Culture Cretins

Our Favorite Gaming Memories

• Nathan • Season 1 • Episode 3

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A new dinosaur drops, a grenade erases our first Fortnite win, and somewhere on a mountain fortress a legend named “Meat Hook Steve” keeps charging our scope. We open the vault on the gaming memories that made us: the chaos, the comedy, and the quiet moments that turned pixels into friendships.

We trace the wild early days of Fortnite—deliberate build battles, storms that punished hesitation, and the accidental team wipe that still gets brought up years later. From there we jump to Battlefield 1’s broken horses and cinematic glitches, the birth of a persistent nemesis, and why some of our best laughs came from lobbies that should never have worked. Call of Duty Zombies brings back CRT noise, “teddy bear” curses, and the weird joy of training routes and couch-side coaching, plus the beauty of bot lobbies that helped us learn without the pressure of ranked.

Foundations matter: PS1 demo discs that seeded a love for odd classics, a jungle-green N64 that made Mario 64 feel eerie and new, and a GameCube era we still swear delivered the best-feeling Madden. We revisit Double Dash rivalries on Peach Beach, SNES daycare days where Mega Man X’s soundtrack turned us into lifers, and Pokémon milestones—from Yellow’s battery heartbreak to a Blastoise-led Elite Four sweep and the electric summer when Pokémon Go turned city streets into late-night meetups. Not every modern story is rosy; Outriders shows how a great power fantasy can collapse without stable co-op and voice chat.

Through it all we make a case for why games matter. They’re not just time killers; they’re where families cheer, friends learn to strategize, and shared language—dubs, wipes, clutches—translates into how we tackle life together. We tease what’s next on the pod, from a Star Wars deep dive to future reviews and maybe a live stream where we finally put a JRPG in Nathan’s hands. Hit play, laugh with us, and then tell us your most unforgettable game fail or first big win.

Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review—what gaming memory should we feature next?

Surprise Dinosaur And Episode Setup

SPEAKER_02

Welcome back everyone, episode two of culture credence. I'm Will, and you're with me, Nathan. Hey guys. Today we have an exciting episode. We're gonna be talking about our gaming memories throughout the years. And something else exciting that I haven't shared yet today. A new species of the Spinosaurus has been discovered. Bro. Yeah, it's called the Spinosaurus Mirabilis.

SPEAKER_01

Dude, you're surprising me with stuff on the show. Yeah, new dinosaur just dropped. Dude, get get it in the item shop.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Shadow drop the dinosaur. Looks pretty powerful. I'd say he's probably like up there in power level. Um he he does have kind of like malformed hands. And he he does look more amphibious. Less spiky. Um, but he does have a horn on his head and a lot of teeth. Wait, wait, wait.

SPEAKER_01

Did you say a spinosaurus has a horn on its head? Yeah, yeah, it has a horn on its head. Okay, so he's he's taken it up another. I got a picture of him eating a fish hole. Oh, I think I might have seen a picture of this somewhere.

SPEAKER_02

He's in the desert for some reason though. Like, I don't think there's fish in the desert, don't get me wrong. I I'm not exploring the desert, but dude.

SPEAKER_01

We gotta get him on the show.

SPEAKER_02

Gotta get him on the show. Friend of the show, Spinosaurus Mirabilis. Yeah, so but you weren't expecting that.

SPEAKER_01

Did you uh you used to play a dinosaur game? What was it? Was that Arc Survival? Oh man. Did you have a Spinosaurus Mirabilis on there?

SPEAKER_02

I had I actually had a pterosaur named Goblinodon. And then we name it this? Yeah, yeah, I did. And then I we found out it was a female and we named it Goblinodonette.

SPEAKER_03

That's respectful of you. Yeah, she died in a volcano. Oh.

SPEAKER_01

Man. Why? Arc Survival is uh a little morbid than it's a little morbid.

SPEAKER_02

It's kinda kinda horrible.

SPEAKER_01

Really horrible place to pretty much apparently the the uh moral of the story with dinosaurs is it's going to end badly. I mean, I don't know. No matter what. Jurassic Park, Arc Survival, uh real dinosaurs. There's not any dinosaurs like that.

SPEAKER_02

Talking to them kindly, giving them affirmations.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, de-escalation efforts, yeah. I mean, diplomacy is always the better solution.

SPEAKER_02

I tried de-escalating the dinosaur situation and it ended in a meteor drop. With a meteor drop.

SPEAKER_01

I would say that probably de-escalate things a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Fortnite Stories We Still Share

SPEAKER_02

Beat em beat emotion. Dusty Depot's gone. So are all the dinosaurs. That was you. Yeah, that was me. Speaking of Fortnite, one of our earliest uh multiplayer gaming things that that we had um when that was that first came out free to play, like 2017 or something. It wasn't like a long, long time ago, but it was 2016, 2017, something like that. Something like that. Yeah, we uh was that?

SPEAKER_01

We were on Xbox. Yeah, I I was on Xbox One at that time. I think about everybody was on Xbox One, yep.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and it was uh build only. Had like the one emote, and we were really trying to win because it was super hard because everyone was super sweaty.

SPEAKER_01

And it was more I guess it was more realistic-ish than like as far as like well we we would like try to build actual forts and like all these different types of barricades and quickly, like for fun.

SPEAKER_02

Like we'd chop down all the trees and just build a castle and it would it would take like a long time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, this was before build mode was easy and like everything you did was like really deliberate. It would take you a whole game to like build this fortress. Yeah, exactly. And then like we'd have to just leave because the storm would close or whatever.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and the storm could also, I remember like a lot of times it'd close around the edge of the zone or the edge of the island, and you if you fell off, you uh got eliminated.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it was anything. The game just in general was a lot less forgiving at that point. Team kills. Yeah, well, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02

Oh man, speaking of which, the f the time that we almost won for the first time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, would have been our first dub.

SPEAKER_02

Mine mind explaining what I I did completely by accident.

SPEAKER_01

We were at it was a squad, full squad of four, and um we were like hiding behind this mountain as the storm was closing in, waiting for the other team to come around, and we were in pretty good shape. I I don't even think the other team had a full squad.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so like one or two people.

SPEAKER_01

Like we We were so close, like we could we could taste it, the dub. And and what is you threw a grenade?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I I said I'm throwing a grenade now, and one of our other buddies didn't hear me and put up a wall in front of us.

SPEAKER_01

And it just the grenade just bounces off the wall and just blows all four of us up, just kills us all right there. And I was blamed. You were blamed, you've still been blamed, probably. It still comes up in conversation because we had that dub and it was just like one grenade and it was all gone.

SPEAKER_02

But that was probably that other person's best gaming moment.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, he he loves to still talk about it, so yeah. But we all got dubs. We all got dubs later on. But in those early days, like getting one win was like I mean, it could take you, I don't even know how long to get a win.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that that was also when we were playing like Battlefield 1 that had just come out.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah. And Meat Hook Steve.

