Oh, I'm sleepy.
Dan's like, ha ha, Mike's sleepy.
And I was like, how dare you call me out for being sleepy.
Dan's like, I want the people who saw the Mario movie to talk about that.
And we're like, yeah, it's, you know, whatever.
It's the Mario movie.
So we should talk about video games.
Dan had a video game where he typed something.
Isn't that interesting?
I was like, yeah, it's good. kind of interesting.
I'm not going to get involved in this conversation about the typing video game.
Then Jan said, Mike, you just, I was like, ah, it's my turn to talk.
So I talked about Virtua Fighter for a little bit.
Then Jan said I could go to the bathroom and I did that.
I switched my calendar and it had a Minnie Mouse with a bumblebee on it.
I'm like that's nice.
Uh, I can't believe I didn't switch that until just now.
We're already a week into April.
That's my bet that's on me.
Jeff wanted to talk about the video game news and uh, Quantic Dream is maybe not going to make a Star Wars game after all, and the Mario movie made a lot of money, so that was nice.
And then Jan was like oh, do you guys need to take a break?
And I'm like I got a a little bit, but like everyone else doesn't want to take a break, so that's okay, we can just go into the next thing there.
Uh, and that's that's when jeff showed us the video game ad and it was like two words he's like this one's pretty easy.
And no, he had no idea he was disappointing us.
Then i remembered about.
Then jeff said that he thought it was a port of, And I'm like that's not right.
That's not right.
I looked it up and that's incorrect.
This came out before that.
Uh, so yeah, yeah.
So another, another grub L and then it was like, uh, then there's, yeah, yeah.
And then I was like, uh, emails, Mike, you got to read super chats.
I was like, oh crap.
My name was said again.
I had to do something.
Then I accidentally clicked the button where I got signed out.
So Jeff came in and he read the Super Chats instead, and I think that's what's happening right now.
Hey, everybody.
It's Tuesday, April 7th, 2026.
Welcome to the Giant Bombcast, episode 935.
I am your host, Jan Ochoa.
For video viewers out there, do not be alarmed by the yellow bean in the sunglasses.
I'm not taken a heel turn, i've not turned evil and evil doppelganger is not taking over my uh persons, i am just simply trying to fist fight a migraine uh, and my destiny, and it seems like the world as well.
I shouldn't be yelling, but.
Co-captain of the ship, Jeff Grubb.
Oh, I'm very happy to be here, Jan.
I'm also not feeling tip-top, but I think, relative to many people on this podcast, I'm doing really well, so I'm just not going to say anything else.
That's right.
We're all falling apart at the seams.
Pax may have done a number on us, but speaking about together at the seams, he is bursting at the seams with rage dedicated towards Oates businesses.
Ian Reichert.
Who can say which oats business has wronged me yet again and whose oats code you should not use.
But yeah, we're all struggling today, Jan.
You got the migraine grub.
You're not tip-top shape.
I had to go to the dentist today again.
I'm having some severe tooth pain and everything.
So things are rough there.
And Mikey had to get up at noon.
It's tough for everyone out there, guys.
Our own Prince of Darkness.
I'm laughing at Mike shaking his head.
More than anything else, our own, our own prince of darkness, jeff bacalar, is out on assignment, but don't worry, he's.
He's festering in the corner, he's stuck on the escalator of badassery.
The bad boy of games media, Mike Minotti.
Look, I'm sorry.
I don't have an excuse.
I don't know why I'm out of it.
I don't have an excuse, all right?
Yes, I was up late playing video games.
That's not an excuse.
The sleep just didn't really take for some reason, you know?
I don't know why.
I just kind of woke up and it's like looks like I hit my snooze button 30 times in my, or 30 minutes in my sleep.
That's always a bad sign.
No time for my shower in the morning, which always helps wake me up.
Missing the shower, that's a bad sign.
I'll have to do that after this.
I got no excuse.
There's just tons of brain fog right now.
No good.
I'm not sick anymore.
I can't blame it on that.
I was sick last week and then really busy this weekend because, you know, all the Easter stuff.
So I don't know.
I guess I'm just unrested.
That's it.
I'm just a little baby.
You know, it's been a hot... This is Mikey's hard times promo.
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Minotti, can you hit me with a daddy?
I guess I'm just a little sleepy, daddy.
Close enough.
No notes, boys, other than... No notes, no oats!
Yes, yes.
Other than the world seemingly on fire.
And folks, hey...
I know there's a lot happening in the world right now.
There may be a lot happening in your own life right now.
Uh, sure, sure is a lot of stuff happening to us right now.
Uh, but we appreciate you spending time with us and we hope this uh hour, two hours almost, maybe three hours, who knows?
However, the heck long we'll go today will help distract you and be a little bit of reprieve from the fucking world on fire.
Boys, otherwise, how are we doing?
It was Easter!
It was.
Yeah.
We did one of them little, hey, follow the trail.
Go ahead.
There's some bunny stickers.
They're paws stickers.
Put that on the ground.
The kids went all around the house, found some cool Easter eggs, some toys, and stuff like that.
Easter, a much bigger deal than whatever it was for me as a kid.
Uh, like we would go get the eggs in the yard, but now we make a big deal out of it.
And I hadn't been here the last couple of years cause we, I would go to pack.
So coming back to my, Oh yeah, there's all this setup.
It was almost equivalent to like staying up late, getting Christmas set up, but it was a lot of fun.
The kids had a good time.
Hell yeah.
I had Ryan and Becky from Outpost 31 Productions come here to fix up the alien day one on Sunday.
Day one of the restoration.
And we didn't realize it was Easter.
And then he showed up and starts fixing up the alien.
They're both wearing alien shirts.
And they're like, this is our religion.
I'm like, oh.
Oh, I found the right crew for this.
This is awesome.
They're coming again today.
So you would say that your xenomorph has risen.
Yes, his wrists are fixed up.
The latex is drying right now.
They're coming back with some hydrating stuff to kind of like freshen up all that stuff.
They're going to paint the head a glossy black like in the movie.
It's fucking awesome.
Yeah, they're really found the right crew.
These people love horror movies.
Yeah.
Very cool.
Fix the alien butthole.
Oh, Cubano, you should see the butthole on this thing.
It's crazy right now.
Did Jim Carrey come out of it? did carrie come out of it okay jim carrie come out of it and i'm not impressed with your house i don't know if this butthole picture is going to show up like the butthole is like they took the tail off so this is the but that's latex drawing on the butthole right now yeah so the tail's on the ground over there it's yeah guys i i think i gotta go you can handle the show without me right yeah all right let's all right let's talk more about buttholes everybody welcome to the butthole zone a new podcast from giant bomb Oh, boy.
I think even our bench team may be going through it as well.
Boys, I think two of you may have actually participated in some gigantic festivities over the weekend.
And I'm not talking about Jesus or whatever.
He's old news.
I'm talking about the Mario movie.
Yeah, Jeff and I saw it.
We haven't talked to each other about it at all yet.
In fact, I think I even texted him.
He ignored me.
I don't know if he ignored me.
He texted me while I was in bed.
I was sleeping.
Well, what if Mike Minotti... It was like midnight.
You know what some people do?
Some people are like, the next day, they text back.
They don't go, well, that's just a wash, Mike.
Come on.
Well, obviously you don't have many friends with ADHD.
But also, this whole weekend I mostly spent wallpapering, so that's what I was doing.
I'm like, I don't have time for Mike Minotti's silly asides.
I know he's going to have opinions about this movie.
I need to go do adult stuff.
What if Minotti texted you first?
You up question mark now?
Then I would.
Okay, I'm like something's up, I need to be there, for I need to ask a question.
I've not seen the film, but I've seen a lot of reactions from people and they've been very polarizing.
I want to see which end of the needle you guys point more towards One end.
A lot of my friends I talk to about movies and stuff like that are like oh, it is a bad movie.
This is not a good movie.
And then, on the other hand, it's usually people with kids that are just like the references the joy, the kids loved it.
So it's like one or the other is like, this movie sucks or like my kid laughed, so it's good.
So like, where are you guys on it?
I mean, am I the only person that can hold two thoughts in their head at the same time?
It's a bad movie that I had a good time at.
What?
What am I supposed to do about this?
Sure.
What happened?
Yeah.
Like, yeah.
You already know what this movie is, Dan.
I don't think it's going to surprise you in some way.
Maybe because it's so obvious what it is, it comes across worse than that first movie.
There are definitely...
There are problems.
There are some things done better.
Like the no needle drop bad music tracks thing.
That's a lot better.
That's what you said.
It was worse than the first one because the first one I thought was fine.
I remember seeing the guys and thought it was fine.
In some ways, like the plot is definitely more haphazard.
It's like really kind of just it's nonsense.
I don't blame say, a movie critic who has no affinity for Mario for thinking that this is just absolute gibberish and having a bad time with it.
I'll say this.
There was definitely more like sounds in the theater pointing at references then.
Ha ha ha ha.
What a genuinely funny joke in the movie is the Super Mario 2 stuff.
Is that a substantial part of the movie?
It's a scene.
It's a good scene.
It's one of the better scenes.
Yeah, it was fun.
And stuff like that.
It's like ah, you know, that's Yeah.
You know they could have done more obvious things and I like the fact that they did a whole.
All the bosses from Mario 2 are in this casino scene.
Yeah.
That's neat.
That's fine.
I will say, the first half of the movie, I was like, oh no, they turned Yoshi into a minion.
That mellowed out a little bit.
Yeah, pretty much.
Fox McCloud's the best part of the movie, for sure.
Is he a big part of it, or is he a cameo?
He's a.
He's a pretty decent part of it.
He's like a tertiary character, like he's like Donkey Kong last time.
Almost he's like a Hawkeye, perhaps a little bit.
Yeah, actually for sure.
Yeah, the kids did enjoy it.
We came out of the movie.
They were all talking about their favorite parts.
Their favorite parts, like One was a reference.
The other one was just like a funny joke that everyone laughed at.
You could tell the kids were like, oh, my God, I thought that was funny.
And everyone in this room left, too.
That's cool to be part of a group like thinking something's funny.
And they're kind of having that realization.
So it's like oh, it delivered what I went to the movie for, which was to see a bunch of Nintendo stuff be bright, colorful.
And have kind of a fast pace to it where they're going from one thing to the next.
So it does go by pretty quick.
And it does.
And it's exactly what I was expecting.
And I just can tell that this movie doesn't have any sort of pathos or tension or anything that I go to other movies for.
Right.
But again, that's not why I showed up.
That's not why I paid $100 for tickets for my family to go see this thing.
We went to go see the colorful Mario characters.
Even like your average kids movie or family movie usually tries to be about something like a theme or a moral.
And there's maybe like the slightest attempt at that or a gesture that something to do with family.
It's not even like the first one.
The first one was like, we're brothers and we could see like see everything through together.
And like they're like willing to do like have a speech about that or whatever.
This movie is kind of like, I don't know.
Mario wants to have a girlfriend and maybe Luigi still scared.
Who knows?
Okay.
All right.
So, I mean, none of this sounds surprising to me.
This is about what I would have expected from this, right?
I don't think you're going to go in and be shocked.
Like, oh, that was not what I was expecting.
Yeah.
I definitely maybe have the opinion that it's not worth all the hullabaloo that some people are getting into here.
Right, right. you know, the fall of cinema, or that was the greatest thing ever.
We just know what it is.
Like, we know what it is.
Maybe they don't.
Yeah.
I mean, I was, what was the Mario, the first Mario movie?
Was that 91?
I was fucking.
Oh, the live action was 93.
The Bob, Bobby Haas.
It might be 91.
It could be 91.
Well, I was either seven or nine years old and I left and I told my dad it was the best movie I ever saw.
So that was a fun time for me.
So I can't be mad about kids liking a movie that's not the deepest, best movie in the world.
Like, that's just for a kid.
Right.
But it's funny because I was thinking about that and I'm like that's the movie you get when you try to actually make a real movie based on Mario right.
Those are the concessions you have to make to make it...
Maybe make sense in a screenwriter's world.
Whereas this movie is like what if we just don't really worry too much about why all this is happening or how it makes any sense?
Or we just can't introduce Fox McCloud in our movie.
Yeah, we can.
And like I will say like, if I am looking at it, if I step back a little bit, the original Super Mario Brothers movie from 1993, I think is way more important than these movies.
It's cool that like people had to figure out answers to those questions that no one at Nintendo ever asked themselves.
And they had like set producers come up with ideas about how to bring these things to life.
It's awesome that that happened and makes that more timeless in the long run than these movies ever will be.
I wish we could live in a world where we got both frequently.
I'm glad we got one at one point and I'm glad we're getting these as well, because the kids are enjoying them.
And then I hope that one day I could show them the weird Mario movie and they're like yeah, just like objectively, this feels like it's cooler because there's so many interesting ideas actually in the movie.
Yeah, I don't understand getting mad about this.
As a Mario fan, I'm not particularly interested in seeing the movie, but if it's a thing that makes kids into Mario in 2026 and then maybe they check out the games and stuff, that just seems like a positive to me.
I think there's just like, people are conflating a lot of the arguments.
People do hear like, oh, it's a kid's movie.
What do you expect?
And that's not, I don't think any of us are saying that.
I'm just saying it's a kid's movie.
You should occasionally expect this in that.
Yeah.
Like they will make bad stuff for kids, just like they've made bad stuff for adults.
Like this is not indicating that people think kids can only like bad stuff.
Obviously, that's we just know that's not true anymore.
After years of Pixar, years of excellent Disney movies.
Yeah.
And we could do all this other stuff they could do better, and I don't know if it's because of like they just don't have it, or it's just like a dedication of like this is the kind of slop we want to throw out to them.
Yeah, and I do think Miyamoto.
My theory, my pet theory, is Miyamoto's there showing up and like all these characters should always get along and We don't need all this.
He's like the Gene Roddenberry of the Star Trek Next Generation era for the Mario movie.
Yes.
I think he's kind of spoiling any chance for them to take a cinematic reign to it or whatever.
I think he's kind of getting in the way.
Right.
Who knows?
I have no idea.
I think it's going to be interesting with that Zelda movie.
And this is going to sound condescending, but they're going to have to make a real movie with that.
There's no way that movie is going to be good.
There's just no fun.
I don't know.
I think it's safe to assume it won't be.
And if it surprises us, it's great.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised by that.
I want to believe.
