MARVEL Cosmic Invasion, Horses, Majesty | Noclip Crewcast

Thank you.

Hello gamers and non-gamers, welcome back to the Noclip Crewcast.

This is episode 256.

You may have noticed, long-time listeners, this is not a game of the year episode, despite the fact that last week's episode was our last normal one.

We pranked ya!

Actually, it's a lot sadder than that.

Danny posted a whole update on Noclip too.

You can read about it if you go on the Discord, but you can hear about it.

He'll explain his situation.

He had an emergency back home.

A family member has fallen ill.

So he's got to go deal with all of that and be the family man for a little while.

So he's preoccupied at the moment.

That's why he's not on the pod this week either.

Everything's going to go, you know, the way that it goes.

Life is as it is.

But he is in our thoughts and we're thinking about his family and everything while he's over there back home.

So I hope he stays in your thoughts as well and you're having a good weekend. holiday season.

It's, it's the time.

It's the most wonderful time of the year, except for everything negative.

I just said, uh, Jeremy, bring me back to the joy town.

Make this lighter.

Bring me back.

Okay, it's been snowing.

I saw snow accumulation for the first time in so many years, and it's been absolutely magical.

Every time I look outside, I'm filled with holiday joy.

And I don't know.

There's something about playing video games when there's snow outside that I feel like it's a real peanut butter and jelly situation.

You know what I mean?

That is true.

It's going outside is too cold.

It's too cold to go outside.

I have to play video games.

I'm legally obligated and morally obligated to play video games.

I want to stop, mom.

I just can't.

It's so cold.

The cops are going to arrest me.

Frank, how have you ever been arrested for anything cool?

Uh no, i've got, not even like i've all.

I've been pulled over like for having a good break light out, but i don't think i've ever gotten a ticket.

So again, every time i say stuff like that, i feel like i'm jinxing myself.

But i'm sorry, i should have asked you.

Yeah no, it's fine.

You know, i don't, i don't care.

But the biggest yeah, the biggest fear is if i, if i do any criminal act in japan, then i'm never, ever allowed back.

So that's when i'm on my best behavior right, and you gotta be extra careful in japan.

I don't care here.

Whatever, kick me out of america great, oh god, Oh no.

I've been extradited to Japan.

Oh, really?

Oh, man.

I think the only time I ever got stopped by the police was I was with a friend in high school and we saw a cop sitting there watching the crosswalk and the light.

And it's like the littlest – we're talking like 15-foot crosswalk.

Like it's nothing.

The light was red and –

Our third friend who was with us was like, don't cross.

There's a cop there.

And I was like, what's he going to do?

Arrest me really loudly.

I shouldn't have said that.

Obviously I go to cross the street and he pulled, he's got the lights going.

He stops us.

He's like, Hey, you know, that crosswalk, blah, blah, blah.

Where are your parents?

You have, you have a hundred dollars to pay the fine.

And I'm like no, like what it's, it's just stupid.

Was he trying to like extort you?

He's like yeah, he's trying to intimidate us.

I mean you could pay me now and we could just forget about this.

You give me a hundred dollars cash and i'm not gonna arrest you.

You're gonna switch off this body cam.

You hand me a benjamin or whatever.

A hundred dollar bill is in canada, also benjamin's.

No, i actually don't know what who's on the canadian hundred dollar bill?

I should know that.

I've never seen them, so i guess i probably some some monarch that isn't from canada, Or like a scientist who cured a disease or something.

That's all of our money is like scientists, activists, and yeah, monarchs.

We just got Ben Franklin.

Ben.

What did he ever do?

Yeah, Jefferson.

What's Jefferson on?

The Five, right?

The Five.

The Nickel?

I don't know.

Who's on the penny?

Lincoln?

Lincoln's on the penny.

But they just retired his ass.

No more fucking pennies.

Take that, Abraham.

Dumbass.

You know, he's like one of the only guys who did something good on the way.

Yeah, I take it back.

Actually, he was a little chill for a little bit there.

You know who would be on.

All of no clips money though, if we had our own currency, our battle pass holders.

That's right, because they fund our endeavors.

They give us the currency so we can spend the currency to create more currency.

They're kind of they're kind of our pimps, including the our great list.

I'm going to try to do it all in one breath.

Let's see how far I can get.

Oh, I almost made it.

I almost made it.

I got like five more, six more.

George Sarkotis, Jacob Godserve, Entheogen, James Med, Tohir Tillyev, and Rison.

I apologize.

I had to take a breath for you lovely people, but I didn't want to pass out on the podcast.

That hurt my head.

That sounded painful.

You know what's crazy is Lincoln's on the five, but I use cash money so infrequently that I just forgot.

I can't remember the last time I paid for anything in cash.

Yeah, I feel like cash was for suckers.

Yeah.

Except for all the people who use cash, they'll tell you the other way.

I might just be the brokest bitch ever.

But you're like, oh, who's on the $5 bill?

I'm like, I don't know, man.

That's kind of out of my pay grade.

Do you guys have tap yet?

Do you have tap to pay?

Can you do that yet in America?

Yeah, you can.

I used to tab the soda.

I was like, yeah, we got rid of that in the 80s.

Do you guys have a tab down there yet?

Yeah, do you guys have that yet?

Have they invented that?

I know there was a brief period, maybe like 10, 11 years ago, when I was in the States I couldn't pay for anything tapping my card.

And that's like the only way you pay for stuff up here.

Nobody.

If you have to put your pin in, you feel like you're in the Paleolithic era.

It's like a dinosaur.

I can't believe that it was so uncommon for you guys that long ago, but at least you have it now.

So that's good.

I I didn't know.

This is embarrassing.

I didn't know that when people said, oh, you can like, you know, tap if you want.

I didn't know what they meant.

And I just never asked.

And I never was.

I was just a fundamentally incurious person.

And I was like, oh, that must be like Apple Pay or something.

And that was the start of it, I think.

Right.

Was banks had to sort of catch on after.

But I mean, you could pay with their watch.

You could tap your card for probably half of a decade before I, before I personally opted to figure out what that meant.

That's fair.

I just keep saying you tap and you're like, that's OK.

Can we have dinner first at least?

I don't think they're going to dab me up.

They're like, yeah, you can tap, dab me up and then you can pay.

I'm like, I'm good, man.

I don't need to dab you up.

Germs.

I'm not into that.

We got a lot of video games we're going to talk about this week.

Well, actually, not that many video games.

A lot of questions, a lot of emails.

So thank you so much for sending those in.

I'm excited to talk about those.

But we do have some video games.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion.

Jeremy's gone back in time to check out Majesty.

He's reliving his childhood.

I'm going to talk about the Samogo Legacy Collection.

Great collection of classic games from one of my favorite developers, as of recent anyway.

I'm going to have a quick shout out, just a quick little brief talk about Scrabdackle, this new game.

Sounds like I just made up a pill you have to buy over the counter.

Or behind the counter, rather, if you want to get in the black market pill industry.

But we're also going to talk about the video game of our time.

Everyone's talking about it because you can't play it if you only buy games on Steam.

Horses.

That's what we're going to talk about.

Not the not the animal.

And it turns out, actually, horses doesn't feature any horses in reality.

Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah, do we start with horses or is that... We have to start with horses.

It is the conversation of our time.

Everyone's talking about it.

Let's just get it out of the way, too.

I feel like everyone's going to talk about it, so we might as well just get in and say the same things everyone else is going to say, but differently.

I think this would be an interesting start.

Frank, what have you heard about this horses game?

I looked into it and I think I saw like what the twist was, but I still want to know like how fucked up it is.

Is it like a Serbian film, the video game?

Is it worth checking out?

Like, to me, I'm like, oh, this sounds cool.

Yeah, should I play this?

But there's no trophies.

It's not on PlayStation.

No, there aren't.

No, if you get it on GOG, there's achievements.

Okay, I meant to see.

All right.

It's only five bucks, so it's cheap.

So, like, these are all pluses for me.

And there's, like, faux controversy around it.

Or maybe genuine controversy.

It's pretty faux.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

So it's like, there's some points of interest in here.

Okay, good.

I'm glad that you're excited about it a little bit.

It's basically just like a a, you know it's.

I would say it's a challenging and, at times, you know, kind of like disturbing and dark uh, sort of art house horror game that just is.

It's like no more offensive than a hundred movies that i've seen that are a million times worse.

Um, it's very like specifically dark movies, like there are mainstream horror movies that i think get a little bit or like at the same level of of dark weird, messed up visuals that this, this game employs.

I feel like that's not unfair, Especially because a lot of the dark stuff is kind of like implied and happens off screen.

Yeah.

So this game was this game Horses.

The developer, Jesse, you're familiar.

What are they?

Yes.

Santa Ragione, I believe, is how you say the Italian team.

I'm pretty sure they developed Saturnalia, which is like a really interesting horror escape game.

Takes place in a small town.

I really enjoyed that.

I thought it was pretty cool.

And then my wife played Mediterranean Inferno, their last game.

It's like a coming-of-age narrative adventure that takes place around the start of COVID-19.

So it's like a bunch of lockdown remote relationship stuff, which I thought was pretty interesting.

It was fun to watch her play it.

She liked it so much.

She beat it twice.

And I don't think she's ever done anything twice, like in terms of media and stuff.

She wakes up twice.

She does a lot of things twice, but not not play video games twice.

Yeah, but Santa Ragione does a lot of weird, interesting indie stuff.

They like jump around different genres.

So it was cool to see them do like they normally do very bright, colorful sort of art housey video games, like the sort of stuff that people who are, you know, Not inclined to playing that sort of thing.

We'll play it and go, wow, this is when indie games are.

What the frick?

So it was interesting to see them announce Horses, a game that, if you watch the trailer, looks like disgusting.

Complimentary, I suppose.

Yeah.

Jeremy, could you could you talk a little bit about Horses?

Sort of explain to the audience what you're doing?

What is this game exactly?

Yeah, you're basically just like a kid who's helping out on a farm, is sort of the conceit here.

And the farm has horses, but all the horses are just like naked people with horse masks on.

And it uses this, it's sort of like a... it's like a, it's like a bottle parable.

It's like this very narrow perspective on one sort of environment, one situation.

And it teases out this like horse and human dynamic in to basically just like explore themes of dehumanization and otherization uh, and exploitation and all of these kind of different, you know dark different, Asians.

Any word with an Asian at the end you can think of um.

And yeah, so the controversy around this game was that it was slated to come out on every you know digital platform.

And then it was banned from Steam.

And then Epic took it.

Epic also banned it at the last minute.

So I bought it on GOG.

But I mean, you know, for an independent developer.

Also on itch.io.

Yeah, it's also on itch.

And it was supposed to come.

It did.

So this was the weirdest part is it came out on Humble.

And then I think it was delisted on Humble for a couple of hours the day it came out and then it was relisted by Humble.

That's okay.

You know what happened?

They heard it was bad.

They took it down, and they were just like, all right, just someone play it.

Someone in the office play it.

Because it was three hours later, too.

So you're totally right.

I think someone played it, and they were like, oh, shit.

The longest you could possibly spend with that game is three hours.

And then they were like, I mean, that was like fucking kind of gross, but like, I don't know.

But anyway, so yeah, it's been sort of a big deal in the discourse, in the zeitgeist, because this is a small, independent... you know like art art game developer uh and steam is you know obviously if you make if you make like ragu pasta sauce and they stop stocking it in like walmart and every grocery store it's like sure yeah theoretically you could sell your ragu at the fucking every corner store in the world but it's you know you're gonna take a hit now transpose that onto like a small art house developer and all of a sudden it's like you're you're losing out on basically like I don't know the percentage of PC games sales that happen on Steam, but I imagine like 90.

It's like it has to be a shocking majority.

And because of that, like, you know, a lot of discovery happens on Steam, essentially.

So I think people who were already excited about this game, who played the developers previous games, they will seek it out.

Yes.

And that is sort of the like the counter argument.

I've heard from a lot of sort of like I don't know.

What's a nice way of saying corporate bootlicker?

Is there like a euphemism for that?

I've seen a lot of people being like well, if you want this game, you can go on down to GOG and you can buy it.

And it's like, yes, that is true.

But I think that you know the amount of people who will like organically, discover this drops exponentially, excluding the, you know, people who are aware of it, because of the controversy, which is sort of like a different conversation.

It's not like steam was like let's ban this game, all right, long long play.

Let's ban this game and then everyone will hear about it and go play it.

It's secretly a marketing tactic.

I want to get to the banning stuff in a second because we got an email here that i want to include in this, so we're not saving its answer too late.

But i just wanted to quickly talk about the Parts of the game that I think are at least interesting or noteworthy to me.

Visually it's all black and white.

So it has this like it's in first person.

So it's sort of just walking around and performing these tasks and takes place over about 14 days.

Right.

Something that I thought was kind of interesting I don't know visually is like there's intercut of live action footage throughout the game, usually when you're performing a task.

But sometimes like it'll just overlay what you're doing or it'll be like a different camera shot.

They do interesting things visually.

I think that's also something that they did in Saturnalia as well.

Just like weird camera angle stuff and like text rendered a texture on a part of the screen.

It's like a cool visual style.

So there's there's interesting stuff going on here visually.

I don't know necessarily if I thought the game itself really stuck the landing on what it was trying to say.

There's like parts of it that.

I think resonated, um, especially the, like the horse stuff and like the work ethic part of it of like, um, who is allowed to be denigrated and like, what do we allow that, that, that relationship to be between people who are forced to do things, people who aren't, um, who's allowed to be in control, obviously I think leads to the, uh, reaction to the game and the way that it's been removed and sort of blocked on, on these platforms.

It's like the game is sort of saying, um, the thing that happened to it is a problem.

And, but like, it's, I don't know, it rides the line on a lot of commentary.

And I don't know if it necessarily hits the mark on everything it's trying to say.

Like it really briefly talks about religion at a point in a way that feels sort of like You got to include it because we're talking about control.

And I'm like, OK, let's go somewhere with it.

I that's the interesting thing is I played more than I mean, it's a two and a half hour game.

I played more than half of it.

I've not completed it.

I don't super resonate with it.

I think it's fine.