SPEAKER_02

Dude, Meat Hook Steve, you're right.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, I have to I have to talk about Meat Hook Steve. And if you I I think that was his name. It's been so long now. I can't Meat Hook Steve. If you're out there, Meat Hook Steve. Okay, so I was not I'm not a particularly good uh first-person shooter type player, but I am okay, uh, especially in that particular game at sniping. And so that's just kind of how I played Battlefield 1, I would just find somewhere to get and snipe. And so this one guy, I think we were on the map. I don't remember what it was called. Like I'm wanting to call it like Montanerva, but I don't even know if that's right. It's like where you're up on this mountain fortress. So I kept getting up on this mountain and sniping down at the fortress. Well, Meat Hook Steve decided to make it his sole goal in life to get up there and kill me. But every single time he did it, I'd get a headshot on him and kill him. And then what was really funny about it, so I killed him probably like six times in that one game, just him continuously coming back. And but what was really funny about it was somehow Meat Hook Steve kept getting put in lobbies that we were in. And so like it could have been like a day a week, like it it was much later. It wasn't even the same decision. It was for an extended period of time that he just kept coming at me. And I I again I am not a great player. I mean, oak was an okay sniper at the time. Every single time Meat Hook Steve came at me, I killed him. And it's just like it just became this like uh farcical nemesis type thing of like no matter what he did, while Lee Coyote almost I'd lose more. It's just like he would come after me and he just could not kill me. And so it just became this running gag about Meat Hook Steve. And we have not forgot you, Meat Hook Steve, because you were probably one of the only people in my entire life that I was able to kill consistently in a first-person shooter game.

SPEAKER_02

Dang. Rest in peace, meat hook Steve.

SPEAKER_01

Rest in peace. He's probably a lot better than me.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, he's actually been growing stronger ever since that day.

SPEAKER_01

He's waiting, he's waiting for me to get back on Battlefield 1 right now.

SPEAKER_02

He's been like training in the mountains, punching trees with his bare hands.

SPEAKER_01

And I mean, props to him because he was not gonna give up.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, why would he?

SPEAKER_01

But I would have given up because, you know, what do they say? What's the definition of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over and getting the same result. But I guess so. Dude, there were some crazy things going on in that game. That game was wild. Like, I thought there was stuff about the game that I it's one of my favorite first-person shooter games in certain aspects, but this overall the game was just It was hysterical.

SPEAKER_02

Like, picture this You're at the castle of Versailles, right? You're on a horse, you accidentally clip into the front of a tank, and it launches you so high in the air that you land on a Zeppelin. What? That type of thing could happen. Frequently, frequently, people were taking down balloons with horses.

SPEAKER_01

Really everything about the horses was just Dude, the horses were broken.

SPEAKER_02

And they were taking they were stronger than tanks, too, right?

SPEAKER_01

Well, a lot of the stuff is just like, okay, oh look, I got a tank or I got a horse or I got a zeppelin or whatever. And you would take it down in like 10 seconds, and it just you like wasn't even worth having a lot of times. And I don't think any of us particularly enjoyed any of the I don't remember what the game mode is called. It's been so long since I've but where you're capturing the objectives, which I think is the whole point of Battlefield.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But like we didn't even like that game mode.

SPEAKER_02

Sometimes it was just too big. Like it was too and it's ever to find people in the game, stuff like that. People wouldn't squat up very well.

2016: When Everyone We Knew was Gaming

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you would spend the whole game like looking for someone to shoot, and then if you got killed, okay, well, now I gotta start over again, you know? And yeah, we were like never together as a squad in uh in the capture the objective kind of game mode, and that makes it a lot less fun that way. But and oh, couldn't you okay, so if you're playing as a medic, couldn't you kill people with your syringe on the other team? And which I mean it's kind of awesome in a way. Battlefield one and Fortnite, so we were playing those right around the same time, and that was really one of the better gaming times for us because everybody was gaming back then.

SPEAKER_02

That was like a really big comeback for like games. Like I had played multiplayer like Marm Warfare 2 and Halo 3 and all that before, but like this was like everyone was back into gaming around that time, 2016 is when for me that was the first time I had done any multiplayer online games.

SPEAKER_01

I had never had online, never done multiplayer unless I was at like a friend's house or something, until 2016. And so all that was new to me, which talk about being just like dumped into chaos. Like, imagine being a guy who's never played online Call of Duty ever. And you're in like your 20s, and you just get dropped into online Call of Duty. Hey, learn this, you know? It was it was wild, and I definitely had to learn a lot of things, and and unfortunately, we don't even all really play those types of games together anymore.

SPEAKER_02

But we used to like group up and play zombies and stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Like I I would always go to people's houses and play the games, but I I never like had online until the Xbox One. Um, but like one of those kinds of memories of playing with other people, not online, but like in a big setting. Um, in high school, we had a like a computer class or something, and one of the teachers had like a server with COD for Modern Warfare 1. And so like everyone would get done with their work and jump on a game of Modern Warfare and play against each other, and it was awesome.

Zombies Modes, CoD Tales, And Local Play

SPEAKER_01

One okay, talking about zombies and especially that time period like before we were all online. Okay, so one thing I definitely have to talk about is our youth minister, uh, his name was Michael. So at the time, one of the things we would do is like go hang out with them and play zombies. And his youngerest son, Caleb, was like really good at at zombies. It was that Black Ops 2? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_02

Uh it was one, then two came out in 2012.

SPEAKER_01

So we played that a ton. He was kind of the one who like taught us about like training zombies and all kinds of stuff like that. Mr. Rick. Yeah. And so we were at his house one time, and somebody hit gets the carpenter power up. And our youth minister just like so excited, goes, Ropadope. And we just look at him and we're like, What did you just say? And he this whole time he had been playing with his sons, he thought the name of the power-up was rope. Which I will admit, it does sound just like it.

SPEAKER_02

Like, I don't even understand how you can say carpenter and it comes out as rope.

SPEAKER_01

It it does sound like it when you when you don't know what it is. And so, like, but we never forgot that we still call it.

SPEAKER_02

Well, especially because it was on like it's still on the CRT and it was like super compressed output. So like you can't like see the text on the screen really, but you also can't hear it very well because the zombies are all loud in the background, too. Wild.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah, the zombies in that game were so loud, like it was just absolute chaos. And of course, your system at that time is like having a trouble, like props to things going on.

unknown

Dude.

SPEAKER_01

But those were so much fun. I would always like get the teddy bear on the mystery box.

SPEAKER_02

I could I could never.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. I messed it up for everyone all the time. And that would happen. Like, you would be this whoever it was that game. Yeah, it's like one person would get the teddy bear like three or four times in a row, and it would just be okay, that person doesn't get a gun this game, and they're just going to die.

SPEAKER_02

Or you'd go back and forth by a wall um tombstone over and over again, just keep wasting your money on that because you keep getting down.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Moral of the story was trash at zombies. Yeah, zombies can be really hard. Yeah. And I liked honestly, just as far as what was more fun to play, some of the newer zombies that came out later on to me was more fun. It was a lot easier not to die.