Yes.
They're shooting where they shot the Hobbit.
Their little footsteps are going to fit in the other little footsteps, guys.
Wait, is Link a little lame dude?
No, he's got a sword.
He's literally in a forest of children.
He has a sword and a hookshot and abilities.
Hobbits all have swords.
Have you seen Bilbo Baggins?
That motherfucker's strapped.
He's got the coolest sword, too.
The hobbits have swords?
Yeah.
Oh, wait.
I haven't seen the hobbit.
The hobbits in Lord of the Rings have swords, too.
They all have swords.
I forgot that.
Swords all the way down.
I thought they just walked in grass and talked for nine hours.
They also do that.
Yeah.
Let's be clear.
All right, gang.
Well, before we talk about video games, Jeff Grubb, how can the folks at home support us here at GiantBombcom?
Yeah.
Dan's oats code.
No.
Yes.
You can go here to oats overnight.
Giant.
No.
Drained my account.
Listen, here's what I want you all to do is go to giantbombcom slash, join and become a premium member, because we're independent games media and we need your support to continue doing the things that you like, that we like creating a home away from all the insanity on the internet elsewhere.
We got cool stuff happening over here and you can ensure its future by going to giantbomb.com. slash join, becoming that premium member.
It's going to get you ad-free versions of the shows.
It's going to get you all of our cool new premium shows.
Marry Me a Tomodachi, Porto Pals.
Nine Lives of Mr Mistoffelees.
I just did a Grub Snacks premium that I put up yesterday a little bit late, but it's up there now.
Yeah, get all that stuff and more and get the satisfaction of knowing you support us.
And of course, if you can't financially, we get it.
Tell a friend, share our stuff and just show up in the chats and stuff like that.
Show up in the comments and we see that and it means the world to us.
If you have a friend that you think would like any of our offerings, whether it be a quick look, any of our podcasts, perhaps you know, give them a share.
You see us on the social medias.
You like a fun clip that we'll cut together.
Give it a share.
Why not?
We've got the poll up right now for a premium unlock.
If you look on Blue Sky on YouTube, we've got a vote going up from Chuck to unlock a premium episode.
So vote on what you'd like to see there.
And speaking about supporting us being able to do dumb, silly stuff, we had a very extensive meeting yesterday to make sure that we make good on a goal that we hit during the bomb.
I'm so excited.
Actually, I'm getting really excited about it.
I'm making maps.
I'm making spreadsheets.
I'm reaching out.
I'm talking to breweries.
We're good to go.
I'm very stressed out, but we're going to make it happen.
I don't want to announce any specific dates, but the wheels are turning for... They'll be turning.
They're turning.
I get it.
The wheels are rolling.
Rolling.
Not on the river, but on the highways.
Hopefully not on the river.
Let's try to steer clear of that.
Please.
I don't know how to swim, guys.
Because the great giant bomb road trip is happening.
It's probably...
99% sure happening this summer.
Dates, plans, Jan's going to see the Midwest.
We got plans, we got Jans.
I think there's an over-under.
For how many times I'm going to say I'm going to turn this van around if these guys don't settle down?
I'm going to go to full dad mode.
We're going to take Jan to a meat raffle.
It's going to be...
And then you know Chuck, being Chuck, added an interesting layer at the beginning of the road trip that maybe it's going to be a little bit of a different trip for Dan, Chuck and I before we hit the road.
Oh, that one night, the first night.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, right.
Okay, that.
Yes.
And you could redo the whole planes, trains and automobiles thing.
Jan, between all the stuff you're doing this summer,
We're not allowed to stay at Backlar's house, so we're going to rough it.
Yeah.
Jan and Chuck.
That's right.
We'll just say it now.
You can sleep in their backyard.
We could.
Set up a tent.
Dan, Chuck, and I, and I think we convinced Will, even though Will lives in Jersey.
Yeah, Will could just sleep in his bed that night, but he's a trooper.
We're going to go camping for the first night.
Oh, yes.
Are you worried that something's going to go wrong on the camping night and it's just going to derail the whole trip?
Because I'd be great.
All right.
You're all about to see how much I sleep on road trips, because I'm thinking Dramamine the whole time.
I'm actually very excited about that.
That will roll.
You've talked about driving to Disney with like you just lay in the back sleeping with your CPAP.
Is that what we're dealing with on the road trip?
Yeah, probably.
Oh, I love that.
I will fuck with you.
You can't say it like that.
I'm going to fart in your CPAP.
I've got to actually get out of the CPAP.
You whole fuckers can hear me snore.
I don't give a shit.
Sweet.
God, Dan is going to put vodka in your CPAP reservoir.
Man, what would happen?
Would that work?
No, no.
It would work.
You know what?
Jackass was an inspiration to us all.
Steve-O was reckless by injecting himself with the IV of vodka.
We have grown.
We're smarter.
We're wiser.
So we'll just put vodka in a CPAP.
Yes.
We'll just inhale it, not inject it.
Yes, all right.
Yeah, maybe we don't do that.
I'm so concerned, god.
I saw some things, i'm hearing and i just we had like a two-hour meeting.
I'm just over here like and everything's like, oh no, Oh no.
I was going to say it.
It was floating around.
You were like, we probably aren't going to do this.
I'm like, what if we just crashed at fans' houses?
And I was like, no.
Look, indie wrestlers have been doing this for fucking decades.
Sleep on the floor.
All right.
Before we get to video games gang, just a couple of quick programming reminders for those premium folks out there.
We're going to have a new episode of Nine Lives of Mr. Mustafa Fleas happening after the Bobcast.
Grub, I saw the clip that is of today's episode.
I don't I can't believe that's the episode that the folks are on.
So much has happened for you, myself, Chuck.
Right.
I was looking at that, too.
I had the same thought.
It's like OK, the fact that they're just getting to this joke that I do remember that feels like forever ago.
So, yes, there is plenty of adventures of Mr. Mistoffelees yet to come.
Yes, yes.
Tomorrow, the blight continues.
Dan, how are you feeling about re-embarking on Space Ace?
It's only 40 minutes left.
I've heard it's only 40 minutes away.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't want to take breaks with this.
Memory is my biggest adversary with this run, because you do have to remember very specifically where to jump, where to stand, with all the auto-scrolling and all that.
I think it'll come back to me, but I think every level will have at least one or two like oh fuck right, that.
OK, OK, we do.
I stand left here.
There's going to be a quick relearning process for every level, I think.
But yeah, I think it'll click into place much faster each time, even after this extended break.
Yes yes yeah no i'm, i'm i want to say looking forward.
I'm looking forward to conquering this game yes, and getting it done.
So uh, every step towards that uh, is a plus for me.
So yes, i will do.
But before that tomorrow, before Blight Club leaves the space station, gang Turbo Sean and I have dusted off the gym.
We've put our own wallpaper up across the gym floors as well, the ceilings.
We've done so much to the bathroom because Poke Monday Night Combat relaunches.
Tomorrow, gang.
Uh, sean and i are going to check out pokemon champions because tomorrow's day one, so we're gonna just uh, you know, see what shenanigans we sean janigans, we can get up?
Yeah they're.
Oh, it's a launch.
Look, Don't give it to me, Dan.
Yes, during the content meeting you were like oh, and then maybe when that game comes out we can do a launch look.
And then you caught yourself like, or whatever it's called.
I mean, it's the placeholder.
I'll use the placeholder vernacular.
Yeah, that's fine.
He's right, though.
You did realize what you did.
You were like, quickly.
Hey, listen, you start Mitch Check and we're all good.
You know I'm all for Mitch Check.
I love it.
Yeah, that's another Bombathon incentive was the Poke Monday Night Combat.
And there's another one maybe in the works with Mike and Grubb coming up in the near future.
But yeah, just to reassure everyone, hit all those incentives in October.
It's extremely important to all of us.
We are going to make good on every single one of those, and they are all very in the works.
So stay tuned.
A lot of fun stuff coming up on that front.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Pokemon Monday Night Combat is going to be on Wednesday tomorrow.
Sean and I are going to assess the sketch and see, nail down a definitive date to put that on.
It's Pokemon! day night combat so it doesn't have to be on a monday day yeah you know that's that's uh the type of uh loosey-gooseyness that can happen here at giant bomb uh gang unfortunately the hottest gaming and the hottest dating show it's gonna have to be postponed due to scheduling stuff going on so we will be having a discord town hall for all of For premium members out there, if you're a premium member, hop into Discord.
You got queues.
You got questions.
Holler at your boys.
You can ask virtually any and everything.
And please be ready to talk on a microphone.
And then we got UPF as usual.
But also, gang, this Saturday.
The community is embarking on their own endurance run.
That's right.
We're going to be hosting it on the website, giantbomb.com slash endurance schedule T-B-A.
Gang, I'm ready to talk about video games if you are.
Always.
Let's do it.
Let's do it.
Speaking.
You know I'm already donning the yellow beanie and I'm kind of leaning into the toxicity because last UPF our dear friend Samantha Kalman showed up, hung out with us and showed off her new game.
That is still in the early days, but we checked it out.
We checked out versus hyper kinetic aerial joust gang.
You know there's still early stages, you know of everything, but kind of I kind of felt myself liking it too much.
Oh, we could tell because you were being a menace to everyone with your laser sword.
Evil Jan is not a thing that just unleashes randomly.
Absolutely got unleashed on everyone on that stream by you.
And it was scary to see.
For folks that don't know or haven't seen UPF yet versus Hyper Connect Aerial Joust kind of a wipeout looking game, but not a racing game per se.
It is a jousting style game.
The mode we checked out it was 2v2 two ships going against each other in opposite directions, circling around an infinite loop.
And you would just have to unleash a blade, and that blade would take out your opponent.
And the neat thing that I think should be in more games, whatever genre, even if it's a puzzle game.
Just give me slowdown.
Give me that witch time, that bullet time happening.
The Tekken thing.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, everyone has their association with mine's burnout revenge.
Like, I mean, I'm just trying to have that same association.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But very fun time.
I suggest you go check out the UPF.
And I think if you join the free Patreon, you'll get access to it.
That is versus hyper kinetic aerial joust.
Speaking about jousting, and actually speaking about that UPF, sorry, my brain is melting actively.
I feel it leaking out of my ears.
Dan Reichert, on that same UPF, you showed us a fun little word game, glyphica.
Oh, I'm a sucker for any game where typing is your weapon.
As much as I don't keyboard and mouse for anything, I get real hyped up for a game where you're just typing as the only method of input.
Typing the Dead and a few others have done it.
Uh, this one is typing roguelite survival, I believe is how they pitched it.
And it's great when you just see like three words describing a game and you're like that sounds like my shit.
I'm going to try it.
And then it's exactly what you wanted and more.
I think it's technically early access.
But yeah, you're just like a dot at the center of the screen.
Like, look it up.
It's very minimalistic, almost like sound shapes-esque art style.
And enemies are coming in from all angles.
Like, imagine like a Vampire Survivors, but you're not moving.
And they have a word above them and you type it to shoot projectiles at them and kill them.
Some have shields, some shoot their own projectiles that have words that you have to like, type to counteract and you are leveling up.
You are getting turrets, you are getting like Tesla mines, you're getting giant spinning saw blades that chop up the enemies, and words and things like that.
Um, you know, elemental damage, some really clever boss fights and everything.
So yeah, it's just one of those games where it's just, your fingers never leave the keyboard.
Even like when you're leveling up and stuff you choose, you know which upgrade you're doing by typing the word at the bottom.
And yeah, you're just.
There's no way to not pay constant attention and be like super locked in all the time with this game.
You have to be.
Um, and every time I'm done it's just like you feel like chemicals in your brain were just going insane for however long you're playing it and got an endless mode.
Uh.
So if you're really good at typing, that's probably a real fun leaderboard situation there.
It tracks like your words per minute, uh over time and stuff like that.
So if, if anything I'm saying sounds appealing to you at all, check out glyph.
Uh, um, it's, it's fun.
I did play some, some of it.
And I was, I immediately was like, yep, I get it.
I like this so much.
And I want to like, just sit down and really spend a long time with it.
Cause I'm like, I can play it for 10 minutes here.
Uh, the, those trials, uh, Uh, they go on for how long would you say?
Each trial, there is a like actual timer at the top.
I want to say it looks like maybe five minutes each.
It could be more.
Yeah.
And then a boss fight at the end.
Uh, and yeah, like fun stuff where it's like, okay, there's two floating enemies here for a boss.
And it's like, I think that one's called Gemini.
And it The gimmick with them is, every once in a while they will heal each other to the maximum of the healthiest one.
So that way you don't just want to go after one and take them down, because then it's going to heal to the max.
Wow, that sounds like a World of Warcraft raid boss.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
And so, yeah, you got to bounce back and forth quite a bit.
And there's a Cerberus where it's like three different heads you got to attack.
There's one that scrambles the letters of all the words in a radius.
That was nasty.
It's got clever stuff.
Yeah, it's really good.
And zoning feels like an important thing as well, because you're not only targeting enemies, you're triggering off like these different abilities like this, like missile, hammer of dawn, kind of thing.
There's like a meteor shower one.
Yeah, I got an upgrade there where it's like okay if on the left side of the screen there's a place where, if I type this word, I'm going to trigger a meteor shower.
And that's got a huge radius.
It's like well, I know that area of the screen is pretty taken care of while the meteors are coming down.
So I can focus over here on the right side of the screen.
Yeah, yeah, really clever stuff like that.
Lovely.
Fantastic.
Something that Mike Minotti and I checked out.
Quick look with the director and a very dear special friend is now on the website.
We checked out People of Note.
Dan, I'm going to say this now.
This is the most on you game in the world.
That's what I've heard.
Yeah.
For folks that don't know, this is a JRPG.
It's a turn-based RPG, but it is all about musicals.
They have like the...
Claire obscure the paper Mario style of like timing based combat where, even if you're doing your basic attack, you have to like, sync it up to like the little rhythm based pip and you do more damage, less damage, depending on the timing nature of it.
Your abilities are also tied to that.
And, you know, do need to say this off the tippy top.
We have a dear special friend that is a prominent character in the game.
But that being said, I'm actually having a lot of fun in this.
I'm like maybe No.
I'm like I've finished the first full, complete world that they dump you in after the initial tutorial area and I'm having a good time with it.
