012 - Driddided up

Episode 12. Can we be stopped? Should we be stopped?

Discord : https://discord.gg/UssZkqB7BR

Street fighter leaks, a tribute to a beloved obscure game series, and multiplayer memories. Could this be the podcast of the summer?

No. 

But listen anway.

Games (and other things) discussed:

• Guilty Gear Strive 2.0
• Earthion
• Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst
• Tank team
• Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
• Super Mario Galaxy Movie
• Hautepad C-AT
• TBGamer Emotion III
• The Kunio-Kun Series

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Sean, I noticed you've brought your your Bible to the uh to the podcast record today. Uh what passage is it uh you are sort of helping all hope you help you through the podcast today?

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Um so yeah, so the the uh the great uh you know like I mean I mean you've heard of the book of Job, isn't it? Um sorry just gonna just gonna get to that now. Just one second. Um uh you got it ready though, obviously. You know, Job once said uh oh shit, okay. Uh yeah, you probably need to come back to this to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Hello and welcome to Lucky and Wild, a podcast about fighting games and other video games. Old and new, discussed, dissected, and occasionally understood. I'm Harrison Hunt, and with me is Sean Hunt. Kwan in right, so today we're gonna be doing your feedback, followed by the news, followed by what we've been playing. And of course, uh we're not gonna do our radio style items today because we've got a special different item today. Uh, and then we're gonna end with your listener mail. We have. We have. Does that sound does that sound fucking excellent?

SPEAKER_02 1:22

It sounds, yeah, it sounds good. Sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Uh before we start the show, though, speaking of fucking excellent, um, we've got a new patron.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

And they've pledged uh the playable character tier on Patreon. So that means we get to shout them out. Kate, this is for you. That's just her name is on there, it's just Kate. All right, should we do a song like no? We're not doing no no no we're not doing it. No, no, no, no. Okay, right. But what we will do is say that Kate is now our boss, effectively, right? Because she's the biggest, she's the highest roller on the Patreon.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

I mean, I'm an island, so you know I'll but you know. I'll listen, I'll listen, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I'm just you'll you'll take on board what she's saying, but you I work alone. Exactly. But uh Kate, I don't work alone, so you can tell me what to do.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Um yeah, no, with big respect.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Actually, that's a bit of a weird thing to say, isn't it? But no, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Thank you so much to you. Big up. Yeah, and big up to all our paper and listeners.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

You know, that's right. Yeah, um, right, let's do some feedback, shall we?

SPEAKER_03 2:25

What are you saying?

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Um, first feedback comes in from Carti. He says the soundboard is a welcome edition. Robo bitch.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Um yeah, I don't know really. I mean, it half like it half is. I mean, I'm so like digging.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Well, as you can no doubt tell, I have kept it um based solely on that feedback from that one person. All the other listeners, they were silent, they haven't mentioned it, probably because they hate it, but it is here to stay.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Well, I imagine that they're happy because if you know they're not commenting, then they're most likely happy with it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

They they they've got so much joy in their hearts, they cannot find the time to comment.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

It was just like a logical sort of evolution, really, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Well, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

Um I don't know why I'm being nice about it, because it was a bit annoying in the last podcast.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Well, no, but the bit where you were trying to do your sound test at the end of the show and I kept on pressing the horrible buttons. I mean, I wasn't pressing it, it was a glitch. I don't know how it happened. Yeah, some a ghost in the machine, a ghost in the machine there.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Well, it's a metaphor. I'm glad you de-ghusted the machine, though.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

No, I'm it's I mean it's still here. I don't know what's going on, but that's not me pressing that button there. Oh, okay. That's just a glitch on my computer. Probably a virus of something. Yeah, I reckon. He follows up uh Sean Hench with the insane pocket pick of custard donuts, a man of culture. As we then uh discussed last episode, Sean spent the Patreon money, what little we had, on a pack of custard donuts. Yeah, but and I I maintain that that is a terrible choice of donut. Well, I mean, well, okay, firstly, filled donuts are far s inferior to other donuts. Second of all, of the filled donuts, custard is the worst filling.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

I mean, of the ones you can get, you could either get jam or custard, you know, those bag of five donuts.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Yeah, jam custard or that white chocolate cream. Oh, those are good, yeah. Right, but custard is cut cold custard is fucking horrible. It's the worst. I don't know who who in the right mind would eat. It's like a solidified congealed lump of it. It's not I mean, it's not actually custard that they put in there, but it is, it's just very, very thick custard, which makes it even worse. Like it's disgusting. I don't know why you would eat that rubbish. Um, custard donuts are shit, Carti. You're wrong, Sean's wrong.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

But yeah, the Patreon money uh will be going towards the um the the hosting fees this month.

unknown 4:43

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

That's right. Excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Well, that is nice. Um, so so that that would be very handy. I mean, hopefully we can actually withdraw it. We'll wait and see. But thank you, Kate. And uh no thank you, Carti, for your email, because you're wrong. Custard donuts are shit.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

It's quite constructive, I thought.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

It is not. Right, let's do some news. Nintendo launching pop-up store in London. The Nintendo Experience Zone, the best name for a business since Red Hill Fish Bar Centre, is currently visitable in the Argos store in Tottenham Court Road.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Argos store? Uh oh yeah, that is a pretty big one, to be fair. I've been in there.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

And more importantly, about that Argos store, the Grime MC Big H, obviously his career didn't go very well. He's a manager there. Yeah. So if you go there, you get to meet him too.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

He's a manager. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

He's a manager of an Argos now, yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

That's cool, that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Now, the Argos store have been very unspecific about how long this uh Nintendo shop is actually going to be there, but it claims it'll be there for, quote, the next few months. Now I know what you're thinking. This is gonna be like the Bandai Namco pop-ups with exclusive merch t-shirts and all that shit. Sounds good. But the reality is actually quite different. The TikToker Bad X Girl Cosplay shared some video of the store, and in her video said the store is, quote, fully stocked with the latest games and consoles as well as as well as all of the accessories to go with it. Now watch the video, and she is correct, but there's basically nothing new here. It's switched to consoles, games, etc., and all the merch you can already buy in literally any Smith's Toy Store. Admittedly though, the shop looks cool, but there's nothing, no new things there. Yeah, so it's not worth uh if you're already in Tottenham Court Road, go in and take a video of it. I imagine that was what what uh that's what bad X Girl Cosplay did.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

I was sort of thinking today as well, uh, should shouldn't we um because it's been a year since Switch 2 came out almost, isn't it? Um I'm thinking that we should highlight, you know, like the good things that have happened like in that year with on the Switch 2. Yeah. Um the um there was the um DK Bonanza.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Uh yeah, there was yeah, that was that was alright.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

But no, no, you're forgetting the um What about the£10 instruction book?

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah, that was a Nintendo welcome part. Now that is a game. Yeah, that's should have been free with the console, but uh but the the thing is the thing is it's more satisfying when you buy it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 7:13

It's a higher concept.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

It's m it's m it's more satisfying when you buy it, so I wouldn't want to have it for free.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Yeah, because if you had it for free, you wouldn't play it, but if you bought it, you'd like you now now you've you've really got to give it a go.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah. I think that's what most people did, isn't it? They're like, well, I have paid the tenner.

SPEAKER_04 7:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Um but anyway, yeah. So you're gonna be going to the Nintendo store in Argos, you're gonna go meet Big H? Uh well Holt tight all the man dem inside. Big H in the building.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Technically, I will be meeting him if I do go there, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Fair enough. To make a complaint about his bars.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Um but I'll take but I'll take your advice on like if I'm about, then I'll go in. But fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

But why would you ever go to Tottenham Court Road?

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Yeah um go to Forbidden Planet. It's a good uh good I mean the that that's good. That's that's a good store. But um also the train station, you can go to It's one of the greatest train stations known to man.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

I mean, that is why you go to Tottenham Court Road because it's good to go to other places, really.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

It's quite easy to brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

That's good, that's good, that's good. Right. Uh well that's why Kate is pledging on Patreon um for jokes like that. Invincible versus plagued by excessive rage quitting. So the open beta for the fighting game based on the show Invincible, which is based on the comic series Invincible by Image Comics, just happened. It was a console-only beta, so we didn't actually get a chance to play, but what always happens with licensed fighting games, and this is sort of an aside, but so fans of the IP they dip in, they play for a minute, discover they don't like fighting games, then fighting game fans are the ones left playing, right? That's their normal pipeline. Yeah. As such, relying on IP is actually rarely a good strategy. The game actually has to be good, otherwise, people move on instantly. Hunter X Hunter is a good uh recent example of this. It's based on a beloved series, but a week after launch, it's player-based dipped to 30 players on Steam. Eggloopway!

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Unfortunately, uh there were a lot of videos that surfaced right at the time it came out of some really goofy uh stuff and also like combos that would last an entire game.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

There was there was a minutes-long combo that used seven supers and could not be broken in any way.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

But anyway, why do I mention all of this about the licensed IPs and fighting games? Because the people trying the fighting game over the beta are not all fighting game fans, obviously. A big portion of them are invincible fans, and not only that, but everything I've seen from the game and the community look uh and the from community impressions, it looks absolutely awful, as you mentioned. To give an example, um actually, well I just mentioned it, but um there was a that seven minute that that one-minute combo with seven supers in it. Uh it was a monster girl combo, and it was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I mean, all it was it was like a brain dead combo as well. He does one, he does the launcher attack, does a tag assist, then the super, just does that over and over and over, and the super is so long, she just grabs them, pounds them on the floor, and that's it.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Yeah, too long really, and the damage is like just very very low.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

So but also the fact that with that that super, the sort of uh command grab-ish super, the fact that they're immediately vulnerable to ta to attacks after that is fucking stupid. Yeah, you can launch them after that super is dumb as shit. They're on the ground.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Yeah, that's why you you always have like a short animation with the characters doing that that kind of super so that you can't really then abuse it afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Well, exactly. Yeah. But anyway, the biggest reported issue during the beta were excessive rage quitters. Now, Quarterump, the developers of the game, blame matchmaking, which was making errors during the beta, resulting in matchmaking um mismatches. So high ranks were getting matched with low ranks. So seems like a fair point. But doesn't it seem plausible, in fact, more plausible, that invincible fans were dipping in getting slapped about for longer than a minute in a sloppy ass baby's first tag fight a game than just quitting never to pick up the game. Doesn't that seem more plausible than the mismatches thing?

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Yeah, I'd say that like the the like the probably small percentage of invincible fans plus like fighting game fans who tried it and then realised it wasn't very good.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Because I think people that have never played a fighting game are dipping in and then and then quitting, right? Yeah, because ranked mismatches occur, especially during betas, and it happened during the 2X KO beta, right? But it's like the the thing about this one is that like but usually when when that happens, you don't see people rage quitting all the time. They just go, Oh, it's a beta, but I really want to try the game, right? Yeah, yeah. The fact that rage quitting is happening left, right, and centre, I don't think can entirely be blamed on bad matchmaking. That said, if you're developers of the game, you can't come out and say that, can you? I think otherwise you look bad.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

I think it's just like halfway through the game, people are just getting sick of the game. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yeah, they play one match, get get locked into that monster girl combo, and then go fuck this and turn the game off. That's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

I've made a mistake.

unknown 12:07

Igoubing.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Um anyway, I made a bet with uh somebody at uni. He's like a massive invincible fan, loves it. It's his favourite series of all time. And uh he's now playing the game, and he is convinced that the game is gonna retain its players because of the fact that it's a big IP and invincible fans will play it.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

How long's he's been playing it for so far?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Just the beta. So recently like a week, I guess?

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Oh yeah, it was like three days, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Anyway, um I have a bet with him because I know the way this goes, I know the pipeline, and I said I wasn't trying to just it like shit on his thing, right? But I was just saying to him, like the the fact that the IP is big will not carry a fighting game. It never does. No, it doesn't. And so I I bet him, I said, right, a month after launch, I bet the player count is down to my uh less 500 or less. And if it is, you give me 20 quid. If it isn't, I'll give him 20 quid. But how like you know, Sean, how much of a fucking sure bet is that? I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Yeah, yeah, skin like all there is no way.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

I know I've got 20 quid in my bank account, basically. I might as well have already spent it.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

No, the beta, I mean, the game's dead like now, really.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Yep. No, I think I think give it a week. The fact that I've given it a month, and I think 500 is even quite a high number, yeah, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Yeah, for a for a fighting game, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Uh but yeah, here we go. I've I've won 20 quid. Thanks, Josh. You can send it to me now if you want.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Yeah, yeah. Send it through the Patreon.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

That's right. Street Fighter 4 characters announced, and they're cool. Now, we've had a bit of a tumultuous time with SF6, and in fact, neither of us really play it anymore, and believe it needs a big update to bring us back. But a recent leak might change this. So the same person who leaked the correct predictions for season three has leaked info about season four characters. These characters are uh you got Hagga and from Final Fight?

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

And you maimed him on Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Uh you got Tifa, Final Fantasy VII.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

And we got Vega and uh Goken.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Yeah, so ah, mate.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Now I'm really excited. It might be like uh with Vega aside, we said a couple of episodes ago that we won Goken in the game.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah, yeah. And Hagar from Final Fight one of your favourite characters of all time.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Tifa from Final Fantasy VII, straight main for me as well. I might actually but it's not gonna fix the game, is it? It's not gonna fix the game.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

But I it might yeah it's just like City of the Wolves, like a character comes in, hopefully, hopefully it'll save the game.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah, we we even said that like uh a while ago on this podcast because Ken came back and people started playing.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

But um But like according to some people, like Ingrid's gonna shake things up. Uh like I don't know though.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

But did you see the gameplay trailer though? I mean I I think the character looks cool. I would play Ingrid, I think she looks great.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

But my soft guest character, but my yeah, it pretty much is.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

But my problem is is that like it doesn't look like a Street Fighter character. No, it doesn't. I mean it's it they they the the whole idea of like the style of the game has gone completely fucking out the window.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Well it's sort of implied that she's from another universe.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Well she is, but it's weird. It's like a fucking um VTuber avatar now in fucking Street Fighter 6.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Oh, there we go. Oh, that reminds me.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

That noise signifies the corrections corner. Oh, okay. Uh I figured as it's we we've now been doing this podcast for a year. So we're gonna do something special uh throughout this episode. Um and we're gonna go I've listened went and listened to all the old episodes and found instances of us being wrong about stuff.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Um throughout the podcast, when that sound randomly plays, um we'll jump into one of them. Do you know? Do you remember on I think in episode one when the uh Fatal Fury tournament for 1.5 million in America got announced, I predicted that it was a silly amount of money and it would never happen. Yeah, you did. I mean I can't believe I said that. Um and then and then, of course, like follow up five episodes later, and we were watching the tournament and absolutely loving it. I mean, I was so wrong about that.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

It was a very lavish tournament though. I mean, it's it's like nothing ever seen before.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

It was amazing, it was it was brilliant. I mean, I I don't know how much longer they're gonna continue doing it, but I was so fucking stupidly wrong about that. Yeah, um, but yeah, just wanted to say correction. Sorry about that, I was wrong, right? That was corrections corner. Um, right, so there I think that is it for the news. Is there have you got anything else to say about the Street Fighter 4 characters? Six.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Street Fighter 6 season 4.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Season 4, that's right. Sorry, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

That's all right. Um uh no, I haven't really. Uh to be honest. No, that was good. That was good.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Fair enough. Alright, well, we might go back to it then.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Cause Hagga. But do you no? I mean, well, actually, I've got a question like, do you think like they'll after like Ingrid, do you think they'll want to change things? Or do you think the characters are enough to keep people that's it though, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Think about it. We've we've just seen them be announced, uh, or like not even announced, leaked, and we're like, fucking hell, I might have to go back. Even though the game, like, at top level is really, really shit in comparison to other games, it's sort of like, but Gokan and Hagar there. Yeah. And T T. Do you know I want though? I would like Goken's brother to be in the game.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Well, Kuma.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

What? Right, all right, so we get on to what we've been playing.

