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A Novel Console
A Novel Console
Loading Memories with Will
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This week on A Novel Console, Chris is joined by ANC Discord Member, Will! They talk the games they played growing up, the N64, Gamecube, and a ton of Nintendo!
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Hello, hello. Welcome to a novel console unique podcast where we talk about books, games, food, and stuff that caught our attention during the week. Uh, this week it's an OD another loading memories. And this time I have Discord and community member Will. He is finally making his debut on the show. Will, how are you doing today, man?
SPEAKER_01I'm well, man. Hey, this is totally like that scene in the Wizard of Oz where they get behind the curtain. I honestly thought that you just recorded yourself doing the intro and that you pasted it on your podcast every time, but I just heard you do it in real time.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's always in real time. Um, I'm I'm too lazy to record it and paste it in. So I I would rather just say the words and go that way.
SPEAKER_01You were definitely not born to be a software engineer.
SPEAKER_03Oh man, I I am I am an I lowly IT tech. Um, so uh wish I was a software engineer, then maybe I wouldn't have to deal with so many stupid people.
SPEAKER_01Dude, I wish that I could deal with you in IT. Every time I call them, I have no idea what they're saying.
SPEAKER_03See, the problem is that most of the IT people are are booky techy guys, so they don't know how to explain stuff. Even I working in IT sometimes don't understand what the fuck they're telling me that has to happen or that I have to do or whatever. So yeah, I feel you.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's one of those things too where like there's a baseline level of competency that they have to assume that everyone possesses, and that baseline is pretty low. So by the time I get to you, I'm like, I've already restarted my computer, I've already uninstalled and reinstalled or what have you. And they're like, do it again. I'm like, no.
SPEAKER_03You know, sometimes we we do push shit from our side to yours. So when we tell you do it again, it it's because maybe sometimes we push shit. Um other times, you know, the computer needs to check in with the server, so you have to turn it off, and then when you sign in, you have to sign in with your password. But sometimes they don't tell you that, so you're just wasting your time. So it's fun stuff.
SPEAKER_01Well, that if I'm wasting my time, that really doesn't change my workday too much.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03And if only, if only but hey, you're here to talk about the games you played growing up. Um, tell me about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man. Well, uh, other than your your typical analog games like uh bullying my little brother at capture the flag or something along those lines. I uh I had video games pretty early on in my life. We're about the same age, are we? I was born in 95.
SPEAKER_03Dude, I am five years older. I was born in 90.
SPEAKER_01Oh, dude, Medicare is calling your name.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. I I I feel the dream reaper staring at me every day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I bet your back yells at you a lot.
SPEAKER_03Dude, I was before we we started trying to figure out how to how to uh record, I was on the floor testing out a lot of games that I bought recently. And when I got up, my back started hurting, and I told my wife, holy shit, I am not meant to be on the floor. I thought I was still young.
SPEAKER_01So that'll do it, but soon we're gonna need a pulley system to get you up.
SPEAKER_03Oh man, just leave me there, just put a bullet in my head.
SPEAKER_01Hey, you said not a joke about that stuff on this very professional podcast, Christopher.
SPEAKER_03Fuck us, Christopher.
SPEAKER_01I've decided that's who you are. You're not Christian to me. You're still Christopher in my heart. No, no. I've known you for how many I've known you for how many years now? I never knew that that was your full name.
SPEAKER_03Should have been like two or three years already.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, probably. I think I jumped in the codex discord in 2020, and I feel like you were already there. I probably was. Huh.
SPEAKER_03Interesting. It's been a while.
SPEAKER_01It really has. It's kind of funny that it just started with like a handful of us jacking around on this very niche podcast Discord, and now we have our own Discord with blackjack and hookers.
SPEAKER_03Right? The ones that you guys bullied me into making.
SPEAKER_01I had no part in bullying you. I just woke up one morning and I got an invite to this Discord, and then the rest is history.
SPEAKER_03That's not how I remember it. I I I definitely remember you and Matt from Japan telling me to make a Discord, and then he never showed up.
SPEAKER_01So that's yeah, I was about to say, I don't remember that, but uh, you know what? I am a bully. We've already established that in this episode. So I probably did, but the fact that Matt never joined is even funnier.
SPEAKER_03Right? I kept waiting for him to join, and I'm like, What the fuck is Matt? He never showed up.
SPEAKER_01I told you I met him in real life, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. You when you went to Japan.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was very funny. Um, I I he texted me, or I guess he DN'd me on Discord and was like, hey, um, because I was getting like Japan suggestions from him. He was like, hey, if you want to meet up, let's do it. I just thought that he was saying it casually because like we didn't really interact like that much on balance. Uh, but it ended up being a good time. He was a cool guy and it was never awkward, and we were able to keep the conversation going and hang out for hours. That's pretty cool. We did the yakuza songs at a karaoke bar. Really? Yeah, they have them like the video, like they have the videos and everything. It was all from Yakuza Zero.
SPEAKER_03I can just picture you and Matt going like breaking the loo. Literally, dude.
SPEAKER_01Also, the game that's on the or the song that's at the beginning of the game where he's like, da-da-da-da-da, judgment. Yeah, that's funny. So good. Yeah, I couldn't believe it.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's awesome. That's really fucking awesome.
SPEAKER_01That just goes to show uh how much like stuff that we still consider to be like kind of nerdy or or not really in the zeitgeist has really penetrated Japan that it like a a kind of niche video game series is at a karaoke bar.
SPEAKER_03Right, right. But then again, Yakusa is way bigger than we think it is. It is fucking massive, dude. And it's true, but it's gonna keep getting bigger.
SPEAKER_01I can't imagine a world where like Super Mario was at a karaoke bar, you know what I mean? Or like some equivalent in America.
SPEAKER_03Well, in America, but in you know, Japan.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're weird folks.
SPEAKER_03It would be what I would find super weird was if you went to the karaoke bar and they had like five-finger death punch or some shit for you to sing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that would be weird.
SPEAKER_03That would be very strange.
SPEAKER_01They didn't have that, but they did have a lot of girl groups. And what is five-finger death punch if not a girl group for men who don't know how to talk to girls?
SPEAKER_03Right, right. It's it's funny because I like five finger death punch before I met my wife, and my wife loves him, so it's it's super strange.
SPEAKER_01I know that makes sense. I mean, she also loves nickelback, so that you know that that's a lateral move.
SPEAKER_03You know, true, true, at least it's not downwards, like liking theory of a dead man.
SPEAKER_01That that is, you know, true words that have never been spoken. That whole era of butt rock is both iconic and repelling at the same time, right?
SPEAKER_03Very yeah, so so games. Let's go back to games because I don't know when Suma's gonna kick us out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we'll find out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so the hardware. Tell me what what what was your first console? What did you grow up playing and all that? Favorite game of all time. Let's start with that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that's good. I don't want to make this a GameCube retrospective, but it's probably gonna end up being a GameCube retrospective. Um, the earliest console that I remember experiencing, I'm not even sure what it was. Um, my parents got divorced when I was very young. This is about to get really depressing. Just kidding. Oh no. Um, and a benefit of that was two Christmases. Huge benefit of having divorced parents. And uh on top of that, my mom started dating other men. And one guy like came over, and I guess to impress us, he brought his console, and I had to be like four. So my parents got divorced when I was like a baby. So I don't remember another plus. Uh and it was like, I'm pretty sure it was a Sega Saturn, but I don't know that for sure because the graphics were really bad, even for that era. This would have been like 1999 or something.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it was an Atari Jaguar.
SPEAKER_01Did it have a number pad on the controller? Uh man, I don't remember. I was so young, I was mostly watching this guy play video games. Okay. But I know that it had Daytona 500. That's what makes me think it's a Sega Saturn. I do remember playing Daytona 500. And and there was some like um like a Star Fox. It was actually kind of similar to the 3DO game that Drach and Bill played last week.
SPEAKER_03Could name I don't remember, but it was it was one of those like I I know which one you're you're talking about because uh a buddy of mine told me, hey, download this for the Steam Deck and play it and then talk about it on the show. I think it's like solar eclipse for the Saturn.
SPEAKER_01That may be what it was. Uh that may very well be what it was. I just remember that the graphics were really bad, and I I I had no reference point, but I just remember that all the people and ships look like blocks. So I don't think it was an N64 or a PS1.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Uh shit. Let me send you a picture of it on Discord. Maybe, maybe you'll you'll be able to tell. But yeah, I'm pretty sure it's this one because I think this is like the only like Star Foxy real shooter on the on the Saturn.
SPEAKER_01You might unlock some core memories here because I've never actually been able to find this game. I've looked for it in vain.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so there we go. I just sent it to you. Uh yeah, there we go.
SPEAKER_01Oh, dude, this might actually be it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Solar Eclipse for the Saturn.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, I'm gonna have to watch some YouTube plays of this later on. This this looks about right.
SPEAKER_03Um, it might have a different name. Um, because my buddy told me it was Solar Eclipse. I downloaded it, I put it on the Steam Deck, and then when I went to play it, it had a different name. So I don't know if it was reverting to like maybe a uh European name or something, but you know, you might get it by a different name.
SPEAKER_01Man, downloading sketchy games on an emulator. It's like we're really the LimeWire generation.
SPEAKER_03Right, right. Thank you, Vim, and thank you, CD Romance, for not sponsoring the show.
SPEAKER_01You guys are I appreciate that when I download a RAM on Vim, it's not Bill Clinton doing the whole I did not have relations with that woman speech, like it used to be on LimeWire. Right. But yeah, I mean that was like my first uh that was my first video game experience, and then I was too old for the NES, which you're right, the cutoff there being born in 1990. Um I mean, yeah. My sister definitely had one of that. I'm sure I have an older sister, but uh I don't remember it. The the first like real console that was ours, because I have a younger brother, was uh Super Nintendo, and it was just like my sister's hand-me down, and uh so we played a lot of that, and like not we weren't very good at it. Like um I think the furthest that my brother and I were ever able to go in a link to the past was like to the dark world, and then we got stuck immediately, so we were not very good.
SPEAKER_03To be fair, once you get to the dark world, it's like you're having a great time, and then it just kicks you in the nuts until you get strong enough.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there is quite the the difficulty spike there.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, yeah. That that shit is like massive.