The RPG nature of it I think is really well done, where you can wind up finding specific abilities that already feel kind of broken, even in like the early uh world of it, where it's like okay, i can see these synergies popping off now um, and in the same way where claire obscure in mid to late game, the like timing of it would kind of feel very um complicated um uh, to pull off every time.
It already feels that way in in a good way.
Uh, in the early stages of people of note, and because it's all rhythm based, it for some reason in my head is clicking a little bit easier to hit onto the beat versus clear obscure um, we're just watching the little pips to shrink down, Um.
The other bit that I think is might go underappreciated in people of note is that I really do like the puzzles and we talked to the director and the director straight up said like Hey, if you don't want to encounter any of the the, the battles or the puzzles, you can completely turn them off.
If you just want to go through and try and encounter the story.
That being said, I have enjoyed the puzzles, and the puzzles are ranging from stage world puzzles to light platforming tile-based ones.
And for the theater kids out there, this is our game, everybody.
Finally!
The Venn diagram of JRPGs in musicals has just become one again.
We haven't felt this represented since Final Fantasy X-2.
And the music, at least the first two songs that you come across in the game.
Fantastic title card reveal, by the way.
I think it popped Mike really hard.
Yes, I love a late title drop for sure.
You know, you talk about the musical nature of it and watching you play it for a while.
It's like oh because yeah, you're in this world and it's like you're at a club and maybe there's techno or K-pop blah, blah.
But then, you know, there was a part where there was basically just a cut scene and it got very Broadway musical there.
But oh, my God.
That's what I want.
Yeah, yeah.
Give me this kind of, you know, one day more Les Mis style.
Everybody's going to say their piece in musical form about where they are in the story at the moment.
That's the good stuff.
Yeah.
Kayla out there.
I think you would really really like this game because it has the capacity to be a very tough JRPG, because you could just crank up the difficulty and there are music.
There's musical numbers in this.
She's just a half sister in case anyone's wondering.
The musical side, though, is where it comes from.
Both of you guys share that, of course.
Hi, Kayla.
Jan.
So you're obviously the vibes are working for you like the sort of what it's going for in terms of presentation.
You are saying that you're having fun playing it, though, right?
Not that you can like pull those two things apart.
Obviously, one leads to the other.
But you're like, it's just a fun game to play on top of that.
Yeah, it's a fun game to play and I've talked on this podcast where I've been searching for an RPG to play and the answers and suggestions that people have given me are upwards to 30 to 50 hour journeys where I don't quite want to invest that much time.
I kind of want to like turn my brain off and engage in turn-based combat in a way that can be satisfying.
But also, if i do need to turn my brain off, i can just kind of sink into that autopilot mode And because it is the like timing based combat and it is only timing based combat in the offensive side there's no defense portion of it at all where you're dodging or anything that is enough to kind of like keep me engaged.
And if I am just like tuning out of the game, it'll lock me back in when they drop a new musical number.
And also the director here.
I think him and I are cut from very similar cloths, because all of the puns in the game just make me giggle and go.
That was stupid, uh.
And then if i were to drop similar puns, i know i would get booze in the chat.
Um parentheses positive yeah, that's what you're going for when you're dropping a pun, though let's be clear, okay.
Then last thing uh, in terms of musical stylings, is it a variety?
Is it is there like?
Oh they're, they're obviously inspired by sondheim or something like that.
Like, is there, like?
Is it obvious?
The first two numbers in particular feel very Greatest Showman-esque.
Okay.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
So very bombastic, loud.
Not gang vocals, because that's in different genres of music, but layered melodies on top of each other.
I'm a sucker.
You popped Kayla with that.
I am a sucker when characters will start.
It's not just a duet, but it's multiple characters singing their own songs on top of each other.
One day more effect.
The one day more effect.
Exactly.
We initially met the villain of the main villain of the game in a smaller cutscene and then, when he popped off into his solo, Mike lost his shit, because I think he kind of sounded like the evil priest from Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Oh, it just definitely reminded me of Frollo a ton, yes.
I like the villain a lot.
I was like, oh, that guy, he's a cool guy.
I mean, he's probably not a cool guy.
He's probably, like, terrible.
He probably thinks being horny is evil and a sin.
Right, which, you know, we all know.
Of course, it's just true.
Disney talk.
Right, right.
But I was like, oh, yeah, the villain was good.
He kind of reminded me of JP from Street Fighter V, but better.
Interesting.
Six.
Incredible.
Street Fighter VI.
Six, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you know, you know, the old guy at the cane.
Right.
Although that guy reminds me of the people from Clear Obscure.
So, yeah, maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He has a little Renault.
Oh, yeah.
Renoir.
Renoir.
Renoir.
Yeah.
Renoir.
Renoir.
Renoir.
Renoir.
Renoir.
The French will love it when you say that.
Wawa.
That's a wawa, isn't it?
That triangle.
There we go.
Thank you.
I didn't quite know what you were doing at first.
That triangle from Gayle Perry.
I don't know what their death rate is.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
By the way, I told the English story at a friend's birthday at a pub.
When I got to the punchline, I got excited and screamed English probably too loud in the bar.
Amazing.
Oh, no.
Representing us well, Mike.
But to answer Mikey's, or continue Mikey's thought about diversified music genres, it drops you into a small town that has
Japanese and k-pop influences and then okay, the next world is kind of like a dad butt rock type of world, so it feels like they are kind of hopping and bopping around to different genres of music.
In terms of the music numbers, I think they are going to be pretty diversified as well.
Tune in for the Quick Look also, so you can hear Mikey belt one day more.
And a little bit of memories.
It was very moving.
And it is out now, the Quick Look EX, right?
Did you guys put that up?
The Quick Look EX is out now, and so is the game.
It's out on everything.
So if anything we've said entices you at all, and also if you're a theater nerd, this one's for us gang.
Finally finally, we have a musical video game.
Um there, there have been multiple musical video games since then, of course, but this one yes, like nightmare before christmas oogie, boogie's revenge, or whatever.
On the playstation 2, guitar man.
Yes yes, guitar man.
I didn't want to say this because we had the director of the game there with us.
But, yo, there are going to be some thirsty ass motherfuckers because of this game.
Because some of the character designs not just of the main protagonist but of all the other people,
If people got a little bit too weird fawning over, let's say, K-pop Demon Hunter characters...
They're going to do the same exact thing over here.
Anyway, that is the confusion of life.
That is the paradox.
It is okay to be attracted to a video game character or an animated character.
That is the paradox, just like Darwin's paradox has been happening and Jeff Grubb has been exploring.
I have been playing Darwin's Paradox.
I'm trying to know if I know the answer to your question of whether or not I'm attracted to this octopus.
Yeah, sure.
He's a handsome octopus.
I...
Like this game, it is from Konami publishing it, and then it's a developer that they're working on.
It's kind of one of those things they did with, were they the ones that did deliver at all costs?
Konami published it.
Konami published it, yeah.
Yes, right.
So similar thing here, where Konami spotted a game they liked, they took it under their wing and they published it as a Konami game.
And that was part of what I was interested in.
I was also just, I liked the look of it.
It kind of had an Abe's Odyssey style to it, I thought.
And playing it.
I would say yeah, that's kind of what they're going for here in terms of not necessarily how it feels, but the way it presents itself where you are solving platforming puzzles as this character that can go around and grab things and move things in the environment.
And there's some physics on top of that to make the puzzles feel weighty.
You know it, it's so it's not going to be.
It's not mario brothers.
Um, i want to try to give an example of like what to expect from it, like the one of the early uh puzzle sections that kind of went on for a bit longer than i was expecting, to the point where i was like oh, this is just what the game is going to be.
It's going to be these sections like this um, there it's almost a stealth section.
Um, You get dropped back into the water after exploring the land a little bit and there's like a sewer system you get into and the sewer system has a bunch of rats and the rats are chasing you and if the rats touch you, you're basically dead.
So you have to avoid them and you can get in the light a little bit, but very quickly it's like oh no, you need to jump into this chemical glowing waste, cover yourself in it, and then the rats won't mess with you while you're covered in it.
And so you have to like run from one section to the next in the sewer system before the glowy stuff washes off of the octopus.
So you're just trying to get from one point to the next.
And then occasionally you'll get to a point where it's like, oh, there's a barrel in the way.
I need to figure out how to get it out of the way before this stuff runs off.
So you're kind of solving puzzles under a little bit of a time crunch.
And that seems to be the loop of the game where you're doing stuff like that through a section.
Then once it's over, you kind of get the next gimmick and you're doing that.
And I thought it was pretty well designed overall.
It's not going to blow anyone away.
And I...
Definitely like playing it more than I liked playing Abe's Odyssey and all those games, but it has that spirit there as well.
So if you're looking for something along those lines a little bit of a thinking platformer, it should have that.
They definitely have the 2000s Jimmy Neutron, Nickelodeon eyes going on with the whole look of the game as well.
And that presentation works as well, where they do get a little bit cinematic with the in-betweeners, where you're going from one level to the next.
And it's like, okay, we're going to show off kind of what to expect from this new land.
And they'll zoom in close to the character and the character animates well and looks really expressive and the world looks really nice.
And then it runs great on the Steam Deck because then you're just kind of controlling the 2D plane of a 3D game.
So yeah, I think it's neat.
It's definitely worth trying if you have some interest in what I described.
And then I think it might be on one of those platforms.
It might be on PlayStation Plus or something like that, I think.
Grub, where do you land on stealth sections in a 2D game?
I mean, there's some games that like when they build themselves around that concept of being a 2D stealth game, like Mark of the Ninja.
That's one of my favorite games.
I love Mark of the Ninja.
And then other games where it's like they'll introduce that.
I think anytime I can hide in a doorway in the background of a 2D level where it's like oh, here's a closet, and you can sort of like like, curl around the closet, hide in the shadow and the character walks past you.
I like that.
That feels cool.
Anything more than that, it's usually probably a bit much.
Do you wind up playing that Terminator 2D No Fate game?
I did, yes.
There's that one sequence where the T-1000 is chasing you and it very much is exactly what you described.
Like Sarah Connor, you duck into the closet.
Cool.
Yeah, I think there was a part at the end of the game where they did something like that, and it was a little bit more challenging.
It was like, okay, this is a little cheap now, but up until that point, I was enjoying that.
I beat that game.
That game was pretty good.
I checked out Darn's Paradox during a preview during GDC and the stealth segments kind of bugged me.
But maybe I just don't wind up liking them when they're in a 2D plane versus 3D.
Anyway, moving along, going from the sea to the space.
Mike Minotti, you've checked out Marvel Cosmic Invasion.
Yeah, just over this holiday weekend, my girlfriend was visiting.
I was like all right, I actually rarely play games on my couch in the living room on like an Xbox or PlayStation anymore.
What's something we could play pretty quickly here and have some fun?
And just going through Game Pass, I saw Marvel Cosmic Invasion.
This is that beat-em-up.
They're from tribute games, the people who did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder's Revenge.
This came out last year.
Like I played the demo of it and then I was like yeah, once that comes out, I'll get around to it.
And I never did.
This was a good opportunity just to go play through the whole thing with my girlfriend for an evening.
It was a really fun way to spend that evening, right?
Just, you know, really good pixel art.
Very, you know, just nice visuals all around.
Very punchy combat.
Beat'em up stuff felt great.
I like the tag system, so you're picking two characters, so you're kind of swapping between it.
You can call one in the middle of a combo or swap in the middle of a combo to extend it.
Each character has a different thing too.
So they're not just palette swaps or, you know, like especially these old beat-em-ups like um, you know, teenage ninja turtles, they're all basically the same a little bit different.
We have like the old x-men arcade game, like everybody has like the one power, but otherwise very similar.
Here it's like okay, Captain America can throw the shield.
He has like a kind of uppercut anti-air thing.
Whereas an Iron Man can just straight up fly.
He can shoot the repulsor blast, but they have to recharge over time.
So stuff like that is cool.
I like how the levels encourage you to swap up the characters as well by having like the canonical characters for the level.
Yeah.
And it's like okay, so I wasn't going to use this character, but now this level is expecting me to do that.
So I'll swap over to them and then you can get a bonus, I think, if you do certain things in the stage with them.
Yeah.
I mean they do that, but they also Like your characters level up, and so they get perks when you play with them.
So there's a bit of like, well, now this character is stronger.
I feel like I should just keep playing as them.
So I felt a little dissent, de-incentivize to swap characters, I guess, which was maybe a little bit of a bummer to me.
So I did just kind of stay with Captain America and Iron Man the whole time.
You know you, straight up, are unlocking characters like Venom or the Silver Surfer while you're playing the game.
So yeah, I guess, like I understand you want to have that progression system of parties.
Like yeah, maybe didn't.
I bet if I had just swapped anyways I would have been fine, I wouldn't have noticed.
But in my mind I was like but this character has a plus bonus self and it says I have a new passive skill.
I don't know what that passive skill is, but I have it and I want to use it.
I think like, what got me over the hump is like oh, if I do these certain challenges with these characters, I'll get extra upgrades and stuff like that.
So it's like I might as well try to maximize it.
And then, yeah it's.
I did get to a point, playing by myself, where there was a couple levels that I had to do a couple of times to be able to beat them.
And I was like okay, so I'm leveling up these characters now and they'll be ready for the rest of the game.
And I'll go over to these characters and kind of do the same thing with them.
I do really enjoy this game for the sheer fact that they have Cosmic Ghost Rider in it.
Yeah, it looks great.
And they do some good pulls with the characters, not always the most obvious thing.
Like, it's Beta Ray Bill instead of Thor, right?
There's even some, like, a lady showed up with a sword, and I was just like, is that...
Magic or whatever, who I only know about recently because of Marvel Rivals and Tokan.
I know some other person that I don't even know.
I'm like, okay.
I will say it's kind of hard for me to feel much...
I guess just to feel much with Marvel stuff anymore.
Oh yeah.
I just, I just feel so kind of like overwhelmed by it and just desensitized to it.
And I'm having that a little bit of token where it's like I don't know who they could show, a token where I'd be like, oh yeah, I guess it would be Cyclops for you, Jan.
That would be it.
That would be the biggest pop for me at this point.
Otherwise, I just don't know how much I would care.
The game has some of the problems that a lot of these games have, where it's like oh, I've been fighting the same kind of enemies for a long time here, haven't I?
You know, some of that just comes with The genre.
We'll say it's interesting.
I did like this game.