SPEAKER_04 17:30

What's your game?

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Um, right, so uh, yeah, we've been, and this is for the big release this time, we've been playing Guilty Gear Drive 2.0.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Oh, we have, yeah, we have.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

What the fuck is going on out there, man? Like, right, so Street Fighter 6 is is is kind of is rubbish and stagnant at this point, right? Yeah, exactly. Tekken releases their back to the basics thing and everyone thinks it's going to be saved. It's almost irrelevant now, Tekken. Yeah, and then suddenly, uh the with impeccable, probably accidental timing, Guilty Gears Drive launches its 2.0 update. Now, previously we've said we don't like Guilty Gear and that there's a lot of things that can be fixed about it. Now, this update isn't really an update so much as it is a sort of uh, I don't know, soft sequel to the game.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Well, it's 2.0, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Yeah, it's 2.0. So technically it is the second version of the same game, right? But what they've done is like they we spoke about the trailer last time, and that they're going back and fixing so many things that have become wrong and bloated about the rules of the game over time where it's received incremental updates, like getting rid of Wild Assault and a bunch of other stuff, which we'll get into. I mean now we're at the point where this game might be my favourite one out there at the moment. And I think it might be if you're looking to get into fighting games and not playing one currently, it would be the pit it that is where I would send people.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Yeah, it's yeah, me too. It's very weird, it's refreshing, but um they just came out with a good game, and now they've got like a lot more players playing the game, and they put it on sale for 2.0 update as well. Half price, they did uh half price, and also a lot of the older seasons were discounted, nice discounts as well, tenor each, some of them for four characters.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Yeah, meanwhile, on uh other games you're paying six pounds per character, things like this.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

I will say, so for those that don't know, Guilty Gear might be the most based game ever made, right? The creator whose name I cannot remember, he it's just everything he likes smashed into one, right? It's an anime fighter that is very, very fast-paced with a very unique type of moveset for each character. And you for to give some examples of the uh the setting is just mental. I don't understand it one bit, but my mate Tommy from Uni's been telling me bits about it. Um, for example, the character Bedman, who is uh a guy who was dying in a hospital, and then as he was dying, he possessed the bed that he was dying in so that he could continue to protect his little sister, so he is a bed, a living hospital bed. Yeah, that's true. That's a character.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

That is a cool character.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah, a really good character. There's a character called Unica who he wields a sword that is also a motorbike. Um, there's a guy who uses a pool cue as a weapon.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Um, yeah, I mean, there's a chilled-out vampire, there's a guy who has a like an alien in a coffin, but he doesn't believe that there's an alien in the coffin.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

He doesn't believe in aliens full stop, but his weapon is a coffin with an alien in it.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Even though he's a CIA agent, he still doesn't believe in aliens as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

And yeah, I know. And they know the secrets out there, don't they?

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Yeah, they do.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

But here's the thing, um uh it's funny because also on he on that's Gold Lewis, that character, and on his windscreen, sometimes his opponent gets abducted, but he conveniently gets a phone call so he's facing away and doesn't see them get abducted by aliens.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Yeah, it's usually like um like he uh orders uh like he orders a pizza and then forgets he ordered the pizza and then like yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

There you go. But um so the bit the big update, right? Basically, the problems with old guilty gear strive.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

I reckon like they sort of had like only a few characters that were viable in the old one.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

That was it, that was part of the problem. Um and also there was like where characters have received continual buffs over and over again to quote unquote rebalance the game, and also Wild Assault, you could steal meter from your opponents. Um like like what the what the end result was was that matches were very, very short and usually consisted of one person juggling the other in a big combo for the entire thing and just killing them instantly, right? So there wasn't really much strategizing. It was just about trying to get a hit in first. And there was no neutral game in Old Guilty Years Drive. You would just dash at each other and that was that.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Yeah, it was all about positioning.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Now they've given every single character in the game a debuff or a nerf and they've made them I wouldn't say worse, but what they've done is they've uh opened up the game to being more about about having more meaningful interactions with each other. Um a good example being that the there's a thing in the game called Roman councils, right? And you used to just be able to fucking red Roman cancel out of any old shit, right? And including a whiffed throw. Now whiffed throw should be the ultimate punishment moment, right? Yeah that's like a risky thing to do. But you could just whiff a throw, red Roman cancel, throw them. I mean, so there's loads of little things, and it's it's one of those things that's also very I'm sure you'll agree with this, Sean, very hard to describe, but the feel of the game from before to now. We when we picked up straight away, we were just like, we're having meaningful interactions with each other, there's strategizing the neutral game actually fucking exists now.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

Well, they gave everyone uh they gave all the characters like a new command normal. Um, so it adds a lot of depth to the game uh in that way as well. Uh to be honest, like uh even though they've sort of nerfed a lot of the characters, everyone sort of feels like kind of strong, but you've also got an extra command normal, which really sort of helps with the the neutral game and movement.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

It's not as if they've nerfed it and made everyone shit, it's that they've nerfed it to make it less like a to compress the tier lists, yeah, and make it less stupidly powerful all the time. Yeah, it means that that there are characters currently that are um uh that have been bumped up the tier list, some that have gone down, but for all intents and purposes, it's like uh uh a brand new game and it's so much fun. We like I I haven't had this much fun for a while on a fine game, it's so good. And the thing is, I was a little bit disappointed because the trailer um talked about expanded movesets, and I thought the characters were gonna be getting a new special move. What I didn't realise was that actually I'm kind of happy with the fact that it's either one or two command normals that have been added in, and actually just the rebalance of the game has made the whole thing feel better. When I first booted up, I I messaged you tonight. I was like, Well, they all they've done is they they haven't put any new special moves in the game, just temper your expectations about that part of it, but the whole rest of it was was really good, and actually the new command normals are fine and adequate, and they the characters feel well-rounded.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Yeah, they do, yeah, they do. Um yeah, there's a lot of good options. So, yeah, if you were like thinking about jumping into a fine game, there probably is there probably there almost definitely is a character for you in this game, to be fair.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Yeah, and and the if it's it's currently cheap and really really fun. They've added proper ranked modes into the game. I forgot to talk about that. Yeah, like because before there was that stupid tower shit, now they've got proper ranks with silver, gold, all of that shit.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Yeah, it's perfect. I mean, I didn't really that put me off a bit before, but now I'm just like churning out the ranked. Um also uh they've uh got a whole new season that came out with this update. Um so currently out of four characters there's one that's been released called Jam. Uh and she's like she's like sort of a traditional sort of kung fu sort of type uh sort of woman, and um yeah, she she can do like she's in mysticism type shit with kung fu, yeah. Yeah, like the mysticism type stuff. Um so you can buff uh her special moves um to make them more powerful. Uh so she's got like a flying kick she can go across the screen with, um, but it like really like pulls you to the corner and does a lot of damage if you power.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Her pressure is insane. Um now, of course, there are no tierless out there yet because it's too early, right? But predicted tier list put her very, very, very high because the pressure is insane.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

And she's got parry as well. Yes, and the the choose to like just parry the move, or you can parry the move, then punch afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yes, because Sean, you I uh I bought you her on Steam, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Yeah, you can't really like so I've like you've been trying her out today. Yeah, I've I tried her out yesterday and today, just like so I could give like a like people were wanting to jump in and be her, you know. I thought because she's new, I thought I'd yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Yeah, and I I I think that I think that I just thought you would really like her because the pressure is insane. You like martial arts-based characters, and she's probably the only semi-realistic one. To me, what it reminds me of a bit like Gato from Fatal Fury, yeah, with a bit of Feelong sprinkled in there, if they were a Marvel vs. Capcom character, that's what it feels like.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

She has got that gato flip as well, to be fair. Um you can sort of do like you can do like the somersault where you like sort of mildly somersault in the air, like sort of low down. Um, but then you can also follow it up with like a special move as well, like um, yeah, she's got like a like a kick, like an axe kick in the air.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

So yeah, that's another move that can be buffed, but well I noticed this she's got that slide move where you if you you slide and it it hits even if somebody's ducking, it's a move you have to jump to avoid. Yeah, and like that is an absolute monster of a move, especially when you're turtling up a little bit and trying to wait for an opening. And I've noticed the jam players online do that, and it is fucking annoying. But cracking character, the other notable one is that Nagoruki has like been at the top. I don't know if you've noticed this when you've been playing ranked. So he, ladies and gentlemen, he's a samurai character who I would say is like if you were doing a blood build on Elden Ring, he's a bit like that. He's focuses around making you bleed and doing big hits rather than combos.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

He's extremely similar to um uh Ward Warden on um Samurai Showdown. Yes, so he kind of deserves to be at the top because he's just got like a few like he just does like a like simple like hits with his big sword and stuff like that. Um like uh like special moves are like these combos like that he does and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

So although on in the game it tells you how easy to use each character is. Nagaruki is like he's he's uh low ease of use, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Yeah, I wouldn't apparently I wouldn't use him to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

No, but I I if I was if I'm being honest, he'd be my recommendation for new players. If you fancy getting into this game and you really, really should, it's it's really good. Um I would recommend it to new players because you don't need to focus on any combos whatsoever. You could just focus on your positioning, baiting out attacks and then punishing them with big slashes. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, yeah, you're probably right actually.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Speaking of new players, though, what what I've been doing, because a couple of the uh people from uni play Guilty Gear, um and of course my friend Tommy, uh they were already really into it anyway. And when we've been online, me and them have been playing quite a lot, and then they've been telling me about all of this, all of the lore and stuff. That's what I know about Bedman. But we've had two other people um from uni also playing, and we've been making like rooms and all playing together, and of course, Carti from the Discord has been in there, and uh just that has been some of the most fun for me because one of the things uh where before from before was that when you if you want to play with a bunch of people, your maids, you have to create a a room, like a I was gonna say a physical room, but like it's like a a hub that you all hang out in in-game, right? Yeah, and before it was so buggy, it works.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Now it just works. Yeah, it just works perfectly, and it made it actually made me sort of go and update my avatar. Like there's hundreds and thousand hundreds and uh thousands of items you can get because you can like go fishing. You do this fishing mini game, you do a fishing mini game, and then you get like a certain amount of avatar items if you want to get that.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

Well, you can get items for your house, yeah, yeah. But we yeah, we've been we've been in a room like most nights, like uh all of us, and that's been some of the most fun because uh a friend from Uni G uh called Matt as well, was like new to fighting games completely, has been getting into it, and I I've been sort of I wouldn't say coaching, but like showing him cool stuff to do and like different techniques and stuff, and that was pretty fun because he stopped it out, and no offense, Matt, but he was he was trash, obviously, because he was completely new to the game, and then he played against Carti and was doing much better, and that's because I was in his ear and I was going, right, do this, do this, and I was showing him like the cool things to do. He was playing Axl Lowe, and I was just saying, and uh obviously Carti was playing Chip Xanaf, right? So he's a rushdown character, and Axel Lowe is very good at keeping people away. So I was sort of giving him those little tips, and seeing him get better has been a lot of fun, but also just hanging out in the same room and all playing, and then seeing people go into training, or like uh like Tommy, for example, would go off and go, like, right, I want to learn how to link these two moves together. Give me a minute. Then we'd do a bit of training, and then when we're done, we'd play again and stuff like this, and it's just been like a really good learning experience for the game, especially as because all of us have been like trying out new characters as well. So I I've it's the first time I've been alright with uh with about three or four characters in a game, probably ever.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah well, you've been playing a lot of it, so I've been going mental on it, man.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

I've been going fucking buck wild.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

It's good, it's good, yeah. Um, and uh speaking of that, um unfortunately, like it's the day before, I think, like before my uh leveless comes. Uh so I'm getting the uh so I'll report on it next time, the Cosmox C A uh C A C A T or Cat, some people have called it. Um and you're getting the um Yeah, well this is it.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

I look I I I've I told myself now that I wasn't gonna buy any new controllers, right? But I think I just have to accept I just have to accept that maybe the the the new tech going into current levelesses is interesting to me and that it's part of what I enjoy about the hobby. Instead of going, I've got my perfect controller and feeling guilty that I'm looking at new ones, right? It's just that I like different ones for different situations and different ones have different merits for different games, right? But also a lot I think I just enjoy about the hobby seeing the new shit that's coming out, like the CAC is the one you're getting, it's very, very different from your old one.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

And it is yeah, even like looks very comfortable to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Because of the rise of like keyboard switches and them getting better and better and more technologically advanced, like the prices of levelers have gone up, but also that means that the the quality of the buttons is getting better and more useful in a way that perhaps traditional arcade sticks haven't in a long while.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Well, um you got like a um sort of nice mix, so you got uh like the traditional keyboard buttons up the top for like start tournament lockout and all that stuff, but you've got like also um with the actual buttons, the the main buttons you're gonna be using in-game, um, you can turn them uh so you can make them deeper or uh like quicker to press and like see that's the type of shit I'm speaking about though. That's the tech, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

And also the the fact that you've got those because usually they have those like I don't know what they are, like three millimeter buttons for start select and all that, and your one's got instead like traditional keyboard buttons on it. I'm just like, but there's those little touches like that that make you go, right? Yeah, but I am happy with my controller, but the this one has something new that might aid me with a specific game. And I'm thinking, like, I I pretty much love my Victrix, like I love it to death, right? But the only trouble is that is that um it's got traditional arcade buttons, and specifically only for guilty gear, like for any other game, that controller's perfect, but for guilty gear, slide inputs are really, really, really handy to do. And the thing is, is that there's these um, I don't know, they're relatively new keyboard switches in the one I've bought, and I'll get into that in a second, called shadow hunting ones, right? Oh, yeah, and they've got like the tiniest amount of travel, you could breathe on them, and so for slide inputs, it was just gonna be so easy. I'll be able to do the supers, like nobody's business. And but anyway, yeah, the one I went for is so Hout 42 are the company, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:19

No, they're the the they're the um they're the controllers, the company's cosmox.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

No, no, no. So Halp 42 is the company. I know this because I was looking into it yesterday. Oh, it was, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

So just the other way around. Is it the other way around?