SPEAKER_02

People know I hated Infinite Warfare, but the idea for some of those maps, did you ever play those? The zombies in Spaceline, like each and one of the DLC maps was like a different um like era of cinema with like different horror types. Yeah, I did play.

SPEAKER_01

Those were so fun. I also liked um I guess it was one of the Black Ops ones we played where you could actually win, like you could be evac or whatever, like, or you could actually win.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, that was Black Ops 4, I think. The Titanic map and the Coliseum and stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and like the one that we did where you're I don't remember it's it's Russia or Germany or something, and there's like the plane that's been downed, and you go under underground into like this bunker, and there's all that uh machinery and like it's a big thing.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah, and it starts out black and white and it turns to color. I think that's ascension. I could be wrong.

SPEAKER_01

And like you we would win rounds, and for me that was really cool because I I loved seeing how far you could get, but I always kind of felt like with zombies it was like, okay, you were gonna get to this point where no matter what, you were gonna die, and you couldn't ever really win. And so I I liked having a chance to actually beat the round, you know. But yeah, we uh it's been a while since we played zombies. Oh, okay. I can't go away from talking about zombies without mentioning this. This is possibly a hot take. So I loved Call of Duty ghosts, and I know a lot of people did not like ghosts. That is one of the first Call of Duty games that I played, and I loved aliens, and maybe that was partially it again because you could actually win it, but I loved the extraction aliens game mode, and you could you one of you could be the red, one of you could be the yellow, and I actually never played it because everyone I know hated it and didn't want to play it, and I I didn't play it. Oh, I loved it, man. So I had I didn't have an Xbox or anything like that, and I went to Ryan's house and played it on his Xbox One, and we would play it all the time. Well, I ended up getting an Xbox 360 with ghosts so that I could play it. And I played it, I played it with my dad, I played it with my roommate in college, I played it like anybody who would play aliens with me. I wanted to play it. And I got in that game, me and my roommate, which I didn't have online, but we got really good at it because we would just like play it with against veteran bots like all the time, and we just would play it and learn the maps so much that we would like know where people were gonna be, when they're you know, dude, I got it.

SPEAKER_02

I like that with Black Mops too. I would just this sounds really sad. I would just play by myself against bots on like local multiplayer, and I'd set up like a class of like the ballista and shock charges and tomahawks, and I'd like run around the turbine map or like um like nuke town and just like throw the tomahawks and shock charges and like practice quickscoping and stuff. Because I was like, oh, I gotta get good so then when I play with my friends I can be better at the game, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and now like I think we a lot of people would r wish they could go back to having like more local uh bots like in Fortnite. Dude, I would love to just have a game mode that it's just me playing the game against bots and play against snowers. Yeah, well, yeah, if I get on my switch, it's but like I thought that was fun, you know, at the time. And and me and my roommate at the time would play where we would try to like you could up the kills numbers to, I don't know, into the hundreds, and we would be we would just try to get through the whole game without dying, you know, and it was just so much fun to do. And so I kind of missed that. I mean, online is so stressful, and you know, sometimes the locals almost more fun than playing online. But as far as like, okay, so that's stuff that we played in, you know, 2016. That was all multiple stuff.

Our First Gaming Memories

SPEAKER_03

I feel like that was the pinnacle of multiplayer.

SPEAKER_01

So what are some of your earliest uh good gaming memories?

SPEAKER_02

Ooh. Um, okay, so the first memories that I have of gaming um when I was like really young, um, we had the uh PS1, or I guess the PSX, just PlayStation. And um we had what was it? My dad had this Tiger Woods golf game called Cyber Tiger, where everyone had these like really big heads for some reason. Like they had these like chibi heads. Um that was like fun game. We had this like Tonka space game where you had like these different missions. Like there was one where you're racing a space car, like you're excavating plants, like these blue raspberries in a like space farm, I guess, or something. Um, but one of my favorite things, you might be able to comment on this. I don't know if you ever had any of these um demo discs. We had this one uh interactive demo disc on the PS1, and it I think it had like Blasto, the first Metal Gear Solid, I think it was the first Grand Turismo or Red Ridge Racer or something like that. It had Jersey Devil and it had Tomba. So I had this really weird taste in games from early on, games that no one I knew was probably ever going to play, right? Because I'm playing these like strange demo games that like who's ever until recently, I know they re-released it, but like I don't know a single person who's heard of Tomba before, right? And I was like, Oh, this is like the best thing ever. So that was like my first like favorite game, I guess.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I did have some demo discs. on the Sega Dreamcast. And I remember one of the Sonic games being a demo on there. Um I would say Dimitri, my oh, I don't really remember. I just remember you running around collecting rings, which I think is the premise of all of the Sonic games probably or some of them. Yeah. My earliest gaming memories would be uh NES, because we already had the NES by the time I was born and playing Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt and I could not I I to this day, okay everyone can make fun of me, I have not beaten Super Mario Bros, the original one. I have gotten to the final level I've never beaten it. And so my dad could beat it. My sister could beat it. I could never beat it. But um past that like especially for my own having my own thing hope. Come on. The first thing I had was the green Game Boy Pocket that played in black and white. And I had at the same Christmas I got Pokemon Yellow and I had this Mickey's Magic Wand game.

SPEAKER_02

I had that game actually but it wasn't on the game board phenomenal they had a version of it for a system you've probably never heard of before uh the VTech Smile. It was like a children's educational system and it looks like a like ravioli is the mascot and it's orange and purple and the controller looks kind of like a paw and it has a joystick and different color buttons on the paw and it had that game on there? It had that game but like a more educational version of that game.

SPEAKER_01

And I also had um the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Game Boy game I think it's Follow the Foot Clan which by the way I tried to put here on as an adult so difficult Ninja Turtles game is so difficult. The controls were are not very responsive at all and they're it's very hard to jump and I I don't particularly enjoy it now. I liked it as a kid but Pokemon Yellow is probably like my first real this was maybe personal gaming experience because I was so young then and I actually got Pokemon Yellow before I got Pokemon Blue but so on Pokemon Yellow I remember we were on a trip with our parents my dad had some kind of work conference. And so I remember being in the hotel and the whole trip I'm like trying to figure out this game because I'm like five or six years old or something. And I'm trying to learn how to catch Pokemon how do you beat Brock, which is notoriously difficult in Pokemon Yellow especially for a child that you're learning Pokemon games for the first time. And so finally I had learned how to catch Pokemon started to like build a team and figure out a lot of stuff. So we're back at home I've done all that after spending all these hours on it my batteries die. And that was my first experience with that because I didn't even I didn't even think about that and that it could delete your data and everything. So then I had to start it completely over. So that was that's one of my first core gaming memories of just being devastated you know because it took me all this time to do all that and uh you know so but it was so much fun. I love Pokemon yellow it's I kind of like the challenge because in Pokemon Blue which was the next game I got well I'll I don't want to dominate this conversation or make it exclusively about Pokemon but that would be another one of my great gaming memories is my favorite Pokemon was always Squirtle. It probably still is Squirtle and so I got Pokemon Blue and me and that Squirtle went to the top together and I when I he we wiped out the Elite 4 together and did you evolve when I battled yeah I did Squirtle both just solo the Elite four but like I don't even remember the rest of the Pokemon on the team I had at that point. But I obviously wasn't using them very much because he was in like Blastoise was in like the high 80s which is takes a lot of battling especially in the first gen games and so we battled Mewtwo man and we just punked him. I mean it wasn't even difficult because my Blastoise was so good. I mean I just I remember that just being like man dude that's like it's got to be one of the strongest Pokemon I've had which now I mean obviously it's a lot easier to get Pokemon up to like level 100 and all that kind of stuff but back in the day it it took me it was years before I had another Pokemon that was anywhere near the 80s again because so I had spent a lot more time on that training him than I normally do. So that's one of my good early gaming memories too.

