0081 Mega Cat Studios Founder James Deighan

Episode Transcript
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(00:09):
Channel 3 is the future welcome crew to one of your 3A

(00:29):
Channel 3 podcast where we take a member of the Channel 3
community. But not today Today we are
taking one of our friendly game developers kind enough to join
us here today. James Deegan of Mega Cat Studios
is joining myself and I I don't have Ray with me today.
I have laugh at Brian Brian McGuinness is here with me too.
So hello, what's up everybody? How?
Are you? And Mega Cat Studios, James

(00:52):
Deegan, as mentioned, shout out to my backyard here in Western
Pennsylvania down in Pittsburgh before, you know, founded the
studio was a 2015. So you've been, you've been
rolling for a while now, I think, right?
Something like that, Yeah. We're coming up on 10 years next
year. Nice.
Nice. Congratulations.
Before we get started, I do wantto say how dare you.
First of all, I yeah, I was, I was going through doing some

(01:14):
final checks on things. And of course, the Steam summer
sale dropped yesterday and, you know, you're conducting some
personal attacks on all of our wallets.
I've had coffee crisis for a while, but I was going on.
I was like, oh, that was and I saw on Switches $0.49 right now
to get coffee. Crystal was like anybody who
doesn't have this game, you go spend $0.49 right now and get a

(01:37):
great archaic. Probably.
We'll get to that. Brian, I'll kick it to you
'cause you had the great openingquestion that I really wanted to
hit up here. I, I'm a big retro fan myself
and I love nowadays that you, you know, with the ever Cade
having cartridges and manuals and you're making stuff that's
actually also fits in a Nintendoor a Genesis or things like
that. Like what made you think like

(01:58):
it's it's it's way past those consoles of life, but we're
going to make a cartridge that fits inside a Genesis, that fits
inside a Nintendo that actually plays because I love it.
But what? What was the whole idea behind
that? Yeah, you know, the first four
or five years of Meg cat like itwas very much like a hobby for a
few of us there. There was a maybe I think maybe
3 cats, maybe 4 full time, but very like 4 fun start up second

(02:22):
job type of energy. And all of us came from like the
the retro gaming and game collecting community.
So like the like the the genesisof us was definitely just, we
just love retro games and wantedto make a few, you know, it was
really just a wish list. You know, somewhere there's like
a a 10 year old James that wouldlove to high five me, you know,
but it's most of much that is a big interest in the community

(02:45):
and pixel art. And we were already, you know,
active across a lot of other, you know, forums back in the day
and, and groups and meet ups. And it became like a, an easy
way for us to continue our hobbyas we got deeper into
collecting. And then, you know, I don't
recall exactly which year ever kid came out, but I think we're,
we've been around for maybe 6-6 years or so at that time, seven

(03:08):
years. We've made quite a few games I
think. It was like 2020 ish ever kid
came out right something. Like that, something like that.
And then I remember one of the one of the blaze folks for the
ever kid team like reached out to us because we were presenting
some other like PC console game at the time at E3.
Maybe logjammers, but it was something that may bite the
bullet. But we were, we were at E3 and

(03:28):
there was like one of the, you know, in, in advance meet to
match like biz dev meet ups. And we ended up meeting
somewhere in one of the one of the meeting rooms and he's like,
oh, we're going to make this, you know, small run niche, like
physical emulated collectathon, like platform.
You know, I, I don't know if it's going to be successful or
not, but you know, we figured out all the, all the P&L stuff.