SPEAKER_01 34:32

No, Halte 42 is the why don't you just let me say it and then you'll know. Alright. Right. So Halp 42 is the company, then they have some pads they make under, some controllers they make under the Halp 42 range, right? Which tend to be their more basic ones. Then Cosmox, they tend to make the uh higher end of things. That is another branch of the exact same company. Yeah. But they've now just started a third fucking company called TB Gamer, right? That appeared to be mid-range ones. But this one I've got is it was released this month and it should be on its way very soon. But it's the Emotion 3, that's what it's called. I don't know where Emotion 1 and 2 went, but uh but here we are. Um but the cool thing is that all of these, all the levers, levelesses, not all of them, uh, with hitboxes being an exception, they use the GP2040 PCB that has that little screen on it, which is something I really like about those levelses, because you can see your inputs, you can program it to have a custom image when you boot it up, all of this shit. But this new one that I've got is the first one, it uses a Sky, no, not Sky. Fuck, what is it? RP3045 or something, printed circuit board, but it's a retro pi one or Raspberry Pi, and um it has a colour screen on it. And that but but it also has a little computer inside that can record your inputs and display them to you on in colour on that little screen, right? So that means you could practice inputs without even having the game on, and you can uh set it to display different types of information or custom images when certain parameters are met. And it comes with this new software that you can get on your computer to program all of that. So I'm just like amazing. That looks fucking cool, but also as much as I love my Victrix, it doesn't have the extra buttons, it's just got the directions and the main buttons.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Well, I think you're gonna be um you're gonna like especially for guilty gear, um, there's the long buttons on the side, uh on the bottom, but also the ones on the like side of the D-pad and above the eight buttons as well. I think you're gonna like that for like a dash on guilty gear.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

Exactly, but that that was my point. Like, like uh I do think my Victrix is like a perfect controller in in a lot of ways, but it's just not it for Guilty Gear, it's not the exact one, and also I just like the look of this controller, it's got a weird the Emotion 3's got a very weird look. Like all the buttons are sort of subtly different, and it's got sort of a wall-y type vibe, yeah. It's got wall-ly type cyberpunkish punk vibes to it, and it's weird, and I like that about it. So yeah, um well, we'll review it next time uh on the on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

Um we'll review both, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Um we've also been playing Earthian.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Yeah. Alright, so Earthian is, as many people will know, it's Yuzu Kashiro's new shmup. Yuzo Kashiro being the fellow who uh designed Streets of Rage, the criminally underrated Protect Me Knight games. Yeah, and also uh this Earthian is a is a new shmup, and he did all of these uh sound effects and music for it, and uh it's really really good. So it's a classic horizontal schmup where obviously your hitbox is your entire ship, so it's quite large. Um but it's the the big thing is that you have your shields and can power up your gun. Um you don't have bombs in it, but you power up uh power up your shields and try to collect items from downed uh enemies to power up your shields and guns. You also have which is is like see most schmupp players like purity, right? They don't like people to fuck with the formula, but they fun with the formula in one subtle way that I think is really good, and in fact, some classic schmupps have done it, is where they have weapon switching.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

Yeah, I mean, um I mean that's been in like sort of the side-scrolling ones for a while now, though. Gone then um I mean I can't think of any examples, but there are my point, it's not common. But I mean, there are like some games that do the only one I can think of is Radiant Silver Gun.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Radiant Shitty Gun.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

That's the best game ever.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

It's fucking terrible, and I hate it. Um, but but yes, you but the weapon switching is very, very uncommon, and I don't think I've ever seen it in a 10 out of 10 shmub. I might have seen it in some shitty ones.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

It is good because you have to kind of strategize and then you have to sort of figure out by the end what the best weapon for the boss is, because you can also at the end of each level you get an upgrade, but you have to hold on to it till the end of the round, so the end of the stage, and so then you can upgrade your ship in some sort of way, like life or different attacks or yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

So, this this little pod that you grab takes up one of your weapon slots. So you're you get when you get to the boss, you see the pod and you go, right, I I could which weapon do I want to give up? Or you're wearing weighing up in your head if the upgrade is even worth it. Like, I might need these two guns to get through this boss. Like, for example, I've been using the um what is it called, the pulse laser, and then the one that shoots in three directions, right? Yeah, that's that's that pretty much is like uh almost for most situations of the game the ideal setup, right? But then I get to the first boss, and the first boss, like for example, is really you can more or less shoot it with a dead-on laser most of the time, but there are some attack patterns where you need to go underneath it, right? Yeah, and so then that's where the V thing becomes very, very handy. But on its main phases, the V thing is not very, very good. The um so the point is is that you you you're going, well, which one of those do I want to sacrifice to get the upgrade?

SPEAKER_02 40:25

But I did notice that uh with the first boss, like the flamethrower is good because it moves up and down, and then so does that. So it's like you got that that that's also a good option, but probably the laser is the best, but you have to be a bit more skilled to use the laser. But yeah, it's like things like that, really.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Well, this is it, this is it. I'm I'm quite good at schmupps, and as a result, like the I uh the straight shot is the with the laser is like pretty fine for me. That said, this game is fucking hard, and the flamethrower is amazing, but I I never ever get it because of the short range. I'm just like, I don't know if I want to be that close to anything until I've memorized the game a bit more. But this is one of the things that put me off. When I first saw the trailer for Earthian, I saw the upgrade system and I thought, does this mean you upgrade your ship and then you could start the game again with all these upgrades? But it's not, it's per run. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, that's that is perfect for me. I absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Yeah, because it's a mega drive game, so that's kind of hard to make it like that, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Yeah, yeah, but the thing is the fact the upgrades being per run, I think, is is is fucking perfect. I mean, I just I I didn't want I like pure experiences when it comes to schmups, and like here's the thing like Radiant Silver Gun, and I'm gonna slag it off a little bit here, it included a level up mechanic that is stupidly unbelievably complicated where you need to chain attacks of similar colour enemies. So it's like you're a lot of schmupps revolve around memorization, it's just a fact, right? And that one, the memorization goes to fucking 11, and it's like 15 stages long, right? And no, it's not a masterpiece, and then you're upgrading your shots by killing things with them as well, and it's like, but then here comes Earthian, right? It does the fucking level up thing really, really well, keeps it arcadey, you lose it. If you game over, all of your upgrades are gone, end of story. But but it keeps it arcadey and manages to include a level up system that includes a risk reward system that feels good and feels like a challenge, right? And I'm like, this this is probably the best way of adding RPG or upgrade mechanics into a schmuck I've ever seen. And people talk about Radiant Silver Gun, like it's the best example of it, it fucking isn't. I mean, it's the best example of uh I I I to be honest, I think I can see that Radiant Silver Gun is a good game, I just hate it. And to be honest, it was also part of the fact that I one CC'd it and it was the hardest one CC ever. And then when I went and did some research, people are saying that like almost nobody does that, and you have to be a psycho to do it. And this was a all I did was main that game for about four months, and I it just led to me fucking hating it. Like every time I would be because you because you have to I'm sorry to go off the tangent here, but you have to keep the chains really, really fucking consistent.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

You do, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

And and the thing is it's like I would get to like because the game is far too fucking long. It is really long. I would get to the point where I'd be on stage like 11 and I'd miss a chain, I'd be like, that's the entire rest of the fucking game fucked up.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Because they sort of mixed an arcade game with a story and stuff. I mean they like they made it like it is nice, I mean, it is like the cinematic type nature of the game.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

I love the look of it. But anyway, look, Earthian is very, very good. It is good. To put it in perspective, like as Sean mentioned, it's actually a game made to run on a mega drive, and there is a ROM within the files when you download it on Steam, which is fucking cool.

SPEAKER_02 43:48

And they're gonna have a physical mega drive release soon as well.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

That's true. Um but there was a moment when I was playing the game, right? You know, like say for example, Shovel Knight, it's NES inspired, but it could not ever Work on an NES, like it just goes right. But um, there was a point where you know the really unbelievably beautiful ship animations at the start of every level, and you know, in the first level, that big fucking hulking ship that crashes and it's like warping and all this shit. And I was like, fucking hell. Well, um, it there was part of me in the back of my mind thinking, well, this is retro inspired, that would never work on a mega drive. And then I remembered, I was like, How have they done it? Like, when you watch the game and how beautiful it looks, you're like, How the fuck did they manage? There is a feat of programming, the fact that they managed to make it look as beautiful as it does.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

No, in the last few years, there's been a lot of like I don't know, like advancements in how people in understanding of how the Mega Drive works.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

I mean that that helps, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's still but it's still impressive. No, it is definitely. I don't mind the bit crushed voice. All I have a problem with is like the music's like incredible. Oh the music is fucking it's it's top notch. But they have to make sort of I guess they have to make space, so I I agree, but then but then okay, I I look the sound effects on Streets of Rage, for example, another user share game, were not uh of high fidelity, but you you know the way they were mixed and the way they fit with the game's soundtrack felt very um like congruent, right?

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

And I just feel like the A, the mix is off, and B, there's something about the noisiness and over-the-top nature of a lot of the sounds that interfere with the cool music.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

You know what I mean? I I agree, yeah. Especially when you're no low life and it's like um this is like wounding.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, I I I I get it, and I I get that, but still I don't think the sound effects in charge should should not be loud. They shouldn't be loud, they shouldn't be overbearing because you're gonna hear them six thousand times.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

Yeah, but uh yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

But it's a simple fix, I just turned it down, that was that.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

And the game comes with some pretty good CRT filters, very, very customizable CRT filters, and some really nice, uh actually, apart from the main story mode, some actually amazing, really difficult challenges.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

Totally. Um so Earthian, would you recommend it?

SPEAKER_02 46:24

Uh yeah, yeah, definitely. Uh, if you see it in the sale, that's when I'd recommend buying it.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

How far have you got in the game?

SPEAKER_02 46:31

Uh so so far I've only got to stage three, but I'll just keep playing it. Uh, and like dying and then like sort of doing it, trying it again.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

That's that's exactly what I've been doing. I managed to get to the end of stage four on one credit so far. That's as but that's as good as I've done. Yeah but um I'm gonna keep chipping away at it. I haven't been able to play it this week, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Um but mid mid-stage three on one.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Listen, if you're out there and you're thinking, oh schmupps, aren't they outdated on their dead genre? You're right.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Are they though?

SPEAKER_01 47:04

Yeah, they pretty much are. But they if if if there's one that I I would recommend to people, I think this is a very good one. The musical get you adrenalised, it it looks fucking beautiful, and it's a really, really um challenging, fun game to play.

SPEAKER_02 47:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

Alright, that is it for Earthian. Um so let's go on to our individual games. I see Sean, you've put down, um, we're gonna go to you first, because you've put down Yellow Taxi Goes of Room.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

Yeah, uh what is this? Uh it's a really oh it's a bloody good platformer, man.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Um bloody good, bloody good room.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Um so uh yeah, um it's a bit like uh Banjo Kazooie. Uh it's actually uh probably one of the most underrated games ever. I I had a lot of fun with it because it was it's a 3D platformer, you play as a wind-up taxi, uh, and um yeah, you you you sort of start in like a you start in like a garage, it's like a massive garage, and you go to like different levels similar to Mario 64. Um, but in each level you uh you go and get cogs and stuff, uh like di uh in different areas. So it's a bit like Banjo Kazoo in that way, but you've got uh sort of the control uh weirdly enough, even though you can't jump, uh you've got sort of similar to control to Mario Odyssey because you get like a move where you can like jump and uh like spin around, you know, like that move in Mario Odyssey.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

Yeah, I'm watching a trailer of it now. This looks so good.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

Yeah, it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

So you can you you drift. Do you drive like a car in it?

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Yeah, you do, yeah. This looks amazing, man. You also like jump, yes, it is amazing. It's absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

I love the retro style graphics as well. That as well.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

That as well.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Um, I mean, um how much was it?

SPEAKER_02 49:06

Uh well, I I got it for four quid in the sale. What the fuck? It's usually a tenner, which is worth it, but four quid it's like oh, there's that sound again, it's corrections corner.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

Um, we'll go back to Yellow Taxi goes through them in a second. Um, Sean, at one point in the podcast, and I never pulled up, but I've I listened to it, it flew under the radar. Um, you said Virtual Fighter is Japan's biggest fighting game.

SPEAKER_02 49:29

Oh yeah, I did. I'll stand by it.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

Do you understand how wrong you are about that? Why did you why did you say that?

SPEAKER_02 49:37

Obviously, Street Fighter 6. Yeah, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Uh Virtufighter isn't even close to being the Japan's. Why did you say that?

SPEAKER_02 49:45

Um well like I mean I I mean I thought it was because I saw it on uh I saw it on like a sort of list of like the biggest fighting games per country and Virtufier was Japan's Virtufier and Street First.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

Like Japan's like 20th or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 50:02

Um you know they like Sega, you know, like so, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Yeah, they do, but then go when you go to Japan finally, you will see that Sega World's in comparison to say Taito or any of the other arcades are a depressing affair. Much smaller.

SPEAKER_02 50:19

Okay, I thought it was like Yakuza, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

Yeah, they are, but they they are like the ones in Yakuza, yeah. That's they're actually but they're very small. You go to Taito and it's like eight floors of different games, and you go to the Sega one, it's like one floor, and like a real like old Sega fan welcoming in. Oh, yeah. Welcoming you in. Right, anyway, uh so for Virtual Fight 5 uh being Japan's biggest fighting game, you're gonna apologize for that now or yeah, sorry about it.

SPEAKER_02 50:46

Yeah, I'm not all right.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

That was corrections corner. Uh yeah, so yellow taxi goes room.

SPEAKER_02 50:51

Um yeah, so um you got like uh sort of different uh yeah, you got like the jump, the spin jump, like Mario Odyssey. So you can sort of exploit that and use that, like you can go, yeah, um you can sort of tackle levels in sort of different ways. Um it's really cool because so is it a collect a thon? Yeah, it is a collect a thon. So you got like different puzzles, different quests you can do to get all these cogs.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

Mate, I need to concentrate on the guilty gear. Yeah, but um but this looks so good.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

Well, I swear I spent like an entire evening playing it like the other day like gold cogs in one of the levels.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

I love these types of games, it looks fucking awesome.

SPEAKER_02 51:30

Yeah, you'd absolutely love it, man. It's like a ten out of ten for you, really.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

Alright, I'll get it. Alright, fine.

SPEAKER_02 51:35

Yeah, yeah, you'll love it.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

Is it still on sale for four pounds? Because if it is it should be, yeah. I mean can I have four pounds? Um right, anything else to say on Yellow Taxi Goes Room? It gets how many thumbs up? How many uh ten.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

I think it's uh like stands up there with uh some of the best platformers, to be honest. Great rollboard bit. So go and get it, it's one of the most underrated games.

SPEAKER_01 52:01

Sorry. Um and you went to see the Super Mario Galaxy movie with a lot of galaxies!

SPEAKER_00 52:24

Go, go, go!

SPEAKER_01 52:35

Now I've heard nothing but good things about this.

SPEAKER_02 52:39

Have you been on the internet?

SPEAKER_01 52:41

Not not much.

SPEAKER_02 52:41

Why? No, because it's like it's the opposite, really. Um but um uh um I'd say like the first film was like a good intro into like the whole Mario sort of thing. Um so you you you it's very canon as well, which is all not really, but like it's a cinematic show, but um you um you like you sort of it g it gets the imagination going so what could happen in the next movie, but um they just sort of did a showy, reference heavy sort of hooray! Yeah, and it sort of felt like the ending was a bit rushed to be honest. Um, of the first one. No, no, this one. The second one. It's felt like they were like trying to cram a lot in there.

SPEAKER_01 53:22

But see, I heard somebody say that it was a bit like um this is my uneducated opinion, but it was a bit like they designed it like a video game. Like it's almost like the there there are different levels that are set pieces, but there's not actually a plot.

SPEAKER_02 53:38

Yeah, I suppose. I mean, I just um I don't know, I didn't expect anything major because you got like some good like films where like you go for like a simple story, but it just felt like they they sort of built up stuff in the first one, like Mario and Luigi have a bit of a character and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

Um I wasn't like Mario in this film apparently he's not even part of the plot, really. Not really, it's just about everyone else, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:02

Um so Mario and Luigi come in on bikes and then like that's they're coming on bikes. That the they come in on bikes at the beginning of the film, like uh they go through like a desert and shite, and it's like, oh yeah, it's Mario and Luigi, and then then they meet uh Yoshi, uh voiced by Donald Glover and that and you know Does he sing this is America though? Uh no, he doesn't. He doesn't, he just uh just says Yoshi all the time.

SPEAKER_01 54:27

This is the mushroom kingdom, Yoshi. Uh no, it's wait, how does he how does he actually sound? Because I was wondering that. Does he sound like Yoshi?

SPEAKER_02 54:34

No, he does, he does a good job.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Have you seen that video of um him the him and him and the cast trying to name Mario songs? And it's like and they're like, that's Bowser theme. Yeah, I know this one, that's Bowser's theme, bruh. And then Donald Glover's like, I'm such a fucking fan, and it does that, you know, that from 64, the racing one.

SPEAKER_02 54:59

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:00

Right? And he does that, and he he's like, I think this is from Mario 64, and I'm like, You can't, you've never played it.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

He claimed to have completed it, it was the only game he had on his N64, according to him.

