop

Phanopolis and the Art of the Tactile

The Enduring Value of Physical Media

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Forza Horizon 6, Petscop, and the Tactile Beauty of Gaming]-[Forza Horizon 6, Petscop, Phonopolis]

📋 Summary

Gaming Horizons, Digital Mysteries, and Physical Media

Forza Horizon 6: Arcade Thrills and Cultural Context

The Haunting Authenticity of Petscop

Phanopolis and the Art of the Tactile

The Enduring Value of Physical Media

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

ListenLeap Brings You Into Real Context Learning