(03:50):
What do you guys think? And I think we were probably
like the third or fourth ever people signed at the time.
It was like Atari and maybe one other that I recognize.
And they were all yeah. Yeah, and they're kind of
chatting everyone. This is before they before
releases. Is it like when it was just like
an ID on paper and they were trying to figure out like what
they're going to do and when that gets up.
But the other cake guys were were so easy to work with and it

(04:13):
was so simple because we're like, well, the reality is you
don't really sell thousands and thousands of genesis copies make
them mostly for fun still. So if someone wants to, you
know, participate in like a second wave, even if it's a, a
few 100, then it, it feel like an easy fit for us.
You know, people always ask us if it's, hey, is it worth doing

(04:34):
Evergate? And the reality is like nobody's
making any money selling cartridges really.
Like it's like all of us do it. But probably the same reason you
guys do your podcast because youhave a love for it, you know, so
it's so it's, it was easy for usto jump in and say, yes, I know
a lot of the, the home brew folks are worried about kind of
like 3 camps. There's like camp one, which is

(04:54):
I'm doing this to make money andthat's a bad way to do it for
homebrew particularly, and it'lllet them games in general.
And then there's a second camp, which is like, I really want to
explore the hardware, which I think is great.
And then if they make money on accident for some of their time,
awesome. And then there's like the the
lifetime Indies that are just like they have reasonable
expectations. They've had other releases.

(05:16):
They, you know, they basically want to want to keep active with
their skills and apply it somewhere.
Maybe they work full time and finance the healthcare or
something else engineering or tech based, or they, they go
home, they make games And you know, we kind of found a a leg
in there where we can help the retro gaming community, no
matter which camp you're coming from, like bring these things to

(05:37):
market, distribute them better, you know, hopefully bring just a
little more attention. It's still not going to be a
massive commercial success. You're probably not going to buy
a new house. Maybe you can upgrade some
things in your kitchen, you know, and and then they advocate
does something like that where they kind of once you've already
had your your meaningful number of sales.
I think once the game's been outfor a little bit, makes total
sense to do something with everyCade.

(05:59):
You know, it's definitely not going to it's going to hurt.
There's a lot of evergate dedicated super fans that would
never buy like a Nintendo where Genesis game.
They just buy every Cade. So and they have the shared
interest in physicality in retro.
So why not? Why not give them a new
cartridge, you know? I loved everything you just
said. That was a that was such a great
answer. Just with all three of those

(06:19):
camps, everything I agree with all that stuff that really makes
a lot of sense. And I'm I'm a big like guys,
this comes with a, with a manual.
Do you understand that? Like a physical, you could take
this out and read it like I'm a big fan of that.
So I'm sure you are too. Like we missed that.
You open a switch box now and it's just this little tiny
cartridge and it's and it's empty.
It's like, what do you do it? Like give me something or worse.

(06:40):
Some of those Switch boxes don'teven come with that.
They just come with a download card inside.
Just there's no, there's no actual game inside.
Just here's the code to downloadit.
But this like putting the cartridges in the Evercade.
It's awesome. And and what's cool about this
that too that it does. You know, your games are new
retro games. I guess we like what do you
like? They're they're newer.
They're made now, but they look like old games, you know what I

(07:00):
mean? Or they also like whatever Kate
does too. They have.
They take old games from the 80sthat people just can't play
anymore and put them on. That's why it's cool to do both
of those things. But you guys are killing it
with, with your style, the variety of stuff you have.
I think it's been, I think it's been awesome.
Yeah, I appreciate it, man. We, we, we definitely work hard
on it. It's like as we've grown, it's
been harder and harder to know what role the cartridges need to

(07:21):
play because, you know, there's like a the, the origin of Meg
Cat was all purely and totally for fun and for the love of
games. And then one day we were all
like over 30 summer started having kids and getting houses.
We're like, we really need insurance, you know, so it's
like things have evolved, but you know, we found a way to kind
of narrow the focus to keep doing the cartridges within like

(07:44):
our suite of stuff and then not let it, you know, completely
consume us because it's, it's easy when you love something
like that to let them monopolizeall of your time.
And we'll probably never stop making cartridges based games.
But now it's like it's been years since we've even released
some of our some of our games. We mostly publish other peoples
and help them Co develop. And also as an example, we have

(08:06):
some of our best ever, like Genesis games will come out
probably next year because we finally have some time in our
slate where we're not consumed supporting other other friends
in the community. So we'll have like channels
coming out next year and and leave the wedding.
And those are those are like multi year long term, long term
Genesis projects. What is lethal wedding about?
That sounds awesome. So think, think the.