SPEAKER_01 55:11

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because obviously he grew up very poor. Do you think Donald Glover is a bit of a Nepo baby? Um like I I think he seems like a nice fella, but he's not he's not as bad as say Jaden Smith. But he is a bit, isn't he? Yeah, look at it. Because it's wasn't his dad, Danny Glover?

unknown 55:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Who made Lethal Weapon? Yeah, yeah. Right? So he's he I don't think he only had Mario 64.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

No, I mean he said he won an if it wasn't for that, he wouldn't have had a console. He won an N64 in a competition.

SPEAKER_01 55:39

Oh, right. I don't I don't value that for a fucking second.

SPEAKER_02 55:43

Uh but um yeah, I mean, uh the only thing that was kind of sort of good about it is the way you got the no no there's the popcorn bucket. Oh yeah, I've got the popcorn bucket. Just in case you paid for a cardboard bucket. No, it wasn't a cardboard bucket, it was uh it was a metal, it was a metal bucket.

SPEAKER_04 55:59

Hooray!

SPEAKER_02 56:00

It was a metal bucket, and uh I also How much was the metal bucket? It was eight quid, but um geez.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

So you spent eight quid on a bucket.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

Yeah, I got excited. Um but I thought of garbage. I thought of garp in value, but it's only really gone down because they're like giving them away now, really. Um so I managed to get some free key rings, like a couple of like I know.

SPEAKER_01 56:22

You're so bad though with knowing the valuable of the value of collectibles though. Yeah, you're so bad with this because you're like, no, oh that's gonna be rare one point. Of course it yeah, what it will be, but it has to be sought after at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 56:34

Yeah, I mean it's not really it's sort of the opposite, really.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

Yeah, yeah, but about the bucket. It's a nice bucket. Oh, this episode, and we'll give away the bucket to the listener. Yeah, no, you don't want to keep it.

SPEAKER_02 56:49

No, no, we can do that, that'll be good. Yeah, we'll uh we'll send it out. It's a nice bucket. Super Mario Galaxy uh popcorn bucket, it's not the Yoshi one. It hasn't been used, has it? Has it been used? No, no, no, it hasn't been used. So I was gonna put plant in it.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

Alright, so let's do a competition. Let me play let me shut up, let me play a jingle. Igloop way, shut up, eggloopway! Right, so we're doing a competition. If you can provide evidence of you sharing this podcast with a friend and send it to Lucky and Wild Podcast at gmail.com, you will be put into a hat, not you, your name will be put into a bucket. There we go, nice. Yeah, and we'll put it in the popcorn bucket. We'll put it in the popcorn bucket, we will draw out a name, and uh you will win that popcorn bucket. We'll send it to you.

SPEAKER_02 57:32

Obviously, we'll wash the bucket after putting paper in it and that because like you don't have any paper residue.

SPEAKER_01 57:37

What are you talking about, you idiot? Right, anyway, look, we'll send out the bucket. So send us shut up, send us quiet, send us evidence of you having shared this podcast with a friend. Real evidence. Um, and uh you'll be entered into the prize drawer to win a bucket.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

Yeah, um, I also did get some free keyrings. Um live. Because they were sort of giving stuff away. I should have got another bucket for a comp line like for the competition, really. Um we could have done with more buckets. I paid eight pounds, but they're like they they just really wanted to like rid of them.

SPEAKER_00 58:12

They were like, that'll be are you are you sure? You want to pay eight pounds? I'll give you a bucket.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

And you were like, No, I want to I want the full experience here, bruv. It was a bit like that, yeah. And they were trying to give me cups, and I was like, nah, I'm alright, man.

SPEAKER_01 58:23

We should we could have sent some cups out to the runners up, man.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

But the keyrings were of very good quality, but um, yeah, we might be chucking those in as well. But no, no, I don't yeah, no, it was good, it was good. I mean, but they were sort of, yeah, yeah, they were sort of really I went to see another like weeks later, I went to see another film. It was a couple of days ago, and uh yeah, they just really were just like they were just really trying to overload me with stuff.

SPEAKER_01 58:49

People running out of handfuls of buckets. So if you want one of those, um what was the film you saw a couple of days ago?

SPEAKER_02 58:55

Uh The Magic Faraway Tree.

SPEAKER_01 58:58

Cool. Um right, I'll do one of my games. I've been playing Fantasy Star Online. Keeping it current. Um, right, this isn't Fantasy Star Online 2, it's not the latest one. It's the old one that was on the Dreamcast. But more specifically, the PC port Fantasy Star Online Blue Burst. The servers are uh are down on that. Um and uh as a result, some people have set up private servers, specifically I'm playing on the Affinia server. The reason being is because the Affinia server is unaltered. Like some people, uh other private servers will like change the amount of XP you get, this, that, and the other, but I wanted the genuine experience. And for those that don't know, Fantasy Star9 was sort of one of not I don't want I want to say one of the first MMOs, but one of the first real big MMOs, and specifically it was a MMO for console uh on Dreamcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:01

Yeah, and GameCube as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

Yeah, and later got bought to GameCube, yeah, that's true. And uh yeah, the the it's weird because it doesn't really nowadays all MMOs have to have a little action bar at the bottom and all follow the fucking same structure, and back then things were different, right? And uh Fantasy Star Online has a very weird structure. So you sort of go into a lobby and create a team, and now anyone can come in and join your team and help you on missions, but you're really progressing through a linear story, a little bit like Final Fantasy XIV in that regard.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:33

Or Monster Hunter, yeah, yeah, I guess so.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:35

Yeah, yeah, he but he shares a lot in common with Monster Hunter, actually. But once you've got your team, you then go down to uh this sort of um I forget what they fucking call it now, I can't even remember, but like the city hub area where you've got your shops, all of that shit, and then you can embark on missions and you can play with other players. Now, the thing is that most of the levels in the game and the missions that you're doing are uh sort of maze-like maps, aren't they? In different areas as you progress through the story that all end with a big boss fight, some of which are really, really fucking cool. Um now the thing about the fantasy storyline is it is very slow-paced, isn't it? The characters walk slow, the manner in which you attack is sort of like you have to press the first you press the attack button, and then you have to press it with the right timing to do a one, two, three combo, and that's more or less all you'll ever be doing, with aside from like setting traps and spells, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:29

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, it's just fun to play it with other people and progress through a dungeon, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:34

Yeah, find your way through, unlock doors, and grab loot. Like, it's a simple game, but when you're playing it with other people, it's very, very fun. And let's be honest, the vibe, you absolutely cannot beat it. It's got mad, like I don't know how how to put it, but like Y2K Dreamcast sort of uh vibes, obviously, right? And it's got a beautiful, uh very nice sort of look that could only have really come from that time with accompanying music and character designs that make it that that uh all add to that feel. Um the community that are playing on this Affinia server, there's about three, four hundred people, something like this, depending on what region you go on. And they're all really, really nice and really helpful, really chatty and all of this stuff. Um and that has been a hell of a lot of fun. The only thing is that I did play it recently, the Dreamcast version, where somebody had made a hack so that you could play on private servers, and so playing it again on PC, it is nicer, it does look nicer, and uh it is nice to actually be playing it with more than 10 people. Um, but I just I find the game to be a bit of a slog, to be honest. Because the the trouble is, right, there's two episodes there's Fantasy Star Online episode one and two, right? And most of the people in the game are already on to episode two, and they're already on to doing ultimate difficulty, which you have to complete on normal, hard, very hard, it's so on and so on.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:00

So the really when you're doing Fantasy Star Online 1, you're doing the first content in the game, you're gonna be doing it on on your own. And it could feel like such a slog because the game isn't meant to be played like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:12

Yeah, it's definitely designed with like having four people in mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:15

Yeah, I mean, because they that's the one thing, like it's because it's an old MMO and these things weren't really standardized. That's the one thing they didn't really iron out. They just assumed you would always be playing with other people. And when sometimes monsters can take five or six combos just to kill one, and you're sp set into a room with 20 of them, it can feel like a real slog. And yeah, it's weird because you go in with two with three other people, and it's it just feels like um playing like Diablo, right? Yeah, it's got that type of pace to it, but when you're playing it on your own, it's fucking hard.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Someone's unplayable, to be fair.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:48

Yeah, and I can see why some of the other servers butt bump up the XP so you can get to the later content, but also you don't level up faster if you're playing on your own. You level up at the same rate. Yeah, you do. So it's it's like it is a bit of a slug, especially because when I recently played it on Dreamcast, I actually only played up to um I only played episode one. So I'm kind of trying to get to episode two, and as a result, it feels like a slog. The other thing, um, I'm probably not gonna continue playing it, but if if you are curious about the game or if you want to go back and revisit it, I just wanted to recommend it to the listeners and be like.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:24

Well, it's a good time piece.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

Yeah, exactly. Well, not time uh what would you call it? Time capsule.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:30

Yeah, time capsule, yeah. Okay, it's a lot bit of history, you know. Yeah, and and it's good to have it online, functional for people to see in a historical sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:40

Yeah, totally. And and I will say, like, the few times I've been like, this is fucking boring. I've just gone into the lobby and gone, does anyone want to help me with this? And people have just done it, to be fair. So I mean the last time I played, I I was just like, I got put in a good uh I joined someone else's group and they just had an amazing shotgun and were tearing through fucking gigabombers like you wouldn't believe. And I was like, Okay, well, I need one of those. And I just went into a lobby with a bunch of guys that were feeding their mags, which I won't get into, but they were feeding their mags in the lobby, right? And I was just speaking to them and I was like, How the fuck do I get decent weapons? Because it's been hours, and I remember last time I played I got one quite early, but I must just have got good luck. And they just extremely they just took me to one of the later areas of the game, and then we just farmed until I got a decent shotgun.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:26

Just shielded you from all the enemies that would kill you in one hit.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:30

So the people are very willing and very nice, which is cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

Yeah, it's it's um for that sort of game, like the way that that game is, uh, and also like the age of the game and like the like how loved it is, you know. Yeah, you'd you'd expect that really to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:46

But I will say this some of the best, most brightest, and coolest looking areas are also in episode two. They are they're very dank in episode one, aren't they? I mean uh but but there we go. And the look, the thing is as well, and I'll just On a mild rant here is that as a uh fan of the entire Fantasy Star series, the lore of Fantasy Star Online makes no fucking sense. And I'm aware I'm an outlier here because most people don't like Fantasy Star, they just like Fantasy Star Online, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:15

I always consider it online to be a separate thing that has the same name.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

It more or less is. But it's got some of the iconography in there, some of the skill names are the same. Actually, in fact, all of them are the same, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:26

Like the characters look like something from the older games, but even the enemies aren't really from the No, well, this is my problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:34

They exactly are from the older games. But it doesn't make sense, right? Because at the end of Fantasy Star. No, no, they're they're like there are so many that are exactly the same. But this is what doesn't make fucking sense, right? You see at the end of Fantasy Star III, the world ends, right? You have and and two big ecosystem level ships leave the planet, right? You've got Pioneer 1, which goes off to the Algol system. I think I look, it's been a while since I played Fantasy Star. But they go off to the the uh star system that you play in in Fantasy Star IV, right? And then Fantasy Star IV takes place a hundred years after that, and society's rebuilt, and all of this shit, right? I understand that. Pioneer One goes there. Pioneer II is the other one that goes off in a completely fucking different direction, and it's it's where most of Fantasy Star online takes place. You've crash-landed on this planet, not crash-landed, but you've landed on this planet and seeing if it's habitable. Habitable? Habitable, habitable, right? And you're and you crash land there. Now, answer me this, right? In Fantasy Star, the original IPGs, you have things like Rappies, you have Bumbas, you have those Scyther type things, you have Hildebears. How the fuck? Why you've you've travelled light years away from your original planet. Why are the iconic monsters from the old Fantasy Star games on this new planet that you find yourself in? Consider the fact that on our planet, Australia, when broke off, it was the first landmass to break off, right? Right, from where uh like you know, millions of years ago. It was the first landmass to break off. That's on the same planet, and they've got platypuses, right? My point is, is if if if this entire why is the ecosystem exactly the same to where the exact same animals have formed on this planet? What fucking sense does that make? Maybe they're just really efficient species or something. Yeah, they managed to figure out uh figure out and then forget space travel, all of them, right? And the other problem I have with it is that the Fantasy Star Wars has this fucking problem, and it's it's not really a big deal when you consider that one, two, three, and four are like a very succinct quadrilogy of games, right? It but the bad guy is always Dark Fowls, who's like the the kind of overarching bad guy from all of them, right? But as we know, Pioneer One went off, and in Phantasy Star 4, it turns out that this whole time Dark Fowls has followed them to this new fucking solar system and is trying to destroy all of the uh humanoid races there too, right? So why is it that he's also in Phantasy Star online?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

So he happens to be literally in two places at once. It doesn't make fucking sense.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:16

Yeah, because that's a game in the game, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:18

Because he has to be in there, because he's the bad guy, but nobody ever explains it. Like there's this really cool bit in Fantasy Star IV where they go into the history of the past of the previous three games and they explain why Dark Fowls is there. And I know my explanation earlier was flippant and silly, but in Fantasy Star 9, it's just it's just sort of like at some point they're like, Fucking hell, this guy's back, shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:39

It's like he managed to be in two places at once. It's easy, uh it's easy enough for him to like sort of be fly present, like you like speak about him, and then suddenly at the end he's like so there, it's that sort of looming.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:51

It's quite I think that's just sort of it. They just go, Oh, I think it might be. Oh, look, it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:56

Yeah, it's perfect for an MMI.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:58

Also, the other thing, think about it, right? Just even think about the forest zone at the beginning of the game. Yeah, like why why are there so many electronic doors there? Uh when it's that the planet has never to be never been habitable before, right? You you've landed your ship there, you're sending people out to see if the planet is habitable, right? Why are there so many electronic doors to different areas?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:23

Uh rag rappies are really good with electronics, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:27

Yeah, that's the one thing that annoys me the most. Like, because some of the monsters have had redesigns, but rappies, giant fucking yellow penguins also happen to exist on this new plan. Anyway, look, it's dumb as shit. But it's it's only I'm like, most people that play Fantasy Star Online have never played a Fantasy Star game. And it's like me, I've just I'm playing it and I'm like raging about it, but everyone else is like, they don't know. As far as they're concerned, that game has a cool story that they kind of like. For me, it's like it doesn't make any sense. How does it fit into the fucking canon?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:58

I think most people probably don't even like it's just like they don't really care about the story either, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:04

No, it's it's rubbish, to be honest. But yeah, anyway, that's uh fantasy store. The only other one I wanted to talk about quickly was Tank Team.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:12

Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:25

Right, so there's not actually any music for Tank Team. I forgot about this. So instead you've got me singing Britney Spears. Suck your mum. So Tank Team, you know the game tanks? Is it Tank? Is it tanks?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:39

Tanks from back to the game.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:42

Yeah. So it's literally that, right? You move it, you've got two tanks, they're fighting each other, you move around randomly generated terrain, and you try and shoot.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:49

Oh, you move around now.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:51

You can move around, yeah. But here's the twist, right? Yeah, tank team is like imagine it's a co-op game, co-op PvP game. So you have four people versus four people, and all of you have to operate the tank from within, right? So you can't even see the map unless one of you goes up and looks through the binoculars and describes it to the rest of the team, right? Okay. So you have one guy, you you might have one guy on refueling, like collecting petrol, refueling the tank. You might have one guy going to the vending machine to buy ammo, loading it, and then you might have a guy on the bottom floor pressing the shoot button. So you need to all coordinate to play that game. Is it tanks? Sorry, yeah, yeah. To play the game tanks, but everyone is like a little man inside the tank trying to um do one of the little functions of it, right? I we had an absolute blast on it, um played it with some of the Unimates, and it's like you really got to coordinate and sort of give out roles to people if you want to be efficient. So we had one guy that was just on getting ammo and loading the cannon based on what we need. We had somebody that was because the steering wheel was right near the binoculars, so we had somebody that was just their role was just to look at the map and move the tank about, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:06

