Proof & Pixels
Jeff and Mo discuss two of their favorite things, bourbon and video games. In each episode they'll give their thoughts on a bourbon (picked alphabetically) and each bring a video game to pair with it.
Proof & Pixels
Ep 1: 1792, 60, 64th
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Welcome to the first episode of a new podcast where two friends are talking about a couple of things they love, bourbon and video games. We'll select some of each to talk about but with a caveat, we'll be doing it in alphabetical order.
In our inaugural episode we're starting with numbers because why not?
We'll be tasting 1792 Small Batch bourbon. For video games Mo is bringing 60 Parsecs and Jeff is bringing 64th Street: A Detective Story.
Other games discussed in this episode:
Rematch
In The Hunt
Dungeon Clawler
19XX: The War Against Destiny
Email:
proofandpixelspod@gmail.com
Mo:
Bluesky
Artwork Credit: Potomax
Intro/Who We Are
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Proof and Pixels, the podcast celebrating our love for bourbon and video games. My name is Jeff, and with me is my co-host, Mo. Mo, how you doing, man? Hey, Jeff. I'm doing fine. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02How I do how do you do?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I'm doing great. I'm doing great, man. I'm excited to get this thing started. So this is our first, our inaugural episode. This is going to be an awesome new podcast for everybody where we're going to be talking about two things that we love. We obviously are uh bourbon is a big one that we both share, and video games, of course, because we're both pretty big video gamers. And uh yeah, it's gonna be fun just discussing these uh these two things. But uh for those of you who don't know me, my name is Jeff. Um on the internet I am known as Mook, and I've got a few podcasts out there. Uh well, I've got one other podcast out there, I guess there's gonna be two now. If you are familiar with the Polymedia uh podcast network, I do a podcast on there called Split Up, which is a horror movie themed podcast with my buddy Dylan. Um, and I am part of that community. You know, yeah, I'm always on the internet beating video games and doing those kind of things. But um, what about what about you, Mo uh Mo? How why don't you tell us a little bit of uh maybe your interests and who you are, and then um yeah, we can talk about why we're doing this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm glad to do that. Um so my name is Moritz, uh, but that's German. Um pretty pretty uh difficult for the most English-speaking people, so just call me Mo or Mr. Mo, like you can find me on the internet. I'm not experienced in doing podcasts. Uh, this is my first time. Thank you, Mook, uh, for having me. Uh I said Mook, Jeff. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Either one's fine with me. I I I most people call me Mook on the other podcasts too, so I have absolutely no problem with that.
SPEAKER_02We both know each other from from the Discord. You already named it the Polymedia Discord since a few years. But um yeah, I had the pleasure to meet you in person uh in July this year. We met in in Denver, and you took me to a special place I've never been before, and that's I don't I can't remember the name of the store, but it was a big liquor store.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. So it's called they're called Total Wine and More. Um, if you're from the states, you'll know that like certain states have different laws on alcohol and alcohol distribution. So states like Colorado, where we met up, and like the state I'm from, um a few states, there's definitely a lot more lax with distribution laws. So for those types of states, we have those we have like more superstore liquor stores called, which is what Total Mine is. It's like a basically like a like a Walmart for liquor, pretty much. Um their selection's great. I think that's that was like the main reason why I wanted to take you there, is because like compared to a like a general liquor store in America, like they definitely their variety is almost unmatched, especially when it comes to things like bourbon and scotch and things like that. Like they they definitely being that bourbon is an Americ a very heavily American thing, like their their selection on bourbon is unreal.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I know similar places, but I've never been anywhere where I saw uh this much bourbon. This I don't know how much feet it had, very long shelf of bourbon. Yeah. And yeah, you were you were you wanted uh to show me some some good bourbon, and um you asked me which of those we should take and or which I would like to taste, and I said, yeah, every one of them.
SPEAKER_01Every one of them, yeah, yeah. So we ended up picking up a few bottles of different things, but I'm glad we landed on one that you that you ended up liking. I was I was very happy when you we you tasted them all, and it seemed like one or two of them you were like, yeah, that's not bad. It's uh wasn't impressive though, but then you finally found one that you were really into. I was very happy about that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we we chose two. I I can't remember the the first one, I think something with the O, I don't know. And the second one, maybe that's spoiler alert, but um the redemption was really great. And yeah, that was that was a nice experience for me. And yeah, I since I'm already said I'm from Germany, there Bourbon isn't not very popular here. I think it's the biggest brands uh everyone knows is Jim Beam and Jake Daniels. I mean, everyone can drink what they like, but I don't like these two brands. Oh okay. But uh coming from drinking Scotch a lot and also other whiskies from from Japan or from Scandinavia by now or already also some Germans became good. I already tasted a few bourbons and I and I like them. Yeah, so it was a very special experience to stand in front of the shelf with you. Yeah. So when I came back to Germany, I thought I really want to taste a lot of bourbon, but I don't know how to approach it. So why not take uh an American friend and have a podcast about bourbon once a month do it alphabetically this time the pilot episode uh will be a numbered one to start off, but we are planning to do it monthly, go through the alphabet and not only bourbon, but also each one of us brings one game to the show alphabetically ordered.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I'm really looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, this should be this is gonna be fun. I think I love the concept. I think when you brought that that idea to me, I think that was I really like the idea of one, the alphabetical thing is great because I I think it kind of allows us to really choose some, you know, as we go through the we'll be going on through the alphabet, I think we'll be able to definitely try some things that we've never had. It brings variety, but also because it's like a letter like the obviously you're you're restricted to just that section, so like it brings in that ability to like try some new things, and especially with the gaming as well. I mean, I I the the fact that we're matching with the video games being in the same category as like the same letter, for instance, as I think is gonna be really cool because it's it's gonna bring allow us to bring a couple games to the table that maybe people haven't played, or you know, it might even like have us be playing some new games that we've never tried before, or even like you know, there's a good possibility that either one of us brings games that the other one hasn't played before, and it's like you know, that's that's always good if you're uh expanding someone's uh knowledge on things and uh their catalog uh is gonna be it's gonna be fun.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, looking forward to it. And what I did is looking in my backlog. It's very big. I mean I think you have the same issue. Definitely, yes. So we can work on that too. Yeah. We'll see. Maybe I won't have to buy any games because I have enough that I didn't play that are already in my library.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think um this will definitely it'll be a good way for us to clear some backlogs or even because I mean I could foresee maybe a game or two here and there being like something where it's like it's if it's something that I absolutely love, then I'm like, this is an opportunity to talk about a game that I am completely in love with, I'm bringing that to the table. I just have to. But I think for the most part, it's gonna be more of a let me try some new things and uh talk about something that you know that I wouldn't have normally played other had we not been doing this.
SPEAKER_02Me too.
SPEAKER_01So that's pretty much the plan for the podcast. Uh uh, like we said, it's gonna be a monthly podcast. We'll uh go through we're gonna go through alphabet. We're starting with a number today, and then we'll go into the alphabet pretty much in alphabetical order, a game and uh games and a bourbon that all meet that criteria, and we'll be uh yeah, we'll be having some discussions on both. So
The Bourbon
SPEAKER_01let's go ahead and um kick it off and get into our bourbon that we're gonna be talking about today. So uh, like Mo said, we are starting with a number um to kick this thing off. So our bourbon that we're bringing today is 1792, and that's gonna be 1792 of the small batch variety. This is a bourbon produced by the Sazerac Company. Um, and I would imagine most people should be. If you're familiar with bourbons and rise, you should be familiar with Sazerac. But this is the parent company Sazerac that owns this distillery that is distilled by uh Barton 1792 distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky. From what I've seen on their history for this specific bourbon, they started producing this in 2002. So it's relatively new, I think, when you especially when you're talking in the realm of bourbons. That I mean, like, yeah, a lot of new brands and new new types of bourbons pop up, and or alcohols in general pop up all the time. But you know, getting it like breaking into the Kentucky Strait bourbon market, usually you're always talking about like tradition and a lot of old companies that have been around forever that people trust and stuff, which these are run. This is run by an older by a company that's been around, been in the game for a while. But I don't know, this was an interesting one. So this this pick was uh your pick um that you brought to the table, and um I was pleasantly surprised because I've I've never had this one, but yeah, this uh so this one is a let me see, it is a 93.7 proof, I believe is what you said. Exactly. Yeah, and it is uh 46.85% um APV alcohol by volume. I guess right off the bat for me, like one of the things I noticed because obviously I've you know been trying it before we came to the podcast, uh, so I can get a feel for it. I really, really liked how smooth this one is. I don't know how you how you feel about it, but like it's like almost more of like a subtle taste to it, and I really appreciated that about it. Like it doesn't it wasn't like a full for me, it wasn't like a full-on like punch you in the mouth type taste. It was a lot smoother. It was like very almost relaxing, I think.
SPEAKER_02Okay. I have a slightly different perspective.
SPEAKER_00Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02But I wanted to get a step back, um, because you talked about tradition. I mean uh it wants to be or or it wants to um look like a traditional bourbon, I guess, because um named it 1792, the founding not the founding, the the year uh Kentucky became a state. Yes, yes, 1792, yes, yeah. So it goes back to uh the starting of um Kentucky as itself part of the US. Yeah. And the the bottle looks also looks very like old fashioned. Yes. To me, at least. Is it is it old fashioned? I don't know. But the gold um how is it called? Top? Oh yeah. Yeah, the top or whatever on it, yeah. Yeah. The form of the the bottle is like a cognac bottle to me. So it looks like an old, very traditional bourbon to me. Yeah. So when you said it's a very young, I was surprised.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It is it is surprising, and I I definitely would agree with that that the bottle kind of has like a more of an older style. Like you would think looking at the bottle that this stuff has been around like forever, and it's like one of those things that they kept a tradition of their bottle design throughout the years, but it doesn't seem to be the case. But that's obviously you can tell that's what they were going for. Because yeah, I I completely agree that the bottle design is like almost like a traditional cognac or something. Yeah, it definitely feels like it's something on the shelf of your grandfather's yeah, exactly. It has like a big rep uh a very old reputation type bourbon. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So they mimic tradition at least pretty effectively.
