We Compare Rebirth’s Open World To Horizon, Xenoblade, And Breath Of The Wild

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth grabbed us by the scruff and reminded us how an open world can feel alive without drowning you in chores. We dig into why the new exploration loop works—think the curiosity of Breath of the Wild, the gathering rhythm of Horizon, and a dash of Xenoblade’s scale—then point to the quiet magic of Kalm, a bustling town that feels worth lingering in. Streamlined materia and upgrades reduce menu tax, while crafting makes scavenging meaningful. It’s modern without losing that FF7 heart.

From there, we zoom into small-but-mighty experiences. Cast and Chill is cozy pixel fishing at its best, with a controversial idle mode that prints progress while you’re away. Is it a smart quality-of-life choice or a shortcut that dulls the grind? We weigh both sides. Then it’s retro time: Evercade’s Taito Collection 2 brings back Rastan and friends, proving how licensed, curated collections can preserve feel and friction with save-state respect.

We also get brutally honest about a hyped handheld clone. The screen’s great and Game Boy shines, but performance above SNES gets patchy, audio artifacts crop up, and marketing outpaces reality. If you want Pokémon nostalgia on the go, it’s serviceable; serious retro fans should aim for better hardware or curated platforms.

News highlights deliver whiplash: Sony quietly axing thousands of low-effort shovelware titles (a win for curation and a wake-up call for trophy culture), Yakuza Kiwami 3 remastered with a playable Game Gear lineup that celebrates Sega’s heritage, and widespread GameStop/EB Games closures that make physical browsing even rarer. We talk discoverability, why shelves still matter, and how indie gems get lost in algorithmic noise.

Stick around for what we’re playing next—more Rebirth, Evercade experiments, and a return to Metroid Prime Remastered’s atmospheric corridors. If you enjoy smart takes on game design, storefront ethics, and the joy of finding a world you can’t stop thinking about, hit follow, share with a friend, and drop a review. Your support helps us keep the good stuff coming.

Chapters

• 0:00 Banter, 300th Hangover, Housekeeping
• 4:20 Community Updates And Website Push
• 5:55 Final Fantasy VII Rebirth First Impressions
• 13:30 Open World Design, Crafting, And Streamlining
• 20:30 Cast And Chill: Idle Mode And Progress
• 28:30 Evercade Taito Collection And Rastan Nostalgia
• 37:20 Metroid Prime Remastered: Why It Still Works
• 49:40 The Game Lab R36 Clone: A Hard Truth
• 1:05:20 Sony Pulls Shovelware And Trophy Talk
• 1:22:30 Yakuza 3 Remaster Adds Game Gear Classics
• 1:31:40 GameStop And EB Games Closures: Physical’s Fate
• 1:43:30 Community Corrections And 300th Quiz Winners
• 1:55:40 What We’re Playing Next And Sign-Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:20

Hello and welcome to the Unofficial Controller Podcast, your weekly gaming podcast, episode number three zero one. Said it that way this week, RGT, because I feel like I can. Uh, with me joining this week joined by the aforementioned RGT. He's dry January. To my wet Wednesday. How's it going, RGT?

SPEAKER_05: 0:41

I'm good, thank you. Yeah, I'm very good. Are you dry January? Um, I'm at the moment, but I don't know if that'll last, but we've done well. Yeah, yeah, not too bad. I'm not a massive drinker anyway, but um sobered up from the 300th episode. Just about, I think. That episode was a blur. So uh yeah, I hope it was good.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05

I watched Scotty surf Seb down an ice sculture.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09

Wow. Wow. I mean I found OG Tom back behind the back of the biffers and he was ill. So I had to take him home.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17

Wait, mate, that's not where I where we did the 300th celebration didn't look like a place that would have wheelie bins. So where was I?

SPEAKER_05: 1:26

I have no idea. I lost you at about half past one in the morning. I don't know where you went. I saw you and Deb Deb's Babs wander off, but I don't know where you went. But Oh yes. I think she promised you a late night kebab or something, I don't know, but I'll be honest, mate.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41

I sat down uh in her front room and she just sort of like got comfy in the chair and then just showed me her bab, and I was like, Well, is that chili sauce? She was like, No, I don't think so. Maybe a little bit's just seeped out the old bottle or something. It's mainly mayo. I was like, Oh, you I don't care at this point. Oh mate, honestly. I was so sick.

SPEAKER_05: 2:02

I'm not surprised. That was a heavy night, so I think on the on the 600th episode, we probably ought to get away.

SPEAKER_03: 2:08

One of the streets was definitely raw at all.

SPEAKER_05: 2:12

Oh, bit of food poisoning there, I think.

SPEAKER_03: 2:14

Yeah, there's uproar in the village, I'll be honest, because she might lose a one-star fire food safety rating, and if she shuts down, like where do people get like a hot cup of tea or a or a or a good couple of baps?

SPEAKER_05: 2:27

Well, exactly. I mean, you your selection is limited if Debs goes.

SPEAKER_03: 2:31

Well, I'm suffering in silence. You know, health and safety guys have been kicking around, the food safety guys have been kicking around. I thought he was trying to get a stall sample or some drivel, but you know, he just took away one of my sort of breakfast bar seats, so I ain't got a clue what's going on. No idea.

SPEAKER_05: 2:47

Well, we'll we'll we're hoping for you, Debs. Don't worry. We'll fight for you. Don't worry, Gel.

SPEAKER_03: 2:53

Uh I'm I'm on I'm on the fence, to be honest. I've seen enough people in this village struck down with like, oh, oh, you know, oh, it must have been every night last night. Well, we did go Debs Bubs. The coincidence is getting a bit too well.

SPEAKER_05: 3:07

I I thought as well. I was a bit worried because the last time I had a chit in kebab, she asked me if I wanted at medium rare. So oh I found your contacts in Debs Bubs as well. Oh, did you?

SPEAKER_03: 3:17

Yeah. I wondered what happened to them. Yeah, I thought, oh, a bit of bone or something. Um, sort of had another little lap at it, and uh yeah, one of your contacts. No it was yours because it was the ravey ones, you know, the little smiley faces that you used to wear when you went to Dreamscape.

SPEAKER_05: 3:33

Yes, it yeah, yeah. Oh, no way.

SPEAKER_03: 3:35

Oh, well done. Just wash them off, will you? Because I need them. Uh by the time I realised it was halfway down my esophagus, so you know.

SPEAKER_05: 3:43

Well, just keep a check on them, then I'm sure you'll find them. I ain't seen anything yet. Oh anyway, how are you, George? Other than food poisoning.

SPEAKER_03: 3:56

Yeah, oh yeah, I'll do a great. Um glad everyone's uh still with us. Uh especially after that intro. I don't know quite where that went. Some sideways piece of law no one ever asked for, but there you go. Um yeah, everything good, mate. Been a very busy week, UCP wise, up there on air, everywhere, but under the chair.

SPEAKER_05: 4:17

It's all been good. So yeah, been chipping away at bits, haven't we? No, the 300th episodes done from last week. That's out of the way. Websites up and running.

SPEAKER_03: 4:25

Yes, go check that out. Well, I think we were trying to funnel into that. Go check out the website, go make sure you've seen the 300th episode. Yes, because by demand, we even put one up as a video. Yeah. If you want the videos, make the YouTube look sexy.

SPEAKER_05: 4:46

Yeah, get on there. Give us a like, give us a sub.

SPEAKER_03: 4:50

Make it look like you care, and then we'll keep slapping the videos out because right now it it goes down in there. Uh audio, great, but we've always been a radio show, so maybe that's why.

SPEAKER_05: 5:04

Yeah, I'm definitely a face for radio.

SPEAKER_03: 5:08

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, you're like the sort of no, mate, no, yeah. You're sort of the study that people use for art class, you know.

SPEAKER_05: 5:19

Looks great. Yeah, I don't think they'd want to study me. That'd make you want to give up art. I what have you been playing?

SPEAKER_03: 5:30

Save me, you save yourself from that, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 5:33

Yeah. Um I have started Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Um, and I know what you're expecting me to say. What? I'm a I'm a bit burnt out, George. I shouldn't have started it, George. I should have. I know you're not gonna say this. You're gonna have a pallet case.

SPEAKER_03: 5:59

In fact, you're gonna try for another baby and call it cloud.

SPEAKER_05: 6:05

Have I already told you this or no? No, um no, on seriously though, um yeah, I'm about ten hours in, I think, to rebirth. Um so far, very different to remake. Um and I was thinking last night, how can I describe the gameplay in this game? And this is gonna sound odd, but it reminds me very much. It's got tropes from the landscape and everything reminds me of Xenoblade Chronicles because it's open world, this one. Um Horizon Zero Dawn for the way that you collect and gather, and you've got the you know, when when in in Horizon when you'd collect sticks and stuff and you'd have the little triangle and the line sticking out to show where things are to collect.

SPEAKER_00: 6:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 6:56

Um, you got all those like that, so you you collect sage and bits and pieces now, and you can make your own potions rather than just relying on people.

SPEAKER_03: 7:03

Is that only in this rebirth section, or was that in the other section as well?

SPEAKER_05: 7:06

No, this is like a new mechanic or reverse. New mechanic, yeah, new mechanic. Um, and and then because of the open world and the way you go around, it reminds me of Breath of the Wild. It's got them sort of three games inherently in. Um, I've literally only got to chapter two. I've been clearing the map and doing side missions and stuff, and it the way it makes me feel is very, very horizon. When you're in horizon, and before you want to go off and do a mission, you've got that mission marked on your map, but you can just go off and explore, do some side quests, and just go off. That's what I've been doing, and um I've been enjoying it very much. You start off in um the village of or little town of Calm, um, and then obviously Shinra come in to try and get you, so you have to go out, get out, escape, and then you're off out into the into the area. But even like when you're in that short bit at the start, when you're in the town of Calm, it's one of the best sort of lived in towns I've seen in a game. Do you know what I mean? But there's lots of people about the town, looks fantastic with all these sort of um almost Harry Potter-ish sort of Dygon alley, um buildings, restaurants, pubs. Um, there's people everywhere, there's marketplaces, you can listen into people's conversations and what they're saying. Um, your your team, um, like Barrett will be in a pub, and um Erith is up near the clock tower, and you can go off, and it's just fantastic. You can go in the shops, and it's a very, very lived-in place, and then you you introduce to the um lot of the side game, the card game they do, which is uh god, I can't remember what it's called now, Queens, something or other, which is great fun. You can go off and play people outside restaurants at this game. Um, so yeah, very good. And I was in a while, I was disappointed when I had to leave Calm because I was quite enjoying going round and and visiting the in the town, and then obviously we're now out in the open world, but I think we come back to it. But yeah, so far, first 10 hours, very good. I know when that's a good game for me is when I'm at work and I'm not playing it, and all I'm thinking about is getting back and playing it. So I know I'm on a good game when it's like that, and that unfortunately happens less and less these days. That happened to me this week, and so I all I was thinking about like yesterday was oh, I've got a spare couple of hours when I get home. I'm gonna get in Final Fantasy Rebirth and uh and off I go and into the wilderness again. And yeah, very, very good. If if you've got a game, sometimes I found with like if you're playing them open world Assassin's Creeds, sometimes you just miss them side missions, just to get the story done, just get the game done. But this one, I just want to do everything, and that's when I know it's a good game.

SPEAKER_03: 9:54

Yeah, I agree. There's uh there's been some games recently that I've been playing, and it's just been like, no, what's the next mainline quest? Please give it to me now. Yeah, right, go. And you know, when that happens, you know, in your own mind, you're thinking, Well, if you're thinking like this, you're probably not enjoying it. Uh or or you're not comfortable. Well, what's happening? So, you know, it's an interesting game of question, that dude.

SPEAKER_05: 10:18

Yeah, and also um I think as well, they've they've taken remake. Okay, so a few years ago they made remake now, and they've looked properly looked at the game and thought, right, maybe we were a bit overcomplicated on upgrading your weapons and your material and bits, and they seem to have streamlined that now, so that's a more user-friendly experience. But then what would they want us more? Ah, rather than finding potions, let's have them craft potions so they can find the stuff out in the wilderness and then decide what they want to make with what they find. So they've they've streamlined some things that would be submenu into submenu, but then added stuff in that was be more enjoyable and more part of the experience, which I think, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 10:58

Do they feel like disconnected experiences, or does it feel like you've put down seven and you've picked up after uh rebirth?

SPEAKER_05: 11:05

The the very start of the game is a bit weird, really, because it's not um it's almost like um different timelines. So um, like the start of the game, um I can't remember the guy's name from um Crisis Core. Um the main character, uh, I can't remember his name, but he you'll get a clip of him bringing you back into um Midgar, and the others are like captured, but then you play as you've escaped, so there's like different timelines, which I would imagine it will be down to Sephiroth and what he's changing in timelines and stuff. So that's a bit confusing at first, but it felt a complete continuation because that gives you a recap at the end of what you've done at the end of remake, and then goes into the game. But now you're in the open world. Sometimes I forget I'm in Final Fantasy VII, apart from the characters, because the gameplay is rather than a sort of a linear experience. Well, I say not so much linear in remake, but you were in controlled little map areas each you know, each stage. Um, whereas this now is now an open world, you sometimes forget you're actually in the Final Fantasy universe at times. Um, but yeah, it's very good. Um they've they've definitely streamlined some things, they've opened up other things, which has um been really enjoyable, and yeah, just enjoying exploring at the moment, and yeah, uh looking forward to playing some more on that. Um, I did try your you boat. No, no, no, okay, mate. Yeah, yeah, you you'll be talking enough about that. Um cast and chill. So I was sitting here writing a few bits for our other show the other night, flashback, and I had my switch to on my desk queue with my monitor for my recording area, so I thought, hmm, do I flick on the idle mode and see what George was on about? So I put cast and chill on, put the idle mode on, off he went, off his boat. I just had him on in the background while I was writing.

SPEAKER_03: 13:08

Did he go back to the dock?

SPEAKER_05: 13:11

Um, I didn't see him go back to the dock, but um I went off to do some bits, popped down the shop, forgot I'd left the switch two on. When I come back, I had 1500 gold coins. So I would imagine.

SPEAKER_03: 13:22

Oh, you piece of garbage. So that's how people are mainlining it. Because I'm like doing everything I can. I'm going out getting a little tiddler coming back, little tiddler coming back, get a bit more grade to rod, blah blah blah blah. So it's been progressively getting more and more. Tip jar, tip jar, chip chip jar. I'm about, you know, probably 90% of the way up to the top of the map. Wow, are you really? Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_05: 13:45

Wow, well done.

SPEAKER_03: 13:46

Oh, yeah, I've only I've only unlocked like two areas, so yeah. I think I've unlocked about four. Oh, well done. Not the mainline areas, though, that you unlock within the map. There's I think I've done one of those. I got one of those quite quickly because I I wanted to make sure it wasn't a bit of a one-trick pony. Yeah. So I wanted to see the other level and and then see the depths. So I think I've got one that's got a beaver dam in it.

SPEAKER_05: 14:09

Um that's the second one, isn't it? The beaver damage. Is that the second one?

SPEAKER_03: 14:14

And then there's another one that's um like an ex some I've got another one that's like an extension of the river that you were on. So you start on a river that kind of goes from left to right, and that all of it it all goes from left to right. But then I think there's an upward section of that river that you see, you know, where you see the little deer sort of poking his head down. You then end up on that section, but it's turned, isn't it? So you're left to right. I think that's kind of how I interpreted the map, anyway. Oh then I'll throw in some money in, and we've got that little pond that you immediately get on the right hand side. That's it's quite nice, it's quite sweet, isn't it? Like it was my first little open thing from the tip jar. So it was like, oh, what's this? Uh, and then I think I got another one further up uh from the tip jar. I need to get back on it. I was playing it this week. Sorry, I've overridden all your time.

SPEAKER_05: 15:04

No, no, no, not at all. It was literally just an experiment to see how that worked. Um, so I've left it at that. I haven't done it anymore. Um, but it's yeah, it's very, very interesting. I've never sort of seen anything like that added in a game before. I know you sometimes have like easy modes on games and auto battles and stuff, but in this fishing game, I've never seen where you could just you could literally be playing this game if you haven't played Cast and Chill, it literally is what it says on the tin. It is yeah, you know, it's a lovely pixelated, gorgeous looking little fishing game, and you just save up, you upgrade, you catch bigger fish, and you find different areas, but you can flick it into an idle mode where that'll just then fish and sell your fish for you as you go. Um, and I just wanted to see what that worked. And actually, when I'm when I'm doing my work on my laptop with the monitor behind, and you can just see him cruising along, cast that's really nice little background and a lovely little touch.