SPEAKER_01But I was lucky. Um, my sister had most of the games that like a kid could play. Uh, like we had you know, Super Mario World, Mario All-Stars, the OG. Um, what else? We had a Kirby game. I think the Super Nintendo Kirby game, I forget what it's called. Maybe uh Return to Dreamland or Dreamland 3.
SPEAKER_03Something like that.
SPEAKER_01What I will talk about is some of the ones that don't usually get brought up on everybody's retrospective podcasts. Um, we had a game called Tin Star. Uh have you ever heard of that?
SPEAKER_03Never. Let me look it up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do that. It is surprisingly fun. It has a pretty banging soundtrack. It really takes advantage of like the the sound chip in the SNES that gives those cartridges like uh more sound effects than you can find in a Genesis. I'm not being paid by Nintendo for this podcast. And uh it's basically like you're a bunch of robot cowboys, and it goes between kind of almost like an old school arcade, you know, where you pick up a physical light gun and shoot at like targets. And then you also have like boss battles where you meet a big fat or a really skinny uh robot cowboy, you know, at high noon, and you have to draw on time and and shoot them.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so is this something you could play with the super scope?
SPEAKER_01I don't know what that is.
SPEAKER_03So the the okay, you know in Smash Bros. that machine gun that they hold over their their shoulders.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's the super scope. That was like the SNES's version of the Sapper.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I didn't know that the SNES had that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I mean, like only three games used it. It was like a very small amount of games, but you know, this game looks perfect for the super scope with that reticle and whatnot.
SPEAKER_01Well, now that you mentioned that, it was actually pretty hard sometimes to hit all the targets when you were using the control the you know the the D-pad and the buttons.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01So you you might be on to something. I have no idea. You know, this is one of those things where if my sister had it, it probably got lost years before we got the secondhand Super Nintendo. Right. Um, but it's a really fun game, and I actually recommend emulating it if you ever get a chance.
SPEAKER_03I'm gonna look into it, see if I can uh put it on the good old Steam Deck because uh apparently uh light gun games work really well on the Steam Deck on handheld mode. Um think where where was it? I we flew somewhere, and the entire flight I was just playing time crisis. It was fun.
SPEAKER_01I I often end up playing retro games, usually on the NSO when I'm on a flight, because like unless it's an international trip, the amount of time you have to play the game. I don't know, it's I don't like sinking my teeth into like a big RPG or something, only for that to be interrupted in 45 minutes to an hour.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh but on I I used to play a game uh on the Super Nintendo called Sparkster, which was like I want to say it's a Konami game. Uh it's basically a combination of like run and gun and platformer, where enemies are constantly you're like a little fox that's also a knight that also has a jetpack, which is you know pretty cool concept when you're a kid.
SPEAKER_03Oh, this is like uh uh fuck. What's uh rock? It's not Rocket Knight. Is it Rocket Knight?
SPEAKER_01This is I think there is a Genesis version called it's like the Genesis version has a different name and soundtrack.
SPEAKER_03Rocket Knight Adventures.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I've seen the Genesis version, it sounds terrible because of the Genesis's uh like lower grade rocket chip. The sound chip. Yeah, it's it just sounds awful compared to the Super Nintendo version. This is again one of those games that really takes advantage of, but it's a lot of fun, and the difficulty scaled pretty well uh for a kid anyway. I I think we were able to beat it at some point.
SPEAKER_03Nice. I'm gonna put that on the Steam Deck because that that looks like fun.
SPEAKER_01It's kind of like playing Gunstar Heroes, if you ever played that on the Genesis, where there's like a platforming element to this run and gun.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02Sparkster.
SPEAKER_03Man, I just pulled up the the list of games that I've been adding from doing all these episodes, and this is game number 36.
SPEAKER_01I'm surprised that list isn't higher, honestly.
SPEAKER_03You know, I've only done like uh like six or seven episodes of these that I have recorded, so 36 for you know, six is a lot.
SPEAKER_01That that's fair. That's six an episode, more or less. Pretty much, yeah. But I think the last one I'll talk to is more about just the absolute jank that was allowed to come out on these early, especially like 1990s era consoles. I played spawn, or we had a copy of Spawn on the Super Nintendo. Did you ever play that?
SPEAKER_03I never played it. That spawned like uh uh Todd Mark uh Todd McFarlane Spawn.
SPEAKER_01Yes, exactly. Oh god, it is not great. Uh the D-pad doesn't really move your character in the way you would expect it to. And it's basically a beat-em-up with some light platforming elements. And it's in that weird uh Tudo 3D that the Super Nintendo is doing, you know, towards the end of the 90s.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh it is not a great game. Do not recommend, do not download it. I don't know why anyone play it today, but because we had nothing else to play, um we would keep replaying the same crappy games over and over sometimes.
SPEAKER_03Right. No, oh man, this looks it looking at a picture of like spawn fighting like a boss fight. It's like Nega Spawn, the the evil version of spawn. And uh it looks like a shitty fighting game, it looks really fucking bad.
SPEAKER_01I think I consistently can only make it to like the third stage. Oh, this is this is terrible. No, it's not great. No, yeah. I mean, I had all the stables too, you know. I had Donkey Kong Country 1 through 3, I had Super Mario World, I had uh A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, and all those games are very near and dear to me. I just feel like everyone talked about them. So I figured that I would talk about some lesser knowns that I played.
SPEAKER_03So I I I am gonna ask, how much time did you think you put into Donkey Kong Country 3? Because that seems to be the black sheep of the trilogy.
SPEAKER_01This is gonna be really weird, but I actually had that game before I had two, uh, because my sister's Super Nintendo came with the original Donkey Kong Country, which I played the living shit out of and still love to this day. But but we I think my mom got us three, you know, probably at like uh like in EB or something. And uh I actually enjoyed it. You know, we didn't we didn't know that it was the black sheet meal when you're like we I would have been probably somewhere between four and seven when I was playing Donkey Kong Country 3 because I didn't know that it was different, and which which is part of the reason I think I took to the GameCube is uh my expectations for what came out on that console couldn't be disappointed because I didn't have any.
SPEAKER_03You played spawn, for God's sakes.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03Oh man. So then next after that, you went in you went straight into the GameCube. You didn't do 64 or PS1 or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01So this is where having a two-parent or having separate households for both of your parents gets interesting. Um I I think my mom broke down and got us an N64 in 2000 because she makes pretty financially responsible decisions, and I'm sure that with the GameCube being announced, um it was probably discounted six ways to Sunday. And so I did get an N64 before I had a GameCube. So I got an N64 in like 1999 or 2000, and I didn't get a GameCube until Christmas 2002. So there's about a two-year period there where I only had a Super Nintendo at my dad's house and the N64 at my mom's house. Okay, and uh I had that and I liked it. What were your feelings for the N64?
SPEAKER_03I um I think I'm more nostalgic for the N64 on paper than actually playing it. Because like the only games that I can say that I that I love blindly from the Nintendo 64 are Star Fox 64, Ocarina of Time, and Mario 64. The rest of them are games.
SPEAKER_01I I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I I do remember that a lot of kids had it in 64, but I I even though it's at a time in my life, you know, early childhood when I should have a ton of nostalgia for the system. I really don't. I think it's just because most of those games were so limited and I wouldn't say lifeless exactly, but like if when you got stuck in an N64 game, you were stuck. Like I couldn't figure out what to do in any which way. And that happened to me a lot as a kid. So I think that impacted my experience.
SPEAKER_03Right. So like I would go to the point to say that I'm more nostalgic for the GameCube than I am for the Nintendo 64. That's even definitely I grew up with the 64. That was the console that I had for a very long time until I got the PlayStation 1 in like 2000.
SPEAKER_01Is that when you first experienced Star Fox?
SPEAKER_03Well, no, I I had the Nintendo 64. I think I got it with Mario and Turok. Um, my parents wouldn't let me play Tourok. Then one of my neighbors got Star Fox, and he's like, Oh, the Rumble pack is so cool. So I I went over to his house and really liked it, and then I kept telling my parents about it, and we rented it a couple of times, and then they were like, We're not renting this anymore, so they bought it. Um, and then I that's the only thing I kept on the 64 constantly. It was either that or yeah, that because I didn't have lucky enough time on the 64 or golden eye. Those were rentals for borrowing them from the neighbors. So yeah, wow, it's pretty much just Star Fox since I got it.
SPEAKER_01That's crazy because we actually have quite a few parallels here. First, one being when we got the 64, it came with a bunch of games. My mom surely bought it used. Um because we got we had Mario 64. I mean, I don't think anyone had the N64 and they didn't get Mario 64.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And we had a great time with it. My brother and I were actually able to get pretty far on that one. Mario 64 is very it's kind of like a Super Nintendo game almost, in that even if you're a dumb kid, if you do the level enough, you can brute force your way to the end at some point. You'll get lucky on the playthrough. Yeah. Uh so we we I think we beat that.
SPEAKER_03I didn't beat that till the DS.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really? You played that version?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, I played 64, obviously, a lot. And I think I got to the second time you fight Bowser. Um, and then after that, I I just couldn't figure out what the rest of the stages wanted me to do. Um, but then on the DS, I beat it beating a couple of times. I actually rather play it on the DS than on 64 or an emulator or something.
SPEAKER_01Really? I never hear that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think it's a much better game, even though you have to hold a button to run. Um, I don't know. I think it's just a better game because it has a whole lot more content. You have the four the three extra characters apart from just Mario. Um and it it on the 3DS, you have a joystick already, uh-huh, and holding the button just makes it feel like you're playing like Super Mario World or some shit where you have to hold the button to run.
SPEAKER_01So this game doesn't utilize the stylus at all. I've never owned it on DS.
SPEAKER_03So you can so when it came out on the DS, the gimmick was it's touchscreen. Here's the nub on the strap, so that you can use your finger on the style on the touch pad as if it were uh uh analog stick, but you could also play it using the D-pad, which I didn't think it was bad at all. I thought it was pretty serviceable. So I got I I don't know where people why people hate it so much. I I don't get it because I think it's the best way to play Mario 64.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're the first person I've really seen have very positive feelings about Mario 64 on the DS.