It's funny how, you know, I thought this would be the big beat-em-up last year and then it was actually Absalom, which I think is even from the same publisher.
In fact, I remember at Summer Game Fest at their booth they had Marvel Cosmic Invasion and then they had Absalom there and I was like oh, what's that?
Oh, it looks like a Golden Axe.
That's neat.
Anywho.
Uh-huh.
And that ended up kind of being the more impactful game.
We should do a tier list of the modern beat-em-ups.
We could pick one game and be like, this is when they started.
Oh, yeah.
I think it's like Castle Crashers, the beginning of that.
Oh, maybe Castle Crashers is like, yeah, the beginning.
Maybe.
Wait.
That was almost like a separate, smaller revival with that Scott Pilgrim game back then.
It feels like it weren't something newer that started around Streets of Rage 4, maybe River City Girls 1.
Oh, yeah.
That'd be good.
Yeah.
Yeah, because it feels like they started leaning into a little bit more depth in the combat at least.
Depth in the combat, depth in the replayability, yes, absolutely.
I mean, Streets of Rage 4's roguelite mode is fantastic.
Oh, this is the key idea of what to do here, and then obviously Absalom took that and ran with it.
I'm a big Scott Pilgrim mark.
I still, even though the game came out maybe a month or so ago, I still want to do a quick look for it, because that game is doing some interesting things.
Specifically, if you were tuned into the whole uh, story of Scott Pilgrim.
There was that Netflix show that came out that kind of twisted the story around, which was a fun uh uh neat.
Look at the universe.
The game does a very similar thing, um, that I, I want more folks to see.
Also give us more on a Monoguchi music.
And that's not normally my Jimmy jam, but tracks were hot.
I do want to check out that Scott Pilgrim game still.
That's also tribute games.
Oh, yeah.
They've been doing a lot.
Please just give them the Simpsons after all this.
It has to happen eventually.
Drake's a coward.
He won't do it.
Yeah, come on, Drake.
I'll get you a Diet Coke or whatever you want.
Speaking about games with multiple characters in them.
Mike Minotti, you have continued your adventures through Resident Evil Zero.
I beat it, Jan, I beat Resident Evil Zero.
I did it, which, yeah, feels good.
This always seems like a controversial game, and I'm ready to be a Resident Evil Zero defender now.
I'm like, oh, come on.
Oh, sweet.
Everyone complains about, yeah.
But then when I ranked it in the series, I'm like, eh, it goes on the bottom.
Fully on the bottom?
Of the numbered series?
Yeah, but I haven't played like six, right?
So, you know, it's in like that tier with Resident Evil 3 remake, Resident Evil 5 for me.
Our games, I like those games.
Five's above those.
Now it's five has issues.
Five is really fun, but it has it has certain issues.
Yes, kind of like this game where i think it was fun.
Um, it looks great because it just looks like resident evil one remake.
It's some of the stuff that i was worried about that people complain about a lot, like the way the inventory works.
You don't have the item boxes, you just drop items on the ground.
You have to deal with it like that.
That wasn't too bad.
Yeah.
It's, you know, inventory management, and it's slightly less convenient than it is in some of the other games.
But you have two characters between them.
You can kind of figure that inventory out.
It's okay.
You'll, you'll get there.
I've got a question from the chat Mike, I think for you from team Kayla.
Oh, is resident evil zero worse, the two remake?
I don't believe it.
Yes, i think, i think.
I think, even kayla, i don't know, because this game wasn't very scary and that often seems to be your issue with what makes it the worst.
The bad ones are the scary ones.
Yeah right, so like there were some scary moments in the beginning, but most resident evil games kind of mellow out on that as time goes by.
Some of the other things I heard about like oh, the enemies are sort of annoying and they're very bullet-spongy.
That was true.
But I liked having the two characters and solving some of the puzzles with them.
The puzzles in general, I relatively...
Enjoyed.
I liked both characters.
Bad boy Billy with his tribal arm tattoos and Rebecca Chambers.
It was a good crew.
It struggles just with that comparison, the Resident Evil 1 remake, because the environments.
You start off on that train, and that's all I knew about this game.
In my mind, this game may have taken place entirely on a train.
That's what I thought as well.
And to be clear, that's what I want from this game.
I want this game to be on a train and have pre-rendered backgrounds like Resident Evil Remake on the GameCube, and look awesome.
That's what I want.
You're on the train for like two hours in the beginning.
Okay, I'll take that.
It's the best part of the game.
And I get why it's maybe hard to keep that up for long because it's a train.
You just got to...
Up the train, you got down the train.
There's maybe two levels, and then you could go up on the top of the train.
Part of me wishes they could have extended that a little bit, because then the next areas you're basically in Spencer Mansion, Light.
It's like the Umbrella Research area and it's okay, and then you're in some cathedral and then you're in another underground research facility something, something.
Of course, it's Resident Evil, we know.
Right, right.
So if they could have kept that train with that sort of elegant Oriental Express look, that was very striking.
And then after that the game kind of loses on having its own visual identity, even though the pre-runner background still look amazing.
All right, still incredibly attractive game.
But yeah, it loses a little something.
So it's a good time.
I'm really glad that i played it.
I'll be very curious to see What they do with.
It was a remake.
And I hope when they remake it, they don't just turn it into Resident Evil 2 remake.
I hope they find a way to make the whole you're controlling two characters thing work and maybe be a little bit less cumbersome.
Maybe even make it a co-op game.
Yeah.
At some point, get the remake Resident Evil 5 in this.
Maybe work on those co-op mechanics for both of them.
That'd be a good time.
That'd be smart.
Yeah.
I really do like the idea of us doing a baton pass with the different campaigns for RE6.
You can't just say these things, Jan.
You know what you have to do at some point then.
Because I'm like Mike.
Six is something I never checked out because of the gigantic vomiting on it from Games Media.
Other people from the team in chat elsewhere, Discord, they're just beginning to panic.
I see Will say no, just no.
All right.
I think you're right, Dan.
We have to do it.
I mean Kayla and I had the intention of going through it because we had a fun time playing five co-op.
And then we did one of the four campaigns and both me and Kayla were like oh, this is not, we can't keep going with this.
This is awful.
It's so fucking bad.
Uh, and say it for myself, because i like i put it below residual zero and then i can be like residual zero is is good.
People are too mean to it.
It's not the worst resident evil game.
Yeah you, you need that.
You need to be able to say that part that's crucial.
So yeah right god how, how would we figure out who does what campaign?
That'd be a fun little exercise.
Roll a roll of dice or roll of dice, or maybe a community vote.
Maybe they'll know which one's the worst and they could punish us.
I think I did whichever one was in a graveyard.
I think that's the Chris one.
And then there's one that starts with like a political thing with, like the president turning into a zombie.
I think that's when that's Leon.
So I think I've actually done two of the four campaigns.
Once when it came out, once with Kayla.
I would have to take the other one then.
I will eventually play through all of the six campaigns over the course of like 15 years.
I would want to do one with Mike where I secretly install mods.
So he has to play as John Halo.
Oh, God.
Your character is 10% smaller.
Okay.
You are going to have so much egg on your face when you see this horse and you fall in love with how little he is.
He's stuck in geometry.
I can't believe it.
Mike, it's going to remind you of one of the best parts of Parks and Rec, Lil' Sebastian.
I love Lil' Sebastian, but that's a real horse.
Nobody modded that horse.
I guess maybe evolution.
Yeah, no, humans definitely did.
Genetics totally modded that horse.
Breeding, yeah, yeah, yeah.
God, that's a good name for an episode.
Modded that horse.
Writing that down.
Mike Minotti to cap off the video game talk you have checked out on the Switch 2 Virtual Fighter 5.
Revo World Stage for Nintendo Switch 2.
We should play!
Yeah, it's funny because, like you know, the Switch 2 could play the new Resident Evil game well, and yet when I play this fighting game from 2006 on my Switch 2, I'm like
Wow, this is crazy.
Virtua Fighter 5 on my Switch, and it looks great, right?
It's a fucking PS3 game.
Everything has come to Nintendo, but for some reason in my mind I'm still like I'm playing a Virtua Fighter game on my Nintendo console.
Whoa, bro.
Because I was such a Sega kid, and I love Virtua Fighter.
I had Virtua Fighter 1 and 2 on my Saturn.
I even got the Virtua Fighter 1 Remix disc that they mailed to the Saturn owners because the original port was so bad.
You could VF kids.
I did a VFKids, and I like VFKids.
I don't understand.
I want to play VFKids.
Everyone acts like, oh, it's a terrible thing that they did, right?
I don't know.
They had giant heads.
It was funny.
Come on.
Live a little.
Yeah.
Virtua Fighter 5.
It's a good video game.
And this is a very good way of playing that video game.
You know especially, You could spend so much time in this game just kind of picking a character and trying to learn everything.
Even though the game is like a three-button game, right?
You got punch, kick, and block.
There's so much nuance to that.
And then there are some characters who are way more... technical than others.
There's the luchador, right?
And what's going on with that?
Or it could just be Jeffrey and do my wrestling moves and my grapples and that feels really good as well.
I did not...
I did not really even bother trying the online stuff and maybe I should have, but in my mind I was like that's probably not going to work.
I'm also not that interested in seeing what people who have played 2000 times more Virtua Fighter 5 than me are going to do to me online.
I know how that's going to work.
Do you know if they do the whole weird Arxis lobby system, or is it just straight up matchmaking in this?
I don't know.
I didn't really mess around with that.
Part of me thinks the original.
I think one of the Rivas had something like that.
There's been so many versions of the five.
Yeah, i tell you what it was.
It was virtual fighter 3, i think, where it's like the um, who's the main character?
Jackie, or something like that.
Uh kara yeah, someone like he was like spinning and his jacket was spinning around his back and it was like oh, material physics have come to video games.
This is the most realistic thing i've ever seen.
That image has been in my head ever since.
I need to bring something up.
It's one of my favorite tropes for a character to wear a jacket on their shoulders, over them, and not like sleeves through.
Like the Requiem guy.
Yes.
Yes.
Exactly like the Requiem dude.
But it never looks cool in real life.
It just seems not convenient.
Yeah.
It seems like it's always going to be sliding off and you look like a dope and it doesn't seem like it would actually keep you warm, which is the functional part of a jacket.
I've tried it so many times, and I can't do it.
I'm sorry.
I might continue on with Virtua Fighter.
I'm sorry.
Somebody in chat's like we should play all four campaigns of Resident Evil 6 at the same time.
No!
Oh my god.
We race?
Yeah!
Isn't there a campaign that's just one character?
Yeah, there's an Ada Waugh campaign that is just the one character.
That could be Jerf by himself.
No, I think... No, Dib.
Oh, Dib, yeah.
Kayla.
Kayla.
Kayla.
Kayla.
Honestly, okay, if we're gimmicking it up, suddenly it sounds like a pretty good idea.
Apparently they can't still play that one in co-op.
Oh, the player 2 is just a generic agent.
Incredible.
Let's go.
She's like, I feel kind of bad about all the genocide I have had now.
It's okay because I'm hot.
Mike, how do you know about my internal dialogue this whole time?
There you go.
I like that spider, by the way.
That push spider was cute.
She got it for Easter.
Yeah.
Good, good, good.
Yeah, Virtua Fighter 5.
Still a good video game.
Playing it on Switch.
That's fun.
I'm excited to see what that new Virtua Fighter is going to be all about.
Very exciting.
Maybe we should check out some of this Virtua Fighter on UPF this week.
Oh, yeah.
I would play some Virtua Fighter.
I would do that, too.
Sure.
I'm looking for an excuse to play that online with you guys.
Yeah, I don't want to go on matchmaking.
I don't want to play with you guys.
And this is the version that came out on Steam last year.
Yeah, totally.
Virtua Fighter 5.
It's available there.
Switch places.
Mike, we're going to play a quick game.
You cannot participate because you are more well-versed in at least Virtua Fighter, I'm assuming.
Grub, Dan, we're going to go back and forth.
Name as many Virtua Fighter characters as we can.
They're all.
Grub.
I took my one.
Okay, so Virtua Fighter characters.
All right, I will say Jackie.
Akira.
Oh, you're doing two.
Okay.
Ryu?
Ryu?
The ninja?
Yeah, okay.
Jeffrey.
That I have no more.
Sarah.
Oh, yeah.
The hornet.
The car.
That's Fighters Megamix.
You lose.
Okay, fine.
I'll see myself out.
You guys have a good rest of the podcast.
You forgot about Wolf, damn it.
Oh, yeah, Wolf.
I like Wolf a lot, actually.
Yeah, Wolf is sick as hell.
Alright, folks.
Where's Wolf from?
He's got red hair and... Oh, so Ryu is in Dead or Alive.
Yeah, you're disqualified.
Okay, Worf.
Wolf could be a Nacho Libre situation.
You know where it had certain familial lineage, but it was also raised in a specific location.
Anyway folks, we're going to go take a quick bricky break and we will be back with the news right after this.
This is a fraud report.
This is just crazy.
Thank you.
I think the natural conclusion is eventually we're doing a panel and Dan couldn't be there for some reason.
And then we open up the panel to questions from the audience.
And a man walks up and introduces himself as Walter Crunk.
And it's Dan in makeup.
And at that point, we already can't trust anything on Reddit.
I want to be able to not trust anyone I ever meet.
Like this could be Dan Reichert.
You can trust it now because fucking I heard Walter Crunk got banned.
There were serious discussions with the mod team about Walter Crunk, and they banned him.
I didn't see that.
That's a real fun mod team.
That's a great job.
Well done, mods.
Well done.
If you navigate the various parts that Giant Bomb is on the internet, specifically the discord, you will see if i've seen a discussion about it.
Oh my god, incredible man, everyone's discussing walter cronk.
Uh, all right, let's get on to the autobiography Star Wars Eclipse.
Development is quote very slow going.
Development on that game.
You know which is the Quantic Dream game, which is not supposed to be like a typical Quantic Dream game.
It's going to be an action adventure.
First got announced in 2021 and it is apparently proceeding very slowly, with very little progress over months.
Sources indicate the game is still looking to be years off from completion.
Parent company NetEase which, as a reminder, I think, acquired Quantic Dream a few years ago, has been hesitant to invest in expanding the development team.
So this sounds like another one of those issues where NetEase acquired a studio or started a new studio, like they did with the RGG guy who was like okay, I'm going to go to NetEase and make something.