(08:26):
Title. Yeah.
Yeah, so I think zombies get my neighbors.
You have like a a mother-in-law and a bride.
You know that we have this mafiatakes your husband on the
wedding day and you got to you got to do what you got to do to
get him back. Love it so so just.
Give me a give me a link to pre-order that thing now.
You can check out the demo on the website if you, I don't know
if you guys do any emulation, but we have an old Lethal

(08:47):
Wedding demo on the website thatcaptures a little bit of it,
Yeah. Who's lawyers asking about the
emulation question? That's what we're gonna.
How dare you put us on a spot like that?
What are you, a cop? Is this a sting?
You can't do that. I I gotta leave this bread
crumbs out though. Hey, Ed, I I do wanna talk.
You've got a big one coming up. I is this one still slated for
August 8th. You've got Five Nights at

(09:08):
Freddy's Into the Pit coming. Speaking of Speaking of some big
ones. Yeah, but we think so.
You know, it's, it's one of those things that we can never
publicly confirm anything. Exactly.
We've always worked through Scott game strategy.
I think they, they love keeping the, the community excited and
kind of ominous. But you know, we've worked in
that game for a couple years andthe fans have been really rabid

(09:28):
and excited for it. It's been but awesome watching
them just kind of find us. I think we've had like our, our
Discord and our YouTube subscribers have like doubled or
tripled in the last 90 days alone just from releasing some
screenshots. Like it's a, it's a really,
really viral community. Yeah.
I'd say it was on our wish list when we first started Mega Cat.
And then once we got into it, you know, it was easy to fall in

(09:51):
love with because so much of thefinance of Freddy's franchise,
even if you've not really experienced it, has a lot of
retro and indie roots. And then like the, the type of
game that it is, it's not reallylike a jump scare.
I'd say the bigger pillar for gameplay and a Freddy's game is
really like, I'm going to say it's like narrative and, and
like discovery. It's all about like replaying

(10:13):
and digging around and staying fully immersed with all the
context of the pieces. The jump scares happen to be
what disrupts that kind of ebb and flow to kind of keep on your
toes. But it's it's, it's kind of
unlike anything else as far as the community goes.
So it's we're really excited to have have it finally leave the
nest and and get out there. I bet in a couple.
Years. I was just.
I was just happy you finally announced it because we have a a

(10:35):
library of games you maintain onthe site and continue to add
them. And that was a game that people
kept it. Like can you add into?
I'm like, I don't even know if this game actually exists.
It's just. The.
Rumors and leaks on the like five nights at Freddy's, like I
just had to wait. And then finally it was
announced like I can add it to the library now.
We're good. We're we're, we're good to go.
But but this one for anybody who's not familiar, so it's not

(10:55):
the, the point and click. It's not the the jump scare like
you mentioned, it's a, it's actually kind of like a 16 bit
plus side scrolling game. It's a it's a much cleaner
animation. Like it almost looks like hand
drawn with how smooth it is. Like there's there's kind of
like that element to it. Yeah, everything is hand drawn
and that's, you know, it's funny, it's actually a little
over double the frame rate of what you would normally see.

(11:17):
But we, we have a massive interest in all the, I wanna say
high fluid of the animation. So it's probably not worth, it's
probably not worth the cost. But our animation team's
probably one of our strengths and we we get really hard with
that project. But have you played the game
Clock Tower? Do you know what that is?
Clock tower for super family. So it was like a Japanese
release, definitely famous for the region.

(11:38):
There's there's a lot of fan translations and whatnot to
bring it to English. But clock towers, like I would
say it's kind of like the one ofthe pre Resident Evil things
that probably brought Resident Evil to the to the market in a
way. So it's 16 bit and I'd say clock
towers game loop and gameplay plus the the Freddy's like
secret sauce or really kind of the intersection that our game

(11:59):
is at. So you might want to get a sneak
preview by just looking at a little bit of clock tower
footage. I'm looking at it now.
You surely pick it up. It's pretty awesome, man.
Yeah, it's there's something about like, do you know that
feeling in the first you guys played the first Resident Evil?
Do you guys play that genre at all?
Oh, oh, yes, we were. We were there in the beginning.
We're we're, we're old guys. You.
Remember the feeling of like you're kind of a little bit