SPEAKER_03It's also been a while since I last played it, so if I played it now, there's chances that I might hate it, but you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's how I felt playing it on Mario 3D All-Stars. I was like, I like this game at some point. Wow.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like I was like, oh, I'm so excited, I'm gonna beat the entire game. And I got to the the sand stage, and I was like, fuck this game. I'm not playing this. This camera's awful.
SPEAKER_01That that is almost exactly where I dropped it to. Yeah, that game has that that that world in particular. I mean, you can basically break it, like you can fall off the map, even though you're already solid around in theory.
SPEAKER_03Right. So man, I don't want to do this.
SPEAKER_01I had that, we had Majora's Mask, which was another, we had the gold cartridge version, and um that was another good game to have as a dumb kid because I don't really think it's a very replayable game now, and I don't have a lot of nostalgia for it. But at the time, anytime my brother and I would get stuck, we would just do whatever we could figure out how to do in Clock Town, and that that turned out to be a great diversion, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, that that one was another one that I didn't know how to beat when I was a kid, and I beat it on the 3DS, and the 3DS version is awful. Don't don't fucking play that that version, it it's terrible. They changes they made were fucking stupid. Um they changed uh the rolling and then they changed also the swimming. It's it's just fucking shit.
SPEAKER_01Um I know that my brother actually beat it.
SPEAKER_03I actually have. You never have?
SPEAKER_01No, I made it to the Stone Tower, and I was still pretty young at that point, probably nine or ten. It was you know years later, and I just gave up and I never went back to it.
SPEAKER_03Don't blame you, man. I cannot tell you how many times I tried to beat that game growing up, and I never could. Um when I had the GameCube, I got the Zelda collection, which which was which had Ocarina and Majora.
SPEAKER_01And I'm like the only person that did not have that game.
SPEAKER_03That's sad, dude. That's such a good thing. It was great because you had four amazing games on it, but only two of them were games that I cared for.
SPEAKER_01What were the other two?
SPEAKER_03The NAS ones, yeah, one and two.
SPEAKER_01The only thing that would have that makes that game not perfect is that you can't play a Link to the Past and Link's Awakening on it. That would have been the ultimate collection at that time.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I wonder if it if they would have fit on it. Maybe if they would have taken out the Wind Waker demo, it would have fit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, probably. Because those games can't be that big.
SPEAKER_03No, no, they're not that big.
SPEAKER_01Especially for a disc system that comes out 10 years later, right?
SPEAKER_03It it would have been awesome to play uh the uh Link's Awakening on on GameCube.
SPEAKER_01Oh, for sure. I guess people still had access to it though, because you could play Game Boy games on your GBA. So whether you had a regular Game Boy, a Game Boy Color, or a GBA, if it's the early 2000s, you have pretty easy access to Link's Awakening now that I think about it.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01Plus, there was the uh they re-released a Link to the Past on GBA. That's probably why it's not on the GameCube.
SPEAKER_03That's true. They did do that. There was also the the Game Boy player for uh what's it called, for the GameCube.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and like six people had that. They probably all lived in Japan.
SPEAKER_03The Game Boy Player, dude. My neighbor had one, and I loved that thing. I really wanted one so bad, but I didn't know how to ask for it. I didn't know too.
SPEAKER_01Like how to manipulate your parents into getting it for you, right?
SPEAKER_03Because it was at that time where I was in like middle school slash high school, and my grades were fucking awful. So my parents wouldn't buy me anything video game related because I was also too old. So they wanted you to make your own money. Oh, yeah. Well, well, they wanted me to have good grades and also not focus on video games anymore, but you know, they outgrew that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Fucking 45 years later, you're still playing video games.
SPEAKER_03Right. Like they they had to outgrow that mentality. Now they're like, all right, that's your thing. At least it's not drugs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I feel like I don't know how old your parents are, but mine are definitely too old to have ever played video games in any capacity. And there's definitely a generational divide there.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. Yeah. Like my my dad would play like some 64 games with me, and then when I had the GameCube, he would watch me play some of them. But he he's what? How old is I'm 33. My mom is 63, so he's 60.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow, your parents are young. My dad's 70. Yeah, and I'm younger than you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So so yeah, they're they're they're not they're also kind of like old school uh Puerto Rican parents, so they're like, you know, it's important to go to school, it's important to get a job, it's important to get married, it's important to get kids. I feel like that's any parent. Like, and like at some point in life, you have to stop having fun and you have to, you know, be an adult. Like, no, fuck that.
SPEAKER_01I'm never gonna be an adult. Yeah, I guess my parents didn't get that memo. I mean, they they were with you with your parents up until the you stop having fun part, but my parents still have a lot of fun as adults, I feel like.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, like now I feel like they now have figured out that it's okay to have fun. So like they go out on the weekends, you know, they go to movies and have go out to have dinner and go explore Puerto Rico and all that shit. But you know, back when we when I was growing up, my sister were growing up, it's like you go to work, you go to school, on the weekends you clean the clean the house, Sundays you go to church, and then you go back home.
SPEAKER_01Sounds like a miserable existence.
SPEAKER_03I mean, we we did go out like on Friday nights and stuff, so there you go. It was something.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, to kind of wrap up the N64, I was in the same boat as you in that I never had Ocarina of Time on it. I first played that on the GameCube, and I got Star Fox because of our neighbor because they were playing, they had an N64 too, and we would you know bring our cartridges, and they had like they had games we didn't have like DK64 and Star Fox, so it worked out, and I watched them play the first couple levels of Star Fox, and I was like, I gotta have this.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's so such a classic, such a damn good game.
SPEAKER_01It is so good, and we had we had Rogue Squadron already, which is another similar game all-time there.
SPEAKER_03It's such a fucking banger. I I hate the last stage of that game, but the rest of it is so good.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, where you're killing that guy's ship, that is a terrible level. That's man, it's fucking awful.
SPEAKER_03But the rest of the game is so good. Like, uh, I think like one of the stages that sticks out the most to me is the second one where you're flying the A wings and you have to like protect this uh ship that's being evacuated from like interceptors. It's just such a fucking great stage.
SPEAKER_01Such a great stage. I'm with you, man. That game is a top-to-bottom banger, and so is Star Fox. And the nice thing about both of them is you know, we'd be playing Goldeneye or Banjo Kazooie or Majora's Mask. We get stuck, you hit a wall, you get frustrated, you need some time to think about what your next move is and talk it out, and you go, you pop in Star Fox and you play it for the 50 bazillion time, and and then something unlocks and you figure it out. Oh yeah, oh yeah. That that generation is definitely the peak of like games where you're in a ship. Right. Right.
SPEAKER_03Because even uh what was it? Jet Force Gemini starts you off in a ship and you're like killing bugs on a ship. It's like starship troopers, but for kids, but still bloody somehow.
SPEAKER_01For sure, and you have Panzer Dragoon too on the Saturn, like just all those all those rail shooters and and light open world ships. It was a good time for that. Battle for Naboo. We had that, another great game.
SPEAKER_03I I did try that on the Steam Deck recently, and the first day, just like you're on a car just driving around killing people, and I didn't get past that. I should probably go back to that because I do like it's not as good as Rogue Squadron, but it is fun. Okay, I might have to move that up because I I did start it after Rogue Squadron, but you know, I didn't get in an Abu Star Fighter immediately, so I kind of dropped it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this this game does utilize different vehicles. I think you drive the little vehicle that the battle droids drive in episode one. I think it's called a stap. You get to be in that at one point.
SPEAKER_04Oh, cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they they try out the difficult, the different vehicles thing that they'll roll out in Rogue Squadron 3.
SPEAKER_03So, you know, the this is the first time I've ever heard heard anybody saying that they've played that game. Really? Yeah, never heard anybody else. I I didn't even know that game existed until a couple of years ago.
SPEAKER_01Well, it wasn't emulatable until very recently. It used to always crash on N64 emulators.
SPEAKER_03That makes sense.
SPEAKER_01All those Factor V games that that studio knew the N64 better than Nintendo did, and the emulators reflect that.
SPEAKER_03That's fucking crazy, dude.
SPEAKER_01It is. I mean, that and the Resident Evil port on the N64 are goddamn technological miracles.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, that that is a fucking miracle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because you gotta work with the janky hardware and fit your game into a tiny ass cartridge. Right, right.
SPEAKER_03Man, I did not miss uh recording on Zoom. This thing is fucking headache. Yeah, sorry, or recording 20-minute bursts. No, but it's fine. At least it sounds a whole lot better than it has with uh some other guests that have uh their audio keeps getting mixed up with mine, so it like cuts both of us off for no reason. Oh wow, yeah, yeah, it's super fucking weird, fucking finicky as shit. So uh we we were talking uh late 64 games. I I got one that still to this day I'm not sure how the fuck that game ever worked. Mega Man 64.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, I knew people who had that.
SPEAKER_03I played the shit out of that game, and uh, I still have no idea how the hell that game worked on the 64.
SPEAKER_01You can definitely tell that Nintendo burned all their bridges with their old partners because Konami and Capcom gave them some of the shittiest games.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. Oh yeah, the the fucking Castlevania games. Apparently, they're not that bad if you like uh emulate them and and like work with the controls out, but you know, you can't do that on a regular 64.
SPEAKER_01You have to bad if you have a computer science degree and you can completely remake the game, right?
SPEAKER_03Exactly, just like uh Mario 64. You can fix the camera if you're a fucking coder, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we we had all the Star Wars tie-ins. We had Shadows of the Empire, Episode 1 Racer. We had them, we begged them on. So good.
SPEAKER_03Wow, that I keep I forget that that was a 64 game.
SPEAKER_01Dude, any game where I can play as Ben Quadraneris is a winner. Fucking pulling out the deep cuts. Yeah, let me see what them four arms do, Ben.
SPEAKER_03But uh Shadows of the Empire was another one that I rented a lot. Like a lot.