And now he's made that game and NetEase is like, oh, we don't care about this anymore.
So you can put it out if you want, but we're not going to spend on marketing or anything like that or even do the publishing.
So...
Yeah, and this game was always going to take a long time.
I remember back in 2021 and 2022 being like yeah, I don't think this game comes out until 2027, according to people that are telling me what they know.
And now we're coming up on that next year, and it sounds like it won't even be ready at that point.
This was always one that was weird, but...
Do you guys think we ever see Quantic Dream's Star Wars Eclipse?
We've seen... Mikey, go ahead.
I mean, so, Quantic Dream released a game this year, by the way.
Isn't that wild?
That Spellcaster's Chronicles?
Spellcaster Chronicles, yes.
Right?
That came out... So, it came out in early access for 26.
It has, like... just under 700 scene reviews at mix.
So that game's, that's just not going to happen.
That game's not going to be a thing.
So they're going to lose money on that.
I think I read, I think I saw somewhere.
I don't know.
Maze's case that they were hoping to finance or fund the Star Wars game with the money from spell casters.
Yes.
That's not going to happen.
No. this does not seem like it's going to be a real video game.
Yeah, and we've already seen so many Star Wars movies and games get announced.
They'll have a trailer or a little teaser, and then nothing will ever happen with them.
And I think it's just another one of those.
And, like you know, the word is a lot of work has been done on this game and so you know yeah, it's got a few years left, but they've completed a lot of stuff.
So that's one of the issues, is they kind of need to hire up to work on other stuff they haven't done yet and the people who could do the other stuff well, they've already done a lot of their work.
So that does not mean that's like oh well, they've already done so much work, so they're just going to see it through.
No, they could easily still just cancel this game and it never sees the light of day.
We've seen that, like you said Jan, a number of times, with similarly scoped out Star Wars games specifically.
And I can't say that there are many folks clamoring for a Quantic Dreams Star Wars game as well.
Yeah, I mean, especially, like, do you guys remember the details about its setting and everything?
It's that High Republic stuff.
It's the High Republic stuff.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, which, you know, like, they've kind of stopped and started it up again a little bit.
They like reintroduced a new comic line that still takes place in the High Republic but that never quite hit the way that they were trying to get it to hit.
So like, who's going to?
Like you said Jan, who who's asking for this game?
But specifically, who's asking this game set in the high Republic?
Like I like some of the high Republic stuff and that's not what I'm showing up to star Wars games for.
So it's always been in a weird place.
I don't feel like it's any more real today than it was in 2021.
It's star Wars is also just such an, a funky place.
Like yeah, everyone's talking about Mandalorian and Grogu dude, what's gonna happen with that like, is that like it's going to fizzle out?
Like yeah, I don't know.
I saw a trailer for it and then I don't know.
I love that first season of Mando.
I love Pedro.
Yeah.
But I felt nothing watching that trailer.
I mean, it's like you got to keep watching the second season of Boba Fett or whatever and all this other stuff.
And I did.
Yeah, i mean i've watched some of it, but it's like every every ounce of it i watched made me less interested in whatever this movie was gonna be.
And now it's now, it's here, whatever.
I still can't think about the time when they go like mandalore needs a new ship to replace his rv in the sky that blew up.
How about a two-seater nabu starfighter for a baby?
You'll live in this.
Yes, we're based.
Where do they go to the bathroom?
Who cares?
I did initially pop for that until I thought about the logistics.
Yeah, that is the thing where it's like I'm always thinking about where do they go to the bathroom in space?
So, yeah, I couldn't get on board with it.
All right, let's keep going here.
Sony delist hundreds more PS5 and PS4 games, including Jesus Simulator.
Sony is escalating its efforts to clean up the PlayStation Store by delisting thousands of low-quality or deceptive games with catalogs of publishers like Welding Byte Go Game Console Publisher and VRC Forge recently wiped.
They removed titles like Jesus Simulator, Watermelon Fruits Puzzle and titles intended to confuse consumers, such as I Am Busy Digging a Hole, which is a clear knockoff of another game.
One of the things that people are saying is oh, AI has made it very simple for these companies to make even more of these knockoff games very quickly, and people will make a mistake and purchase them.
I listen.
These games are so low quality.
It's like if you want to get them off your store, I don't blame you.
I still think the better solution would be like, just let people get refunds.
If they don't like the game that they bought, like within the first two hours, just do exactly what Steam does and let people one click, get a refund.
But Sony still won't do that.
So it is a problem that they have these deceptive games on their store.
It's more of a problem, I should say.
It would still be a problem for a lot of people who feel like it clogs up the store shelves, makes it hard to find stuff, which it certainly does.
But yeah, cleaning up their store from a lot of this junk is probably going to be one of the solutions here.
But do you guys expect Sony to eventually make it possible for people to get an easy refund?
What was the last game that launched poorly that they had to offer refunds?
Was it Cyberpunk?
Did Concord do refunds?
Yeah, it might have.
Right, because they shut that game down pretty quickly.
Mind's Eye was another one.
Oh, Mind's Eye, right.
Yeah.
That was because it was sabotage, though.
Of course.
Well, we're going to find out in that DLC.
They're going to have the proof, and you're all going to feel like fools.
Wait, what does that come out?
I don't know.
I'm so excited for that.
We kind of need to check it out.
We will definitely be checking that out as soon as it happens, for sure.
But that did happen last week.
MindsEye said that they're going to have DLC for their game that explains who and why the sabotage behind Minds Eye happened.
Not just explain grub, it's going to provide proof.
It's going to provide names.
It's going to name names.
I can't do that.
Yeah, I don't think you can do that.
Mike's right.
Legally, that's a problem.
You can, but your lawyers are going to be killing themselves.
We got to get out of here.
We can't do this job anymore.
Please.
Is he the espionage?
Is he the sabotage?
He's been working for Rockstar this entire time.
You know what this has the energy of that mindset thing, has the energy of like when a wrestler gets me too'd and then it's like oh, you're all gonna feel like idiots.
Here's my two-hour youtube explanation showing all my text messages and naming all the names.
Like it has that energy to it.
Yes, you know naming names.
Yeah, like an ec3 type of deal, you're gonna control their narrative yeah, Yeah.
So we're looking forward to that.
We'll see what that looks like.
I just continue to be baffled by everything happening with Minds Eye, for sure.
Alright, PlayStation Studios removes nearly all PC references from its website, so they still have not come out as Sony and said.
That thing that Jason Schreier said we're doing, where we're not going to port all of our big games big single player games to PC anymore.
We're not doing that anymore.
Yay.
They haven't said that publicly but they are clearly moving in that direction as a lot of their references in their SDK and all kinds of other stuff.
Their references on their terms of service, references on the store that say PC.
They've dropped that stuff.
So they're de-emphasizing it at the very least.
I can imagine it's probably going to be challenging for them to communicate it a little bit because they don't want to make it seem like they're never going to release anything on the PC ever again, because the multiplayer live service games will still be coming to PC.
So it's just a specific set of games But yeah, it does feel like that is really happening.
So recent games like Ghost of Yotei and Sorrows are just coming up soon.
Those are the first two to get marked as.
Those won't be coming to PC.
There is no plans to do that.
So that era is over for now.
And I guess, how do you guys feel about that?
And do you expect the change to continue to stick?
It seems silly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a bummer.
I mean, at this point, my PC is more powerful than my base PlayStation 5, and I'm not buying a PlayStation 5 Pro anytime soon.
You know even something like a Soros.
Uh, if I played that, I bet I'd like to play that game with mouse and keyboard.
That is a game mostly about pointing and shooting at things largely.
Um, Yeah, it's a bummer seeing like we're moving in that direction.
I guess I kind of get it from their perspective.
Like, why aren't we shoring up?
Why aren't we really emphasizing the fact that we are a console company?
Why are we dabbling in this PC space that you know that's a World War?
Suddenly, PlayStation thing isn't special.
They are incredibly special in the console space.
So I get, I get investing there a little bit.
I'm not going to be shocked to work back over here at some point.
You know, five years, 10 years, whatever right.
Places of games being on PC more regularly.
I'm thinking less than that.
I'm thinking three.
Yeah.
Uh, On the other side of the PS6.
Yeah, very quickly.
Some of those launch games might show up on PC a year later, right?
I could see that happening.
Yeah, depending on how I don't even want to say the words PlayStation 6 launch goes.
But if that goes poorly, or if availability people's ability to even buy them is poor, then
They're going to need to still sell the software.
So I could see them pivoting and being like oh, you know what?
We're back on PC.
Yep.
Yeah.
And I'll say a lot of people in chat are echoing that exact same sentiment, Jen.
I think that's the general consensus here is like once they get to the PS6, they'll reintroduce it.
At that point.
It's, you know, it might take a little bit of time, but they will.
All right.
Speaking of PS6, report claims that the PS6 handheld will be more powerful than the Xbox Series S when it launches, in terms of just raw performance and then anything involving ray tracing.
It will be much, much better at performing.
PS6 handheld goes along with a standard PS6 and maybe a PS6S, a less powerful PS6 as well.
All those things have been in various forms of reports about the next generation from Sony.
But here in a general perspective, but profile of how powerful this thing will be.
Does that get you guys more excited, prepare you more for a much higher price?
I want a handheld PlayStation six for sure.
Like that would be the most exciting for me, but it will come down to, is this thing $800, $900?
How expensive is it going to be?
Yeah, there's just so many other questions.
Yeah, the idea of having a really powerful PlayStation portable console, that would be good.
I would like that.
It gets weird because I can't know how many pillars of portables I'm going to have.
I'm going to have the Switch.
I need to have my PC portable and I need to have my PlayStation portable thing.
And all these things are costing 700, 800, 900 dollars now.
It's like choices are going to have to start being made.
Maybe two out of three.
Maybe one out of three or none.
But boy, being a three out of three household, that's going to be tough.
Yeah, agreed.
Especially doesn't help when, like every time, I see a new friend post about the AYN Thor, I'm like I should have bought that.
I should have grabbed that.
And now I'm feeling the FOMO of that.
Yep.
And the stuff is just going to keep going up in price.
So it's like, yeah, stuff like that.
You kind of want to act and then you feel left out.
And you're like, oh, I didn't have to spend that money.
I'm glad I saved that money.
And then a week later, you get the desire again.
And now it's $100 more expensive.
All right, let's see here.
Level 5, Vision 2026 will be a stream that's happening soon to show off what Level 5 the developer is working on.
This is happening April 10th at 6 a.m.
Pacific time.
8 a.m.
That's not, it can't be right.
Uh, 6 a.m.
Pacific time.
I'll say 9 a.m.
Eastern.
Uh, that makes more sense.
The stream, which will feature level five.
President and CEO Akira Hino is expected to provide updates, new trailers and really state windows for upcoming games like DECA police and Azuma 11 R, E and professor Layton and the new world of steam.
Uh, professor layton in the new world of steam is one i'm looking forward to.
That got announced a few years ago.
We haven't heard much about it since.
It does feel like it's time for that.
And then deca police, and that's been in the works for forever.
Yeah, i still don't really know what it is.
I feel like i heard that name forever ago.
Yeah, they've been working on it for a very long time.
So it'd be nice to like, oh, these things are real and are coming soon.
That would be exciting.
But you know, none of this matters because, gang, the streets, there's heat on the street.
It's not just me this time.
We're all clamoring for Dark Cloud 3.
Where is Dark Cloud 3?
Many people are asking this.
Thank you, Dan.
Yeah.
When's the last time Level 5 made one of their really big RPGs, though?
That's something they were able to do a lot in the PS3 era.
Ni No Kuni 2 was a PS4 game.
Boy, that was probably like 2018, though, right?
That was probably even quite some time ago.
Since then, I think.
They made Fantasy Life Eye, which I don't know if that's exactly what Mike is getting at.
Sure.
I mean, it's a big game.
It is a big game.
Yeah, yeah.
New Kitty 2 is 2018.
How about that?
Nailed it.
Then, yeah, since then, what's this Megaton series?
Yeah, Fancy Life, Inazuma.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they haven't made a big RPG in a big way.
I guess Fantasy Life 5, that's just something.
It's a great game.
It's a good game, yeah.
You can't make a Dark Cloud 3 on top of whatever's doing that, right?
Yeah.
Man, shouts out to Jean D'Arc for the PSP.
Game was an underappreciated banger.
I can't believe the start of level five.
They were like, Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud 2, then somehow we're making Dragon Quest VIII.
Like, what?
How'd that?
Whoa, look, geez.
They just had an incredible run on the PS.
Then they did Rogue Galaxy, John the Arc, then me after that.
It's like, Professor Layton.
Yeah.
And then, when we first saw White Knight Chronicles, we all thought that was going to be a very big deal.
That was like one of the early PlayStation 3 tech demos.
It looked amazing.
It turned out to mostly be bullshit.
I also still kind of want to go and play Dark Knight.
I mean, White Knight Chronicles 1 and 2 at some point.
There's a White Knight Chronicles 2.
I'm with you, Mikey.
They got a 60 Metacritic.
What?
What is it?
They also had the game that was the closest to overtaking Pokemon as the big thing in Japan, with Yo-Kai Watch, which was massive.
It was so huge for like five, six, seven years.
To me, it felt like it fell off the planet.
I bet it's still popular.
It seems like it kind of like, yeah, since COVID, it seems there hasn't been a new Yo-Kai watch.
Here's the thing, gang.
Here's the thing.
It's in the name.
Nintendo doesn't want to listen to me.
Valve doesn't want to listen to me.
Now, I'm on the streets and the steps of PlayStation.
Please!
Give me a goddamn watch!
Anyway.
Get a Yo-Kai watch uh, all right.
Uh, the super mario brothers movie uh, the galaxy movie becomes or the series becomes the only animated movie series to open globally at more than 350 million dollars.
Twice, both the super mario brothers movie did it and the super mario galaxy movie did that as well.
This past weekend uh, the super mario galaxy movie made 3725 million dollars globally.
Uh, that puts it just behind what the super mario brothers movie did three years ago at 3878 million.
So just a touch off there, but that is a ton of money.
It is like just unequivocally massively successful.
Yeah, This is what everyone involved was hoping for that they could replicate the success of the first movie again.
And it ensures that they will begin reinvesting in this stuff across the board.
And you're going to get a lot more Mario movies, obviously.
But now it's like oh, full gear into taking all these properties and making a bunch of other Nintendo related animated stuff, probably at Illumination.