It sounds good and it sounds really fun, like it sounds like a good laugh. Um, I imagine you'd have to have like a few mates. There's probably like quite a few people that do that though, like where they're in a similar situation to you, with like, you know, because you go with the people from uni.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:20

Yeah, I mean it was it was just lucky. I just logged on one day and one of them was like, we're playing this. The thing is, it's free as well. Um, there's a paid version that then comes with extra tanks and also like more customisation options, but to try out and play for a couple of hours with your mates is free and it's pretty good. Um the the cool thing about it is like you've got sort of um Among Us style mini games for the things that you're doing and you're having to do them under pressure. So like um filling the petrol, you don't just go over to the station, fill the petrol up, you you go, you press action on the petrol, and then you've got to use your mouse to like move the petrol under the little tap, turn the tap on, fill it out.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:02

Oh, that's cool, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:03

So it's like it feels quite cool to play. Um it looks kind of crap, but it's you know, it's a lot new twist on a very, very old game.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:13

Well, it's probably like a lot of different moving parts, so they've had to downgrade the graphics a bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:18

Maybe something like that. Yeah. Um but yeah, it was really good. And um, one of my proudest moments was that we had there's a shield you can use if you choose the big tank, and um basically you just have to you it you it has a battery that goes down, right? So you have to act know when they're gonna shoot and activate it. Now we had somebody that was uh looking in the binoculars so they could see the other tank and they would have to give commands to everyone else. But there was a point where I just had got a feeling for the rhythm of the other tank, of how long it was taking them to reload and shoot. And there was a certain point where nobody was looking through the binoculars, I just activated the shield, and it just happened to be the exact moment that they hit. And that's due to I was just like thinking, right, it's been about roughly now I reckon they're about to shoot. Activated the shields, and then it an exact thing happened.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:04

Oh, yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:05

It's a good game, and uh, if you've got like well, you kind of need eight people to play it, which I don't even know eight people, but uh in this particular case we had a team of three versus two. Oh. So the game kind of moved glacially slow because we were all desperately trying to do stuff, but yeah, good game. Tank team, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:21

Yeah, good idea, good idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:22

Uh that's it, isn't it? For what's your game? Yeah, right. So we'll go for a break and then go on to the next seg. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

unknown 1:15:29

Yeah, we get it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:40

Um, so today instead of our usual segments, we're going to dedicate a portion of this podcast to Yoshihisa Kishimoto, one of our favourite game developers of all time, who sadly recently passed away. Now, I'm aware that thus far this podcast hasn't been that funny, but uh let's just so is that funny?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:58

No, you shouldn't say that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:59

No, no. But uh uh and uh obviously we're talking about a guy that has sadly passed away, so this segment is probably not gonna be very funny either. But um hopefully we we're gonna give a uh loving tribute to the man and his work and also give you some fucking good game recommendations that we know you will fucking love. Now, I'll forgive you if you don't know who this guy is, but if you you if you do know him, it's likely as the uh creator of Double Dragon.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:25

Sean, your favourite? Double Dragon. Um Double Drag the Double Dragon.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

It's not even just one dragon.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:31

And the two of them. Like I'd say Double Dragon and the Cuneo series are two of my favourite sort of series at the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:38

And uh now, listen, those games, just Double Dragon and River City Ransom alone, speak volumes about his legacy already, those being the most well-known ones. But what if I told you, and Sean's already hinted at it here, that this man was responsible for one of the greatest and criminally unknown game series of all time, and yet you, listener, have likely already played the series without knowing it. Robo Bitch. You see, as I mentioned, Kishimoto created the hugely popular game River City Ransom, a beat-em-up RPG hybrid game featuring the one-off protagonists Alex and Ryan trying to save their girlfriends from local gangs. But here's the interesting thing River City Ransom isn't a one-off game, it's a series of games, most of which never left Japan during their original release. And Sean, you just jump in with any facts you you see fit here.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:31

Although uh now you can get all of these on Switch. Uh actually, all the everything, actually, you can get more or less everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:38

There's some omitted, but um we'll get into that in a bit when we get to the recommendations part.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:43

But yeah, I mean uh uh the this series really started with in the West, it was called Renegade. Um over over there, it was called um Naketsu Kuha Kunio Kan. Uh kunio kun.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:57

Now we will be we are gonna say that word a lot. We're saying kun the Japanese honorific, not the racist term, right? So just bear in mind that when we say that, because the series is based around a guy called Kunio Kun, basically. But you see, Sean mentioned that obviously Renegade really is the start of this series, but it yeah, I kind of see that as being uh almost like River City Ransom or Kunyo Kun Zero, right? The the plot elements and things like this were not really uh and all the things that makes this series special were not really there in Renegade.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:31

Uh um although uh the ZX spection port is a sight to behold, really, it pushed the system like, you know, it's a like button.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:39

Renegade is not a very good game.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:41

You're you're right, uh in that regard, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:43

It's not it did sort of invent the beat-em-up genre, but it was just single screens, it wasn't belt scrolling, like we've come to know.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:50

Nah, but then Double Dragon came and uh gave us the belt scrolling.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:54

Exactly. But you see, in Japan, right, River City Ransom, a game that loads of you already love and loads of you already know and have probably played, is called Downtown Niketsu Monikatari, and this is sort of the first game in the series, you know, if we discount Renegade from there. Um and it's all about the fictional Japanese town Niketsu, which means hot hip hot blood. So the title of the game translates to Hot Blood Downtown Story.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:19

I thought the town was still called River City. Niketsu is the school, Niketsu High.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:25

Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so but um that's what it means, basically. Hot hot Hot Blood Downtown Story, and it features two protagonists by the name of Ricky and Kunio, two guys from rival gangs that have to team up against other gangs to rescue their girlfriends, and that's just the Japanese version of River City, basically. But the game is functionally the same, but the story and setting are different, and these two characters in Japan went on to star in more games than Mario, right? And this series is called the Rikikuneo series, and they're usually, or it's sort of not called that, but that's what most people refer to it as, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:00

So there was a game called Rikikunio, uh, that was a plat the probably the first platform fighter as well, to be honest. Oh yeah, that's a good oh I forget about yeah, anyway, so they So like uses the the fighting from from uh River City Ransom or whatever, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:16

But it's a four-player platform fighter. Yeah. And it was on that wait, and this is gonna be a running theme, listeners. So many of these games ended up influencing games you know and love, and you didn't even know it, right? Um, but uh these games usually in the series, the main sort of format is RPG beat em up hybrids with stories centering around gang life. But the series also features the greatest sports games, sports spin-offs, like Mario does, but years before, right? Um best sports games ever made, a parkour game, 18 years before Mirror's Edge, and perhaps the greatest game in the series, Super Dodgeball.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:55

So Super Dodgeball uh is like literally the framework for any other dodgeball game that came after it, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:03

That's true, not a uh overly played genre, but it it uses the physics and uh sort of mechanisms from River City Ransom to deliver an amazing dodgeball game, and that's what they did with all of the sports games too.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:17

It's one of the best games on the NES, to be honest. But every one of these sports games, because they had a hockey game as well, and you and I you and I went through the story mode like co-op and it was it was like it was so much fun, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:31

Yeah, and these games like I'm not sure if it's hyper p hyperbole. When I say that these sports games are the best arcadey sports games ever made, they literally are. Nothing has got better than them, and that's just a fact, right? But in addition to this, there's even a historical Ricky Kunio retelling of the Edo period in Japan on the NES in the River City Ransom engine, that is a beat-em-up RPG hybrid featuring Ricky and Kunio as stand-ins for historical characters. The game is called Downtown Special Kunio kun no ji daigeki dayo zenin shugo, which I'm sorry about the pronunciation, or downtown special kunyokun's historical period drama.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:15

We all called it Techno Samurai back in the day. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:18

Um, and that's what the run was called when it was circulated around uh emulation fans, right? And this game took place 23 years before Like a Dragon Ishin, which basically did the same thing and was inspired exactly by that game, right? And the fact that we have modern games that are inspired by those because they were so big in Japan, but nobody fucking knows about them, right? Is mad. But um, and not to harp on the point, but they also gave the same treatment to the Three Kingdoms period, too, long before any Dynasty Warriors game had even been thought about, right? Basically, Kishimoto's legacy is so much more than just Double Dragon and River City Ransom. The River City games actually went on for years and years and years and featured a plot that developed over 20 years of games, much like the Yakuza series. We saw the games mature from the wacky physics-based beat-em-ups from the NES and into the slow-paced, very serious Shadai Naketsu Kohar Kunio Kun, aka original hot-blooded guy Kunio kun, which was a SNES game featuring two fully open world areas, and was a legit full-length JRPG beat-em-up.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:32

The world was incredible. I mean, like uh It was it was huge. Yeah, you like you can get on trains and explore, like it's like basically the city of Osaka feat features as the first part of the game.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:43

And then you go to another city, I'm I'm trying to remember where where it was, but there's two full cities in the in this SNES RPG. From 1992. Utterly insane. Um, and interestingly, right, uh the inspiration for this series, well, uh Kunyokuno is actually based on Kishimoto himself, right? Here's the fun fact: you see, when Kishimoto was a teenager, for fun, he acted as a one-man anti-bullying task force, right? Roaming about his hometown and beating up gang members, right? In his words, he says, as a teenager, I got into fights on a daily basis. There was a girl, she dumped me, which pulled the trigger. Basically, he turned a breakup into street justice and therefore might be the coolest man to ever live, right? He's a genius game designer and a hero who protected people in his town.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:36

Uh, yeah, um, and uh, you know, that's not not the next game really that he made, that's sort of the most prevalent in that one, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:46

Are you talking about Tachino Banker? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We'll get we'll get to that in a second. And and the thing is, is that the um the inspiration is obviously very, very strong there because ki uh Kunyoku and Ricky, they're delinquents, right? Yeah, they are in a lot of ways kind of shit people, yeah, but they've sort of got heart of gold, they like deliver justice, and I think Kishimoto like based the characters on himself because he was a delinquent, he went around beating people up for a for a laugh. Oh okay, they deserved it, right? They were it was he only targeted bullies, but that was sort of where the inspiration came in, like um like you say about Kuneokun Tachino Banka, which is an amazing uh boss rush beat-em-up game, and in that it's it's literally about uh him it's Ricky and Cuneo delivering justice to a bunch of terrible people in their town, basically.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:45

Yeah, um, yeah, and it's uh it sort of uh becomes a Yakuza crime drama as well. Um you can get it on Steam actually, it's under this is uh it's um uh under the title River City Girls Zero.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:57

Yes, which is an annoying title, and maybe we'll get into the annoying leeches and spin-offs that have happened in Steam where people have tried to capitalise on River City ransom being the only known game in the series. So unfortunately, it the original title, Cuneo Kuntashino Bankar, means Requiem for Cuneo's gang, right? Is that what it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, but then they called it River City Girls A Zero because of the success of the shitty, non, almost non-licensed spin-off game River City Girls.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:28

It's because it featured those two girls that you play that that were their girlfriends in um the first Rivers He ransomware.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:36

Yeah, and then uh featured because Tachino Banker is a prequel, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And so as a result, you play as the girls. You play as the girls as well before they got kidnapped. So then River City Girls was like they kind of got the license to produce a game, but it's not, I don't consider it to be canon.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:53

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:54

And as a result, then the game got renamed River City Girls Zero, which is fucking annoying. Because it's not a prequel to those fucking shitty games, it's a prequel to the good ones that Kishimoto designed. But there we go.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:05

Yeah, Kazark System works made River City Girls 1 and 2, which were like not like they weren't the best, but they're fine games, but I just don't consider them to be canon.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:15

Technos didn't make them, Kishimoto wasn't involved, and like the humour was like a bit too much, terrible. And I think that the games were have always been very funny. I mean, the an interesting story about actually how we discovered them was that when we were young and had no money, we would just go and play emulator games, right? And one of our favourite things to do was just scroll through games and just download ones with funny names and see if they're good. We stumbled across one called Skinhead City Cancer, which was a very odd game, but it was a um a ROM hack of River City Ransom. And then we noticed that these Skinhead City games had like loads of um spin offs, and we were like, fucking hell, these skinheads. Games are really good, and they were all just ROM hacks of these lesser-known Japanese games. And one day we just discovered oh, it's actually a series called Um the Kunio Kun series and played the fucking lot of them. But like they are spectacular games, and the River Seat Ransom series like original game. If you liked that, if you liked in fact, Scott Pilgrim vs. the world is based on that formula.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:24

Yeah, it is. And that that's also very good. I mean, the sequel's not very good, but the uh original Scott Pilgrim has that same vibe.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:31

But the only reason that game is good is because it almost wholeheartedly like literally rips off the Kunio Kun series. Copy and paste, yeah. And and this is like something not a lot of people will know, but like the and and the series is so vast and like even down to like the secret shop as well. Yeah, and it has doesn't it like even have the same name as one of the shops in River City Ransom? Yeah, Flat Irons. Yeah, but yeah. But anyway, um, yeah, the series is is is incredible and uh is very, very wide-reaching. And I'm just gonna say, like, if you liked River City Ransom, there is a whole treasure trove of games out there waiting to be played by you that you will fucking love, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:15

Is that a fair way of putting it? Yeah, definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:17

Um, I'm gonna give some recommendations at the end of this segment and how to play some of the better ones, and maybe you can give your recommendations too, right? Alright, yeah. But um anyway, speaking of the man himself, right? His cause of death was never announced. But following his death, Kishimoto San's son Ryobo Ryobo? Yeah, Ryobo Kishimoto received a flood of messages from well wishers. And to this he responded thusly. Um he says, I'm so happy to know that there are people all over the world who have played the Kuniokun series so much and understand my father better than I do. Please continue to enjoy my father's works and have a good time. So I think we'll do just l let's do just that. Let's enjoy some of Kishimoto's work. So, of course there's always emulation, and with many fan translations for some of the older games being available, and that's how me and you enjoyed them as as kids, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:30:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:09

Um, because of the hard work of some uh very enthusiastic people translating these fucking games, and even you made a ROM hack at one point, didn't you?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:17

Yeah, I did. Well I um uh well it was nearly complete, but um it's uh just annoying when the fabric sort of comes away. But um I um I'm I managed to get the sort of Japanese sort of uh like look of the game to work with the American River City Ransom.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:38

Yes, and and that that was like a roadblock at some point. They made the River City Ransom version of uh downtown Niketsu Mongatari was like changed so that the main characters are wearing jeans and t-shirts, and a lot of the buildings changed to look Western and things like this, and you just wanted the look of the Japanese version in the English version.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a lot cooler, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:01

Um, but yeah, so there's always emulation if you want to try that. But luckily, some of the rare unreleased games uh that we had to I don't know, really dig to find when we were kids, right? Have now been re-released on Steam, now in English.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:15

Yeah, yeah, like the hockey one.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:17

Yeah, and the fantastic boss rush SNES game Kunio Kun Tachino Banker, it features Ricky and Cuneo escaping from jail before getting revenge on everyone who put them there. Um this is available on Steam and it goes by the terrible fucking name of River City Girls Zero, as we've mentioned, because it takes place before River City Ransom and features the girlfriends as playable fighters. And it's just two-player?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:42

Yeah, it's two player.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:43

Has a really, really good story. It's a boss rush game. It's not a traditional beat-em-up.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:48

You're just there are sort of there are there are bits where you like run and about two though.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:53

Yeah, yeah. There's not that many.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:55