SPEAKER_01They seem to at least, yeah. Because it it does. It's yeah, it's surprising how much you look at it and be like, oh, that must be like one of those ones that's been around forever. But uh yeah, that's that definitely makes sense.
SPEAKER_02But to the taste, well, the first impression you had, I said mine was slightly different because um I try to I'm not a bourbon connoisseur, not um expert, just uh I like to drink it, you know. Yeah. I try to approach it professionally by uh sniffing on it. Um and the nose to me was like a little bit of fruit and caramel. And um when I tasted it, it was punchy to me.
SPEAKER_01You think so?
SPEAKER_02I thought it's uh my first thought was oh alcohol and and like spicy.
SPEAKER_01I could see that, yes. So the spiciness I do get out of it. And I I think like I I guess I understand where you're coming from there. I understand that, but for me, for some reason, like I think as like the drink as a whole. So like you take a drink of it, and I definitely get the spiciness right off the bat, a little bit of that caramel note to it. I I definitely get all that, and like fruit, a little bit of fruits in there, like it makes that all make completely make sense to me. I I think it's just maybe like it's I don't know how to describe that, but it for me it feels like more of a smoother flavor, though, all those things combined, especially like when you go front to back from like the initial drink to drinking it down and everything, like it just yeah, it maybe it's a finish that to me that feels smoother. You know, some bourbons, you you have it, you know, you take a few sips of a bourbon of sub bourbons and like just drinking it down like gives you a little burn on the throat. It gives you it it it can have a little bit harsher of a taste, but for me this felt smoother. Like going down, it was it's almost like it doesn't, it doesn't really the have the like the burn that some bourbons can have going down the throat. Yeah, it just and I would say it's an easy drinker, it's a good sipper too. I think this is I think this is a prime bourbon for sipping because it just it has the right balance of uh of a taste that you can just really sit and enjoy it and not just throw it back.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for the for the proof it has I was a little pro surprised at first because I thought it was punchy, but I mean with every bourbon or scotch you drink, the first sip is maybe stronger than the second. Because if you have the warmth, it's very warm and um it stays warm in your throat. And when this warmth is there and you take the second sip, it's it it's getting smoother and you taste the oak a little bit more. Yeah, I think. I didn't taste the f the fruity fruitness fruitiness uh I smelled, I didn't taste it very much. For me it was yeah, very oaky and caramel, I would say.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But um very enjoyable, and I shared it with a friend, and he's not a bourbon lover, he's more into scotch, but he really liked it too, because it's not very complex, but many bourbon disappear very fast. Yes. Um, from your mouth, and this one doesn't. It's not very long, but it it stays like a minute or something. Yeah, I think so too. You have still a bit of on your tongue, and yeah, it's a good taste.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I d I would agree with that that it does stay with you a bit. I think for me, aroma-wise, I do definitely get like the oak or the cask or something, I can really like get a hint of that, and when I like in that initial smell, and then maybe some caramel note. Also on the taste, I'm getting I'm definitely getting the caramel like you described. I think that's probably like the strongest note I'm getting as far as taste-wise from it than anything else. Um, but I definitely like that. I I do like something that has a bit of that caramelly like note note to it. So I don't know, maybe that that might contribute. Because that to me, that flavor is more of a smoother flavor. Like for my palate, something that has like more of a caramel note to it will like usually come off as being like a smoother taste to me, maybe I guess, just because like it almost reminds me of like sweet. So it I definitely think that it's the smoothness that I'm getting from it, like comes more on the finish than up than up front. Yeah, I can I can relate, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I said it's punchy, but uh that's not uh nothing uh negative for me. It can taste uh a little bit stronger. I I like it if the alcohol or the proof is is high. So okay, yeah. I I can absolutely enjoy that, but sometimes all my my taste sensors in my mouth have to uh adapt to it, you know, for like one or two sips, and then it unfolds its its full taste for me. Yeah. I don't know how you drink uh Bourbon, but uh do you take the first sip and let it go through your whole mouth and just drink it?
SPEAKER_01No, I I mean I guess it depends on what it is. Something like this, so like I think it's when I'm doing a sipper like this, or something that I'm you know, pour a glass of and just want to kind of enjoy. I'll usually kind of let get a couple sips in and let it I'll I'll take those in and kind of let them wash over me and you know see how I feel about it, and then kind of really get into it to drinking it. But I I kind of I am the same way where like it a couple sips in, then I can adjust to it to its flavors, and then like third or fourth sip, I'm really starting to like understand it itself, like the flavor of it and what I like about it. So I so I drink a little bit of everything. Like I I I I definitely will drink, you know, a little bit of everything as far as alcohol is concerned. I gravitate towards bourbon, so but I do also enjoy mixed drinks a lot. So like I I can sit and have a glass of bourbon and enjoy it, but I usually am prone to like making like a Manhattan or like an old fashioned or something like that, especially if I just want to like end of the week Friday, I want to chill the chill out, sit down, have a drink. That usually I will gravitate more towards like making make myself an old fashioned or something. But I have been known to you know just sit and have a glass of something straight and just uh you know, just enjoy it. When I would just have a glass of something to enjoy, it would usually be more like a scotch or a brandy. But I think of over the last few years I've gotten a lot more into like bourbon, drinking bourbon straight. Because it used to be years ago that I would just I would I could drink bourbon anyway, like shots or uh in mixed drinks or something, but mixed drinks is always like my favorite way to enjoy it. But I definitely have been like appreciating bourbon a lot more in these last few years and trying to uh drink it more on its own just to really get a good sense of it, I guess, of whatever one I'm enjoying.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I saw your your drinks on on the Discord.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, yeah. I'm too lazy for that.
SPEAKER_02I'm the most uh mixing I do is gin and tonic, and that's it.
SPEAKER_00Oh okay.
SPEAKER_02So I'm also straight bourbon or just scotch.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, yeah. I think for a few years, like my wife and I both enjoy alcohol, so like usually like the weekend is our time to like finally have a drink. I think I just more like the it kind of creates like a social aspect of it, I guess, like being able to make a mixed drink, because it's like something fun to do with it. So it's kind of always the reason why we always make mixed drinks, usually. But it looks good. I would drink with you. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_02I'm too lazy to do it for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I enjoy making cocktails too. Like my wife, she'll make a cocktail, but she's not it's not like she's kind of the same way that she's like that's not her choice, that she would rather just drink it straight if she was having to pour it herself. So it's like I I I think because I am more of the instigator, I'm like, well, I'll make them, don't worry about it. I'll just make I'll make something out of it. Let's make a cocktail. Um, so that's I think that's where we got into the move into the groove of doing that kind of thing. But I think these last couple years, you know, just with life, you know, having a child and uh being you know, being being parents, having full-time jobs, being you know, eventually wife's life starts to wear down on you sometimes, and you're just like, you know what, just pour me something straight. That's all I need is something straight. I don't I don't I don't have the time for a cocktail right now. I just want to relax. So I've been definitely doing a lot more just drinking things straight lately.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like me. Yeah. Also kids and no time for that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But but um I will uh remind you uh when or if I am becoming next year uh also to the Polycon, you know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Let's let's mix some drinks. Definitely, yes. Your favorite drinks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can definitely we we would have to uh yeah, we can make a day make uh you know, usually at those those kind of things we find time to go out and get all the stuff we need. And yeah, I definitely could put something together for some for some mixed drinks, because I'll have to make you like a good old-fashioned or something. That's usually was like old fashions and Manhattan's are like my two of my favorite all-time cocktails. So old fashions obviously are bourbon and like Manhattan's are traditionally rye, so I usually that's kind of my both ends of the spectrum as far as whiskey's concerned. So definitely we can get that done.
SPEAKER_02I have another question for you. What do you think about ice? Ice cube, uh not the rapper, but the ice cube and um and the bourbon.
SPEAKER_01Um I honestly I can go either way. I feel like some certain alcohols, like some certain bourbons, like I can just drink straight. I think recently I've moved more into like I don't do on the rocks, but I will do like an ice cube usually. And it won't be a big one, because I don't I do think that there's something to With like scotch, where it's they usually like I guess traditionally maybe putting like a touch of like water into it or something to kind of with a pipe head as a yeah, yeah, is usually like the I I guess is like the way to enjoy a good scotch or whatever, and I've I've kind of carried that a little bit into bourbon. I don't really usually do like straight water into them, but I'll use like like one small ice cube usually I'll put in with with a bourbon. And I I enjoy them more at room temp, so that's why I don't like to like do them on the rocks because I just don't yeah, yeah. So I I like putting like a small, small ice cube, not not so much more to make the make the bourbon cold, but to kind of let that uh melt down and kind of mix a little bit with the bourbon, like get a touch of water in there to kind of open up the flavors a little bit. But I like the process of like a small ice cube because as as it slowly starts to melt in there, like it for me it's altering the flavor a little bit as I drink it, which I kind of I really enjoy.
SPEAKER_02I mean I c I can imagine to do it uh as a summer drink with a bourbon. But I think you shouldn't do it with a scotch because all the flavors just really shine when when it's hand warm. Sometimes if it's if it's casks strength, uh really strong whiskey, you can put in a few drops of water to change it. Also, I I read for this for the 1792 that a few drops of water bring up the fruit. I didn't try it.
SPEAKER_01Um I did try with mine, though the one we're enjoying now. Like I I did put a touch of water in it, uh just took it. And I do I think that like initial drink that I had after I added like a touch of water to it, definitely I think it does bring out a little more of the like brings the fruit forward a little bit. It's it's definitely gives it a little more of that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Tasty on the fly, yeah. I do it too. Okay, so would you recommend the 1792 small badge to your friends?
SPEAKER_01I think so. I think I would definitely recommend it in the way that we're enjoying it, as like a sipper, just in a glass. I think that this one specifically, I don't know how this would really taste in in like a mixed drink. I don't know that it would really be doing this bourbon justice. So I this is definitely one that I think if somebody's looking for something good to just relax and sip on straight. I think this was would be a good recommend for something, maybe something that you want that's a little a little smoother, a little like we said, has a little more of that caramel flavor to it. Just like a really nice something nice to enjoy that, you know, you don't need I don't know. You don't I feel like if you just need like something something to get you like this is gonna be better than you know just pouring yourself a glass of jack or you know, and then obviously much more cost effective than pouring yourself something really nice, so you know, something that's like an age scotch or something that you're gonna be paying way too much, you know, a lot of money for. I don't know if I would say like an everyday sipper, but this is definitely like uh not even a special occasion, but just so you know, every now and then if you want something a touch better than like a a gym beam or something, you want to enjoy, yeah, enjoy your your whiskey. I think this was definitely be a recommend. I don't know, what about you? What did you would you recommend it?