Hardware Loved and Lost

SPEAKER_02

Yeah I would that's that's a great one. I um think that having the PS1 I I had access to so many like really cool games and I just um I never played a lot of them that I should like I'd go to the store like it was EB games at the time before they shut down North America or I guess just in the US like you know I'd have the option for something cool like Metal Gear Solid or like I don't know I think I think Persona was Western I like stuff like JRPG's Final Fantasy VII and I'm like hey could I get this Bob the Builder game? I'm like man why did I get some of these games I had this like cart racer game that was like I think it was just called like cart racing or something and there's this cactus guy that looks like a like a cowboy I had Gex. Have you heard of Gex? From you? Yeah not from anybody cracking gecko that makes very untimely references about like specific figures and references from like the 70s through 90s. And of course like I don't understand what he's talking about but I'm playing this and he's like yeah don't drink the tap water at Jerry Garcia's and I'm like what is he talking about? But it's in like this really whimsical format. And I remember I always used I had this it was like a crystal green it was almost blue um PlayStation 1 controller and it had like gray joysticks and triggers on it and my dad would always play the uh the gray controller and one time we had a yard sale and ended up selling the PS1 because I didn't know it still worked. It had the issue where the power cord kind of like kinked and so it wouldn't turn on. And um I kept all the games but we sold my green controller by accident. And um I I kept the gray controller. But yeah I was like ah that was like my first moment where I was like man I should have kept this gaming thing. Because like anytime I've ever gotten rid of a game I've regretted it. So I just kind of keep every gaming thing I have.

SPEAKER_01

I don't trade or sell them Oh yeah well I learned my lesson at a young age. Yeah there's a lot of things I wish I had kept for sure um you know you could go back to like even computer games I mean I played the backyard sports games like to the point of it being absurd.

SPEAKER_02

I played uh jump start first grade I played that yes it was phenomenal I mean my sister still talk about that I would play that game right now uh I remember one of my friends had one of the putt-putt games the car the old car yeah yeah the wool car I hated that I went over to his house and I was like this game You went to Putt Putt's house yeah I went to his house you didn't know this but my dad's the CEO of computers so but um Bill Microsoft so those are some really there were a lot of good computer games back in the day you know what like you'd go to the library and they'd have these like really whimsical machines that are like decorated or like have have like a crazy shaped monitor or like a fun little mouse and then they'd have all the games loaded up there for you already. I'm like oh man I'm set I don't I don't even have to read a book here.

SPEAKER_01

And like you know parents would like take us there out of courtesy and be like hey can we do we we can do this kind of thing at home you have games at home but yeah that was always well games were very whimsical you know yeah for kids back then and and like you said about the green controller makes me think of so I had one of the systems I had was a Sega Dreamcast which I got a like clear black controller for that and of course I always wanted to have that but the the one that I was like most proud of my whole life was I got the Game Boy Advance platinum edition. Dude I thought that I was hot stuff after getting that and that it was the coolest thing I ever owned. It was like oh I have the platinum edition Game Boy and I don't know what happened to it. We probably like sold it at a yard sale or something. And now it's like okay well if I wanted the platinum one you know it'd probably be like really expensive now or something but yeah dude I bought way after the fact because I didn't have a Nintendo 64 like when it was out I got one way after and I got the green one with the green control dude you got the jungle green one that was no and I wouldn't say really I think it was like 20 bucks dude that is I I was at a friend's house and he had that one and it caught on fire. Dude it started let's I got it from it might have been EB games. What was the thing that was in Hollywood video for a while oh that was just like a Hollywood video had their own store.

SPEAKER_02

Like I know what you're talking about it was that separate part of the store it was still owned by them yeah that's where I got a bunch of PS2 games I I begged my parents to take me to get the Mega Man uh collection for the PS2 and they're like you have the Mega Man X collection and I'm like or no it was the opposite I had the Mega Man collection they were like you have that you don't need this other one. This is the same thing you're just like you just get really mad about the games because I sucked at those games they're they're really difficult games and so I would I would play them and I'd quit them or I'd get really mad while I'm playing it. I never got like super angry or anything but I'd get really upset that I'd keep losing and they're like you don't even like these games why do you want this one but I like really liked that series so dude that that place was awesome. I think I bought their copy of Battlefront 1 and 2 whenever Hollywood video closed it was really cool.

SPEAKER_01

I I got a lot of cool games that I wish I had kept all the stuff I had bought from there. I mean they had some really good stuff in there did you get anything cool when Blockbuster Hollywood video and all that close I don't think so I don't think I even went in there that's so sad.

Gold and Silver: Young Nathan's Battle With Ash?

SPEAKER_02

I got so many PS2 games I got like Indiana Jones Savage Star Wars Bounty Hunter bunch of other stuff they had Pokemon Mystery Dungeon I somehow have a case to it and just lost it.

Will's First Pokémon Games

SPEAKER_01

It's in the void somewhere dude I think it was Explorers of Time one of the DS ones oh well before I forget to say this about in our I'll say one more Pokemon thing. Okay another super awesome gaming memory for me as a kid yeah Pokemon okay Pokemon I I get confused about which one I had first I think I had Pokemon gold before crystal or silver but I I getting okay so just going back to Kanto after you win the Elite Four is cool enough but when I went to Battle Red as a child I mean that like sticks with you as so intense and I was one of those kids and I saw somebody make a video about this the it was like a YouTube short or something the other day and I totally agreed with it. So as a kid and I was super into the anime I thought red was Ash and it made sense because he had a Blastoise a Charizard a Venusaur a lapros and a level 81 Pikachu. So obviously Ash is loosely based on red but as a kid I didn't know that. So I was like I am battling Ash and I thought it was like the big now why Ash had an espion that didn't matter to me but you know I was like this is the most intense thing I've ever done I have to beat my hero you know and beat Pikachu and it was tough yeah it especially when you're first doing it because your Pokemon are not level eight right at that point. And Gold and Silver is one of those games which several of the Pokemon games are like this that it's hard to get your Pokemon really level up that high. And so you could do that thing I think it was in Viridian City where once a day you could battle these trainers who had really high level Pokemon but you could only do it once a day. And now as an older when I got to be an adult and went back and played it what I figured out was you can't do this in heart gold soul silver because the moveset has changed but I figured out with Typhlosion in the old games you could have like flamethrower thunder punch earthquake and I can't remember what the fourth move that I used was but you could literally make Typhlosion strong against like every possible typing and so oh sorry I'm Bruce wasn't ZA I just gave him like every type of move under the sun and he was just invincible well like so like in that game it'd be like oh a rock type oh not a problem I have earthquake oh a water type I have thunder punch you know and yeah so like you could just like wipe out red with a typhlosion and so I mean it's a little bit cheap which is probably why they changed his the moves that he can learn but Typhlosion but anyway so we could always make these Pokemon I got one more thing to say about Pokemon actually.