SPEAKER_01That game is janky as fuck.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, and you know why it's so janky? Let's hear it. Because they what they implemented a jetpack, but they didn't give it to you till like really late in the game, so they had to like fuck up the the jumping physics and everything so that the jetpack could work correctly.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, yeah, man. My only real memory of that game is always falling off stuff, so that tracks.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because you were supposed to save yourself from the shitty jumping by using the jetpack.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that makes sense. That that that explains a lot. I didn't even I didn't even put those two factors together. Um the thing about the N64 was it didn't have a lot of games, but usually the games it had, you know, if they were made by Nintendo or Rare or if they were a Star Wars property were good. But Shadows of the Empire is potentially just not good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and yeah, but it's still playable, which is the weird thing. It's not a great game, but it's still playable. Well, Glover is still playable, but that doesn't mean I want to play it. No, I don't want to fucking play Glover. Yeah, that uh whoever thought about adding like bowling balls and shit to that game was a fucking masochist.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we need to take them out back. Probably not in game development anymore, to be fair. Uh, hopefully. Shit. I think the last game that I'll touch on, and you're welcome to add anything else you played. Uh, again, trying to go for deeper cuts because when I do my GameCube retrospective, it's gonna be all stuff that people have played before. But uh Pokemon was really big during the N64s run. And on top of your your typical Pokemon Snap and Stadium, which we had lots of fun with, we had Hey You Pikachu. Not great.
SPEAKER_03No, definitely not. Fun idea. I I think I've told the story before where I would stay at my aunt's house sometimes, and the kid across the street had Hey You Pikachu, and he lent it to me one day, and I would like lower my voice as much as possible and get really close to the microphone, be like, Hey Pikachu, just try to see what he would do when I would tell him like bad words. But he didn't react, he was too stupid. I'm sorry, what was that?
SPEAKER_01I said, I wish I'd had the genius to think about doing that.
SPEAKER_03You imagine like he go to Pikachu, like, hey Pikachu, you're a fuck face, and he would go like kid playing the game's bomb, he's saying bad work.
SPEAKER_01He would just rat you out. No, I didn't even know that. I think we got him to play with this ball once. All I know is that our one of our one of my friends, or maybe one of my brother's friends, sold it to us for a deeply discounted price, and I immediately figured out why that worked.
SPEAKER_03As soon as you put it in and you try to try to tell Pikachu to do something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that was that game was a straight cash grab, which is uh really playing the tone for Pokemon. Oh yeah. Which is funny because Pokemon had some bangers.
SPEAKER_03You know, I never played any of the GameCube Pokemon games. Oh, we can talk about that. Yep, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, so uh I can tell you exactly where I was when I realized that the N64 sucked ass. I was at a uh I was at a McDonald's playground in somewhere between like 2001 and 2002. And you may remember this, but McDonald's used to have video games in the play area.
SPEAKER_03They didn't have this before retail? I've seen I I I've seen the pictures of them, but I don't remember them. I I know that there was like a pretty large McDonald's in the town that I grew up in, but the one that we would go to was newer and it was very small, and that one didn't have any of that fun stuff.
SPEAKER_01Man, you miss out. I probably did. You know, McDonald's is like it's already perfect when you're a kid. You you get shitty food that tastes good because your palate is chicken nuggets, and you get toys, which are always cool, and you have a play area, and then on top of that, they have video games. And so what it was was it wasn't a demo or anything, there were straight up game cubes behind a like lockbox, and it had Luigi's Mansion, Pikmin, and Smash Melee. Basically, the only games that were available when the GameCube launched.
SPEAKER_03God damn, that's so fucking cool. No, my that was definitely not a thing in Puerto Rico. I I vaguely somewhat can recall. The 64, but not the GameCube.
SPEAKER_01Just imagine that you're a six-year-old kid, and the epitome of video games that you've played so far is something along the lines of like Majora's Mask. And you get on this and you play Smash Melee or Pikmin, and all these games are so much better than what have come before you. I needed one at that very day, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_03Oh man, that that must have been torture.
SPEAKER_01Well, so the lucky thing, again, with having divorced parents is that your mom just bought you a console a year ago, so that avenue is closed off to you. But your other parents, well, they still have a Super Nintendo at their house. So I was able to successfully lobby for a game cube. I don't remember how I did it, but somehow on Christmas Day 2002, I got a GameCube. Nice. Nice. It came with quite a few, and pretty much all of them are straight bangers, and all of them are games that I'm still pretty nostalgic for to this day.
SPEAKER_03What'd it come with?
SPEAKER_01So it came with uh Luigi's Mansion, of course. Right. I I played a ton of that. Very easy. I think it was actually the first GameCube game I ever beat because it's it's you know, it's not really that hard to figure out, even when you're seven or eight.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's not that long either.
SPEAKER_01So exactly. I I I think I struggled a little bit with finding all the booze, uh, because I would forget what rooms I was in. But otherwise it was pretty easy. I I love that it's like a Resident Evil ripoff, though. Like I didn't realize this until years later when I played Resident Evil, but the whole thing about it like zooming in on Luigi's gloved hand, like trembling as he unlocks the door, is so funny. Classic. Very inspired idea. I know people hated it at the time, but again, it was like seven or eight. I thought it was great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they they hated it, and now they're like, it was pretty good.
SPEAKER_01If anything, it was just criminally short, like there needed to be a whole other section of that game.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I would have liked the challenge mode or something where you just it's just like suck up all the ghosts as fast as you can, or something like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. I I just assume that they probably rushed it out to some degree because the N64 was such a relative flop.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that at that point, by the time that they were ready to get the GameCube out, but by the end of the 64's lifespan, it just was not holding up. Like the shit that was happening over at PlayStation was just fucking crazy. And then, you know, they beat everybody out with the PlayStation 2, and then Nintendo's just like sitting there holding their dick, being like, oh, what the fuck do we do now?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I feel like for Nintendo, it's even worse because you you already are late to the generation. You dropped the N64 in 1996, and just two years later, the Dreamcast looks leaps and bounds better than the N64. Right. So they were they were it was a tough time to be releasing technology. Let's just put it. It's like it's like how electric vehicles are now. Like a three-year-old electric vehicle is basically worth nothing because there's so many improvements. Right.
SPEAKER_03That's a good comparison. That's a very good comparison.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Put me in game journalism so I can write clickbait articles about how the Xbox sucks.
SPEAKER_03Right. Don't say it too loud. Thrak will get mad.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Burger and Thrack will be on me in two seconds. I just like rasm them about it. You know, play what you want to play. Yeah, except for Xbox. Nobody wants to play Xbox. All right, we're back at it. Nice. Just so you know, Thrack, you need to visit Chris's house at 3 a.m. with an axe, not mine. He said it.
SPEAKER_03I I didn't say anything. Will started it, so there it is, there it is.
SPEAKER_01Right. Um, but yeah, Luigi's Mansion. Um, what was your first GameCube game?
SPEAKER_03Star Fox uh Adventure.
SPEAKER_01Of course it was.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so but if I wanted a GameCube, I wanted a goddamn GameCube, I had to work for it myself, right? I got the money on my own, I bought my own damn GameCube, and I had $20 left over after I bought it. So I went to KB Toys and I bought Star Fox Adventure because it's the only game that they had that was twenty dollars that seemed like something that I would enjoy. Oh what?
SPEAKER_01I didn't mean to interrupt you. So what'd you say? I said I I'm surprised it was that serendipitous. I figured that you would just have been following the development of Star Fox adventures for the last like three years.
SPEAKER_03Oh fuck no, no, but like by that time, my parents were trying to cut me off of video games and they couldn't get it done.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, were you disappointed? No, I fucking loved it, loved every second of it, even though it was nothing like Star Fox 64. Yeah, it was Zelda with Star Fox. So I I was happy as shit with it. I I beat that game so many fucking times, and I am still surprised at how good it looks. Even I I booted it up before we we started recording, uh just to see where I was the last time that I played it, and it still looks fucking incredible.
SPEAKER_01I'm actually with you. I think that Star Fox Adventures and Assault are are both good games. There are they 10 out of 10, must play Hall of Fame. No, they're good games.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they are they're they are very solid games. The the problem with Assault is that you have to swap out the entire control scheme before you can play it, otherwise you're one stick inverted trying to play the game, and it's it's fucking impossible.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. The C-stick was such a mistake, such a mistake, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But then when you move the control stick to have uh the two uh control sticks, and then you invert the aiming, it's perfectly playable.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. I mean, both I have fond memories of both games. I I got Assault, I think, pretty much when it came out, but I got adventures like years later, and one of the things that sticks out in my mind is that they had a translator for the stupid dinosaur language in the game manual. Do you remember that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, they did.
SPEAKER_01I just thought that was funny. I tried to come up with a few words and then gave up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's uh apparently you can like uh translate everything that they say at the beginning of the game before they actually give you a translator to understand everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you can tell that game needed some time to cook, which is true a lot for a lot of those early GameCube titles.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that one definitely needed a little bit more time because like the latter half feels incredibly rushed, and then at the end they just tack on Andros to finish the game off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I mean that that's pretty much what happens to uh Mario Sunshine too. It feels very rushed at the end there. I've never played that one. Really? Yeah, that's that's kind of the next one on the list for me, actually, is Mario Sunshine because I you know I I had probably played Mario 64 for the first time a few years prior. So so seeing what to an eight-year-old was such an upgrade, uh was a big deal. I loved Super Mario Sunshine, I played it so much.
SPEAKER_03You know, to to be honest, I growing up I didn't really like Mario that much. Um, I think now as an adult, like I can appreciate it, appreciate Mario and whatnot, but I did like a lot 64 on the DS. That that probably made Mario click for me for some reason. But like people would be like, Oh, it's a new Mario game. I'm like, who the fuck cares? Uh well, also Mario Luigi Superstar Saga, those were fun, but oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01To this day, you've never played Mario Sunshine?
SPEAKER_03No, no, I have the the All-Stars collection and I I haven't played it. Actually, I have it physical and I haven't played it.
SPEAKER_01Is it because doing manual labor on a tropical island reminds you too much of home? It's a good one.
SPEAKER_03No, no, it it's just because I haven't done it. That it's just as as simple as I just haven't played it.
SPEAKER_01I know that you don't want kids, but just think if you have them someday, you can convince them that Super Mario Sunshine is about your life and how you afforded a game cube.
SPEAKER_03You know, it pretty much was because I did cut a lot of grass, I did pressure washing, so it there you go. Yeah, that's how I got the game cube.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you did everything except uh chase a weird like bipedal dinosaur around.