Mike and Grub, you know, you two have seen the movie.
Did it seem like they positioned a character like Fox McCloud in a way that he could successfully have his own spinoff movie just based off of the movie character alone?
Yeah, yeah.
Even with Star Fox popping off like this, the movie puts over Star Fox big, right?
Yes.
So there's going to be interest.
There's probably going to be a new game.
Even then, I'm still like, are they really going to make a Star Fox movie?
I hope so.
Might be more likely he shows up it's stuff.
It's like that hawkeye thing jan, he'll show up in our movies.
Maybe at one point get a limited run series on something peacock i don't know what that is is daredevil.
The better comparison in terms of like, like a lot of shows, maybe.
Maybe i don't know, we'll see because it definitely is a highlight of the film.
Uh, And I am curious where all that goes.
I mean I'm kind of curious what exactly the third one is going to look like now, because they really do hold very little back here.
Of course, it's Mario.
There is still a ton that they can do, especially now that the Star Fox gate is open.
You could just be like, oh, and Pikachu's in this one.
There are also tickets.
I don't know.
Yeah, the post-credits character, which I won't say who it is, but it's very similar to how they do stuff with Sonic, where it's like okay, the next movie is going to be about this character.
It's like the first one with Yoshi.
And it's like...
The implication of that character is like okay, I bet some other ones that are often related to that character will show up, and it could be the new threats and stuff like that.
So you could see where they go to just keep this going.
It's going to be the same thing.
A lot of references with just a new set of villains each time, basically.
And this time it was Bowser Jr.
It'll be someone else next time.
They can keep that going for a while, but I want to see what it looks like when they do begin working on something like maybe, a Star Fox.
I don't know if that's going to happen.
They're probably going to try Donkey Kong first, see how that goes, and then take it from there.
And if that does well, maybe we do get something involving a Star Fox in theaters.
I want to see what's the Guardians of the Galaxy moment, right?
Where it's a Nintendo franchise that the average person doesn't know about and its movie was a giant hit.
Kid Icarus.
Star Tropics.
I was thinking Kid Icarus, actually.
All right.
People like Palatino a lot, that's for sure.
Yeah, let's get these last couple of stories.
State of Decay 3's 2020 announced trailer was just a concept, Studiohead says.
Basically said in 2020 when they announced that game, it was just a Word document and nothing else.
But they had a trailer, announced it back in 2020.
Now it is the year 2026.
And for the first time, it sounds like the game is going to be playable to people.
They're going to show up with a beta or an alpha.
I think it's an alpha in May.
So people are going to be able to play this game, State of Decay 3.
Wake up your Brad Shoemakers.
Tell them it's time to go back to State of Decay.
So the game's real, surprisingly.
It's not one of those ones that got caught up in the Microsoft calling, so they'll actually release that game.
I'm a little surprised that it made it through, but I'm glad it did.
I have a soft spot for State of Decay.
It's a systems-based game, and I like those.
Yeah, I didn't realize how strong of an audience that this game has.
People that are into it are extremely into it.
Mike Maharty is one of them.
It is a very unique game.
For player co-op, that is the type of thing that would be fun to kind of mess around with.
I would try.
I don't think I've played a second of a state of decay before.
So, yeah, I guess I should try one out.
It's very much about like emergent storytelling, getting these characters.
They have their own background and then that makes them behave in a certain way.
And you try to get them to do things and you're like oh, I didn't account for the fact that he's actually a dick and I shouldn't have done that.
And then you kind of tell these stories and.
I like that concept.
I just have never been able to fully click with one yet.
It's the emerging stuff in the systems that does it for me where it's.
You know, normally I'm not big into zombie stuff, but this one has its own hook that got me to look past that and really enjoy it.
I have a small specific friend group that is very much into this kind of like post-apocalyptic zombie world.
And this day's gone.
Any of the Walking Dead games will appeal to them because it's like, yeah, I'm a tough guy.
I could survive the zombie apocalypse forever.
I think that this is still somehow appealing to those people, while being kind of its own thing that people who just are there for systems can show up for.
So yeah i, i i'm also not super into zombies, so it's like i i think that's one of the things to push me away.
It's like i like this idea, maybe in a different way, but you can see why the apocalypse works so well for it.
It's funny because that same group of friends isn't into anything like dead rising at all.
Like dead rising is like too goofy, too fun.
The zombies shouldn't be laughed at.
It's sad They used to have brains.
I don't know if they think it's sad, but they think it's serious.
It's time to take these zombies seriously.
Dead inside.
Speaking of taking people seriously, the Mass Effect TV show will reportedly be rewritten to appeal, to quote non-gamers.
Yeah, I don't know.
Report claims Amazon's head of global TV, Peter Friedlander, who has now become the last word at Amazon by looking at scripts and be like I approve or I don't approve.
He didn't approve of the Mass Effect scripts, which is Going to start filming soon.
It's very close to switching over to production.
Good sign.
They don't have the scripts ready.
Yeah.
He said, no, go back and make it appeal to non-gamers.
And I still don't really know what that means.
I've seen people...
They hypothesized that.
Oh, they made it to appeal to fans of Mass Effect, and if you're not a fan of Mass Effect, you won't recognize this character.
And it's too inside for people who already are familiar with all of the lore.
It's like, well, that...
I think that would be dumb if that's the way they were doing things, but that's not what it says.
It says non-gamers, not non-Mass Effect fans.
Right, because obviously Fallout and The Last of Us, the reason why they were big, successful TV shows is because they did attract an audience outside of just that, core fans of those video games.
But it seems like they did that by just being really good adaptations of the video game thing.
The feelings of the video games.
Right.
Making those people happy.
And then it's just so good and well done that other people discover it.
Uh, because you know, if you go the other way, they end up with a halo thing where oh, we're gonna appeal to the normies and make, we're gonna we know how to make this more interesting and cinematic, master cheeks.
Well, you can't just have a character who doesn't show his face a bunch of times.
Like, come on.
Then you really lose that core audience.
It's concerning here because Bass Effect has very dedicated fans.
And if they turn on this thing, there's no hope.
You have to have them on board with this.
Do you think the original script may have been too science and sci-fi heavy that they thought it may not be unpalatable to the normal?
It's impossible.
It could be that.
But, you know, it could just be like, what's a Garrus?
That stupid alien, right?
Like, I don't know.
We just don't know what their issue is.
Yeah, there's a strong possibility that this Mass Effect show will not have that many aliens in it, which boy i mean that's.
That was part of what was so cool about mass effect when i first played it.
It's like, you know, with a star trek a lot of the aliens just have to be people with the forehead ridge because it's tv and it's cheap.
On a video game you don't have to do that and some of the aliens will look a bit more humanoid than others.
But you couldn't really get a rex in a TV show with decent practical visual effects.
And now that we're still here and we're gonna make this show, I'm still kind of like How are you going to do that?
How are you going to make Garrus and Rex look right?
That's the other thing.
It's described as a premium genre drama, or pricey, excuse me, pricey drama.
So they're going to spend a lot of money on this thing and Amazon has spent like a billion dollars on their Lord of the Rings show and all this other stuff and Apparently it's important to Bezos to have these big premium shows.
So they're probably going to spend a lot of money on this thing.
Hopefully that goes a long way.
Yeah.
Unless like the original script was just very poorly written.
This doesn't bode super well.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't think they just need to be appealing to people who like good shows.
I think that's what they should do.
Yeah.
And do that by being honest to the games.
Sure.
They can't fumble this one.
This is kind of like one of the remaining big golden gooses in terms of a video game property that could be a TV show.
This is the one everybody wants.
You could see how it could work.
But it could just as easily not work.
I don't know.
What about all the like?
You know 20 times?
They've super duper confirmed that the Metal Gear Solid movie is in the works and they've greenlit a script and they've got a director and Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman and Oscar Isaac.
It's in the works.
It's basically in production.
And everyone votes for it every fucking time.
The Bioshock movie is right behind it.
Yeah.
Oh, my.
Yeah.
I mean, you know a successful or?
I haven't seen it myself, but the Exit 8 movie was apparently really well received, based on the highest rated video game movie of all time or something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I don't know.
Maybe you lean into the zaniness of the property you're adapting.
Yeah, definitely.
I think they're learning the wrong lessons if they're running away from the video game stuff by being like oh, any sort of reference to a video game can't be in here, because Fallout very much worked on that level and it went a long way to making people more excited about the actual TV show.
All right, that does it for the headlines.
Jan, I'm handing this show back over to you.
Folks, we're going to take a quick break and be back with the emails and super chats if we got any right after this.
These are the emails for the show emails.
Bombcastgiantbombcom is the email address to send your emails, to write in about any and everything.
We've been getting inundated with hella emails.
I specifically made a note to myself to mention it here.
We've gotten some weird emails Good.
Hell yeah.
Good.
I love that.
Some of them make it onto the show.
Some of them don't.
I still appreciate you sending your emails too.
And hey, you know, for anyone going through a rough time, we assure you that we over here at GBHQ are here for you to make sure that we help you get through the day.
First email comes from Paul.
This morning I got an email from Mike Minotti with a code for being a premium member.
Parentheses, thanks.
And felt excited that my friend was writing to me.
I've never met any of you and live on the other side of the world, Australia.
When was the last time you got excited about a message from a friend who doesn't know you exist?
Paul.
Boy.
Boy, that's pretty specific.
Yeah.
A friend doesn't know you exist?
What?
You don't know they exist, but they message you.
And that's a pretty hard combo.
They don't know you exist, is the way you say it.
Yeah, that might be a super special fun feeling that just you experienced there, but I'm happy for you for it.
And guess what?
I know you exist now, so it'll never happen again.
Wow.
Folks in chat are putting up Kenny G. Kenny G, yeah!
Absolutely.
That's a good one.
That's true, actually.
Never mind.
You're not special.
Logan Roy for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brian Cox.
Yeah.
Brian Cox.
I can't think of one specifically.
Yeah, me neither.
Uh, i mean maybe learning that like um a celebrity listens, or listen to any of the podcasts at one point that that always gets me uh, going find out like john super eye patch wolf is a fan and h bomber guy is a fan, i'm like oh, oh shit, i gotta, i gotta, tighten the ship a bit.
Yeah right.
Definitely like meeting some people at PAX where it's like, oh yeah, that's just Dan Olson.
Yeah, that's cool to see him.
He has no idea I exist, for sure.
I thought it was funny the time Jose Canseco thought I was dead.
I just posted the tweet and the chat.
Jose Canseco somehow thought I died and tweeted a rest in peace to me and tagged me.
If he does still live the day that it comes that you do die, I'm going to make sure that he's the one that announces.
Please do.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
He didn't tag me.
He says, I'm sorry to hear Dan is dead.
I didn't know.
A good, strange little man.
Rest in peace, buddy.
Hug for you.
Just miss you, Bam.
Miss you, brother.
A good, strange little man is incredible.
I hadn't read that in a while.
Title of your memoir.
Yeah.
All right.
Rob writes in, hey, Bomberatos.
I'm visiting Chicago for a week later this year and want to soak in some food options that are part of the giant bomb lore.
I live in Denmark where restaurants are annoyingly classy, so I want to get into the grease zone.
Yeah.
Just don't go to a Portillo's or else you're a filthy kind of funny fan instead.
Exactly.
Don't be a best friend.
Ugh.
Yeah.
Be a worst friend.
Exactly.
Be a giant bomb worst friend.
Yeah.
Welcome, everybody.
I was going to say... No.
Let's do sworn enemies.
Giant bomb sworn enemies.
Yes, there we go.
Clearly, I will order a Jets pizza on day one, but what...
What other Giant Bomb canonical restaurant should I try to give me some good old Americana?
Red Lobster?
Cheesecake Factory?
Give me your go-to top five.
Thanks and love everything you do.
Launch Look for Life.
Rob, I mean Giant Bomb Cannon.
There was that entire the packs that I spent the entire time at that Buffalo Wild Wings, to the point where they gave me the like manager jersey and a name tag.
And I had control of the remote control in the restaurant.
I still have the jersey.
Actually that was my referee jersey.
Um yeah so, oh yeah yeah, buffalo wild wings, those are going away, so if you can find one, go to one, i guess.
Yeah, not doing too well really.
Oh, they're great, Taco Bell.
Cheesecake Factory, you kind of have to see it to believe it.
I think actually that one I maybe would try to do.
There was a Margaritaville in Chicago.
Ooh, Margaritaville.
That's a good shout.
Specifically for this iteration of GB.
Right, but if you're in Chicago, you should get some actual Chicago pizza.
If you go to the touristy one like Giordano's.
Giordano's is good.
Giordano's is fantastic.
It's worth having Giordano's if you're a tourist.
Yes, 100%.
Do that.
You will find it incredibly American.
Yeah, I find it obnoxious when people turn their nose down at something that's like Giordano's is good pizza.
Yes, it's tourist stuff, but it's like a good deep dish pizza.
It's a chain, whatever.
Get over it.
If you're a tourist, be excited about being a tourist.
There's a reason that stuff is the tourist stuff, usually.
Chat really wants you to go to a rainforest cafe.
I have to let you know.
Which I guess is pretty canonical.
I won't tell you what you got to do there.
Legally, he's not allowed to tell you.
Do you think anyone ever has been inspired by that story and did that at a Rainforest Cafe?
No.
I'll tell you what, if you have, don't tell me.
Don't tell us.
But no one's ever done that.
We're in a weird email era right now.
That'd be too weird for email.
Yeah, that's actually too much.
Guys, I already go through so much psychic damage listening to all of the voicemails every week.
Do not do this to me with emails.
I thought you were going to say listening to us.
No, no, no.
I'm part of this mess.
Also, you have to go to a gas station and get hot dogs.
And get the roller taquitos.
Go to a quick trip.
Get the roller taquitos.
They're great.
Taco Bell, I think, Dan, you mentioned Taco Bell.
Oh, sure, go to a Taco Bell.
Oh, go to an Arby's.
You see an Arby's is top.
Get, like, one beef and cheddar, right?
That, or just like go inside and just like you know, like rub the counter and like bless up to it.
You know.
Yeah, yeah, right.
The beef and cheddar boys were here.
He was here, yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Costco hot dog?
Yes.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yes.
What is a food that Backlar likes that he can also... He doesn't.
Does he like food?
I don't know if he likes food anymore.