SPEAKER_02

Oh yeah go ahead dude so um when I was in middle school I think um I traded someone for a copy of Pokemon Crystal and it it looked like it had been beat up. Like this I mean the the cartridge was good and it played fine um but it had like a piece of graphite like punched into it or something on the label and like it was it was just kind of like janky you know and I um I had a a DS light. This was when the the you're you're gonna be like oh he's a baby over here. This was when the uh 3DS had just come out this was like 2012 2013 like right at right at that point and everyone I knew was playing Pokemon X and Y and I didn't have it yet. So I had the DS with Heart Gold and Soul Silver. I actually just played I I didn't play the games when I was younger I always like watched the show and I was like super into the show and the cards and I didn't even know they're war games until like later on for some reason. I don't know how I missed it but like I didn't even have a DS until like the end of the DS generation. So I get this copy of Pokemon Crystal I'm like I have the Game Boy Advance port on the DS so I'm like oh I've been able to play Game Boy Advance games I bet I could play this and I couldn't and then someone that I knew had a friend who had an action replay Game Boy color um cart and they were like yeah this is an adapter so you can play this they tricked me they were like said this with full confidence they were like this is this is definitely what you're gonna use so I was like looking for like how to do like I I couldn't look anything up for this because like you couldn't find anything about it. And um yeah I I was just like I felt so silly because later on I got a Game Boy color from someone and just played the game and I was like man I wasted so much time on this but it's really cool that I I think I traded the person like a Lego minifigure like a Lego Batman like the default one. Oh wow yeah and then that copy of Pokemon Crystal later I was like I I think I was in high school I was like I'm gonna put some LED lights in it so when you put the cartridge on it'll light up and I um I accidentally soldered the battery and fried the circuit board on it. So I have a dud copy of crystal that I traded the Lego mini figure for. Thing is worth like hundred and you know dollars I could go back and it could have just been the battery but I'm kind of scared to try because I'm yeah it could work just fine but I don't want to I don't want to mess with it. Well and I will say one more thing about Pokemon there's always one more thing about Pokemon.

Pokémon Go's Early Days and Its Impact on Perception of Pokémon

SPEAKER_01

It's it's yeah it's not really what you would think of as typical gaming but one of my favorite gaming memories was that first year or so that Pokemon Go was out and you and me and all these guys would go to the riverfront like every night of of the summer and I remember like okay so I was home from college for the summer and thankfully I didn't have to work but I would like be up at night and I remember distinctly seeing there's a bulbasaur down the street. And so this was early on and you thought that was like a huge deal. And and so I went walking down the street at like one o'clock in the morning everyone was doing it like it was normal. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02

And like I mean it was just so much fun and it kind of and it's weird to see how everyone's like been gated since then like no one like it's weird if you go outside now. But like during that time it didn't even matter. Like if people were out at 1 a.m it wasn't creepy or weird for some reason like everyone was like oh yeah they're on their phone they're just probably playing Pokemon.

SPEAKER_01

They're just playing Pokemon go. So people could just like have fun yeah and like it I thought it was fun because though like I was in that age group where from like I don't know so I quit playing Pokemon after Gen 3 and quit watching it. Yeah that's where I quit watching the show gen right when Gen 4 came out I was like preteen or something and so you're like oh I can't I can't like Pokemon it's not cool or whatever. And so then as you're getting into high school and college everyone's starting to rediscover the old games and you're like oh I like Pokemon again. But once Pokemon Go came out it was like oh everybody likes Pokemon now. So it stopped being like super weird for you to go back and like Pokemon again people who never would have played a video game were playing this game. Yeah. Like it was just cool. Um and I remember like you and Mac came to visit me in Kansas City when I was in college there and we were going around and my apartment complex had a bunch of Pokemon we were going around catching Pokemon in Kansas when we drove out to this place kind of in the middle of nowhere because there was an Alakazam and I ran out of pokeyballs because it was super easy to do and so I was trying to level up and I leveled up and then it disappeared. Yeah and stuff like that would happen. Yeah I remember I was with Michael and we would drive through we saw a Raichu and I could not catch it and I was there gave him my phone okay and he caught it for me and I just lost it like hugged him and everything man. And then another time me and him were driving we saw a niterino and we crossed like five or six lanes of really busy traffic to get over there and catch this need. Just to clarify were you driving or were you walking well we were driving and we stopped parked somewhere and got out and walked across the butt and uh I remember another weird one was when I first started playing like the first day a Nido king showed up on my street and so I caught it and it was like CP or whatever 32. Well I didn't know what that meant at the time but I was like bro I caught a Nido king. And so then like I don't think I ever saw a wild again while it's forever for me to find one.

SPEAKER_02

I I know we were talking about the N64 earlier do you remember how one of our uh local churches that we had like upward basketball and stuff

SPEAKER_01

I remember people talking about like they had a lot of stuff to do there, like that, that type of thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I I I loved that game. Um and I I remember specifically like uh any chance that I would get to play it there, I I would want to, because it was like the coolest thing. Like I didn't have the I had the PS2 at this time. I didn't have a Nintendo console until the Wii came out. We got one for the Christm Christmas the Wii came out, we got one. So that was my my first intro into having a Nintendo. Um but like it was always so cool. Like Mario 64 was like it was one of those games where it was like cool and kind of creepy, but not like scary, you know? Like there's just some kind of unknown quantity about it. And there was also there was like a local pediatrician office when I was younger. Like I'd have to go to the doctor, and I didn't make up being sick to go, but when I would go, they had one of those demo machines like McDonald's would have, and it had an N64 in it with Mario, and it had uh I think it yeah, it had a PS1 with Spyro in it, which is really weird. Competing brands, right? Especially right after they split and didn't make the uh um Nintendo PlayStation. They went their own separate ways. So I don't know if they custom made this, but it looked like real, like and I haven't seen that kind of cabinet since. But I I I always loved playing on that machine, and it was always at the Bowser boss fight at the end, like someone had played through this entire game there, so you're just fighting Bowser at the end of the game. And it I don't know. Like Mario 64 had a really interesting vibe that I don't think any other games have really had.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I that's one that I got on that green Nintendo 64, so this is like way after it was actually out. And I I played it a lot. Now I didn't get anywhere close to the end of it because I was not good at video games, but I I uh I did play it a lot. It was it was very interesting. It it just kind of really was intriguing that a lot of games haven't been as interesting, you know.

SPEAKER_02

But yeah. And um and yeah, I d I just it's such a good game. It's just so solid. The camera controls, going back and playing it, the camera controls are horrific. I don't know if you've played it.