Like, I don't I don't love it or hate it.

I think it's it seems like good.

Like, I think it's interesting, but it may be not my cup of tea.

Yeah, but i think it's important that, like that's sort of the core of this issue when we talk about, like censorship stuff with games is like you don't have to like a game to want it to not be fucking banned from the storefront.

You know what i mean.

Like that i i if, if your metric for what should be banned is, do i personally like it?

I think you should really like re-evaluate, like what the purpose of banning things is.

Um, do you hate authoritarian authoritarianism or you just don't like it when it's not someone you agree with?

Maybe you know um reflect the initial sort of like.

So what I heard initially was that an early build of this game had been sent to Steam for approval and basically had a scene where a child, a young girl, was riding on the shoulders of a of a naked horse person.

Yeah.

And this was that bit yet. what'd you say?

Did you get to that bit in the game yet?

Yeah.

Or it's like an adult woman, right?

Yeah.

Um, so they obviously changed that.

So that's not in the game anymore, but I guess what I had heard is that and again, this is the problem is that there's not transparency around these like D listings is that these things happen and people were like all right.

So what policy specifically did this violate so that other people can avoid it?

And there was kind of no, like, you know, this is, this is the moment, this is when it happened.

And if you do that once, even in an early build, we'll like D list you forever.

There was no sort of like, come to Jesus moment where everyone understood in the air was cleared.

And that's kind of the issue here is, um, uh, basically all I heard is that that happened.

And then they removed that from the game and kind of got no update from valve.

And then they like made the final game without that in it.

And it still got delisted.

Um, And when you compare it to like... I mean, there's some crazy shit on Steam.

There's like five Sex with Hitler games.

There's a lot of like... I didn't even play the first two.

How am I supposed to catch up?

Yeah, no, you can't jump in at three.

It's like you can't just watch Empire Strikes Back.

That makes sense.

It is a bit like Star Wars, Sex with Hitler.

Yeah, it's of a similar caliber.

But yeah, no, it's just... I mean, that's the problem is that it's like...

Sure.

Steam has the right to list and delist games as they please.

They are a privately owned company that you know it's like you don't have to do anything as you're not compelled to list a game just because it exists or whatever um but the problem is is that when there are sort of like these byzantine back channel rules and processes for determining what is you know listable and non-listable uh it becomes just like weird arbitrary censorship and i think that a really interesting point of distinction in this is that i think that like Sexuality and violence in art are these things where it seems like – and this is a very American perspective, but I do feel like this is sort of like largely true in global culture to some extent – that I think violence and sexuality, when they are leveraged towards or focused on pleasure or gratification – always seems to be more okay for some reason yeah like 100 i have seen games where someone's like head is like ripped off and they're like spine comes out and shit or like you know someone's balls exploded an x-ray like these things are operated a giant plane full of rockets and shot a bunch of dots on a map like how many games is that just a perfectly acceptable thing to do yeah and and and to be very clear i'm not saying those things should be censored i'm saying that like no the other side of the coin is if you do something where it's like you know horrible grotesque gore but it's not meant to be titillating but it's not yeah but it's not like fun stimulating gore it's like look how disgusting this is gore or you know conversely or like you know the sort of sexuality has the same dynamic where it's like if it's a game where you know you're having sex with an anime girl or whatever there's a ton of jiggle physics it's like that is i don't think that should be banned either that's fine to have like pornographic materials if you're an adult and you can if you're of the legal age to buy that and wherever the fuck you live that's fine but when sexuality is explored in a way that is like subversive or challenging or sort of evoking larger artistic ideas but but the ideas that it's exploring are not just like doesn't it you know make you doesn't this make you so horny to see are you horny baby yeah if austin powers plays your game yeah and he's getting excited then it's okay everyone at valve gathers around while austin powers plays the games they're like does he look randy does this make him randy is his mojo activated yeah let's check the mojo beater um But but I just think that's like an interesting sort of metric for like sexuality and violence of these things that are either censorable or allowable, depending on like, is this is this challenging you or is this like pleasing you?

You know what I mean?

Is this?

Is this frictional sexuality or is this, like you know, conducive to sexuality as a form of pleasure?

I mean, you know what they say.

It seems today that all we see is violence in movies and sex on TV.

It's a family guy metric.

Where are the good old-fashioned values?

You're just reading the rules from Steam censorship.

Yeah, Gabe sent it to me.

I did want to read this email from Catherine because I think we're sort of getting into the echoes of this conversation.

So Catherine sent in an email.

Thank you so much.

It says, hey, Noclip crew, I wanted to ask your thoughts on Steam and then Epic and then Humble.

Banning the narrative game horses from their platform.

The developers are still able to sell on GOG and Itch at the time of writing and could sell on their own site, like some adult games have been forced to do lately, but they're missing most on the market.

Like you were saying earlier, Jeremy.

What are your feelings about how Steam's approval of a game can decide if it lives or dies on PC, especially with the prominence of the deck and upcoming Steam Machine?

The developer Santoragione, expects to close if sales aren't strong enough for horses and with most PC players reluctant to buy off of Steam people defaulting to it over checking itch it seems that they'll have to.

And all over again, it seems like a Yorgos Lanthimos film.

I wouldn't go that far.

I wouldn't say it's...

It didn't remind me of any Yorgos film in particular, really.

It's sort of like in that ballpark, though.

Yeah, it's in the same universe for sure.

Unsettling, surreal, horror adjacent.

The closest you can get to it in a video game while being able to sell it on at least one platform.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean again, it's not that.

It's not that steam has this obligation as a private company to list everything that comes their way.

That is obviously not the case that anyone is making i.

I think that the obviously this email is not making that case either.

I'm just sort of like throwing that out there as a preface.

I i think that the the, the point that i think is worth attention, and the reason people are set in such a like, so worked up about this, is what the email alludes to, which is that like, steam has this, this sort of huge monopoly over the sales of pc games and that is only sort of like growing and becoming stronger, as far as i can tell, and like you said with, like the deck and the steam machine, all these things, it's like pc gaming is is so firmly in the grip of steam and valve that, like they, though they do not have a financial or like business obligation to list everything.

I think that it is.

I feel like there's a need, if they care about video games as a medium, to confront the fact that like, there is the whether or not they like it, whether or not they have a responsibility to.

I feel like they should think about the fact that like, if they delist a game, they are deciding what games get to live and die in some sense.

You know what I mean?

Like it's, I, i i don't know it's weird because it's like i don't think we should like the government shouldn't be like all right steam you have to like play every porn game and make sure it's like not too sexy um do the austin powers test but i do think that like like there's so much fucking money that comes in through this it's 30 of every sale on steam which is an insane unless you make a bajillion dollars in which case it's lowered which right of course it goes down after you hit like a million dollars and when i say it's an insane amount of money i'm not saying this isn't me making the point of like oh 30 is too much though i do feel that in some cases uh but that's a totally separate point what i'm saying is the amount of money that's coming in is is a lot of it's a lot of fucking money i i don't think it would be unreasonable when there are sort of like edge cases like this which i i don't even feel like it really like i have no transparency into how often they delist or ban games i'm sure it's more than i think but like i feel like a lot of them are probably a little more black and white than this a lot of them are probably more like insert horrible act here simulator and it's like well we can't can't have that because that's like you're just simulating that to for no artistic effect but but when it comes to games like this and like um god i can't remember what was the game the mortuary game not mortuary assistant but it was the other delisted game like a few it was what never mind i'll have to look it up before the end of the episode one of the games that was like delisted from steam and the whole like itch payment processor uh fiasco vile exhumed yes yes that was the one um i think that like there are sufficiently few edge cases where it's like oh maybe this is art or maybe it's like exploitative that like couldn't they just give me like I would just, like, play all those games and then, like, write a book report to them.

And couldn't they just have like two of me who are like they pay like a few thousand dollars a year?

Just pay some sickos to play all your freak games.

Figure it out.

Just give me, like, 10K a year, and I'll just be, like, you know, like, middle of the night, Gabe calls me, and he's like, hey, man, we got, like, another... someone's fucking the horse people is that okay and i'm like i don't know let me give me a couple hours and i'll say i brew my coffee and i play the horse people game and then i just write them a little book report i don't know i'm being overly simplistic because it's kind of funny but like i am serious sort of what happens though right like once this situation comes up somebody has to review the content in some regard like once they put in their report and they noticed this aspect of the game whether it was in a trailer or something i assume there has to be some manual review At some point, there is a manual review, but I wonder if like, it seems it it seems hard for me to believe that someone played the initial build saw a kid was in it and was like that's fucked up which you know that's whatever personal opinion i mean i also like you know i watched like a cassavetes movie the other day that had like a naked child in it and it's like that's not sexual that's like it's weird to assume that every time a child is around like like there's like fucking if you're like a parent you like bathe your child on the beach there was a baby running around naked yeah there was a naked baby running around and i wasn't like somebody call the police this baby is breaking the law like it's a fucking baby so like the thing about that scene by the way i don't think the kid was supposed to be nude no no the child was clothed right it's just that all of the horse people are naked because they're like horses which makes it uncomfortable the scene in the game this isn't particularly spoil-y but spoilery spoil-y I'm going to start saying that is the they replaced her with an adult woman who now like comes and visits the farm and rides on the horses around.

And there are these like weird slapstick sequences in the game where you ride a horse around and it plays like vaudeville.

Yeah, it's like vaudeville, like rubber hose cartoon music.

It's like you're like riding a tortured man around to collect all the carrots.

It is because there is sexual content in this game, but that is not part of it.

You know what i mean?

Um, and i think that scene is worse because they replaced the character with a, with an adult woman.

I think the point that's being made in that moment works better when it's like this is the juvenile thoughts of a child, this is what they're being instilled with and then repeating it to you literally.

It's like this is what the next generation is going to say in this world.

It doesn't work as well if it's just like an adult woman and this is what she thinks like okay sure yeah, you're a bigot.

I i get that because like, when you're a kid, you know it's like the fucking, it's like the uh, the ones who left omelas or whatever, where.

If you've never read this, it's ursula k leguin, i think the short story.

But it's like this society where there's like What?

Everything is paradise and everything is perfect utopia, but there's like one sort of like whipping boy figure.

There's like a child who has to like receive all of the hatred and ire of everyone, and it's like only by having this one person who lives the shittiest life imaginable can everyone else live in paradise.

It's like. i it's an interesting theme because the the point of the story is that like once you're old enough they tell you about the omelas child and it's like some people hear that and they're like whoa this is way too fucked up i have to like leave paradise behind because it's this run on suffering but most people are just like they grow up with it and then they're showing it and they're like oh yeah that's just like that we just have like the omelas kid who everyone fucking spits on and whatever and And I think that that's an interesting theme to explore that this game could have explored by having a kid in it is like if you're if you're a kid and the adults around you are just normalizing atrocities, you know, like if you're if you were like nine years old when 9-11 happened, they're like, yeah, we got to go kill those people over there because they're bad people.

They hate the way we live.

You're like nine years old.

You're not like wait a minute.

I don't know if that's like a long-term things to consider about that, or so you're just like yeah, i'm nine, i feel like that's, that's what you're supposed to.

America?

Yeah, i get what you're saying for sure, and and that is like to to the point of all the people defending this game as art i and again, i don't even particularly like this game.

I just think it's important to like discuss this that that is a like that scene having a kid in it.

A is totally non-sexual and b is a sort of like you can't explore that theme in the same way without a child in that scene, And so it's not that like.

It's not that I'm defending the right to do whatever the fuck you want in a piece of art.

Like I, I don't, this isn't some sort of like weird abstraction of a point.

It's that, like this specific instance, by changing the material of this artistic expression, changes the message and the limits, the sort of like limits the, the type of message that is able to be explored through a piece of art.

And I think that's, I think that's fucking bad.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think just yeah, even past the the economic considerations of banning video games and defining the small shape that video games can fit within.

Yeah, the fact that the censorship isn't just like oh, you can't sell your game for five bucks on Steam.

It's like, no, if you want to even try to, you have to change the content of it.

And now all the reporting that comes out about.

It is like everyone's playing telephone, repeating the wrong information.

It's the same thing that happened with the collective shout situation we talked about months ago of like.

Everyone heard one talking point and repeated it, but incorrectly, over and over again, until we were all assuming the thing that we heard was the truth.

When it turned out,

Because you looked into it Jeremy, after we had that big conversation about it on the pod, that like oh, actually the content of the game they were trying to get banned was not some egregious simulation of, you know, sexual assault?

It was just.

It was just text.

It was just like, it was basically like a soft core porn video game.

People were like, oh, this is like a sexual assault simulator and stuff.

And it's like it definitely had weird themes of coercion, but it was played in the most like soft core porn way imaginable, where it was like hey, i'm gonna like, i'm gonna tell someone something about you if you don't have sex with me.

They're like i guess we'll have to have sex then, like it was like that level of fucking.

You know what i mean.

It's like i guess that's kind of depraved, but everyone was talking about it.

Where it's like this is a game where you do the the most horrible things, like man hunt on the wii and you do all the motion man hunt for sex.

Yeah, and it wasn't that it turned and it's the same thing here.

I feel like people heard kid and and you know, fetish act in some way and that sort of got molded into being it's actually.

It's this messed up thing and it's the truth and it's it must be true, because i heard about it.

Well, that's not what happened.

It brings up an interesting point as well about the way that you can sort of disingenuously frame anything to sound way worse than it is.

Where it's like i saw people you know a content warning i'm about to say like a few words that are bad, but like i saw people talking about horses and they're like should we really be going to bat for a game that has, like you know, sexual assault and like necrophilia and like this and gore and dismemberment and blah blah, blah.

And it's like.

All I could picture was someone talking about like, oh yeah, that horse game that came out this year.

I think we should ban it.

You know, I actually think it's evil because, like it's, it's instilling, you know, negative behavior in children.

It's like it's teaching them the wrong way of living.