SPEAKER_02I would, yes. Maybe not to someone who's not into bourbon so far. Um for me not the not the first bourbon to recommend. Yeah, because I would go smoother and and less alcoholic maybe for the first one. But for those who enjoyed a few bourbon, I would definitely recommend it. And I had a few water drops into mine just now, and it becomes uh lighter and and fruitier. So definitely does. It's really interesting how how a little bit of water can change the drink so much. It's very interesting it's it's cool. I like it. It's um maybe it's a good idea to start with a little bit of water and then Yeah, maybe move into a straight pour and see how you like that as well.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, I think with the water, it like it it helps it. I don't I don't know. I wanna I don't want to say use the word muddle because it doesn't really like take away from it, it just opens up different flavors. Yeah, and maybe maybe makes it almost. You have to be careful though, not too much. Yes, yes, the balancing of water is like definitely has to be right because if you put too much, it completely kind of ruins it. But so that is $17.92 small batch. Um, yeah, if that sounds like something you might enjoy, definitely go check that out. Find yourself a bottle because that is and it's reasonably priced too, I think. So it's you know, we we at this podcast we're gonna we're not gonna be recommending to you something that we think is way outside of like what is reasonable to be buying yourself for personal use, I think. And I think that's also too like I don't know about you, Mo, but like for me, like as much as I enjoy something that's a little pricier and maybe aged and like you know has all these fancy accolades to it, I I do enjoy more of like a reasonably priced and whiskey. Like it I just I don't know. I feel like I get more enjoyment out of like if you take scotch as an example, like I will enjoy like a 12-year scotch more than like a fancy 18-year or something like that. Way more. I I mean I I like the flavor more, but I also like the more as far as like bourbons are concerned, this wheelhouse of like the price range that we're in for this podcast, which is gonna be not at the lowest end, but it's not gonna be at the highest end either. Like we're a healthy medium, I think, as far as like bourbons are concerned. And I I think this right here is like in my wheelhouse of a bourbon that I think I can enjoy, feel like the money I spent on it was worth it, and you know, I didn't have to break the bank either. Yeah, you can there's always the possibility to find treasures.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You don't you don't have to spend so much like uh let's say $35, and you can still find for that price something that's super tasty and enjoyable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, something that'll fit your palette that you really enjoy.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And I think that's the goal for us, to find exactly that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's exactly what we're we're wanting, we're looking for.
SPEAKER_02So we're not going fancy here. Right. We do sometimes with scotch, sometimes, uh, but that's that's not the Scotch uh podcast. Um maybe we do a spin-off sometime.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we'll do a spin-off with uh with maybe uh someone we know that's has Scotch in his name.
SPEAKER_02I I I bet he's drinking bourbon too.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I'm sure he is, yeah. But uh I'm sure he's he's been known to have a scotch or two.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I I hope I hope we have some guests.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that would be great. I think I would be definitely down for that. But uh yeah, so that was the bourbon. Yeah, definitely check it out if it sounds interesting to you. So the next part of our podcast, we are
What We've Been Playing
SPEAKER_01gonna usually be moving into the games. So the way we're structuring it, like we said, we've already explained what game how we're picking the games. Usually Mo and myself are each gonna pick a game to bring to the table that we'll talk about. Just a general gaming discussion about um what we enjoy about it, why we're recommending it, things like that. But before, right before we get into those, let's talk a little bit about maybe some stuff we've been playing, just that outside of the games that we brought for this episode. Uh, what what have you been playing lately?
SPEAKER_02Not too much, to be honest. I mostly played online with my friends. And um, we just met a few times to play rematch. Do you know rematch? I am unfam I don't know if I'm familiar with rematch, actually. Yeah, it's because you call the game soccer. Um, okay, okay. It's my made by the CFU devs. So do you know SIFU?
SPEAKER_00That sounds familiar.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Where you where you age your age a little bit?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do know what you're talking about. Yes, I am familiar with that game, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So they made uh a soccer game about that, and it's online uh three versus three or five vs five. Oh wow, okay. And sometimes we get five people together and playing as a team, you have really it's a nice co-op game because you have to act strategic, a little bit like uh Rocket League. Someone has to be has to stay in the goal, someone has to stay in the defense to get the ball if if if you get countered. It's a little bit difficult to to control. Weird control scheme. So it's a a very hard learning curve. Um many people jumped off it off of it because uh it's too difficult to to play. Okay. But if you have a good team and uh no one is toxic, if you make any faults or or or bad moves, uh it can be really fun. Um even though we lost a lot, uh more than we won, uh it was still great fun. So that's um just a really fun um co-op experience, especially for us Europeans who enjoy soccer very much.
SPEAKER_04Right, right.
SPEAKER_02And it's trying to get up the leaderboards uh or the rankings alike in Rocket League, it's the same thing. Okay. We start at bronze and then we go to silver and gold and try to get up the leagues.
SPEAKER_01So you when you say like a little bit of different control scheme, so we're we're talking like something different from like the traditional soccer foot or football like FIFA or something like that, and like not carrying that kind of control scheme.
SPEAKER_02No, it's it's like playing uh Sifu but with a soccer ball. Oh, I see. Okay. You have to you have to your left stick, I played I mostly play on PlayStation. This also, um with your left stick you look around, and where you're looking, you are shooting or passing.
SPEAKER_00Oh okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02So if you looking at your teammate, and he is running on the side of the field, and he breaks in the ball, you have to look to the goal to press R2 to shoot.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. Interesting.
SPEAKER_02If you I struggle with that, so most of the time I try to get the ball controlled, then look to the goal and then shoot. Also, passing is on what is it, square? Okay. Uh dribbling is on X, and if you want to make dribbling moves, you have to press L2 and X. Oh wow. If you want to make uh the ball flip behind you, over you, you have to press R1 and X. You can you cannot change anything or any of the controls. So it's every time we start the game, even if it's three days ago, we just have to learn the controls again. It's really complicated.
SPEAKER_00Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And they implemented more controls and skills and and and tricks. And yeah, you have to train a lot to be good at it. And we don't train, we just play, and that's why we're still on bronze.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that sounds interesting. It definitely sounds like that would be it's an interesting control scheme that would definitely take some time to pick up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I hope they they make a tennis game out of it. That would be good, great, because I love tennis games. Oh and there are not many good ones on the market.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've never really dove into tennis games, but yeah, you could I could see that I've heard enough talk of people talk about them to know that yeah, it seems like they're they're kind of hit or miss, if you uh at least for the the the ones that have come out. When did you quit Super Mario tennis? Oh, because Super Mario gosh. I don't think I've played one of those since the N64. That's probably the the only Mario tennis that I have experience with. Because I never got into like what is it, Virtua tennis or something, or um like any of the Sega sports, like tennis games or whatever.
SPEAKER_02I think they they were good too. By now they they get too too complicated. Um anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've never I've never really dove into that sport, but yeah. So what did you play? So I've been lately, I've been on a huge, huge arcade kick. Um I have been playing arcade games like there's no tomorrow and uh been having a lot of fun with it. Um I I had experience with arcades, obviously, when I in my youth, but um maybe never to the extent I I'm doing now. Yeah, I'd finally decided to, you know, playing arcades any way I can. Uh, but I I got some arcade stuff going on my PC, and um I have uh my own little arcade stick that I've been using. And yeah, I just wanted to do like a deep dive into arcade gaming, and I kind of rediscovered my love for it. Like I I enjoyed it as a kid, but maybe I just didn't play enough to realize like how much I really did enjoy it, and I think now that I'm getting able to like I have the freedom to like really get some variety in on this arcade gaming, I'm realizing that it's like a it's a whole uh genre that I probably should have been into a long time ago, because I feel like arcade games were kind of designed for someone like me. I I'm not like an RPG player or like a really long story type narrative like type game player either. Yeah, like I I really love short and sweet. Like I 10 hours is about my max for something that I'm interested in, like say like for instance, like a Castlevania or something. Like I love that franchise. So like some of those tend the Metroidvania, especially the Metroidvania's tend to be a little longer. So that's like I'm willing to play those at length because just because I really enjoy what they're about, uh their you know, their stories and uh just the atmosphere and yeah, the whole vampire, you know, hundred vampire killer thing. Like, I don't know. It's always been something that I've loved. So I guess it's just you know leads into horror. Why I mean like me loving horror, but I'm anywhere from like two hours to like five hours is like my what I'm willing to put up with for most video games. To see credits, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you're not a completionist.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I just to see credits. I'm not a I don't really do side questing, I don't do any of that kind of stuff. I I just I need to get from point A to point B, just get the game done is pretty much what I really care about because I just want to see what the game has to offer, not I don't want to do everything that it entails. So that's I arcade gaming. I mean, you're talking about games that were designed to quarter munch to to just basically take money from children. And so but the nice thing with that is their design isn't really like it was like to give kids like a taste of you know, if you used enough money, you could finish this thing, but you know, you're gonna die a lot, so you gotta use some quarters to do this. And uh it's nice because it's like you can look at like some games are 20 minutes, some games are an hour, but like you're really not gonna get any more than that. Like over that 45 to an hour threshold, you're never really gonna pass that on most arcade games, because otherwise it's like, well, there's no point in making an arcade machine for that because people are gonna lose interest and not want to spend that much money. So they kind of had to make them short and sweet, which I really appreciate because that's it lends itself to exactly what I love in gaming. So, anyway, getting to what I've been playing, I think of the highlights of the stuff, because I played a lot of games, but highlight-wise, one of the main ones I really liked is called In the Hunt. This game, this was one that was um done by Irem, which is uh I think it's Irim is the way it's pronounced, but uh they've got a few games in the genre that uh um and in arcades that people will recognize. But I love that it's got a great pickle pixel art style. It's very similar to like um like a metal slug or something, has like a little bit of that pixel art style to it. It is a shoot 'em up, but what it is is your submarine, and so it's all underwater uh battling. You're basically doing a shoot 'em up but underwater. So you're fighting like ships that are like above water or on water, you're fighting other submarines like underwater life. Like it's crazy. This is like one of the funniest games I've played in this whole group of games that I've been playing, especially for a shooter. Like it's I just I had a ton of fun from front to back. It had a great soundtrack. It's pretty standard shooter fair, where it's you know, you got a couple lives to work with, and then it's and then you lose, you know, and then it's just having to dump in credits and you know, and make your way through. But um, I just I loved everything about it. The enemy designs were cool, the background art was great, the soundtrack was was awesome, the power-ups were really nice. Like you have your basically your gun that you shoot, but then you also have usually with most shooters, you're gonna have like some kind of special attack. With this one, you fire missiles out of the sub, and usually they're like vertical shooting missiles, so you can blow up the ships that are like above water that are on the water above you. Um, because a lot of times they're dropping like mines and bombs down on top of you. So you it's it's a little bit of like fighting what's in front of you and fighting what's at above what's above you at the same time. And I just I loved the pace of it. Like that it was fast-paced, it was just it was never boring. I had a great time with it from front to back. It was such an awesome game. That one's a high recommend for people, like if you've never played it. I I absolutely loved that game. I also am partial, like in in media. One of the weird niche genres that I like is like movies about submarines and boats and stuff. So you're talking like U571 and like Huntford October and like Doss Boot and like all those kind of like movies. I I absolutely yeah, I I enjoy that style of film. Like, I don't know what it is. I have I had zero interest in like ever like wanting to join the Navy or anything like that, because uh, you wouldn't catch me dead in a submarine, but I love watching movies about submarines. I don't know why. I I'm so maybe that I think a little bit of that influence is probably why I enjoyed this game so much. But man, this game was a blast.