SPEAKER_03Right. And that would have been fun, though.
SPEAKER_01No, it would have been. I mean, and the game itself is a lot of fun. I mean, it's not the step up for Mario 64 that it should be. Um, the you're stuck doing this, like when you play Mario 64, you can find the stars in any order, but when you play Mario Sunshine, you actually have to play the levels in order. You can't get the sprites in any order, which is is uh was a weird decision.
SPEAKER_03Huh. So Sunshine, I I've never played it, right? I I've seen it and whatnot, I've watched millions of videos on it, but I've never played it. Galaxy, the same thing, and really, yeah, and it's not like I can't play them because I have them. I have physical copies of these games, and I have them also on Steam Deck and Switch and all that shit, so I can play them if I want to. I just haven't.
SPEAKER_01So I know you don't like Mario. Yeah, you definitely need to play Galaxy.
SPEAKER_03No, now I love Mario growing up. I didn't care much for it. Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. Because it was platforming and I didn't have the hand-eye coordination or skills for it, so but now I I fucking loved Odyssey. I played the fuck out of Odyssey, and you know, I I love Super Mario World, even though I'm terrible at it. I wanted to like wonder, but you know, it I just felt like it didn't respect my time, so I gave up on that.
SPEAKER_01But I actually don't love Super Mario World. I'm like the only person in the world that thinks Sonic 2 is better.
SPEAKER_03I mean, but you're comparing it to another game, you're not not liking it because of the game itself.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, that's I guess that's what I mean. I don't think that Super Mario World is enough of a step up from Mario 3, which I love a lot. Um, I just feel like Mario feels so slow on the SNES compared, and this is where I am comparing it to other games. It feels like I'm playing NES games still, as opposed to all the other platformers on the Super Nintendo and the Genesis. It's so slow.
SPEAKER_03Okay, that's just my nitpick. I can see it, I I can definitely see it. Um but also I I played Mario 3 a little bit at a neighbor's house growing up, and I was awful at it then. I'm awful at it now, so I I don't care much for you know the game. Like, I don't I don't have any nostalgia for it because I I didn't have a copy of my own to play while growing up, so I never got good at it.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, you'll struggle with Mario 3 because they're the same game.
SPEAKER_03Like but world I did beat on the Super Nintendo, and I think I beat it on the Game Boy Advance, but now I I just don't have the coordination for it. Like I popped it into the the Super Nintendo that I bought this weekend, and I was like, How the fuck did I play this when I was a kid? This is impossible.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that makes sense. The final boss fight in that game is also really janky.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it is, it is kind of kind of not good.
SPEAKER_01Very few mainline Mario games stick the landing on that final boss fight. It takes a while for them to get there because Mario Sunshine is pretty doggy too. Really? Yeah, the last boss, for one, the difficulty spike is unfair. You you basically go to this volcano on the island as the final area, and you have to use the the water jet pack called flood to move a boat that you're on on lava, but the controls are inverse, and if you touch anything, you sink is completely broken. That sounds pretty awful. I've only beaten by save scumming, I never beat it on the GameCube.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Alright, then I might have to play the Steam Deck version of that then.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Definitely save scum that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Um, no, I'm surprised you haven't brought up uh Rebel Rogue Squadron 2. Not Rebel Leader, Rebel Leader's the third one.
SPEAKER_01I had them. I had Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike. Um, and I I love both of them. Uh I I have fond memories of both. The thing is that they're just kind of more of the same. So since we talked about Rogue Squadron, I wasn't gonna bring them up, but now that you brought them up, we might as well.
SPEAKER_03I haven't played them all to completion. Like I had rented them and dabbled in them, but I never owned them growing up. Like, and I've tried to play them on the Steam Deck, but they just don't run well on Dolphin at all. They're the cutscenes just kill them immediately. Really? Like it yeah, like if they start chugging and they don't want to load past the cutscenes, but if you skip the cutscene, then you can go into the gameplay and it and it runs perfectly fine.
SPEAKER_01So that's funny. During COVID, I emulated Rogue Squadron 2 and I had no issues. Really? Yeah, no problems at all. It was a lot of fun. It was the first time I played it in years, too. It's a it's a super well-made game. Um, it's more the same, but it it that's what people wanted. And I'm sure that if more Nintendo games had made their sequels like Rogue Squadron 2, uh, it probably would have sold better. The uh the third game is kind of weird because you have that on foot stuff, it does not work, it's not great.
SPEAKER_03Strange. I wonder why they did that decision to make it on foot, because you know, there were there were a couple of really good other Star Wars games that had on foot, like uh Bounty Hunter and uh Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, yeah. Calcatorn, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think they would do that.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. That was kind of a tough generation because all these like light rail games and and spaceship type games got really prominent on the N64 PS1 Saturn, and then they really struggled to move past that. Like Assault doesn't really ever find itself completely, and Rogue Squadron is not able to move on from the model they established on the N64. Right. I'm not sure why that is. That it's an interesting question. I just don't know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. You really didn't have any like on-rail shooters in in that generation because uh assault barely even counts as one, because there's what three on rail stages, the rest are on foot.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, pretty much. That's that that's a good point. Uh the the first level definitely feels like a throwback to Star Fox 64, but yeah, as that game goes on, they start moving away from it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and like the thing is like the three on rail stages are really good. The first one is fucking crazy. It's like next gen Star Fox. You have like a whole war going above corn area with hundreds of ships and you know, little enemies coming out, and then there's the one where you're invading the heart of the Aparoid Queen, and there's just like tons of enemies and obstacles and shit that you have to fly through. I I they they definitely drop the ball by forcing in the the on-foot segments, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Cause some of those levels are just that they don't, it's not easy to find the objectives in some of those levels, and then you're halfway to them, and Slippy's like, Oh, please help me. It's like Flippy, it's not 1998 anymore. I don't have time to run to my vehicle and spend five minutes finding your ass out there. You're just gonna have to die.
SPEAKER_03Right. Like, there's some stages like the the dinosaur planet stage. You can do that in two minutes. So it's like, why? Why why would they just waste time even creating that stage?
SPEAKER_01I just think they didn't know what to do, but Star Fox Adventures probably sold well enough that Nintendo was putting a lot of pressure on Namco to figure it out. Could be, could very well be. But uh moving on to a maybe lesser known game that I also got at Christmas with Scooby-Doo Night of a hundred frights. Did you ever play that? Nope. Never played that. It's such a good game. My passion project is to get Mike and Tyler to cover it for October one year, and eventually I'll succeed. I adjust it every year. It is trained up in Metroidvania.
SPEAKER_03What?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a Metroidvania, and it came out like when Scooby-Doo was making that comeback with what's new, Scooby-Doo, and all those movies. Right. So all the voice actors from the the TV show at the time are on it, which is cool. And wait, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_03Wasn't at that time wasn't Matthew Lillard voicing Scooby uh Shaggy in everything. I I I believe that's right. Oh man, there's a video game with Matthew Leeard at Shaggy. That's fun.
SPEAKER_01You could look that up to confirm it, but it's whoever was voicing them on what's new Scooby-Doo is also their voice actors on that game.
SPEAKER_03Knight of a Thousand Frights. Night of a hundred frights. Knight of a hundred. Okay, that's less frights. Substantially less. Oh yeah. Uh let me see. What's new Scooby-Doo shaggy voice actor? Matthew Lillard. There it is. Matthew Lillard. Holy shit, that is awesome.
SPEAKER_01It's a good game. Um it basically it's your typical Scooby-Doo where uh the Scooby-Scooby is the main character you play as, and all of the team gets captured, and you have to go find them in this big mystery manner. And there's there's like three zones. There's like the the haunted house, there's like this um hedge cemetery area, and then like a ship, a shipyard dock area. And you you get upgrades after beating bosses and and and completing certain puzzles that lets you progress further in the game. And so, just like in Super Metroid or something, you can only get so far in a certain area before you have to backtrack, go somewhere else, and then come back there and see what else you can unlock.
SPEAKER_03Hmm. Yeah, that that sounds pretty fucking awesome. I'm I'm definitely gonna put that on the Steam Deck.
SPEAKER_01It's a lot of fun. There's a couple of licensed games on the GameCube that are worth playing. Battle for Bikini Bottom is one. Um the one piece hack and slash game is pretty fun. I forget what it's called, but those are all worth trying.
SPEAKER_03It was a hack and slash one-piece game?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man, it's actually pretty solid.
SPEAKER_02Hack and slash for GameCube. That's right.
SPEAKER_03GameCube. Uh Grand No, it wasn't Grand Battle, because I played that and hated it. Really? Uh Grand Adventure.
SPEAKER_01Yes. $208 at Walmart.
SPEAKER_03Nice. That's not that's not bad. Yeah, my my uh group of nerds that I used to hang out with in high school and and middle school were obsessed with One Piece, and they always wanted to play Grand Battle, and that game fucking sucked.
SPEAKER_01I believe it. This game is not like amazing or anything, but it's worth a try if you don't have to pay for it. Yeah, I'm not gonna pay for it. Just so that HR is possibly listening here, we are not advocating for piracy, even though we're talking about One Piece.
SPEAKER_03This is the one game you would need to pirate. Yeah, that's what Luffy would do. He would. But then he'd feel bad about it and return the game. Yeah, probably. Right, right. If you can't beat him by the power of friendship, then then he'll do what's right.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. But uh add that one to the list. Speaking of games that involve piracy, uh, obviously, we gotta talk about Wind Waker.
SPEAKER_03Yes. The man, this is the first time I said this out loud, but I think that's the best Zelda game ever.
SPEAKER_01You know, I could be convinced of that. It's in my top three, which it's not in most people's top three.
SPEAKER_03Right. Like I I Ocarina of Time is my favorite Zelda game, but I think Wind Waker is a way better game.