There's a few, yeah, there's a few platforming scenes, but yeah, most of it's boss fights to be fair.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:00

But they're sort of challenging in in a very dark soulsy way, aren't they?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:04

Yeah, there's a strange bit as well where you go on a roller coaster and heal because you've ripp rode the roller coaster. It takes it takes like about two minutes to ride.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:13

Yeah, that's a weird section of the game, isn't it? But what's cool is you can switch between if you um if you play two player, um uh player one is always gonna be Kunio, and player two is gonna be Ricky, right? Yeah, and uh but you if you you can switch between your character and their girlfriend at any point, and they have different abilities, and you can sort of manage their health. It's an absolutely brilliant game, and I would say probably a good place to start. Yeah, I would because it's got a great story, uh probably some of the best graphics the gay uh the games I've ever seen, and like you said, cracking music, so that's a good one to start with. Uh, River City Goals Zero is called on on Steam.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:51

I would also uh I would also recommend there's been a release recently. Um I think part of the problem with um Super Double Dragon on the SNES was uh it was uh far too slow. Um, but I have released on Steam Super Double Dragon, but now it's two times speed, so it's perfect. Great.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:11

It's a good recommendation. Yeah. Additionally, there's the brilliant collection Super Technos World, because Technos was the company that made all these games, right? Yeah, um Super Technos World, River City, and Technos Arcade Classics. That's on Steam. It features 12, including many, 12 games, including many or uh from the series, including the only Sega Genesis Kunio game ever made.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:33

Yeah, I know Odin.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:35

Uh no, what's that one?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:36

Uh it's a puzzle game.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:38

Yeah, okay. Odin is on it, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:40

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:41

So there were two Genesis games then. The football one. No, no, the baseball one.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:45

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:45

Oh, the base remember the football one was an unofficial fan-made game, okay, yeah. Which is fucking great.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:51

The thing is, there's so many that's in English now then.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:54

Yep, in English and on Steam, right? And that was that was a very rare one back in the day. Didn't have a translation. We tried to play it anyway. Yeah. Um might be one of the best baseball games ever made, right? Um so those are the two Genesis games ever released. Um the thing is like, just as an aside here, there are so many games in this series that when I went to Japan, I found a Kunio Kun game in a game shop that I bought for you as a gift. Yeah. And we don't even know what it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:20

And there was that Game Boy game I found. It looks like um to me, um, yeah, that was good as well. That was really good.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:27

Yeah, and and that I don't know, I we don't even know what that is. I can't find it on any listings on Wikipedia. But there you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:33

To me, the cartridge you got uh looks like River City Ransom for the TurboGraphics.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:39

Yes, I think that's what it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:41

Which is a very good port, to be fair.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:43

Um, but yeah, anyway, speaking of this collection uh on on Steam, the Super Technos World 1, uh it's got that baseball game, which was very, very hard to get your hands on uh uh once upon a time, even as a ROM, right? And of course, it's got the aforementioned SNES RPG original hot blooded guy Kunio Kun, this time called River City Renegade, which as I mentioned is a full-length JRPG, but one thing that I didn't mention earlier, it's two players, it's entirely two-player JRPG. Um that's um Super Kunio kun. You know that one?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:16

We mentioned earlier, yeah. But that uh I didn't mention earlier that it was entirely pla uh two player. So one guy plays Kunio, the other pla guy plays Ricky, and I cannot recommend that game highly enough. It's a fully open world JRPG beat em up. And one of the cool things about it is that um you can it's sort of sandboxy as well.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:37

Because you got you yes, you do have random encounters where you get jumped by goons from other gangs, but also if you want to just pick up a bin and you to uh any of the passers-by in the street, you can do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:48

It's also got sort of a very similar leveling system to Yakuza. So the more you level up, the further you can go out. So if you venture out too far when you're underleveled, you're gonna get bashed by some high-level goons.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:00

Yeah, and it's also like a very immersive world in that you can go to areas like you mentioned that are too high level for you. But there are like some, yeah, there's I mean, the story's quite intricate as well, and also features one of the coolest motorbike segments in a game ever.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:16

I thought I was Tashino Banco.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:18

No, no, this one's got a motorbike segment in it as well. Yeah, yeah. But um, yeah, so uh that collection is very good. The one thing I will say, on Steam, that Super Technos world collection is unmixed, and it's not because the ports are bad or because the games don't run well, it's because nobody knows Kunio Kit and they're like, Why aren't more of the Double Dragon games on here? And I'm like, These are better.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:40

Shut your mouth. But yeah, like I mean, Double Dragon is good, but you've got double dragon collections that exist already, so and this one features games you wouldn't have played before that you really fucking should. Yeah, it's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:51

But everyone's just like, Who was this no-name game I've never heard of, bruh? And so some mix, but the game is great and it works well, and it's got top games on there.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:59

Appreciating the achievement because uh, I mean, of all of them being translated as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:04

I know that was not a luxury we had when we were children. Some of them were, and even some were partially translated as well. Cuneo Kun River City Renegade, as it's called on this new collection, right? That JRPG, when we played it as a kid, we played a partial translation. Yeah, it was 75% done. Some of the items weren't done, some of the dialogue wasn't done.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:25

It's a huge plot twist I missed when I played it back in the day.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:28

And the games were so good we played it anyway, yeah, right? Just with a partial translation, only able to get part of the story. That is how good they are. But also, this collection features all of the Cuneo dodgeball games, uh, which is pretty fucking good. Now, as what we'll do now is we'll give our recommendations of where you should start with the series. And I but I've already given mine, so I think Kunio Kontashi no banker or Riv City Girls Zero is good because it is the start of the entire story of the thing and also features impressive graphics and gameplay, basically.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:03

Yeah, definitely. But um, I don't know really, to be honest. I probably I mean, I probably would go with a hockey game.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:09

I mean no, but the football game though. The football game.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:13

Yeah, the football game which became uh Nintendo World Cup and they stripped it of any like identity and personality.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:20

Yeah, and a lot of the special moves were gone.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:22

Yeah, yeah, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:23

So what is it called? It's called downtown Naketsu League Soccer, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:27

Yeah, so um funnily enough, the story is that um well they took all this out of the Western release as well, but um the story is that um I think it's something Oh no, I should look it up because it like can I just take a minute to look it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:42

You take a minute to look it up and I'll describe the game. So the game is is a soccer game, but it's like very um cartoonish. And in the River City Ransom games, basically there is a kind of system where you can do more damage to a thing the more effort you put in. So it's sort of like if you punch a guy, minimal damage. If you run and punch a guy, slightly more, if you running, jumping, punch a guy, that's the most damage you can do. But you could also down someone onto the f uh onto the floor, pick them up, throw them, bounce them off a wall, and then running, punching, running, punch, running, jumping, punch. I can't fucking speak today, running, jumping, punch them while they're bouncing off the wall. That's the ideal attack. And the soccer game kind of works like that, in the you can do more powerful shots based on how much effort you put into them. So if you sprint for longer, if you jump where your character will jump with by holding the ball in between his feet and then jump into the air, if you do that, then fire a shot off, you'll actually do a more powerful shot. But in addition to this, if you jump uh with the ball between your legs onto your teammate's head, they carry you, then throw you towards the goal, then you jump and shoot. That will be your most powerful shot. And in the case of the soccer game, the power shots are all based around racist stereotypes of the teams you're playing. For example, the Argentina one, when you do your power shot, the ball will turn into a banana that will fly at a very weird angle, like in a sort of sine wave banana shape, right? Yeah, and as a result, it becomes difficult to defend. And then also, if it hits your goalkeeper, if you've got enough power by it, the goalkeeper might save it, but it will destroy him, sending him flying backwards through the goal.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:34

You can also stand on your other team members as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:36

I did just mention that, but you were looking at your phone, but that's fine. Um and it might be the best football game ever. If all you've got to do is get two people versus two people, and then try to combine together to do those weird ass moves where you're picking up your teammates and yeeting them, and it becomes it's incredibly fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:55

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Um it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:58

The hockey game is also incredible.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:00

It's funnily enough, it's a sequel to the um dodgeball game. Um but um now because uh their dodgeball coach is um uh like out of action, she's unwell. The Lacunio is sort of forced to play football.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:15

Uh he's like, well, what else can I fucking do?

SPEAKER_02 1:41:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:18

I would say the only misstep in the sports series was the basketball one.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:21

I thought it was good. I thought it was good. It was good, but it was it wasn't like you couldn't play it over and over.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:26

The soccer one, despite how how fucking stupid it sounds, had a very, very sort of tight gameplay that had uh sort of almost like a meta to it and effective things you could do and ways to outsmart your opponent, to the point where it sounds like we're just praising it because it was dumb, wacky action. But the reality is the soccer game was brilliant and rewarded you for putting more effort into the things you were doing. Um yeah, absolutely cracking. And the basketball one was good, but it wasn't quite that, and it leaned more on the wackiness where the baskets as well. Yeah, yeah. So instead of having three pointers be shots that you score from further away, it was baskets that were higher up. That was the fun. And like the item, the the fucking um court was littered with items. So if you wanted to get the higher shots, you could have it was 2v2, wasn't it? It was like street basketball.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:18

You could jump 30 feet in the air.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:20

But if you wanted to get the higher shots, the most effective strategy was to have one guy take possession of the ball, have the other guy build take get all the items and build a mega structure up to the third basket to that you wouldn't then climb and then get it's fucking stupid, but um good game, but yeah, not as good as the others. Um, right, so yes, Sean, your recommendation to start would be the hockey one.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:42

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think that's probably the best out of all the sports ones. Yeah, I'd say so.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:46

Because I think the sports ones probably out of all of them are the ones we've replayed the most. But what about the parkour one?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:52

Uh yeah, I mean that's a good one actually. I'll probably start with that because um you got different events.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:58

Uh could you even that got ripped off on a recent game, didn't it? That was it, Tokyo something, you know, the running game.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:04

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:06

But the yeah, anyway, sorry, go on about the parkour game.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:09

Yeah, one we forgot was Crash in the Boys Street Challenge, which uh is the original uh sort of iteration of that game. It wasn't very good because it didn't control very well.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:19

It was like it was like an Olympics uh game.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:21

It was very yeah, it was uh like a it was an urban Olympics game. So you had all like you had like hurdles, but you were jumping over buildings and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:29

And here's a fun fact for you there's a gang in the Scott Pilgrim comics and film called Crash and the Boys, a tribute to that game.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:35

Yeah, yeah, literally, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:37

But um the Parker one was like a sort of they streamlined it and just made it about so you get like a screen, four players, and you need to run to the end of the screen the quickest, right? Whoever gets the uh to the end of that screen will be the first one coming out on the next screen.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:54

Now, but what you have in that is like weird environments uh that uh need a lot of skill to get through. So you might have like, I don't know, a storm drain on a lower level where you can platform over rocks to get through quicker than if you just went the route above, but it's gonna require better execution. In addition to that, like you the people that were behind you could pick up items and throw them, but it wasn't like Mario Kart, it required skill. You actually had to try and hit your opponents accurately with these things.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:24

You also had like um, because you had like the different schools in the area, you um you had uh different people that were good at different events. So um with the running one, you'd pick like I don't know, like someone who's quick had those sort of stats. You had one where you fight uh on top of like a uh like somewhere you can be knocked off.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:46

You like you're like 10 stories up and you like not basically the parkour game would always end in a big event evolving all the teams that wasn't around running for some reason. Yeah, like you said, there was that fighting one, and there were some some of the gangs were very, very good at throwing other competitors once they were downed, right? Yeah, some of the gangs that were very that had really powerful kicks or punches or higher jumps, all of this shit. Yeah, fucking that come on. The sports games I think were probably the ones we played the most out of any of them, and never got bored of them. Never got bored of them, especially the parkour one, playing that all the time. I forget what that was called, even.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:23

Yeah, I can't remember, but it was it was brilliant though.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:26

Really, really good. And the soccer one, of course, is amazing. But yeah, essentially the Kunio Kun series is an unsung hero out there, and uh, we just want to say to Kishimoto, Jarbless, thank you for all the games. We've been playing these for like 30 years and absolutely fucking loving them, and nobody I know knows about them.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:47

Well, it was one of the best times of my lives, really. I mean, I remember I remember, I mean, I held on to um like uh I had uh the first time we completed River City Ransom. I don't know, like I lost it like probably probably about six or so years ago, but I had uh the end screen from River City Ransom uh when we completed it for the first time for all that time because you know like Oh you had like a screenshot of it?

SPEAKER_01 1:46:12

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because it was a special moment, yeah, a good game. And uh and and it it's it sparked us looking into this entire series. Um, and I would just say to anyone listening, go and go and check them out, the Kunio Kun series. You you genuinely could do a lot worse than playing this series. They it's ins once you dig into playing any of these games, you will start to notice the amount of influence it's had on games that are more popular outside of Japan. I mean, even the Yakuza series being one of the biggest fucking ones, but like you you will see that this game is so influential and yet somehow not known outside of Japan. Um this series, I should say.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:49

Yeah, and we don't we don't really like to be honest, like I like I love Double Dragon, but we don't really need to say much about that, really, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:57

Because everyone already knows it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:59

Yeah, uh just super double dragon, go play that two two times speed double dragon on Steam.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:04

No, no, do not play that. Play Battletoads versus Double Dragon, that's the best one.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:07

That is good, that is cracking, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:47:09

Alright, shall we do some uh listener mail? Yeah, yeah.

unknown 1:47:20

Here we go.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:27

Alright, I asked the listeners what is the uh Robo Bitch, best multiplayer experience you've ever had. Umortherney comes in, he says, uh not a single experience, but playing Kirby's Return to Dreamland on the Wii with my neighbourhood friends. No matter what you do, friendslop over Discord will never quite reach the heights of playing with people sitting on the same couch in your childhood home.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:50

Yeah, I mean that that that is a that is a really good Kirby title as well, to be honest. I mean, that was one of the sort of ones that was like sort of really, I don't know, like really crazy sort of fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:02

Yeah, I agree with that. And but but also like playing with people on the in the same room. Yeah, I've got as many annoying memories about that as I have good ones, but it's like it it just it doesn't get better than that. And I I don't mean to sound like an old fuck, but like I think that playing games online is a very, very good way of socializing and and does um I don't know, it's it's a nice it's a nice way to socialise nowadays, it's very, very fucking convenient, right? Yeah, yeah. However, we did used to have to put the effort in and go to each other's houses, and before let's plays are a thing, you just go around and watch your mate play a game, and that was entertainment.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:39

Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I mean, you you can't be like, yeah, you can't be.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:45

I mean, um the amount of time we spent playing Time Splitters 2 with the multi-tap with four of us in the same room, yeah, exactly. It was just uh it was the best, but like it doesn't compare to nowadays. Look at like I don't know, we we would kind of play it because uh we were children to be fair, but like it would be all of us would be hanging out all day, and then we'd go back in after after fucking about outside, probably pretending to wrestle each other all day, right? Like, and uh it would be like we get back and it'd be like, Well, we're all still hanging out, let's play a game, right? Whereas nowadays, look at how much fucking trouble we've had trying to arrange to play a game with Katie and Rob, our main gaming gaming group, because none of us are hyper focused on the same fucking thing, right? Whereas if we were already hanging hanging out and we were like, Well, you know, when we were kids, what we used to do was just play a bunch of games until one stuck, and it was like, this is all we're playing. And time splitters was kind of that, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:49:38

Yeah, it was, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:38

And it was like, okay, we'd we'd we bounce around a couple different games. We played a lot of uh WCW versus NWL Revenge, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:49:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:46

But certainly man used to get very annoyed at that game. So that one didn't stick, but we'd occasionally dip into it. Yeah, and then that was kind of the fun. Whereas let's say, for example, for me, you, Katie, and Robot already hanging out, and we just had the nebulous goal of At some point, we'll go home and play games. We'd play something and find something that we all started to enjoy, right? I mean because we can't agree on it. When was the last time we all played a game together?