SPEAKER_03: 15:57

But I suppose that he's there to be abused by people because you're well that's why I haven't like I'm I'm not one for cheating, but I did want to I I enjoy this game so much that I've kind of I did click it on the idle mode, say like Tuesday night, I think it was. Um I was away and I uh had the switch two with me. I thought, oh yeah, we'll we'll flip this idle mode on, so try it out. And I'd made some of the selections. Did you go into the idle mode submenu and check the checkboxes or uncheck the checkboxes?

SPEAKER_05: 16:29

I made sure that it didn't have the legendary fish checked.

SPEAKER_03: 16:33

I also tipped the trophy one as well. So I basically watched him catch and release for 30 minutes, thinking, why isn't he going back to the oh okay? Um so that was a bit so I'm I'm glad because at the minute I want to be responsible myself as the game player. I want to be responsible for every coin, so I when I get an upgrade, it feels a bit more heartfelt. Sometimes in the game, if they give you an option like this, I tend to drift off because it's like, well, leave it on idle mode for six hours, come back, complete the game. Because the only thing stopping you from progressing through the game is the currency that you unlock from selling fish. If you don't unlock that currency yourself, it kind of weakens the value of the money down to in my mind. It should do because you know, so what? I'm playing with a fully upgraded rod. Yeah, but you need to feel the pain of every sub-menu and upgrade on the way to fully appreciate it in my mind. Yes. So I'm like super envious that you've got 1500 uh cast and chill coins in your back pocket, but then I look at it and be like, yeah, well, that's all the levels bought, and that's pretty much all the boats bought. That's the vast majority of the rod upgrades needed.

SPEAKER_05: 17:50

And I I I I think um I I can understand why they've done it because I think they've they've probably thought that the game they're they're they're probably the devs are probably a bit worried that this might get a bit repetitive, so people might play the first and they've added that in to boost the people up a bit, but people will abuse that.

SPEAKER_03: 18:09

Um adding that in in on the first map, where your fish are like uh five coins each to enable you to get a slightly better rod so you can lure fish on that level, as an example, yeah, might work. Um you're right, the abuse. I sometimes wonder if this game started as a game or a screensaver.

SPEAKER_05: 18:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 18:36

And they built the screensaver and went, could you control me to? Oh yeah, you could, yeah. This could be a great game. Or was it like a screensaver? That's an insult. Actually, it's not, it's a good idea. I don't know. Um, but the idol mode, yeah. I like it, but I don't like it.

SPEAKER_05: 18:56

I mean, there might be a lot of people that probably wouldn't buy the game, would buy the game just to have that running in the background. You know, people make YouTube videos about the Switch, and on the back they've got the idol mode of that fishing away in the background, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 19:08

So maybe you can I mean don't get me wrong. I mean, I walked in here a probably a week or so ago and gave it eight out of ten. And I stand by that.

SPEAKER_05: 19:18

Yeah, it's a great little game. It is a great little game. But um um, yeah, I think my idle mode days are done. That was just an experiment. Um, but I am definitely gonna play some.

SPEAKER_03: 19:26

So all Alex say RGT.

SPEAKER_05: 19:28

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll be idle mode and all over the place. Um yeah, leave that one there. Um, and finally, I've been playing um I've been wanting to get on because I've got the Taito Collection 2, I believe it was, for my avocade.

SPEAKER_02: 19:44

Oh, what's on that?

SPEAKER_05: 19:46

Um, well, there's one game I've been playing, it's mainly Tato Arcade ports, but there's one game I noticed. This is the reason I bought this, uh just pure on pure nostalgia. Um when I was little RGT and I used to go. To a local youth club. Um there was an arcade machine in the youth club, um, which I used to put my 10p's in, which was Tato, and obviously, and it was Rastan, if anyone remembers the arcade game at Rastan. Um, and that is on this Evercade port, and the nostalgia flood them back. And I even uh my mate who we used to play it with, I took a picture of just the open screen. We had this sort of magician guy on there, and I sent him that and said, Does this bring back any memories? And he came out and went, Oh my god, is that Rastan? And I was like, Yes, what we used to play in the youth club. Um, I've got that on my Evocade, and he's like, Oh, I need to come around and play that. I was like, Yes, but I saw I've been experimenting with that. Um, it's also made me realise that one, um, I'm pretty terrible at RK games. Uh two, um, as I'm old now, my re my reflexes are pretty terrible as well. Um, and three, probably how games have got a lot easier than what they used to be years ago. I know these are coin crunch. I know they were coin crunchers back then, they wanted you to put your 10ps in, which we did, but there's still something I don't have you ever played Rastan, George?

SPEAKER_03: 21:12

I just looked at it there and was actually I've never played it, but it I have seen it about. Um but what blew me away was how good it looked.

SPEAKER_05: 21:24

Yes, and on the Evocade on my monitor, because I have my Evocade now on my desk here, it's um it does look very good. I have the added scan lines in, then you've got your credits, so use your select button and your controller, bling bling bling, chuck your 10 Ps in. Um and you also got quick save as well, which you can abuse to your part's content to help you get through because it is tough. I mean, you get a couple of hits, bang, you're dead on this game.

SPEAKER_03: 21:48

Games are what's just let mini save states.

SPEAKER_05: 21:51

Yeah, you've got a menu button on your controller. Got it here, let you see. Press your menu button in the middle here, ding ding ding. Um, and then you This show's never going out on video. No, I know, but I'm showing you a lot like death, yeah. And um you then you then bring up quick either quick save or you can make your own save state, and then you've got you can reload from an old state, but that's just as soon as you press that button up the load and go. But that's what I love about the Evocade, it it brings it into a modern world. Not only that, it's it's very user-friendly as well. You know, it's yes, these arcade games are hard, and sometimes you just think you play a couple of times, a couple of lives, and you just think, Oh, I can't be doing this. But with these added save states, it's just like, oh, let me just go back to that save state, I'll try that bit again. And it just yeah, you know, and also, how else are you gonna play Rastan unless you've got an emulator? You're not gonna buy a Rastan machine. I mean, there's probably about three left running in the country, you know, they're they're not available, and this is just a great way of playing these games. Um, for you know, I think I paid 20 bucks for this cartridge.

SPEAKER_06: 23:02

What else is on there?

SPEAKER_05: 23:04

Um I'll have to have a quick look because um I hang on, let me just quickly look because I can't. I went straight on to Rastan. Uh sorry, bear with me, bear with me, bear with me. Um there is New Zealand story, Rastan, Elevator Action.

SPEAKER_03: 23:31

New Zealand story, wow.

SPEAKER_05: 23:33

Yeah, elevator action, liquid kids, uh electric yo-yo, alpine ski, um called it Operation Wolf, um, another one of my favourites.

SPEAKER_03: 23:45

So how are you playing that on there though? Like mouse controls.

SPEAKER_05: 23:49

I haven't tried yet, um, but you can use a mouse on an Evercade. They uh they upgraded the functionality for that. So on certain point and click games, because you get broken sword on there as well, which I've got. Um you can use a USB mouse, there's plug in the front where you go.

SPEAKER_03: 24:03

I've played it on Atari ST with mouse, but I tell you what, it's actually quite hard. You'd think it'd be easy, but it was just as hard as a light gun. Yeah, I suppose it is because you've got to move across the screen pretty quick one at a time, in you, whereas and you could move the gun way quicker. The ST was like, oh, okay, you want to do that.

SPEAKER_05: 24:20

Yeah, you've got to move that cut. Yeah, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 24:23

The guards are like uh uh and the helicopter's like Yeah, I haven't thought of that.

SPEAKER_05: 24:31

Let me leave it with me. I'll try for next week, I'll try Operation Ball.

SPEAKER_03: 24:34

It just seems the way uh like I understand why Taito would put it on that pack, or or Evercade would put it on that pack. It's it's got credence, it's got fans, it's a solid game, but it's traditionally a light gun game. Obviously, back in the days of the Atari ST didn't have a light gun, uh, didn't have that code programmed into it, probably. Um, you know, it was a mouse game, and probably even joystick control, which would have been an absolute nightmare. That would have been like trying to shoot someone through the medium of using the QE2 folksle with a little circle and crosshair on it as your medium of aiming.

SPEAKER_00: 25:10

Like, hang on a minute, turn around, like all the meantime, while you're getting absolutely riddled with bullets like a Swiss cheese.

SPEAKER_05: 25:19

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's um yeah, it's interesting to find out. I'll leave it with me. I'm gonna have a go on that this week and see see how that works.

SPEAKER_03: 25:27

Is there an Evocade light gun? Because it seems to me like the leaving are they not?

SPEAKER_05: 25:32

No, there's there's not an Evocade light gun. Um there's like I say at the moment, it's more the hardware of obviously you've got the versus consoles, home consoles, you've got the handhelds, uh the XPRs and bits, you've got these uh hypertech, which is Evocade, they had to call it a different name, but super pockets, which I've got like the little Game Boy ones, and then you've got the Alphas, which is the bar top arcades, and they all accept all the cartridges, so you can you know play whatever you want on, which I know retro ed, if you're listening, I know you've got an alpha. If you've played it yet, let us know how to he is an alpha, yeah. Let us know how you get on with that alpha because uh are you calling him alpha or how he got on with the alpha?

SPEAKER_03: 26:13

Let us know how you get on with that alpha. He's an alpha, he's the alpha dog, alpha male, alpha.

SPEAKER_05: 26:17

He definitely is, but that that quite intrigues me to have a little arc, you know, it's almost like the old Neo Geo cabinets back in the day when they'd swap out the cartridges, the MVSs. You know, you've you've got that opportunity to play whatever you want on your little arcade machine, you're not limited. Yeah, so that's cool.

SPEAKER_03: 26:30

I just can't believe they've left like such an open goal of a light gun.

SPEAKER_05: 26:33

Because I think it's because of it's with modern screens, it's been quite awkward tech to get that operational and it's expensive. Um, there is one that's out at the moment, a time crisis gun, and I've seen very mixed reviews on that. The accuracy and how it works. So, yeah, the light gun on a modern screen is all very awkward tech. I think it's getting more popular, more people at companies are trying it. So, hopefully, maybe in the future. I mean, the way Evocade's selling at the moment, I can't see why they wouldn't try something different.

SPEAKER_03: 27:03

But just seems like absolute gold for them to batch up like Wolf, Thunderbolt, a few of those other old school. I'm not even talking like the big boy ones, I'm talking like the smaller traditional ones.

SPEAKER_05: 27:14

Yeah, and especially with the licenses they've got, you know, from Neo Geo to Taito to Datories. Exactly that.

SPEAKER_03: 27:20

You know, they could swoop up there, yeah. I mean do like a light gun collection packed in with a yeah, well no, let's face it, they're gonna stretch it out further. They'll do Taito light gun games packed in with a light gun, XYZ light gun games packed in with a light gun, and each light gun will be a different iteration of one that looks closest to one in that game. I mean, yeah, tech's hard, blah blah blah, but yeah. Imagine one of those bar tops as well, where you just lift the foot the buttons off and then lay down a little Uzi on a turner as well. You've got the Terminator 2 arcade game as well, would lend itself to that. That felt very Operation Wolf reincarnation at times.

SPEAKER_05: 27:57

Yeah, we played that, didn't we, at um at Berry at the arcade club?

SPEAKER_03: 28:01

Yeah, you probably absolutely owned me and then laughed at me and you know pointed at the damn patch on my trousers or something, you know, sort of ridiculous. Yeah, it's it's totally fine.

SPEAKER_05: 28:10

Um, but yeah, so that's pretty much what I've been playing. So, what about you, George? What have you been apart from U-Boat? Has there been anything else in your life this week?

SPEAKER_03: 28:18

Um, to be fair, mate, I want to do just a light touch on U-boat because I played it over Christmas, quite enjoyed it, went back to it in the new year, uh, and I was still enjoying it. Finished the tutorial. Um, the tutorial gets a bit rushed at the end. It's like, oh, you know, it's how you sort your crew, and this is how you send them on leave, and this is how you do that. Enjoy the game. What they didn't really double down on was I'd done the whole tutorial with my crew that I've never sent on leave. So I'd finished a tutorial, I was like, Yes, you know what? I went to the stores like I remembered, and I bought some food and some luxuries to keep the morale up. I thought, yeah, awesome. And there's so many menus and submenus that you it's taking a lot of understanding. So I was like, right, so I finished a tutorial, I'll accept this next mission. Awesome, load the ship. So it took about two days to load the ship, and you have to fast forward the time to make it happen. Totally fine. All the stores were loaded, no other restrictions on my ability to leave. Didn't think to check the crew morale because we're starting a mission. Beep beep, off we go. Mate, I get like one yard into the English channel, and everyone's like, ooh, don't like it. And I'm like, what I've got all the luxuries, like what's happening? Menu, sub menu, click morale, boom. Your crew are tired from continuous missions. You need to rest them at home, then you need your other crew to come on board.

SPEAKER_05: 29:43

So there's even another in depth to this game.

SPEAKER_03: 29:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 29:46

You have to rest the you're crewing.

SPEAKER_03: 29:48

You have to rotate not only your rank and file crew, but you need to rotate your officers as well.

SPEAKER_05: 29:54

Oh.

SPEAKER_03: 29:55

And that it goes through, it talks about crew morale, it talks about crew rotation, but like you you go to fire a torpedo, you're in for an eight-hour mission. The crew morale thing and and switching your party out is literally done in two windows like that. Bam, bam, back tutorial finished, you've done great. And it was like, actually, I raced through that tutorial. I didn't actually really look at anything because I didn't realise the importance. Now I'm halfway through the English Channel, I've got a mutiny on my hands.

SPEAKER_01: 30:23

I wish I I I wish I'd looked.

SPEAKER_03: 30:28

And I was trying to patrol this area, and every time you go under, your air quality goes down and your crew get upset. Well, I was that busy trying to look on the hydrophone, I didn't realise that everybody on board was like starting to cough their lungs up. So I come out of the I come out of the hydrophone map, and everyone's like coiling over one guy. Just as I come out the map, some guy, my chief engineer, just sort of coughs a couple of times, he coils over on the deck. I'm like, oh my god, surface, come up quick, then didn't I? And jumped out of the water, pop open slide in there, sort of comes back round a little bit. I think okay, so I turned it off. I thought, no, I can't even comprehend how I would get these people back without some serious, actual real-world pain. We'll come back to this. Good god, as I as much as I want to embrace you, look you.

SPEAKER_05: 31:20

You just abandoned them floating out in the ocean.

SPEAKER_03: 31:22

As much as I want to like love you for everything that you gave me and all the feelings I talked about a week ago. My god, guys, help me out. Um, so anyway, that was the light touch on that. One game I didn't want to talk about. Obviously, me writing the cutting edge of game, and everyone's playing Metroid Prime Prune. Metroid Prime 4. I was away, I was in my room, had the Switch 2 with me. Looked in my little sort of collection of games, Metroid Prime remastered. Yeah. I played that a while. Uh remember being impressed by it. I'll stick that in, give it a go. I mean, you don't need me here to talk about a 400-year-old remaster of a 400-year-old game, but it looks so nice. I always had a soft spot for the GameCube version. I think I predominantly played it on the Wii. I had like a it's it's worth a lot of money now. Bloody trade there. I'm an idiot, really. But for the longest time, uh, when I had my Wii U, I also had Metroid Prime Trilogy, which was absolutely banging on there. Um was that on the Wii U? On the Wii, but it was backwards compatible on the Wii U. So you had this nice little box pack, and like I say, I traded it. I didn't get another Wii U game or something. I think like it was like I bought when I bought it at like£12.

unknown: 32:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 32:49

I will you have a little look see while I rabbit on about Metroid Prime. So um, like I say, I've got some memories of the uh Wii of the GameCube original. Uh me and a mate played it, and you know, I quite like to watch him play it, had to play on it myself. It really is one of those great games. This remaster, I have to say, it looks great, right? This it's not had a switch to upgrade or anything like that, but it looks great, and it plays just really nicely. I've been spending a lot of time. Oh RGT is now the time when I review the game lab console.

SPEAKER_05: 33:28

Yeah, we can do that after you've done your your Metroid bit, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 33:31

Oh god, I don't know if I'm ready for it, might have to wait another week. Uh well, yeah. Anyway, so I've been playing a lot of like uh Metroid on the NES, the snares, the Game Boy, really enjoying just that generally, just a nice aesthetic, the game, the way it plays. And Metroid Prime is a love letter to 2D Metroid, it's absolutely brilliant. Um graphically, as well, considering it is a Switch 1, it does look so nice. There's lots of atmospherics, there's lots of little environmental sort of puffs of dust and sand in the air. Um, have you played uh Metroid Prime remastered on the Switch 1?

