July 2024 Podcast: Mature N64 games, Nintendo and female protagonists, and the games of July

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hello everybody and welcome to the digitally uploaded.
Podcast i am matt i am
hosting today because alan has better things to do than hang out with us apparently
uh no i'm not sure why like he's not here this month but he's not so i'm gonna
stand in and do his job in his place we do have an all-star cast here anyway

(00:22):
we have trent hello trent how you doing oh yeah being been better.
Been better? That's good. That's what we always like to hear.
A bit of positivity in the morning, on a Saturday morning, bright and early when we record.
That's good. And we also have Harvard. Hello, Harvard. Welcome to the podcast.
You weren't here last month, so it's good to see you again. Yeah,
good morning. Good to be back.

(00:43):
Excellent. So what have you been playing, Harvard, in the last two months?
You've got a lot of time to fill us in on.
Yeah, I might give two games then because it's been two months.
What's consumed my last two months has been theater rhythm
final fantasy final bar line i got almost
every star on that game i got almost every achievement on that

(01:03):
game i played like all 403 songs
on nearly every difficulty there's a
lot to do in that game and i did it all so that is some
commitment well done yeah i don't it's very compulsive it's
gives you the little rewards frequently and i
know i know it just keeps handing them out so then you keep playing and then it keeps handing
out more rewards and it's a very wholesome yeah especially when

(01:26):
there's no money involved it's just that's the game which is not sure
no money involved mostly by the dlc yeah that's true
game two is going to be dice fork i think is what it's called it's a um a roguelite
monster collecting deck building dice based game like it's just every indie
trends all all the one but yeah i played that a little I played that a little bit in preview.

(01:50):
That's the Good Shepherd published one, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah. It's decent. It's good fun. It is a bit of just a let's throw everything
that's popular into one thing and...
Watch how it works but it does work which is it does work and there's
a lot of mass going under in the hood to make sure
everything's balanced like i do really respect that nearly every strategy
and every monster and stuff is like pretty viable

(02:13):
and you feel good while playing it you don't feel like oh i rolled a bad set
of monsters or whatever like whatever you get you feel like you can strategize
your way through it yeah for sure for sure you'll have to check out the one
i can't remember what it's called now but there is one that's on in in the works
as well i I think it's also Good Shepherd, if not Good Shepherd and Devolver,
but it's basically Slay the Spire mixed with Puzzle Quest,

(02:37):
which is another kind of combination of all those popular things into one.
It just, you know, Dice Folk kind of reminds me of this game and vice versa in what it does.
So I'll figure out the name of it and I'll send it your way because I think
you'll like that if you like Dice Folk.
Two. Trent, what about you? What have you been playing? What have I been playing?
I've been playing uh that's a

(02:59):
good question what happened i don't even play vocal
but no one wants to be able to talk about pokemon every five seconds i
think i've been
playing paper mario
yes ah the re-release i
wouldn't i wouldn't even call it a remake the re-release of thousand year

(03:19):
door yes yeah that's a good game that's
a lovely game not the dlc for elden ring which is
apparently so brutal that even the people that enjoyed elder
ring aren't enjoying this one can i hide in
a spot in the dlc and level up
in the wrong way again no i'm pretty
sure that this one i mean apparently they patched it
because it was too hard for the gamers and if it's too hard for the gamers then

(03:43):
you know it's uh they kind of went above and beyond but uh yeah the dlc has
been pretty controversial which has been interesting the people that have been
able to handle the difficulty love love it but that's not many people at all
so there you go from software does love to do that to us,
um yeah so that's cool you've been busy and playing good games so we will uh

(04:07):
just jump to a quick bit of music and then we'll be back and we'll be talking
about all the games that you'll be playing in july.
Music.

(06:13):
Welcome back. Okay, so we are talking about the games of July,
and after a relatively new June release schedule,
I haven't even looked at what's coming out in July, but the very first game
is such a time-consuming thing that I'm pretty sure that's going to set the
tone for the rest of the month.
The first game that comes out in july and it'll

(06:33):
probably be out by the time you hear this podcast is a final fantasy
14 dawn tight trail the latest big
expansion to that mmo and for
anybody that's playing that mmo i'm sure they're looking
forward to another 50 60 hours worth of
content to work to work through i haven't
played final fantasy 14 in so long and it's really annoys me because i constantly

(06:56):
want to but at the same time i know if i pick it up i'm just not going to have
the time to commit to it that it needs especially since i'm like three expansions
behind at this stage but i love everything about final fantasy 14 i love the
music i've even been to like symphony.
Symphonies of final fantasy 14 music and yeah
i just love everything about it i just do not have the time to play it but for

(07:17):
those to do there you go you've got a new expansion to look forward to
do you need to have played the is the way
you play all the expansions in order or can you just
jump into this if you at least as far as at least
as far as i've played and this is
you know i think i only got into the third expansion before
i just ran out of time for final fantasy 14 yeah you

(07:38):
do have to play them in order so if you're coming into final fantasy 14 new
now you're you've got a lot of work ahead of you they have done things to speed
through you through the first part of the game now because they do want to push
people into the new stuff so
it's not quite the time time commitment that it was back when it was new,
but yeah, you do need to play it through. So, it is a big time commitment.

(08:01):
That's how MMOs work, especially ones that are still a monthly subscription
fee. It's not a free-to-play one.
And yeah, but you know, it has a huge audience still, still very popular.
So it keeps on rolling on.
For those who do have a little bit less time and just want something a little
bit light to play, the Battle Cats Unite comes out on July 2.

(08:22):
Now Battle Cats is a long running series of tower defense things.
You would recognize it immediately if you saw the characters in it.
It's very cute. It's very charming. It's very Japanese.
It has been around since the early times of mobile.
Bar there is the the original was a mobile game which was free to play
and then they've done all kinds of 3ds versions and other

(08:42):
things the switch one is coming out with 350 varieties of cats and multiplayer
and stuff so that actually looks like a pretty comprehensive package which is
cool i do like battle cats so
i'm looking forward to that low-key moving along we have zemlis zone zero,
on July 4, which looks like a very anime game.

(09:03):
It is a brand new IP, apparently, and it is set in a post-apocalyptic metropolitan
city with an engaging story and futuristic art style, distinctive characters
and exhilarating action, which is basically what every other game promises these days.
But, yeah, it looks all right. It's a one for Alan, though.
I mean, sometimes I'm glad that Alan's not on because

(09:24):
I can talk about games that he just rolls his eyes at and I can kind of do it
and you guys don't laugh and then turn it into a fast so how many x's and zeros
are in that title sorry x's and zeds no no this is all just very clean zenless
zero zone zero zzz the clean of a title the dirty of the game,
that's right that is true that is very true actually no it's not what no it is true it is true.

(09:51):
On July 4, we've got the video game adaptation of Machi Koro coming out,
which is a bit of an iconic Japanese board game now.
I think the board game itself came out about a decade ago at this stage and
has just kind of rolled all the awards at the time.
It's that very Settlers of Catan level impact on the board game industry.

(10:13):
And we've been waiting for a video game adaptation of it for quite some time.
That is now imminent. I did see it very briefly at Tokyo Game Show last year,
and I thought it was pretty good looking.
So I am keen on checking that out, especially since I have a board game group,
the Switch, most weekends these days. And we're looking for something new to play.

(10:33):
We've been playing Wingspan constantly. So Magikora might be a bit of a break
from Wingspan, which would be good.
On July 4 as well, we've got a game called Taboo Trial, which could go any number
of directions I guess but it is a roguelike role-playing action game,
based in north norse mythology but has

(10:56):
anime style characters and stuff so yeah it
has an interesting box art that's why I mentioned it but don't
know anything else about it at the stage I should say that I have absolutely
no idea about most stuff that's coming out at the moment I'm just
kind of reading the metacritic list live because I've just lost all track of
what's happening in the games industry moving on moving on moving on moving

(11:19):
on there's an awful lot of stuff coming out on july 4 like pages of aesthetic
still on july 4 move to july 5.
There is a game called sea under the sea
under the sea which is pretty neat game a name i think
it looks like a horror game set under
the ocean surprisingly the year

(11:40):
is 2082 most of the planet it is covered with water and
the cosmopolitan of marine fauna has changed dramatically
humanity has only about 500 million people left so
it's one of those it's a water world it's water world the video game hopefully
it's better than water world that's out on july 5th and then also on the same
day there's some game called bouncy chicken which i don't know but that's a

(12:03):
good name for a video game if you ask me here we go here's the first probably
big release that's not final Final Fantasy related.
It is another big RPG. It's another hundred hour commitment.
The Legend of Heroes Trails Through Daybreak comes out on July 5.
Now, I've just started playing that for review now. I don't know if I'm going
to have a review out in time for the...
For the release, because those are very big games. They're, if you're not going

(12:27):
to commit 50 plus hours at minimum to it, you're probably not even going to
get close to experiencing what it offers.
But yeah, that's obviously a very famous long-running series.
I know Harvard loves it. Don't you, Harvard? I don't understand this series.
I've never been able to get into it, but I also...
They're making them faster than you can play them.