SPEAKER_02It looks great. I think it's just and it's uh the architect archives for PlayStation, it's just seven euros so.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, it's definitely I would recommend it if you if you like a good shooter. I think it does everything it does that shooters do, it does really well. You know, it's challenging, it's you know, you're gonna die in it because it's sometimes it's just inevitable. There's so much crap going on, but like it's not one of those where it's that super shooter hard where like it gets frustrating. I think if you're willing to dump credits into it, it's it's just it's just a fun time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, maybe I will buy this archive to know to get to understand what you like about all these arcades, but I don't find it. Maybe later. Yeah, yeah, but it looks really cool. And it's uh a little bit like bullet hell, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a little bit, yeah. Yeah, it has a bit of a bullet hell, especially there's certain sections that can get a little bullet helly where you're you're really trying to dodge and trying to survive. But like I said, I don't they those are sometimes hit or miss for me, like the full bullet hell style shooters, where some of them can get to be too much for me, where like I'm just like this there's too much going on. I cannot, I just can't do it. Like, even though I'll be willing to power through it, I'll just feel like I'm dying the whole time. And it's like, okay, this isn't fun anymore because I just feel like I can't keep up. But like this one I think strikes a good balance.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I like I love the the pixel art, and it looks really great. Yeah, it's a great looking game. Very much love to detail, it looks really good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So what uh what else you got? What else you've been playing?
SPEAKER_02I played a little bit, I don't know, like seven hours or something of Dungeon Clawla. That's uh roguelike. I'm mostly playing roguelikes or roguelites. I have uh I have a list of those games. I think it's by now at 320 games or so I played tier list. And Dungeon Clawler looks really simple but is uh way more fun than I thought. So, as it said, is is a dungeon crawler. You have to beat 20 floors, and those floors look like a classic dungeon crawler crawler, top-down perspective, and you sometimes have to tackle the next battle, sometimes you have to you can choose if you take the elite battle or the normal battle, the elite battle will give you better uh relics or or more money or whatever. And um the basic gameplay is uh it's like I don't know if you played Protato, but they are Potato similar to Dungeon Crawler. Okay. When it comes to character um diversity, there are a lot of characters. Many of them are free to choose from the beginning, others you can unlock with uh different starting stats. I started with a basic one. Yes, two claws, and you can navigate the claw to the left and to the right, and by pressing X it will go down and grab whatever there is. So you try to grab swords uh to attack and shields to defend yourself. You see the enemies on the right side of the screen, you can always see what they are uh attending to do if they attack or buff themselves, uh defend themselves. Uh so you try to strategize what you are getting out of the claw machine. And when you go to the few floors, you try to get a build together. One character, for example. Example doesn't have a claw but a magnet. So everything that's magnetic, magnetic like uh swords, will be catched. And uh things like wooden stuff, like the shields, you don't get, so you have to play super aggressive. Okay. But later on the run, you also have the chance to to change um you can pay money to change the the material of the things you have, so you can could make the shields magnetic. So you also can grab shields. Okay. You can also attach um poison to your weapons, you can upgrade them. Yeah, and every few stages, I don't know, every five stages there's a boss. You have to fight them. And I think I only in the seven hours I played, I only beat it once. It's pretty tough. Oh wow. Okay. And I also try to get uh trophies and platinum trophies and roguelites to climb uh specific leaderboard. But this game just gave me one bronze uh trophy in seven hours. So it's way more difficult uh than I thought, but it's uh fun. The 20 stages or floors is a little bit much for me. Uh it a whole run takes too long for me, it's like 45 minutes or something. Oh, okay. Yeah. I think uh I didn't try every character, I I'm sure some are easier, some are less easy. The magnetic one is super aggressive, make everything magnetic, make the magnetic uh things burn enemies or poison them. And yeah, you can make a broad variety of builds, and that's pretty much fun. The game looks like nothing, but it's really cool. Okay. So for roguelite fans I can recommend it, or cr uh claw machine fans.
SPEAKER_01Claw machine fans, yeah. Yeah, I like the concept. It's a really cool I like the call claw machine concept. I think that's a really cool idea to throw into a roguelite.
SPEAKER_02They make everything a roguelike, a roguelite nowadays.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, I would agree with that, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like pick machine, piglin, uh good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it looks it looks interesting. I definitely I like the the art style, it's kind of cool. It like feels like um I don't know. I don't know what you would call it, like almost like a cartoon style, but it like yeah, it's it's really good looking. I like it. I I have a hard time with roguelikes just because I don't know. It's not a genre that like I like certain elements about it, but there's other elements that I don't about it. Like a lot of like the meta progression stuff I don't really get into. Because I just want to like I'm more of like a brawler type gamer, so like I just like to like headfirst go into it, you know. Like I don't I don't like I think that's the other reason why I don't gravitate to RPGs, because like I don't really get into the whole like I don't want to like do like a whole build and all that. I just want to I just want to kill things or fight or do whatever, you know, like without a ton of thought. Like I don't mind like picking up different weapons and stuff, but yeah, like I don't know. I I there wasn't uh there aren't like a ton of roguelikes that I've gotten into, but there are some that I've I've enjoyed.
SPEAKER_02So among all the games I played, I'm sure there's something I can recommend to you. Yeah, oh yeah, definitely. At first glance I would say Absolum, that's a brawler.
SPEAKER_01Oh right, right, right. Yes. I've heard it, I've been hearing about that one.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. It looks so good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So it's a 9 out of 10 for me. Okay. For some it's 10 out of 10 because it's really really really good and pretty hard. Uh but you can play it solo or online co-op, and you can drill down the difficulty also if you like. Um you won't beat it on the first try or the second or the third, but yeah. There are different paths to go, and everything everything everything looks really great. It's a fantastic game. So I I'm pretty sure you would like it. Okay, you wouldn't beat it because it will take you some time and you have to unlock some things, but there's also uh a lot of story and quests you can pursue.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but definitely I've been hearing good things about that one from people and stuff. So maybe yeah, maybe maybe they'll check it out sometime. But yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that one looks interesting. It's um I love stuff like that that takes I guess that's one thing I do really appreciate about roguelikes is that they they'll take concepts from other styles of gaming or other things I like. I love and turn them into a roguelike. I really like that outside the box thinking that they do a lot with roguelikes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it doesn't work every time, but I mean like Dungeon Crawler. I played seven hours and beat up one time, so that it's a little bit exhausting. Uh especially if you know if I want to win, I need 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let's see. So for my second game, keeping on the arcade thing, I played another shooter. I didn't mean to bring I would not mean, but I didn't realize I was gonna bring two shooters here. But I'm gonna throw this one out there only because I you were on the right track. So before we recorded this, we hadn't really we haven't talked to each other about the games we're bringing. We're kind of keeping it in the dark about the two main games that we're gonna be talking about. And I think Mo probably instinct was because I I had gone on like a tear playing a bunch of shooters, and the majority of them were like the 19 series, the the 1940 whatever series. And so I've been playing a bunch of those. So and I I think you were guessing that I was probably gonna play one of those, and even I thought I was gonna be playing one of those. I was gonna be bringing one of those, but I ended up not bringing one of those. So uh you guys will just have to find out here later in the episode what it what I brought. But I will honorably mention 19XX, which is part of the 1940X series, but uh doesn't have so it has a little bit of like the World War II theming to it, even though it's supposed to take place in the future, so it's like a bit of a mix of like futuristic stuff too, like because you have like lasers and stuff in it, but it's part of that series though, same devs and everything, but yeah, it has like a little more to it. Um I the thing I liked about 19XX compared to the rest of the series was that it still had the same style where you're fighting like big other big planes. I mean, all the regular enemies are other World War II post-World War II type ship type planes, and then you're fighting like bigger giant like carriers and stuff like that. But I just liked the way this one was set up. I think come I it might be my favorite in all of the 1940 series. I played through from 41, 42, 43, uh 44, and like pretty much the entire series. And then this game, I think that this game had a more of a mellow feel to it. I liked it because while it was still a shoot-em-up, and so there's still a lot going on, and it's very fast-paced and crazy. This one felt like it was more it you didn't have to be as good at shoot 'em ups to be to be good at this one. Like it was, I guess, more a little more forgiving. But it also like what helped it was the soundtrack is like completely different from the rest of the series. So like the rest of the series has a pretty standard shoot-em-up soundtracks. Um, they're kind of like taking from that old 1940-41 game or whatever, like the uh or 1942 game, like that little digital audio style that it had of just like your run-of-the-mill like soundtrack, and then they kind of moved it over into like a little bit of like rock undertone type stuff. But this one was like mellow. It was like a little more of like a I wouldn't say an EDM soundtrack, but it had like more of a synth type feel to it, but it was like slower paced. It was almost like just really like relaxing, I would say, which was really weird. Sounds like a weird contrast with the style of gameplay you're playing, but it worked for some reason. I don't know why it works, but it works for this game. Like it doesn't sound like those two things would go together, like a shoot-em-up in that style of music, but they work for this game. Maybe that helped me like feel like the game, I was just much better at this one than the other games in the series. That mellow thing kind of relaxed me, that mellow soundtrack, and I I just like fell into a nice groove playing this game. But I I definitely would recommend this one over all of the rest of the 1940 series, because I think 19XX just it hits like all the right marks for the series.