SPEAKER_05: 34:13

No, I've I played it, I didn't finish it, but I played years ago on my GameCube. And I when I still had the game shed, I played Metroid Prime, but I haven't played remastered.

SPEAKER_03: 34:22

To be fair, mate, it's a great experience on the GameCube. All you're gonna get here is slightly fancier graphics, even though I I quite like the aesthetic that the GameCube.

SPEAKER_05: 34:30

I remember thinking, yeah, I remember thinking this does look good for the generation.

SPEAKER_03: 34:34

Yeah, this is a nice looking. A thousand percent did, and and this upgrade has done it a world of good. You know, I've I haven't played four, but I've seen screenshots of four and video four, and it looks very much obviously it looks better, four does look better, but this looks just as good, and it kind of hooks its talons in the back of that game. My only slight annoyance with it is you mug me off with a one-off copy of Prime Remastered, which I dutifully bought Sir Nintendo. Then you brought out four, but you've not deigned to give us two and three, like why don't you just give us a remastered trilogy? Like, what are you playing at? Because I've got one on Switch and I've got four. Well, I haven't got four, but I could get four, but I can't you won't let me play the in-between games.

SPEAKER_05: 35:20

Yeah, that's that's that's an odd one, and you think they'd have released that as a trilogy.

SPEAKER_03: 35:24

Or as a compromise, because I didn't mind the graphics in the first place. Why don't they give us Prime Remastered of sorted? They might as well just drop two and three unfettered, like they did with Luigi's Mansion, straight onto the GameCube uh app for the online Nintendo online.

SPEAKER_05: 35:44

Oh, was it? I think three yeah, went three a Wii game and then one and two was GameCube, I believe. I might be wrong. I think it was quite controversial the third one, wasn't it? Uh God knows. Um if I remember rightly, but um I did just look up your trilogy, CEX do it for£70.

SPEAKER_03: 36:07

What the frick?

SPEAKER_05: 36:10

But some some people on eBay are asking well over a hundred for it, but then that's eBay, but it's on the Wii, you're right.

SPEAKER_03: 36:16

Wow. So only the first two games came. Yeah. The older I get, the more blurred it is. And that's why it was probably a trilogy on the Wii that I had, so you could play through them concurrently and then straight into. Although, you know, we ran GameCube anyway, so what's another another cash grab guys?

SPEAKER_05: 36:37

Yeah. I have got Metro Prime 4, but I haven't um I haven't started it yet. I'm waiting until rebirth is done, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 36:44

But yeah, I mean it's not it's not a difficult game. I don't think any of the Metroids ever really sort of overload you with combat. I don't think they ever suggest they're a combat game. I'd you know, there is in there you're like shooting the little critters and bosses and bits and bobs, but mainly it's you versus the environment. It's that kind of keep going till you find a room when you get an upgrade and then go back. Oh god, yeah, there was that door. I remember that, I remember a door like that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh god. Okay.

SPEAKER_05: 37:16

And then like I like I like this element of it because you're exploring, but even with the map up, like, I'm like, okay, so how do I get back to my I've always found the 2D metroids easier because I don't know why I find it easier to track your way on the map than I do in the first person ones.

SPEAKER_03: 37:34

Yeah, I agree. The map is more easy to understand because it's just a 2D thing, so you can either go up, down, left, or right, simple as that. In this one, you the rooms are very similar, and sometimes you walk into a room, go through another door out of another section, and then appear back in the room, but you don't it doesn't feel like the room because you've entered it from a different door from a different angle. So you then like, okay, but I've been here.

SPEAKER_05: 37:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 38:00

Have I been here before? And WAP says I have, but I don't really remember. Oh, yeah, oh, okay. So there's a lot of that going on as you're kind of bimbling around, which I quite enjoy. Like I say, the combat's not difficult. It reminds me very much of like a Karina of Time, you know, you hold down trigger and like bah bah bah bah bah bam, you know, hold down trigger to lock on, and then bah bah bah bah bam with the other one to sort of take them away. The scanning element of it, you and I think Prime's always suffered with this a little bit. You kind of have your combat visor where you do all your shooting, and that's your main sort of navigation of the area visor or hood. You know, you want that on to walk around, and if a bad thing pops up, you shoot them. But then you also have the scanning visor which you have to physically press a button for and then look around and do the scanning. I often forget the scanning visor. So I'm walking like, what am I doing? Oh, there's nothing here. Oh scanning visor, yeah, scanning visor, look round. Oh, you've unlocked a magic symbol. Damn it. I saw one of those in that room. Oh god. Okay. Walk back through all the scan. It was one of those magic thingies. Right. Okay. Uh, but where the hell are the other two? Oh god. Uh so yeah, it's Metroid has always felt really overwhelming, you know, especially in those early days. Like, I've just got an upgrade for my gun. What can that do? Fires missiles. All right, I use that on the bad guys. No, you use that on the doors. What? Okay. Yeah. Oh, okay. Um, but yeah, thoroughly enjoying it. And it's as you mentioned earlier in the show, it's the game I've not been able to stop thinking about. And I'm quite glad that I went away, only had the switch to dug into the back catalogue, slapped this in, been a while. Oh, yeah. You know, and and then the enjoyment comes. So, yeah, if you haven't played it, I'm sure everyone who's listening has. Um, get into that because I think you'll find a really nice experience. As I always say, RGT, great game to take on the go. I think that probably brings us to the end of our what you've been playing section. And sorry I've been a bit boring.

SPEAKER_05: 40:20

Oh, we need your review, don't we?

SPEAKER_03: 40:22

Of your uh you want to do that here and now.

SPEAKER_05: 40:24

Yeah, I do. I want to hear about this. I want to see how great this is.

SPEAKER_03: 40:28

Because I'm not current I'm not currently in possession of it. But let's go from the top down. So during the month of November and December, I'm sure all of you have got any sort of social media were completely slammed to the wall with our 36 clones. Uh, the most notable one that uh the most uh egregious uh advertiser in that space was a company called Game Lab. Um lots of like UK-based people showing you pictures of the console says it's delivered in the UK, lots of people playing games on there that I would argue uh are not running on there, but whatever.

SPEAKER_05: 41:06

I love games AI people with six fingers as well.

SPEAKER_03: 41:09

And though to be fair, the videos I saw, there was none of that, but they were kind of non-descript undisclosed people I've never seen on Instagram before, probably the biggest grifters of all time. Oh, massive listener base, I want one for free. Well, guess what? I rocked up and paid good money because this is the only show you can trust. So I got the R36 and the Game Boy uh shape, the OG Game Boys for the vertical portrait version. Not they also do a like a GBA style uh port um landscape version. I went with the OG. Um I think I got like a one of the see-through ones. Um it was like a smoked purple. Um with that, I thought, well, when I'm checking out, I'll get the online multiplayer pack. That was£20 for a couple of dongles, and then there was a um a carry case, which I'm glad I got because it's actually quite decent.

SPEAKER_05: 42:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 42:11

So initially we talked about the delivery. Um, it was meant to come technically by their recommendation within so many days, and I thought, well, this will get to here before Christmas. Now I think probably slightly unfair to judge them by that merit because obviously all the delivery companies are struggling over the festive period. So that was probably always that's hard for me to judge. But this thing I do not get the impression this thing shipped from the UK. So the fact it's shipped from China, China, and got to don't call Matt me, but I love Trump. Not for the reasons that you might think or anything like that. I love him because he is the most memeable dude. Yep. There's a meme a day from him, he's the most clippable dude that I know of in history, especially as a president. And people say, Oh, that's yeah, but George, that's what's scary about him. I don't care. He's no danger, he's no threat. He's not running the if you think that any of the heads of state are running any of the countries that you live in, you're off your tips. Right? They're just a token fall guy who's going to be able to enrich himself while taking the heat for some of the bad decisions other people make. Yeah, that's totally what he's doing. Um, anyway, got it from China. And uh why do you say he got it from there, George? That's where he came from. Came from China, China. Uh anyway, came from China. China, I can't even say that one. You keep saying it now, you just can't stop saying it. I can't say it in the in in just general conversation either, without going China. Um, anyway, so it's shit from there. So you could argue that's quite impressive. Anyway, between Christmas and New Year, I was quite happy to receive like a little mini sort of tech gadget game thing, you know. And as a stocking filler for a casual, yeah, I can probably say that if you'd bought this for your significant other who didn't have a gaming console in the house, or maybe did was casual, maybe a gem behind or whatever, or maybe has some uh often talks fondly, doesn't have a gaming console now, but often talks fondly of playing Pokemon, playing the snares, all that sort of good stuff. This is a good buy for a five-minute blast on this, oh remember this, five-minute blast on that, remember that. If you're in any way still deeply connected to the hobby, you will find that this thing frustrates more than it rewards. What I would say is, as a Game Boy emulator, which is what it looks like, really, it's bang on. It will do Game Boy easily, it will do GBA relatively okay, it will do filters on those to make them look like a Game Boy Pocket, whatever, and it looks acceptable. My son went away for college. Um I said here, take this because he was wanting me to go in the loft and get the uh Game Boys out because he'd got a little ponchant bit of nostalgia to finish off his Pokemon Blues save.

SPEAKER_05: 45:22

I remember you mentioned that, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 45:23

And it was like, nah, have this. It's better than going in the loft. Uh and he's been blown away by it, but he's predominantly been playing the Pokemons. Now, it does have emulators for Super Nintendo, Genesis, it does have emulators on there for N64, it does have emulators on there for PlayStation 1, it does have emulators on there for Dreamcast. Stazz and Mega Drive, you just are gonna about get away with it. I was playing Super Metroid, and the game was slow, really slow. So I remember thinking that's actually it's actually quite calm. We've got this sort of low gravity feeling where I can jump jump Samus up in the air and like this rotation drop and then and initially I thought that should make the game a bit easier. This is quite cool. And then as I started playing a bit more, I thought, hmm. Why does this colour palette look a bit strange? I don't remember it. I'll load it up on the switch too, it's probably the easiest way. Up a couple seconds. Oh god, wow. Okay, all the colours. Red's red. Alright, what's it play like? Jump immediately, there's no it's up in the air and down. Ah okay, this sits different. This sits different now. Okay, let's try some of these other games. Oh yeah, that's that is ropey as well. Right, okay. So Super Nintendo within reason is about your upper threshold of what you can do. PlayStation 1. But here's the weird thing. Legacy of Kane Soul Reaver. Listed as a Dreamcast version. And it was because I saw the menu screen. It plays really well.

SPEAKER_05: 47:22

So that tells me that the emulator they're using for Super Nintendo is absolute garbage then.

SPEAKER_03: 47:27

Well, that might be the case. Uh I've so let's sum this up. Screen, fantastic. Looks and aesthetics of the actual machine, actually very easy on the eye.

SPEAKER_05: 47:40

About the build quality, is that okay?

SPEAKER_03: 47:42

Build quality, okay. You rattle the console and the buttons shake within the housing, but I I don't think that to be too egregious. I mean, this is always going to be a bit like that, you know, shake a game boy and it'll rattle a bit, won't it? Buttons moving up and down. They need freedom of travel to move. So I'm giving it a pass there. Everything else about the build quality looks to be okay. In terms of the emulation on there, it's a very old, like, I'm learning as I go because I just wanted a plug-and-play solution. Uh, I'm learning as I go that you need to be a full-on C colon backslash push my glasses up nerd to get this thing working to its best. The immediate thing I thought was, okay, let's see if there's a quick fix on the internet to all this. They're like, Oh, don't as soon as you get one of these, take the card out, put it in a reader, put it in your laptop, clone it, get like a really expensive card and move it onto there, and all your problems gone away. Well, okay, so I'll blow another 40 quid on this pile of dog poo, will I? No, exactly. Let's just hold station a minute. Because it's a clone, you can't just update retro arch, you can't just do this, you can't just do that. You know, you've got to go on, you've got to find the specific retro arch that's working for your specific R36 clone, that's it ain't even gonna turn on. Immediately, to me, that's like a no, this is not your scene, George. You're just gonna have to make do with it. The closest I could probably do is clone the card over and stick it in. So to summarize, to summarise, to summarize, to summarize, to summarize, they're gonna get a free pass on the delivery review because I can't really heartfully like kick them too hard, although there is, I would say, express caution. Uh game lab interaction, the advertiser game comes from Gran Turismo. It's probably about the only game I probably would have played on it when I found out MSR actually wasn't on there after they said it was. So also check the games if you're getting it for a specific game that you're quite passionate about, even though there's 21,000 games on there alleged, a lot of them are doubles, a lot of them are this, a lot of them are drivel you'd never play anyway. I mean, who's playing a 20 Atari 2600 ET? One thing it is good at though is satisfying that curiosity. There were some games on like Super Nintendo I'd never played that were just there, instant access, load it up, play it. What's it like? Oh, okay, this is good, this is bad, this is interesting. So there is that there. Um the PlayStation 1 games that I played were were pretty garbage. The N64 was just not happening, and the Dreamcast was that spotty, you might as well be, you might as well just give up. PSP emulation also, which they offer, is in the bin. A lot of the adverts show you playing classic G get your classic GTA on the guy. Yeah, actually, what they're showing you there is Vice City stories on the PSP, and you're not moving in that game. I'll tell you why you're not moving in your advert that you've made Game Lab because the guy is probably working on a one to two second delay of input to actual action.

SPEAKER_04: 50:46

Oof.

SPEAKER_03: 50:49

So yeah. So this thing, uh, if you want a throw in the bag, because Rachel got me a very similar one, a lot cheaper, a lot more throwaway, probably a£10 stocking filler, where it was a little bit of a Nez clone, it maybe had 50 NES games on there, nothing good, not Zelda, your Mario's, your Kaplunk type games, just shovelware. And I have that kicking around just for a quick blast on Mario, it's good for that. This would be great for a quick kick around on your Pokemon, so you save states, all that. It works, it's good for that. I think if they'd advertised them as that, they'd have a lot more mileage. Advertise them as all these things, I think means that they're gonna go home to a wide audience, and that wide audience is probably gonna bounce off it because they're just like this is not that great.

SPEAKER_05: 51:40

The thing is, with these companies, especially like Game Lab, next year they'll be called something else, and then they'll drop ship another bulk load of clones from AliExpress or whatever they drop ship, and that'll be that, so they're not really. I mean, they promised the earth they know it ain't gonna deliver because the company will be a different name next year. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03: 51:56

And yeah, well, I complained to be like Gran Turismo now, you're not playing it. I contacted customer service to say I bought this specifically for these this for Metropolis Street Racer, Gran Turismo, and something else. And they're not on here as you advertised. Oh, well, yeah, they are on there. It's just that the way the machine has sorted it, here's a link to our FAQs. I thought, oh wow, this would be great. Went to the FAQs, it was just a lesson on how to put a ROM on there.

SPEAKER_05: 52:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 52:25

Yeah. So it's not on here, and you sent me to basically a piracy website or an idea that I need to now start pirating 30-year-old games.

SPEAKER_05: 52:35

Yeah.

unknown: 52:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 52:36

And I do own both copies, so is it illegal, maybe? But then I'm starting messing around in the inside architecture of the console to put a game on that they promised us on when it was shipped.

SPEAKER_05: 52:45

Yeah. I'd I find with these emulator consoles, um, it's a minefield. Um if you get if you want to get like an Amber Nick or something like that, which is a proper, decent company that makes really good hardware, but then you're paying for it, and then you need to put your ROMs on, then you need to know how to do that through your laptop or your PC and bits and pieces, and then you start getting a bit more complicated. Go back to it. That's what just wanted Evercade because you've got your handheld, you've got your home console, you've got your cartridges, the games come, you put them in and you play them. It's it's inexpensive, it's cheap, it's fully licensed, and it's a way to go. Like I say, your yours is it's cheap. Like you say, if if you bought it for like your son, he's playing Pokemon, it's bang on.

SPEAKER_03: 53:31

Um, and in that regard, I don't want to kick it too hard because it's doing that element of what it's saying.

SPEAKER_05: 53:38

Yeah, the downside is they're promising stuff that just isn't possible, you know. And you find a lot of these AliExpress, these wish, these teammates consoles will show a picture of Fortnite or something. Yeah, play it on the you ain't got a hope in hell upon it.