(12:48):
Actually, there's actually Trails through Daybreak 2 out in Japan already.
Has it not even been six months since the last new one?
You might be right, actually. I swear every other podcast we talk about one
of these games. This is an all new, I think.
Pretty sure it is. So, I mean, it'll be related to all the other ones and the
fans will tell you that you have to play them all in order, in a very specific

(13:09):
order, not necessarily a release order.
You know how these things go because they're a bit weird like that,
the fans of the Trails series.
But yeah, I think this is an all new narrative arc. So it might be a good opportunity
to get into the series for the first time. We say this about every one of them, too.
I know, I know. I'm about to find out myself. I'll tell you if you can play
it without having played all the other ones. But in theory, perhaps.

(13:31):
It's like when someone tells you they're up to date with One Piece and you're
just like, respect, right?
Like if someone tells you they're up to date with Legend of the Heroes, it's like, nice.
But also, are you okay? You know, I tried to get up to date with Gintama at
once and that just fell through after a while.
Yeah, it's a real commitment. It is when it's like $700.

(13:51):
Episodes and you're starting at episode one that's you definitely know what you're up against,
what else we got on july 9
so a couple of days later no actually we'll go back to july 7 we've got a game
called editors hell the only reason i mentioned that is because i empathize
it's been two days since you assigned the editor you were you were assigned

(14:14):
the editor job of a newspaper after months of unemployment you just had to took
it okay so maybe this game needed its own editor,
I like to think that is a very meta joke.
It could be. If it's all deliberate, then that's excellent. No, it's made by AI.
Don't start. I've actually played some visual novels made by AI in recent months,

(14:34):
and it's just not good. I'm not amused by that at all.
On July 9, we've got Spin Rhythm XD, which is a homage to classic arcade rhythm
games in brackets Guitar Hero DDR. DDR with a modern aesthetic and soundtrack
match colors and beats spin tap flick and blow the juiciest beats.

(14:55):
Western rhythm game. I think so. It's actually got reviews. They're pretty positive.
It's coming out on Switch. I think that's maybe the new thing.
I think it might be out on other platforms already. It's coming out on Switch on July 9th.
We have True Colors, A Date With Deception coming out on July 10th.
That can't be good. Surely not.

(15:16):
No, it had a bit of box art, but it doesn't even have a description there.
So maybe let's pass on that.
What else have we got? we have on
july 11 princess maker 2 regeneration which is a remake of the classic princess
maker i think that's probably the one that people generally rate as the best

(15:38):
in quite a long running series for people that haven't ever played princess
maker they're basically
life simulation games where you have
to put your daughter through schooling
and training to become whatever career
she ends up becoming and figure out

(16:00):
what character she ends up marrying at the end of the game it
takes you takes them right through the whole the whole
youth of the princess and it's a wildly popular series in japan but it's not
like fantasy storybook princess it's like dark feudal princess isn't it yeah
they've got some really dark edges

(16:21):
to these games they're they're they're interesting they are interesting.
I did not know what i was getting into when i played one for the first time
and it was not what i was expecting so yeah that
one would probably be the one to go with if you've ever been interested
because it is a remake a full-on remake and that means
it'll be a little bit more modern and easy to get into that's

(16:42):
july 11th or for a
very different change of pace on july 11th we
have ace combat 7 skies unknown deluxe edition coming out now is that is there
a radius ace combat 7 is this like a i vaguely remember one came out i want
to say recently but literally could have been five years ago but we were all

(17:04):
like cool ace combat and then i mean ace combat
is great i'm just not sure if this is oh no i can
now i've got this is the switch version of ace combat 7
so ace combat 7 itself was a playstation 4 game
i think and yeah now we've got the switch port of it coming out so that'll be
cool because that means you can play ace combat on the train i think this is

(17:28):
the first or on ace combat on switch actually there were a couple on the 3DS and that were good.
I think this might be the first one on Switch.
So there we go. Moving on. Bleach Brave Souls comes out on July 11 on Switch.
I think that's the mobile game, which did all right.

(17:48):
And now they've kind of redone it into a premium release as such for the console.
So those people that are still fans of Bleach, being an older anime at this
point, I guess, there you go.
Bleach was the first long-running anime thing that I ever watched.
So I have a soft spot for it, but it is a bit old at this stage.

(18:13):
It doesn't have the capital that it used to. They probably need to start a remake
of it, right? That's the way things go these days.
On July 12, we've got Fitness Boxing featuring Hatsune Miku coming out in English,
which is great. I've already reviewed it. I love it. It's great fun.
And now I'll be able to understand it. It's good fun.

(18:36):
You set up a little fitness program. You do your little boxing.
It actually works if you do it properly.
Like if you follow the instructions and you move your body like it tells you
to, then you do get a bit of a workout. You get a bit of sweat going.
So, yeah. And now you get to enjoy it with Hatsune Miku music because there
have been a couple of other ones before.
There was a fitness boxing original, which was just kind of generic mini music.

(18:57):
And then there was a… A Fist of the North style one, which was the best idea ever. Which was great.
I'm not sure of many people who played it ended up looking like Kenshiro,
but the aspiration was there.
So yeah, good little series, that one. Yeah, you can do it. Mickey fans can enjoy it.

(19:17):
On July 15, we have B Project, Ryusei Fantasia, which is a visual novel about
J-pop, I think. Yes, J-pop.
So, yeah, if you like the visual novels, then that's another one to look forward
to. There's a lot of them coming out at the moment. It's a crazy time for visual novels.

(19:41):
And, yeah. Are they mostly coming out for Switch?
Yeah, Switch has become the platform for them. Either Switch or kind of the
indie ones end up on PC first, obviously. And then if they're popular enough,
they get a Switch port after.
Speaking of Switch ports, on July 15, the Switch port for Darkest Dungeon 2
comes out, which will be good.
I haven't actually played it yet, but I did like Darkest Dungeon. yeah yeah

(20:02):
it's been around for ages on pc i just don't play pc games
much and yeah i'm looking forward to that i
really did enjoy the first darkest dungeon and now
that i've got an oled switch the aesthetic of darkest dungeon
will probably look quite good too so double reason
to play it on july 16 we've got deliver us the moon coming out on switch now

(20:23):
why do i know that name why do i know that name that seems like a game that
might be yeah it's already been on Some PlayStation 4 has a decent review average,
80, with the critics.
It doesn't look like what I
thought it would look like. It honestly sounds like an anime kind of game.
Yeah, it's not that. Just from the title by itself. But it looks like a Portal

(20:46):
Talos Principle kind of situation. Yeah.
Anyway, that looks like it'll be decent fun, I guess. More games on Switch is a good thing.
On july 16th we've got
demon slayer sweep the board coming out on playstation
4 now that's already on switch it's very good if
you like your mario parties and you like demon slayer then

(21:08):
this is kind of the combination that will make you very happy if you
just like mario party you can still enjoy it because it is the
mini games are very good fun and the board games are pretty the board
game design is pretty good if you like your demon slayer
then this is a chance to enjoy all all those characters so
yeah it's a well-used application of
the license i felt and if you

(21:31):
don't have a switch you'll be able to play it on your playstation on july 16
we've got a game called let's school coming out which is a simulation where
you are the principal and need to make the school good or something oh that's the job.

(21:52):
I think that's the point of simulations isn't it it's the chance to
do a job that you wouldn't do otherwise this one looks quite charming like the
art style is nice and well make it like prison architect to make it like you
can make the worst school and like have detention for everyone and have fights
every five seconds yeah that's how i would just normally play it even if it
was a normal simulation trend.

(22:14):
That's what I do. I would be the worst principal ever.
Okay, what else we got? We got a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game coming out on July 17.
Splintered Fate. I assume that this is going to be a brawler.
That's what most Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games are.
I haven't played one for... I haven't played the more recent Turtles games.
The last one... The last new Turtles game I played was the terrible one that Platinum Games made.

(22:41):
And since then, the only other Turtles games that I've played is the collection
of retro ones. So, who knows?
I mean, I haven't watched Turtles in a long time as well, so I'm a little bit
old for that franchise, I guess.
I've got nostalgia for the 80s version, 90s version. All right.
So the first Nintendo game for the month comes out on July 18.

(23:01):
We've got Nintendo World Championships NES Edition coming out,
which is that collection of speedrunning minigames.
Basically, the sequel to NES Remix. Yeah, that was what, a Wii game?
It was a Wii U. Wii U.
Wii U game. Wii U game. One of the few Wii U games that didn't get moved off that console.

(23:25):
So, yeah. I don't know. I'm sure it'll be fine.
Can't say it's the Nintendo game in the world I'm most enthusiastic about,
but if it's a good fun thing, then I'll enjoy it anyway.
Moving on. Halfway through the month now.
It is picking up again. It was a bit quiet for a couple of weeks there,

(23:46):
but it is picking up again.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that I just don't know if it's going to be very good.
Magnus Trilogy on July 18.
Revalia Dungeon Raiders on July 18. Lint Lock the Siege of Dawn on July 18.
Kunitsugami Path of a Goddess on July 19. Now these could all be decent games

(24:08):
but I don't know anything about them.
They just have interesting art. But that's what I'm going on.
Sports games. Fans can look forward to a college football game on July 19.
EA Sports College Football 25.
Which is, I must admit, I'm not that across how American football works.