And then they're being like, oh, I'm actually talking about Uma Musume because like gambling is evil. like i think you can it encourages gambling uh yeah like you can disingenuously for you could talk about like uh any literally like any r-rated movie ever and be like is it really appropriate for to like rip a woman in half and it's like i mean that's just like godzilla just does that because that's godzilla um so i think you could make things sound way worse because it's like you know i don't know what should we just like not make art that has like violence in it and then we live in a world where it's like when real violence happens it's so shocking because it's like oh no like i've never even thought of death as a possibility um it's like art like exists to explore shit that like shouldn't be explored in real life you know what i mean like i i don't even like gore in movies like i like horror movies but i i don't even particularly like i'm i've personally feel very like sensitive to gore i watch gory movies like you know i watched like weapons recently and uh it has some crazy gore in it and i was like well that's fucking genuinely shocking um but it's like i don't know it's like It's just it's supposed to be shocking.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, I don't want to see I don't want to see a woman's head explode in real life.

But, like when it's in a movie, it's done in a way where it's it's basically your friend being like dude.

Can you imagine if this happened?

And it's like, I that yeah, that is crazy.

I can't imagine that.

That sounds horrific.

I don't want to think about that in my brain or see it on the screen.

Doesn't mean that you want to ban, though.

Yeah, it's fine.

Yeah.

Or that it can't.

You know, it can be used to explore ideas that i think are like, worth defending.

I guess is my bottom line here.

So even if you don't like horses, you should not want it to be banned.

That's right.

Don't ban horses, don't do it.

Yeah, Real life horses.

Yeah, the video game is.

It's available on GOG and it's still, if you want to play horses, if you want to check it out.

Jeremy and I don't sound super enthused about it, but that doesn't mean that we want it banned.

If you like weird art horror, you should play it.

You'll probably you'll get something out of it.

I thought it was visually interesting and like there are bits of it that were so grotesque that they mess with me.

But like I also got, I was more uncomfortable playing like no, I'm not a human, that I was playing this by a long mile.

And not because I wasn't expect, like I was expecting, this to be uncomfortable in the same way that I was expecting.

No, I'm not a human to be uncomfortable.

This was much less distressing than no, I'm not a human was at least for me personally.

It's definitely, I thought this was way more distressing personally.

See, we have, we have different feelings about, I have, I have unprocessed COVID trauma.

That's what it is.

That's why I'm not a human.

I have unprocessed other trauma.

Yeah.

Well, there you.

You also worked on a farm, ranch People.

I've never talked about it until now they finally let me out.

Yeah, that's horses.

I think we've said our bid on it.

I think it's it's bad that this happened and it's probably not great for the medium that we've had two stories this year of games being banned from the biggest platform and what that means for a content regulation moving forward.

I don't know, we'll see.

I wish danny was here to give us the other uh side of all of this.

I don't think he would.

I don't think he would push back you don't think he would be like let's ban the video game.

No, i think i'm kidding danny.

Would you know he would do his journalistic duty by represent?

He'd be like well listen, we got to consider these positions, but i think danny is firmly anti-censorship on this ship.

He always has been.

Yeah for sure.

Um, we'll ask him about it when he gets back.

I'm sure he'll be excited to talk about this.

Uh, yeah, that's horses.

Like I said, check it out.

GOG itch.

Maybe they'll have their own website up.

I mean, maybe it'll still be on GOG and itch.

Who knows?

This story has been changing so much this week, uh, but this podcast will be up tomorrow.

So if it changes that fast, that sucks.

Uh, yeah, check it out.

Let's move, uh, to literally anything else.

Uh, Frank Marvel cosmic invasion after talking about, people being exploited.

Let's talk about heroes saving the day.

Artists being screwed, like Todd McFarlane, which is why him, Jim Lee and uh image comics and Todd McFarlane was going down the elevator.

Someone at Marvel said, you guys won't be successful.

And that filled Todd McFarlane with spite of a hundred years.

And he said that spawn will keep going until he dies.

And he was right.

Spiteful against Marvel.

Um yeah, the image story.

Check out the documentary streaming on amazon.

They're banning spawn from being sold at your local comic store.

I just want to interject for one second to say that's literally mf doom's backstory as well as really despite towards an entire industry of the music industry.

That's so yeah um yeah, i guess, coming into this like i'm not a huge marvel fan but i like comic books.

But the real reason i'm stoked on marvel cosmic invasion is it's tribute games.

Uh oh, this is my, you know no like, not that how.

I don't know the geography of canada, but montreal quebec, far right side, east coast, they're not far right.

Yes no no um, but uh yeah uh, the quebeckers uh, tribute games, One of my favorite developers.

For me, the first game that really hooked me was Mercenary Kings, like a decade ago.

Yeah, Mercenary Kings is awesome.

Scott Pilgrim, and then they even recently did TMNT Shredder's Revenge.

They've had a long history of working with pixel artists like Paul Robertson, Mario Cartwright.

They've always worked with really cool people. great composers too.

Their music's always great.

They work with T-Lopes a bunch, which is so good.

Yeah.

And uh and yeah, and like the last few years they've lucked into like just getting, they've like gotten like great properties to work with.

So they did TMNT shredders revenge, which was super fun.

And now I don't know if this is their biggest budget game yet, but Marvel cosmic invasion, I think it has like 13 to fit our 15 characters.

And with each character, that's so much like animation, voice work, everything.

So this is like a big um.

There's only like what?

Like a dozen levels, but in terms of just like um, i don't know, this game backs a bunch.

I don't know.

Monocostic invasion is a new beat them up from tribute games.

Um, it is on game pass.

I did not know.

I like requested a code, like i really want to play this.

The guy's like sure, and i was like, oh wait, it's free on okay, but i'm playing it on ps5.

It is cross play.

Um yeah, it's a standard beat them up.

But what makes this game really unique and special is like uh, the folks at tribute games and everyone involved are such hardcore fans of just like it's like 2d pixel art as like an art form, as a as a body of work.

There's specific like moves and animations that's like oh, they're straight up just doing the marvel vs capcom 2 iron man special like oh, that's all he does, the big supreme cannon or whatever.

Yeah yeah, like all of the all of the moves are literal callbacks to like the old, like even uh, konami's x-men arcade game like beat him up, like this game is just a massive love letter.

It's like every 2d, capcom and marvel beat him up like So, like you know, like we, like we've had the conversation like this year uh, Jesse was radicalized by like Absalom was the beat him up that finally clicked for me.

Like as a kid going to Chuck E. Cheese and playing X-Men arcade was like my exposure to that.

So it's, it's been incredible to play this.

And um.

What I like about Marvel cosmic invasion is like you can start single player.

You can open up your party.

And within minutes it feels like random people will jump in.

And then your lobby is full and you have so many characters on screen and it's just chaos.

But I like that.

The thing that also makes this beat him up unique is uh, When you pick your characters, you pick two characters at a time, in middle of combat.

You can swap out your characters.

You can even do like like Marvel's Capcom, like tag team assists and stuff, and like juggle characters and stuff.

So, yeah, Marvel cosmic invasions are really satisfying.

Meet him up to play.

It's got fun progression again.

Like Scott Pilgrim, you can level up every single individual character.

So it rewards like replayability.

Every level has like different challenges.

Use Iron Man and kill 15 enemies with your special, whatever, you know?

So, um, yeah.

And there's like hidden collectibles.

You can unlock art, things like that.

So yeah, Marvel cosmic invasion.

Uh, I was, I was, I was stoked.

We got to cover it.

Cause originally like, This game would have been cropped out of our game of the year discussion.

I don't think it's necessarily a game of the year, but for me, a big 2D beat-em-up fan like oh, this is awesome.

Oh my God, this is so cool.

And yeah, so I really like this game.

So where does this sit on the beat-em-up spectrum?

Because I talked about how I do not like this genre, and Absalom was the first one that really made it click for me.

Is this closer to Streets of Rage or is this closer to maybe like a Turtles in Time?

Or like I played Shredder's Revenge and I thought that was actually really good.

Is this closer to that?

Yeah.

It's, uh, like it's, it's, it, it, it feels, it's weird.

It feels like it's like the, the Capcom beat them ups where it's just standard like push through the levels.

Like you're not, um, let me see, like streets.

I'm trying to recall like streets race for, I don't know.

I'm so sworn by like the pixel art as opposed to like the.

I feel like streets of rage had the more illustrative, like modern, like flash look.

I know that's not the right word.

I mean, yeah.

Um, yeah, I don't know.

It's just, uh, it's, uh, I feel like levels are only like 10 minutes long.

There's not like different routes in terms of like during a stage, like final fight three on super Nintendo.

You could like punch a wall and then you go through a different which was like God, oh my God, we haven't done that in a while.

Um, uh, yeah, it's, it's pretty standard.

There's not like, you're not getting loot or anything like that.

You're just, you'll get XP at the end of a thing and level up.

But, um, Playing this to me, it does scratch that final fight itch.

I'm trying to think.

Again, X-Men, Konami, I think a lot of this is what it feels like to play.

Shredder's Revenge is probably identical in terms of how that plays and feels, because it's the same team.

I only went through Shredder's Revenge maybe once or twice.

I didn't replay it a ton of times.

Whereas with this I'm kind of hooked on getting all the achievements.

So I'm going back to the levels a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah, and then I feel like Scott Pilgrim felt a lot slower.

I know Scott Pilgrim was all about like the big boss battles and all the gimmicks in each level, but I feel like the stage to stage in Scott Pilgrim was like kind of slow.

Oh, the individual enemy fights in Scott Pilgrim versus the world was like it took like 20 punches to kill anybody and they dropped all their loonies and quarters and toonies.

Come on. yeah it like i'm sure that got better as you leveled up but i feel like this is like way more fast paced and definitely if you are doing the multiplayer stuff um yeah if you're playing single player it's kind of fun though because you can like parry so if you hit circle you can block or you can parry and so like oh there's a little there's like an advanced uh i don't know what to say sounds like there's fighting game strats yeah and again a lot of it really does feel like throwback to like the 2d beat him like fighting like actual marvel vs capcom stuff which is um yeah surprising amount of depth and again a lot of it is tied to achievements like i got an achievement yesterday that's like oh deflect 50 times using captain america's shield so it was fun to just sit there and spam the button um but yeah it it it scratches it well for me um i know eventually like i mean maybe within a week or two i'll be done with the game and move on but um yeah for now it's again it's literally perfect as an arcade game because i'll sit on my ps5 thinking like what do i want to play so many games feel like you need like a half hour to like genuinely like get something out of it here you can playing it yeah you can boot it up do a level for 10 minutes like oh that was good should i keep going or put it down so um but yeah literally playing it feels like playing x-men uh konami which was like early 90s and then uh i don't know final fight's still my favorite and it has that same satisfaction of like when you're juggling enemies and they're bouncing it's the best Is Final Fight the one where you fight the mayor at the end or like the CEO of the company at the top of the tower?

Or is that Street to Rage?

Yeah, that's Final Fight.

You're Mayor Mike Haggard and the Mad Gear gang is trying to overthrow the city.

And so they've kidnapped Jessica.

And at the end, you go up to the tower and you fight E. Bulger and he's in a wheelchair.

And at the end, you throw him out of the window and he falls and dies.

And so, yeah, that's Final Fight 1.

Games got to bring that back.

So it sounds like Cosmic Invasion is really nailing that arcade.

Feel that sort of throwback style to it.

How are the characters?

How do they vary?

Because I'm looking at the roster here and we've got, you know, Captain America, Nova.

Everyone loves Nova.

Venom, Beta Ray Bill.

Sure.

Why not?

Beta Ray Bill.

Pretty cool character, dude.

He's like Thor, but he's like a dinosaur guy.

I don't know.

I don't know a ton about Marvel.

I feel like I do, but more through osmosis and not because I like to read the comics or anything.

I'm more of a DC guy.

Yeah.

How do you feel about the characters, Frank?

Is there a lot of variety or is it kind of like four Spider-Men and everyone's like Captain America?

I like – yeah, because like half the roster are deeper cuts.

Like even Cosmic Ghost Rider – like I love Ghost Rider.

Cosmic Ghost Rider, I think in the lore is actually Frank Castle, the Punisher, but now he's – I don't know um, but he's looks really sick and fun to play as yeah, i didn't know who the hell nova was.

Phyla vel um, everyone else i'm familiar with.

Uh yeah, she hulk is in here.

He's really fun to play.

It was funny.

There's a she twerk She – no, that's not – yeah.

Just the show.

All right.

But it was so funny to see on the Steam message board someone complaining like I don't want She-Hulk.

Give me Hulk.

Who is this woman crap?

Why are they making woke Marvel?

Yeah, and so like – yeah, it's just – again, the Pixar is awesome.

So even Venom, when you're playing as him, it's the same crazy animation of his goop fucking spitting out and going back and he's really big relative to the other characters and everything.

Yeah and uh and um uh, oh yeah, every character.

You can swap their palettes so you can have venom be essentially carnage, red venom um uh yeah, so i don't know, it's cool.

Yeah, it is weird playing this because it feels like you should be able to swap to megaman or ryu or like.

It feels like this is like marvel versus capcom beat him up.

That we never got.

I mean, it's only Marvel stuff and even the enemies you're fighting.

There's Taskmaster.

I'm trying to think of the other like and, a lot of times, the stages you'll fight like and you'll fight like Silver Surfer because he's been corrupted, and then you unlock them on your team.

I think when you start you have like six characters and then as you beat each boss you unlock them.

But yeah again, I'm not like yeah like, like the same thing.

I'm like half versed in marvel, like i'm familiar enough with it.

Again, a lot of it comes from the 90s games that like, capcom was producing.

Um so again, playing this game that has throwback art, all of that, like even wolverine, you can pick the classic like brown and yellow as, but you can also swap to the the blue and yellow.

You know all that.

Can you give him the the flannel so he goes full canadian?

Oh so there's no, there's no, like different costumes.

That would be sick.

Yeah, it's just palette swaps but um yeah it's, it's.

It's pretty sick and i think each stage like, There's like a Black Panther level.

So you're in Wakanda.

There's like Streets of New York generic, you know every level, every beat-em-up is like the first stage, it's just the streets.

Yeah again.

So I think there's a lot of fun Easter eggs in the background if you are a Marvel fan or just there's like.

Again, I don't know, is it?

SHIELD is the Avenger core.

I don't know, whatever.

So it's like all this stuff is there if you like that stuff.