SPEAKER_03: 53:53

I I went into that and I started at the top. I started with Dreamcast, didn't have Metropolis Street Racer, right, kick, PS1, didn't have Gran Turismo, okay, kick SNES, okay, got loads on here, awesome, like and everything, like Uni Rally, and I one of the things I did is I went through all the every single one of the consoles listed, and you can go through all the games and hit one of the buttons and it favourites it. Then you have a whole folder that's full of your favourites. That's a nice touch. Yeah, I went through and favourited all the things that I knew would work on there and all the things I wanted to check out, which it does. Uh anything above Super Nintendo, Super Nintendo is like a fine line.

SPEAKER_05: 54:40

Anything above that, there's massive compromises, even if the problem with these these companies at these consoles, they think it's quantity. If we show as much stuff that this can play, even though it can't, that's when people are buying. If they actually limited it and went up to just 16-bit games and said, here we go, this is a console just for your 16-bit, your 8-bit, your handhelds, blah blah blah, I think people would be more satisfied with it. But then again, like I say, these companies are flashing the pans, there'll be Game Lab this year, there'll be something else next year, and they'll drop ship another clone of something else.

SPEAKER_03: 55:13

It rinks to that, sadly. So, express caution. I don't think the price is too egregious. I think I paid like 40 quid delivered, right? Yeah, and for the quality of the screen alone, in terms of like a handheld experience, it's up there.

SPEAKER_05: 55:27

Yeah, and I like you say, I think if if you're a Pokemon fan, um you can buy a whole console delivered to play your Pokemon games on for less than what it would for about half the price of one of the retro Pokemon cartridges.

SPEAKER_03: 55:40

Well, look at it this way you've gonna have to buy Game Boy, Game Boy Colour, Game Boy Pocket, probably preferably a Game Boy Advance, because then you've got the full suite available to you.

SPEAKER_05: 55:48

And probably modded because you need the lights on the screen.

SPEAKER_03: 55:51

And then you need all the copies of the game. So blue, just cart only, is what 30, 40, 50 bucks maybe these days, I don't know. Red, yellow. Then you want the ones um silver, pearl, you know, you're running up a big chunk of change to play your nostalgic 2D RPGs. This is the way to do that. Yeah, some other bonus games on the side, like Donkey Kong Country kind of ran okay, it was a bit slow. Uh Mario All-Stars ran okay. Um, bizarrely, it kind of ran the uh DS version of Mario 64 like bizarrely. Well, it's amazing how some games are like nah, like a SNES game's like, nah, dude, you you're not, don't think you're playing this. And then I'm playing a halfway decent version of uh Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast. Like, make this make sense to me. Uh I didn't go that far into it, and there was one of the things that the console does exhibit across all pla all of its platforms, but predominantly the ones that are pushing it, SNES onwards. It's a weird clicking audio artifact. Which despite everything I did, I couldn't get rid of.

SPEAKER_05: 57:12

Sounds like a very sort of dodgy emulator or ROM. That doesn't sound great, you know, as it's probably been copied over so many times.

SPEAKER_03: 57:19

If you wanted me to give you a review number, classic style, I would say it's uh it's a six with some caveats, and those caveats are do you have these anywhere else? Do you need these games specifically on the go? If you're just looking for a Game Boy Pokemon like emulator, you'd nailed it. You know, get another point on top, get up to seven, maybe. Um but I think for your general and I think if you're a casual gamer, if you're a a parent or a a partner now that's listening and thinks, oh, do you know what? XYZ really loves their old remember where he used to be always playing their console up in their bedroom. Oh, do yeah. I'm gonna get him this for Christmas. He'll love that. Little stocking fill, a little side present. So you go round mum's and anti maureen, you open the parcel and it's a brute aftershave set. You're like banging. I love that. Next one. What's this, Anti Maureen?

SPEAKER_01: 58:21

Oh, a little bit of something special for you. I know what you used to like in little games back in the day.

SPEAKER_03: 58:26

Holy shit, what's this? Open it up, start getting the nostalgia out. If it's a feeder for a wider involvement in the hobby, and the next thing you get is an Evocade, a Retron 5, uh a Switch, it's a very good lead into the hobby in that way. It's something that you can play while your partner's watching television, something you can play in bed while you're drifting off. The cheapness of it means that if you if you dropped a real Amber Nick, you'd be like, Oh god, I better make sure the screen's not broken. This is 40 quid, it's not throwaway money. I'm not here to say, Oh, it's nothing. It's but within reason, it's yeah, it's less of an investment. So you can be a little bit rough with it. If you want to throw it without a carry case into your bag and go on holiday, it's perfect because even if you get your bag open at the airport and the thing's crushed to dust, you just shrug your shoulders and move on. If that had been your switch too, you'd have rolled your eyes out. So it's a nice disposable gaming unit as well in that regard. So maybe chuck another point on there if you're going away for seven to ten days on a uh a sunny holiday somewhere, and you just want to have a little bit of throwaway gaming fun on a sun lounge at the beach, and you don't mind if you end up with half of Crete in the charging socket, it doesn't matter. So view it through that lens if you would, listeners, but don't get that thing, don't get it thinking it's the great white hope of gaming. It's certainly not. Game Lab, I would argue, as RGT says, are a little bit fly by night. Here today, gone tomorrow, sort of drivel, and I get that feeling from my interactions with them. So don't think you're buying into a retron or something like that. But uh you've heard everything I've got to say about it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:13

Interesting, very interesting.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:15

Yeah, it was an interesting experience, and in a way, one that I wish it'd kind of delivered a bit more because I think there's some good stuff going on here. It's unofficial for sure, as we are, uh, but it it's a shade too unofficial for me.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:31

Just a shade.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:32

It's just nice that yes, you haven't spent too much on and your son's getting use out of it, so it makes it a bit more worthwhile.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:37

Yeah, and I you know what I I've half thought so that here's a guy giving it a six who's pretty much probably guaranteed to find himself on the Game Lab website again within the next 10 days to buy another one so him and his son could maybe fight Pokemon or something.

SPEAKER_06: 1:00:52

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:54

Uh since he took it, I have yearned for it, uh, but not in any sort of real appreciable way. Anyway, with that all said and done. Go check it out and let me know your mileage with the game lab or if there's any other. I've seen so many different versions of this kicking around on the internet over Christmas RGT. It's hard to know what you're buying. Uh, we scatter the red darkest regions of the internet to bring you the latest stories. First up, first up, and this is a new story I can get behind. So, Lord Barker, aka Sammy Barker from the Immortal Push Square. Um, he's a small chap, but he's wearing those sort of risers in his trainers now. So he's at least five foot now, so he's a proper solid-looking dude. Anyway, he pulled on his Deerstalker and he's come out with this. Sony nukes thousands of shovelware games from PS5 and PS4. Oh, thank God. Thank God. I've been asking for this since the show started. Sony has seemingly taken action against one of PS4's most prolific shovelware makers. Fi Games, THI games. The Bavera Five Titans like Jumping Burrito was one of PS5 and PS4's most prolific publishers with more than 1,000 games. Many of these were reskins of the same idea like Jumping Pizza and the Jumping Taco. I think you get the idea. But as of yesterday, all of these games have been axed from the PS store in all regions. We carefully clicked through dozens of its titles on its official website and couldn't find any of them available to purchase. That remains the case to this day. Neither Sony nor Ty Games has commented on the uh on this situation yet, but have reached out to both parties to try and understand what's going on. We'll update the article if we get word back. Many companies have built a business at a flooding PS store and as reported on this show, every store available, storefront available in gaming is flooded with this low quality software. Often these games often offer extremely easy platinum trophies which can be stacked across PS5 and PS4. I know who you are, by the way, as well as different regions. In some instances, a single game could net you six or more of Sony's top trinkets. But while the trophies for Thy Games efforts remain on PlayStation servers, the games are no longer for sale. This is the first sign of a platform holder cracking down on poor quality content. Well, the PS store is still absolutely full-loaded with shovelware, but the removal of Fi games it at least looks a little cleaner today. Thank you, Samuel, for that wonderful piece of reporting. RGT, is this the start of a fight against the avalanche of shit that finds its way onto these digital stores on a daily basis? Or are they losing a fight in their own ecosystem here?

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:55

I hope so. I mean, I've got to confess I've played a few of these myself, and I think the last time, well, I think it was one of these jump and burrito games. I thought, oh, that's an easy platinum. I paid like a pound or one pound fifty. And I played it, and that pinged a platinum in 15 seconds. Oh, I played the next one. Then I suddenly thought, what am I doing? And I knew what it was. I was on 67 platinums. I thought, oh, I can get to 70 platinums. And I thought, but you're not at 70, you are at 70 platinums now, but you're not, are you? Because you've just bought three platinum trophies to make it look better than a better game than what you are. So take that temptation away for these easy plates, get rid of them. Let's just have let's just have play goods goes. Yes. I'm I'm confessing, I'm being honest, and I I'm admitting how many of these have you played? Uh three, I think. Oh, GT. I know. I'm not proud of it. This is a bit of a master system over again.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:58

I'm on the edge of sacking you.

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:00

Oh. That'd go quite.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:02

I thought you were gonna say like one or two. You came in with I thought you said I said, how many of these have you done? In my mind, I set this little sort of guideline. I was like, if it's one or two, that's okay. If it's three, it's a sign of something worse.

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:12

And you came out with three, and I was like, Oh no, no, I did years ago I'd done the mayo ones as well. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:18

Let's get this out there. I'm giving Mayo away for three because I think it's one of those sort of curiosity. Yeah, I've done it. I think it's one of those curious curiosity. So you've done Mayo, have you? Oh, I did Mayo on the Vita.

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:30

Oh dear. So now the Mayo one's okay because you've done that one.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:34

I always thought mayo was jumping. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no.

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:40

Don't justify it. Don't justify it. I'm not in.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:42

No, I'm justifying it. I'm gonna, because I can't.

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:44

No, no, no, you're as bad as me. You've bought a platinum.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:47

No, don't start trying to fight out your bloody verbal warning like this. This is not how this goes down. I tell you. Mayo is in the zeitgeist, the PlayStation ecosystem. It's often talked about, it's lauded, it's it's up there as one of those experiences because on the PlayStation was the first one to do it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:05

It was the first. That's why.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:07

If you've been through it and realised what it is, there is no enjoyment in there. In fact, it's a it's a lot harder to unlock than you think, because you can't just randomly just waggle, you've got to select the different mayos and do all that. You know, it's not an easy game.

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:20

Oh no, that's that's a that's a proper RPG cruncher that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:24

You're talking to the guy, mate, that just started the game and hammered the button for 30 minutes and wondered why he wasn't getting trophies.

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:31

Hey, uh no wonder your crew's dead in you boat.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:38

Everyone said this was easy. My hands absolutely obliterated. I've probably not been able to do that. Little did I realise you had to keep checking the different things to shake again. Uh so anyway, so to me that's in the zeitgeist. That's much talked about. You can't have a PlayStation and not at least have looked at Mayo. Oh, okay. But once bitten, twice shy, one would say. Although I've got Burley Men at Sea. Is Burley Men at sea?

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:06

Oh see, this is all coming out now, isn't it? You were then threatening to sack me.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:12

Turns out that Burley Men at sea is not anywhere close to what was this drivel?

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:20

How many how many mayos did you play? The jumping orange. Did you how many how many did you play of the mayos? Did you do all three mayos?

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:31

No, I don't think I did. I think I did the Vita one and I was uh I think I was it was during furlough or something like that, and I thought, oh while I'm sire, I might as well just try mayo. What is it these weeks? Did you do the second one or no? No. Sure.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:49

Look I'm the CEO.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:55

I'll do what the hell I like.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:57

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:58

But I have to hold you to a higher standard.

SPEAKER_05: 1:08:01

Yeah, I thought this would be turned on me.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:03

Yeah. But I have to hold a higher standard.

SPEAKER_05: 1:08:06

I did play these games, and yes, I am very, very pleased.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:08

Is Burley Man at sea? No, it's not. No. Is that as egregious as Mayo? No, no, no, no. No, it's not. It should be, by the way.

SPEAKER_05: 1:08:17

These these jumping games are they make they make Mayo look like Death Strandon. They they literally are you literally just go for 10 seconds, press a button as quick as you can, that goes bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, platinum. Next one. So you two minutes of your life, you've got three, four platinums. And I've done about God knows how many of these versions. Jumping orange, jumping burrito, jumping pizza, jumping soda, jumping whatever. I don't know. So, yeah, not impressive. I had to delete them off my dashboard just in case anyone saw them. Because it's just embarrassing, and yeah, they need to just take all that temptation away. Platinum games that you enjoy playing, and yeah, just get this shovelware off. Just you know, um, PlayStation, have a word with Nintendo. See if you're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:04

Before this turn into a bizarre confessional for both of us, seemingly, although I'm I still feel well messaging. Am I a dog? Let me know. Uh am I wrong to judge RGT for playing spaghetti, orange and burrito, and no no doubt as well slewable the word.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:20

Berate me, berate me because it's awful. I should be ashamed of it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:22

Am I am I in the wrong for trying to look at the internet curiosity everyone was talking about in the moment, Mayo? Am I?

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:30

You looked at it as an internet curiosity. No, you looked at it because you want a platinum. Don't turn it like you were doing it for I'm doing it for you guys. I looked at this for you guys.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:41

No, you looked at it because you I'm glad this is an audio-only show because I did this for you guys. Stop laughing. Stop any laughing.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:53

You're too good at this. You are too good at this.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:57

I did it for you guys, so it was uh it was an experiment.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:01

Yeah, you had me believing you when you first were talking about Mayo. Oh, it's the internet curiosity.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:05

It is an internet curiosity, it's much if much vaunted in the PlayStation ecosystem. Um but jumping spaghetti and jumping orange, the th the third version of Jumping Orange, by the way, they didn't just make one, they made a trilogy of jumping orange games.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:22

That that goes beyond internet curiosity, that goes into exactly as you labelled it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:28

Some of them have a decent story to them, though. What's this next bit of news?

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:32

No, they don't. Actually, genuinely, I I want to touch on this. We often we've we've done our confession, we've had our fun. I often come on here and absolutely berate the Nintendo store, but the PlayStation store is equal to, if not worse, in some cases, egregiousness of because of trophies. Because trophies is one of the main drives for this garbage, yeah. Uh, and people's trophy collections, achievement, blah blah blah. It matters to them. Um it maybe shouldn't, but you know, we've all got to be into something. If you want to measure the metric of your success in games through the medium of your trophies, totally cool. It's a great way of cataloguing what you're doing.

SPEAKER_05: 1:11:15

But yeah, that probably means not really gaming to get them.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:20

You need to walk all your true other trophies into the bin with these ones just to get another score. Because if I looked at you and see that you'd platinum demon cells, I'd be like, wow. If then I looked on your next gamer profile and it was jumping orange three, I'd be like, mmm. That first one was an absolutely blinding, amazing achievement, but it's kind of been made worth an achievement, a trophy collection of that merit, in my mind, has been de don't hate me, son. Don't don't hate me, son. But it's kind of been a bit devalued by your bloody orange three.

SPEAKER_05: 1:12:03

Yeah, you're right. You're right. That's just you you haven't played anything to get it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:07

No, and I don't want to beat down on developers that are trying to have a go at making low-end titles for a quid or whatnot and put them onto these stores because let's face it, everybody's got a different budget. Everybody's got a different kind of aspiration to the game they want to play on this platform. I'm not here to dictate to someone that a simple game should be excluded, but have a word with yourself, put it through some quality control. Can you look yourself in the eye and say this is a game that it's not a game? If you're into this, not this specifically, RGT, but there are games within this ecosystem that we brand as shovelware that maybe with another couple of weeks, or maybe with a rethink, or or maybe there's slightly different strategy, there is actually the lines of the seeds of a good idea within it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:12:56

Where I think the line should be drawn is when you get games like Catquest off platinum that that's a good fun, that's like a little nod to the early Zeldas. You'll get 10-12 hours of play, you can pick it up for about three bucks, and you can get a platinum out of it after about 10-12 hours. You've had quite a good time with it. You explore dungeons as quite basic, so kids can go in and play their like my first Zelda and have fun with it, whereas adults go in and get a bit of a blast of what the early Zeldas were like. And Catquest is a it's a basic little mini RPG that you can get a platinum for at the end, it's only cost you three pounds. You've had a bit of fun playing. That's where I think the line should be sort of drawn up.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:33

I just want to see a little bit more of a game within it. Now I know that game is loose because RGT mentioned CatQuest as a high watermark of what a game is. You know, you could argue Pong is a game, basically in its most rudimentary form. So it is hard for a publisher to say, Oh, well, that's a game, but that's not a game, get pushback from the developers. It is a game. Yeah, it it it it is a game. Okay, list it. But the hallmarks of quality it just makes you nervous to click on some games that haven't had, and this is the danger. You're an indie developer, you've poured your heart and soul into game, you've put it up at launch for a lower price, like cast and chill. What separates you from airport parking 5 at that point? Nothing. And yet you've got a real game literally going out to die against a mobile port or jumping orange three. I think it I think it's unfair, and I think it kind of waters down the quality for the sort of start-up developers. It's a great way of putting it watering it down, yeah. To get in because all of a sudden you've thrown your Magnum opus in next to Blood Orange 3, next to jumping spaghetti, next to this, next to that, next to the other, and all of a sudden you just look like a slew. So, what do you do? You've got to put the price up to drag yourself out of the shovelware.