SPEAKER_02 1:50:09

I mean, there's not like It's been months. There's not like as many games tailored to that kind of fun though. I mean, I could like break out mashed and everyone would, you know have a good time.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:17

Yeah, but then put it this way: don't you remember like a couple of years ago on my birthday? I just said, right, I'm just gonna have name open on my computer, plug it into my big TV, and we'll just play some shit. And and look how much fun we had. And and on your birthday, when we played uh vendetta, four player, all of us, right? It was just like, well, we're already here, right? People are gonna have that investment. It's not the same as like when you play online and somebody can just go, I don't know, it's not for me. I'll refund the game, I'm logging off, right? We were there, we were committed to spending time with you for your birthday, or in my case, we played the DD arcade game, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:50:52

Yeah, and and everyone just had a nice time. Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:55

It's like you already bought in because you committed that time to it. I'm gonna enjoy this fucking game. Whereas when you play online, it's sort of like I don't know, everyone's so fucking non-committal all the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:05

Yeah, yeah, they are, yeah. Yeah, it's a bit sad in that sense. I mean, last time I had sort of couch stuff like that happen was um with uh Mario Party Superstars on the Switch 1, uh, which was good. I mean, the only thing that held that game down was like this lack of content, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we just yeah, it's just sad, but uh I I think there are games that that are good at that type of stuff. I'm not saying okay, games nowadays maybe they don't cater to that experience so so much, but we don't need them to. There are already loads of games out there. Why can't we get together and play time splitters? Because everyone is just so I don't know, like I mean, like I don't I don't I wouldn't want to do that to to do that so much nowadays. I do I'm just saying that like I think the online environment is too um prone to being non-committal. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:54

I do like those experiences though, and when it like comes up, I will buy those games. I mean, like I don't know, like Victory Heat Rally, for example, uh it's another uh one one of those. Um there's been a few recently that I can't think of, but you know, I always buy those kind of games, even if I don't like get to meet up in person as much, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:13

Like it's still good playing online, yeah. Like it's still good, but it just doesn't beat that thing of us being together. Like, I I think if if, say, for example, when we were growing up, our our mate James, right? If if I called him up and just said, Do you want to come over and play um I don't know, uh because he didn't watch wrestling. If I said to him, Do you want to come over and play a wrestling game? he would have said no. But what we said was just we it was just sort of like, Well, do you want to hang out? And then we'd hang out and it'd be like, I don't know, what do you want to do? Right, let's stick on this wrestling game, and then we'd all have a laugh playing it, you know what I mean? Yeah, whereas like that experience cannot happen as an adult, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:48

No, I can't, I can't, no.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:49

But apparently, I can't remember the name. I'll I will try to remember it and maybe I'll edit it in post. But there's um a wrestling management game where you can play the matches inspired by the Akai engine games on Steam right now. I think it's called like wrestling manager, I can't remember. It's an N64 inspired wrestling game.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:11

That looks good. I mean, I mean, that'll be good, I think. That sounds good. Um, but there's also the Fire Pro games that Oh, Fire Pro is so good, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:19

But anyway, um, good answer, fucking Northerner. Yeah, I think that even sometimes uh a mediocre game played sat with the same people in the same room can be good.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:31

You know what I mean? And I think maybe uh N NWO Revenge was that.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:36

No, it wasn't mediocre. That was a good game.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:38

That was very far from uh Kill Defences, he said, God, there's a lot, especially during Covid when we all uh when all we had to do was game with each other. I have great memories of the forest. There were like nine of my buddies in the game. We built a compound called Camp Krusty. The hardest I've ever laughed though was uh during this game called Human Fall Flat, where you run around like drunk babies trying to solve puzzles. That might be my most memorable.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:01

It's the famous, it's a very like it's a speedrunning game though, isn't it really?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:06

No, it's not. It's a physics-based comedy game.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:08

Yeah, it's it's a lot of people it's a very popular speedrunning game.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:12

Well, that might be the case. It also happens to be Virtua Fighter tournament organiser Mr. Morden. It's the only other game he owns on his PS4.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:21

Uh he probably gave up on it because it's too difficult, though. Wait, where are we doing?

SPEAKER_03 1:54:24

Don't sag him off. He runs a good tournament.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:28

Does he?

SPEAKER_03 1:54:29

Sean, we're gonna see Sean!

SPEAKER_00 1:54:31

We're gonna see him at VS Fighting. You cannot say that. You cannot say that. He listens to this podcast, you fuckpin. Oh yeah, you have to delete that. Yeah, I'm definitely deleting that. Sean.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:45

I can't help it, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:51

Anyway, um yes, I agree, and I felt like a little bit recently, like I mentioned earlier with Guilty Gear, I'm sort of in that. Like, I know that the guys I go to uni with white aren't quite as enthused about Guilty Gear as I am right now, except for maybe Tommy, but like that whole feeling of getting the lads together every few nights or every night and getting the room together and just hanging out and playing Guilty Gear, like there's that this is what I said early on in this podcast about Peak was the um you gotta make hay when the sun shines, right? And there was a point where all of us wanted to be playing Peak, and at the moment, a lot of the uni people want to be playing Guilty Gear, and it's like you've got to harness that because those are the special times you're gonna remember for the rest of your life, right? Yeah, and it's like it's just a shame that Peak was a sh was sort of a game that annoyed me quite as much as it did, but you've got to admit that was a fun time, yeah. And that time with him and the forest was also like quite a special time, and I think a lot of people during Covid had the same experience with Animal Crossing, didn't they?

SPEAKER_02 1:55:53

Yeah, they did. Um they did, yeah. I do find it funny though with the COVID.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:58

Tiger King, yeah, classic man. I I and and we we were so starved because all we had to do was watch TV all day that um I finally convinced Millie to watch Black Adder all the way through and Twin Peaks, and it it was just it was great. But here's the thing what I find funny about the COVID thing, I might have mentioned this on another podcast already, was I hear people who were like, Whoa, it was crazy, man, what a wacky time! It's like, but do you know, like it was pretty wacky, man? Yeah, of course it was. But my point was that do you know how most people could go up to the supermarket to buy food, right? Or go to the fucking pharmacy to get their medication, or go for a walk, and how because my wife is disabled, we had different privileges to everyone else. We weren't allowed to go outside because she was immediately suppressed. I spent three years never leaving this flat, right? Yeah, you used to deliver me cigarettes and shit, man. Yeah, I did, yeah. It was mental, and like it was funny because everyone else was like, Oh mate, it really fucked me up that whole shit. I'm like, mate, I genuinely, you guys did the beginner edition, we did the real COVID man.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:02

It was it was really funny because uh like uh about COVID. I remember like uh the excitement of uh this is really bad, but um like because you couldn't go to the vape shop.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:15

Like I was excited about curses, my favourite place. I can't go to the fucking vape shop. Like every month I need to get my custard sliz, bruv.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:24

Every every month I buy like e-liquids, and that was like one of my exciting moments of the of the whole month was ordering like my e-liquids online, but oh this like Red Bull flavour.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:36

Nice fruity flavour there today.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:39

Yeah, it was funny, man. And I uh but I remember like getting our uh our medication delivered and having to wipe it down. I mean, but what's funny is like so many actual say like like for Brent here with his kill defences, I always say his name, but he um he had a special moment online with the forest during that time because we were trying to find those things new ways to connect, weren't we? And I think I can't remember what it was, but you and I played a game quite regularly. Was it Siege?

SPEAKER_02 1:58:05

Must was it Siege? We did play see a lot of Siege at that time. Yeah, it must have been, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:09

And and like I I remember Animal Crossing being the thing like everyone got it and everyone visited at each other's islands. But I think one of the most uh the this isn't uh e even remotely, remotely uh related to the question anymore. One of the funny things is that me and Millie got right back into gaming. Like I'd always game in the spare room, this was before my son was born, and uh I would play all my games in there, but because we have fuck all else to do, we did the old let's play thing like from the 90s where Millie just watched me play through a couple of games, and um I played Resident Evil 3, she absolutely loved watching it. Resident Evil 2, same thing, right? And then it was like quite shortly after that, Final Fantasy VII remake came out. Oh yeah, and that was where that whole thing of uh us gaming together and her watching me play died. Because I got to the bit where you get to Walmart, and Aries is going, Well, I'm not gonna do an impression of it, but basically Final Fantasy VII Remake is cringe as shit, and she couldn't stand to watch it. So I went back to gaming in my little hovel.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:08

I also remember because um uh it's kind of gaming related, like um, because like just before like COVID was like massive and like we had to go into lockdown and stuff, uh Sonic, the first Sonic movie was the the last film that came out before that. So it's like two years, like all like all the billboards and all like the buses used to have that Sonic movie poster.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:33

So that became the herald of the end times basically.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:36

So it's like I yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and I always see it now, and it's like yeah, it's like PTSD.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:43

But okay, and you did the beginner version, man. Uh I tell you what I did like though. I'm sorry, we've gone way off topic here, but what I did like was the um as if you were immunosuppressed, the government would have to send you food because you couldn't go out and buy it, right? Obviously, we we got deliveries and shit, but it was just uh more difficult. So what was funny is the government would send us food, it's all like war shit, it was sort of like spam and shit like this, like canned foods. Oh, yeah. I fucking loved it, man, because you know how I love cheap shit. It was like it was the best. So what was funny is you remember the toilet roll shortage, yeah. And uh the government sent us those big old fucking industrial rolls of it. So that was the sort of the one thing we weren't struggling for was like we we got we got a big old huge bog roll that didn't even fit. It was just it was so huge, it was just on the floor. We would just sort of take from that. But yeah, good times, man. Um but yes, anyway, sorry, let's go back to the multiplayer question. Sid the Squid, he said, I think for me it was back in the early 2000s, or maybe 2003 or so, I was playing Never Winter Nights on an online semi-private server. We all had characters that were maxed out in levels, so we didn't go around looking for random encounters to level up. We just sat around the village and basically chatted in character in character for hours on end. And then one of the GMs would come up uh come online and do a special quest that we would all go and run through, probably get killed a few times and have to respawn. It was a blast.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:09

That sounds good. It's something it's something that you probably couldn't recreate anymore. It was like one of those things you had to sort of be there.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:15

All the best moments they come from weird situations that you couldn't necessarily see coming, like the thing we spoke about last episode with Apollo. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's like that was due to weird circumstances and it cannot be recreated, entirely similar to this Neverwinter Nights experience. Like, but I think if I remember cool, if I remember remember correctly, Neverwinter Nights had a GM mode in it, so you'd have the world, and then like you could have a guy that was playing the GM that could come in, drop monsters, add quests, all of this shit. I never played the fucking game. I feel like I should have, yeah, but I feel like I missed the boat with that one.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:52

There's no like the there probably was never anyone that like you'd you'd meet that was that dedicated though, like very rarely.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:58

Well, it seems like he he did, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:00

Luckily, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:01

So that's good. Sounds like a lot of fun, and I I I would that I think I remember learning about Neverwinter Nights like years and years after, and being like, that GM mode sounds sick. I I if if I was to look at everyone in my life that I know, it would probably only be you that would be up for playing that. Yeah, definitely. I just I sort of shrugged and was like, but that does sound like a lot of fun though. Um like the fact that they were conversing in character as well. Yeah, so it reminds me of like the early days of Team Fortress 2, like where there were no uh I don't know if even know if there are ranked modes in it now, but like one of the most my abiding memories of that game was just uh you know, we weren't chatting on voice, it was just text, but we just would sit in the lobby and talk about politics, and that was it. Like, not play the game, we just stay at spawn and just chat. Um Carti he says, I think one that comes to mind recently would be Seamless Co-op for Elden Ring. It makes the game so much more enjoyable. You're not locked behind certain sections of the game or bosses. It's no surprise that the world building, the environment, the story is great. Being able to experience that with two or four people just enhances it. I wouldn't have completed Elden Ring without it. Fucking noob.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:10

But you you I think it could have, to be honest. Uh no, you've got to believe in yourself, Carter. You can do it. Because they had the old they had the old system with um like the helpers and stuff. So I think it could have in that.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:22

Yeah, you could summon.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:24

But the the trouble is I found with the summons in Elden Ring, and I think why this seamless co-op thing is necessary and why people thought to create it, was because the summons, like Dark Souls worlds, were more linear, although they did have branching parts, they were more linear. The when we played Bloodborne, for example, there were certain points where you knew that there were going to be signs on the ground for you to summon people, because there were certain areas of the game that were known for people having to summon or bits that were difficult, or whatever. There's like a bottleneck. Yeah, I mean, like Elder Ring, because it's an open world game, I don't think I ever managed to reliably summon for anything.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:04

Well, the only like the the parts on Bloodborne, um the plot parts on Bloodborne that you didn't really get anyone on was side quests.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:13

But in Elder Ring because we did Amygdala, that one?

SPEAKER_02 2:04:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:17

And we couldn't summon for it. We summoned a lot because we were nubs.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:19

Uh but Elden Ring, um, like it's a bit more free-form, so like you're gonna get parts that like there's not many people in.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:27

There are main bosses in that game where there are no summon signs. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:04:32

Because some bits are hard to get to in that game.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:34

You don't well, there's that, and also people are doing exploring and doing things at their own pace and in different orders, right? Yeah. So I can see why that exists. I did see some of my friends from uni playing it online, and it looks fucking cool. I feel like we should play that.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:47

Yeah, I mean, that'd be great. That would be a good one to play, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:50

But it does it does sound fucking amazing. I can see why people modded that into the game. But Carti, can you follow up and tell us how well it works? Because I don't know why, but I've got this feeling like it seems one of those things, seems like one of those things that's gonna be, you know, like glitchy.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:04

You know, I don't I don't think it will though. Like, like, because the the games are really tightly made.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:11

But how come you didn't complete Elden Ring without it, though, bruh?

SPEAKER_02 2:05:15

Uh I mean well, like I mean, because you I mean it is good like having you know like two people thinking and stuff, because it it does kind of help in those games.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:25

Yes, it does. And we completed Bloodborne together, didn't we? But we just did life for life, like two turns.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:31

Yeah, and we both had different ideas and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:34

So I had the idea of being like good at dodging and hitting the thing, and you had like the one of like dying on that.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:39

Dying and that, no, I probably mean I I've probably I died you know, I was there, man.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:44

You were there, you were there, that's a fact. Um yeah, I completed Elden Ring without it.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:50

Yeah, I mean, you've sort of forced to really, but I think you would have taken the option.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:55

Yeah, no, I would have definitely 100%, especially because I played it on launch and I played it on PS4 where the load times were outrageous, yeah, and I played it without the sound on because my son had just been born and he was frequently napping in the room where I was trying to play Elder Ring.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:10

But it was like two minutes per loading screen, it was insane, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:14

Think about how often you die in that game. But I just want to say this um did beat Elder, was it his fucking what is his name? Radan. I beat him pre-nerf. Just want to say that. That's all. Yeah, I don't I just want to flex that I did that, I did it pre-nerf and I did it without sound.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:31

Yeah, I tried. I tried, I did try. I thought I was shit at the game, but it turned out I wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:36

That was an insane boss that was fucking dumb. Yeah. Uh Dr. Mumsen he says, apart from good old land parties, yes, mate. I'd have to say the early days of GTA 5 online, it was pure chaos and unadulterated fun. Sadly, mate, I don't have much to say on that. I've never played GTA Online.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:52

I did play GTA 1 online, so there it How did you play GTA 1 online? Um I don't add a.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:59

Oh, it did, didn't it? I forgot about that. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:03

Yeah, it was just it was uh you could play deathmatch or you could race, you could race together.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:08

That is ins. I I completely yeah, we did. We played that a lot. Yeah, we did. We played it with our uncle.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:13

Yeah, we did, yeah. We played it with our uncle, you also played it together as well, and you know, all of that.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:18

You reckon he listens to the podcast? Do you reckon Angel for listening? Um why is that funny?