Chicken?
He likes chicken parm.
He likes chicken parm.
He does like chicken parm.
He gets a glare in his eye when he thinks of chicken parm, yeah.
That man loves a dirty martini.
Oh, sure.
Go get a dirty martini in his honor.
Extra olives, please.
All right.
Travis and Fargo writes in with five questions every week.
I choose one of them.
I chose the fifth one this week.
What skill do you naturally lack but have worked the most to improve?
Hmm.
I used to be almost cripplingly shy, actually, believe it or not.
What?
Didn't really get over that until almost after college.
Really, even even during college i wasn't, you know, doing anything too crazy there.
So yeah, just like actually going out, learning to be comfortable being around people and being myself and developing social skills, things like that.
You know that stuff doesn't always come naturally necessarily, but you kind of just work on it and uh, it's like once you're in front of the mirror being like how are you?
I'm No, not that.
Oh, my name's Mike.
You just go out there and you talk to people, you hang out with people and you just develop that stuff.
Yeah, same with me.
I was super duper shy.
It was college that did it for me.
And more importantly, alcohol.
That helped quite a bit.
Running is one.
I was just not.
I told the story recently about having to call the mile in gym class because I was the one that was taking.
We'll just put down 15 minutes and like fast forward to like the half marathon training and stuff.
And that's not something that came naturally at all.
And I just had to learn, and learn through mistakes and injuries and stuff like that, which I'm still kind of working on.
So yeah, this year is going good.
Yeah, mine's like just being willing to not bother people but feel like i'm not bothering people by by asking them for something or getting their attention or something like that.
It's like always like, ah they, there's no way they're gonna want to put up with me and i just have to like get over that, realize most people do not care.
I just gotta recognize that even my time is valuable, so is theirs, but i, i can bring value to them if i'm bothering them even.
I haven't necessarily improved on this skill at all, but on the Filipino skill tree, there's Two specific things that I'm lacking in.
One of them, basketball prowess.
Terrible.
Of course.
The second one, exactly that grub, singing.
It's an Olympic sport in the Philippines.
And I, unfortunately, my parents didn't spec in that skill tree.
Instead, they give me Catholic guilt.
Okay, extra, sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They were like, you know what?
He needs a plus four in this.
And I've tried so hard to sing well.
Got so far.
And you know, I've been told maybe my ceiling or maybe my like bottom, my floor, is someone's ceiling.
But gang, I'm going to let you all know the second, I can start to sing.
Very well, I'm going to be so fucking insufferable.
All right?
Oh, that'd be fun.
I would never do that.
No.
Never.
Never.
Never.
Come on.
Don't be annoying with singing.
All right.
Last email of the show.
And we do get a lot of these, everyone.
So I'm doing my best to sort through them, read most of them.
I'll try and forward some of them if you have kind words. to say for a specific member of the crew.
There's a couple that actually pertain to Mr. Bacalar, but he's not here today.
Last email of the show comes from Mark from Perth.
Hello, GB.
Parentheses.
Gorgeous boys.
Got a question for the Bombcast.
I'm moving from my hometown of Perth, Western Australia, to London, UK, at the end of April.
My partner's always wanted to live there.
At 27, we felt that now was a good time to give it a go.
I'm going to be keeping my current video editing job and working remotely, and we've already found a place to live.
That said, I'm a bit nervous about the loneliness and isolation of being in a whole new country, especially when I won't necessarily have a place to go and meet people, though.
Besides the obvious stuff, do you guys have any nuggets of wisdom for a first-time mover?
I mean, you've just got to jump in the water thing.
I've done it so many times across the country, and every time, I wouldn't take any of them back.
No regrets.
And you can also leave if a place doesn't click with you.
I've liked every place I've lived except for San Francisco, and that's why I got the fuck out of there after two years.
So, like you know, if you go to London it's not for you go somewhere else.
But um, give it a shot, give it an honest try.
You know, you'll probably find things to love.
You'll find things to miss about home.
But uh, you know, hopefully you're in a position where you can travel.
Like I always go back to Kansas, New York, places I've lived that I enjoyed.
Um, but yeah, nothing's permanent.
It's true.
Yeah, I think it's right.
Just start doing stuff.
Get on the Facebook communities, the Reddits that are for your neighborhood and stuff like that.
Just see what people are saying and become a part of the community.
And then if it's not your vibe at that point, you know, you tried it.
You did some cool stuff.
You will almost certainly probably make friends and have cool experiences.
And that's all part of it.
So, yeah, go for it.
A difficult thing because you will be continuing to work remotely is just finding the motivation to go outside.
And I'm a big advocate for clock the fuck out.
Uh, at some point during the day, like grub said, go find some type of community, and that could be uh, even in a coffee shop, that could be in a local dive bar, a local sporting stuff.
I'm sure it could be a local gang of vagrant cats exactly roaming the street with them buying.
Yeah Actually, volunteering is also a major thing.
So you know, if you are a cat person, a dog person, maybe go volunteer on the weekends at a shelter that could help out and help you introduce you to other folks that you may mesh and vibe with.
You're going to London.
There's going to be plenty of resources and shit to do out there.
When I moved to Danbury Connecticut.
That can be a little tricky because even someone as social and outgoing as me and everything, it's like I'm in Danbury Connecticut.
I looked.
I tried.
There was not a lot to do.
London is going to be great for that.
Yeah.
I mean, also two very great suggestions here.
I mean, if you like you're into games, you know, you email this podcast.
If you're into tabletop stuff, I'm sure there's like a board game shop out there that you can meet people, maybe play magic if you're into magic or other tabletop stuff with.
And I love Will's suggestion.
Join an improv class.
I am dead set.
I think everyone, no matter what your career aspirations are, should at some point in their life take an acting class or improv class, because it just gets you out of your shell.
And you're moving there with a partner, but then you'll wind up befriending a bunch of people that just want to bang each other.
And that's just fun to witness.
That is great.
That's what it's all about.
Yeah, yeah.
Before we get to YouTube Super Chats, this is the third time we've had this segment pop up.
Jeff Grubb, I want to guess that ad!
That's right, everybody.
We're going to do the game show within a podcast.
Guess that ad.
It's Jeff Grubbs' most famous game show where I show you an image from a magazine ad from the past.
You tell me what the game is.
I have two this time in case.
This goes by pretty fast, because there's a chance, you guys just get it right away.
I'm turning chat off.
We all should.
Yes.
Yeah, turn chat off.
I am putting it in our chat here, but you guys can also see it on the stream.
Oh, fuck.
Okay, so I'm going to describe it real quick for the audio listeners.
Right now, I'm just showing a very small segment of the ad.
It is a bubble that has someone saying, blow me, exclamation point.
That's all I have so far.
Is it a Kirby?
This is not a Kirby.
All right.
For some reason, the image is failing to load for me.
Is it tied to the NES?
I don't think so.
I don't think it would be.
I'm going to say no.
Blowing.
Is it a bust a move?
Just based off your description.
Blow.
It is not Bust a Move.
It's a bubble thing.
It is not Bubble Bobble.
I'm guessing this ad is between 1995 and 2000.
Let me look at the corner.
It's...
Yes, you're right.
That's like peak blow me, suck it era.
Yes.
Blow me.
Blow.
Blow.
Blow.
I'm trying to think if it's a DS game that you blow into the mic.
No, not if it's 95 to 2000.
That's right.
I'm leaning 64.
April 1997.
There you go, guys.
April 97.
This comes from an issue of ultra gameplay.
Oh fuck.
Okay, that's ps1.
That could be 64 saturn possibly.
Um, so definitely that 32 60, 64 bit era.
Um, it's not bubble boy Boy.
I thought puzzle bobble was my best bet.
I'm going to get that.
I think we'll still do the second one.
I think the second one will actually be easier.
So I'm getting a picture of that right now for you guys.
And I'll put that in there in a second.
All right.
So let me see here.
You guys have guessed a bunch of stuff.
Yeah.
Can we guess the platform?
Yeah.
Let me see.
Let me double check.
Make sure I say the right platform.
Balloons.
Uh, this actually is a windows version, but the series is on a lot.
The series is on a lot of platforms.
Okay, windows release gex.
No, he doesn't blow anything.
It is.
This is not gex.
Just think about vibes.
All right uh i'm, let's see.
Let me get this other one here, Oh man.
So confusing.
Blow me.
I'm trying to like... A balloon, a bubble.
Any information.
All right.
A candle.
Let's see here.
For you guys, and I'll put this in the thing in a second, here is a second text bubble.
Oh, fuck.
It says, your toast, this time the color of that background on that text bubble is green.
Balls 3D?
This is not Balls 3D.
Okay.
Is there a character that's... There was that candle guy in Beauty and the Beast.
Is there a Beauty and the Beast?
He wouldn't say blow me.
That would have been way before this.
He wouldn't say blow me.
Not with this font either.
No.
You're toast.
What is going on with these?
Someone on fire.
There's a fire.
There's a breath.
There's an air thing going on here.
Wait.
Is it a clay fighter?
It is not Clay Fox.
I was thinking that because there is that ad where me and Mr Frosty is blowing out the Mortal Kombat candles.
That's why I was thinking that.
Wait, wait, wait.
Okay.
Now, it's not Boogerman.
It's not Boogerman.
Boogerman is a pick and flick adventure, not a blow and suck.
You're overthinking it.
Early for Twisted Metal?
I don't remember the timeline.
Twisted Metal 1 was like 95.
This is not Twisted Metal.
It is a multiplayer game.
Mario Party?
No, PC version.
Oh, it's Windows.
Windows version.
Multiplayer.
Online multiplayer?
It might have online, but this would have been pretty early for that.
That would not have been the focus.
It's certainly a couch co-op game.
No, couch multiplayer.
Is it a Worms?
It is not worms.
Bomberman?
Even though none of these deal with bombs.
It is.
Bomberman.
He did it, everybody.
It's Atomic Bomberman.
What is Atomic Bomberman?
I'm going to get the full ad for you guys.
I had Atomic Bomberman on the PC.
Shit, I should have known this.
That game was good.
Yeah, it was the PC one they made.
It was cool.
Yeah uh no, atomic bomber man i think it's the pc port for like, saturn bomber man is uh how i understood it to be.
Um okay, let me see here that game's good man, okay.
So i i got a picture of this.
I think it's wild.
You thought we were gonna get that from this.
Blow me bubble, i gotta You did.
Did anyone in chat get it?
I bet they got it right away.
You said we needed a backup because it might be too easy.
Listen, a character just saying blow me just sounds, yeah, blowing up.
I just figured you guys could get it right away.
Oh, okay.
Hang on, let me post this one here to our... I'm going to have to post it in content planning.
It's on my phone real quick.
Some folks did get it, apparently.
Man, now I'm nostalgic for Atomic Bomberman.
Holy shit.
Alright, let me describe the second one real quick while I post this to you guys.
I'll send the image to you in a second, but I'll describe it for you first.
It is...
It's kind of horrifying.
It is a bunch of skin and there are several mouths with different colored tongues sticking out of the mouths.
It is the Game Boy Pocket.
Pocket, okay.
Yes, but very close.
Yes, Game Boy Pocket.
Before you even posted the image to us.
Yes, before I posted the image.
Yep.
There you go.
Jesus Christ.
Yep, I remember that.
That's terrifying.
Yeah, that seems right.
That's right.
Yeah, there you go.
Yep, all right.
Well done that.
That was guess that game ad, or whatever we call it.
Thanks for playing.
Everybody guesser, i believe.
Yeah, grub gaster.
There you.
Thank you for playing grub gaster.
We'll be back with a new one next time.
Back to you, jan Fantastic.
We're going to go play a quick game of hot potato, because I'm going to pass this back over to Mike Minotti to hit me with some YouTube super chats, if we have any.
We do.
And I'm going to load them up right after I log back into YouTube because I accidentally signed out.
Oh, gosh.
I got to get a verification code texted to me so I can log back in.
This is going fantastic.
Hold.
All right.
Come on.
Let's see who's going to do it.
Do you want Mike?
Yeah, you do.
Well, okay, do it, but be prepared.
I was going to ask you guys how do we feel about people who use our super chat thing for self-promotion?
You could do it this time, but this is the last time.
How about that?
Sure.
Yeah.
Is that fair, Mike?
That sounds fair, yes.
Cute, cute.
You found a loophole there, but we will not allow again.
Go ahead, Jeff.
Simon from Saskatchewan.
There's got to be a Blake Club worthy game that Jeff has to play with that light gun of his, right?
Bayou Billy has sections.
Box art is incredible.
I do have it set up.
I can do that.
Jeez, I did gosh.
I was at some point watching somebody play something they described as the worst light gun game ever.
God, it can only be so bad.
Yeah, that's the thing.
I will say that it sounds like it was very unpleasant for Will to watch along because of all the light gun flashing that happens.
Oh, a lot of people have that, yeah.
There's a solution for that when you guys are watching this long.
I could send you the OBS feed that is going to take out a lot of that flashing.
So pretty good tech there.
Zombie Porn.
Oh, no.
Evil Jan killed business Dracula jerf.
What can I say?
You know?
And you, as the podcast goes further along, Jan, you're looking cooler and cooler.
It's true.
Fucking moco, baby.
He almost certainly isn't wearing pants right now, guys.
I'm so worried.
I'm not happy.
Martin Hollis, Grubbs said games will never get prettier than Doom 2016.
I didn't say that.
I said they don't need to get prettier.
Another podcast said design won't surpass Witcher 3.
What do you see as being the next jump?
We're going back to light guns.
Like guns are back.
Okay.
Connect is back.
I mean, they're better.
Look, I know I'm not going to really probably be that into it, but there better be something about Grand Theft Auto six.
That's impressive.
Yeah, I want improvement to the intelligence of enemy characters and characters you interact with.
And I know they're all going to be like AI now, but I like the idea of the stuff being programmed and having emergent stuff that happened from a human programmed algorithm or something like that.
I want improvements to just logic and things to happen, because I interacted with the character and they went to go do something and it had ramifications.
I forgot to talk about this during the game segment.
I checked out Marathon.
I'm trying to do the whole Rook thing.
Yo.
Yeah.
That game has so much fucking swag.
Yeah, it does.
Gang.
We maybe need to at least stream it one more time on this website.
I would do that.
Definitely.
I would do that game fucking bangs.
Anyway.
All right.