SPEAKER_02Is it slower than the other games?
SPEAKER_01It I would say movement, I'd say like the gameplay, like obviously the ship movement is still the same, it's still got good fast-paced movement, but like maybe the enemy waves aren't as intense. Um, the bullet hell aspect of it like isn't nearly as intense as some of the games in the series. Like, there's one I think called the Loopmaster, which I think is 1944. That one can get kind of crazy. Um, that one was pretty, I remember being kind of wild, but I like I said, I think it's more forgiving than the other titles that you I think more of like a novice player can enjoy this one and not feel like they're just getting their their face pounded in by it.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, it I I didn't play many games like this, but um I think Aces of the Luftwaffe looks pretty similar as the one that I have. Maybe I have to bring it next time. Yeah. Or at least to the games replayed. So Yeah, yeah, definitely. We have something to compare.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but this one was this one was fun. I definitely would I think if you like shoot 'em ups, but maybe you don't like how intense they can be. Like I think this one's a little I think this one's definitely a lot more um manageable than than some of the harder ones.
SPEAKER_02So is in other shooters there's only the core of the ship which can be hit. Is it the same here? So your wings, for example, if they get hit, that's not a problem. But was it the whole short?
SPEAKER_01So this with the 1940 series, it's kind of weird because like uh not all the games, but most of the titles, I think like three or four of the titles in the series, and this one I think is in it is also one of those where if you get hit in the wings, it will kill you, but there's also like if you're basically if you're hard banking like left or right, the ship will do kind of like like an like an airplane where it where it banks like to one side to turn. Um, it kind of has like a little bit more of like a leeway there in these games where like if bullets are passing by where your wings would normally be, but because you're sideways, they've just passed through and they won't you won't take damage for it. Or you won't take damage.
SPEAKER_02Slim your hitboxes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, pretty much, yeah. It definitely it helps. It's and there's certain projectiles too that come at you that they must have like a larger hit area as compared to like some of the smaller bullets and stuff like that, where like I felt like a lot of like smaller projectiles I could weave through a lot easier, but like the bigger ones, if they even got close to my hitbox, they would just wreck me. But that's kind of that feels like that's where a majority of like the newer games in this series are. They all kind of feel that same way. But yeah, this one I I just think I feel like they died a lot less on this one. It didn't feel as like the crazy times when it gets crazy don't feel as intense as some games like uh I don't know, like R-type or a Gradius or one of those where it just there's just like a lot going on. Um, these these I think this game is definitely much more geared towards like players that aren't as experienced. Really nice. Looks good.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01So that was the uh games that we've been playing. So moving on to our main games that we brought for this episode.
Mo's Pick: 60 Parsecs
SPEAKER_01Basically, uh, like we said at the top of the show, we're each bringing a game. We're gonna talk all the points that we loved about it, why what's the reason we brought it here? So we'll kick it off with you, Mo. Well, what did you bring to the table for this podcast?
SPEAKER_02At first I thought about bringing 20xx, which would be would have been a perfect segue from your slate. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't, because it's um yeah, it's an action metrovania uh um or action platformer game that doesn't fit the the I drink a burden to my game style we want to find here. So instead of that I brought 60 passecks. Okay. Did you ever heard about 60 passex or the predecessor 60 seconds?
SPEAKER_01I don't think I know this one. Um and I'm not even sure I'm familiar with the predecessor as well. No, I'm actually not familiar with these games. So this is yeah, this is gonna be completely new to me, because I'm I don't I don't know anything about these.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I I thought it's rather popular, but really good. So you have to experience something new here. Yeah, yeah. So, uh 60 Parsex. Is the successor to 60 seconds? It's um developed by Robert Gentleman. That's an indie studio from Poznaan in Poland. Uh little side note to to that, it's it's funny because I mean I live in Germany, next to us is Poland, and the city Poznan is continuously coming to my to my life. At first my my father married a second time, a woman from Poznan. Okay. Then they realized that my grand-grandfather also was stationed there during the World War II, and he was making door handles uh for the for the for the troops, houses they they lived in. So my father and his mother went there to see the um traces he left there. Oh again, Poznan. And first time I do a podcast on my own, I choose a game and I didn't know it before, where the deaf team came from Posen. So funny coincidence for me. Yeah, yeah. But uh back to the game. It's uh originally released in 2018, so not the freshest game. It was released on PC and now is available on every platform and also on mobile. Could be a good mobile game for those who like that. Genre wise, it's a survival game. You could also call it a roguelike. It definitely has uh quirky humor, and it's divided into two phases. Like in the first game, you have sex sixty seconds to uh gather stuff from the station you're on, because in sixty seconds a new um nuke is coming and will destroy the space station you're on. Oh, I see, okay. And then the second part of the game is like a point-and-click decision-making game. Okay. It's um presentation is comic style, uh, the characters uh all looking a little quirky and um the long faces and very thin arms or something, uh they look look funny. And it's all in a in a futuristic 1950s like setting. So uh real quick to the story, there's not much story, as I said. Um like in the first game, a nuke is approaching and you have 60 seconds to uh uh gather all the stuff. Um and um but instead of the bunker from the first game, you on a space station uh have to go to the escape pod. And yeah, it has some more mechanics than the first game. Gameplay is as I said, the first part is every prepper's nightmare. The nuke is approaching and your bunker is empty. Or in this case, uh yeah, escape pot is empty. Okay. So in this 60 seconds, you have a top-down view on you. You start in the hallway of the station, you have two rooms to your left and two rooms to your right, and you have 60 seconds to gather soup. That's the thing you have to uh the only thing you have to eat, soup cans, okay, uh equip equipment and crew members. But you only have four inventory uh slots. So a soup can take one uh spot, equipment takes two, and a crew member would take three spots in your inventory.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02So you have to uh fill your inventory and you r run to the through the hatch to the escape board and you throw it in. And then you start to run again and gather more things. And after before the 60 seconds end, you have to jump into the hatch. So after the 60 seconds of gathering stuff, you get into the second part of the game, uh which is most part of the game, the point-and-click part. You are uh in your spaceship with your crew, if you gathered some, if you took some crew members with you. The most important uh things to to gather is uh tomato cans because as it is a survivor game, you have to keep your crew and yourself alive. If your main character dies, uh the whole game is over, but if a crew member dies, uh the game still goes on. So maybe you have to make the decision to only feed you and uh let your crew members starve. And if you do so, they will instantly become a skeleton sitting on their their spot, uh still wearing the clothes. Um one day after to another, there's a skeleton. The crew and yourself may be uh still hungry, so that's not the reason. Uh there's no meat on the bone, but yeah. That's the one of the good things of this game. Uh it's pretty funny, it's it's run uh pretty funny. Um the longer the run is going, the more days you play. The characters will change, the male characters grow beard, the females get maybe uh less makeup um or the faces are are changing in some ways. Okay. Also, if if you you can get ill or uh hungry or close to starving, everything of these changes of uh stats will change the appearance of the characters.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02So uh the main mechanic in this game is daily decision making. Um every day the board AI will give you a task, it's always something you have to decide on, either a yes or no decision. Do you want to let those aliens in? Yes or no. Do you want to land on the planet, even though it's maybe hostile, yes or no? It could be we have to remove something from the wall to get be uh into it because we think there might be something in it, like soup cans or some equipment we could use. Yeah. Who should do it? You have to choose which crew member should take the task. Um, and since all crew members have different abilities, some are intelligent, some are strong, some are agile, we have to choose which one should do it.
SPEAKER_01That was gonna be one of my questions about it, is because you you had said at the top that uh everybody has their like each character when the character select each character has different attributes and stuff, um different different things. I was curious about how that affects the gameplay or whatever. Like do their abilities like have a direct effect on the things you can do in the game and stuff, like like it would there is that like the reason why it would be better to choose one character over the other to play as just because like does it help if a character is yeah, more intelligent than another, so then you're able to do like certain tasks better or something?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it depends. The tasks that come um are randomized, so you don't know what's coming for you.