(24:29):
But I understand that college football is like universities, obviously, colleges.
And that's amateur. They can't be paid and stuff, right? That's how it works.
Pretty sure that's how it works.
Like, it's a big business, and yet they don't pay any of the athletes.
Which is just so great 134 fbs schools so apparently it's a very big competition as well,

(24:51):
and ea is doing it so there you go on july 19 we've got agatha christie the
abc murders so if you like your detective fiction and your point and clickers
this is going to be one of those,
which will be good i think it's microids and probably the same developer as the,
Poirot games. It is a Poirot game itself.

(25:12):
So, cool.
Ah, another Nintendo game comes out on July 22. This one was only announced
during the Direct a couple of weeks ago, this stage.
And it's the new Dempter Men, which is great.
Yes. Yes. I'm very much looking forward to this. Dempter Men was a 3DS series
of three games, wasn't it? It was three games, yeah.

(25:35):
They were kind of like Pokemon-ish dungeon crawlers where you needed to capture
Dempter Men in by using the camera to kind of spot them as they're floating
around in the real world as such. Very early application of AI.
It's like radio waves or like Wi-Fi signals or something. Yes, that's right.
That generates unique monsters for people. So if two people were in the same

(25:57):
area with the same Wi-Fi signals, they'd get the same monster.
That's right. Which is kind of a gimmick, and they use that tech to make a Dragon Quest parody.
Yes, yes, that's exactly it. They didn't need to go so hard,
but it is an excellent Dragon Quest game.
It is. It is. And it is a very kind of grindy RPG behind that,
which is actually a good thing in this case, because this one is a free-to-play game.

(26:21):
Just to pull the excitement out of it. Yeah, it is unfortunate.
Who knows how well- Pay money for it. Link it to the blockchain and make it
have, what do you call it, those things, NFTs.
Yeah, no, it's not that. Thank goodness for that. but it is
a free-to-play game who knows how aggressive it'll be on the micro transactions hopefully
not because i have been looking forward to a new

(26:41):
temper men for quite some time isn't it nintendo's
first party though no it's not it's only a time yeah
it's only getting it's only a time it's timed exclusive to the switch it'll
be released elsewhere later on which also means i guess that the way that that
handles the the collection of temper men will be different because with the
playstation 4 it's not like you can pick up the ps4 and kind of ps5 sorry and

(27:02):
and swing it around to find new temperaments.
Could have sworn that it was a genius sonority game.
Yeah, it's not...
When else have we got? July.
23. Sports fans get another one to look forward to. F1 Manager 2024.

(27:23):
This is not F1 racing. This is the manager side of things where you need to
kind of make your team successful by doing all the things that a manager does.
I must admit I haven't really played too much of the F1 Manager series games.
I do like the football manager ones. So at some
stage I will try to find the time for this i'm sure i'll enjoy it

(27:44):
a lot but i haven't yet played them
i do know that they have pretty decent reputation overall on
july 25 this has been a while coming a new earth defense force is coming out
earth defense force six it's been ages since the last earth defense force and

(28:05):
yeah so people who have not played an earth defense force game before you're
in for a fracking good time.
They are the epitome of B-grade action games, and they just really lean into
that as well. They have a lot of fun.
You basically go around shooting big bugs and other alien monster things and
everything else that you can imagine from the B-tier of horror and big action

(28:29):
Hollywood and all that kind of stuff.
And, yeah, it's quite subversive in the narrative as well.
So the series is good. It's a very good series. It has its fans that just play
everything, including me, and I'm looking forward to this a great deal.
On July 25, we have Tokyo Xanadu EX Plus coming out.

(28:51):
Gee, God, it's a big week month for Falcom.
Is that a new one?
No, it's an enhanced port for the Switch.
So for people that don't know, Tokyo Xanadu EX is basically Falcom,
which is the developer publisher behind the Trails series, Legend of Heroes
series, and also the Ys series.

(29:13):
They've got this other one, which is just one game at this stage,
so I'm guessing that this releases to see if there's room for another one.
But Tokyo Xanadu is basically their take on Persona.
Yeah, it's Persona with action combat.
Yeah, pretty much. So it's got very Persona-style characterisation and plot
flow, and there are interactions between characters and the stuff that you do

(29:35):
when you're not fighting.
All of that is very Persona. And then you go into dungeons and real-time combat,
which is a little bit different to Persona, but the vibe is very much there.
It was actually pretty good. I did enjoy it on the... what did I play it on? PS3?
Vita? I did get a Vita release as well, but I think it was PS3. PS3 or PS4? PS4.

(29:58):
Yeah. Whatever I played it on, I quite enjoyed it. And I am looking forward
to playing it on Switch again as well. It's good fun.
They did do a good job of adding the Persona style.
On July 25, you've got Kemco RPG Selection Volume 12, which has got four more
Kemco RPGs in one pack. I cannot contain my excitement.

(30:22):
I can't believe they've got to 12 volumes of cheap RPGs that they've just shoved together.
I can definitely believe it. I just don't think people would be able to tell them apart.
No, you can't. They all use the same assets. They're just terribly written. They're all RPG maker.
Style games by people that just quickly churn them out i can't believe that

(30:44):
series is still going there there's obviously an audience for it otherwise they
wouldn't get to volume 12 but,
wow i think maybe they're just so shitly made that they don't need yeah no you're
right they probably only need to sell like two copies to make their money work
and they probably do sell like two copies for something that's slightly different

(31:05):
in scale and scope and i imagine sales expectations.
Disgaea 7 Complete comes out on July 25 as well. That's still going.
That's still going. That's still a very big series.
I am looking forward to that. I'm not looking forward to how much time it'll
consume, but I am a pretty big fan of Disgaea over the years.

(31:28):
So yeah, I'll play that for sure.
On July 25 we've got Sengoku Koihime, which which I'm going to say means gender-swapped.
Sengoku period, Warriors-style action game thing, I think. I think that's what
it looks like from the box art anyway. So that'll have an audience, I'm sure.

(31:50):
Wow, Alan would hate that. He would. He would, absolutely.
I assumed it was some kind of romance. Sengoku was romance? No,
Sengoku is the Nobunaga era, right?
Yep, that's correct. Yeah. You would think it would look very different to what
it looks like. There are plenty of gender-swapped Sengoku games,

(32:12):
animes, and all that kind of stuff, too.
The Japanese animators and artists and people involved in video games and anime
seem obsessed with figuring out what Nobunaga Oda would look like as a woman.
And, yeah, I don't know much more about this one other than that's probably the same drill.
On July 25, we have a very long-awaited sequel, I guess.

(32:34):
It's been ages since the first one. white day
2 the flower that tells lies is coming
out so for people that didn't play the original white
day it is an old game and then it got a remake which was mildly popular thanks
to pq picking it up and really pushing it hard white day is korean horror by

(32:54):
a korean developer it was set in a school and it was kind of stalker horror
so you needed to sneak around why while a janitor was
chasing you around a demonic general
janitor a demon possessed janitor and in the meantime there are all kinds of
ghostly things happening as well as anybody that's ever seen korean horror knows
it doesn't kind of it's got no chill the korean horror goes all out with the

(33:16):
the thrills and scares and stuff and white day was a pretty good application
of that but it was a little bit,
dated in terms of how it played and all the rest so this one i guess is a chance to to really,
nail the aesthetics as well as the.
Playability and mix that in with all the good stuff that made White Day quite

(33:37):
a compelling game so yeah, I'm looking forward to that, that should be good.
Still going on July 26th. Another RPG is coming to the Switch.
One Piece Odyssey Deluxe Edition.
So that was a PlayStation 5 RPG.
It's basically Dragon Quest, the One Piece version.
So it's turn-based RPG combat and stuff, but with Luffy and the whole Straw Hat crew.

(34:05):
And it was pretty decent so yeah should
be pretty decent on the switch too better platform for
it i think because it was the kind of game that you played in between doing other
things and it wasn't that engaging in the sense
that it wasn't it wasn't a hardcore time commitment so
it's the kind of game that you can play on the train and whatnot to
fill in the commute and that would be a good application for

(34:27):
it we have on july
30 the bitmap bitmap bureau collection coming through no idea what that even
is but it's a collection of three games and i've never heard of any of them
three retro classics run and gun hack and slash it's a bunch of old style i

(34:50):
guess action platformers.
So that's there. I do like how there is this trend to have these really niche
retro things thrown together into collections because it's good for the preservation of these games.
I'm just scrolling through.
Finally, I will mention this one. It's an August release, but I will mention

(35:11):
it because it's August 1.
We may miss it next month. Hakuoki Chronicles of Wind and Blossom comes out
on Switch, which was an excellent visual novel.
It was one of the first Otome visual novels, if not the first Otome visual novel,
that was localized and released in English back on the PlayStation 3.
And it got a lot of people, including me, into the Otome visual novel genre.