But if you just like 2D fun beat-em-ups, oh my God, this clears the mark.

It's cool to see Marvel going back to that sort of aspect of their games and licensing stuff out to to the fighting game aspect of things, because Tokon Souls is still coming out next year.

Is it coming out this year?

I can't remember.

Maybe there's a beta soon.

Beta soon.

I think.

Yeah, I think I think the actual is next year.

And then, yeah, maybe separate.

But then Marvel Rivals was earlier this year.

I know the.

Where's that marvel card game you're obsessed with?

I was obsessed with, i got over it.

All right, i went to.

I went to marvel snap aa, i got over it, okay.

But i i do like now that, like the, the movie industry like had cooled off with the marvel stuff.

Now it's like, oh wait, we forgot about video games and now we're getting all these incredible video like.

I mean the fact that we even had the marvel's capcom collection this year was a miracle yeah, which also mvc2 was like locked away forever.

So finally having that yeah, on a modern console is nice.

And then the Punisher beat him up.

So it's weird that this has been the year of like Marvel's comeback to video games and like this at the very end, like oh crap, this is a fun, beat him up.

I don't know how many people are going to discover it or play it.

Yeah, it is on GameSass.

I think that includes PC.

But yeah, I just grabbed on PS5, but I think I had a few friends grab it.

And, yeah, again, it has cross-play, so anyone can dive in.

You can also share room codes if you need to.

But, yeah, when I play the game, I just open up the lobby, and then random people will join.

Or I'll browse what lobbies are in and just jump in.

And there's been, yeah, no issues.

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

There's no voice chat or text chat, but the community seems fine.

Wicked.

Well, there you go.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion.

How much does it cost?

I think it's 30, but I think it has the, the steam, uh, whatever, like first week discount.

Uh, yeah, this feels like a game.

Like if it came out like last console generation, it would have been like Oh, this is like a 20 game.

It feels like everything is like a little inflated now, but also like is that because of the Marvel license?

There's 15 characters.

So each character who knows how much that is to budget and animate and all like but?

But the fact that there's a beat them up with this many characters is pretty cool.

And yeah, when you see in motion, the pixel art is so beautiful.

And, like this, is again a studio that, like all of their games, have definitely shown that love for 2d art.

So it's so nice to get this as opposed to like yeah, I'm like it sounds weird to say, but it's like I'm less impressed with like the.

I mean like stuff like Hades is so beautifully illustrated animated, but like to me, video games is like like that's, that's just what I grew up with.

So it's like having that crisp pixel art is like Oh, this is.

This is what I think of video game is.

For sure, I agree.

I think this looks great, too.

I'm just flipping through the screenshots here.

The backgrounds are amazing.

They look so good.

This is awesome.

Yeah, the character animate.

Rocket Raccoon pulls out this gigantic machine gun, as they always do, with a bunch of rocket launchers on it.

Yeah, it looks great.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion, check it out.

Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, probably Switch.

It's got to be on everything.

OUYA, why not?

Check it out, yeah.

I think this looks like a lot of fun.

We're going to do a quick look on it as well, and we're going to bash some bubs or whatever Wolverine says.

I don't know.

Bub, what's going on?

Get him.

I'm Hugh Jackman, greatest showman jeremy, who's your favorite marvel character?

I know how much you love the uh, the franchise, beta ray bill baby, you just heard about him.

I was just reading about him while you guys were chatting about it, because i need to know a little more.

Let me drop a little lore here.

Yeah, hit me with it.

So beta ray bill he uses molynear, thor's hammer, and i thought that this was legit.

I'm not.

This is not a bit.

I actually think this is cool.

The creator of beta ray bill was saying that uh, that like superman and captain, america can't pick up molynear because it's like, It's a.

It's a hammer that's like made to smash people to death.

And it's like Superman is like too moral.

And Captain America, he's like too moral.

And then Captain America can pick up the hammer.

He does it in the movie.

OK, well, fucking why don't you tell that to Walt Simonson?

Sorry, maybe you know.

Maybe watch Infinity War or Endgame, which he probably said this in like nineteen seventy, seven or something.

Oh, no, this was twenty ten.

All right.

Oh whatever regardless fan, i think it's cool that they were like all these like super, super bad, he's like too good to do this.

And the beta ray bill is like i'll fucking smash a guy with a hammer, i'll kill him with a hammer.

And then they just were like okay, he deserves the power of thor.

Oh, comic books, they're so strange, they're so strange.

Uh, can i quickly talk about the samogo legacy collection?

Yes, before you do, can i have one comic book interjection?

Yeah always, i was reading about the mask last night, like the comic book that inspired the jim carrey movie.

The comic is so much darker than the jim carrey movie.

It's kind of crazy if you read it first and you're like wait, jim carrey plays this guy.

It's just like it, because in the mask movie it's like it makes you like wacky and charismatic and you're like hey baby, somebody stop me.

But in the comic it's just like A guy who has grudges against all these people that he puts on the mask and he's like I should kill them all.

I did it in the other order and I was like, when's he going to do the Cuban Pete bit?

Why isn't he doing that?

It's so crazy.

I don't know.

I just thought that was fucking bizarre.

I didn't even know it was a comic until I was reading about it last night.

I don't know why I was reading about the mask last night.

Sometimes you just get in those rabbit holes.

Yeah, i just had to go down a wiki hole.

Also, you're reading about loki or something.

It's snowing outside and i can't dox myself by pointing my webcam outside, but it's uh, it's magical.

I could just sit here and chat about video games and fucking watch the snowfall and be delighted forever.

Christmas time is here.

All right, tell me about samogo.

Yeah, i will tell you about the samogo legacy collection.

Um, samogo developers out of sweden.

They make really great video games.

They have been since like 2013.

Uh, they started out making mobile games, including like is it jelly car?

It's in the collection, let me pull up the names but they made a ton of really good like early mobile experiments.

I would call them um, they didn't really pop off until year walk.

Do you guys know about that game at all?

There's like a mobile game if you see, like the picture of the goat you might know about.

I don't know.

It was pretty popular in that space for a while.

Yeah, their original games were like Cosmo Spin, Bumpy Road, Beat Sneak Bandit.

I hadn't played any of those.

I'm not going to lie.

I also didn't play Device 6, which is another game on this list.

But Year Walk was the one that I did.

And it was this very interesting... visual deliverance of a story it was like weird and it was a lot of reading there was like books that you read in the game and like a lot of texts it was like i don't you don't do that i'm playing video games if you want to read a book i read a book uh but it worked and it was a solid way to tell that kind of story i enjoyed it talked a bunch of uh talked about a bunch of swedish like folklore stuff which i thought was really interesting at the time uh and they eventually went on to make games like sayonara wild hearts and uh one of my favorite games from the last couple years and Lorelei and the laser eyes.

That is a fantastic video game.

And they worked on that as well.

Uh, and this is their collection of a bunch of their iPad stuff.

Cause all those games are like lost on the platform.

If you want to play some of them.

You know they got to keep updating their games so that they work on the new iPad.

Cause does this work with face ID?

If it doesn't, then you can't have it on the iPhone 17.

So they were like, you know what?

Here you go.

You can play them all on your computer or on your switch too.

And that's what I played this collection on.

Um, This was a really interesting thing.

So like there have been these collections of games.

You guys were talking about the Mortal Kombat collection.

Frank, you talk about the Marvel collection, all that stuff.

But like the ones that are more documentary style, like the Mortal Kombat one, those are interesting because it's not just here's the video games.

It's also like here's the history.

Right.

Here's here's some look at the development and everything.

And I think that's a really cool way of documenting video games outside of making great documentaries.

Patreon.com slash noclip.

Nice.

Thank you.

But this way of doing it is like so they present it as basically it's an iPad in the video game.

Um, so you know, if you play this on on your switch to, it's like you have a tablet with a tablet inside of it, like a vertical tablet inside of your widescreen.

It's so weird.

Um, the switch to version of this, I think is the ultimate way to play it though.

Cause the tablet interface.

You can rotate your your uh, switch to and play it like vertical or like long long, the long way.

They got into tend to switch to the long way.

And you can look at it that way.

And it's like playing on an iPad.

Then these games work perfectly on it.

The Switch 2 has multi-touch.

So the games that have those features, that's still there.

Gyro stuff is still there because it's, you know, Switch 2 has gyro features.

So all of the stuff you would expect from the iPad mobile versions of these games is translated onto that platform really well.

It feels really good.

And I will say this is the first game I have played on Switch 2 and I've been waiting for something that actually uses the mouse controls and doesn't feel like dog shit.

It feels so, and the weirdest thing, because it has multi-touch, You use both joy cons.

You have two cursors on the screen and both of the joy con independently.

Control one.

Sorry, all of the Joy-Con two.

I'm so sorry, Nintendo.

I'm so sorry.

Each of them independently control a cursor on the screen.

If you want to play like with your tablet on TV mode, you can even rotate.

This was the weirdest thing.

You can rotate the tablet in the game like the fake virtual tablet to do the gyroscopic stuff because, like their early game, Cosmo spin is about rotating the interface in the screen.

It's like a little planet and there's a character running around.

It's like a super simple video game and you're trying to get your score really high.

It's like very early mobile stuff.

But like later on device six especially this is the highlight for me is this like narrative book experience.

It's like, it's just basically just reading.

It kind of feels like playing the house of leaves.

You have to like rotate the screen and like the letters get all big and spacey.

If you were reading a book and you're referred to it as a narrative book experience, that would be very, very funny.

Sorry.

Guy who only plays video games who reads a book one time.

Yeah, it's sort of like a narrative book experience, but it's just a book.

You don't really use the controller much.

There's not a lot of buttons.

And it's just.

It's very.

It's like a puzzle game, but all of the bits of the puzzle are revealed as you move the screen around.

Like it does this parallax thing where you can see puzzle solutions by like manipulating the way you're reading the book in the right order and stuff.

There's like audio stuff.

I think you would really like it, Jared.

I think you would really like Device 6.

It's such a weird way of delivering the story.

And the story is like actually... sort of labyrinthian and it's telling it's, you can reach dead ends in this book, which like outside of choose your own adventure books, I don't think, you know, that doesn't tend to happen.

Um, so it's a pretty cool experience.

Uh, and the sailor's dream also does similar stuff.

It's like their later version of that sort of storytelling, but it's like a lot more visually uh, I would say, arresting.

I think it looks really, really nice, and the puzzles are harder to find.

But yeah, this collection is great.

I think all of these games work really well, especially on Switch 2, if you're playing with a double cursor thing.

I don't know how it is on PC.

I imagine there aren't two mouse cursors.

That's not something computers can normally do.

But it still, I imagine, works well.

I would say get this on Switch if you can.

I think it's also on Switch 1.

So you could play it on that as well, but it's not going to have that mouse mode stuff.

But the gyroscopic mouse controls still feel really good.

I don't know if that's a switch to thing again.

If you have a switch to this is like, I feel like this, you need this.

Like it's great for the arcade stuff.

And then there's also um, they're like they have a bunch of prototypes of their other content in here.

Like you can play an early version of bumpy road.

They're like weird side-scrolling car game and stuff like that's just cool to see their history, if you like the kind of games that they make, because they make very esoteric, different genre style video games but they're still relatively approachable in uh, in most of their design, like they're weird, but not so weird that you can't get into them.

They're just like it's a little taste of the of the freak you could get if you played really obscure, small indie games.

They're they're very well produced like they're very polished in their in their weirdness.

It's nice.

I like some of those games a lot.

Whatever they're doing next big, i'm gonna be there day one.

This is a very cool collection, though if you want to check out their early games.

They also have a podcast in there that they made for one of their things.

That's just included in there.

I think it's a preservation thing.

This is awesome.

I think it's a switch to, you know system seller.

Hey, why not for 15 bucks?

I think it's on sale right now for 15 bucks.

It might launch at 15 bucks, i'm not.

When else are you gonna hold your switch to long wise?

You know exactly.

When are you gonna hold your switch to the long way?

That's weird.

That's like eating a hot dog from the side.

You know i'm saying that's corn cob and your hot dog.

You can't do that.

Yeah exactly, i'm corn cob.

My dog um, yeah.

So mogo legacy collection it's corn Corn cobbing my dog.

Corn cob your dog.

Simogo Legacy Collection.

Put that on the box.

Yeah, check it out.

Device 6, I am going to play more of.

I've only played, like, bits and pieces of all of these.

Beat Sneak Bandit was really cool.

It's like a side-scrolling rhythm platformer.

It's very strange.

You like, tap to the beat to move your little bandit around these like puzzle environments, to get to a clock, to escape whatever.

Uh, it's a fun little weird thing.

That's the thing with a lot of the earlier games is like mobile used to be you could do whatever you wanted.

I was thinking while I was playing this.

I was like mobile games.

You used to just if it was a circle that a character walked around.

You got a million dollars and they gave.

They put you on the front of the app store.

And now it's like you gotta you have to sell me a triple, a 100 hour long experience that extracts money out of my wallet when I'm not looking.

If you, if you want to be on the app store homepage.

So it's it's weird to look back at that era of games and think, like what the requirement was for success.

And how you couldn't do that anymore.

Like if you wanted to just start an indie studio and say yeah, I don't know, we'll make a game where you like, drive a car across the screen.

That was like you could.

There were hundreds of those and somehow that started like Zynga, you know, not literally, but like that was all it took.

And now even if you make a game like that on Steam, forget about it.

You know how many of those launch every day next to like. you know a hentai puzzle game or something you're not you're not pulling it off that's not a way to start a company you gotta make like chinese point and click adventures for moms now yeah that's your choices chinese point and click adventure or like you have to make where the winds meet or whatever that game's called you have to make a big free triple a experience chinese game or a different type of chinese game it's the only things you could make oh that's that's your choices now you're gonna learn mandarin you're gonna like it uh samoga legacy collection corncob your dog and uh learn chinese corncob your dog that's gonna fucking haunt me oh i hopefully call the next game corncob your dog all right uh that was the yeah some uncle legacy collection check it out it's on uh steam switch switch 2 might be on other consoles probably shouldn't be though just get it on switch just if you don't have a switch go steal a switch and then play on switch Um, let's talk about some older games while we're on the topic of, of going back to the past, the past to play some games that don't suck ass.