(12:21):
fighting the controller, That actually makes you feel a little
bit more on edge because you're just thinking like, God, Get Me
Out of here. And Clock Tower has a little bit
of that, but with more elegance with the input because you don't
have the 3D space. And also like there's, there's a
little bit of that sense too, where sometimes there's a slight
reduction of player agency because you're having to like
tightly hold the game pad to tryto figure out how to get away

(12:43):
from these little these little moments.
But you know, capturing that is was a lot of fun to to kind of
explore and play with. And that's what reminded me of
was because I remember being in middle school with Resident Evil
directors cut when I first came on my radar and just really
hating like that sense of like, I'm never going to get past this

(13:04):
zombies, you know? And it's like, like I don't
really play a ton of horror, butI have a a massive love for the
Freddy's specific place and the horror movies and horror games
are just like undeniably cool. I probably say I watch people
stream them more than I actuallylike play them, but I played
quite a few the last few years. Now I don't know if you guys
follow dread XP. They have some really cool stuff

(13:25):
they're doing over there with indie horror and you know, it's
just it's a lot of fun to explore that in a product
ourselves. Yeah, I'm, I'm terrified of
horror games. I don't like horror movies.
Like I will, I will force myselfto do a couple minutes of it and
then like like I lasted maybe 9 minutes and Outlast.
And I just stopped I'm. Like I'm like, I'm like I'm
done. I can't do this.
I'm terrified. I I did the Until Dawn VR and it

(13:45):
was just terrifying. I'm just like, Nope, I can't.
I I respect these games are awesome.
I wish I liked them, but I'm so scared of what's gonna happen
next. So I like I, I, I don't give
them, give them the time they deserve.
So wait, have you not played? Have you not played?
Your the game, your wait have. You not played I'm in I I played
until dawn yes, but that was theonly but I'm glad I was in it

(14:06):
because I wouldn't have played it otherwise.
I love that game, but I do voiceacting too, James That's why I
was in I I did a few roles untildawn, which is awesome, but it's
like some games I'm just like, I'm too scared to play this like
they did a good job. They like when I when I came and
get past the menu, I'm like, you're you're that guy who's
like the meme that like. Play put.
Put the darkness. Down so you can barely see the

(14:27):
Logan? No, thank you.
I wanted to be. I I put it all the way up.
I want it as bright as possible so I can see everything.
Yeah, that's me. So, so oh, go ahead.
Sorry. Just letting you know in the
horror stuff, I I used to consume a ton of horror content
and married for a long time now.I actually just celebrated my 15
year wedding anniversary last weekend, but it's like prior to

(14:48):
marrying Misses Deegan, I watched a ton of horror stuff
and she hates it so much. But I think we've only watched
maybe 3 horror movies our entiremarriage.
One of them was the Freddy's movie.
I don't know if you guys saw it when it came out last year, but
it's like she actually liked it because true to the game like
the jump scare component of it is I would say like second
pillar, like the first pillar isreally this this really cool

(15:09):
universe with like these lore and these characters.
And I think that's that's kind of what we wanted to capture in
the gameplay too, is just like making sure that the jump scare
is not first. So if you're not really into,
and by the way, that's a really common approach to horror games,
like people like like the concept, they don't like playing
them. And I think there's probably
something there for you in the Freddy's franchise because it's
if you think that some of the fan base, a lot of them are like

(15:31):
teens and things like that too. And I don't think they're like
horror junkies. They're they're like lore and
universe junkies. And there's what really drives
at fandom is all the excitement with, you know, fan theories and
how these things connect and whythey're happening, right?
Yeah, yeah, I, I, I will, I willgive it another chance.
When I saw that you guys would make one, I'm like, well, I have
to give it a chance now 'cause Ilike everything you guys do.
So I'm more intrigued to to do the next one that comes out.