I still grub to your point how impressed I was in Medal of Honor for PlayStation one that you throw a grenade and some of the enemies would take off their helmet and like jump on.
It's like, oh, my God, that's crazy.
And I just and I just want that stuff.
OK, can we extrapolate on that with these more powerful CPUs that can do all of this reasoning?
Hopefully, yes, that would be great.
All right from BigFresh37.
Dan, now that you don't hate Pokemon anymore, would you ever give a try to Legends ZA?
It's not turn-based.
I don't think I ever hated Pokemon.
I just never really was interested in it necessarily.
I don't know.
I don't know if you get anything out of that one, Dan.
People were talking about the Arceus.
Was that the one?
That's the sequel to Arceus, right?
Yeah.
Correct.
People were talking big about that one.
Oh, just the Breath of the Wild, the Pokemon.
All right, I'll try it.
And it just did the fucking thing where it's like.
I felt it was like two hours of me talking to idiots in a town and I didn't do anything.
Sure.
I'm good.
Yeah, so it's okay not to like things.
Yeah, that's never been for him.
Yeah uh, martin hollis's stadium yeah yeah yeah, for sure.
Uh, martin hollis is back.
Says also the mario movie is bad, but my five-year-old loved it.
Yeah, i definitely had a similar experience.
I liked a huge part.
Yeah, It's just like how kids like the Minion movies, right.
These are the movies by the Minions people, right?
Yeah.
Exactly.
Flobotron says, to celebrate the start of asparagus season, thick crust pizza with sliced ham, asparagus and sauce hollandaise, plus cheese, tomato base of course.
Yay or nay.
So they laid it out.
Thick crust pizza, sliced ham asparagus, hollandaise sauce, which is the cheese, tomato base is what they're saying.
Listen, I would try it.
I would absolutely try it.
I don't hate any of that stuff.
I don't like holidays.
It's fine.
You don't like holidays?
No.
Oh.
Holidays is okay, but a Bearnaise sauce, which is holiday adjacent.
Oh, that's the shit.
A good Bearnaise sauce.
It's got that...
It's got that, like, I don't know.
There's something about that almost tastes a little marshmallow-y to me, which sounds crazy, but I love it.
From Jeremy Hervey.
I think that's right.
If you guys come to Indianapolis, I will give you a dozen of the best chocolate chip cookies you've ever had.
Is that a threat?
I mean, that's the kind of threats I love right there.
I don't like.
I'm going to look at the road trip map.
Indianapolis.
We could easily dip down there.
That's a dip down.
That would add a lot of time.
It's a dip down.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, if you kind of like begin to swell.
Yeah.
It's a lot.
Okay.
Yeah.
I veto it.
Okay, there we go.
All right.
Well, we should.
We should not have given him veto power over the road trip.
He's gonna just cancel the whole thing.
Um yeah, we haven't announced exactly like where people will be able to hang out with us, but there are some details in the works.
We're moving, putting stuff together to maybe have a community meetup, so we'll let you know.
There's as we know, more Obviously, it's a road trip.
There's going to be a lot of places we stop and stay and go have drinks and dinner and stuff.
But there is one specific thing I'm working on as far as like a actual real deal community meetup situation.
So stay tuned on that.
But it's coming together quickly.
All right.
Let's see here from Amy Winehouse of Leaves.
A while ago, y'all were complaining about no ski games.
Hear me out.
Baby steps, but L1 controls left ski.
L2 controls left pole.
Same for R1, R2.
Fuck ice.
I love this idea.
I would love this.
Any game where you could control all the limbs on a character.
I love that so much.
Yeah.
So give that to me.
Reb Valentine is probably one of my favorite people in games media, right?
She's great.
I highly suggest folks go check out the article that came out last week about how Baby Steps fans think that that game might be a covert, Uncharted sequel.
Yeah, it's Uncharted 5.
Look, Reb is great, but I gotta say there's something I saw pop up in the last couple days where one Yeelix Alex Perry, a great games media fella, a friend of mine, made a post about And Ocarina of Time.
I don't remember if he said it was mid or he said something along those.
He's like oh, is this Blue Sky a safe space where I can say that Ocarina of Time is mid, or something like that.
And she was one of them in the games media space that was like, oh, yeah, yeah, she agreed.
She just played that a little bit ago, too, in the last couple months.
Jesse Vitelli said the same thing.
I know.
I know.
People are just disappointing me left and right here.
No comment.
I know.
I know.
Chat of the Wild says, the new season of the Zelda podcast is live.
Tingle.
There you go.
You got in there at a fair rate, too.
Yeah.
Zombie Poren says how does Dan feel, knowing he's friends with the famous, preeminent Mario expert Ben Hanson?
No one in Minneapolis knows more about Mario and Nintendo.
Oh, man.
I want to put some of Ben's messages on the spot that he's told me about Mario before.
Pretty funny.
He's the guy doing the local news rounds as the Mario expert.
He was on Game Mess Mornings, and he was trying to get me to be like, that Mario Wonder, right?
And I'm like, no, I like that game.
And I forgot just how much of a I don't get Mario guy he is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'll just have to think of something higher profile to be a Mario expert on.
So I'll get him.
Dan, it's pathetic.
You're not going to be able to figure out anything.
Yeah.
Viv Reen says why is Bacalar the bad guy in a zombie movie and it's Dib that has to take him down?
Dan is Dib's pet zombie in all of this, by the way.
Oh, that man that actually super tracks.
That's great.
What was the first part?
Why is Bacalar the bad guy in a zombie movie and it's Dib that has to take him down?
Because he doesn't like anything.
Oh, okay.
And then Dib is plucky enough that like, no, I see the good in the world still, Papa.
Yeah.
It's kind of like Bacalar is the big boss and he's getting a solid snake and he has to take him down.
Yeah.
Bacalar accidentally created the zombies with his son in a 3D printer accident or something.
Yeah.
They 3D printed a zombie and then it infected other people.
Pax East's own woke gabagool boy who said hi at the show says idea for a karaoke slash musical game feature.
Le Mitch.
I did not live until today.
Do you guys remember when we were leaving dinner in Jersey that one night?
I think it was last year, and he was just... belting.
It was like a back and forth, like singing to himself and back thing.
I think it was from Les Mis, wasn't it, Mike?
It was confrontation.
I was doing both sides of confrontation.
Man like me can never change.
Man like you can never change.
No!
24601.
My duties to the law.
You have no rights.
Come with me 24601.
Now the wheel has turned around.
Jean Valjean is nothing.
Now, Dare you speak to me of crime And the price you had to pay?
Every man is born of sin.
Every man must choose his way.
You know nothing.
Au revoir, I was born inside a jail.
I was born with scum like you.
I am from the gutter too.
And then the other character.
You can just read dialogue.
Right, right.
The other character, he does a different thing during all that, which I will indulge myself in.
Here's the thing.
I was telling Mike before he got going in that car ride.
I know the other character and it's more impactful as a duet as it's written.
And then Mike just kept going.
I've been looking for somebody to do edit with for so long.
I told you twice now.
I don't think the people at home realize how much of a no-off switch guy Mike is.
It's incredible.
We took a break between the news and the games.
Mike, you didn't even realize this.
We were all talking about like, there's some logistics actually about the road trip.
And I was bringing up like, okay, check the Discord, Jan and Grubb, check this out.
So when we're talking about like, oh, what do you think about this, this, this?
Mike doesn't have his headphones on, so he doesn't know we're having this conversation.
He's got his Disney calendar in the back and he's changing the month and he's just yelling and we can pick it up.
Oh, it's Minnie Mouse month.
Oh, it's a Minnie Mouse.
It's like we're trying to have a business talk.
I am still staggered from the idea that Mike singing seven stanzas was him not indulging himself.
I know.
I'm like, what does that look like?
Think of me.
What you will.
Remember when he was tired?
From Macro Perla, they say, what are the chances we can get minimalist small logo merch?
I'd love more clothing that I could wear to work.
For now, I'll buy the kind of funny merch.
Wow.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
I see what you're doing there, and it works.
Yeah.
There's going to be a new merch drop soon, everybody.
I'll try to include some.
Yeah.
You just mean that GB logo?
Yeah.
Something that doesn't have a picture of or the word bomb in it.
I get it.
The golf shirt does have a picture of a golf ball instead, and that's pretty small.
That being said, I have seen folks clamoring for the OG red giant bomb block letter hoodie again.
We're going to see if we can bring it back.
We can do that?
Yeah.
We're going to try.
We can do that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yep.
I just want to make sure we get as good of a hoodie as we did for that one.
Cause it was just, that one has lasted so long.
I don't, I want to do right by it and make sure we don't, don't make sure our partner comes through.
So yeah, we'll do what we can there.
All right, last couple of super chats here from Miguez.
I fell asleep.
What did I miss?
All right, Mike, start the podcast over.
No, don't do it.
I'm sleepy.
Dan's like, ha ha.
Mike's sleepy.
And I was like...
How dare you call me out for being sleepy?
Dan's like, I want the people who saw the Mario movie to talk about that.
And we're like, yeah, it's, you know, whatever.
It's the Mario movie.
Dan said, we should talk about video games.
Dan has a video game where he types something.
Isn't that interesting?
I was like, yeah, it's kind of interesting.
I'm not going to get involved in this conversation. the typing video game.
Then Jan said, Mike, you just, I was like, ah, it's my turn to talk.
So I talked about Virtua Fighter for a little bit.
Then Jan said I could go to the bathroom and I did that.
I switched my calendar and it had a Minnie Mouse with a bumblebee on it.
I'm like, that's nice.
I can't believe I didn't switch that until just now.
We're already a week into April.
That's my bet, that's on me.
Jeff wanted to talk about the video game news and uh, Quantic Dream is maybe not gonna make a Star Wars game after all, and the Mario movie made a lot of money, so that was nice.
And then Jan was like oh, do you guys need to take a break?
And I'm like I gotta pee a little bit, but like everyone else doesn't want to take a break, so that's okay, we can just go into the next thing there.
Uh, and that's that's when jeff showed us the video game ad and it was like two words he's like this one's pretty easy.
No, he had no idea.
He disappointed us.
Then i remembered about atomic bomber man.
Then jeff said that he thought it was a port of saturn bomber man, and i'm like that's not right.
That's not right.
I looked it up and that's incorrect.
This came out before that.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So another another grub.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And then I was like, emails, Mike, you got every super chat.
I was like, oh, crap.
My name was said again.
I had to do something.
Then I actually clicked the button where I got signed out.
So Jeff came in and he read the Super Chats instead.
I think that's what's happening right now.
Sean, can you do me the biggest favor and cut that out and put that at the very beginning of the podcast?
Yeah, oh yeah.
Podcast in mic form.
That's the Mitch check.
I just recapped the bomb cast right after it happened.
Separate feed premium.
Only John wants to know is Pokemon Tonight Combat going to be open to all?
It's just like Wu-Tang, baby.
It's for the kids.
It's for the kids.
That's what we're saying.
Yes, absolutely.
That is all the Super Chats.
Jan, once again, back to you.
Mike, what just happened?
I think the show's almost over.
Yes, that's correct.
Boys, what do we got going on for the rest of this week?
Game this morning is popping off Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, right?
Correctamundo, dude.
That's right.
Speaking about Pokemon, Monday Night Combat, Sean and I are dusting off the gym to check out the launch day, perhaps looking at the launch of.
Pokemon Champions with Pokemon Day Night Combat.
We're going to nail down a specific day that's going to work best for the both of us.
And after that, Dan heads back to space.
Our own space ace in the Blightning Round.
Blink and you'll miss it!
40 minutes left.
40 minutes left, baby.
We got voicemail dump truck popping off on Thursday as well.
And then for premium members out there, we will not have Marry Me Tomodachi.
Due to scheduling errors, we will instead have a Discord town hall.
If you're a premium member, come in.
Go hang out.
Go hang out by the water cooler.
We'll bring muffins.
And then Friday to end the week Unprofessional Fridays most likely will be popping off with a grab bag.
If there's anything that's been popping off that you want us to take a look at and you think would work well in a UPF, Just holler at your boys.
But after this, after the Giant Bombcast is wrapped, a new episode of Nine Lives of Mr Mustafa Fleas just for you premium people out there.
And speaking about premium people...
For the folks that still need to be convinced and you want a taste.
You want a taste of all the stuff we've been cooking up in the premium kitchen.
There is a poll out on YouTube and as well as Blue Sky, for which video we will unlock.
For you folks at home, let's see.
It's my bold predictions here.
I think the Irish who wants to be a millionaire may win that poll.
It is a banger of an app.
All-timer episode, yes.
Incredible.
It's a good wit bam.
That's right.
That's what they're calling it.
The titter wit bam.
That's what the kids on the streets are calling it.
That's right.
That's right.
Boys, anything else popping off?
Oh.
Oh, I would be remiss if I forgot, and I almost did.
This Saturday, the community is embarking.
They're hitting the streets for a community endurance run.
More info to come.
A schedule will be announced soon, but you can go to giantbomb.com slash endurance.
And you will be able to view those streams from there.
Hang out.
We got a lovely community that loves helping other people.
So help them help other people.
Boys, anything else going on this week?
No, I don't think so.
I think he covered it.
Hey, you know what?
Jesse Vitelli's mom watched the PAX East vlog.
That's true.
So why haven't you?
That is true.
And why isn't your mom?
Come on, everybody.
Get your mom to watch their stuff.
And why can't Jesse Vitelli find a nice girl at one of these things?
We, listen, the next one could be us setting up Jesse and Telly.
That cracked me up.
That is the most mom comment.
Of course.
Guys, what if one of these things not being in games and just like seeing a pageant what the fuck is this thing?
I don't remember if Vitaly often makes his way out to PAX West, right?
But PAX East next year?
What if we have a speed dating panel?
Yep uh, and we've come up to four, i remember uh, and it's just for vitelli, like we don't tell, we don't tell vitelli, it's just for vitelli.
We do the dating thing too, where it's like you got the dividers up and everything.
Yeah, questions all hosted yeah yeah, oh beautiful yeah, i can do that.
All right, Folks at home, that about does it for this week's episode of the Giant Bombcast.
He's been Dan.
He's been Jeff.
He's been Mike.
Shouts out to Sean for editing this show.
Shouts out to Will.
Shouts out to Chuck.
Shouts out to Jeff Beckler, who's out on assignment today.
I've been Jan.
We love you.
Goodbye.