(35:35):
It's since come out on Vita.
And now, thanks to East Asia Soft, it's getting a full release on Switch.
So I am looking forward to that. That's both Akawoki games together in one package.
Package and if you haven't played those before you absolutely owe
it to yourself to do so good historical fiction mixed with
good art and yeah they're interesting games

(35:57):
so that is basically everything for july
it's a pretty big month after a relatively quiet june trent
of all those games pick one what would you perhaps play i will at least play
the nez thing because i've already had that pre-ordered for like five seconds
so then i'll be playing that i am not surprised i figured that would be the

(36:22):
game that you would pick as i was reading through them actually,
what about you harvard what are you gonna play let me just say that if if you
if you lined up all the rpgs we talked about for this month and you got someone
to full-time play video games they might not actually finish all of them probably
not it will it there's there's so many any 50-hour RPGs.
We recently were seeing a trend of 20-hour RPGs.

(36:44):
And then it seems like they're not anymore.
I'll probably try the Dempament because I liked the original so much but I'm
not hopeful I think the amount of gap and the amount of changes that might happen
to it might kill it and that would make me sad but I'm going to try it anyway.
Yeah I mean at least if it is just a free to play thing that you can then throw

(37:04):
away and not think about again you haven't wasted much time or money on it so I guess there is that,
it's a low risk thing to at least try Because the
original was like 13 bucks for a full 20
hour dragon quest so yeah yeah yeah
i wonder how they're gonna premium that they they were
cheap yeah i'm interested in seeing how how

(37:25):
they can make it kind of that never stop playing quality
that free-to-play games meant to have you know you can spend hundreds of hours
playing it i'm not sure how you can take what dimperman did and expand that
to free-to-play but anyway we'll see i think it would just be like dlc dungeons
or whatever i think that's really the most likely I think they'd do.

(37:46):
Yeah, but whether that'll engage people on the long term, who knows?
We'll wait and see. We'll wait and see. For me, I mean, obviously I'm quite
interested in most of the RPGs there, but I am really looking forward to Earth Defense Force 6.
I love Earth Defense Force so much.
It's basically Starship Troopers, but video game, which is great. I love it.

(38:11):
Music.

(40:30):
And welcome back, everybody. So one of the surprise delights of that Nintendo
Direct that was a couple of weeks ago at this stage, but people are starting
to really get stuck into it now,
was the release of the Mature Age N64 app,
as well as two games, which were Turok and Perfect Dark. Which we never thought we'd see again.

(40:54):
Yeah, I mean, Perfect Dark has been kicking around on the Xbox via Game Pass
for a while. You can play it there because now, obviously, Rare is owned by
Microsoft and Perfect Dark.
But that N64 original Perfect Dark, in the way that it was made,
was something that we never thought we'd see again.
But the cartridge is worth like $200 plus, isn't it? It's very... Yeah, yeah.

(41:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is kind of a legendary N64 game.
It really pushed the hardware. It was probably the one that pushed the console
as far as it could go. That was the thing that people kind of really loved about
it, and it consumed a lot of people's time for a very long time.
And it was a pretty big thing to launch this mature collection or this mature app for.

(41:43):
Have you played it yet, Harvard? I did try out Perfect Dark.
I really respect how much detail went into it. Like, you can see the way that
you're walking through these giant buildings and, like, shoot through windows and stuff.
And it's, like, it's so much more fully realized than any other game from its era.
But at the same time, I can't get my head around N64 controls,

(42:06):
especially on the Switch.
Because I think I've never held an N64 controller for a long period of my life.
So I don't know what buttons and sticks are corresponding to what buttons and sticks.
Like, it doesn't make any sense to me. yeah what you need to do harvard is
you know how you can remap the controllers on
your switch yeah yeah you just need to
apply that the perfect dark and you can you can have the same basic experience that's

(42:28):
the only way to play i can't play it with the controls as they were originally
were it's just impossible yeah i think it's because it's like my brain is is
hardwired to when i see a screen look like that it wants to control in a particular
way and oh yeah absolutely If anything is slightly different from that way,
then I just get motion sickness. Like, you're completely confused.

(42:49):
Absolutely. I totally agree with you. I mean, I had no problem playing Perfect
Dark and GoldenEye back in the day. We got through them.
You know, we unlocked all the kind of the time issues.
Because Goldeneye especially had a bunch of kind of cheat codes and things that
you could unlock, but to do it, you had to speed run through levels.
And the times that you needed to speed run them through were pretty strict.

(43:10):
And I had no problem unlocking everything back in those days.
So the controls were fine for me back then, but since getting used to dual control
sticks as a way of controlling first-person shooters and stuff,
it's just become so ingrained in how we play video games that I find them pretty
much unplayable without the remapping trick that anybody listening to this podcast

(43:35):
can find pretty easily. Just go Google search it.
It does take some time to set it up though. It does take a little bit of time,
but once you've done that, then you're set and you can just switch to that remap
whenever you want to play one of these games.
So yeah, it is worth doing because otherwise you just get frustrated and give up on the games.
I have the Same issue. I think I should just buy the 64 controller.

(43:57):
I keep forgetting to buy them when they're on the Nintendo store.
I honestly wonder if I'll even be able to play it that way, though.
Because it's, yeah, the controls are at least mapped.
So you're holding the controller as it was originally designed.
But I'd still be looking for that second control stick, which is probably the

(44:17):
fundamental problem for me in playing these. But, yeah. Yeah.
And it's also quite, because the other game that was released on the N64 app,
the mature N64 app, was Turok.
And Turok's an interesting one because Turok was already on the Switch.
Yeah, it's already out. The version on the Switch is properly mapped.
Yeah, that's what I was getting towards.

(44:40):
The team at Nightdive, that's the name of the studio, I think.
So they've already released it on switch with the
full kind of remapping it's nightdiver an excellent development
studio at taking these kind of classic games and and remastering
them for a modern audience and turok plays really nicely that way i tried to
play the n64 app version of it and i did not do very well at all but turok you

(45:05):
really need the the remapping because it's so much faster it's a very fast game it's arcade fast,
first person shooter retro first person shooter Turok has
got enemies that dodge you and like platforming bits
and traps and stuff like you really can't be on your game I think even more
than the shooty bits it's the platforming bits that are particularly difficult

(45:26):
with the controls as were so if you are interested if you have downloaded the
N64 app perhaps and found Turok interesting but unplayable.
Go look for the actual Night Dive remake or remaster, sorry,
of it on the Switch thing.
I think you'll have a good time with it. Is there multiplayer on the N64 talk?

(45:47):
No, not the original one. Oh, the Turok 2 had multiplayer.
Turok 2, and we'll get to... Yeah, let's talk about that then.
So those are two games. There are just two games on the mature app at the moment.
And the first thing that I thought when they released this was,
well, what else could they possibly do?
Because the N64 was not exactly a console of many, these kind of MA+,

(46:07):
especially by today's standards, MA-rated games.
I understand why Nintendo did it for those two particular games,
just so parental controls and, you know, separating the all ages games that
are on the base N64 app with the mature age stuff which is this
new app but I thought okay so
there's two games there what else could they possibly do one of

(46:29):
them as you mentioned there Harvard is Turok 2 is an obvious choice now Turok
2 would be an interesting one because unlike the original Turok which has just
basically been replaced by the Night Dive 1 on the Switch Turok 2 had a very
good multiplayer mode like a really good split -screen multiplayer.
Everybody's good. Like, back when we had the N64, we kind of cycled between

(46:51):
Perfect Dark and GoldenEye and Turok 2 for the multiplayer.
I never actually finished the single-player of Turok 2 because I was just,
you know, it was a multiplayer game to us.
And Night Dive did port Turok 2 to the Switch as well, but they stripped the multiplayer out of it.
And I was very upset by that because I bought the thing before I realised that

(47:11):
there was no multiplayer in there.
That was basically a wasted purchase for me
on the switch so that would be an obvious one
that they could bring to the switch and actually into the mature app and actually
add some value to it that way because nintendo's never stripped out multiplayer
of anything right i don't think they've ever released a virtual console or a

(47:34):
switch online game and just took out the multiplayer all right well they don't
need to because the way it works is it's not like.
All they're doing is emulating the multiplayer thing. It's just P2P.
There's no cost involved. It's not like they need to build servers and maintain
servers and all that kind of stuff to make it work.
It really is just make the whole app, the infrastructure behind the app,

(47:57):
but facilitates multiplayer.
So there's no work to enable. In fact, it would be more work to kind of remove
it from the ROMs or whatever. Yeah.
That are on there. So yeah, if Turok 2 were to release on the mature app,
it would have the multiplayer which would be just immediately good
value to me i'd love to get back into that and then
from there they'd be able to do the other two two turak games

(48:19):
that were released on the switch as well they would also be games on the
switch yeah yeah so there was turak three shadows of oblivion which i never
played at all we were kind of done with turak by the time that came out and
then there was beast wars beast wars beast wars turok turok beast.

(48:43):
I'm just typing in google to see what comes up i feel like that that period
of history i hate to say is a bit murky at the rage wars rage wars you could
you could make up a game and i would believe Yeah,
no, Turok Rage Wars was a multiplayer-focused one. It had no single-player mode.
It was basically Unreal Tournament, but Turok.