SPEAKER_05: 1:15:01

Exactly, because I've looked, I've passed on many a game that have been£1.49 thinking that they're that they're Platinum Hunter trophy games. When I actually I've seen them on a hidden gem list a year later, thinking, oh, should have played that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:13

So, in a bid to drag themselves out of the shovelware section, they've had to attach a semi-reas semi uh premium indie price to it. So let's say they've they've had to stick a$12.99 price tag on it to lift it out of the dross, but then all of a sudden it goes from a small game they've made that they thought might be an impulse purchase into a game that you're women and are in about and can't see the justification at$12.99. Like you're literally just gating out decent people that are having a go. Now, I'm not here to say that the uh Thy Games aren't a decent publisher or decent developer. I'm not here to say that. I don't understand the logic behind their business decisions. It might be that they're trying to build a war chest with this drivel and maybe then have decided to retroactively take this drivel down themselves to pull the money that they've gained from these cash grabs and trophy messes into a game that they can actually get behind and believe in. But the problem that they've stitched themselves into is they're gonna have to release that for$12.99 or more because they're gonna be sat within their own shovelware pantheon that they're not gonna be able to escape, they're not doing anyone any favours. Um, I guess, in a way, as gamers, we need to take some form of the guilt and responsibility for this. Uh, because we've put money in the pot and we've shown that this is a viable route to market for a developer. Oh, they want an easy platinum. Sony will let us do it. Bang it out.$199, done.

SPEAKER_05: 1:16:41

I think, and also, like you say about getting lost in it, there's a good example of that. Um, there was there was a list that was going round of these easy platinums, my name is Mayo, all this, blah blah blah. And there was one in there, and it just intrigued me because the art style looked different and looked a bit Picasso, looked a bit strange. I thought that was like one pound, I think, or£1.50 a four. So, and when I actually looked up the game before I bought it, it was in the middle of all these Mayo games and stuff. Um, it was actually art students in Spain, as part of their project, had made a game about art to go onto the store. So, yes, it was an easy platinum, but it was actually their coursework to and they'd been lost in all this Mayo and all the rest of it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:26

And when you actually played it, yes, it was quite a basic game, but it was quite interesting how you went to these different paintings in a museum, and you could I thought, well, you know, they had they done a good job there, these students, and it's not our job to beat Thai games, Thigh games, because they might be legitimately, and this is the danger, this might just literally be someone trying to work out how to make a game, how to list a game on the PlayStation store. Yes, it's been co-opted by us as easy platinum, but was it just in testing the waters trying to get a thing moving on the screen? Maybe he's super proud, they're super proud of that, and they've like, I'm gonna put this game out. And to be like they've been rewarded financially as well, though. So, yeah, I what's a good game, what's the bad game? I think that's always been a tough one to judge because your one out of ten is my ten out of ten, you know. You would give you vote one, I would give you vote eight, nine. So it yeah, I don't know. But this good a sign of good things, if nothing else. Uh we'll report back if we hear any more. What's your what have you found in the new sphere to bring to the table this week, RGT? What have you brought for the family? We're hungry, we're starving.

SPEAKER_05: 1:18:40

Uh this is over at Pure Xbox. Um Fraser Gilbert again. Uh the legendary Fraser Gilbert.

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:46

What do you think Fraser looks like?

SPEAKER_05: 1:18:48

Stannon. There's a little there's a little picture of him next to his name, and uh, yeah, yeah, he's he's a good looking guy. Tall, short, round, slim. Only a headshot, I'd say tall, I'd say pretty ripped. Um, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:01

Do you think he could have Sammy Barker in a fight?

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:04

Oh, that's tight because Sammy goes in low. So he's uh yeah, he get your knees, so you've got to be careful with him. He's he could be vicious. So it's be interesting, be interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:17

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:18

Yeah. Um this is uh this is very interesting story.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:23

Sorry, Fraser and Sammy.

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:25

Yeah, sorry. If if you are listening to this, you'd be thinking, why are they talking about us like this? Uh yeah. Um 12 Sega Game Gear titles will be playable in Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Dark Ties on Xbox. That's one for you there, Scotty boy, Marathon Gaming and your uh um Game Gear collection.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:48

I've remastered the remasters. Yep. Let me give them some money.

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:58

Right. Sorry, my Screens froze at the moment, so I cannot bring the uh I cannot bring the uh I'll do it if you want. Hang on, here we go. Let me just reload that. Sorry, technical. Here we go. I'm alright now. I'm alright, I'm alright. I'm alright. Um yes, so we have 12 Game Gear titles, will be playable in Yakuza Kwami 3 and Dark Ties on Xbox, a retro fans paradise, Fraser says. Uh we are now less than a month away from the release of Yukuza Krami 3 and Dark Toys on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on February the 12th, and ahead of the launch, we have been learning loads about um retro games that will be part of the package. The thing that's getting the most attention right now is that no less than 12 Sega Game Gear titles will be playable inside of Yuku, Yakuza Kowami 3 and Dark Tides, including the likes of Sonic Chaos, Pac-Man, and Streets of Rage. No way. Here's the full list of those 12 Sega Game Gear titles. Many with split screen multiplayer support. This is they've gone deep with this. Um we have columns fantasy zone gear.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:11

So good on there, so good on there.

SPEAKER_05: 1:21:17

That's okay, Pac-Man, uh, Puzzlo Kids, Sonic Chaos, brackets, Sonic and Tails.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:23

So good.

SPEAKER_05: 1:21:24

Sonic Drift, Streets of Rage.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:27

Good on there.

SPEAKER_05: 1:21:27

Yeah, the the Game Gear, Shinobi, and Woody Pop.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:31

Woody Pop is banging.

SPEAKER_05: 1:21:33

Beyond this, um we also know that at least three old school Sega arcade games will um be part of the Yakuza Kwame 3 release. Um, with those being emergency call ambulance, slash out, and magical truck adventure. All in all, it sounded like an amazing collection of retro titles, but there is some disgruntlement online that they're not making them playable outside of Yakuza Kwame 3 and Dark Tides. Uh Dark Tides. Uh, we can understand the disappointment, but there is also something really special about getting to enjoy these classic uh games inside of Yakuza um Judgment Like a Dragon series. We'll leave you with a couple more Game Gear images. Head over to Pure Xbox for these from Yakuza 3, um, along with one of the arcade games down below. Yeah, so go over to uh check out Fraser's article on Pure Xbox because um I think this is I love it when developers do this. I know it's a legacy of Sega, and this is a little bit of a nod to their back catalogue, but to put a game gear in that's playable with 12 games and then add in split screen multiplayer as well. I just think they didn't have to do that, but that is a lovely touch. That is a lovely touch, and something that like for me, Yakuza games have never been my thing. I've never really been interested in them, but this makes me think, oh, I want mine trying to play.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:57

Mate, honestly, if you start with zero, you're gonna come in tomorrow with a massive back tap. You're gonna be so into it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:04

I have I have bought a Yakuza game at Christmas this year for the PS5.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:08

So was it Zero? No.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:10

No, I bought the Pirates one.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:13

Right. You've been a PSN user for a while. I will have a look, see what Yakuza games you've got. And if you haven't got Zero, please start there. It's a great I honestly see it as a game you could really get into, dude.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:26

Yeah, I think I tried a few demos of them a few years ago, and they were so odd, and I just could I just couldn't get on.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:32

I didn't know what was the fighting alone gives you streets of rage vibes. Um you know, it's just got something going along. You've got to let it bubble and bounce a little bit while you fall into the ecosystem. But honestly, you and Mrs. RGT sit down there and you're watching like a 15 series long Yakuza crime drama, soap opera style. Um and it's it's it's got that in spades. One thing I'm excited about this is three was always like the bit of a weird dark horse. It was the first PS3 game they brought out, and you know, technically, if you played the original, it doesn't look that good. You run an orphanage without too many spoilers, but there wasn't really any sort of orphanage sort of structure to the game. Uh later games give you kind of like business simulation aspects, sort of gang simulation aspects, that sort of thing. But three didn't have that. They've now remade this game, so they remastered it some time ago, and I've got the remastered pack. They're now remaking them, remastering them, whatever they're calling it. I don't even know. Even I'm confused. But the idea of this remade with the beach vibe, with the pulling your I presume, and I like to imagine it'll be executed this way, wherever you are in the game, you can pull your game gear out and start playing it. Oh, that's so you've got the noise of the street going on around you, or the beach where you're sat while you're playing your game gear. That to me would be special, but I think it might kind of do a full zoom in and you end up just with a full screen game gear thing.

SPEAKER_05: 1:25:08

I think that's probably how the Yeah, there's an image on here which sort of zooms in the sort of uh basically around a screen, but that's like the game gear, then with the screen, and then obviously you'll be playing.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:19

Yeah, so when you play an arcade game, you you kind of load into it and then it loads into the arcade game. You're not kind of watching your guy play an arcade game, but the idea of being able to whip your game gear out at any moment, which I think this is kind of suggesting. I think I like the idea of being able to buy the games, it does remind me of Semu 1, where you get a Walkman, you can buy a Walkman. I can't remember if you get given it or you buy one. I think you buy it, so you buy a Walkman, and then you can start buying tapes. And when I played Shemu in 1999 or 8 or whenever it was when I first got my hands on it, so I got it at launch. I played this game so much, and I had my own little routine, so I would get in from work and I did shift, so I'd finished like halfway through the day, although I started halfway through the night swings and roundabouts, and I would sit down and I'd start playing this Shen Yu game, and I'd get up in my house, I'd walk down to the bus stop, wait for the bus, put my walkman on, and I'd listen to the in-game music. It was not flashy at all, it was just in a menu. And this clock, uh, bus is here, headphones off, get on the bus, cut scene to work, do my work, cut scene back. You know, it kind of had this like real in-life like vibe I was living. To me, this gives me all that back, and for me, and you know, Roast Space Monk, the reason why we like Yucusa is because it reminds us of Shemyu, and it is an evolution of Shem You in many, many, many, many ways. So, to have more of this aesthetic in there to give three a little bit more grit. I know you brought this news here because of the Game Gear titles, but I do believe there's like the they've tacked on a whole orphanage management game as well, where you need to get better at cooking, get better with your interactions with the kids. I'm excited for this, and I didn't think I would be.

SPEAKER_05: 1:27:16

Yeah, I think this is again, it's obviously their legacy with Saga and bits and pieces, but that's a that's something that they didn't have to do. Um not at all. They didn't have to do this at all, but they have, and I think that's the nice touch. And to be fair, it'll probably work because I think you'll probably drag quite a few more people into the to the series with this because most people are going to be curious thinking, no way, you've got your own game gear that you can just pull out and play games wherever you are in the game. That's that's great touch, yeah. Very good, very, very good. Yeah, I like that. I I wish more developers had done them sort of things, and especially with their legacy titles and stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 1:27:51

They flirted with it in the original Shen Meu. I think you could get a Satin, yeah, although the Saturn only played like Space Area or something, or or whatever it was. So it did feel a bit like why's he got satin in this era? Why you know, but you know, it's a game, it's all a fiction, isn't it? At the end of the year, yeah, yeah, exactly. It was not it was a nice touch if you spent a lot of time in the universe, and and the same for this. So much to be said. Last bit of news here uh it's Ollie Reynolds, uh, a gentleman who looks quite dashing over at uh Nintendo Life. Uh, keep writing the stories, Ollie, and we'll get you a backstory, mate. Uh, don't you worry about it. Don't feel left out because you've heard the bigger boys, you know, little Sammy and whatever you called Fraser. Sammy's probably a seven-foot roid monster, and he was gonna come in here and rip my head off. Um sorry, Sir Sammy. In the pecking order of video games news as well. Like, he's like Duke Sam, and I'm like, I don't know, peasant, peasant scum. Anyway, Ollie's uh much to his uh credit, Oli's broad story here. It's uh GameStop kicks off 2026 by reportedly shutting hundreds of its stores. There's a little bit of an update in here because all the EB game stores in New Zealand are set to close this month too. Let's get into it, yes. So here's the here's the we'll read it backwards. So the coming of the new year is a good time to take stock and look at 12 months ahead with a sense of optimism, according to a new report from Polygon. However, GameStop have instead decided to kick off 2026 by shutting hundreds of its stores in the US. News of such closures apparently came as quite a shock to employees, with signs being hastily pasted to storefronts confirming the news. To add insult to injury, the signs offered up to 20% extra on trade-ins if customers head to alternative GameStop locations. Many customers reportedly note that some store closures have less than with few alternatives, with one Reddit commenter stating that the nearest store is now one and a half hours away. It's estimated up to 296 stores closed in the first week of 2026, even with even well-performing locations being given the chop. It seems likely that such drastic action is somewhat linked to the recent announcement that CEO Ryan Cohen could bag a packet worth an astonishing 35 billion, but only if the retailer is able to reach a market cap of 100 billion. This is roughly 10 times its current value at 9.3, so it's a wild target. The announcement clarifies that Cohen receives no guaranteed pay, no salary, no cash bonuses, and no stock that vests simply over time, with the compensation being entirely at risk. It's not a case of all or nothing, mind you, with Cohen's compensation available in nine tranches or portions. This versus the first is available if GameStop achieves a market cap of 20 billion, with each subsequent tranche requiring additional 10 billion in value, all the way up to 100 billion. So even if GameStop only reaches 20 billion, Cohen will still earn billions in shares. Recording to a report from RNZ, GameStop is considering ending its EB Games business in New Zealand. Update for you. In the latest update from RNZ, it's now been confirmed all 38 stores in this location will close at the end of the month on the 31st of January 2026. This includes the closure of the distribution centre, which will shut down in February. While numerous third parties reportedly approached the company after the news about the possible closure went public, apparently they did not present any proposals or solutions to keep the business sustainable in New Zealand. The letter sent to New Zealand's EB staff on Wednesday did not mention anything about the future of the 300 bloody hell, 336 Australian stores currently in operation. However, the company says there may be opportunities for New Zealand employees, very generous of them, to join EB Games in Australia.

SPEAKER_05: 1:31:52

Yeah, just move to another country.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:54

Well, and and also, mate, it's it's hours away.

SPEAKER_05: 1:32:00

Yeah. Is this so let me get this correct then? Is this a CEO who's trying to up the price by making the value of the company seem more so he gets more of a payout?

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:15

I don't know how he could be using the closing of stores to upbreak the value of a s of a of your share.

SPEAKER_05: 1:32:23

It's obviously a loophole there, isn't it? That's making it more, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:36

Yeah, I get that. And maybe the push towards the end of the year and then the immediate closing of those in 2026 represents some sort of on-book value that we can't even perceive. And the loss of wages to pay out, so they've instantly gained millions of dollars in unpaid wages because people I don't know how that alone could exist in the ecosystem where this news is published and it doesn't have a downward effect on your share price. It's a nonsensical move from a guy who's only return. I mean, the way it's worded, this guy's not even getting a salary unless he hits these metrics with these tranches. So I maybe he's just set his sight on the fact that I'm never gonna get to a hundred billion, but my first cutoff is ten.

SPEAKER_05: 1:33:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:28

And I'm gonna get millions for that anyway. So let's just sack everyone and close it up. Let's just roll the dice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:33:34

Because they they had they had opened a lot of retro stores as well, aren't they?

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:37

They've dipped dipped their toes into uh well sitting in a country that has no representation on the high street whatsoever, RGT, them closing their st only closing their stores now, and Australia sat with bristling 336 EB locations, we have got nothing here but Asda.