SPEAKER_01

And the most it's really not and it makes the sound every time you rotate the camera. Yeah, it could get really annoying.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

There was um another Mario, I guess I guess you could call it Mario. I didn't mean to change the screen.

Mario Kart Double Dash and Nathan's Love of the Gamecube

SPEAKER_02

Let's keep the Mario train going because I also have another Mario thing after this.

SPEAKER_01

Was okay, so Mario Kart Double Dash. Oh, the GameCube. That was on the GameCube, which by the way, I love the GameCube. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_02

One of the worst-selling uh consoles Nintendo ever had.

SPEAKER_01

And I that's so frustrating to me because okay, so it was the amount of games they had.

SPEAKER_02

We didn't have light, crazy games for that system, but neither did the N64.

JRPG On-Ramps And Chocobo Wonders

SPEAKER_01

I'll make a slight detour here and then I'll come right back to Mario. Yeah. But so for example, I was a addict. I was an addict about playing Madden. So this is I was a huge sports game kind of guy. Um, I've played Madden on a lot of different systems and things. The best Madden is on a GameCube by far. It is I liked, I mean, a lot of them, but particularly Madden 07 and Madden 08. The version you get on GameCube to me is way better. It looks better, it's more fun, you have more features on it than what you had on like an Xbox or Xbox 360 or whatever like that. So I I liked a lot of the games on the GameCube better than I've liked them on other systems, and it was the very user-friendly. I felt like the controller was user-friendly. So, anyway, that's my aside about I love the GameCube. But I have some beef with the GameCube that we can get into a later episode, yeah. Old GameCube for sure. Alrighty. But Mario Kart Double Dash. I played the fire out of that game, and that is one of the only games that my sister to this day would still play that game with. Really? That's awesome. If I asked her to. She loves that game, and she never plays video games really. And um she always wanted to go to Peach Beach, the uh the map, and wanted to go there. And and she always she would always want to be baby Mario and baby Luigi, and we would like disagree over it because we both wanted to be them, but she'd be like, Well, I'll only play if you let me be baby Mario and Baby Luigi. So I was like, okay, whatever.

SPEAKER_03

Dude.

SPEAKER_01

But Baby Mario and it was really fun. I liked it a lot. Come on. Yeah, I was usually like Mario and Luigi, and she was usually baby Mario and Luigi, so it was super. Ice blue Yoshi. Dude.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's my that's my guy.

SPEAKER_01

Dude, you know who I really hated on that game? Birdo. Dude, Birdo, Birdo's a dude.

SPEAKER_03

Did you know that?

SPEAKER_01

Are you serious? Yeah, Birto's a dude. Doesn't it? Isn't it like have a bow in its hair? I yeah. I had no idea I thought Birdo. I honestly, okay, so this is how little I know about Mario Lore. I thought Birdo was like Yoshi's girlfriend or something. But evidently Birdo's a dude. Well, I hate Birdo. And like, okay, I Birdo was to me. Birdo's a little gross looking. I don't want to be a little bit more. Yeah, well, what I was to meet hook Steve. I mean, it was like my white whale. I I had this rivalry going with Birdo because it was always like throwing items at me and knocking me out of first place, like all the time. And I'd be like, I hate you.

SPEAKER_02

Did you play Mario Super Sluggers for the Wii? I'dn't I have never baseballed one. There were if you had the Goomba on your team, it would always just like get hit by the ball and be able to walk. So it was like the meta to have it on your team because he was. I don't know why, but all of the AI pitchers would just throw the ball at him.

SPEAKER_01

They just hated the game. I guess so.

Will Finds Megaman

SPEAKER_02

Poor old guy. Man, I so another Nintendo thing. Um, I'll get I think we should do modern stuff, more so. I I know we talked about online gaming, but like the Wii and GameCube and all that, and I think we should talk about another time. Because there's a lot of PS2 stuff I could talk about. I had a PS2 from like the time I was four until like almost high school. So uh there's a there's a lot of PS2 and Xbox 360 memories, but um one Super Nintendo memory, my favorite console, I think. Um so we had a daycare that we would go to after school until our mom was off work and could pick us up. And um at the daycare, they had a Super Nintendo, and notably they had a milk crate full of games. Like they had Super Mario All-Stars, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong Country, um, Super Mario World, and now my favorite game of all time, Mega Man X. So like I had never heard of Mega Man before. I just thought it was some generic thing, and I guess it still kind of is. No one really cares about Mega Man anymore. Um but one of my friends was like, hey, you you know, play uh Mega Man? I was like, oh, what's that? And I see this game, right? And it starts up and it's it's doing the Capcom thing, it's like and then it plays this like guitar riff like powery, just like and there's lightning on the screen. And the way that you control the menu is you scroll up and down, and he's standing to the side of it and like shoots it when you click the start, like on start or something, he clicks the start game and shoots that or something. And one thing that was really unique about this game is it starts out with like an intro stage, and then you can pick whatever stage in whatever order you want to. Like you can play this game however you want, and that's how the Mega Man games are. You play and maybe one power that you get from one boss is strong against another. Um, but like you start out and you're on this like broken highway, and um, and you're just like running and shooting from a blaster on your arm, and the music in this game is so good. It was like, you know, everything up until that point on hardware was like really chiptony, and like I don't know if you experience this a lot, Nathan. I I don't know, like the music was good, but it was like very generic video gamey, but this was like full-on like rock and roll music and like metal music. I was like, how are they doing this in a video game like this? Yeah, no, I totally know what you mean. Man, it was awesome. And like, we would only get like so much time per person to play the game because there's so many kids and they're like, oh, you you can only get this long. But because there's no save files on those games, you have the password system, so we'd be writing down the password on like a piece of paper or something, sharing those around, like, oh, I beat this boss, and I got this password for beating him. And so that was that was something that would be like spread around the school, or like, oh man, if you do this one, you could get this power up and this boss and this boss. So, and you know, we're all in like second and third grade, so none of us are good at this game. So everyone, of course, beat the initial stage, probably, and maybe even um the first stage after, there's like a recommended stage, Chill Penguin. But dude, I I love that game. And Super Mario World, still my favorite Mario game of all time. That game is so good. Donkey Kong Country.

SPEAKER_01

I've actually only played a Super Nintendo one time. You gotta come over here and play Super Nintendo sometime. Yeah. When I played, we were being babysat at one of my sister's friends' house and they had a Super Nintendo and they were NSO. Uh I do.

SPEAKER_02

Do yourself a favor, try Mario World if you never have. It is so good. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I think the vibe of it that I played at their house, but I don't remember.

SPEAKER_02

It it just I I think Mario World really set the vibe for Mario for like a really long time.

SPEAKER_01

I wish I was better at Mario. I'm not very good at that is the only Mario game that I can actually speedrun. Dude. I wish I was just a better gamer. Dude, you're you're a good gamer. I'm only good at like certain things. I'm only good at like certain things that I play thinking man's games like Pokemon and chess. Yeah. Yeah. I saw somebody post a meme today and it was about like if you played a hard Pokemon game and it exposes that you only have average skills and I'm like, that's probably that's probably more how I am.