(49:06):
And for obvious reasons, that wouldn't work if they were to strip the multiplayer out of it.
I guess that's what's happening in the N64 with regards to shooters,
where while everyone else was doing the Quakes and the Unreal Tournaments...
Yeah, I mean, the N64 generally had, like, the shooters, because they didn't
have the dual stick and all that kind of stuff, they had single-player story

(49:29):
modes and all that kind of stuff.
And all they were very retro style after Quakes and Dooms and things,
because that was what kind of worked with the controller.
Turok was an attempt to bring what was being done on PC and other consoles to
the Switch, and Rage Wars is actually a pretty good example of that,
in that it is that Unreal Tournament-style, multiplayer-focused Turok.

(49:53):
It was pretty decent for what it was, and I would be interested in seeing that
there as well, especially since it would kind of work nicely with the multiplayer
sessions that people get together to with Switch,
and the N64 app. So that was pretty good. That would work.
But what else could possibly land on that mature app is the question.

(50:14):
The only other two things I could think of are Conker's Bad Fur Day,
which I think I mentioned in the chat before.
If they have Rare games coming out and they still have the original to that,
I don't know if anyone would particularly enjoy Conker's Bad Fur Day today.
But I guess it's a piece of history.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's happening. I heard that that was happening by multiple sources.

(50:38):
I know you mentioned it when we were talking about this section in preparing
for the podcast, but I'm pretty sure
that Other people have said that it's happening, other decent sources.
So yeah, I would be surprised if that doesn't become one on the N64 mature app.
But what was the other one that you're thinking of?
If Mortal Kombat, if they find a way to get the licenses worked out.

(51:02):
Because I don't think you can play the old Mortal Kombat games properly in any way, right?
Yeah, that was actually a surprisingly... I mean, the N64 did not have many
great fighting games by any means. It was not a fighting game console.
But the Mortal Kombat trilogy was pretty decent.
An effective kind of summary or collection of the first three Mortal Kombat games. That was decent.

(51:32):
I guess Killer Instinct, but that's already on the non-mature app.
Yes, that's true. I guess it's funny how they would draw the line.
I guess I wonder if it was more of an ESRB kind of age-rating situation.
I think it's just anything that would kind of land on the wrong side of any
of the classification boards, the major ones, not Nintendo.

(51:52):
I don't think Nintendo gives a crap about Australia, but the other ones.
We used to be real gatekeeper back in the day. I think it also might be a CERO
thing too, because Japan's CERO board can be weird about adult content and what
it considers to be adult content.
So yeah, it's definitely just a way of dealing with the ratings difficulties

(52:13):
of re-releasing some of this stuff.
Trent, can you think of any games that from the N64?
I think maybe they're like the South Park original. Oh, of course.
Yeah. South Park would be mature gauge games. Yeah. And then you also have the South Park.
That were terrible. Yeah, that were terrible. But they were very bad.
Everyone played South Park Rally.
Rally was good. No, it was not. It was just absolutely terrible.

(52:38):
It was one of the worst things ever, but it would be fun to have it on there
just for like five minutes. And I mean, if they put Iggy's bloody wrecking balls
on there, they can put the South Park games on there just for shits and giggles. Yeah.
That would be good fun. Like, which was the one, it was the first person shooter
one where you could actually piss on the snow and then make a snowball as a weapon, wasn't it?
Yes, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that was a very classy game.

(53:00):
Like, that's why I wanted to talk about this, right? It's like,
what passed for mature in the N64 era is not what passes for mature today.
No, it's often not. crude humor and gratuitous violence beyond what it would
be necessary in any game.
I remember Turok 2, her game that had a weapon that just.
The cerebral yeah yeah so it had it had

(53:22):
a cerebral bore so basically what
that did was it just like it was a homing weapon and
then yeah it attached the enemy's skull and then just kind
of blew up that was a horrible weapon to be targeted with in the multiplayer
i tell you what unnecessarily brutal right it was it was just ridiculously over
the top i mean that was the way because they didn't have the graphical capabilities

(53:45):
to be subtle they just had to kind of go over the top and just yeah.
Really make things grotesque yeah and i think mortal kombat if
anything the modern mortal kombat is a is a remnant of that
era of design too where they were
just like oh we can make mature games now we're not
yeah but the point the point of it was different wasn't it like
these days mortal kombat is very subversive and kind of satirical you know it

(54:10):
kind of it parodies big action movies and all of that but back in those days
it wasn't really about the satire It was more just about kind of gratuitously, yeah,
gratuitously throwing in like really sick,
you know, executions and things because that was cool.
You know, there was a different intent behind it. I think the modern Mortal

(54:33):
Kombat, if anything, is weighed down by that history.
Like you couldn't make a Mortal Kombat game without fatalities and you couldn't
make one without kind of like dialing up the fatalities the previous game.
Even though in the competitive scene, nobody does them because everyone thinks pointless.
Well, yeah, I mean, the game's already, the fight's already finished.
So as far as the competitive scene's done- Yeah, it's just like wasting everyone's

(54:56):
time. It's seen as a disrespect. It's just a waste.
That that's just the the difference i guess in those there are
a couple of other mature ones that i did think about before coming on
that would end up on that if they were actually possible
and i'm not sure whether i necessarily want all of them but some
of them would be decent one is shadow man shadow man

(55:17):
was a great i think that's re-released isn't
it it has been but then so is you know oh yeah the
original shadow man not super original version was actually
by a claim too so because two rocks on there there is a
chance that whoever owns a shadow man license could also drop that
on there that was a horror game that was pretty pretty.
Out there really it was about a guy

(55:39):
that could move between the real world and the
the underworld and the underworld was
pretty vivid in terms of
the horror themes and stuff and fun story
i that was that was one
of the i love that game and i played it a lot on
n64 and i got about 90 of

(56:00):
the way through because of whatever tracking thing like there was souls thing
that attracts about how many souls you collect and that's how
far you get through anyway i got about 96 of the
way through the game or something i was getting towards the end of it and my
memory card corrupted so i have
never actually finished that i mean i actually have the remake i just
haven't had the time for it i've never ever finished shadow man but i did really

(56:21):
enjoy it and who knows maybe if i got a release
on the n64 app i would give it another go anyway just
for old time's sake another one
was hexen was one actually a 64 yeah.
That was a launch game on the n64 and it had
four player two uh split screen co-op not
competitive which was which was

(56:42):
pretty neat like we actually spent a lot of time playing and hicks and working
our way through it very dark doom style
uh medieval on the 64 there was
doom 64 it was doom doom 64 doom 64
was like not a true 3d 3d
game right it was like the the way that the earlier dooms were
kind of yeah but it was different like it had

(57:03):
additional levels and daffy it was a different
game i think that one's possibly a little bit less likely
because that's already out too i think and it's
a bethesda thing like it's you know it's
i think licensing for that one is probably it's probably less likely
to get on this hexen has never been re-released and so it may it may it was

(57:24):
pretty it was good fun resident evil 2 was actually on this n64 as well and
that was probably a lot of people say that was the definitive version of resident
evil 2 the n64 version of it at least until the remake.
So that would be another option for them. There was a Duke Nukem on the Switch,
which would be an option, I guess.

(57:45):
That's a game that's really lost its luster. Like a title that's really lost its luster.
Another one of those like gratuitous because we can make it gratuitous kind of. Pretty much.
Yeah, the 64 version was obviously the best version. Yeah.
But here's the one. How much would you all love to play Daikatana again?
Yes. Because it got a release on N64. people i've never

(58:07):
played the first one you never played you never played no
you've never played day katana john
romero's masterpiece so so
back in the day my brother used to run a server
and it probably still is running and he also made
the mod for the pc which was
basically the single player stripped out and was

(58:29):
just a multiplayer so you can probably still search for it
and like find like just the
multiplayer yeah just a multiplayer version and it
was like really really big and like we used to play it all the time
and yeah it was great it was terrible
game an absolutely dismal game
it really did deserve to fail but actually it's kind of a
curiosity and i mean ultimately the the point.

(58:52):
Of these apps is to not just give you the best games right
it's also to preserve something about those consoles we've
talked about this on the podcast in the past that preservation doesn't mean
just give people the top games of the
thing it's about finding the more obscure ones it's actually almost the the
real value of these things and i've had that with the n60
sorry the nintendo and the super nintendo apps with

(59:15):
the virtual console they've both had games that i just never even
knew existed until i played them and saw them and sure
most of them are not games that i'll play again in
a hurry but i'm glad for the chance to have
played them and you know i mentioned earlier in
this segment iggy's wrecking balls my brother and i actually played that
on one of our own 64 kind of meet up multiplayer sessions.

(59:36):
A couple of weeks ago that game now do you understand
it's good fun it's stupid it's it's
stupid and terrible but it's also good fun and yeah
it's just a race platformer so it
it it's just not a particularly
memorable game it's not something that you go out and buy as a
new game if they were to do some kind kind of h2 remaster of

(59:58):
it yeah there would have been some very disappointed kids in the
90s who received that game yeah but in the context of
the app and having a whole pile of games like that on there then it has value
and i i would like to see a lot of this mature stuff limited as it was in terms
of the number of releases actually make its way to this app i think there's

(01:00:20):
potential there for it to be quite a decent addition.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but when the N64 was out, it had a reputation
for being the more family console against the PlayStation, right?
Oh, no, that was definitely it. That was entirely it.
Was not seen as a mature console at all.