SPEAKER_05: 1:33:57

Yeah. Yeah. Or independent stores which are few and far between.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:01

Few and far between.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:03

So we've got you know what this this whiffs to me of the I don't know if you've heard of the Xbox sort of conspiracy theory that they think why would they buy in all these studios to then go shutting the studios? The theory is they buy these studios to get the share price up, and they gain so many millions and millions of dollars in the share price rise just by purchasing a studio because they become popular and people want to invest in them that they then just shut the studios because they're not going to use them anyway. It's literally for that short-term big boost in millions of dollars that is outweighed what they've paid for these smaller studios to then just shut them, you know, like Tango and bits like that. And this whiffs a bit like that. Do you know what I mean? Manipulate the market so he can get his shares, you know, he gets his payout, and you just think, hang on, you've just laid off thousands of people. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:56

I'm I'm struggling to get myself around the sort of business gymnastics of it, and that doesn't mean that it's not possible, it you know, because there's lots of caveats and loopholes within businesses, and obviously New Zealand and Australia are trading under slightly different rules to other countries as well, because they've all got their own implementation of their own rules. Uh, generally, we kind of all conform to a similar standard, but there are sort of weird peculiarities in each home nation that we aren't completely off with, that this might make more sense in terms of like a write-off clause, or you know, we don't know about the intricacies of it, so who knows what's going on. But if we just take it at the face value as a besmirch to gamers and physical property, this is another gut punch. Massive, massive. If like DVDs are old hat now, but if you decided to pull on your posh clothes and go into town, go into the big town, and you wanted to come away with the latest copy of the latest movie, you could do it. You could do it. If you went into town to secure yourself the latest copy of a game on the high street, I think you'd come up very short.

SPEAKER_05: 1:36:14

Yeah, and I think my recent experience with my I had some Christmas money, you've probably seen if you follow me on Instagram or on Discord, and I bought a little pile of games, yeah. Some final some Final Fantasy Steel books, and I got Metro Prime 4 and Yakuza, the pirate one, bits and pieces of that. Now, there were two games that I wanted to pick up when I was out, which was Rebirth and the Yakuza one, but the others I bought because I was just in the shop and thought, oh, I'd like to play it out. I picked it up. Now the problem with online is you what shop are you doing that in though? Um I went to CX and I went to what was the other one I went to. No, that was mostly in CEX. Oh, in an independent store in nearby brilliant, brilliant independent store.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:00

I'm not here to knock the independent store, God love them, you know. We need 'em. I'm here to knock CEX.

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:08

Exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:09

Because it's not you can't even get a new game from CEX. It's already got someone else's DNA slot all over it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:19

I want a new freaking game. I suppose your your options are go to Argos and play the roulette to see if they've got it in store. Or go online.

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:28

Yeah, but my point was I picked these games up because I was browsing. Now, online the problem is, unless you know what you're looking for, you have to type it. It's harder to browse online. And yes, you've got the efficiency, you could you could click that Yakuza game on Amazon, it'll be brand new through your door the next day, but you need to know you want Yakuza first. It's it's it's there's something about being in a shop.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:51

I know people are probably screaming at me saying, Well, just buy digitally RGT, just go on the stores of PSNs and just I don't know whether it's an age thing RGT, but going into a store and seeing a raft of games that you know and a raft of games that you kinda know about, and then a raft of games that you don't know about, picking through the cases, looking on the back, looking on the front, picking up another one, looking on Oh. Oh, that's interesting. Put it in your basket. You don't get that shopping online.

SPEAKER_05: 1:38:22

No, and also like Mrs. RGD collects Blu-rays and specifically 3D movies, you try looking for them online. Do you know what I mean? You can scroll through eBay, you can scroll, which is extortionate prices anyway. Very rarely buy off eBay, but going in these stores, which a lot of these uh around me is two really good sort of independent.

SPEAKER_03: 1:38:42

Has she watching them?

SPEAKER_05: 1:38:42

Like Job in like Lawn Mower Man on her own with a PSVR headset on or no, with the we've got a um Hitachi 3D TV in the bedroom with the rechargeable glasses. So she sits there looking like you know when years ago in the 80s and 90s, your grandma used to wear them sunglasses that go over the top of your own.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:03

I had a 3D telly for a while, so I kind of know. But there are like varying headsets, aren't there, for 3D TVs? Some of the ones I had look like just sort of like the glasses you're wearing right now, but with like shaded lenses. Yeah. But one of the other 3D tellies that was doing the rounds at the time had like this like visor, like you look like Jordie frickin' LaForge. So I've got this eye, I've got this vision now, little Donna laying on the bed. You're you you've co-opted the main TV to play your latest single-player game. So she's been sort of relegated to the to the back bedroom, and she's sat in there like Jordy LaForge in some sort of waving her hand around, interacting with the 3D giblets as they come out of the screen.

SPEAKER_05: 1:39:47

That's quite good because they're like they're like ray bands, but they've got a little on button, and then you know when they're on because they're on, and then your lenses change.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:54

Let me tell you one thing, RGT, and I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news. Yeah, but they do not look like freaking. Ray-Bans.

SPEAKER_05: 1:40:00

No, but alright, they look like Ray-Bans, but like your Game Lab looks like a Game Boy.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:05

It's I think they probably look like an Oakley visor uh from the early 90s.

SPEAKER_05: 1:40:11

I I I uh No, these are like Roy Orbisons. These are like 1950s sunglasses, proper Roy Orbisons with the black lenses, and you turn them on and the lens shades over, ready for the 3D.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:22

Are they shutter on it?

SPEAKER_05: 1:40:24

Yeah, so the lens change colour as you as you turn them on.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:27

So no, I just thought it shaded one. It didn't change colour, does it? As it went.

SPEAKER_05: 1:40:33

It's sort of yeah, I know what you mean. It's like it almost goes out of tint when you as you're looking for it, when you turn it on, it tint change a tint ready for the TV, whatever, and it sinks up and whatever.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:44

Yeah, because that was one of my thoughts about 3D movies, is that to achieve the overall impression, the TV lighting kind of had to come down a bit. And because you're wearing the shades, it it goes even more. So when you watch a flat panel, it's quite bright, and you get maybe a movie if you didn't 3D TV was kind of prior to HDR implementation, but you kind of go from watching the flat screen where it's all bright to putting your shades on, and then like watching a more kind of washed out version of the movie, even though it's in 3D and it looks fantastic. You kind of have like a s a little bit of a step back in colour grading in a way.

SPEAKER_05: 1:41:20

You do, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, you do, definitely. But we digress anyway. Yeah, so it's it's it is a shame that these stores are shut and then it's just another nail in the coffin for the high street.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:30

And I think that's the saddest part of all of this. You know, we grew up with the ability to just go crazy in these stores, but like modern kids, I just don't know what their interaction looks like. Maybe they don't know what they don't have RGT, eh?

SPEAKER_05: 1:41:45

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you don't miss what you've never had, so no, yeah, he's a shame. Big, big shame, yeah. So unfortunately.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:52

Well, I think that covers off the news, and it's now time for what I would call um we've got some we've got some uh housekeeping to do RGT. So, yes, so the first thing out the gates I will Oh, is that community corrections?

SPEAKER_05: 1:42:07

Yes. Oh, so while while you're looking that up then, I will just quickly read something out because um when we done our 300th show last week, um, thanks everyone for downloading and listening and bits and pieces. We had the community drop some comments in about where they first listened to the show and how they got involved. Um uh Fatan Geefe, who you've probably heard on this show before, um, he put his in, but that was after we recorded. So I'd just like to read that because he put a uh quite a long one in, bless him. So I'm just gonna read that out, and this is for our 300 show last week. Um, he says, I had a long and meandering journey that finally ended up at the UCP podcast and Discord that started all the way back in 2016. That was the year I decided to get back into gaming properly again after quite a long hiatus. A friend at work suggested um I should listen to some gaming podcasts while out on my deliveries. So I downloaded a podcast provider and searched video games. I started listening to a few like Retro Asylum, kinda funny, the computer game show, and this quickly led me to finding content on YouTube too. By chance, one day I stumbled across a video of a guy doing a comedy skit video about the Dreamcast, and his name was Segahead. I started to watch all of his stuff and got to know him quite well over the years, along with some of the gaming buddies he collaborated with. Then one day one of those buddies tweeted and said he was appearing on a podcast. That guy was Mike Rouse. The podcast was the unofficial controller podcast. I listened to that show and have never looked back in the last decade of me really getting back into this hobby of ours. I've either fell off other podcasts and YouTube creators or they've just outright quit themselves. I've made friends and lost touch with them, but I can't I can honestly say that the UCP has been the most welcoming and sustained community I've been part of. I know the question is what is my favourite memory of the moment of the show, but honestly, my favourite part of the UCP is all of you. How beautiful is that! And that's why I wanted to read it because there's things like that where you just think yeah, it's quite a proud thing to be involved in this. It is really quite a proud uh thing to be involved in, and when you s hear things like that and you just think, Oh, maybe I'm doing something right, maybe we're doing something right, maybe it's the best thing you've ever done starting this podcast, George. Absolutely brilliant.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:37

Every now and then you just get uh a comment um that just it it puts it all in focus, I guess. Uh just I'm blown away by that. I am I read it on the Discord, but you're reading it out loud, it it just carried all it carried weight before, but just to hear it said out loud, it carried even more weight. And I'll be honest with you, Fat Zangi. You're too kind. That's so nice. I hope that we can continue to make people happy. I think my biggest fear is that I let someone down or let them down in some way. Every time we put a show out, I live in fear that they might hate it, you know.

SPEAKER_05: 1:45:18

Oh no, it's I'm the same as well, you know. And it's you know, you get the odd comment, and where people just say, Oh, you know, we we had a couple this week for Flashy B, and someone had I don't know if that was Tingletune or someone had put on, oh I loved listening to 2003 this week, really good. And you just think, you know, people like you know what we had envisioned in doing what we like talking about, people are also liking listening to that, and it makes it all worthwhile. And when you think there's we're we're now become a bit of a routine in people's lives on a Monday morning to listen to us on their routes or their deliveries or their work commute, it's yeah, it's it's a great in my mind.

SPEAKER_03: 1:45:57

I'm an annoyance and we're overstaying our welcome with every single episode we do. Please tell me I've got that wrong. Um, but maybe we I stay thinking like that because that's the show. I think that's what the show is. You know, we who the hell are we? So we're very grateful to be in your life, super grateful um for everything that we've got going on with you. Um and I'll be honest with you, I'm humbled. Uh to humble myself further, we ought to go to community corrections RG2. Oh, yes. Uh and unfortunately, I mean, you got a verbal warning earlier. Probably gonna have to give you another written warning because we haven't done community corrections to the point where Boba mentioned something in July.

SPEAKER_05: 1:46:50

Oh so why am I getting a warning for this? Is this under my job description as well?

SPEAKER_03: 1:46:55

Yeah, it kind of fits community interaction, yeah. So I'm gonna let it slide.

SPEAKER_05: 1:47:01

Uh oh, thanks.

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:04

Uh for myself.

SPEAKER_05: 1:47:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:08

But anyway, Boba, Boba raised the salient point. So I think you guys are way off trying to locate Greg. He's quite clearly nowhere near Berlin. Yet your naming places are in fact near Berlin. He's probably in South America somewhere. He's done some research, though.

SPEAKER_06: 1:47:21

That's a good point.

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:23

He is he's on he's on a sum in here. So I'm a Winchester boy, don't tolerate this drivel. Uh, geographically furthest county from Berlin, Germany, is uh country from Berlin is New Zealand, specifically the South Ireland. Here's why, here's your Berlin coordinates. Yeah, all right, we can all go and chat GPT, Boba. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Um he is he he is in New Zealand. Greg's now a hobbit, as far as I'm concerned. Scotty's come in, Scotty's been monitoring the community corrections. Fair play to him. Uh he says, that's a fair point, Boba. I'll I'll venture a bit further out on the world tour. DM got involved and said, Could he be on an international space station? Scotty's thinking that's great. Carlos got in touch though more recently uh and said, You mentioned you were driving a U-boat. Would you in fact be not piloting or indeed sailing a U-boat? I'm absolutely wrong about this. Now, one thing you've got to love about my son is my my red-headed stepson.

SPEAKER_05: 1:48:24

Um he'll lead to your defence straight away.

SPEAKER_00: 1:48:27

To me, boys, shield wall, defend your king, defend your king.

SPEAKER_03: 1:48:33

He's out there dying in the mud for me. So he says, Carlos, I've had confirmation from my brother that you can use all three and be correct depending on the context. Nathan James Chambers, petty officer, engineering, technician, his Majesty's Royal Navy. So, yeah, absolutely. He says, That's awesome news. I didn't want George to be wrong, says Carlos. Ginge says, I questioned him on how you sail a submarine, but apparently you can lol, or George was in the Navy two mate, so he knows his maritime lingo. Uh to which I replied, I got that excited, I just spat words. I'll be honest. You technically you'd sail a submarine, especially a U-boat. I'll try to remember to heel keel haul myself at the Ponces. Here we are for another bit of community news. The Ponces coming next week because we want to make it super special. And there will be a video release if that makes you feel good.

SPEAKER_05: 1:49:27

Yes, there will be.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:29

We'll record ourselves because it's the Ponces. Uh we'll put it up there, so I'll have to make sure that uh I get my facial reconstruction surgery done this week, RGT. But that's great news. You might need more than a week. Wow, you know all right. Okay, fine. Yeah, no, that's cool.

SPEAKER_05: 1:49:50

Um I'm just bitter because I keep getting disciplinary actions. Uh I'll just that was a cheap shot. I'm sorry. I won't can I keep my job, please.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:58

I love how you hold me responsible for disciplining you when I have to discipline you because you've stepped out of line. You shouldn't be angry with me, be angry with yourself.

SPEAKER_05: 1:50:06

I am. I'm very angry with myself. Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:50:10

Because misspeaking to a CEO like that, I can let slide once or twice. Yeah. 2026 is a year I put my foot down, I think.

SPEAKER_05: 1:50:22

Just what Mrs. RGT says, I just can't keep my mouth shut. I need to learn to put a bit of respect. 2026 is changing now. I'm I'm the employee, I do as I'm told, you know. And yeah. I feel bad for all I've done in the past. Good, good, good. And what I haven't done. So I will work harder this year.

SPEAKER_03: 1:50:44

Yeah, that's the thing that I think we all need to focus on.

SPEAKER_05: 1:50:47

What you didn't do. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:50:51

It's all very easy to flower at what you did do. It's what what's left on the table is what's softened untalked about, RGT. Uh so anyway, for the 300th episode. Don't panic, don't come at me, none of this is real, or it might be real. Um, send him a food bank, something like that. Send him some old tins of food. Uh cheer him right up.

SPEAKER_05: 1:51:14

Oh, yes, uh, tomato soup or baked beans, please. You don't get to pick your asshole. Oh, sorry, you're gone back nasty again.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:21

No, I'm just like, you know, there's I'm trying to do something nice, and you're like, oh no, pedigree chum, darling. Uh uh tomato soup of specifically Heinz. If it's Baxter's, you fucked it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:51:31

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:36

RGT, you're so far from starving, it's unreal. Uh very true. Community corrections done aside. For the 300th episode, we also had running concurrently into Discord by the quizmaster, and I did say to him on text, he's becoming a little bit the saw killer of uh of the UCP as digital monkery. And then I did a kind of I think uh some lore got developed between us where I said that he was a bit of a copycat killer, he kind of holds you in such high regard and your sort of face mask before you were rehabilitated, of course, back into society when you used to sort of gorge on people's consoles. He's now come out of the woodwork because this sort of saw killer who sets these devious traps around the Discord for well, he hasn't killed anyone yet. He seems that rewarding them with their with prizes.

SPEAKER_05: 1:52:32

Didn't OG Tom refer to it as Buffalo Bill? I think was the statement back in the day for the copycat was no Buffalo, wasn't it? From Silent to the Lambs.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:44

Oh wow. That's why we need someone willing to go back through all the episodes and write the law down, cross out all the bits where it sort of contradicts himself and put it into a book. Uh I dream of that day. Uh if it'll ever come, I don't know. Um but the Saw Killer, aka DM, aka one of the Winchester boys, aka I'm now realising if this is your first episode, you're wondering what the fuck. Uh and George is swearing. I thought this was PG. Swearing a lot. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_05: 1:53:18

This sort of new version of Jaded George, you disciplined me, called me an asshole, you know, swearing. I'm uncomfortable, I'll be honest. I'm very uncomfortable. Now you've highlighted it, I am. Well just well, when we finish the show, just go in a little quiet corner, just have a little think. Have a little think to yourself, think about your behaviour, and then maybe try and improve next week. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53:44

So I've just had a verbal warning.

SPEAKER_05: 1:53:46

Yes, yes, you have.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53:47

So and I never actually gave you one.