SPEAKER_02

But I I need to get you hooked on uh JRPGs. I really think that you might enjoy some of them. If you think I wouldn't like would you be open to trying like Final Fantasy VII or something?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's that's like the JRPG that changed the way those games were looked at. Like there were commercials on Toonami for that on Cartoon Network, I remember, where they're like, Oh, this is like the biggest game of all time.

SPEAKER_03

Really good game. Maybe that'll be a review we can do sometime. Or maybe a stream.

Animals in Games, Some Great, Some Not

SPEAKER_02

Because you it might be one of those things where it's like, you know, like some of those old games like Pokemon and stuff, like have puzzle kind of things that aren't supposed to be puzzles, but they're not easy to solve without like knowing or like asking someone about it. So maybe we could maybe we could play that together or something. That'd be good.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you could help me solve the puzzles because I'm done.

SPEAKER_02

You're gonna love it. You there's a mount in the game that instead of horses, they have these things called chocobos. And there are these giant blue chickens, or not blue, yellow chickens, there's blue chocobos too. But there are these giant yellow chickens that they can ride on with a saddle. And there's a there's a like Pokemon catching mechanic with them. You can actually catch them in the wild, and there's a golden one. Whoa, yeah, that's awesome. And in the remakes, there's different versions of the chocoboat based on what region you're in. So like some of them are like brown and can climb mountains, some of them are like blue and can glide. It's a really cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01

I love when a that's like I really like having animals in games and especially like ones you can interact with and stuff. So like some games execute it really well. Yeah, and some games execute it not well at all. Like, for example, one of the things really early on in Fortnite that I was really wanting was uh wolves, velociraptors, uh sharks. Those those things came into the game like I wanted them to, and I was like, oh, this is gonna be fantastic. And they were terrible, and they weren't very helpful, hardly every they always got you found or like you destroyed your car or the bush you're in, would die really easily, and it just really didn't work well at all. And then but then games where you know they were are well executed and they are designed well. I mean, they're really funny. I remember I liked um having the German Shepherd in Ghosts, Call of Duty Ghosts, and Falls.

SPEAKER_02

Do you remember when we were playing Call of Duty Black Ops 4 and we had Nomad and he's he had the dog? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03

Oh dude.

SPEAKER_02

Who needs to be all his all his little punch lines? He had some of the best lines in anything ever. Second to like Kung Fury, maybe.

SPEAKER_01

I feel like you and me picked nomad.

SPEAKER_02

He was so good. You had the mesh mines and you could you could drop unlimited mesh mines until they until they took out the fun. They're like, oh, no one can have mesh mines anymore. You remember that? They they were like limited to like two every like however many minutes after they updated the game.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

There were too much food.

SPEAKER_01

I don't want to be yeah, I don't want to be limited on how many. I want this whole map to be me putting mesh mines everywhere.

SPEAKER_02

Spiderweb, if you will.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And and your dog is like running around getting kills while you have like this spider web edge minds, and you're also like running around with like whatever else just causing havoc.

SPEAKER_01

You would turn that dog loose and you would just watch the kills start racking up on your I mean it was it was insane. I mean That game was actually pretty good.

SPEAKER_02

People hated on the time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean his name is Cupcake. Just like yeah, Cupcake.

SPEAKER_02

No, that was Princess the Pitbull.

SPEAKER_01

I was talking about I won't get into the whole spiel, but I was talking about this pit bull that showed up at the dog park the other day, and I told him it its name was Tank, which was fitting because it was about the size of the big thing.

SPEAKER_02

He looked like a homunculoid.

Outriders and Games that Release Before They're Ready

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it it literally looked like a mutant. I told him if you've ever watched the 2003 Hulk movie, which at the time I thought was horrific. I haven't watched it. Have you played the game? But I have not. But it was like the dog, it looked like the dogs from that. I mean, I told him the the head on this dog was like the size of a watermelon. I mean, I I do not understand having a dog like that at a dog park where there's like little dogs, but whatever. I digress back to video games. Yes, yes, yeah. Um but yeah. So as far as like modern games, I mean, I don't feel like there's been a ton of games in the last several years that I've really loved, other than like Pokemon games and stuff, but I haven't really played a lot of games. Oh, here's one I want to talk about that uh isn't like a good gaming memory. I mean, talk about I told you the other day, so me and one of our friends that I've mentioned on here, when Outriders came out, we were like so excited for it. It's a co-op superhero game. It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna have superpowers. And I actually liked the gameplay of it and the superpower stuff were pretty was pretty cool, and we were enjoying playing it together. The problem was the game was borderline unplayable because of the connecting to your friend and voice chat, which there was no voice chat. They launched the game like that. There was no voice chat. So yeah, and it was no voice chat.

SPEAKER_02

So, like me and him. Their focus was cross-play with no voice chat.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. So, like he he's playing on PlayStation at the time, probably. I'm playing on Xbox, and we're like trying to do Discord through my computer or my phone or like talking on the phone or whatever, because there's no voice chat, and it was so hard to get put in the game together, even on like your campaign thing, like we couldn't even finish playing it because it was so hard for us to get loaded in together, and so it was just like we just quit playing it. So that's like one of those games there's like this could have been fun, but it's total bugs. And like I said, I liked the superpowers things and stuff, but it was just like the game wasn't ready.

SPEAKER_02

The game wasn't ready when they launched it, and that could be an episode we do as uh games that weren't ready yet that were released. Which we could name several, several, especially recently. Oh yeah. Yeah, let's do that sometime.

SPEAKER_03

There's so much pressure to put it out.

SPEAKER_02

Games games that weren't ready yet, or maybe even games that um society wasn't ready for yet.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Metal Gear Solid 2.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know that society was ready for Pong.

SPEAKER_02

Oh man. Have you seen where someone taught like a like an uh what is it, like a single-cell organism how to play it? Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01

Like a goldfish or something, which is not a single-celled organism, I know, but like I think I saw something about like a goldfish learning how to do it.

SPEAKER_02

That's awesome. Do you remember that goldfish that like committed fraud? No. Yeah, so so someone was like streaming with a goldfish. I I'll I'll tell you about this later. But the long story short is they somehow activated like the shop because they had it set up to a controller or a mouse or something, and the goldfish accidentally moved in a place that purchased a game using the person's credit card that was on. Oh wow. Credit card fraud.

SPEAKER_03

By a goldfish. They sent him to prison. That's so sad.

SPEAKER_02

His lifetime, it was a life sentence. Which is very short. Like five days. Okay, so we'll have to do an episode two of this, I think. This was this was something I like talking about. And a lot of good stuff from this.

SPEAKER_01

One thing I want to talk about, I want to do an episode on, is the Sega Dreamcast and what some of my favorite games were from Jet Set Radio, dude.

SPEAKER_03

Crazy Taxi. Rip, dude. Uh I'll put you on take Jet Set Radio sometime.