(01:00:42):
So when they did do a mature game, like Conker's Bad Fur Tale or South Park
or Hexen or whatever, the N64 enthusiast media went ballistic for it because
it was a curiosity, it was something different.
But yeah, there weren't that many. There was actually, sorry,
one other one I wanted to mention because I hate myself, I kick myself if we

(01:01:04):
got off the podcast and I didn't mention it, Mace the Dark Ages.
Again you could have made that up no i could have made that
up i did not it was it was by the
mortal kombat guys i don't know if it's the same studio but midway
published both mortal kombat and it and mace
the dark ages was basically an attempt to do a 3d execution heavy
mortal kombat style game but with soul caliber

(01:01:26):
style characters with weapons so you had
like a guy with a huge sword you had a oh that
is a huge sword yeah that's that's
it's cut off by the the camera yeah even
the point at that point that guy was an annoying one to fight because
that range actually counted like the game the game
was heavily weighted towards the characters that had big range

(01:01:48):
but it was a lot of fun like we it
wasn't the greatest fighting game but i never had the playstation like
the only console we had was the n64 when i was growing up and
so for fighting games which i do enjoy this was kind of the option 3d fighters
so yeah it was it was it was i would like to see it on the switch app so we

(01:02:09):
could play it again probably won't happen because god knows god knows what's
happened to most of midway's,
ip but there you go probably bought up by thq or whatever they want to call themselves these days.
Yeah i mean midway midway went
to warner brothers obviously that's why mortal combat is now warner

(01:02:30):
brothers i don't know how many other ips warner brothers
picked up if it is sitting with warner brothers then there's just no if it's
not one of the brothers it's probably been written off for tax write-offs yeah
it's not going anywhere surely there's a there's a professional job who whose
only role is to look at mergers and go oh we're also getting this what oh that's
definitely funny what they do.

(01:02:51):
They catalog everything that they'd be buying in a in an acquisition.
But yeah, so that's the N64 Mature app.
It's good fun. Give it a go and hopefully we see some of these other games make it that way.
Music.

(01:04:31):
Okay, welcome back. So for this last section of our podcast this month,
we want to talk a little bit about Nintendo again.
We talk about Nintendo a lot, but that's because Nintendo's good and stuff.
Another thing that was announced during that direct was the first Zelda game
that actually stars Zelda.

(01:04:52):
As most, or I think pretty much everybody who's ever played a video game knows,
the Legend of Zelda games are actually starring a Link,
not Zelda Zelda's the princess and so
a lot of people have been waiting for a game where they
actually get to control the princess and I personally think
that Nintendo missed a trick not calling it the Legend of Link because that

(01:05:13):
would have been funny but there is a Legend of Zelda game where
you play as Zelda coming out and it is
different so one of the things I did see a
little bit of the discourse happening on social media
is there were some people that were
disappointed I guess that Zelda was not going to be using a
sword they've changed the gameplay significantly for

(01:05:34):
this one because of this spin-off and they're doing things differently rather than
bashing enemies with a blade Zelda
uses a magical rod which summons characters
to do the fighting for it doesn't it that's basically the mechanic at
play with this game she throws tables at enemies and
there are some people that I guess have been disappointed

(01:05:56):
by this and it kind of backs up.
I guess another nintendo game that
puts one of the female characters at the front who doesn't usually
get that job and that was the princess peach what's
the name of it showtime showtime showmaker showtime showtime
showtime so that one was princess peach kind
of you know jumps from theater production

(01:06:19):
to theater production taking on a different role each time but again
it was what's what's a way to put it it's
it's not a feminine take on gameplay if
there is if you can define that i guess it's it's
yeah mario is if mario is
masculine you know jumping on enemies heads and being very physical and stuff
peach being more culturally inclined and it's more about theater and performance

(01:06:41):
and all of that could come across i guess as a bit feminine and it's kind of
the same with the princess peach sorry the zelda thing whereas Whereas Link
is this hero wielding a sword and shield like some anime version of a Lord of
the Rings character. This is a more...
Yeah, it's like Nintendo has decided to make the game play around a female character

(01:07:05):
rather than just make the female character the hero like she would be in any
other kind of video game.
So there is a controversy about that to an extent about how Nintendo is handling
these offshoot characters. I'd be interested in getting your thoughts.
Personally, I think that that's a good thing in the sense that Nintendo is recognizing

(01:07:25):
that these characters are different. The last thing I would want is for Nintendo
to just keep using the same, putting the characters in the same type mold.
Like if Zelda really was just going to hold a sword and shield,
she's functionally no different to Link and it's just a visual change and it's
this homogenization of gameplay which doesn't lend itself to characterization.

(01:07:46):
By making Zelda a different type of fighter, a different type of hero,
she has a character that's distinct to Link.
And I think that's a good thing, personally. personally but i'd
be interested in hearing your thoughts about that i think well
i say this is someone who really likes it when
you can make a framework game

(01:08:07):
with a female lead and it's
just exactly the same thing like one of my one of
the games that i respect for doing this most is actually the original fantasy style where in
a time when no one else was doing this they're just like oh yeah
by the way alice is the hero normal game
right like that's that's that's cool to me but I think for an established franchise
like this I do definitely see your point that it would be a bit weird to just

(01:08:33):
change the protagonists and then go nothing else is different it's the exact
same game to me that feels like.
Guess not the not the most thought out way of doing it i
guess it's a different statement to be made and i
i think there's an argument for either way but this

(01:08:53):
to me feels like nintendo exploring different
design territory by using the characters that they already have which is a different
kind of interesting thing and i don't think i don't think nintendo has a particular
problem with this because i just you just need to look at fire emblem to see
that nintendo has There's absolutely no problem with putting swords in the hands

(01:09:14):
of its female characters.
Yeah. The other example I was going to give was Metroid. It's like a sci-fi
action game where the protagonist is female.
Yeah. Yeah. To me, it just seems like Nintendo sees this as what makes sense
for those characters. They've got these characters.
You know, Princess Peach is the epitome of the princess type.
And at the start, yes, that was just a rescue the princess kind of trope.

(01:09:37):
But as they've moved on, they've been trying to find ways to make Princess Peach
her own character within that kind of role without breaking the characterization of it.
I thought that was actually quite a clever thing to do, to have her kind of,
you know, involved in a game that made theater the focus of it.
Because theater is that kind of high class, you know, has a reputation,
I guess, for being that kind of high class, prestigious experience.

(01:10:01):
And it would make sense that a princess would kind of be involved with the theatre as such.
And it goes the same way with this other thing. She's the princess of a kingdom.
And we've already established that she has some kind of connection to magic
because we've seen that in some of the previous games.
So why not have her role in combat or the way that she fights her battles be magical based?

(01:10:28):
That makes sense to me as a character.
It's not about making her...
It's not about Nintendo denying her ability to be a physical hero.
It's more just about her character being different to that of Link's.
So I think that people just- I do think they've inherited a problem from a much

(01:10:48):
earlier time of storytelling.
I think your point about how historically these characters have been relegated to damsels is very true.
If we're going to continue the series, then something does have to be done about that.
But what is done is it's kind
of a writing problem well it's interesting that with

(01:11:09):
showtime it was less about you know i want peach
to be you know jumping on goomers like kind of thing like just be a reskin of
mario the biggest complaint seemed to be more it was a short game so people
were really upset that you know all these things were just basically essentially a mini game.

(01:11:30):
You know confirmation was what they that were
complaining about and i think that's less
nintendo not wanting to put their foot into
that sort of area and build her up as a character i
think it's more of nintendo are
starting to do shorter games and
making more aaa games rather than aaa games

(01:11:53):
because that was a big thing from their their announcements
for the shareholders shareholders this financial thing and they're all like
you know going forward we understand that game development times are going to
be longer and all this other stuff and we're going to focus more on aa you know
basically the meme which is like good games by people which are paid more which.

(01:12:16):
Is shorter and uglier so you know you're probably
already starting to see that come out in their titles so
you have showtime which was probably only in development for probably
like a few years rather than like five or ten
which is going to be more common for the bigger games from nintendo
so it's basically came
out as a short title but it's less nintendo saying oh it's a girl's game or

(01:12:40):
whatever we don't want to focus on it it's more that that's going to be more
common and you're going to see a lot more you might see a sequel for showtime
pretty quickly sort of thing just because it's going to be reusing assets and that sort of stuff,
I think what was an issue, so I think Princess Peach as a playable character
is not that alien of a concept because she's been playable since like the second NES game.