SPEAKER_05: 1:53:50

No. So you're technically worse than me. So we'll we'll put it aside this time, but next time I won't be so lenient.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53:57

I just every now and then, as the founder, want to feel like I'm on I'm on the up. Uh but you keep crushing me down.

SPEAKER_05: 1:54:04

Yeah, I make sure we keep that on a level.

SPEAKER_03: 1:54:07

I think that's where the anger comes from.

SPEAKER_05: 1:54:08

You just slow down here, folks.

SPEAKER_03: 1:54:10

The swear words come from.

SPEAKER_05: 1:54:11

Yeah. But anyway, sorry, carry on. 300.

SPEAKER_03: 1:54:16

We're building into something. I think we're building into something big. Yes, of course we were. So we have the the Digital Monkery has woven together quite the uh quiz within the show. You had to find these different letters from different games that had been dropped within the Discord randomly. And some of you picked up on this, super little super sleuths, and you were straight to it. Now, once all that was complete, you were then had to be the first to work out what the letter spelt and to reveal now. It's an anagram of an episode, and the episode was Trestles of New York.

SPEAKER_05: 1:54:53

Ooh, very well done, that very so if you're able to get those letters together, arrange them.

SPEAKER_03: 1:54:59

We've had lots of entries, but the first correct entry was Carlos, the One Man George fan club. Kind of like the way that's worked out. So well done, mate. Digital Monkey is going to be contacting you to organise the sending of your special prize. And I have to say to Digital Munkery, the package he put together for the 300th episode prize is absolutely banging. There's nods to the law, there's some sort of show bits and bobs in there, there's stickers, there's a copy of G1 jockey from memories, counterfeit nappies, counterfit nappies.

SPEAKER_05: 1:55:36

Is a for some reason a pair of pants with my face blastered all over them.

SPEAKER_03: 1:55:39

I didn't want to go there. We've gone there. So there's some RGT pants.

SPEAKER_05: 1:55:47

And no, they will be one-offs.

SPEAKER_03: 1:55:50

Um, unless obviously people want them, and in which case I will sell your innocence. I will sell your innocence online. You've sold me enough online. I don't know, it looks the other way around at the minute. So congratulations to Carlos. Consider this your written warning. Um wow. This next part is your written warning. So the next one in very quickly was Tingle Tuner. I want him to get a t-shirt because he came so close. He smattered up the side of Carlos, so yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:56:22

So if you want some limited artwork, or if you'd like a special one or 300th episode artwork, let us know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:30

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, he can't have that. He's getting that already.

SPEAKER_05: 1:56:33

Yeah, but I mean if he wants it on a t-shirt.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:36

Oh, I see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:56:38

So, but I will contact you, Tingle Tuna, and um let me know whatever artwork you would like that's in the download section, or if you'd like some, you know, some uh history artwork or some back catalogue, whatever. We I can do it. So I will contact you when you could.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:52

Okay, so congratulations to Carlos. Well done for sleuthing all that together. Congratulations to Tingletuna for coming a close second. Yeah, I'm sorry to everybody else. You were either a lot of people. Thanks for taking part or didn't quite get the right answer. So thank you for taking part. Keep tuned in because there's always going to be lots of different ways to And do you know what I loved about this as well?

SPEAKER_05: 1:57:12

What's that? Digital Mungri came up with this idea to do this, which is a very unique but brilliant idea, got us all involved, us presenters, right? And then said, right, here he he worked out very well. Here's your letters, right? We we didn't announce this on our Discord at all. No, in random sections on the Discord, every now and then we just dropped random letters in, and I just loved seeing people start talking. Has anyone else noticed these random letters just appearing in the is there a problem with the Discord? And then all the uh rumors started as to what it was, and then to even to a point where I got um uh a DM from Carlos. What are these letters? Do they have to be made up to someone? Do we have to work something out? And I've just done a little gif of someone just zipping their lips shut, and he was like, Right, okay, I get ya, I get ya. And then it was just everyone trying to work out what these letters were and what words and chatting away. Great idea, DM. Absolutely brilliant. Uh really good, really good, and thanks for doing the prizes as well. The package you put together is superb, absolutely so good.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:19

Um, so thank you to Digital Moncree for that, and thank you to everyone that got involved in play. Yeah, congratulations to the winners, commiserations to the people that didn't quite get there. Uh, but as I say, we are a very generous show. Keep having a go. There's lots to win, there'll be plenty to win, and don't forget if you subscribe, you're about to get yourself your 300th episode artwork as well, RGT. So that's all good and sexy news. Um, I think that draws to an end the community corrections.

SPEAKER_05: 1:58:52

It does. Can I just quickly jump in and this will be already sorted by now? But if you've heard me talk on the show about our RGT to the past that I do with Fat Zang Geef, which basically our generation uh Gen 7 games, we basically go back and we're either me and me and uh Zang Geefe have gotten a lot of things.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:11

What's the latest vote? Just publishise publicize that on air. Let's get stuck into it so we can chuck some words in against it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:59:17

Um so basically we vote on a Gen 7 game to play. We put four out there um every now and then and just let the community decide what we're gonna play. Um at the moment, it's uh four games on the vote. It is Arkham Origins, it is Bayonetta, it is Driver San Francisco, and it is Sleep and Dogs. Um, as of this being recorded, this would have already been settled because there's a 24 hour vote. Um so at the moment, as lot I say of recording, Sleep and Dogs is winning by quite a margin at the moment.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:49

So good, good, good, good. And it's a research for the show. I played Driver San Francisco, and I know it's one of your hidden gems, but hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo.

SPEAKER_05: 2:00:00

It's a very unique game. That's why I want to go back and play it. It's not quite that bad. Oh, is it not? No. No, it's not that bad. It's a very unique game.

SPEAKER_03: 2:00:18

It the interaction. It's a very unique game. It's doing lots of things that are way ahead of its time. It's doing hot swapping. It's doing this, it's doing that. I just don't know whether it and I can appreciate it for its technical prowess. I just don't know from a gameplay point of view whether it sticks the landing.

SPEAKER_05: 2:00:37

No, but I think if you're into driving games and you're into sort of story narrative games, I think it's something to go back and play if you haven't, because it was quite unique for the game.

SPEAKER_03: 2:00:48

There's some fun bits like from the concept where you jump into someone else's body and then you continue a conversation that they were having with their partner and things like that are like kind of cool. Um but I think the talking heads that appear on the left and right hand side of the screen to uh but don't forget this this I will defend myself a bit.

SPEAKER_05: 2:01:07

This was a hidden gem that you made me pick blind off a shelf. So I did have to sort of drop him by that on the hidden gem section of the website.

SPEAKER_03: 2:01:16

It was like this is bad for a random pick out of thin out. To be honest, no, it's not. It's it's a half-decent game, and I think you'll get some good mileage out of it. But I'm glad Sleeping Dogs won because it's by far the better game.

SPEAKER_05: 2:01:28

But I did have also a question from Captain Scarlet this week. He said, Can he play um can he join in with a Gen 7 um playthrough games we're playing on his PC? Because you can. We we had Dead Space win the other month, a few months ago. People were playing the PS5 version or the Xbox Series X version. The remake, that's fine. Just we're not strict on rules. If there's a remaster or remake, or if you're playing it on an emulator, or if you're playing it on a PC or a Steam Deck, just join in. See what you think of the game. Everyone just join in.

SPEAKER_03: 2:01:57

We're here to judge anyone, we just want him to get it.

SPEAKER_05: 2:01:59

Games from that era. If you've got a PS3 and a 360, by all means, play it on there, you'll get the original experience. Yes, if you haven't, play it on your PC, play it on Steam, play it on whatever. Just enjoy it. Everyone join as much as you can. But yeah, so I'm not sure what you you lot will know now what the winning game is. I don't, but I would imagine it's probably gonna be sleeping dogs, but it would have been on the one voted for San Francisco. Uh one report to me. That wasn't me.

SPEAKER_03: 2:02:32

Uh it wasn't me. Okay, well, that's good news. That's nice to see. I like I like that. I've I've watched that on the periphery, and and obviously the episode that you did really enjoyed it. Uh, so it's nice to see a check back in on that. Um, yes. Some interesting games as well.

SPEAKER_05: 2:02:49

So yeah, we've got some big lists, and like I say, they're games we've either wanted to go back and replay, hence we did GTA 4 as our first one, um, or there's games that we haven't played, and this is gives you that a little bit of a nudge and a push to go and play them. So we've got lists, we've got everything from Portal 2 to you know Half-Life 2, you know, there's loads of stuff on there. So, but we'll, you know, we'll keep voting every every couple of months and join in. There's a little section on Discord. So if this is your first time, join the Discord, jump onto RGT in the past, tell us what you think of the game we're playing. Are you enjoying it, what you're playing it on, and yeah, and join in with the with the playthrough.

SPEAKER_03: 2:03:23

So lots of extra crack leak curricular activity going on behind the scenes. If you want to get involved, awesome. If you don't, do what I do, stand on the periphery and just look at them.

SPEAKER_05: 2:03:33

Yeah. Yeah. Literally.

SPEAKER_02: 2:03:36

Yeah. Is that all of our community corrections and business, podcast, business, business done?

SPEAKER_05: 2:03:43

I think, yeah. I think we're a bit there, about there with those. So okay.

SPEAKER_03: 2:03:49

Well, it's time to, as we always say, the show will be free. It will always be free. But if you want to support the show, get in from as little as three dollars, instantly get yourself a t-shirt. That's a Georgie promise. Uh, so there is no better way of getting yourself depped out in gaming merch than just supporting the show that you love. So feel free to jump on there. There's a link on the website, there's a link on the bottom of all the audio shows, and there may even be a link on the YouTube. Just click that, it'll take you to BuzzSprout, nice, clean, simple, secure transaction page, hosted by our podcast provider, where you can key in some details and support us from as little as three dollars a month. That's that's that's probably about£2.40. Um, which in this day and age is damn near throwaway money. Right? So throw it at us. We'd be very grateful, and you get a t-shirt worth probably six months worth of subscription. Yeah. Straight out of getting awfully generous. Yeah, we're like one of those sort of uh CD collector clubs that you used to see on the back of the Radio Times RGT, if I'm being honest. Um somewhere on my phone, though, I have a list of the people that do support us. Uh, you probably sent to me on WhatsApp because you're that kind of cat you did. Um so these people support us, one of the perks is that you get it read out on the show. Uh, tell me about some of the other perks, RGT, you get from supporting this awesome show.

SPEAKER_05: 2:05:15

Um, well, it like I say, it starts from your free bucks, you get read out on the show, you get uh access to a zoom chat, and you also get access to the Unglorious section on the Discord.

SPEAKER_03: 2:05:27

Um you're gonna get yourself one free t-shirt.

SPEAKER_05: 2:05:30

Yes, and as our offer is currently at the moment, that you get your your one free t-shirt just from signing up. Um we we we did change the um tiers. Reason being, um, we thought it was better that you got access to all the um interactive stuff from the from the get-go. So you've got your name read out, you've got the own glorious chat, um, and you've got the zoom meetup, so you get access to that. Then your perks going forward after that is if you go to five bucks, you get those three and a piece of yearly art merch. If you go to eight bucks, you get those four plus a yearly art merch mug. Then if you do uh go to the ten bucks, you get all those five plus a yearly art merch t-shirt. So if you're top tier, you get all the three socials, plus you get artwork, you get mug, you get t-shirt. So who the hell's organising this?

SPEAKER_03: 2:06:26

Because this sounds insanely complicated.

SPEAKER_05: 2:06:28

No, it's not complicated at all.

SPEAKER_03: 2:06:31

Are you looking after this?

SPEAKER_05: 2:06:33

Yes, it's not complicated. That's that's you struggling with that. Wow, wow, okay. Everyone gets the social sides of it. Read out on the show, you're on the Discord uh group chat, and you get the yearly and you get the quarterly Zoom meetup, and after that it goes art merch, after that it goes art merch and art mug. After that, it goes art merch, art mug, and t-shirt. So you get more for what you pay. There you go, done. Boom, in. Out, shake it all about baker candlestick maker, right.

SPEAKER_03: 2:07:09

Candleman. Right. What did you just say?

SPEAKER_05: 2:07:13

Candlestick maker.

SPEAKER_03: 2:07:14

Why did you say that?

SPEAKER_05: 2:07:15

I think that's how the song goes, isn't it? Whatever. Right, let's get on with this list then. We will start off with uh the wonderful and the guy who managed to launch our website, Captain Scarlet. So, yeah, don't forget to check the website out. Um we've now having Flashy B added to that as well, um, which is superb. Um, it's looking really good and growing by the day.

SPEAKER_03: 2:07:40

The uh Do you, as a subscriber, do you listen to Flashy B? Please let us know. And if you do, do you want to see some form of unlock for Flashy V from within the support page? I don't know. Let us know. Because at the minute we're a bit we haven't really pushed Flashy B merch. We haven't really done any of that. So yeah, let us know if you want to see the Flashy V logo on a t-shirt. Do we put that in did we put that in the downloads section?

SPEAKER_05: 2:08:10

We haven't. No, I'll have a chat with Captain Scarlet because he's done some great artwork and bits and pieces that we could um we could chuck in. So even like to Tingle Tuner, if you you know you've got your t-shirt coming for coming in just second place in the 300th episode competition. If you want a flashy B t-shirt, we'll give you a flashy B t-shirt.

SPEAKER_03: 2:08:25

So yeah, um first person to have a flashy B t shirt. I don't even have one.

SPEAKER_05: 2:08:29

Yes, yes, so yeah, me neither. So if that's sort of what you're interested, I know it's early days for the show, but if it's something you're interested in, um let us know. So, yes, anyway, thank you, Captain Starler.

SPEAKER_03: 2:08:39

Yeah, whether we have some sort of maybe Flashy B gets uh like its own flow at one point in time, but maybe for now, if you're into the show and you want to get into it, maybe we just attach something to one of the unlocked bits where they get some sort of we'll work on that. We'll work we'll workshop that RGT, we'll work on that. Um so yeah, sorry to interrupt the UCP uh business meeting to with the with the support readout. Up next, a very talented man, a man that really has no caveats to his personality at all, and he's incredibly talented and amazing, and has produced us uh a really great short for Flashy B. Uh go check it out. It's retroed legend.

SPEAKER_05: 2:09:20

And also retroed, I do believe you're going to the Bristol gaming market, which I might be going to as well. So Brevall! There could be a yeah, there could be a few on a road trip going there. So I think DM's going and maybe a few others. So if we can get a few of us to go, that'd be brilliant. So uh yes, I'll let you know on that. Retroed.

SPEAKER_03: 2:09:37

I don't know why, but when you said on a retro trip, road trip, I suddenly got the thought of is it P. Arnoire on a retro trip? He's been on YouTube for like 4,000 years. He used to have like a Dreamcast collection, or I just made that up.

SPEAKER_05: 2:09:51

Don't know if I know him. Community corrections.

SPEAKER_03: 2:09:54

Uh okay. Uh did you You done retrohead?

SPEAKER_05: 2:09:57

So next up we have the One Man George Fan Club, which is the current champion of the 300 episode competition.

SPEAKER_00: 2:10:05

Retaining an undefeated.

SPEAKER_03: 2:10:07

Yeah, it is never will be beaten. We can't do another 300 shows unless we get there with flashy B. Uh up next, a man who will guarantee you. No, no, no, no, don't go down that road. Don't go down that road, don't go down that road.

SPEAKER_05: 2:10:21

No, no, don't don't do it to me. Don't do it to me, please. Because you'll be doing the rest of the readouts on your own if you do that. Please don't. Please don't. You're gonna do it, aren't you?

SPEAKER_03: 2:10:33

Um man is just gonna guarantee you a great return on your investments. Check him out on X, it's firm returns.

SPEAKER_05: 2:10:40

Thank you. Um next up we have the wonderful trestles of New York, which is also our um what anagram, would you say, from the yeah, analgram?

SPEAKER_03: 2:10:49

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05: 2:10:51

Um, yeah, from um from our competition, so thank you, Trestles.

SPEAKER_03: 2:10:55

Up next, a man who makes Kiriya himself bob his pants because he's bedecked in more Japanese gang tats. He is looking cool with him Yakuza tattoos, and he's I tell you what, he has got one hell of a pain threshold. Yeah, because he's literally bedazzled in her mind. They look amazing, he looks super cool. Like, honestly, you've got some balls there, boy, and I'm a bit envious because I am not that brave. Uh fair play to you.

SPEAKER_05: 2:11:27

Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Rose Space Monk. Um, next up we have the wonderful Badabinkster.