Gaming Memories With Our Dads

SPEAKER_01

One of my favorite games won the GameCube was as far as gaming memories goes, is again, I didn't have any kind of online, so it was just me and my dad playing uh I'm I'm pretty sure it was called Sarge's War, and you were just these two army men. And you could like blow arms and legs off and stuff and not die because you're army men. And like I remember I would always beat him, and there was this one particular game where he he was doing better than me. It was like a deathmatch thing, but there's just one of you. And so he had blown like most of my limbs off of my character.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I just like waddle up to him, and I was really good with using the grenades in the game. And so I like waddle up to him and just drop a grenade and start like trying to waddle away. And he somehow I don't know if he didn't see the grenade. You could hear them drop, so I don't know. Or he couldn't get away from it or whatever, but I blew him up and still won with the grenade. And so it was just like a Really funny way to play the game of like because they're just toys, you know, and so like it was a really fun game to play.

SPEAKER_02

But dude, next time I want to get into some some PS2 gaming memories I have, kind of parallel your dreamcast discussion. Because I I didn't have a dreamcast, but I loved some of those games later on. But the PS2, I think like a lot of the love I have for playing games is because I played them with my dad growing up, and he he had the PS1 and then he got the PS2 for us, and I think he he he took me to GameStop to trade-in games for uh like Halo, like a mature rated game when I probably wasn't supposed to have it in like middle school, and like uh like in the Wii era, um there was a Sims game and he brought it home. He's like, Oh yeah, I I got this game for you guys, uh, so you and your sister can play it, and I just want to watch you guys play it. Because he he would get kind of nauseous playing games, but like, yeah, I have a lot of good memories like that. Like I had a parallel memory to that where like we had the MySems game, but then later on when the Switch came out, um I didn't have it when it came out, but Animal Crossing during the pandemic, I was like, um, man, I this game looks really cool. And it it was basically just like My Sims, kind of. And um my dad's like, oh yeah, this is like the My Sims game you guys had. Well, I I actually got it for you guys so that you guys could play it, and he would watch us play it in the living room uh during the pandemic when we were home a lot, so that was cool.

Gaming Can Be a Way to Build Memories With Loved Ones

SPEAKER_01

And that's that's such a cool memory. Like, I mean, I think what people miss about a lot of these things are, you know, I see which it's just you know online clickbaity type stuff, but like this this thing from a lot of I'm not trying to make it a gender thing, but uh from a lot of women who like hate gaming and hate men who game. And you know, I I saw one influencer who's I think in the political realm, so I don't know why she was even talking about this, but talking about a guy who video games is a bigger red flag than like a guy who's into some like super weird hobbies like doing uh Taxes. Taxidermy was one of them. So it's like like I taxidermy's fine, like if you you're a hunter and you want to do some taxidermy, but like we're talking about like I had a teacher that was like perfectly movie type during our class.

SPEAKER_02

Like he was never teaching us. He was like on the phone, he's like, Yeah, how can I get like five of these like squirrels stuffed and like you're telling me that is a bigger turn-off, bigger red flag?

SPEAKER_01

Video gaming is is worse than that. And so, like, but this idea that people some of these people just think video gaming is just like detestable. And what people don't understand about it is it's a thing you do together. And like, whether you're playing together or playing online, you're watching a friend, you're watching some of like you said, some of our best memories are either with our parents watching us or playing with us or playing with friends or watching our friends play.

SPEAKER_02

I think it's also one of those things where like people don't understand things and they think it's a weird thing. Like, I know this is also a nerd thing, but like comic book stuff was like really weird, right? Until the Marvel movies were coming out, or like exactly anime was not mainstream until recently. Like you were a weirdo if you watched any of that stuff. Like Naruto on Tunami, people would be like, eh, I don't know. This guy's probably smelly.

SPEAKER_01

This guy's a freak, you know, a freak. And there's still, I'm still seeing that some from people. People that I even agree with on other topics will be like talking about video games or or anime or comics being like Satan. And I mean, yeah, sure, some of it out there is not great, but generally speaking, there's nothing wrong with, you know, video games and comic books. They're they're bringing people together and like I mean, like, look what we're doing right now. And like, instead of like bashing, instead of b bashing your boyfriend or date or husband or whatever, like, how about you sit in the room with him and read your book while he plays his video game or something?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you don't have to do the same thing at the same time. You can just like do things together without doing the same thing together.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I don't understand why people think they have to like something for it to be okay for other people to like it.

SPEAKER_02

I think it's kind of like the same thing. I know we're getting way off topic, but like movies lately. It's like if you don't like it, everyone else has to not like it. Or if you don't want to buy something, everyone else is weird for buying it. And it's like I I don't know. We'll we'll talk about that some other time too, especially with the new Pokemon uh re-releases coming out on the eShop.

SPEAKER_03

Um that'd be definitely why we talk about that.

Wrap Up and Coming Soon

SPEAKER_02

So as we wrap up our second episode of the show, um some of our our upcoming stuff. So right now we have a first episode that you should check out. Um what will we talk about? The state of Pokemon.

SPEAKER_01

State of Pokemon.

SPEAKER_02

Um and if you'd believe it, I think we both thought it was pretty good. The state of Pokemon on the episode. The episode could have been. That's up to interpretation. Um and then we have a review out for Pokemon Legends CA. Probably one of the most in-depth reviews you'll ever see of this game. We didn't cover the DLC, but we kind of mentioned it.

SPEAKER_01

Um great.

SPEAKER_02

Full of spoilers review. So um be warned. If you were never gonna play it, you might also like this, because we I mean we we gave it a fair it wasn't all one-sided. We definitely did give a fair review for this game. Um and I'd like I I think I'd like to do more of these reviews in the future, maybe for games or um movies. And maybe we can even stream a game sometime and uh review it as a video or something. Um separate from the stream. But yeah, next episode, um talk about Star Wars, I think. We don't have a topic yet.

SPEAKER_01

We were looking at maybe semi uh, you know, talking about what our favorite Star Wars movies were and and things like that.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Right. And sometime in the future, I think uh if you still want to do that, the Gundam review for the original series of movies where they've compiled the show. I wouldn't mind doing that sometime in March, maybe. Expect that to come out. But in the meantime, we'll have a good variety. It's not all gonna be Pokemon or whatever. We'll have we'll have different things. We might have some people on here too. So stay tuned for that.

SPEAKER_01

We might, you know, talk about, okay, well, what are you watching right now? What are you reading right now? And yeah. I've actually I don't even know how to read. Yeah, yeah. I won't get into it on this episode, but like I had been pretty well out of comic books for a long time, and I've recently picked up one of the one of the Power Rangers series, and I'm really enjoying it. So like we gotta talk about a large swath of very interesting different, you know, comics that he could talk about on here. So dude.

SPEAKER_02

We're gonna we're gonna have to talk about that. Yeah. So yeah, next uh next Tuesday, expect a Star Wars related episode. And then the following Tuesday, may look at uh some kind of review or another discussion on uh video games. We'll uh see you guys later. Thank you for listening, and if you like this, just make sure to share it with people. Uh that way we can get some good viewership. See ya around.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks guys. See ya.