(01:13:03):
But when they first tried to make a game starring her was on the DS I think
with Super Princess Peach and that game had an identity problem of do we consider
it a mainline Mario game or do we not? And I don't think most people would.
Also had a similar controversy where i think the main mechanic was
switching her emotions or something like that and people said that was stereotypically

(01:13:26):
feminine but i think the prints of
that game came out a lot around the time where like
like it would be it was like gaming was
more like girls games boy games kind of
thing like in terms of how it was thought about
like you know sims for example was a
girl's game and very heavily marketed as a girl's

(01:13:48):
game and all this other sort of stuff that started to
come out in the industry so princess peach
was okay it's a girl's game it's going to be about emotions and all
this heavily feminine stuff but the
thing was i think a lot of people missed it was actually quite
funny about that too like it was satirical about
that there were all kinds of memes about

(01:14:09):
that from from that game that made.
It quite clear that it was not seriously that
kind of thing about emotions it was more just that was the there that was
a humor delivery mechanism more than anything else so the the
the developers had fun with that it wasn't it wasn't a
sincere you know reflection on peach's character
so i think yeah yeah and i think peter's character

(01:14:32):
as well functions that way across a lot of the
modern mario media like in paper mario and in
even in just like the various sports games her
personality is more of that kind of humorous angle rather
than just being a woman and i think they've done a good job with
it but they're still inheriting the the legacy of
when she was that character yeah and that that

(01:14:53):
is a challenge and i think that it's a
difficult one to navigate because you can't just completely reset a character
and then expect people to still be a fan of that character and you know this.
Is a problem that companies have any company has regardless of of which company
it is, if they've got characters that have been,

(01:15:16):
perpetually popular for a very long time.
Like, Disney has exactly the same problem with Mickey and Donald Duck and the
rest of those characters.
They can't really produce a new movie with these characters because to make
that movie, they would need to fundamentally change so much about those characters
that they're no longer kind of identifiable as those characters.

(01:15:36):
Yeah, like, Disney hasn't used those characters in so long, I think,
to live for the exact purpose.
They can't because they would just, the first thing that would happen would
be the older fans of those characters would go in, see that they've fundamentally
changed those characters, say, well, this isn't the character anymore.
So the character loses identity.
Some people from the younger generations might like it. Some people from the

(01:15:57):
older generations might also like it because of the change, but then there'll
be a whole bunch of traditionalists that don't like.
Like, the value of that character would kind of dive off a cliff because it
would go from being universally loved or whatever people think of Mickey Mouse
at the moment to being a much more controversial character. So-

(01:16:18):
That's the problem that they have also with Peach and also Marion or Link.
It's hard to redefine. It would be hard to redefine who Link is as a character
without upsetting a bunch of people.
And I think that a lot of people miss that.
I think that people think, oh, I want to see a Zelda game where Zelda is sword-wielding

(01:16:40):
hero, but that isn't really the character of Zelda. And that's not to say they
shouldn't have that kind of character.
They should definitely have those kinds of characters, but it might be better
to develop a new character.
A good way they could do that perhaps is to take one of the Fire Emblem characters
and put them in an action RPG.

(01:17:02):
That would be great, actually. Give us a Lin's quest as an example,
because Lin is a very kind of iconic sword-wielding empowered female character.
Character give her own adventure that is of the scope of a zelda game but it
makes sense that she's holding a sword because that's what she's associated
with as a character i think that's probably the better way and i think that's

(01:17:24):
the way that nintendo sees things if they're going to,
take a character they're not going to mess with the fundamental characterization
that they've developed over decades now because if they do that they'll lose
a lot of stock in the entire property.
And going back to what trump was saying earlier i do really appreciate
that we've kind of left to that era of girls games
and boys games i think it took a

(01:17:46):
few games to make this the norm but
there are lots of games now where the protagonist is
female and it's not a big deal and that's that's kind
of a healthier place for the industry i think both in terms of like representation
to everyone who wants to play but also things like pay for female employees

(01:18:08):
and all of that together I think leads to a more equitable environment, hopefully.
I don't want to say games development is equitable at all, but this is adding,
and hopefully fingers crossed in a better direction.
It does. But I think at the same time that there does need to be,
I guess, an awareness that making.

(01:18:31):
In doing that, in recognizing that women like to play the same games that guys
like to play, that's totally fine.
There also needs to be an awareness that you're not going to solve everything
by simply putting everything in the – homogenizing everything so that it's kind
of the boys' game approach becomes the default, if that makes sense.

(01:18:53):
Yeah, absolutely. What I really loved about the Peach game, for example,
is that a decade ago people would be chalking it up as a game for girls or whatever.
But guys can enjoy that too. and it's just
a nice and you know less less violent
more creative alternative to

(01:19:15):
how they do platformers and stuff for boys i like
to have that kind of both of them it's about making sure
that people understand that all of these games you know
people can play all of these games and enjoy all of them on their own terms rather
than trying to force people to play one particular type of
game one of the the issues that i
have with how sony kind of handles this stuff is

(01:19:36):
that they've decided that you know the games that they used to
make for boys are now games that they're making for everyone
and so they're taking female characters and just shoving them in you know the
games that they would have had a male protagonist in previously i don't think
that's solution that's the right solution i think that it's fine to have an
aloy character or it's fine to have you know the last of us characters or whatever

(01:19:58):
but at the same time kind of losing.
Entire genres of games or entire approaches to games just because they're worried
that their character might be seen as too feminine or the game might be too
directed at girls cynically so to to make that kind of game that i don't i don't want to see that go.
I like to play those games you know i think

(01:20:20):
we're all pushing towards like a larger number of smaller games
utopia right like i
think that's a great solution and i really hope that what trend is saying about
nintendo is where they decide to go is like smaller studios making smaller games
to appeal to smaller subsets of markets to me sounds like a much more enjoyable

(01:20:44):
way of looking at games rather than here are the big three games of the year
that you have to play and everyone has to play them yeah and i think that i
think that is definitely happening i mean the focus that's been put onto wholesome
games as a kind of topic now is a good example of that you know those games
are what i'm talking about you can they're non-violence they're.
Games that would often have been chalked up as being feminine for

(01:21:05):
the girls kinds of games beforehand but thanks
to the evolution of video games we just recognize them as
a different type of game that everybody can enjoy and that's
a good thing so the stuff
that we see in those wholesome game broadcasters is obviously very
heavily indie weighted but it is nice to
see nintendo in particular kind of embrace that kind of thing it'd be good to

(01:21:27):
see some of the other ones do that as well because we don't really see that
from microsoft and sony and you know even square enix and bandai namco and all
that they're still very much focused on making the games that they were always making,
it would be nice to see them broaden their understanding of what everybody likes to play.

(01:21:49):
And this is probably too big of a tangent for us three, but I do feel like that
attitudes towards women in Western and Japanese game development have suffered
different problems and they,
they've taken different ideas and approaches to solve it as well.
And I think that's why we're getting this kind of clash as well, is that,

(01:22:10):
some people expect the western mode of solution which is just put female leads
and don't change things because our
games are too expensive onto japanese development and some people expect.
The more like larger concert characters approach of japanese development onto
western games like it's talking across each other sometimes yeah and i don't

(01:22:31):
think either approach is is right i mean I mean, to your point, I guess,
I do have something of an issue with the way that a lot of Western development
just kind of tries to strip gender out of character roles.
And it doesn't really, like, close your eyes and you can't tell what the character

(01:22:52):
is, is male or female, or the fundamental quality of gender doesn't seem to
apply in a lot of Western games.
But it comes back to the relationship between the player and the avatar in Western
games versus Japanese games. True.
And then to just finish my point, on the Japanese side of things,
there is still often an...

(01:23:13):
Element of of that kind of traditional attitude
towards female characters in video games and the
way that they're used and you know typically exploited through
through fan service which is you know not handled
with any particular concern for
the character's agency and all of that kind of stuff and you know that
that that is isn't different issue

(01:23:35):
in a different way well we have started seeing that get less
and less i guess as the younger generations are
starting to be more were involved yeah like it's
not as heavily exploitive fan
service coming out from those industries now it is getting better it yeah you're
definitely right it is getting better in the japanese industry but there is

(01:23:58):
still an element of that like i said and we we don't i i still don't think we
necessarily want things to go that the the way that the western industry
handles it because I don't think that is the approach either.
I mean, this is a massive long essay that I'm trying to condense down into a
couple of minutes, but the fundamentally.

(01:24:19):
Very Puritan cultural setting that we've got now in the West that really just
tries to strip any kind of sexuality or kind of gender out of everything and
replace it with these kind of very hyper-violent experiences.
There are heaps of essays on the internet about how there's just zero sex in

(01:24:40):
TV and movies and all of that kind of stuff.
And there is issues in doing that.
There is issues in just completely denying that side of the the
human experience which is what i see a
lot happening in video i don't think that that is necessarily the way we want
to go either so the there are questions there and i do think that going back

(01:25:01):
to what we're talking about nintendo has a good approach to this that they do
have these they have a large library now large number of female characters now
who are all quite empowered and have agency in their own way Hey,
Princess Peach now has quite a lot of agency,
and she's quite an interesting dynamic character that is a solid representation.

(01:25:23):
Princess Zelda is another example. All the Fire Emblem characters are all strong female characters.
I'm very curious to see what they do with the new Metroid. Metroid isn't a good
example as well. But what Nintendo doesn't do is strip their gender out of their
character to the point that it's just a kind of a copy place of what a male
character would be in the same role.

(01:25:44):
So I think that that's a good, as far as we've got a good model,
Nintendo still has a lot of things to work out itself.
But as far as we've got a good model on how to do this with characters,
I think Nintendo is probably leading the way.
And then you have a reverse debate where it's like people wanting to inject
certain genders into Nintendo's characters. Like Link needs to be a girl.