Let's talk about majesty.

Jeremy, tell me about your experience of reliving your your early teens with uh, this RTS game from the past.

Oh, way older than that.

This game came out.

Sorry.

I thought this was your early twenties.

I wasn't trying to, to dox your age.

You're 52.

I'm 34.

Okay.

All right.

This game came out in the year 2000 when I was nine years old.

This is a pre nine 11 game.

That's awesome.

Um, back it was a.

It was a.

America was at its height.

This game could just get on a plane, you didn't have to get scanned or anything.

Yeah, this is like your shoes off.

Back in bad day.

Back in my day, you should drink out.

Majesty is a.

Yeah, i.

I don't know what possessed me to play this.

Um, this is a game that i purchased at the uh.

Are you guys familiar with the uh?

Holy shit, what's it called the the uh?

Oh my god, why can't i think of it?

The book Scholastic Book Fair.

Yes.

You guys have that?

Yeah, yeah.

So for those of you who did not have the Scholastic Book Fair when I was a kid back in my day uh, they would fill the school library.

Like some company presumably called scholastic, would come in with a ton of books and like edutainment software and all sorts of like bullshit and just set up like a like the whole library would become a store.

And this is like the most like crass, like capitalism in a public school thing I've ever heard of in my life.

But I loved it.

Uh, and you know, they would like announce it.

It would happen like I don't know, like a few times a year, but it was like less than once a month, for sure.

Um, and you know your parents would be like here's twenty dollars, get like some fucking magic treehouse books or whatever the fuck uh.

But but they, you know, like they this is what i was playing like fucking starcraft and shit, and they had.

They had video games at the scholastic book fair.

Um, most of them were kind of dog shit, but a few of them were pretty cool.

So they had, like you know, like lucas arts was doing weird edutainment software at the time, there was like the droid game where you build c3po with sexy legs.

Droid works.

Yeah, i think you talked about that right.

Um, games like that, like things that were sort of entertaining and like sort of educational but kind of like not really either.

Uh, but for some reason I, because like this was an era that I feel like if you're, if you're under the age of like 20, it's probably hard for this to this beggars belief, but like it, all software was seen as educational in some capacity because if you were a young person it was like you got to learn computers because computers is the future and so it was like if you were like playing starcraft it was like oh my boy he's gonna be a computer man someday like it was it just like was the future he's gonna be operating the scantrons he knows what he's doing yeah he's gonna work my son plays starcraft he was gonna work for the government he's gonna work at oracle and he's gonna build those drones yeah yeah so uh So just like there was just games at Scholastic Book Fair because it was just like, oh, yeah, like software that's educational vaguely.

So Majesty is one of the games that I got at the Scholastic Book Fair, and I bought it because it looked like Age of Empires, which it's it's not at all.

So I was like, oh, cool.

Another like medieval RTS.

I love this.

That's like my one of my favorite genres of game.

But Majesty is interesting in that it takes the RTS genre.

And it spins it in a very orthogonal direction.

So in Majesty it is a kingdom simulator where you build a kingdom in these sort of like standalone instanced scenarios.

But the weird thing is, is that you like hire heroes to be in your kingdom.

And there's all these different types of heroes.

There's like captain america, beta ray bill.

There's not that kind of hero, my dear uh no, there's like rogues and like rangers.

You know, captain america can't pick up the hammer, right?

Sorry, i'm still on this bit.

Some of them have hammers um but uh, but you don't control any of the heroes.

You don't control any characters in this game.

None of the units are under your control.

Uh, which is very interesting, because that's like the whole point of an rts is like, you know, you're micro in this.

You've fucking got like control.

Group two is all your terran marines and they're like over here, you know, so there's no micro, it's all macro.

So so you're just building the buildings where you recruit the guys.

You're building houses, you're building like stuff to build economy, you're defending your kingdom and building like guard towers and stuff, but you're not, you don't actually control anyone.

So it creates this very weird experience where it's like it's like incredibly frustrating sometimes, but when it works it's so fucking good because there's there's this like it's like an ant farm or something.

It's like a fantasy kingdom ant farm where you can.

So the way you manipulate these heroes into doing things is um, you obviously accrue gold through the economy that you build, but you set these flags that are like reward flags, and so you can be like all right, i'll give like uh like, i'll give 500 gold to whoever gets here first, and then the heroes kind of like, kind of like the the way in the sims um, Like Sims have needs, but the way it actually works in the Sims is that the things that fulfill needs around them are constantly broadcasting.

And so there's this sort of like needs hierarchy where it's like oh, the sink is right there and it's telling me to wash my hands, but I'm not that dirty.

And the fridge is right here and it's telling me to eat, but I am hungry.

So I'll go to that.

That's kind of how the needs work in the Sims.

Similarly, these reward flags are like broadcasting, presumably to all these heroes, and different heroes have like different.

So like the, the um, the mercenaries are like super greedy, so they're always sort of like the first ones to go for the reward, even if it's dangerous.

Uh, so you're using, you're setting rewards as incentive to hopefully like like, if the mission is kill, like a beholder, this giant beholder that's out in the woods.

Once you see it, you put like a $1,500 bounty on it.

And then all your heroes are, who are sufficiently leveled will like go after it.

Um, but it's fun to just like.

I don't know there's something cool about it, that's just.

I feel like they looked at how popular real-time strategy games were.

This was not that long after Warcraft was around and popular and stuff.

Warcraft, the RTS was in the height of its popularity at this point.

Age of empires 2, i think, came out like a year prior or something.

Um, and they were like what, if?

What if?

We took this incredibly popular genre and put like a weird game design twist on it and i think that's really cool because they could have this could have just been like off-brand aoe worse yeah, which is what i thought it was.

Um, but the reason i sort of wanted to revisit it is because i think that that's like an interesting game design decision to like How can we take a familiar genre and invert the thing that is so familiar about it completely opposite?

And then like like if, if you were in a studio and you were like oh, what if we made an RTS?

But you don't control anyone.

I feel like they would like laugh you out of the room.

And I don't know.

I think that's so fascinating that it works so fucking well.

No, that's great.

I feel like that's something that's I've.

I've kind of been looking for.

More is games to sort of take an idea and not just like put their own coat of paint on it.

That's definitely been a problem with the with the indie spaces like.

Yeah, vampire survivors, but it's this time it's my brand.

Um, i wish they would like do something just a little bit, just spin it in a cool way and it's.

It's neat to hear that they were doing that in the 2000s, but less so now.

It seems strange.

That's how i feel too, like i, i not i'm not particularly criticizing megabonk here.

This is not me being like a megabonk's an example of megabonk hater detected.

I knew it not, not even not even a megabonk hater i.

But it is interesting as a parallel to see like that you can, you can pivot from a familiar genre in a direction in a different way where like, megabonk is what if?

Vampire survivors but 3d and then beyond that, it's like also, you know, it's more bombastic and fast and all these things like it has its own identity, got boss fights, but yeah, and the boss fights and it has sort of more of like a weird, you know, world of warcraft, vampire survivors, things going on like that.

Yeah yeah, and i think that's interesting.

But it is kind of cool that like pivot, like i often think of design, specifically game design, but also just like creative endeavors in general, as the shoulders of giants thing, where it's like okay, this thing was cool and popular and revolutionary.

How can we push it a little bit further?

And uh, I think majesty is an interesting example that like, that doesn't necessarily always have to be.

What is the next logical conclusion of the evolution of a genre?

It can be like, what is like the dumbest possible, uh, like most the least intuitive direction for this genre to develop maybe that's interesting um yeah like a gentle remix of the idea as opposed to like here's the same thing but we yeah it's yellow what if it was purple like instead it's it's actually trying to do something different yeah that's very cool like what if you ate a hot dog from the side you know yeah what if you corncob your dog majesty corncob your dog that was the pitch for majesty but anyway yeah majesty is fucking great um i i I, I, someday I hope that we have, uh, the budget for no clip to, to do like weird video essays on retrospective stuff, because I would love to, I have a whole video essay in my brain about majesty, uh, patreon.com slash no clip to, um,

But anyway, go play Majesty.

It's great.

It's fucking I don't even know how much I paid for it because I just wanted it.

And I was like, it doesn't matter.

Is it abandoned where now?

Not to suggest people go torrent it, but I mean, it must be on.

You can get it for 249 on good old games.

There you go.

Shout outs GOG.

They're really holding it down.

Horses and Majesty.

That's all I've got there now.

And Cyberpunk 2077.

There is a Majesty 2 as well, but I've never played it.

Oh, I know Paradox published what like the gold edition of something, something like that of Majesty, like a decade after it came out.

Um, so there must maybe that version still available somewhere.

I don't even know who made majesty.

You know, like there's like games where it's like god, he's the one who gave them the right to have the crown.

You know, it's like i feel like there's certain games where it's like who made it is such an important part of its identity in my brain, like it's like oh, this was like.

Uh, microprose made this.

Oh wow, this was actually published by microprose.

Whoa um, i fucking sniped that.

Developed by cyber lore.

Let's just oh, that's a good old 2000 game developer name.

What did they make?

Oh shit okay, so cyber lore seems to be a studio that got hired to do like expansions for popular games.

Uh, i've clearly, i've clearly gone down this rabbit hole before, because their entire wikipedia list of games is uh, is purple links that i've played before yeah, uh.

But they developed warcraft 2 beyond the dark portal, which is one of the expansion packs.

Oh, heroes of might, magic 2, price of loyalty and playboy the mansion nice yeah, they did play the mansion, which was their last game, unsurprisingly.

Uh yeah interesting, all right, so they just did like genie's curse.

It seems like they did a lot of getting hired to make other people's weird expansion packs.

But um, that's what it used to be, that you also used to be a way you could be in the industry.

You just like added stuff on for a lot of money.

We need to.

This is this is one more important thing i must plant a flag on okay, we need to get rid of dlc.

We need to bring back expansion packs.

We need to get rid of video games.

Is it 2010 again?

You're just saying the same thing.

No, no.

But I have an extension to this.

OK, we need to get rid of video games.

We need to bring back computer games.

Whoa.

OK, now you're speaking my language.

And I said that to a friend of mine a few weeks ago.

And then I saw some I saw someone tweet the exact same thing.

And I was like, it's in it's in the fucking there's electricity in the air.

Computer games are bad.

People over the age of 30 are going to be all over this idea.

Old fuck.

All the old heads.

Yeah, all the old heads are receiving the transmission from God that we need to bring back computer games as a term.

We need to make the computer a thing that like has a throne again.

It used to be used to be in a room somewhere.

It used to be like a big box that took up space.

It's like a thing you went and prayed to and waited for the DSL line to kick in.

You waited for their whatever it was called.

You waited for your mom to get off the phone so you could reconnect to Diablo.

Yeah.

Wait for your modem to stop kicking through.

I used to have what dial up.

That's what it was.

I had dial up for like way longer than I should have.

We were, we didn't have a ton of money.

Internet was like an extra thing.

Um, yeah, we gotta go back to that.

We gotta go back to the computer being a thing that, like you go to to play what is effectively an Excel spreadsheet with some graphics on it.

All right.

Bring back magic.

Where's majesty four or three, which what are we on now?

They never got the, we never got a three.

Well, there you go.

You can make it.

You could pitch it.

I will make it.

The Saudis got a lot of money, man.

If you give me $100,000, I will make majesty three.

And will it be good?

Yes.

Yes, it will.

That's pretty cheap guys.

Come on.

A hundred grand and i'll do it in less than five years.

There you go, jeremy jane.

Developer of majesty 3, solo dev.

There's majesty, check it out.

Check out majesty 2, check out other rts games, why not while you're out there?

Well, we're not sure on, the jury's still out, but it has to be good jeremy, let it be good.

All right, i don't know if it is, let the people get excited.

Okay frank, did you ever buy anything at the scholastic book fair?

By the way, that seems like something you would have been into.

Yeah, this i mean like it's a morbid thing, but it's like.

I remember at the scholastic book fair i bought like uh, my dad gave me like ten dollars and at the scholastic book fair was a little like i don't know, it was like a father's day thing where it was like a little a little desk thing that said number one dad.

Oh, so i bought it for a member of him, being tickled by it, and then, like almost literally two years ago, when i was cleaning out his house in his kitchen, he still had that little number one and it was like rusted and it looked.

It looked so scrappy.

But the fact that he kept that was like whole – it was such a like – geez.

And then I threw it away because I threw away like 90% of the stuff there.

But that was like – that was insane that he had that.

Other things – I think that's where I got like the Wayside School books.

There was Louis Sacker, the guy who did Holes.

He had like a trio of like absurdist novels that like these are kids books, but it was like my introduction to like absurdist humor, like maybe even like 70s national lampoon-esque, but it was like sideways stories from wayside school.

And then there was like two more sequels and i like those books were so funny in like there were like children's books but they were genuinely absurd and like that.

That like i think like taught me a different, like lens of humor, even like different than simpsons or whatever, but like those were.

I mean like i think harry, it's so funny, like i don't have any of them now, but you're right, they would have like a scholastic branding on the books, i think.

I think.

Like I think at the first Harry Potter I had like a paperback from the Scholastic Book Fair.

I think Scholastic's a publisher, no?

Yeah, and I think they still have a booth at Comic-Con or whatever.

But yeah, I'm just trying to think of like whatever the popular YA or like kids books in the 90s were.

Because yeah, I definitely had a Scholastic brand.

You probably had some like Goosebumps, scholastic brands.

Yeah, i never collected, but like yeah every all the yeah, everyone else.

I think sometimes they even sold video game strategy guides or something like.

They had like card game stuff too.

I remember i got the yugioh.

I was so into yugioh when i was a kid, can you tell?

Uh, i had the yugioh like guide, the unofficial yugioh guy here's how all these cards work.

Dark magician girl here's what she does.

It was great.

Yeah, so they had weird stuff like that for sure.

Did they have prima guides?

Is that what you're thinking of?

Or i feel like they had.

It was worse.

It was like 1001 cheats for super nintendo.

It was like i, oh my god dude yeah, i had.