SPEAKER_02 2:07:24

I'm just gonna shout out to our uncle who we love. Just uh over pronunciation, but also he's not technically not our uncle anymore.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:32

Well, because he divorced our auntie.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:33

But he is an uncle.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:34

Alright, you're done. I'm never playing GTA 1 with you again. He is an uncle. Um I just got a message from him. He says, Do you want to play some fucking Red Alert? It's a bit odd.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:46

It's Command and Conquer.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:48

Um, right, yeah, I'm sure GTA 5 online is good, mate, but it just doesn't look like it to me. We went off on a tangent there, but it does look we were on a big tangent about COVID, and then also about playing uh GTA 1 with Anchet.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:00

It does it does, it does look like a lot of fun though. It's like sort of like another like you could make it like you could play within the rules of the game or you could do like some Minecrafty type sort of stuff spin-off and from what I understand the heists seem like a lot of fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:16

But uh I don't know man, it I don't know. It's I I don't know. I like I liked the story of GTA 5. I've never had any desire to play with other people, no, and that's a series I have I have a lot of love for, but like the multiplayer's just not really been for me, you know. I I just never have I'll tell you what though, since Saints Row since GTA 1. Oh Saints Row, right, which was made by ex-rock star devs, right? The multiplayer in Saints Row 1 was fucking stupid. It was crazy though, it was really good. Do you remember what was that? There was that there was a mode in it that was like the golden gun from Goldeneye. But instead of the golden gun, it's called Protect the Pimp. Protect the pimp.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:56

Uh so the pimp, like you didn't have any guns, but you had a slap that could kill people with one slap.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:02

Yeah, you kill people with one slap and they would get go flung across the arena. It was great.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:07

And you have like a separate character for multiplayer that you could customize, and it was it was great. I mean, they need to bring that back up. If they're doing GTA online, do that.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:16

But GTA Online is like open world, yeah. And I missed the because Saints Row just had cool deathmatch modes in it.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:22

I like I like like I don't know, like because you you have like an office level and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:27

The office level was so good, and also like that one car park, but it'd be like a small arena deathmatch but with vehicles, and you'd sort of like jump in a vehicle and like do drive-by's and shit, but it was like a deathmatch game where it's fucking mental.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:39

This is where they like had to cram multiplayer into everything, and somehow it works on that game.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:44

Yeah, because you remember there was there was a lot of oddities of the 360 area uh era where every game needed to have multiplayer, and sometimes you got one where it's like this game shouldn't have multiplayer, but they've crammed it in, and as a result, you've got something kind of ingenious. And I've I don't want to say chaos theory falls into that that, but uh to an extent it was a very weird game mode. But do you remember Condemned 2? Yeah, Condemned 2, like that's a that that's just a beat-em-up and like Yeah, it was a first-person beat-em-up, but they had this uh the the whole thing was about exploring abandoned uh uh urban environments, the whole game was about that, right? And fighting off crazed homeless people. So the multiplayer the mode they came up with was that you needed to run through a house and or like an abandoned uh urban environment and find clues. You were there was a team of detectives and a team of homeless people. But the funny thing is that there's shadows in that game and the environments were so well made that it was tailor-made for being a homeless person and sneaking into a dark corner and waiting for the police and jumping out at them with a fucking pole in their arm. It was mental, but it really worked.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:55

It was brilliant, it was brilliant. I mean, the um the single player was an absolute disappointment, so on Condemn 2 specifically, yeah. Yes, like um, yeah, like on the first one, it was brilliant. I mean, it was a disappointment because the first one was like absolutely brilliant, but um, for the week that people were playing the multiplayer, it was a good laugh.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:13

Yeah, I remember I went back to it like a month later and there's five people online. I got into a game and the the fucking servers or whatever just wouldn't balance it. So it was me, I was one policeman, and there was four homeless guys, and I went in and somebody threw a brick at my head, and then I was immediately downed, and I was like, okay, cool, I'm done. But anyway, Sean, your favourite multiplayer experience of all time, not counting the story we told last podcast, but your favourite multiplayer experience. It can be a game, it can be a time in your life.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:41

Oh, there's so there's so many. I mean, um, there's so many. I mean, like uh like probably like Halo turn three, um, but then again, um there's like too many to name. Like even the like when we like used to play micro machines and like we all got so good at it that Oh, the the games would last hours, yeah. Yeah, like um like 'cause you'd have three laps and whoever had the most points at the end would win or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:06

Right, I don't want to make this to podcast too heavy on games nobody has ever heard of, but bun all of that. No, but like money filtration two point nine. Enough said.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:14

Yeah, but like micro machines is enough Sean, enough said. I've said enough said. Yeah, but like no, I wasn't finished for my stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:21

Okay, sorry, go on.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:22

But um yeah, um so like you know, you'd have some like you'd you'd you'd have like five points, and whoever had the most points to the end would win. Um uh after the third lap. But if you if you're all drawn, it would carry on. Oh never mind.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:39

No, no, if you all drew, it would carry on.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:42

No, no, go on, come on. That was a good story. I'm sorry I started pressing buttons.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:48

That's alright. You go with your No, no, no, no, go on. So if you all drew Um, the race would like continue after that.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:55

Oh yeah, because it became it became sudden death, didn't it?

SPEAKER_02 2:12:58

Yeah, it would became sudden death. So um like the races would last like an hour or so because all of us would like all of us would be drew for like laps and drew.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:10

I don't know if that's the correct English.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:12

Like the the race would be drawn for like it would be dry, it would be dreaded up. Lapse after laps.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:17

It'd be good yeah, and uh I remember that because you'd have to get advantage, then one more point, right? Yeah, so it would always be like we'd just be locked into this game for hours. It was fucking good. But um but seriously though, as much as Micro Machines was fun, does it compare to Infiltration 2.9?

SPEAKER_02 2:13:33

Uh no, not really, not really. Because that that was crazy. I mean I won't go mad on this because we already did the Kunio Kun segment, but the technology behind it, it was an Unreal mod, it was an army mod that hasn't been matched to this day, basically.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:46

Yeah, I mean it was a it was a uh full game conversion mod for Unreal Tournament that as Sean mentioned in terms of realism hasn't been hasn't been matched. I mean, like look, all it was was just a very, very realistic military shooter where not only did you press the you know right mouse button to bring your gun up to aim, but you also had to physically aim it, you had to hold your breath, you had to manage your stamina, you had to manage your loadout and all of this stuff, right? But also, I I think that like it was just a squad-based shooter with some of the best maps. But the best part about it was well, actually, two things the camouflage was useful, you would have to use camouflage to outsmart your opponents, and also the other thing was uh the sound. Yeah, that was one of the biggest things. Like, okay, the graphics were shipped for the time, but the the sound, it's never been better. I've never played a game better than that mod that was played by about 30 people in the entire world.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:46

But I will have to say another one, like just any of the time till we played Terraria, really, to be honest. Yeah, even though that's good. Even though it's like it's like a like, you know, it's very difficult game, but you know, all the all the hours we spent playing it, hanging out, you know. I mean, that's the one game where it was like online, but it's like so closely replicated was like to sit together and that.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:09

Yeah, because a lot of the time I think the what's good about those types of games is also the fact that you're because sometimes you're just doing mundane shit. Yeah, you're just going, oh, I need to mine copper. So you're just sitting around just chatting while the lot of you are mining. Yeah, that's a that's a very, very good point. Um Habot Hotel.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:25

Um well, the grooming No don't say the grooming. It was very like Sean grooming is a very different thing. I mean it was it was a it was a grooming ground.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:38

Oh, what for other people? Yeah, yes, right. Right, no, but Sean, I thought you were alluding to okay, look, we used to play Hub Hotel, and it was just the done thing at the time. We would scam people.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:49

Yeah, I mean we like did a lot of crimes on the lot of crimes.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:52

Not grooming, like Sean made it sound like.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:55

Well, absolutely not, but like, you know, sort of like more.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:58

Yeah, I did get a lot of messages from nuns, yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:00

Um, like gambling, but yeah, we also didn't have a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:02

I was like, I was like, I don't know, I must have been like seven at the time.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:06

A lot of people were nuns and about on there.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:08

There were so many, man. The amount there would just be like ASL, and you'd be like, I am seven, I'm from Surrey, and then it'd be like, What are you wearing? Like almost straight away. That's not that's not the fun part. The fun part was the scamming.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:19

Yeah, it was, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:20

Because what would happen is you'd have to be uh that she just makes us sound bad. But everyone was doing it. Yeah, they were one of the big things on Habo Hotel was was starting mafias. The idea was that you were an organized crime syndicate on on Habbo and your whole fucking thing was like scamming people out of furniture they paid real money for. To be fair, very cheap. However, we created a game we we had a casino, didn't we?

SPEAKER_02 2:16:44

This was terrible. What was the instance of um someone getting their furniture taken away? Like, do you remember that? Who? Well of ice, like um where one of the mods came in and then a hand came in and yeah, yeah, I remember that because somebody reported the scam.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:59

So gambling was illegal in there, and we just had a room that a public room that we made that was just a casino, and all of the games are rigged so that we would win, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:17:08

I mean, what uh to the dumbest shit as well, that oldest trick where like we like I'd come up and be like, Oh, I've won. Oh, I like nice, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:16

We did that shit, like the scammers in Paris do. And one of the funniest ones is there was um just a table with three ducks on it, and all of which were sort of oriented differently, one was a different colour, like all of this. And we just say to people, right, pick the odd one out, or you give me one Fernie. That was it. It was always one furnie, and like they would come along, and of course, every answer was wrong, but some of these people would just give us the furniture, and it was like it was terrible, like looking back on it, that was really bad of us to do.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:45

What else were we gonna do on that?

SPEAKER_03 2:17:46

Oh, yeah, well there's nothing else to do.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:49

If there weren't so many houses to do, I think it's I wouldn't do all the houses. I think that was the game, really, for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:55

Or more at the time, that was the game, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:57

And all of us didn't have money, so that's how we got our furniture.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:02

Yeah, and then and then we got so much furniture that I started a wrestling league. Do you remember that? Yeah, and it was a role-play-based wrestling league where you would just say the movie you're doing. That was all based on stolen furniture. The other one was do you remember that game that we did uh that was a roulette?

SPEAKER_02 2:18:16

Yeah, yeah, I did.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:18

And it was it was literally just like, guess what number I'm thinking of? Yeah. Fuck. That was bad.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:22

Right. Um What about the time you got scanned, scammed to like?

SPEAKER_01 2:18:26

Yeah, don't bring that up. I'm not happy with that. I got scammed.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:29

That was the one time you got scammed, but you scammed so many people.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:32

There was a guy, yeah, fair enough. There was a guy that was selling hacked accounts, and that was a big thing back then, was like that's one level up from what we were doing. Yeah, and people would sell hacked accounts, and the thing is they could give you hairstyles that weren't in the game, so colours of things that weren't commonly available because they'd hacked it, right? This guy says came up to me and said, Do you want to buy a hacked account? And I go, Yeah. And I gave him all my furniture, all my wrestling league furniture. Fucking he gives me the account name and password, I log into it, it's a banned account. Yeah, so technically he's correct. He gave me a hacked account.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:04

He did, yeah, he did actually. No, he wasn't lying then, to be fair.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:08

No, he was right, but you fucking mocked me about it for months afterwards. I did, yeah. That's the end of Habo Hotel for me.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:14

Yeah, I didn't really have much to do, to be honest, so sorry about it.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:17

To anyone that we scammed in Habbo Hotel, I'm very sorry about that.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:20

Yeah, I apologize as well, to be fair.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:23

Do you remember what one of your clan names was? Your your mafias?

SPEAKER_02 2:19:27

Well, we had the uh Akadama clan.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:29

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, based on the way of the samurai games. Yeah, right. Anyway, um that is it for the multiplayer questions. Thank you very much for sending your questions in.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:40

To be fair, I could like, you know, go on about multiplayer experiences because it's so many.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:45

So many team buddies on the PS1. Oh, it's time for Composer Corner. Uh Composer Corner? Correction Corner. Uh, in an early episode of the podcast, I said I liked Leffen and I respected him for coming and playing games with us casuals. Big mistake. I have since learnt about the man.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:04

And he was he he wasn't doing that. He was checking, he was checking out who was he was checking out the talent, he was spying on us, man.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:10

I believe so. Um but Leffen from all accounts, he's a professional guilty gear and Smash Brothers player. He's a terrible person. Glad I met him, but um I did a bit of research about him. Awful guy. I do not respect him. Right. Uh thank you very much for all of your questions, ladies and gentlemen. Um, and I hope you enjoyed the show. Uh let's do the outro, shall we? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:20:33

No, thank god. Fuck it, where the me and last two weird shit!

SPEAKER_00 2:20:38

Whoa, how to get off for break weed is too than a me. Fucking with a me and last two get proper wrong. We have we're to get off your wet big shit.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:53

Okay, so uh you can contact us if you want on Lucky and Wild Podcast at gmail.com. Have we had any emails in there?

SPEAKER_02 2:21:00

Uh we have uh have we?

SPEAKER_01 2:21:02

Not once. Um but uh Well, that's cool, that's good to have there. But it's still there.

SPEAKER_02 2:21:06

If you want to email us, you please do. But like the Discord's very active though.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:11

It is, it's fully active.

SPEAKER_02 2:21:14

That's why. That is why we haven't had an email. It's not because like people don't want to talk to us, it's just because just because the Discord's always kicking off.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:21

It's much easier, isn't it? So yeah, do join the Discord, the link is in the description, and if you want to be as cool and strong and smart as Kate, go over to the Patreon, patreon.com forward slash lucky and wild and send your donations there. We got different tiers for different needs. Nice, yeah, we do, we do. Alright, and we got one last bonus uh segment for you. This is the sound test. So this is the segment where we highlight an interesting song from a video game and let it play us out of the podcast. And today, Sean, I'm doing another bad one.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:11

A bad one, alright.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:12

I'm doing a bad music. So Wii Music, an insultingly shit game.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:17

Oh, that was terrible, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:19

Terrible, where you could wave Wii Motes around in a sort of vaguely instrument-like way, and the game would, based on your inputs, make sounds sort of vaguely sounding like part of a song.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:30

It was the pff last time I remember taking back a game because it was shit. Oh, then they stopped that, didn't they? Probably because of that game.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:37

Yeah. I mean it was an absolute mess. And when it was demoed at E3 2003, with Nintendo employees giving a live performance, well, the sound that came out was an arrhythmic mess. We got to see Shigeru Miyamoto and four of his goons do possibly the worst wor world's worst musical performance since the Rapid Reviews UK host tried to rap. But as bad as this was, there was another feature in the game utilizing a Wii balance board and a nunchuck and a Wii mote. The game featured a drum kit simulator, one that was so imprecise and useless due to its complete lack of any tactile feedback and inexact gyroscope controls. This didn't stop Nintendo from employing the famous DJ and drummer DJ Ravi drums to demonstrate this drum mode on Wii Music live in front of an audience. Now I'm sure Ravi Drums is a decent drummer, but this drum simulation is so rubbish that I don't think Jesus Christ himself could make a coherent drum solo on it. Because essentially you're just flailing around at nothing and hoping it sounds good. Anyway, I've been Harrison Hunt. And I've been Sean Hunt. And this is the Ravi Drums live Wii music performance from E3 2008, which is thankfully only a minute long.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:52

Coming at you like Russell Brand in the night. So I thought we began and then we ended up. Yeah, exactly.