SPEAKER_01I totally agree with that. Uh I actually Wind Waker is not even in my top three. I'm sorry. Ocarina of Time is not even in my top three.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I can see that. Especially with uh Breath of the Wild and and Tears of the Kingdom having come out and be a thing for a while already. I can see Ocarina not even being there in that list.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I enjoyed it. I think part of it too is that I played Wind Waker and Major Worth Mask before I played Ocarina of Time. So I've kind of skewed perception around it.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Like I enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong, I've replayed it a couple times. Uh, but Wind Waker, I I had just because I wasn't that advanced of a gamer and I was like eight or nine when I got it, I had never played a game where you could just get in your boat and go somewhere and just totally go off the beaten path like that. I mean, it's basically my first open world game.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I yeah, that that's that's true. I don't think I had ever seen a game like that where you're just like, here, freedom, go. And on top of that, there's a great Zelda story with really fun gameplay attached to it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the plot actually slaps. I mean, the whole thing with uh Ganon tricking you into getting the Master Sword only to find out that it doesn't work is is an inspired choice, right?
SPEAKER_03And then having the the King of Red Lions be the old king of Hyrule and Tetris and incarnation of Celda, but your link isn't related to any of the other heroes of of Hyrule. It it's great, it's a great game.
SPEAKER_01I like that Ganon's like edgy too, because he's been defeated already, and he's over there. Like I grew up in a terrible place, but Hyrule was the land of milk and honey, and I coveted it. I was like, wow, at age nine, that was some deep shit.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. That was a good Ganon. That that Ganon almost felt like he had to take over the world because that's what the universe expected of him. Like he was doing it reluctantly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, it's almost like he knew he wasn't gonna win in the end, right? It's like let's let's get it over with. The king of Hyrule's just like get wrecked. I wish for my kids to have a future. That's just such a good twist, too. Right. We've never seen the Triforce wished on up to that point, I'm pretty sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, at the end of uh fuck, what's it called? Uh the Super Nintendo one, Link touches the Triforce, but I don't they don't verbalize a wish.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Yeah, he just picks it up and does the dun da.
SPEAKER_03And then everything goes back to normal, but he still doesn't verbalize a wish.
SPEAKER_01Right, exactly. I think that's the first time you see it wished on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I've never played the original Zelda, like beat the original Zelda, so I don't know what that ending for that game looks like.
SPEAKER_01And neither have I, so I definitely have to put that qualifier there. It may have happened in one of the NES games.
SPEAKER_03It happened with the very first, the very first Zelda game.
SPEAKER_01Oh, do you know that for sure? Did you Google it?
SPEAKER_03Or you just no, no, no, no, no, I don't know. Like it might have already happened.
SPEAKER_01I think in the first one, you're just getting the Triforce of Wisdom, but I don't know about the second one.
SPEAKER_03I think the second one is stopping Ganondorf's uh resurrection.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. So yeah, I I don't think so. But who knows? I could be wrong. Yeah. But that was a good one for me. Uh Metroid, the Metroid Prime duology on GameCube were big games for me, too.
SPEAKER_03The first one, the second one, I I didn't play enough for it to be a thing. Um, I think I played the first one all the way up till you have to get all the McGuffins to get Ritley to pop out.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I got stuck there, and I I never beat that until last year when it came out on Switch.
SPEAKER_01What is it with every game of that era having like a fetch quest at the end of the adventure?
SPEAKER_03Right? And that one was fucking terrible, so tedious. That one was excessively bad. Like at least the cell the the Wind Waker one was very doable, it just took a lot of time.
SPEAKER_01But the one in the Wind Waker one also forces you to explore like parts of the map that you may have skipped on your first go-around, right?
SPEAKER_03Right, like like the the wind and no the fire and ice caves.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, i if wind waker didn't have the fucking like 900,000 rupee price tag attached to it, it would be perfect.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah that they fixed that on this on the Wii U version. I hear that, yeah. But you needed a fucking guide to find all of the things in Metroid Prime so you could fight Ridley. And then the Ridley fight is fucking bullshit.
SPEAKER_01You don't need you don't need a guide for the first one, you just need to scan the totems at the sanctuary, and it basically tells you where it is the second game. You totally need a guide. I had to use google.com in 2005 to figure that shit out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, I I I s I scanned the totems and I still didn't know where to go. And this time when I played it, I scanned the totems and I still didn't know where to go. I was like, fuck this. I'm just gonna just gonna you know look it up online because I I'm not doing this bullshit.
SPEAKER_01That's funny. I I I didn't have a guide, but it was one of those things where if you had visited the mapped area before, it told you the name of that room, and and so like like there'd be a room like Will's house, and the hint would be like in the house of Will, you will find this artifact. So maybe you just can't read. Have you considered that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, that's probably it because uh I skip everything that was lore whenever I I scanned anything in that game.
SPEAKER_01Nice. I used to read that stuff copiously. I'm I'm not a nerd, so I am a complete and total nerd. My girlfriend was judging me hardcore for being on the podcast.
SPEAKER_03The podcast talk video games.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if I can be with someone who does this, and I was like, too late.
SPEAKER_03Yep, you already committed, and that took for fucking ever. It was like one minute or like three hours to be.
SPEAKER_01It's like, hey man, you need to give us our $5.99 a week, right?
SPEAKER_03I I thought about it. Like, I thought about paying so we could get it over with, but they're like, oh, it'll be $144 if you want this shit. I'm like, no, fuck you. Fuck that. No, no, I'm good.
SPEAKER_01I don't I don't I'm not missing the irony that uh we're talking about the uh the console with the most overinflated uh secondary market, and Zoom is trying to bilk us right now, talking about right, right?
SPEAKER_03They're trying to get their share.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Yeah, um, what were we talking about? I think we were talking about Metroid.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. So I I wanted to ask you, uh you ever played uh what's it fucking called? Uh True Crime?
SPEAKER_01Streets of a I have not, I've heard of it.
SPEAKER_03What about New York City?
SPEAKER_01No, I've never played any of those games. Oh man.
SPEAKER_03Damn, you didn't have you didn't have uh GameCube's uh only option for a GTA clone.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, they're pretty great. I I replayed uh Streets of LA last year, and I had a grand old time with that game.
SPEAKER_01There's a couple of more obscure GameCube games that tried to fill that niche but didn't really succeed because only about five people over the age of 10 had a GameCube, right?
SPEAKER_03And uh the thing is that uh true crime, even though it's an open world, it's still kind of like mission structure. So you would have some missions where you have to rush to like one from one side of the map to the other, but then there were some missions where you could take your time to get to where you were going, so it really depended on on the luck of the draw for if you were going to be able to explore the city and do GTA type shit as a cop or not.
SPEAKER_01Huh. I always associated that game with the original Xbox. I don't even know if I realized it came out of the GameCube. Yeah, it came out on all three. No kidding, that's why it looks so bad, because it had to scale to the PS2. Oh yeah. It's funny how Nintendo possibly took the wrong lessons from that generation, which is graphics don't matter. Look at the PS2. But realistically, the issue is that the PS2 had all the games, uh, Xbox and GameCube did not. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04I think it all comes down to the games.
SPEAKER_01But you know, that mindset of thinking it all comes down to the games is why I'm not a big uh supporter of the current Xbox iteration.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, like I I I have one and the only time that I played that Xbox is whenever I'm playing with Thrack. Otherwise, I I probably don't touch it.
SPEAKER_01It's a good deal, you know, if you're trying to ball on a budget.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like uh Game Pass is fine and all, but you know, it's it's just it's not for me. I I I want to own my games, so and I don't like the way that the cases are on Xbox, so well yeah, you're really into physical media too, so oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's my shit. I I pretty much only have physical Nintendo games, I don't have physical anything else.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01That's mostly because uh it's just it's the same price no matter what.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, yeah, and it's never gonna go down in price. So yeah, um I I really hate that the switch is all color-coded to the same red, and I cannot tell what game is what until I go up to it and read it. I'm colorblind. The what?
SPEAKER_01Are you colorblind?
SPEAKER_03No, no, no, no. I just have to get close to it so I can read the tiny little white letters.
SPEAKER_01Oh, gotcha. I thought you meant that you couldn't make out what it was. I was like, I didn't know you were colorblind.
SPEAKER_03No, no, no. They're all fucking red and with little white letters, so hunting for them is a fancy.
SPEAKER_01I I think I think we may be back to that conclusion. We already know I can't read, so I was elected to lead, not to read. Our freelance is pretty true. Right.
SPEAKER_03That's that's how it is. I was selected to lead, not to read.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Yeah. I I could buy that. I mean, the Switch, I don't really love the case that Switch games come in. I think I miss the beefier old school cases, although it does make it easier for me to stack my gargantuan switch physical collection into my TV entertainment center.
SPEAKER_03That's that's a nice thing. Like my I have all my Switch collection in one shelf, but still, I I have to get up close to it if I want to pick a specific game.
SPEAKER_01I'm honestly about to run out of room, so it's probably for the best that they're coming out with a new console soon. Uh anyway, I'll wrap up the GameCube because I I had so many games on it. Here's the deal: my my dad and my stepmother, they moved like two hours away from my hometown. And so there was nothing for me to do. And so the only thing that they could, when you have a kid who is functionally at your house, an only child, and um he's a little demon, because that's what I was, and you have none of his friends or his brother around to entertain him, you have to bribe me, basically. And so they would just give me like whatever I wanted because otherwise I was gonna fucking destroy the house.
SPEAKER_03That's funny. That's pretty great.
SPEAKER_01So I have an obscenely expensive GameCube collection just sitting in a box at my dad's house to this day. Uh that I've told them not to get rid of it. I'm like, this is literally thousands of dollars worth of video games. Do not get rid of them because we have the Fire Emblem game. It's like fucking $800 on its own. You have the Fire Emblem game. Yeah, man. Holy shit. It's crazy. I would have never guessed that it would become so expensive. I was really bad at it when I played it during its day.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's so good, though. You you have to definitely try to replay that because it's so fucking good.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I will. I'll emulate it one of these days, or I'll or I'll uh get my GameCube back from my dad's. But it was one of those things where I played Smash Melee, still the best Smash game to date. And I really liked Marth and Roy, and I was like, what game are they in? And of course, at that time I was old enough to use the internet, and I Googled it, and it turns out, hey, they're on this game on the GameCube. And so, well, kind of. Uh, and so that's how I got Path of Radiance.
SPEAKER_03Man, you need you need to get that GameCube back from your dad's house before they accidentally throw it out, because that is a fucking treasure trove. Actually, your your first house down payment, you can probably pay it with GameCube games.