I always wondered where i got, because i have like fucking, like the blockbuster 1001 cheats.

I feel like half of those books i got at the scholastic book fair.

That's right.

I just went on their website and you can do a 3d tour of a sample scholastic book fair.

No, that's what they're doing to us.

That's the future.

They're selling us our childhood back to us in 3d.

You can walk through it, put on your meta quest.

No no, it's like.

It's like if you want them to come to your school, it's like oh, you can see what it would look like if they set it up into okay, but you know what?

I don't see a single fucking video game in the whole 360 degree angle that i'm spinning around and i don't see a single video game.

I guess what kids want that?

They have iPads, but they need that crap, for Roblox is on there and has infinity video games.

That's a good point.

Video games were like inaccessible when I was a kid.

Like if you would, you would like go to the store and it would be like you would just bask in the glory of Babbage's, you know, and smell the plastic wrap.

And like it was an experience.

You said video games in like cereal boxes.

Is that a thing you got?

Yeah, they had like.

Yeah, I don't think I ever got any, but they definitely did.

Oh, like bad crap.

Licensed garbage, point and click.

Yeah, good old days.

I don't know.

That'd be a good fucking again.

That'd be a good noclip 2 video.

I'd watch that series play cereal box gaming.

Cereal box games yeah, that'd be fun.

We're getting real nostalgic on this episode.

I like it, it's good.

Hey, you know what?

Sometimes you got to go back to go forward.

True, truer words have never been spoken.

It is the season too.

I get very nostalgic around christmas time.

So holiday season.

Uh, one more game.

Before we hop into emails, i just want to quickly go over this because i have not played enough of it to give it a strong recommendation, but i do think it's very cool.

Scrabdackle This is like I've never played anything like this before.

It's very strange.

It's an adventure game where you're playing as a wizard and it's like a top down thing.

You have a it's I guess you could say it's a bit like a like a Zelda, like an early Zelda game.

It's like a grid.

It's not grid based in that you walk around on the grid but, like you can see where the obvious squares of the pixel art goes.

It looks a bit like a new ground style game.

I would say it has that like early scratchy flash pixel art look to it.

You're playing as a wizard named Blue and you have these spells.

That And it's very, it's a very quirky video game.

Very quirky.

It's very silly.

Uh, you, uh, you, the opening cut scene is very quick.

You see like Oh, you've been kicked out of school and now you've landed in this magical environment and you have to go around and pick stuff up and collect things.

And like, the main interaction ability that you have is um.

You scan or scry everything in the world.

So you, not every single thing, but like, you know, it's a bit like Metroid.

You see a weird thing, scan it.

And then you have this, this like journal you can look in and it has a bunch of descriptions.

The game has like a ton of words.

There's so much writing for a game that looks the way that it does.

Uh, and the writing i find quite good.

It's like funny and it has a good sense of humor.

I like it.

Um, and yeah, all the entries are funny or they'll give you like some new information and basically what you're trying to do in the game is like get back to school and then different things unfold as you're moving around.

It's like the more you explore the world, you like run into these scenarios that don't make any sense and are so strange.

I like the random crap.

I don't know why, Probably because I grew up with like that sense of humor from the Internet.

But you'll like walk into an area that is like peanut character.

They literally they're peanuts with legs and like they talk to you.

And the conversation system actually is really cool.

When you walk up to a character, you can start talking to them and then like above their head there's a text box, whatever.

But like the choices below them, you can interact with and then you can just walk away.

And the conversation will end.

And I was like I don't think there's a lot of games that do that, where you just like leave the conversation and not hit the I'm done talking to you button.

It's kind of cool.

And they like react to you walking away.

They'll be like, all right, I guess we're done talking jerk.

So that's kind of funny.

And yeah, I don't know.

So far, I'm really liking the setup of it.

I like the tone of it, the music, the sound effects, everything.

It's very it's very weird.

I want someone else to play it because it's like one of those games that if I give away all the fun stuff, it's not as interesting.

But I feel like I need to talk to someone about it because it's it's like it's just so strange.

Yeah, it's very it's I like it a lot.

Act one is out now.

The whole thing isn't out.

I think they're planning to put the the remaining acts out every year.

So next year, act two should be out in the year after act three.

But of course, I assume it depends on their sales and everything.

I really shit.

They're aiming for a 40 to 50 hour range experience for all three acts together.

That's crazy.

One is like very long.

There's a lot to it.

There's boss fights.

There's like there's this whole world that you can warp into.

So they're like the game saves with saved spaces like you go into a little sigil and stand on it.

You can save or you can warp between them and everything.

But there's a third option, which is like going to your brain and you dream and like there's different versions, like inside, inside out, not inside, not the bo burnham vehicle or the the other one video game yeah yeah um, there's a bunch of stuff called inside they shouldn't do that.

Uh, inside out, like there's a bunch of personalities within the character blue's brain that are like i am brawny blue, but like they're also still really smart and like this headmaster blue and like it's kind of It's very strange.

It's very weird.

But like it's, it's a cool way of delivering the exposition of the world and like explaining who the character is and everything.

And then you go back out in the world and you talk to like peanut people and they give you a quest, or you go into an area and they're like yeah, I don't know.

This world has been destroyed by something.

Something showed up one day and now there's clouds and everything's dying.

Go save it.

OK, sure.

I don't know.

It's just it gives me that same again, that vibe of like a new ground style game where stuff was just happening and it was strange and bizarre.

And you kind of just kept playing to see what the next new weird thing was.

And I think they've nailed that here.

The weird things per second is just off the chart.

It's constantly.

I entered a new screen and there was there's like these enemies called dust mites and they're just these little like purple balls floating around.

There's like a little bit of combat.

You, you left, click to shoot in the area around.

You do these little like wand attacks.

It's, it's very simple.

The first thing you can do is pick the difficulty mode and just select.

I don't care basically, and just like, the combat doesn't matter, it's just a spectacle um, so i'm glad that they have that there, because they know it's kind of just, it's not, it's not amazing um, but i walked into this area with this dust mite thing, so like all these mites were wearing a coat and just like talking to you.

They're like can i be wizard?

And you're like no, you can't, you can't just be a wizard, why?

No, it's just stupid, just stuff like that.

I really like it.

I think it's very silly and charming.

If you like that old new ground style, i think you would enjoy it a lot.

Cool, i'm gonna pick this up.

This looks cool.

Yeah, i think it's.

Uh, i think it's very neat.

Scrab tackle, check it out quick, shout out.

Like i said, i can't give it a full, full-throated recommendation, but i do think what i've played so far of the first like two or three hours is very charming and i'm excited to get back to it once we're done with game of the year season, which it sounds like has been extended a, So it's time to play more.

You guys need to play The 100 Line, right?

The 100 Line, Last Defense Academy.

You guys need to play that?

That's not on the list.

The 100 Line?

Which one is this?

It's the Danganronpa lead, I believe.

Oh, I did see this.

Yeah, this is freak stuff.

I like that game a lot, but I would not put that on anyone.

Just just mentioning games sorry game.

I said goatee season never ends, the games just keep coming out.

Yep, we're pushing back the day.

I thank god because there's fucking a lot of games came out this year that i did not play.

I played a lot of games this year, but there's a lot of games that i did not play.

I feel like this year we did a lot more um, discovery gameplay at least i did uh, of like playing stuff that maybe i wasn't excited for, but i did want to try to like properly cover on noclip 2 or on the podcast or whatever, And that led to me not playing stuff that would have been on my goatee list most likely if I took the time.

So it's a weird thing to be in, right?

Of like playing video games, but not playing the video games.

It's strange.

Strange job.

Strange world we live in.

What a first world problem.

Those are all the games that we played or wanted to talk about this week anyway.

Majesty, Horses.

Play Horses.

Or don't.

It's up to you.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion and the Simogo Legacy Collection and also Scrabdackle, neat little indie game.

Check it out if you like weird stuff.

But we do have a lot of emails left frank, if you want to read those out for us.

Yeah, i was still hung over on hundred line.

I want to play this, but it's oh, we can talk about that.

You want to talk about the hundred line?

That's a capital c computer game.

It's not coming to consoles.

Oh, is it really not on consoles?

No, so that's a game i straight.

I guess i could play it on steam deck.

Um yeah, it's great on steam deck.

It runs really well.

I did not realize it wasn't another con.

No, it's also on nintendo switch.

Oh, really.

There you go.

I, I can't imagine what it runs like on switch.

It's pretty performant.

Um, it's really cool.

It's like a it's like that murder mystery kind of thing of Danganronpa, but it's.

It's structured like a turn-based strategy game, but it's not overly challenging.

It's sort of like just kill the enemies in the area and then bosses show up.

And like the story goes all over the place and that same sort of Danganronpa flow chart story thing it does.

It does something like that.

There's a lot of.

There's literally a hundred endings.

That's why it's called the hundred line.

Um, that game is long.

I hear it's very, very long.

But people who love it love it, and i would put myself among that if i had finished it.

So It's pretty cool.

Okay, no, thank you.

Yeah, check it out.

Duncan Rump is sick, but it's cool, but I haven't played much of it.

It's a visual novel, but this has gameplay.

There's combat.

There's a lot of reading, but the voice acting is funny.

There's one character I would love to know your thoughts on.

If you get around to it, who's like?

She sucks.

She's so silly and over the top, but she's into murder.

She's like, I want everyone to die.

I would love to know what you think about her when you get to it.

So when you get to it, let me know.

Yeah.

Dang.

Oh my God.

Dang.

Oh my.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, yeah.

Okay.

I mean, what do you want to know?

It sounds like you want to keep talking about it.

No, I know, but again, there's too many games and they're all $60.

So it's like, that's going to wait until they're, uh, they're forgotten about.

Um, that's all right.

Uh yeah okay cool, cool.

There's another game that came up on i was just clicking the publisher and by anaplex, there's a game called hookah haze oh that sounds, that sounds sick which is about a hookah lounge on the outskirts of akihabara.

Dude, it actually is.

That's awesome.

Yeah see, this is a game i want to play.

Um wow, the art style here is so frank.

Oh, my god, that's what i'm like.

It's only ten dollars, so that's, that's a real.

Anyway yeah, i'll check a hookah haze i'm now.

I'm in a hookah haze talking about i don't know what they call it.

It's uh Oh, I forget.

I have a friend that goes to all these.

They're not called hookah in Tokyo.

It's like shiri.

It's a different term, but I don't know.

It's a whole subculture.

Whatever.

Okay, let's get into emails.

We already talked about Catherine's email about horses.

Thank you for writing in.

Yeah, we covered it.

Again, if horses wasn't on console, hey, I'd play it.

If I can get trophies.

All right.

If you want to send us emails, please write to us.

Podcast at noclipvideo or on our Patreon channel, the podcast chat channel in our Discord.

But once again, podcast at noclip.video if you want to send us an email.

Casey wrote in and asked does playing the same game on three different platforms change the experience of that game?

Hi, folks.

I've been thinking about how different platforms for video games change the context around games that are played on them.

For example, I expect my PS5 to be the place where I play huge, gigafuck AAA cinematic games and the Steam Deck to be the place where I play cool indies that have less than 200 reviews.

Another example is I find playing older games that were designed for specific hardware on newer hardware to be a really disconnected experience.

So my question is, does the platform that a game is played on affect your perception of that game?

100%.

Yes.

Totally.

This is Marshall McLuhan never talked about video games, but his whole medium is the message.

Yeah.

Hell yeah um yeah, no it i.

This extends to things beyond video games too.

I think a lot about this with um, with music hardware that, like the, the people who are like big hardware heads in like the music production scene it's.

It's like it's not just that hardware sounds better like, for example, synthesizers this is not the hard.

Synths inherently sound better than digital synths and vsts, though they often do.

But I feel like this sort of thing that fewer people talk about is that having a dedicated device for a task is like it puts you in the fucking zone.

And like the we have associations with devices that this device is for this.

I'm like holding this device.

It's time for me to do this.

I think about this all the time with game dev, because I wish I had.

If I was rich, I would buy a second computer that I'm only allowed to do game dev on, because i do so much chilling on my fucking computer and it's like sometimes i do game dev and i'm just like slipping to chilling and it's like i need, like a game dev terminal.

You know what i mean.

You got to look away from the bad screen to look at the good screen.

Yeah yeah, exactly yeah um, but yeah no, the device on which you play a game super matters.

I think it uh, it shapes your expectation, i think, and i don't think i think it's totally personal too.

I think different people have different associations with different uh, different hardware.

But you know, like old fucking, like retro game enthusiasts uh, talk about this all the time with uh, you know it's, it's.

Playing a game on a super nintendo is a different experience than emulating the exact same game, and it's not just about like frame rate or like running it through like a crt and stuff.

It's also just like the experience, the tactility and the cognitive framing.

Yes, absolutely.

It's like I was joking a little bit about that.

You need to put the computer back in a throne room.

But no, like there is something about that being the place where you go to do a thing being an important part of doing the thing.

Like when I read a book, I'm always like I got to structure it in a certain way.

I want it to be in a specific environment.

It means I don't read a ton.

But when I do I get a lot out of it because I can really give it my full attention and have like a space and let it be just for reading.

It's like you know, if you want to solve your sleep, you got to make sure that your bed is only for sleeping and not also for scrolling and playing games and whatever.

That's just a weird, yeah, cognitive thing for sure.

And I also think, like the device that you play a game on, I think you should try to play it on whatever it was made for.

But also, you know, SNES RPGs to me work a lot better on like a mobile handheld device, because then you can sort of put it down whatever you feel like, you don't have to do.

It's a different way of playing it, but I like them more that way.

Cause I treat them more like a book where you can like play.

Enough of it, put it down, do a chapter whatever, as opposed to like needing to own the living room.

I'm going to do this combat mom, please don't turn it off.

I know judge Judy's coming on.

I want to just let me get past this guy.

I got to beat Gilgamesh.

Give me a second.

Um, so there, there is that part of it too.

Yeah.

Frank, do you, do you have like a specific ritual for playing games?

Is there anything here that you can relate to?

Yeah.

I mean, like, it's so funny talking about like playing a super Nintendo RPG.