SPEAKER_00Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02The first run I had was I took the brilliant one, and every starting character you choose has a different quest to pursue personally. Okay. And for him it was making five brilliant decision decisions that are successful. I did that, it didn't bring me anything, but that was something individual. Right. And there were several occasions where you had a the um you had to decide something, and you either took agility, strength, or your intelligence. And when it was uh I have a computer problem, how should we solve it? The brilliance did help you. So you took the intelligence, you took your your captain, and it worked out. I don't know. Still the the game the game is a little bit quirky, as I said, so maybe it's a good idea to to take strength and just hit the computer and it would work too.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_01So I I'm curious if it would be like like you said, like depending on what crew members you bring with you, and then you have to they have to be fed and stuff to keep them alive, but it's like yeah, so you potentially you could I would think if if you felt like a crew member's attributes weren't really helping that much with your tasks, then you could probably afford to let them die instead of instead of like wasting rations on them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You could let them die, but the crew also develops some uh relationship. So if it's falling in love with anyone else and you let them die, they may be they may uh get aggressive and oh okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_02So it's a lot to manage really about a lot to manage a lot of path you um that could develop. Um yeah. Interesting. Okay. So I thought for the runs I did, uh the crew shouldn't be too big. I just take took one crew ammo and to try to get a lot of uh soup cans and equipment because a lot of uh decisions you have to do is uh you you can choose between different equipments to solve the problem. Like uh the air hatch is broken, so you can use tape to fix it. But you if you don't have the tape, you can fix it. So you have to decide to do nothing and just cross your fingers and hope for it for you to not not to die.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02Often that um you don't die because of that, but yeah, it's always good to have equipment. And one possibility to get equipment besides gathering it in the first 60 seconds, to build it. You have uh a crafting machine. Oh you can gather uh materials uh to to build, uh like a mat pack if you get hurt, or the tape, or a lighter, or a gun, and it's always good to have equipment for you for any case that can appear. But in the later game, the soup cans run out, so you have to recycle your equipment to build soup cans or health packs or something. So sometimes it's the case you uh recycle your med kit to get some soup, and the next decision is you decide wrongly and you get hurt and you don't have the med pack anymore. And then you try to build to craft one more, and it takes a few days to be crafted. So you constantly every day there's one decision, and if you decide the wrong way, one time it can affect the next decisions to be taken too. So one time I landed on a planet and there was something like cow popularity, and they only spoke moo moo, you know. Um there's a handbook you can uh gather in the in the spaceship before you in the first 60 seconds, but I didn't have it. So I should craft it, but I didn't uh find it I I couldn't craft it, so I upgraded the crafting machine and I still couldn't find uh craft it. And then the bot AI found a way to decrypt it, but then killing robots came and wanted in, and I couldn't defend myself because I hadn't didn't have the equipment, so I let them in. And because of my brilliance, I could uh talk around it, and they left again, but later they killed me, and that was the end of the game. After I don't know, 63 days, and every day you have to make your decision, you have to give the crew the soup or the sock puppet. There's a sock puppet if the ga the people go crazy, you can use the sock puppet and make make them laugh again to to stay sane. After sixty whatever days, yeah, every day took like a minute or a little bit more. Uh your run can end after an hour and you didn't win. The end is always funny. Like some scrid aliens killed me, some killer robots killed me. That's always fun, but um so it's pretty tough, and I think there's uh some kind of learning curve to get the most important things during the 60 seconds. Oh right, right. So far, I wouldn't say that the crew members are very important, but who knows? There are very few decisions that repeat it itself.
SPEAKER_01So do you know what like the general win conditions are for the game? Like what you're s what would be required of you to to to actually consider to be considered a win?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you have to find a planet to live on. And finding a planet isn't that uh uh complicated. I think you have always the sh the chance to take the first one. Okay. To uh try to find a second one after not wanting the first one because it was very dangerous. I didn't succeed there. Uh but I also find uh planet to live on. But that was the handbook problem. You have to connect to the species that are living there. Okay. To find some some kind of cooperation. Right, right. So if you don't have if you don't have the equipment uh or the skills to connect to them, you have to try to build them, and sometimes it's not possible. Interesting. Okay. Every day is changing. Uh the longer the run gets, it's it's getting more difficult.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's sounds like a fair amount of strategy involved, especially like with pre-planning with what you're gonna take with you, and yeah, a lot of things to manage during on, and then having the right equipment to be able to survive on the planet. Then it's interesting. I like that. That's it sounds like a lot to manage, but it's yeah, I definitely I could see that being a a lot of fun trying to figure out what works and what doesn't, and doing multiple runs and trying to figure out like what items are absolutely essential and the absolute essential stuff, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's I think there are a few. But um I think every constellation can bring you the win. Uh that's what I talked about with the is the main mode, but there's also random mode. So you don't have to gather, there's not the 60 seconds. You just start in a space shuttle with randomized crew and items and soup cans. Okay. And I did it once, went pretty far, it was fun. And the second time I tried it, I had a full crew of four and three soup cans. So I thought, okay, that's impossible. Yeah, that sounds like a good one. You can quit that. And there's also missions you can play. That's I think from the start get-go you have uh three missions. You start with a special with a character that's that's defined, and you have to go to reach something to uh achieve something with this character. And I didn't play that. That's uh something they have changed from the first game. The first game was just a base game. Run around 60 seconds and let's go. Yeah. Maybe there's the random part uh also, I can't remember, because it's a long time ago that I played that. There's there's some variety in it and replayabil replayability. Yeah, definitely, yeah. But I think it could get a little bit repetitive and also a little bit frustrating if you have those long long runs and don't succeed in the end, you know. Yeah. But it's always I think every death you can have there is funny and Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that sounds like a fun one. It's interesting an interesting uh idea. I I definitely like some I like what you described there. It's uh it seemed like that would be a lot of fun for if you're into that like strategizing type type stuff. Um yeah, that that definitely seems like it'd be kind of cool. Because it's almost like like a puzzle in it in that way where you kinda have to figure out what works and what doesn't and figure out if the choices you make are they're gonna be the right choices down the road and stuff.
SPEAKER_02So that's yeah, that sounds like a fun one. Yeah. Like those strategy games, it's the first part is very janky and you just smash the X button to pick up things and sometimes it doesn't work. Okay. The hectic and stuff. But uh the the randomizers, pretty cool for that. If you don't like it, you don't have to do it.
SPEAKER_00That's cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that. So you're so you're there's different ways that you can I'm assuming that you can die, right? Like just not just like losing killing getting killed by an enemy. I guess you could starve to death. There's other like there's a lot of different ways to to lose the game, I suppose.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I starved and get got killed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you were saying too, like if you let a a crew member die that the other crew members liked, then they could would they put could they potentially like turn on you, or is it just yeah, like to the one crew uh I didn't experience that, but one crew member turned on me because they found a blue pulsating fruit in the spaceship.
SPEAKER_02And my decision uh on that day was should somebody eat it, and if yes, who? So I I chose not me, but my crew member.
SPEAKER_01Someone did yeah, that's funny.
SPEAKER_02Uh and she she bites into this thing and some worms scrawl out of it, and yeah, also in her because she bit part of it. And it only said, I think she changed, and she looks different at you, and then okay, I have to be cautious now. Yeah, okay, okay. But I won't spoil any anything more because that's cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02This game throws this stuff constantly at you. And the decisions you make, uh sometimes you think, okay, I I only can do nothing because I don't have the equipment, so I'd possibly die now. But it's not that the way that way. It's it's very creative. It's not always the you don't often always always have to be smart but either lucky or or creative. Okay. Everything can work.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02Or not. So you can all all the stuff you can yeah, you can write down and learn from it, you know, if you want to perfect the game. I think then you lose lose the the fun of it. Yeah, only thing I didn't talk about is the music, but it's not much to talk about. It's very min minimalistic, just drinks and wins and mixed with those old school alien transmission sounds. Yeah. And yeah. If it's in the background, it's okay. It feels like so yeah, uh, excuse my rambling. But that's the game.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it sounds like a good one, man.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's uh it's a solid uh six out of five, I would say. Yeah, six out of five, six out of ten.
SPEAKER_00Six out of ten, yeah. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think the first game is a little bit better. Okay. And it's always unsea, if you're interested.
SPEAKER_01Alright. That's Mo's game, and uh so for my game, we uh I'm going back to the arcade well again, just because that's that's been my whole life this last like month. So I'm bringing 64th Street, a detective story. So this game is an old arcade game from 1991. It is published by CP Brain and uh I'm sorry, developed by CP Brain and published by Jellicoe,
Jeff's Pick: 64th Street: A Detective Story
SPEAKER_01who most people will know, published a lot of arcade games back then, so uh they were definitely one of the names in the space, along with uh your Capcoms and IRIMs and all those companies. This one is a beat-em-up. So the premise behind this game is that I mean it has a touch of story to it. It starts out, you're there's two detective. Well, it's a private detective. So you have a private detective or PR private investigator uh named Rick, and then his partner named Alan. And he's basically Rick is the main guy, and then Alan's like the guy who helps him um with his like private detective business. And the two of them are the two players you have to choose from as playable characters. The quick story that it gives you up front when you start the game is that a rich man, that's all he's uh uh known as in the game is rich man, uh, has come to you requesting a job that his daughter has been kidnapped by thugs, by some kind of thug organization, and he wants you to try to find her and get her back. And I guess what comes along with being a private investigator is you get to fight your way into fighting what finding out what happens because this is a beat-em-up. So you pick either character, and it's basically it's six levels that you're playing, and you're just fighting your way through thugs and hooligans, pretty much, trying to find out what's going on. And basically what happens is as you get through each stage at the end of each stage, and usually it's like split up into two parts. So you'll fight like one section where you're like like in the first level, you're on the streets, like you're basically going out into the streets to like start this case, and you just beat up a bunch of bad guys, standard beat em up fair, and then it'll like jump to another scene where you're in another section of the city or something, and you're and then you go through that part, and usually at the end of that section, the second section, there's usually a mini boss that you'll fight. And usually what'll happen at that point is it'll give you dialogue after you complete that stage of what they found out. So there'll be little parts that like cut into the gameplay real quick and like give you some dialogue that comes up onto the screen that tells you Rick and Alan have discovered this and this and this or whatever, or when they were investigating, like there's this another level where you're down by the docks, like in the wharf. Yeah, it's like there's like a part where it's like while they're in the wharf, they get attacked by a group of thugs, and because of I guess what they're investigating. So pretty much it's the standard find the girl and beat the bad guys type story, and you're and you but you're getting paid for it. There's a lot of great things I like about this one. I guess getting into the gameplay, like like I said, it's a standard beat-em-up. The view of it is a little bit closer than most uh