SPEAKER_01That's true. Um, my stomach's a hoarder, so there is zero risk of that getting thrown away. But I've already explained to her that it is worth way too much money to just toss, but she wouldn't do it anyway. It's it's like a sentimental thing for my childhood, you know. Right. Uh, but I have them. I I've I played tons of games that are like not great because I would just be at GameStop and be like, I want that, and I would get it. And it'd be games like Scalar or the Fairly Odd Parents game. Those are not great games.
SPEAKER_03Um, you you ever ask them for like Blood Rain or something like that? Or or were you too scared of them when you were a kid?
SPEAKER_01They wouldn't buy me M games. I was barely able to get away with playing like Metroid Prime. Okay. I I was able to get Resident Evil 4 by buying it from a friend and playing on the Wii. So even though technically it was a GameCube game, but I played on the Wii.
SPEAKER_03Right. Uh but that one was such a fucking uh formative game for me. That one was was I didn't know that it was gonna have such an impact in my life.
SPEAKER_01I feel like that's a lot of people's formative game, is Resident Evil. Well, one of the Resident Evil games is formative for like every millennial, basically.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I like this quite a bit. I'm definitely gonna play the uh remake at some point. Oh, you still haven't played it yet? Nah, dude. I have a backlog of my done playing PS4 exclusives.
SPEAKER_03Oh man. That oh man, you got a lot of shit to catch up on. I really do. You haven't even played Cyberpunk, have you?
SPEAKER_01No, I haven't. Oh man. I hate to bring it to you, but that game is pretty low on the list. I am so I know it's not a Bethesda game, but I am so Bethesda'd out that any any game that has the open world as the selling point, I kind of am skeptical of playing.
SPEAKER_03You know, it it is a very Bethesda-ish game, but it's like, what if Bethesda made a modern good game?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what if Bethesda didn't suck? That's fair, right? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Like what if what if they got off their bullshit?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, dude, there's so much Starfield hype, and it was it it it died not with a bang, but with a meh.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. Yeah, I don't know about anybody who's still playing that game.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, me either. I have a friend who was like super hyped for it, and their reviews completely like he still hasn't played it, despite him talking about it non-stop for like the year leading up to it.
SPEAKER_03That's fucking awful. That sucks so bad.
SPEAKER_01He was like, I've already played Skyrim. Why would I play it in space? And I was like, Yeah, I think that's the conclusion that most people are drawing.
SPEAKER_03Right. That that that that was that was their point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, they're still making the same game. Well, whether it's a re-release on the Switch or the uh smart refrigerator or Starfield. We're fucking Alexa. Yep, exactly. Anyway, I'll wrap up the game cube because, like I was saying, too many games. Pokemon games, definitely worth trying. Emulate them at some point. Uh, Gale of Darkness is is the better of the two, but Coliseum came out first, so it's worth playing both.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Um I have those already on the Steam Deck.
SPEAKER_01There you go. You're ready to go. They're not very long, they're kind of hard too, actually, because the amount of Pokemon that you can use is limited by the game's mechanics. Okay. You can't just catch any, you can only catch Pokemon that are affected by darkness.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01It's like if Kingdom Hearts and Ash Ketchum had a baby and made this game.
SPEAKER_03Wonder if they're gonna fit that into the Kingdom Hearts lore at some point.
SPEAKER_01Probably. And it won't make the story make any more sense, that's for sure. Right. Pokemon crossing over with Disney would be like the ultimate crossover.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it would be fucking awful.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, it would be terrible.
SPEAKER_03People will never shut up about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Every eight-year-old on the planet would have that game. Right? So would every millennial. Yeah, so yeah, so would every adult. Anyway, to close out the GameCube part of my life, uh, the last game that I feel like not a lot of people played exactly was uh the original Animal Crossing, which actually came out like super early in the GameCube's life.
SPEAKER_03So wasn't that like uh uh an upgraded port or remake of the original 64 game?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I want to say it's a it's it's a kind of remake because it was on the N64 disk drive, right, which only came out on the Nintendo 64 in Japan. Right. Because they were trying to get uh what's it they were trying to get Dragon Quest VII on the N64, and that failed. That would have been a bad that that would have been real bad. Definitely, it would not have worked out, which I guess is why it didn't come out. But uh it's it's one most people's first entry in Animal Crossing, I feel like is either Wild World the DS or City Folk on the Wii, but this was the first one for me.
SPEAKER_03I know I I saw like my neighbors playing it once, but it it just it I don't like the aesthetic of it much, like the way that the characters look. So I I think that's what repulsed me from it.
SPEAKER_01Oh, like you don't like the graphics or their big heads?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, like they look kind of like chibi, but not really.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I love that game. I can't tell you why. I think it was because again, I was at this place where I just had too much free time, and so eventually I would get bored of the games I was playing. Like there'd be layers here, right? There's like the mainline game I'm playing, then maybe there's like a comfort game that I replay. If I get bored of that, then I'll play like melee or Mario Kart. But Animal Crossing really changed the game because you know it's one of those games you only play every few hours. And so I did just about everything you can do in that game, did every holiday. Um, and and I I would never be able to like stick with the same village. I would get bored. It's it's one of those games where if you play it every day for like a month or two, you've kind of seen everything. You gotta restart. Yeah, no, that's not for me. I liked it, especially because it was in the Wild West days of like localization. And so nowadays the the NPCs and like New Horizons are so vanilla, but on GameCube, they're like, fuck you. Like they're just really mean to you. It's like you look fat and stuff like that. It's hilarious.
SPEAKER_03Wouldn't Mr. Rossetti come out from the ground and threaten to cut your boss off and take him with him if you didn't shut off the GameCube correctly?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man, pretty much I would do that just to have him come yell at me. Like I just thought it was so funny.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he doesn't exist anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's unfortunate. Well, you can't really reset the game anymore either, so there's that. Yeah. Yeah, I liked it. Plus, you could get NES games on it. That was like my only exposure to NES games for the longest time was the e-reader games on the GameCube.
SPEAKER_03Right, because uh Animal Crossing had those those ROMs of old NES games that you could buy and play inside the game.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you would just get them randomly. Like I think for your birthday or Christmas, you would get one if you scanned like the GBA, which I had someone hook theirs up and uh got that. And then you would just get them randomly. Like I might write uh an animal letter and they would with furniture and they would write me back and give me a fucking NES. It would just happen.
SPEAKER_03That would be awesome if I could do that in real life. Just send somebody a chair and get back a fucking Super Nintendo with a rare game in it, dude.
SPEAKER_01That that's the that's the post-USSR economy I'm here for. I like a good barter economy.
SPEAKER_03Right? Like you can have the turnips, give me the the fucking video games.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Yeah, the turnip stock market is the other wild thing. Like I literally learned how to play stocks on a uh a game with talking animals. Uh it was like uh you would buy them on Sundays and you had a week to sell them, and the price would change every day. So if you gambled that the price would get better, you might be wrong.
SPEAKER_03And then if you didn't sold them, they would go bad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they would just rot. So funny. That definitely happened to me too, and I definitely reset my game. Yeah, good times. It's definitely rudimentary compared to the games that would come after it, but I don't think any of the games that have come out since have matched that game's soundtrack. Animal Crossing's soundtrack fucking slaps. Just listen to it sometime.
SPEAKER_03Okay, I'll I'll make sure to give that a listen because uh I did not like the one for New Horizons. That no, it's not great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That game was so relaxing that I was stressed while playing it.
SPEAKER_00That's funny.
SPEAKER_03Because I I I didn't know what was expected of me while playing that game.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's so different, too. It's so different from its predecessors.
SPEAKER_03Oh man, Animal Crossing. That is that that is certainly for for like specific people. That is not not for me.
SPEAKER_01Except it's like the second best selling game on the Switch, and I I think possibly the second best selling game of the generation. I because I think the Switch game is like sell Buco bucks compared to the others.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, yeah. Like I I've thought about like buying it again and picking up where I left off, but then I'm like, do I do I really want to really go back and do this? Because uh no. It was it was enough the first time.
SPEAKER_01No, it's time is definitely over, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And uh the thing is, like, I I kind of got stuck with a villager that I hated in my village, and I couldn't get rid of him for some reason, so that that's one of the reasons why I stopped playing too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that makes sense. You can scare them away, just hit them with your net enough and they'll move.
SPEAKER_03I did. I tried to hit him with the axe and it wouldn't work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's not per well. I don't think they let you do that. You can't commit uh animal homicide, but uh as much as you might want to, Chris.
SPEAKER_03But he deserved it. Have you ever met Lionel? He sucks.
SPEAKER_01I I believe it. I'll take your word for it. You know, fuck them animals. He he deserves a merch. Tita can eat a dick.
SPEAKER_03They wish.
SPEAKER_01Uh before I close out the uh GameCube section for me, do you have any other uh semi-obscure GameCube titles that you fucked with heavily as a kid?
SPEAKER_03Twin Snakes fucking loved Metal Gear Solid the Twin Snakes. That was I I loved uh Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation 1, and when they remade that game, it was even better. So I I was obsessed with that for a very long time. Um, it also for some reason they made it so that whenever you kill people, it actually kind of like felt like you were killing somebody. So that was a very interesting feeling when I was a teenager.
SPEAKER_01I bet that was your first game where you killed someone.
SPEAKER_03No, it wasn't the first one. I had to play Goldeneye and everything, but it was like they let you go into they let you go into first person mode and shoot them straight in the head, and they would bleed all over you and fall dead on top of you.
SPEAKER_01So oh gotcha.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was it was uh it was interesting.
SPEAKER_01Well, plus killing the Russians in Goldeneye doesn't feel like anything. I mean, they're like they're like rectangles with arms, right?
SPEAKER_03Right. So um, apart from that, I did play a lot of garbage. Like I played Blood Rain, uh BMX Triple X, uh, Tony Hawk, Sims, Herbs, uh, what else?
SPEAKER_01I had the Universal Studios game, that was garbage.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, that is trash, terrible game. Yeah, um, the the James Bond games, everything or nothing. Uh you don't think those are fun. Nightfire, those were great, those were really good.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, I like those games.