Cause the first time I played Chrono Trigger and like beat it was on the Nintendo DS.

Cause I think I, I think I was just in bed for like a week and I was like you know, I'm just gonna play Chrono Trigger.

And yeah, the clamshell opening and closing it.

Um yeah, like when you get pissed, you're just like slam it shut.

We can't do that with my ps5.

It's not the same no, but i mean, that's why i rarely play computer games, because for me, like i from now these days, it's like if i'm playing a computer game it's literally just to record gameplay, capture for no clip stuff like i don't like.

So the idea of like, buying a steam game to sit and play for pleasure is like, oh no, like this is where i do work is here.

This is so dumb.

But when i'm playing video games, i rotate 90 degrees and i look at my console hey, it works, but no, but then i'm sitting back and i'm chill, i'm relaxing, whereas if i'm like recording stuff i'm i'm, you know, in the zone or whatever.

But but even then, like PS5 is like, oh, these are the games I actually care about.

I want to get the trophies on.

I'll go on PSN profiles where everything has a breakdown.

Xbox is like my like like my the shitty second tier console where all the games are super cheap.

They're on Game Pass.

I don't care as much.

It's like that is like I'm just going to mess around.

What's going on over here?

And then the Switch I was so dismissive of, but now the Switch 2, even like DK Bonanza, I'm like oh, this is so good, but it feels wrong.

I'm enjoying a Nintendo console.

I've talked so much shit on Nintendo for like two decades.

But again, I play it on my TV.

I'm not playing my Switch on the go, unless I'm on a flight to Japan or whatever, or Oregon or whatever.

Then I'll use it.

But yeah, I have like honestly, like prejudices are weird associations per console um, and i'm trying to think what, like i don't know.

Yeah, so controller is a huge factor.

I'm even thinking of, like my ps3.

The controllers on ps3 are so shitty, but there's some games that are only on ps3.

So like yeah having uh, it's also the ritual.

Again, if you are playing a super nintendo on a crt, it's like oh, my god, it's you're, you're transporting back in time.

So Um, and I think even like Casey's original subject is displaying the same game on three different platforms, changing experience to that game.

I can think of like Tony Hawk too.

You can play it on PlayStation, the enhanced version on Dreamcast.

Everything is like different loading speeds, different controllers, different like um.

Or you can play Tony Hawk too on the remaster on PS4.

And each thing is a different experience.

Like my definition of Tony Hawk too, is playing it on Dreamcast.

Cause that was the version I played the most, but everyone has a different experience.

And, uh, yeah, I don't know.

So it's, uh, I think for me, the core is like, yeah, play whatever is easiest.

So for me, if the game is remastered and is available to play on PS5, that is my A, But then if it's on Game Pass oh, I'll play it on Xbox.

If we're going to record it for a documentary, then okay, here's the Steam version.

I'm playing just for work, but I'm not going to enjoy it on my personal time on the computer.

But everyone has their own specifics.

But yeah, I think like... That's why, again, the whole... like it's it's i don't know i don't think i don't see it anymore but like back in the day the console wars of like i have gamecube i have xbox like we're all we're all kids how many bits does your console have minus 64 yeah gee i don't know it was it was so weird so yeah now i feel like there's way less uh i don't know platform elitism i don't know but now then it's like yeah where are you buying your games you can't play horses on steam so i'm never gonna play it but uh no i don't know i don't know but yeah it's uh i've honestly even talking about like um store launchers there's a new game my friends are playing i can't remember but they call it like it's the anime waifu version of like slay the spire but it's like like like nikkei all these like like these uh um these games you aren't on steam so i'm not gonna play them like you have to download an independent launcher but i'm gonna never think of that so if it's on console i'll play it but um Yeah, I don't know.

There is a convenience factor that I think is sort of automatically included in this conversation.

It's like, as much as there is something that you get out of, it's sort of like a primordial factor of it, but like something you get out of playing a game on a specific console.

I don't have a ton of time.

I'm not, you know, do I want to set that up?

I got to plug in the cables and then I got to do all this other stuff.

But there is like when you go to a console and you put a disc into it and close the disc tray, it's like

There's something to that that makes it feel more important.

Like I have a what do you call it?

The handheld boutique analog pocket.

I have one of those and I have a ton of games loaded on the SD card on it.

Right.

Playing them on the SD card.

I don't care about them at all.

I'm like, I'll stop playing this because I didn't buy it.

But when you put the cartridge in now, all of a sudden, I'm invested in it, not just monetarily, but also like it has a physical space, that that I can look at and be like.

That's my game that I'm playing right now.

It's Minish Cap.

I need to put it into the thing to play it.

So there is that part of it.

But for sure, I totally agree that the convenience part of it is a big element of whether or not I'm going to play maybe more esoteric stuff like weirder things.

I feel like what you're describing is something that I feel like humanity is like coming around to, but it's.

It's funny because it's something that I feel like we all deny, and I am so guilty of this.

We're like I would hear about people who are like oh I you know like when, when working from home became sort of the norm for everyone for a while, and for some people still is.

It was like people were like oh yeah, i gotta, i need like that separation, like i need i gotta.

I can't like work in my bedroom.

I need like a separate space for it.

And i was definitely someone who was like fuck that.

Like i just fucking roll out of bed, i hop on my computer, like that's awesome, i don't even need to like go to a different place.

That's how you get depression.

Everything's on the same.

The last place i lived had like another.

I had like a little tiny nook in the corner where my computer was and uh and having like a separate space.

That wasn't my bedroom.

All of a sudden it was like it wasn't so much that it felt different when I went into that space.

It was when I left there that like my room felt different.

And I was like, Oh, this is weird.

Like, cause I, it's weird because you don't, I don't want to like believe it's true.

I want to believe that I'm like, I am like a sentient human being.

Like my brain is like one of the most, the most amazing things in the cosmos, is like a fucking human brain.

I could just tell myself that it's okay.

But it's like, there's some level where like you don't have control over it.

And I feel like it's like, I tell myself the same thing about emulation where it's like, you know oh i could just emulate that game like i when i'm playing it i don't know that it's not like silent hill 4 on like a disc but it's like you kind of you just do like yeah i don't know i was like in denial playing those games is hearing the disc drive chug or like the optical like reader chug as it's loading something there is a part of games that like i'm sure it's just nostalgia if we're being totally honest about it but like that there is that part of it that i i think feeds into the aspect of play like when a horror game when you can hear the disk drive whiz up because it's loading a character and you know something's about to happen yeah that is part of it that you lose by emulating it i think it's also like um it's just like ritual and and like priming like uh it's putting on a record just the extra bit of friction it takes to like pick up the thing and like have tactility where you hold it and like take it out switch if it's a little like ep you gotta switch the thing or lp yeah yeah you gotta switch the rpm get the right size yeah um or you gotta listen to it it sounds like chipmunks and you're like this sounds like um yeah i don't know there's something ritual is is important no matter how much you like myself are in denial about it sucks when the instagram influencers tell you that like getting eight hours of sleep drinking water and like going for a walk every day will will help you you're like no yeah it is like that it is like how i hate when i exercise i'm like oh fuck i feel better this sucks i hate how great all those guys were telling me man i thought they were just trying to sell me supplements but they're actually giving me good advice i hate this it sucks next email frank yeah uh casey wrote it i think they had two emails uh their second email they're asking um Hi, folks.

I want to get more into reading, but there's just so many books.

And while I've read a few books over the last few years, I feel like I don't read enough or as much as I want to.

So I'm going to give you my top five games.

And I'm wondering, based on these games, what books would you recommend?

My favorite games, Alan Wake 2, Citizen Sleeper, Hades, Red Dead 2, and Silent Hill 2.

Wow.

That's a killer top five.

I'm going to say Cat in the Hat would be a good.

He knows a lot about that.

No, it's yeah.

You guys have any book recommendations that would work for this?

Well, my core is Alan Wake is so well, maybe less the second one, but the first one is so Stephen.

So Stephen King.

I feel like you need to dive into Stephen King.

And it was the same recommendation I gave Jesse, which is like it is like obviously, Oh yeah, you got to read it, but it's so intimidating.

Cause it's like a thousand pages.

Skeleton crew is the prime, like, okay, that was my first Stephen King.

And there's like 16 short stories.

There is, there is a great side by one in there.

The jaunt, you can read the mist novella.

It's in here.

It's the opening and, also inspired half-life.

So the, I think Stephen King, like Alan Wake is so Stephen King.

Um, even like the dark realism like that's my favorite thing from Stephen King is like dark realism where it's like fucked up.

Fantastical shit happens.

And it's like, you're dead.

It's like, not like, Oh, Harry Potter took a scar.

Now he used, he drank Potosium, whatever.

It's like, no, this, this, this crab creature bit my leg and now I have a gangrene.

I'm dead.

Like, it's like, it's so cruel and mean, but I love Stephen King.

Um yeah, i i don't know, but that was my gut.

Um, i don't know if you guys have other suggestions.

That's a great off of silent hill too.

It's definitely not a one-to-one pairing, but uh, the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson, i think, is a good sort of like.

I don't know, it's definitely like a little more antique feeling.

It's more like um, you know, it's like 1950s gothic literature.

It's not quite as like 2000s horror core with an emotional uh backbone or whatever, but um, I feel like it kind of hits the same sort of like emotional horror notes.

Yeah, that sounds right.

Good book.

Citizen Sleeper.

If you really like that, like I don't know about poetic sci-fi necessarily, but if you like that found family sci-fi stuff or just like a group of people doing something that feels you know cosmologically impossible, you might like the Southern Reach trilogy.

Really, really good books.

I started reading those after the...

Ambrosia sky preview or wall feature.

That I did with the team there They were.

They were talking about that game or the book series.

Rather quite good.

I think that's the I is that rival no it's not a rival it's uh annihilation yeah i had to look up i was like oh yeah i had a friend also like obsessed with those and i i love the movie annihilation kept going but yeah yeah i've heard annihilation is the first book is a really great taster because it's like very short and focused on the character dynamics and their relationship it moves incredibly quickly though so like you know get ready for a pace monster it just flies through um yeah if you like citizen sleeper ted chang also i recommend checking out uh story of my life i think is the origins of uh arrival That's, that's the mix up that I had there.

Uh, really, really good.

And uh, I started reading Tchaikovsky's uh shroud very like dense and it's a sci-fi stuff, but like there's, There's things going on in that where you're like oh, the capitalism has just been doing the same thing since forever.

Huh?

Nothing to society ever changed at all.

Was it just like this in the 70s?

And we just wrote sci fi stories.

And has anything improved in 50 years?

Is that a book about the famous FPS competitive e-sports player?

It is.

Yeah.

You nailed it.

I can't believe Tchaikovsky saw this coming.

What about Red Dead Redemption 2?

Blood Meridian.

I hate to make that comparison.

I hate to make that comparison for two reasons.

One, it is one of the most recommended books in the universe.

And two, I think the writing in Red Dead Redemption, I'm sorry, I gotta say it.

I think the narrative craft in Red Dead Redemption 2 is kind of dog shit.

Did you finish it?

Yes, I did.

Okay, no, I'm not asking that to be like, you would have liked it if you got to the end.

No, no, no.

I just wanted to say so you understand what I'm saying.

The back half of that game, I think is so much better than the front half of that game.

Like for, for Arthur's specific character arc.

Yeah, I could see that.

I, yeah, I'm not saying it's like top tier, but I thought it got a lot better.

The closer I will, I'm going to say this, and this is one of the most derogatory things I can say.

It's a, it is a TV show story.

And I mean that as a critical insult.

It's yeah, it's too.

I get what you mean.

It's it needs, it's not, it's not it's, there's a lot of it's.

Like someone poured me a glass of orange juice and then they just were like took some water and they just kept pouring and pouring the water and I was like I just want the orange juice.

No, wait, this doesn't taste like anything anymore.

If it was watered down, but you get so much orange juice.

Yeah, what if you could drink this for 20 years?

Anyway, no, that's, you know, whatever.

You would have liked it more if you played it exactly the way I did.

It had exactly my tastes.

Why are you disagreeing with me?

I sat down and I played the entire thing in a week and did nothing else.

You're supposed to take a whole year to play it.

Then you would have liked it.

It's not a bad game, i just hated the story, right?

You just think it should like rot and yeah, it's not bad, i just think it's dog shit.

No, i it's not that bad, i just didn't personally connect with it.

But blood meridian is uh, is you know?

So you're saying it's the red dev.

Redemption 2 of books is what you're saying.

Oh god, corbett mccarthy will fucking come back from the dead and kill me.

Are there any other like good uh, cowboy books?

I just started reading Steel Ball Run.

It's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, like, seventh series of it.

But I didn't know.

I just picked it up because, like, it's forthcoming.

The anime is coming out next year.

But, like, JoJo is so huge in Japan.

But like, the thing that's unique about Steel Ball Run is it's a Western that starts in San Diego.

Um, the premise of steel ball run is it's a, um, a horse race from San Diego to New York.

So it's like, Oh, and the winner gets $50,000.

So it's just like it starts with this incredible hook.

But yeah, it's like the guy that, like every Jojo volume is a different setting.

Like the first one's like vampires and there's like I don't know but.

But I didn't know like Oh, this is.

I've been craving a Western.

Um, and I think, cause I I love like stuff, like red dead and stuff, but it's like I need a different flavor or whatever.

And, uh, yeah, I started reading steel ball run and it opens up.

Oh, I don't have it.

I think I put it back to the library, but it opens up and it's like, Oh, the year is 1890.

Like they just established everything.

And it's like, Oh, this is what the book's going to be about.

Oh my God.

And yeah, it's just.

It's just horse races and scoundrels and natives and like everyone's competing for this 50000 prize.

And it's like, Oh my God, this is so sick.

So I have volume two, I think is on route from Amazon right now.

But uh yeah, I recommend like, if you're trying to build a reading habit, you can devour comics and manga so easily, but then that will start associating you with like fun times reading and then you can crack into novels and stuff.

But, um, yeah, I don't know.

Steel ball run is, is, is just volume one was phenomenal.

And then um citizen sleeper made me think it's different flavor cause it's more fantasy.

But, like You, might like reading Saga because I feel like Sleeper has such a wild art palette.