beat-em-up. Like it doesn't I noticed that the sprites are a little bigger in this game, and so you're like a little more zoomed in, so you're not seeing or the off-camera enemies as much like before they walk onto the screen. Um, it's a little bit zoomed in, like I would say like even a little more than like a final fight or something where you're you but it's like it's definitely not like a Turtles or X-Men or one of those where you're really seeing a big chunk of the area that you're in. You're you're just it's it's a little more zoomed in with this one. But um the pixel art in it is great. I love like the character sprites look great. Uh Rick and Alan are basically like Rick is like the traditional like gumshoe type private eye. He's like wears like slacks and a button up and he has like a tie on. One of the things that you'll see like people talk about as he uh uh or at least that I've seen when I was kind of looking up this game is that he bears a very striking resemblance to um oh god, what is his name? Uh from Final Fight. Mike Hagar, I'm sorry, yes. So he bears like a kind of a resemblance to Mike Hagar. He's got like the regular like like short haircut with like a big mustache, like a big giant mustache. Um has a little bit of a look to him, not as big, obviously, but he's more of like a standard looking character, but it tears a defin definitely a resemblance to him. Alan is like more he's I supposedly in the lore in the like looking up the information for this game is he's younger, he's like 19, so he's uh yeah a young guy that's just helping Rick out or whatever, and he's just kind of dressed in a t-shirt, and uh he's just your run-of-the-mill type guy. So that the premise of the game, or the one of the things about the game is it takes place in 1939. So everybody's kind of dressed in that old-timey 30s, 40s America like type look. Like there's a lot of like those little, I don't know, what'd you call them, like the those little like golfer like cabbie hats, kind of a lot of people wearing and stuff, like very like uh Dick Tracy type of like atmosphere that this game has. And so supposedly Alan is supposed to be a slightly faster character, even though I didn't really notice a difference between them. I thought that they both their movement on both of them was kind of the same. But um so you have to choose one? Yeah, you choose one or the other. And it's a switch. No, you can't switch between them. I well, if you lose your credits, if you die and you have to put in a new credit, you can choose between the two of them again. But you can't choose while you're while you're still alive during gameplay. You have to just pick one or the other. It's pretty standard, at least like 90s arcade beat-em-up style, where pick a character, if you lose your credits, then you can you can make you have the option to choose another character. But uh yeah, it's one or the other, and I believe this was a co-op game, so or it was a two-player game, so you could potentially play, you know, have yourself and a friend um in the arcade, you know, play this, both play this game as each character, but uh, which I'm sure was what the intention was. But uh as far as their fighting is concerned, like they have pretty much the same movesets. They do have like a special attack, although it doesn't have like a button designation. Since it I guess maybe because it's 91, and this is like right in the era where arcades really boomed, I think. Because like you'll see a lot of 91, 92, 93, and maybe they hadn't implemented like a special button, because you could start I started noticing in like 92, 93 arcades, you start getting like either a button designated for the special, or like if it's like a combo button press or something, like it's always like called out where it like it does specifically like it'll take life away or something like that. But I think in this game it doesn't take a life away to do it, and it's not really like a huge special, you know. Like some games it's like some kind of like magical attack you do or something, but like this game, basically all it is if you hit like forward and the punch button, or if you hit the punch and the jump button together, because it's basically only two buttons and then your directional stick. If you hit the two buttons together, he'll do kind of like a special attack, but they're not it's nothing crazy. Like with Rick, it's like a he does like an uppercut punch kind of, or like a he does like a double-fisted hammer punch kind of thing. And then with Alan, Allen does like a like a roundhouse kick. It's it's it's not even really like a round, it's like a weird, not a tornado kick, it's like this weird kick that he does like over his head where he it's almost like a roundhouse, but it's executed really strange. Other than that, that's like all they really have other than their punching. And if you hit an enemy like consecutively for like three times in a row, it doesn't call out combos, but it does the game reacts like a combo where like if you're consecutively hitting someone three times, instead of just doing the same punch turnover, he'll do like a punch, a punch, and then like a kick or something or something. But they all have to be like within series of each other of the hit uh to the to that enemy. But um, the only other thing that you can do is like if you're really close to an enemy, and I think if you like hit forward and you go to punch on them, you can actually do like a grapple. And most of the time you can either just punch them in that grapple to the point where like you can knock them down, or if you move the directional stick like upward, you can actually pick the your your character will pick them up and throw them at whatever the scenery is that's behind you on the back wall. So you can basically throw them against walls, you can throw them like into windows and stuff, and and it has animations for that. So like when you throw them, you could throw them like into the front of like a car that's parked in an alleyway, and the front of the car will like smash, will like be completely smashed. So it's it's kind of cool. It has a little bit of like that to it. I the only other game I can remember that has a little bit of that that off the top of my head is there was the old uh Batman Returns video game, I think, for Super Nintendo used to be like that too, where like Batman could like grab people and throw them up against the wall and it would like break windows when he would throw them into windows and stuff. So it has a little bit, but it has it has that, but it it definitely different reactions to like when you throw them against a brick wall, it actually kind of cracks the brick and stuff when it Yeah, I see a picture of that as as uh like a game cover. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he's throwing something into brick wall.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So that that is kind of a neat move that it adds to it. Like when you're on the docks, one of the things I really liked about that because you're walking along the dock itself. So when you do that throw move, he just throws them off the dock into the water. Which is nice because then you don't have to deal with that enemy anymore. There's gonna be even like I said, it's even though it's a smaller screen or a more zoomed-in screen of the character sprites, there are gonna be times when you're fighting like four enemies at once, maybe five enemies. I think like five might be the max that you'll ever see on screen at once. But for the most part, I usually saw like three or four at a time that I would have to fight. But it is nice, like so things like that where you can like throw somebody off or something was nice because then you don't have to deal with that enemy. You can fight the other ones that are there. And then there's also like weapon pickups like pipes and like wrenches and I think bats or knives or something like that, also that you can pick up and you can use to fight people off. I mean, it's pretty if you played any beat-em-up that has that kind of thing, it it's pretty much just like any one of those where you just pick up the weapon and you can fight with it for a while. The one thing I noticed about the weapons in this game is that of course you'll drop them if you get hit, but it takes a very, very long time. Like most most beat-em-ups I noticed that like you can you you can get a couple strikes out of it before the weapon breaks and he'll drop it, and you can't use it anymore. This game, you can get quite a few, like you can pretty much go through an entire level with the same weapon before you lose it. It's so that that was kind of nice. But the one thing with that is like if you use it so many times and you get hit and drop it, it can instantly disappear. Like it has the chance to do that. So but it has other things like of course health pickups, like usually like apples or like little food items and stuff.
SPEAKER_02So you find them just laying around, or do you have to pick up the trash can somewhere?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so like this game has a lot of crates, they're like box, like crate boxes that are scattered throughout the levels, and usually you'll break those open. I I I want to say there's also barrels, but I could be thinking of it, I could be getting it confused with another game. But I I know for sure the crates are like a big thing where you'll come across areas, and they're the thing about them is that they're very few and far between, though. So some of the item pickups you can get off of enemies too. It's not specifically to the crates. Most of the health stuff I think you only can pull from brick breaking boxes and stuff, like weapons and stuff you can pull off of enemies. And stuff. There's also like random item drops, like necklaces and stuff like that, like jewelry that you'll pick up. And I don't know what its significance that has of the story, like maybe it's like clues or something, but it all it really serves gameplay-wise for is to is it adds points to your total to your high score. So they're not really useful other than like if you're trying to go for like a high score challenge or something, like trying to do trying to get the highest score possible that you can. So the item drops are kind of weird, they're just there to like really just pick up points. But like I said, six stages, it goes all the way from the city to docks to like you fight on a on a boat, you fight uh in the subways, on railroads. There's a factory level that like this towards the end of the game, that's like one of the longer levels that you fight a bunch of goons in the factory, and then like I said, all the all the enemies are just like thugs and stuff. What's weird about it is you get like about three levels in, I want to say, and there's these random enemies, and I don't know if it's tied into the story where like the bad guy, the main bad guy that you're after that has the girl, the kidnapped girl, I think is like a like a crime boss or something, right? But I don't know if he's involved in some kind of weird underground thing where they're like developing something because there's a certain point when you get into one of these areas, I know it's in the factory for sure, and then there's like I want to say it's like maybe it's the factory level, but you find out the enemies end up becoming like these robots. So you're fighting goons, but you're also fighting these like they basically look like steam-powered humanoid robots that you that end up becoming.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they're like go-go gachetto arm pretty much, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And they look kind of look like Tin Men from like the Wizard of Oz or something. Like they're very archaic looking, but I noticed when they move, sometimes the sprite has like a little bit of like a steam that comes out of his head a little bit. So I'm assuming they're like supposed to be like steam powered. I I think it's supposed to be maybe like a steampunk influence from like that from like those old 30s and 40s stuff. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_02That's uh really cool.
SPEAKER_01It was really weird. Like the robots I felt were like really out of place because the the story doesn't really explain to you what their significance is. They just become one of the enemies in it. It's really weird. So I don't know if you're just supposed to interpret that yourself or or what, but it's really strange. Like they're not all they don't just become the only enemy, but because you're still fighting a lot of like the goons and stuff, but um the deaths uh drank too much too much bourbon and got creative, I guess. I guess, yeah. They decided it needed something fresh so that you didn't feel like you were just fighting the same thing over and over. But I think with that though, I mean six levels, it's it was probably like a good, I don't know, half hour, maybe 35-minute beat. It's not an incredibly long game, but I mean for a beat-em-up, you don't really want something that drags on too long anyway. But uh it felt really good though. Like this for this game, I felt like it didn't for me it didn't get boring. It yeah, I mean it does it's a very few of uh amount of levels, but I feel like there was enough there that with a little bit of story it gives you into their investigation, and then plus you know, the enemy variety and stuff like that, like it just didn't it didn't feel like the game ever like kind of got dull for me. I I had a good time from beginning to end with it. It was it was a it was a good time. So and the mini bosses were pretty pretty much nothing. Like they have pretty regular patterns that you can get down. Like one of the mini bosses is like a guy with like a big he has like a big hammer, but it's like one of those old wooden hammers, like one of those big, like um almost like a like a croquet mallet kind of thing. Like it's a big it's more of a mallet than a hammer. It's he has a routine that when you knock him down, the first thing that he does when he gets up, you can't cut through that animation. Like as soon as he stands up, he like smashes the hammer or the mallet on the ground, and it'll knock you down because it shakes the entire area. So you have to like learn the pattern of knocking him down, then jumping in the air so that way you so you can get through his his like smash animation and then keep fighting him again and stuff. And like it was little things like that. The bosses weren't like incredibly hard at all.