SPEAKER_03Goldeneye, I really like Goldeneye. That one was was Threck hates it for some reason, but I thought that was a pretty solid shooter for for the GameCube. No, Goldeneye's on the N64. No, no, no. Goldeneye Rogue Agent.
SPEAKER_01Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I forgot about that one. I don't think I've played it.
SPEAKER_03Time Splitters. Time splitters one, uh two and three. Yep, yep.
SPEAKER_01Time splitters definitely slaps. I borrowed that from a friend. The Mega Man RPG is pretty good. Borrowed that from a friend.
SPEAKER_03Oh, the Lord of the Rings games.
SPEAKER_01Oh, great games. Again, I think I borrowed those or rented them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, those were pretty great.
SPEAKER_01Um uh Beyond Good and Evil, I I emulated that way down the line. That's a good game.
SPEAKER_03Never played that one, but I did play the Prince of Persia games. Those were fantastic.
SPEAKER_01Those are good, yeah. Those are those are games I played years down the line.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, especially the third one. That third one was fucking incredible.
SPEAKER_01It it's got it, it's got a low-key good RPG lineup. I mean, it's not the PS2 or anything, but you got Tales Symphonia, you got Skies of Arcadia, you got uh Paper Mario, the best one by far. Um you got some winners there. You got Evolution World, it's alright. Fire Emblem. Um GameCube's got a good library, especially for I don't think there's any other console that sold as poorly as the GameCube did that had such a banger library.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh, there was also the uh collections. You had the Sonic Gems collection, Mega Man X collection, the Mega Man Anniversary collection.
SPEAKER_01I never had any of those, but I I know I had Namco Museum. That's the closest I came.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that that one too, which is play. Yeah, it's a very, very solid console, man. That that console was great.
SPEAKER_01It's probably always gonna be in my personal top five all time. I don't think it could ever be in my objective top five of all time because it just not enough people played it, but it certainly has an outsized influence on gaming.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I I I usually set a cutoff. The last one I'll touch on briefly is the Xbox. I usually cut off um at 2006, which is when I got a Wii and a 360, because then I was 11. You know, I'm like not a kid anymore, and I still have nostalgia for these consoles. I loved my 360, my Wii, I have mixed feelings about, but I feel like I was more like it's like a different stage of life, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was I was in high school when the uh Xbox and the Wii came out, so I was I was still playing around with uh the GameCube and the PlayStation 2 at that time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I was in middle school because we're like five years apart. So yeah, uh same, same deal. I was just becoming I was becoming the age where my mom would let me play Halo and stuff, and so I definitely played a lot of 360 games, and to this day, my my brother was way more taken by the Xbox than I was. I enjoyed it, but um my brother really played some gems, you know, some some diamonds in the rough on the Xbox. The only games that I really remember playing on it were Kotor, which is a phenomenal game.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh I could talk about that for a whole episode, but uh, we've talked enough.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um Project Gotham Racing was pretty good. And uh obviously Halo one and two. You can't really talk about the OG Xbox not talking about those games.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that that's the only thing that it had. And uh Jade Empire, that game was fucking awesome.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. I did play Jade Empire on the 360, I think. But yes, great game. That's that's more of a successor to KOTOR one than fucking KOTOR 2 is in a way.
SPEAKER_03Did it come after KOTOR?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Bioware did KOTOR, but they didn't want to do another one. So Obsidian did KOTOR 2 and Bioware did Jade Empire, and then they moved on to Mass Effect and Dragon Age on the 360.
SPEAKER_03Okay, that makes sense, right? Yeah, that that that makes a lot of sense. Um, I hmm, you know, I I did really know that uh Bioware was gonna be such a big thing, but I I do remember like people saying, like, oh fucking Kotor is great and Jade Empire. I'm like, no, Kotor is garbage, Jade Empire is better because you know, dumbass me didn't understand that uh Kotor had the dice, and you know, the you had to like D it and like talk to people and shit. You couldn't just go in and kill everybody, yeah. You couldn't brute force, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And really, even even grinding wasn't possible. There's like a limited amount of XP you can get in that game, you can't really grind, right?
SPEAKER_03Right, like there's no no stage or area that's like filled with enemies that you can just go fight over and over again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the Xbox is interesting because that's like all those Western, all those games that were previously locked away on PC, including Western RPGs coming over for the first time. So, like Morrowind and Kotor are so DD based, and obviously they abandoned that pretty soon after, but it's just interesting to see that ever came out to a console.
SPEAKER_03You know that uh what's it called? Baldur's gate and uh Dark Alliance were on Xbox too.
SPEAKER_01I did know that. I did know that. I've never I mean not at the time I didn't, but I I've learned that since.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's it's kind of crazy that to think back on it and just be like, didn't Bioware work on one of those computer?
SPEAKER_01Didn't Bioware work on one of those? Am I crazy?
SPEAKER_03Uh you might be right, but I don't know which one.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I thought that they did, but I might be making that up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, not 100% sure, but maybe. That does kind of sound right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I have a lot of nostalgia for both the Xbox and the 360. I just think it's funny in retrospect. My brother kind of got off the Xbox train when the one came out because um people maybe not mostly the story that's been written for the Xbox One is that didn't sell well, but the first year the Xbox One sold bananas, uh, and then it just like didn't have anything at all. Uh that would that that that was a real killer for them. But the 360 and the original Xbox, great consoles.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, man. 360 was great. I did enjoy that one. But once I got the PS3, I completely forgot about it.
SPEAKER_01That's that's what pretty much happened to anyone I knew. They either got the PS3 at the end of the gin or they got a PS4.
SPEAKER_03You know, I I got a PS3. I sold it and got a four. There were like two games for the four, so I got rid of the four and bought a three again. And then years down the line, I got another four.
SPEAKER_01I was as you just heard from my game console history, I was not a PlayStation kid at all. Never had a one, never had a two, never had a three, got the four pro in 2020 when the five dropped.
SPEAKER_03Man, you you need to go back and play Final Fantasy Tactics and I know a nine and uh wild nine and siphon filter one, two, and three. Man, you got a lot of games to catch up on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, especially when it comes to old JRPGs, I'm never gonna catch up, but I know that I tried to play all the games that I could that were on PS Plus, uh, which kind of got me caught up to you know, like the PS2 and onwards, but I'm I'm definitely I still have a huge Sony sized hole in my back catalog.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like the Devil May Cry games, you haven't played those, you need to play them. Yep, so many, so many games.
SPEAKER_01So many games. I mean, the thing that makes well I played all those. I played all the originals on PS Plus. Okay, yeah, those were fun.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they're those are great. I I played two last year and finished it last year. That one was really fun. Forgot how fun that one was.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Um, I think the one that really clicked for me actually was three on the PS3. That might be my favorite God of War.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I need to replay that one because I I went through one, two, and the two PSP ones, which are fucking incredible. I'm I I'm still surprised the dose came out on the PSP, and I still haven't started three, which I'm gonna do at some point this year.
SPEAKER_01It's a lot of fun, it cuts out some of the tedium that's in those PS2 games.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, it does. There was like one segment that I very vaguely remember not liking, but I can't recall which one it is in three.
SPEAKER_01Trying to think back. I think the only thing I didn't like about three was that area where you're like on a platform held up by chains. The platforming gets a real jank.
SPEAKER_03That the one where uh what's his face is taunting you the entire time before you actually finally cuts his legs off? Yeah, yes, yeah. That's that part sucks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, God of War is one of those franchises that's like it's always really good for me, but I'm never totally blown away by it. Even God of War 2018, like fun, yes, life-changing, no, no, no, like that one.
SPEAKER_03The the biggest uh thing that I took away from 2018 was the ending when they reveal who Atreus is, and then they kind of do nothing with it in the sequel.
SPEAKER_00Like no, I believe that I haven't played it yet, but I believe that.
SPEAKER_03Man, that that sequel dragged on for way too long. I was like at 35 hours in, and I was ready for that shit to end.
SPEAKER_01I can't wait for God of Wars uh nine or whatever when you kill Muhammad and it gets banned and like terrorists attacks in Santa Monica.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they're they're they're probably not gonna do that.
SPEAKER_01Probably not. If anything, it'll be like Egypt or something.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, yeah. Hey, they can always go to Puerto Rico, that would be fun.
SPEAKER_01Then and fight the the local deity, yeah.
SPEAKER_03They fight the local deities.
SPEAKER_01I don't even know fight the literal rainforest uh what would the villain even be like US imperialism? It's like I'm gonna kill the ghost of half.
SPEAKER_03Go to the abandoned military base, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that'd be fun. So, all right. So, Zoom told me that we have 10 minutes, like three minutes ago. So uh wrap up. Yeah, let's go ahead and get this wrapped up. Will thank you so much for being on. This was great. Um, sorry, Zoom sucks. Sorry that uh you have an old dinosaur laptop that won't let you do what you need to do. But uh that's okay, man.
SPEAKER_01I'm just glad that I finally, you know, I always joked with you that I was gonna come on one day, and uh we should definitely have an episode where all we do is talk about what we like and don't like about Star Wars, but I'm really glad I can jump on.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, hey, maybe we could do that for Star Wars month, um which is May.
SPEAKER_01That's like coming up, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, we can we can work that out. Um, I'll make sure the next time I have either good zoom or or we have something else worked out for the recording. So we don't have to do this cut and stop and cut and stop.
SPEAKER_01Well, now that I know this is happening, I'll probably find I'll figure something out with regards to that. Or we'll just do this again. Because I mean, honestly, the cut and stop wasn't that big of a deal as long as we can keep it two zooms.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, but yeah, no, zoom only gives you like 20 or 30 minutes in between, so it's not not great when you start getting in the flow of things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so yeah, man, thanks for having me. Um, I don't have anything to plug, which is what you usually ask people to know this because I don't have a podcast. Um but uh thanks for having me on, and I really enjoyed shooting the shit with you, and I'd love to do it again sometime.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, definitely. I'll I'll definitely let you know, and uh we'll bring you back on for uh another episode. All right, brother. Have a good night. All right, thank you, man. You too. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We did that wrong. We did that wrong. All right, so that's it for this week's episode of a novel console. Uh don't forget uh follow us on socials and whatnot. Will do you want to say goodbye to everyone? Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye, everyone.