And that's what Saga is.

It's just like crazy, beautiful colors.

And yeah, like I don't know, the stories are Saga is a really good pull.

Actually, it has that like found family aspect to it.

It's got like a ton of characters like go away and die very quickly.

Like next page.

I hope you didn't like that guy because he's gone now.

Very sad as well.

Like they're one of those volumes ends with just like the saddest 15 pages and literally nothing happens.

There's like um, they took a long hiatus and I feel like I don't know if it was like right before that.

I mean, there's like every volume has like stuff happens.

But I remember there was like one huge shocking thing and it's like are we back in like four years?

Yeah.

But now it's back.

And I, I have like piles of issues saved up.

And again, Brian came on Canadian.

Yep.

Um, but, um, yeah.

And then with the Sun Hill, two different flavor too, but like if you haven't read any Junji Ito that is so easy to digest and swallow.

And like, It's Junji Ito stuff is like, to me, funny first.

It's not even in like, uh, it's like they're generally funny.

No, they're very silly.

It's like so stupid and funny.

It's like, so I don't know.

Check out.

Yeah.

But, um, do you have any specific, uh, Ito recommendations?

It was a Maki probably. i'm trying i think i read yeah i read spiral first and then like i did like tommy and tommy is rough to recommend because like that there's the first chapters like he's writing that when he's like 17 like he's a kid so it's like super scratchy so it's not like the best place to start but yeah spiral is fine but i like his short story uh collections and like God, I feel like you can't.

I mean, some are definitely duds, but like, I don't know.

Honestly, go to the library.

If there's any jujitsu, just pull there.

But yeah, I think it has such a mass.

Just know that's all very hit or miss, but it's always like funny and cool.

Yeah, Junji Ito is like.

When I heard about his work before I actually read any of it myself, I thought it was very sort of like serious grim, dark horror.

But it's more like, it's kind of like if H.P.

Lovecraft was Japanese and had a good sense of humor sometimes, you know what I mean?

And not the other stuff, none of the like weird racism or like any of that bullshit.

No, i just it's like, i don't know.

There's junji ito will surprise me where.

It's like the most grim story ever about like being entombed alive in like a buddhist mausoleum.

And then the next one will be like what if, like a shark could walk on the land and he was in your house?

It's like i mean, what if?

What if a guy filled up with air and flew away like okay, i guess, i guess that'd be cool.

Yeah neat, show me that.

Very weird, very weird books.

If I could make one more recommendation, I know this is probably, if you like sci-fi, this is a bit like saying, you know, read Cat in the Hat. just read do android stream of electric sheep it's a really good philip k dick everything dick goes crazy read valence valence dick goes crazy uh yeah no uh i like philip k dick i he i used to live right by his house in berkeley oh that's so cool he didn't live there while i was while he was probably dead uh no i guess by his house um yeah philip k dick is the man he was also clark arthur c clark I have not really read.

I've read more asthma than that older sci fi that like group of like six to ten guys.

They were you know what?

They're lauded for a reason, man.

They were really good books.

They were cooking.

Yeah, there's a lot of novels from that era that are just like a guy is working at the SETI telescope and they're getting messages and it's like aliens.

But then the whole book is just like a guy being like what should we?

What's the first thing we should say to the aliens?

And it's like 350 pages about like what you would say to aliens, and the aliens never show up.

And it's just like damn, this is just like.

It's just like philosophy.

Like this.

There's kind of there's no like oh, like it's the midpoint.

The aliens get off the ship.

It's just like, oh well, perhaps we should show them.

Uh, chopin.

I don't know if that would make the right impression though, because the, the modal movement is a little different than they.

I don't know.

It's like.

It's so fucking weird and thinky.

Yeah, very like techno babble, but still being like grounded in reality.

Yeah yeah, you'd be like the smartest guy ever to write sci-fi in like the 50s.

Yeah, or at least you had to pretend to be the smartest guy ever.

No, don't say come on 2001, a space odyssey, brave new world.

He was cooking, all right, there's a reason.

All the good movies were based on that stuff.

My personal favorite it's fucking.

It's cliche, but my favorite sci-fi shit back in the day was just like all of the fucking dystopian sci-fi like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and all like half of all this Huxley's books.

Yes yeah, I don't know.

There's something very evocative about just like here's what if the world was like fucked up in this very specific way?

And here's a guy who lives there.

Yeah, Very cool stuff.

They were living on the edge back then with the sci-fi.

There's a lot of book recommendations, Casey.

I hope one of those got you excited.

I think they're all good recommendations, though.

All those books are very good.

One more email here, Frank, from Bruno.

Yeah, Bruno wrote in and said, Hi, y'all.

I was listening to episode 254 and Jesse, gushing about Sektori, compelled me to ask if you guys ever played my favorite twin-stick shooter.

Assault Android Cactus.

It's not only one of my favorite games, but the best Dreamcast game ever released this side of the 21st century.

I feel like the game doesn't get enough proper recognition it deserves.

So I want to at least tell you guys about it.

Yeah, Salt Android Cactus is.

I have not played it myself but we did have to.

I got my buddy to get footage, for I think we did a video on unpacking that indie game on what was Noclip Crew at the time.

Yeah, I guess the same developers is unpacking, which is like, really?

All right.

At least the programmer.

Yeah, it's.

Have you guys seen this game at all?

I bought it like a deck whenever it came out.

I never played it, but it's in my library.

Yeah, it feels like one of those steam games steam games that just everyone owns for some reason.

It looks really good though.

Yeah, my buddy said it was really fun, so maybe i should have listened to him and played it three years ago when he played it and said it was good.

Yeah, lots of good uh, arcade shooters recently in the last couple years.

It feels like a blast rush, blast rush ls.

I'm having a hard time with my s's and h's.

Um, that was pretty cool and um, slowly.

Yeah, we're playing star of providence.

Um yeah,

Yeah.

Do you guys have any love for the twin stick shooter era?

Were you, were you big on the shooting?

A lot of little enemies with two sticks.

I like them when I play them.

It's not really a genre that I've played that much of.

Yeah.

You got a big, uh, you finally get good at birdcage.

We can record that a quick look or indie rec.

Not that good oh, we're gonna find out.

As good.

Now i might need a few warm-up runs.

All right, i can't wait to see.

I'm you might have to listen to me make the same joke three times because i'm like let's run it back.

Run it back.

You know what i'll think.

It's funny every time.

Don't worry about it, i got you good thanks, man.

Uh frank, any left room?

No yeah no, i i love like geometry wars.

Um again, i bounced off by the time the third one came out.

But yeah, like one and two i was obsessed with and like, even as a kid like um, you know, go to the arcade playing robotron and like all, not like i wasn't in the 80s, but like back as a kid, robotron was the free machine, like all that crap and stuff like that.

So it's like yeah, like smash tv, like i love smash tv.

Uh, the game i was trying to think of is like, i think it's called canon spike.

Maybe this is straight up what it's in.

It's, it's, uh, pulling from a can spike is a Capcom dreamcast game.

Uh, that is basically the same.

It's a, it's a twin stick shooter, but you're playing as like Mega Man, Cammy chart.

It's like, Oh yeah, dude, that's Cammy from Street Fighter.

It's crazy.

It's so sick.

Um, isn't that her move?

Oh yeah.

Cannon spike.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

It's a bizarre, it's a, such a bizarre game, but again, it's so much style.

And yeah, I feel like maybe, maybe they, they, uh, looked at it.

Um, Yeah.

I mean, technically even GTA is like a twin stick.

The old ones.

Yeah.

Kind of top down.

Shoot around.

You know, you get the rampage mode and you get the machine gun and you just spin around as the cops run at you.

And that was my twin stick shooter.

I never thought of that.

That's so true, though.

Very funny.

Yeah.

Weird genre of games.

It's cool that it's kind of there's nostalgia for it, though.

The ones that I've spent the most time are probably when that genre got merged with roguelikes like Nuclear Throne Isaac, Enter the Gungeon.

Those are probably the Gungeon's awesome.

Gungeon is really good.

I really like that game.

It's really fun kicking over tables, shooting past them and stuff.

Yeah, it's a good time.

They should make another one of those or something else.

They should just make something else.

Actually, don't make another one.

We already have that.

Uh, yeah.

Thanks for all the emails, folks.

Great questions this week, especially the horses one that we covered right at the top.

We don't normally do that, but I didn't want to.

I didn't want you to have to wait an hour Casey, to hear our thoughts between the game and whether or not uh valve should be allowed to ban video games.

So very cool.

Very cool conversation.

Um, yeah, that's the pod this week.

Lots of stuff going on on the no clip side.

It's just whether or not we have the time to put it all together for the end of the year.

No clue what's going to happen with game of the year stuff.

It's really all up in the air regarding Danny and his family and everything that he's dealing with back home.

So it's really we can't make any dedicated calls on it, but we are still plugging away at all of our game of the year stuff.

We have like 55 games in there.

It may end up being 60 by the end.

I'm sure something will come up where we're all like, guys, you need to play routine.

I don't know.

It just came out today.

None of us have played it.

I'm sure it's, Good.

It took 13 years, which means it has to be good.

Right.

The longer it takes, the better it is.

So we'll see what's going on with all that.

But in terms of stuff that's available now.

Disco Elysium, episode one, is still live on our channel.

Has not been removed yet.

They have not banned us for including anything positive about Estonia.

Episode two is live on Patreon, but the public version as of recording is potentially going to come out on monday, at the very least.

It will be out soon, ish.

Uh, it is basically like 99 done.

Danny just needs to finish it up.

Uh, we have some more quick looks coming out and uh, indie recommendations.

Like i said, we're going to do one on marvel cosmic invasion and uh, birdcage as well, and we have all the other ones that we put up.

No caps has that new video about demos, which is pretty cool and lilu.

That new game um, or the demo for that game, rather.

So lots of cool stuff still coming out.

Our movie document or documentary.

We're not doing any movie documentaries.

Our movie podcast that we're supposed to do for Advent Children has been pushed back.

So you can see that either end of this month or that'll be the January episode.

Regardless, it will be coming eventually.

So I think that will be fun because I haven't seen that.

Frank, you haven't seen that either.

So it'll be first time.

It'll be a blind recording for our thoughts on on Advent Children.

So, yeah.

Lots of stuff coming down the noclip pipes that you should still be excited for.

And you can support all of that work at patreon.com slash noclip.

Get all the behind the scenes stuff.

Get access to documentaries early.

You can watch episode two and then probably episode three of the Disco Elysium documentary.

I don't want to make any promises on that, but maybe episode three of the Disco Elysium documentary early, potentially.

Not right now as of recording, but eventually.

Yeah, lots of stuff coming down the pipes.

Guys, anything you're excited for from the noclip space?

No spoilers.

Don't bring anything up that we're not allowed to.

No, there's some good news coming out.

Angelina comes out December 8th.

So I'm honestly, even though the circumstances are not ideal and sad and tragic.

An emergency situation came up.

It is the silver lining of it is that if Godi gets pushed back.

You know it's like.

I mean, it's always kind of the downside of doing Godi.

Is that like we like to do it at the end of the year, because it's sort of this like big way to cap off the year.

We talk about all the games of the year as the year is ending for us.

But then you know, there's always the perspective that it's like a lot of good games come out in December and those get shafted.

So ultimately, I'm kind of glad we got a little extra time to spend with you know all these games and also just like keep an eye on what's coming out the rest of the year.

So go to, maybe delayed, but i think it will be bigger and better when it does happen.

Agreed yeah, and the reaction has been, i think, very positive.

People are, of course, very supportive of danny need to do what he has to do with his family and take care of all that, and everyone understands, because you imagine, if everyone was like no, don't take care of your family, how dare you?

I want my content um, but I do think the reaction of like it's OK, push Godi to next year has been interesting to see.

I feel like there's this ingrained feeling that, like game of the year, you got to do around the sales.

You got to do it around the Keelys.

You got to make sure you line it up at the end of the year.

But I think people just want to hear our thoughts.

And if we can be more comprehensive and cover December games, I feel like that's probably a positive more than it is a negative.

I had this uh, you know, when you're falling asleep and like a weird like scene plays out in your head like a movie and you're just kind of like you're just it's not like a dream, like you're awake, but you're kind of just like ideas are happening.

You're like oh, that's pretty, that's pretty funny, but like it doesn't feel like you came up with it.

Uh, In my head I was imagining the scene from Taxi Driver where Travis Bickle is driving around the streets like looking at it.

He was like, like animals come out at night.

But it's just me watching all the trailers at the Game Awards.

And just like it's that monologue decrying the like the moral decay of the world.

But it's just cuts between Travis Bickle in his cab looking like disgusted.

And then it just cuts to like the 700th Dark Souls ripoff.

Hey, come on.

I mean, I love Dark Souls.

750.

Anyway, get the count right.

You talking to me?

Yeah, it's not monologue, but it's just me watching the game awards.

Pointing, I got it by computer.

Keely's like, you're going to love this.

And you're like, you talking to me?

Are you announcing that game to me?

Nobody else here, so you must be talking to me.

You know who we're talking to?

You right now, but not any longer because this podcast is over.

Thank you for listening.

It's been episode 256.

We'll see you next week for something.

Might be goatee, might not be.

I don't know.

You'll find out.

It's going to be good.

No matter what, it's going to be good.

Go home.

Corncob your dogs.

We'll see you next week.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

[Noclip Crewcast Episode 256: Censorship, Artistic Expression, and Retro Gaming Nostalgia]-[MARVEL Cosmic Invasion, Horses, Majesty]

📋 Summary

Navigating the Complex Landscape of Game Censorship and Preservation

The Horses Controversy and the Limits of Art

Retro Gaming, Preservation, and the "Computer Game" Identity

Community Engagement and Future Outlook

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Crewcast Episode 256: Censorship, Artistic Expression, and Retro Gaming Nostalgia]-[MARVEL Cosmic Invasion, Horses, Majesty]

📋 Summary

Navigating the Complex Landscape of Game Censorship and Preservation

The Horses Controversy and the Limits of Art

Retro Gaming, Preservation, and the "Computer Game" Identity

Community Engagement and Future Outlook

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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