(01:26:04):
Like I think it's more logical that Link would be trans than Link would be Linkle.
Well, yeah, see, Linkle is a stupid example. And Linkle is a good example of
something I'm glad Nintendo hasn't kind of followed through. Yeah, I know.
No, they really did forget about Linkle. Yeah, which is a good thing.
You don't need to gender swap characters.
Link is a perfectly fine character as a male. If they want to have.

(01:26:27):
Female character who has a similar role to Link, then just create a new character.
You don't need to just take Link and make it female.
Or you can have trans characters, or you can have any of the very large range
of character options that we have now.
We should have all of them, but we shouldn't get to them by just replacing the
existing characters. I don't think that's the right approach.

(01:26:50):
On your point, Trent, I do think genderless Link would have been a very interesting
option for them to have gone for.
Genderless. I would love for, or not genderless, but like non-binary Link even, but like.
Well, I think it's more obvious that Link is progressing to that anyway.
Like in the latest games he's, and even things like Triforce Heroes and stuff like that.

(01:27:10):
He's very, you know, explorative in how they present him, like in terms of like,
you know, like he cross-dresses a lot.
He's a little bit more emotional in terms of
like what like he's
more emotive than what he used to be in certain
ways which allows them to show he's got more feminine side at times so that's

(01:27:35):
why i say like link is more logically if they want to make him something he
would be more logically to be able to be trans either one way or the other and
that would be fitting with his character,
Well, I mean, the point of Link's character was always that it was just a voiceless,
self-insert character anyway.
The whole point of it was that you just kind of put yourself into that character.

(01:27:57):
That's why they resisted having him talk for so long, because they want him to have your voice.
That's been the explicit point of what Nintendo wanted to do with Link for all this time.
Yeah, I think Link is probably one of the closest Japanese characters to what
Western design is like. Like, so I would love for them to mess with that in
some way to like, just do something weird with that character.

(01:28:20):
Well, not even that, but like, just, just, just reinterpret that character in
an interesting way. Well, link is getting progressively less. He's an avatar.
Like he's getting more and more his own voice and personality and,
you know, actual story, which is around him rather than inject yourself into

(01:28:41):
link. He's a faceless, like.
Is he, though? I mean...
Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom link, I guess you can make the argument
that he's a little bit more of a defined character, but is he, though? I don't know.
Skyward Sword, he was more of like, but they're being very heavily that he's

(01:29:03):
either warrior or something like that, and in terms of that,
they're doing more friends.
Friends he's still kind of he's still
voiceless and he's really still being kind of led through
the the story by everybody else
your your age he links agency that the agency that you have over link to to

(01:29:25):
influence things or to at least feel like you're participating actively in it
is is still fairly fairly limited i would say compared to final fantasy six
scenes clive i mean I mean, if you compare those two characters side by side,
Clive is a very, very much more defined character that is very specific personality
and you're really there to watch it like you would read a book and have a character

(01:29:49):
as the protagonist in a book.
Link is still very much more like a book where the character is kind of a blank
and you write in what you think that character looks and sounds like and who he is as an identity.
Yeah, the difference is kind of like game design where you push the button to
tell what the character to do, versus you push the buttons to allow the character

(01:30:13):
to do what they want to do.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a bit of a, that's, I guess,
another topic for another time,
but that is also a tension that is in the games industry where there is definitely
a large number of people that kind of want every character to reflect them.
Or they want to see themselves in the character that they're playing.

(01:30:35):
And that makes sense in the sense that, you know, if you're going to be spending
50 hours or whatever with the controller and actively manipulating this avatar on the screen,
it makes sense to you to want to be able to see yourself in that character versus
see somebody else's idea for a character and kind of not necessarily agree with
it and yet be forced to kind of participate in that character's story.

(01:30:59):
Story the other side of the tension of that of course is the artist the person making the game.
May well have an idea for a character that they really want
to get out as part of the story that it's it's
really important that the character does this or looks like this
or behaves like this or so on and so forth and you

(01:31:19):
know a good example of that is again final fantasy 6 16 i don't know a lot of
people that played final fantasy 16 would see themselves in clive So it's just
whether you can enjoy the ride as such and kind of not expect Clive to be a
reflection of you as you play,
or whether you want something like the Zelda games, whereas Link,

(01:31:42):
what's happening on screen is largely a reflection of your own kind of input into the screen.
And we see this with the tension between, a really good example of this is Neo.
The original Neo gave you a very distinct character with William Adams,
and you had to play as William Adams.
And the whole game was kind of from William Adams' perspective.

(01:32:02):
Perspective, the feedback that Koei Tecmo got, and I know this because I talked
to them about it, was that they wanted a character creator instead.
So Neo 2 came along and you could be anything. You could be a woman,
you could be a really masculine big guy or a skinny guy.
You had a pretty comprehensive character creator.
And then the narrative was then largely that character standing there while

(01:32:25):
all the other characters around them talked about what was going on and what
you needed to do next, which to me felt much less...
It didn't work as well as a story because I happen to like the idea of a protagonist.
I don't necessarily need to see myself in the avatar that I'm playing to enjoy what's going on.

(01:32:47):
So there's all these tensions about how characters are handled in video games,
I guess is the point. We're kind of going around here.
We've reached two very reasonable solutions, which is one is to have a very
robust character creator that
allows anybody to play as a person that looks or is exactly like them.
And the other is to have a very vast library of stories that people can have

(01:33:09):
multiple choices of what kind of thing they want to experience.
And I think that's it. I think as long as it's got all of that,
then people can pick and choose what they want, which is kind of the point, right?
We shouldn't be prescribing what people should experience in video games.
We should make sure that they've got an experience that speaks to them.
And if final fantasy 16's

(01:33:31):
clive didn't appeal to you as a character you just don't need
to play final fantasy 16 but there's a million other games and
there needs to be like something like final fantasy of that scale where there
is a female protagonist yeah exactly that's what we should have we should have
a final fantasy 16 with a female protagonist that is equally epic and the character
is relatable to people that want that and there is and it's a tactics game There's Horizon,

(01:33:54):
which is that, you know? Yes, but Horizon's not a good game.
I don't think so either. Wait, Horizon Zero Dawn? No, I didn't think so.
I thought it was pretty terrible, to be honest. You can't equate those two games.
No. But that's the point, you know? You have that, or you have- I think we can
make a valid criticism that there is no game in that existence of that level
and that scope that we would compare in the same way.

(01:34:16):
And we can make a very different criticism that for games with character creators,
they're more limited if you want to create female characters.
The i guess the the issue that i have with games with character
creators is it actually does things to the narrative is the
is the thing it it seems like a good idea but if

(01:34:36):
the developer can't be sure of what kind
of character you're creating there's only so much that they can do
with that character if that makes sense like i
have like some sort of idea that oh you're gonna play
this you're most likely to play this class and want to
do this so but they can't do that because fun things in here
they they still can't do that because if you create a
character that's not that then there's this you're fighting against your

(01:34:59):
design yeah there's this massive disconnect between what the character is
and and the world a really good example of a game with a character creator um
that still has a strong narrative and all of that is elden ring is a just a
brilliant example of that where you've got massive control over the kind of
character you create and the story itself is just you know intricate and detailed
and and just the kind of thing that

(01:35:20):
you could study for years and still find meaning from.
But what Elden Ring did so well was none of the story had anything to do with your character.
Your character was really just a journeyman through the world.
And it was very, I write about it in my review, you know, it was very Pilgrim's Progress.
The classic kind of Christian novel where the person is just really on the pathway

(01:35:42):
and the narrative is actually the stuff that's happening around them and what
they're experiencing on that journey.
So there is a way to do a great story with a character creator,
but what I don't think is actually possible is to do a great story where the
character is the character in a character creator game.
I don't think it's possible to do a great story where their involvement in the

(01:36:04):
game is kind of the the focus of
it so you know final fantasy 16
is kind of the opposite where clive is
the focus of everything you couldn't do final fantasy 16 where you could be
any type of character instead of clive live with some yellow highlights in his
hair and see mad tell that i mean there's a reason that kind of costumes work

(01:36:28):
for and you know horizon's another good example of that. You've got a bunch of different costumes.
You can really dress Aloy up as your preference.
The superficial kind of the elements, the aesthetic options and all that,
that's fine. But we're talking about really kind of core things.
Horizon wouldn't work if it was a Clive-like character in that role because

(01:36:48):
Aloy's femininity is part of her character.
And on the other hand, Aloy wouldn't work in a Final Fantasy XVI for very similar reasons.
Reasons it's the character is kind of core to the story there so
that that's kind of the issue with character creators as characterization
but to bring it all back i guess nintendo is doing it well because nintendo

(01:37:11):
just gives you a whole bunch of different characters and they're doing different
things with each of those characters so you don't necessarily have to like this
zelda game that's coming up and perhaps if you are disappointed with it then
yeah that kind of sucks because that's the first time that zelda's been a character
but it's not like nintendo is not
going to make more games down the track with female characters so hopefully
the next one kind of is resonant.

(01:37:33):
Music.

(01:42:32):
Thank you.

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