SPEAKER_02That's really nice because all the beat-em-ups I played, the bosses you have no signs of their attacks, you just get hit all the time, they're too fast, yeah. There's no introduction to the to the attack they have, so yeah. I think that's always very frustrating in these beat-em-ups.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I could see that. Yeah, this one, it just the the mini bosses they had a very, very simple and easy to understand routine. Like being able to get down their rhythm was was very, very easy. So they almost don't even feel like bosses, they just feel like slightly stronger like goons that you're fighting for the most part. Like, because there's one that's like a when you're on the ship, the mini boss is like a pirate, and he has like a peg leg and everything. And his his main attack, he was probably the hardest boss I fought in the whole game because his main attack was that he would spin on his peg leg, and he would basically just like put his arms out and go into like a top, like spin like a top, pretty much on his peg leg. And he was pretty much invulnerable when he would be spinning. Like you could knock him down, but it has to be like the most precise hit to knock him down. It was weird. Like it most of the time, my animation, if I would like jump and kick at him, it you most of the time he his hit would supersede mine. I was I would always get knocked down. He was like the only enemy in the game where if you got caught into his loop, like it was one of those things where you could lose an entire life quick because he would go into a spin, knock you down, and by the time you stand up, he's spinning and coming right back at you again, and you could just get caught into that like death loop. But for the most part, that kind of annoys me sometimes with being with beat-em-ups where like they have those stupid where some of the enemies have those loops where they're like impossible to fight your way out of, where you just keep they're just like death loops that you can't get out of. And it it those drive me mad sometimes when it's like really, really obvious in some games. But um this one didn't really I think he was like the only enemy that could catch you in that type of that type of loop. But other than that, it was pretty straightforward. Like it was the the enemies weren't anything big, the final boss wasn't wasn't really that bad. I just sent you a picture.
SPEAKER_02I was looking at pictures of the game, and here's some punch out like oh wow, that's interesting. Yeah, that looks like something story world online.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's interesting. That must be like some kind of maybe it's like something inspired by it. That's interesting. I've never seen that before. Are those characters in the background on the game? I don't think so. They don't look familiar. That's interesting. I'm not sure what this is. This is interesting.
SPEAKER_02If not, it's they just stole the whole title of the game. I guess what it seems like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's interesting. It seems like they stole the idea of the game. I don't know, that's weird. But uh it's kind of short and sweet, you know, it's a it's a beat-em-up, so there's not not a ton to talk about in it, but like Yeah, then you you save the girl at the end, and that's pretty much it. I don't even think it has I don't recall if it has a I don't think it even has like an outro animation. It just goes straight into credits, I want to say. Yeah, it's weird. Everything is so detailed and it has like while it's rolling the final credits, you guys like are like in a blimp in the final level, so um that's where you fight like the final boss. And it basically just shows like the blimp floating off in the sky, and it has like one screenshot of like you, the two detectives and the girl like together, and like basically they rescued her and that's it, and that's pretty much it. Like it it's it's just and then it rolls credits, so it's like it doesn't really give you much at the end, but um it's it's it's a fun game though. Uh one of the I guess the other last thing to talk on is is the soundtrack. The soundtrack I think it can get repetitive for some people because mind you, this is 1991. It's not like an incredibly like melodic soundtrack, but I liked the soundtrack for this game. Like it it I think it fit it's kind of like silly the some of the some of the music in this game. Like it it just has like a like a silly beat to it, kind of. I I don't know if that's like inspired by the time, like the 1930s, late 1930s or something. It it maybe it does like have a little bit of that old-timey music feel to it. But I really enjoyed it. Um like the boss when you get to the mini bosses, like there's a there's a main theme for the mini bosses, and um, I mean each theme is very repetitive. It's not like it doesn't have like a ton of notes, it just kind of just recycles itself. But I just felt like it it really fit and it was different from like most other beat-em-ups I've played as far as their soundtrack's concerned. Like this one was very much an outlier, and it it it's much different sounding than most of the beat-em-ups I've been playing. So I appreciated it for that. That it it just I feel like this game has a ton of style to it, a ton of charm. It's just like its own, it has its very much its own feel to it. It's it's its own style, and it runs with that style. I feel like it could have afforded to maybe even go even harder into the its style, because I don't think it even takes it as far as it could take it, but it does have a ton of style, and I really appreciated it for that. Like it was just it's it didn't feel like you know, sometimes you're especially if you're playing beat-em-up after beat'em up, like after a while they all kind of start to blend together, and like this one was definitely one that stuck in my mind just because it it did so many things different from the standard beat-em-up fair. To the music, um, did the did the music change from level to level? Yeah, there the beats are somewhat similar to each other, but they do change. It does have a different track for each level. But it's just like when you get to the mini boss section, it starts it has like a a recurring track that comes back, which it is a pretty good tune, so like I had no complaints about it. But but yeah, that's that's 64th Street Detective or 64 Street a Detective Story. Pretty cool game. I definitely I would give it like I'd say it's a solid 7 out of 10. Maybe even an 8 out of 10 just for how much style as. I would give it like a 7, 7.5, just because like I think I I really appreciate when a game has its own its own style, and that's that that's like huge for me when it when a game can charm me in that way. And uh it definitely did, so I give it points for that. But I'd give it a solid seven out of ten.
SPEAKER_02And you played a lot of beat 'em ups, so yeah, I did, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I did. This was like one of the last beat-em-ups I played. So, you know, you could think of like the group of ones that I've been playing. Like, I it you know, at this point I could have been very burnt out on on the genre, but like it was nice, it was fresh, and I I liked it.
SPEAKER_02So for me and the audience, maybe two, could you please say again how you play these these games? What is the setup?
SPEAKER_01So I am playing these games through retro arc, and for those folks out there, like you may know that what that entails, as about how you go about getting the actual ROMs for this. Basically, I have a retro arcs I I downloaded retro arc and I'm playing everything through that. You can there's a lot of stuff you can go through Internet Archive and find things there to download. Um, I I found a basically I had to find a tutorial online of how to go about setting all this up because I had zero uh experience with using it. I've used Retro Arc before, but I've had zero experience with arcades in general are like their own separate kind of thing. But it's very similar to setting up if you want to set up an emulator for like Nintendo or for like a Sega Genesis or something. Like it's a very similar thing. I don't know how much I can really say about how to do everything or how I got everything, because I don't know I don't know, I don't know how much you know that's supposed to be kept uh you know a little bit to the imagination, but uh I mean there's YouTube videos for it, definitely. So like if you all I did was search for setting up MAME pretty much, because this is all through MAME. I'm running MAME through retro arc, and that's how I'm playing it. So those of you that are familiar with MAME, that's basically how a lot of people emulate arcade gaming. So that's all I did. I just set it all up for my PC instead of running it through a device or anything. Um, I may look at doing that in the future, um, setting up MAME on an actual device that I can hook up to a TV or maybe even make like a cabinet for or something. I don't know. That's it's definitely been like intriguing to me as of late. Like I've been wanting to kind of dive into that world a little bit just because I've been having so much fun with this. So I I might further explore just like everything else that arcade gaming has to offer. Like maybe not out there buying old cabinets from people and buying old boards and stuff, because that's a whole nother realm in itself. But I wouldn't mind setting up like an arcade cabinet with with a MAME with MAME in it, figuring out how to do all that setup. That might be something I explore in the future. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Oh, sounds great. And did you use your um joystick like arcade joystick and and buttons? You have this too? Or don't you don't use a controller?
SPEAKER_01No, I wasn't using a controller for any of this. So when I was specifically when I was playing arcade games, I happened to have um there's a a brand called Vitrix and uh or Victrix, and they have a um where is it Okay, it's huge. Yeah, it's big, it's a big one. It is the uh Pro FS is the name of this one, and it's um mine is um let me see.
SPEAKER_02So we have a joystick and eight buttons.
SPEAKER_01An A button, yeah. It's an eight button setup. This one is a like sh the Street Fighter edition they have of this. So it has like Chun Li like etched on it and everything too, and it's actually aluminum to frame for it. So it's a bit it's a bit heavy with the components and everything inside it. Um yeah, it's a it's a bit of a hefty boy. But uh I I've been looking at maybe buying another one just because like this is technically kind of a collector's item, so I don't want to wear it out. But um I just it's something that I inherited from uh uh my so I have a brother that that passed away a few years back, and I basically inherited his entire gaming collection. And uh it's just it's one of the items that he had. And so I've been using that, but like I said, it's one of those things that I want to last for a long time because I don't want to wear out something that he owned, you know. So it's like I I may look at getting a new stick for this, just because I don't want to burn this thing out.
SPEAKER_02Also, you could play two players, yeah, that too, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I can always get a second stick for somebody to play with me. So but yeah, that's what I've been playing on. It's like pretty pretty much a full arcade stick uh with yeah, eight button layout. So yeah, that's I mean I had to get that like hooked up synced with with a retro arc as well and get all the button layout synced up and everything, so but it wasn't too hard. I I feel like if I can figure that stuff out, most people can. Because it's like I I'm pretty good with technology, but I'm not like you know high level at so like some people are with like a lot of that kind of like hardware and software and stuff, but you know, I I can do enough to get by, so I feel like if I can figure it out, most people can.
SPEAKER_02Alright. Very interesting.
SPEAKER_01So that was uh that was the games we played for this for this week. Hope you all enjoyed. Um check out those games if they sound uh, I don't know, interesting to you. But uh thank you for listening to Proof and Pixels. Um, if you have the thirst to drink along with us on our next episode, we will be drinking Angels Envy Kentucky Straight Bourbon. And that is going to be, I believe we looked it up and it is done in wine or what is it? Port wine finish. Port wine, it's done in port wine, it has a port wine finish to it. So if you uh yeah, if you feel like drinking
Plugs and Outro
SPEAKER_01along with us, that um that will be the next bourbon that we're gonna be trying. And that's gonna be in the A category. So we'll be bringing some games for the A category. That should be fun. If you want to reach out to us, you can find me on Blue Sky at just Jimmy Mook, all one word. And uh, what about you, Mo, where can we find you? You can find me also on Blue Sky as Mr. Mo 1984. And uh if you'd like to reach out to the podcast with recommendations on what uh maybe you think we should be drinking or what uh what we should be playing, uh you can email us at proof and pixelspod at gmail.com. And that is proofand pixels pod at gmail.com. And uh thank you all for listening um to this inaugural episode. Um hope you guys enjoyed it. Uh, and thanks to Mo for joining me for this. This was a great time.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Jeff. I had a great time too, and we hope to have you on the next episode. Goodbye. We'll see you then. Bye bye.