SPEAKER_03: 2:11:34

Stand me better in there, Badabinkster. Stand me better.

SPEAKER_05: 2:11:37

Bless him. He messaged me the other day because now I'm I I know I've said this a lot, but I am updating the hidden gems, and he was straight away. Do you want to say I am updating the hidden gems, and straight away he was uh let me know when you want your artworks. I'll get you guys he does all the little covers and he puts GT present brilliant.

SPEAKER_03: 2:12:03

They've grabbed the website.

SPEAKER_05: 2:12:04

Yes, and I've actually um the reason I haven't been updating them is because all my hidden gems are on my iPad, of which I lost it's which is an old iPad and I've lost the charger, but I found it now, it is charged up. So I'll RGT. Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 2:12:17

So it's like the Lone Ranger, not this week. Rad it on down, but fake you Badabinkster.

SPEAKER_05: 2:12:25

Just leave him sitting in the back. Who we got next?

SPEAKER_03: 2:12:31

I just miss it. It's my favourite section of the show, and I'll get angry, it's because I just want it.

SPEAKER_05: 2:12:36

You always get angry when you want it.

SPEAKER_03: 2:12:38

I know. Um you did Badabinkster and I said Stammy Berney, so that means I get Tingle tuner coming in second place, but number one in our eyes. I don't know, because now just this is Carlos.

SPEAKER_05: 2:12:56

You go, yeah, poor Carlos. No, not in my eyes, Carlos, you won. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's gonna be nice to everybody. Yeah, you might want to you know rethink your one man fan club there, but RGT's fan club is always up for new members, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 2:13:11

Oh guys don't because barely anyone on the show likes it anyway.

SPEAKER_05: 2:13:17

I know, but then that's of your own making.

SPEAKER_03: 2:13:19

Oh, he's not like halfway. Thank you, Tingle Tuner.

SPEAKER_05: 2:13:23

Thank you, Tingle Tuner. Yes, next up we have the wonderful uh well, he's one half half damn god damn Winchester boys. I know. I'm saying this when I'm out on the on the reins now as well. Um yes, it's Digital Mongery, and thank you for all your hard work for the competition. I know we said this before, but and with your challenge accepted and bits and pieces, which, if you're interested in, is Blast Corpse on the N64 this month. Highest score on the first level. So if you want to get involved with that, it's on the switch as well, I believe. On the switch online, so you can buy it on there, or if you want to apply on the original hardware. So, yes, so uh it's blast corpse for this month's challenge, except so thank you, Digital Munkery.

SPEAKER_03: 2:14:11

Thank you. Up next, I get the legendary ball border.

SPEAKER_05: 2:14:17

Yes, thank you very much, mate. Um, then we have the other have the goddamn Winchester boys. It's Boba. Thank you very much, Boba.

SPEAKER_03: 2:14:31

But the sad thing is I realise I'm about to have my red-headed stepson and take that in any way you want. But that does leave me, I think that leaves me co-opted into the Zangeef. So let's start here. He's an appropriate adult, as am I, nor are we blood related. So it's totally fine for me to say that my red-headed stepson is a beautiful sexual man. Hung like a raging bull. But he has the he has the intelligence to execute this violence in the most professional way. I thought everyone knows that now.

SPEAKER_05: 2:15:18

Um yes.

SPEAKER_03: 2:15:20

Why did you what part of that intriguing? I just saw right the corner of my eye you get triggered, and I was like, oh, what did I say that was particularly egregious? Probably all of it, but yeah, who's that?

SPEAKER_05: 2:15:29

Well it's you, because normally when you start saying things like sexual and violent, I'm just wondering what's coming next, so I'm preparing myself by trying to. Normally you probably um next up we have the wonderful Lord of Darkness himself. It is Harvey Retro. Thank you very much, as always. Come on, George, put yourself together. Who we got next?

SPEAKER_03: 2:16:03

The legendary icon of the show has done more to push the show worldwide than anybody else. Uh well. As much as what am I doing?

SPEAKER_01: 2:16:14

Take me off there.

SPEAKER_03: 2:16:15

Emma Sharp's not on the apps, but she's she's in the Discord and she supports the show, and I couldn't ask for a better, better supporter.

SPEAKER_05: 2:16:23

Yeah, thank you, Emma. Then we have part of the discussion we had earlier, which is we were obviously too near to Berlin when he was no environment.

SPEAKER_03: 2:16:34

Greg never said anything though, like he's totally fine, but obviously community corrections are like, oh, actually, he's not there. But maybe the fact that he stay quiet means he's like, Oh cracky, they're really close to finding me. I said I'm nowhere a bit near Berlin, but I actually have hidden in Berlin.

SPEAKER_05: 2:16:49

Oh double bluff.

SPEAKER_03: 2:16:51

Well, with a name like that, you've got to look a little bit between your.

SPEAKER_05: 2:16:55

You don't really want to go further away, you want to go closer.

SPEAKER_03: 2:16:57

So Yeah, using the Reichstag, baby. Yep. Brilliant very much, Greg. Um I'm getting all the bad turns this time round because I get to have Mumsy, so thank you, Mumsy, for what you've done.

SPEAKER_05: 2:17:12

Thanks, Mumsy. And I get the wonderful RGT fan club. Thank you very much, Mum and Dad. Ten bucks out of your pension a month, that's not easy.

SPEAKER_03: 2:17:28

Which no. Um, which means I get pre Pete Brocklehurst, who this week uh clicked his fingers and ruptured an old man's neck in Mongolia.

SPEAKER_05: 2:17:39

Wow. He's powerful, that guy, isn't he? He is I tell you you are powerful, Pete. Um, and my favourite one to get in the Discord, uh in the subs list in the Discord is because I get Billy Marmite, which means thank you, Billy, by the way. Which means it's time you Zangief, boy.

SPEAKER_03: 2:18:00

The danger is I now know how this rolls, and alright. What's an geef do you need?

SPEAKER_05: 2:18:07

Uh well, I tell you what, I'm gonna go quite basic this week, and I'm gonna be on point and on subject this week. So I want you to Zang Geef. So on the fat part of Fat Zangeef, you are unwrapping your Game Lab Game Boy. You turn it on, you see there's Dreamcasts there, you see there's Super Nintendo there. You're getting very excited. You're thinking, oh, might be able to pay a bit of Shenmue on this bad boy. Then you start Metroid at one frame per second, and that's when you Zang Geef. So want that pitch of excitement in a complete and utter lack glass to finish. Away we go. Three, two, one.

SPEAKER_03: 2:18:43

Hang on, hang on, hang on. I need a prop. Wow. Is the box unwrapping is the box unwrapping on on air, or are you saying that that's all happened?

SPEAKER_05: 2:18:52

So I'm kind of excited, but now you're now just sliding it out of its packaging, which I would imagine was probably just some half-beaten old bubble wrap. No, it was actually okay.

SPEAKER_03: 2:19:03

So unboxing thing was actually probably quite good. I was like intrigued. Yeah, I was like, oh, this is better than I thought. And screen oh okay, so I'm ready for I'm ready for action when you want to.

SPEAKER_05: 2:19:14

So remember excitement, excitement, dreamcast, excitement, shenbu, excitement, super nintendo, excitement. You put Metroid on one frame per second. Oh dribble.

SPEAKER_03: 2:19:26

Don't do that face on air again. That last little gurney thing that you did. It yeah, give me a minute to collect myself now.

SPEAKER_05: 2:19:35

Sorry, yeah. I nearly just cut my jaw.

SPEAKER_04: 2:19:37

Can you fucking give me that's what I saw? I was like, what the hell's that? Looks like a snake trying to eat an egg.

SPEAKER_05: 2:19:45

Yeah, that was a proper 1950s gurning competition then.

SPEAKER_03: 2:19:49

Mate, it looked like the it looked like the exit queue of Dreamscape at about four in the morning.

SPEAKER_05: 2:19:54

No, I'll tell you what I looked like. I looked like Crichton trying to say smeghead.

SPEAKER_03: 2:20:01

Just not what I saw. Okay. Ready? Are you ready? Yes. Come on, I'm ready.

SPEAKER_05: 2:20:25

Wow. I think this could be the best one yet. Oh God, such a diva. Um I like how you finished on a cry. That was absolutely brilliant.

SPEAKER_04: 2:20:40

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05: 2:20:42

Just this sad, pathetic gamer, so disappointed, just sits there and cries out his disappointment at this absolute piece of crap he's just bought.

SPEAKER_03: 2:20:52

Thanks for your support, Fansangeefe.

SPEAKER_05: 2:20:54

Yeah, thanks, Fansangeefe. Um, so that's the subs list. So thanks to everyone for that.

SPEAKER_03: 2:21:02

Uh ways. Brilliant. Genuinely we muck about uh and we've we try not to, but we can't help ourselves. So we hope that you're okay with it. If you're not in any way you tell us, we'll be scrubbed from the show. We'll just get your name, please.

SPEAKER_05: 2:21:16

And yeah, we do try not to mess about, but you know, we get left in a room to record for two hours and become 13-year-old.

SPEAKER_03: 2:21:25

I think they know after 300 episodes that uh it's always gonna be danger zone. Oh yes. Yes. Uh brings us here. So the clever people know that the last thing I need to ask you is what you're hoping to play.

SPEAKER_05: 2:21:42

Um obviously the fifth seven rebirth. I'll be that'll be chugging away in the background, gonna put more hours into that. Um, just absolutely loving it. Um I will be playing more of my Avocade. I've got um the Taito collection to play more of. I've got the Neo Geo free carts to play. Um, I've also bought, I thought I'd buy this one because you'd probably know a little bit about this, George. They've done a I think it's now on other platforms, but it's originally released and made for the avocade, which was full void, which I think is a bit of a modern sort of almost sort of platformer flashback sort of game.

SPEAKER_03: 2:22:23

Um I've seen this kicking around. I'll tell you what, it gave me is it Blackthorn vibes? Have I made that up?

SPEAKER_05: 2:22:30

Yeah, no, I think you're right, yeah, I know what you mean. Um and it's a lovely art style of that. And I thought these sort of games that are probably almost exclusive to the console. I don't think they are now. I think you can buy it elsewhere, but the cartridge itself is a physical piece of media is still around 12-15 bucks. So I've bought that, I've got that on a way to play. So I'm looking forward to playing full void on the arcade. Um, and some more cast and chill, but not in idle mode. Um, I should be playing that. Um, just relaxing at my desk, get the old gaming chairs, laid back, and away I go. Um, I'll be playing that this afternoon, I would imagine. But um, yes, that'll be pretty much me for the week. What about you then, Georgia boy?

SPEAKER_03: 2:23:12

Um I mean I have to admit that primary master has got its hooks into me. Um yeah, you've got me a bit, because I've got, I'm sure I've got there's something about the ambience and the kind of solo experience of it that I actually find quite uh endearing. Uh and I think that vibe is is nice, so I'm gonna explore that. Probably a bit of handheld, probably a bit of on-screen action. Uh I was gonna I was looking forward to a lay-in tomorrow and get stuck into some gaming from my bed, but uh I've got to get up at the scratch of dawn to uh record a flashy B with you, you devil. Uh so I'm excited for that. Uh do we know what year we're gonna do? Because I might do some research this afternoon and that might funnel my games playing activity.

SPEAKER_05: 2:23:57

Yes, yes, I do. I'll let you know afterwards um what that'll be. So um I don't want to divide yet because obviously don't forget flashback is releasing on Tuesday. Um so you've got a couple more days to wait for that. It's the new Tuesday release window for flashback, so let you know off air on that one. Okay. So we don't spoil a surprise for people.

SPEAKER_03: 2:24:18

Uh which they get the minute they open their podcast provider on Tuesday, and it says August 2003.

SPEAKER_05: 2:24:25

Oh, yes, they're argumentative today. Oh dear. Okay, so naturally right.

SPEAKER_01: 2:24:35

Where's OG Tom?

SPEAKER_05: 2:24:37

Uh he's offered a special mission somewhere, I would imagine, for a Queen uh Maj oh no, uh Majesty the King, I should say now. His His Majesty the King. What did I say?

SPEAKER_03: 2:24:50

Her Majesty the King.

SPEAKER_05: 2:24:52

Well, either or Yeah, so what come on? What are you playing? More you boat, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_03: 2:24:59

Uh or are you now? I've been a bit burnt by that. It's a lot deeper sin than I give it credit for. I might go back to that and have another go at it. And obviously, these sub-menus and whatnot, they're so overwhelming because just drive sailing the boat is actually in itself quite hard. Adding all the submenus. Now, when I selected it, it did actually give you a couple of choices about how deep a sim level you wanted to go. And I saw the first one dismissed it and actually went for the middle one.

SPEAKER_05: 2:25:32

Actually, now I'm thinking Well, it's even a harder way to play it than what you were playing it. Oh yeah. I mean, how deep does it go? What you gotta go to the toilet and eat food and I don't know, maybe play it in the bath.

SPEAKER_03: 2:25:51

No, it was a lot more of the sim aspects kick in. A lot lot more. So I have some control. So I need to tell and I've it's frustrating because you need to tell your crew member to turn on the uh air cleaning system. But you'd think that everyone would know what they needed to do when you dived. Yeah, you would dive and block.

SPEAKER_00: 2:26:12

What's happening? Why can't I breathe? Johnny, have you turned on the air con?

SPEAKER_01: 2:26:16

Oh no, no, I'll turn on the air scrubbers now, boss. Yeah, no problems. Like every time we dive, we need the air scrubbers. I wait for you to tell me.

SPEAKER_03: 2:26:24

This isn't gonna work. So, one of the more simpler ones is where you have even less crew involvement. So I think when you dive, they will automatically sort it. If you say load a torpedo, they automatically sort of it's more of a compromise because they would do in real life, aren't they? So, yeah. So I'm wondering about coming back out, knocking it down one level and playing it like that. So our feedback on how that goes. Other than that, you know me, it's a Saturday night. I'm probably gonna get a little bit crazy and start playing a PS1 game for no reason, yeah. Uh until four in the morning, and then doing flash should be after two hours' sleep.

SPEAKER_05: 2:27:00

What a show.

SPEAKER_03: 2:27:02

Banger. It's got classic written all over it. Uh I've had a decent amount of sleep, so maybe that's why this episode's off the boil. I don't know. Is it off the boil? I don't know.

SPEAKER_05: 2:27:13

See what people think. I'm always paranoid.

SPEAKER_03: 2:27:15

They're haters, they hate me.

SPEAKER_05: 2:27:16

I think they hate me. You're the you're the CEO. You're the one. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03: 2:27:20

It's not how it's stressed up to me. It's not how it feels.

SPEAKER_05: 2:27:24

Yeah, I think I think you're alright. Once I'm pushed back into the background and just got a little desk job just sorting at the merch and the Discord and bits in the background, and I think that's probably what we should have called flashback, actually. And when you get Colin Moriarty on and his U2, you know, is the biggest show in the world. And RGT, where's my tea? I said one sugar.

SPEAKER_03: 2:27:48

Colin's got a restraining order out against me, to be fair, so it was justified to be fair.

SPEAKER_02: 2:27:53

It was, it did go a bit far.

SPEAKER_05: 2:27:56

Yeah, I mean, I nearly got one against you, so I hate to think how Colin got on.

SPEAKER_03: 2:28:02

I just get so enamoured, you know, I get a bit carried away.

SPEAKER_05: 2:28:05

Yeah, but standing outside his living room window while he's trying to record you know, sacred symbols was weird, especially with no clothes on, just sitting, especially since he's on the second floor when he records. Exactly. You know, where did you even get that ladder?

SPEAKER_03: 2:28:21

I bought it from a Best Buy on the way there.

SPEAKER_05: 2:28:24

Just you in a pair of converse, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 2:28:27

So when the police got hold of me, they were like, What happened here? And I was like, Oh, it's just a bit spontaneous. It's like, where are you from, Britain? Right. I don't know if there's anything spontaneous about getting on a flight to specifically Virginia, to specifically to this Best Buy, to buy a ladder of all things, and then spontaneous clothes. Something about this in adding up, and I'm not Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Newton, but yeah. Anyway, um, all said and done, I think that leaves us here. So uh, yeah, some flashy bee research, some U-boat, some Metroid Prime, and I think I'll be a very happy boy. Nice. And that, I believe, is all we have time for this week, listeners. So thank you for your time. Move forward to the pleasure of speaking to you again next week. Until then, happy gaming. And remember, remember, there's nothing wrong with being given an official controller. It's what you do with it that counts. See you all, GT. Lighters.