(15:54):
Yeah, you watch the trailer for this.
It it it looks clean. It's got more of that the the
side scroller element. I you have my attention a lot
more with this than. I'll play it at two in the I'll
play it at 2:00 in the afternoonwith all the lights on the
windows. Open, that's the way, dude, I
was gonna say you could probablylike, you know, wear an extra
shirt or two, you know, get, getsome coffee.
Yep, I'll play with the lots of light.

(16:15):
Hey, so I wanted to ask about that.
There's a mention specifically of very difficulty levels and
I'm curious just really what went into that too 'cause you're
probably like you have my attention too, 'cause some of
these, this is too simple, this is too easy.
I'm curious about the difficultypiece.
Yeah, that's such an interestingdiscussion point.
We can talk about that the entire podcast.

(16:35):
Because, you know, what makes difficulty fun to balance is
having, you know, in the game design side, all the different
player archetypes of like level of difficulty as it relates to
kind of how you want to guide them.
So as an example, let's say you have a, so they have a critical
path run, which is like end to end linear gameplay.
It's like your minimal path to finish.

(16:57):
You have your expiration run, which is when you're doing some
of the side content, maybe the really juicy side content, and
then you have your completionistrun, which is 100% everything.
You're probably a little bit offthe wall your.
Trophy answers. Yeah.
Yeah. For sure, you're very good at
games. There's a lot of high skill
checks. So I think there's fundamentally
there's there's some of that already where you have like

(17:17):
reward schedule, the things you unlock and the, you know, the
kind of validation of how you accomplish this achievement of
this thing that already part of that.
So in our world, like, you know,you can adjust hit points and
pacing and trying to make sure you're still getting the right
game length. And it maybe you're changing the
aware distance of how far away the creature is from the the
player. You know, maybe you're you're

(17:37):
changing kind of the levels of visual and audio feedback to
know when to hear and kind of getting into the sense of how do
you make it as immersive as possible across each standard?
And also tested against these different types of slightly
compartmentalized player groups that have like a a different
motivation almost because all ofthem are there in some capacity
for for the universe. But some are just there's like

(18:00):
min Max, right, that they just really want to crush the
achievements. They're going to speed run
everything. And that's a big also component
of the Freddy's community. So, you know, I would say that
the reason we have both the accessibility features and the
difficulty settings we did was we wanted to make sure that it
was accessible to people that were casual into Freddy's lapsed
Freddy's. Maybe they were fans 10 years

(18:20):
ago. They celebrated the big
anniversary too, or maybe they're brand new to the
franchise and they love retro games and they want to see what
this take looks like. So that's what inspired it.
And then across, you know, the execution strategy, it's just
lots and lots and lots of play testing and focus groups, which
is just extra challenging for something that has to have a
good information security protections.

(18:40):
We've been doing them at the office with with folks for
probably 2 1/2 years, something like that.
Is this the biggest game you guys are?
Cause a lot of stuff you have especially never cater like
these you know quick pick up andgo for 10 minute quick session
type games. Is this the biggest one you've
you've done? No wrestle quest is like 100
times. Bigger.
Oh, OK, yeah. It's like Wrestle Quest has a 50
hour critical bath, but you knowFreddy's won't spoil the

(19:03):
timeline but it's definitely not50 hours in the critical bath.
I think the standard Freddy's games for for the entire
franchise, they usually run between like two and five hours
for your, if you're a game play,usually closer to two.
So we're we're in that range. We're definitely, definitely
higher than two. But but it's just like the every
genre also has a different like an example, there's a player and

(19:25):
fan expectation for an RPG that has worlds to explore and
character depth and parties and things like that.
So if you look here at your games like your Freddie's, your
clock towers, you're not talkingabout a huge pool of playable
characters and locations. You're really just talking about
really, really tight nuance discovery and Easter eggs and,
and things to explore. And I think that's it's

(19:46):
definitely a different, different experience as a genre.
But you know, our biggest games we've ever worked on are
multiple years in development. One of them comes out early next
year and the other one is eithergoing to come out quarter three
next year or, or drips a little bit into 2026.
But both of those are. 4-5 year giant projects for us, so we're

(20:09):
really excited for those. Neither are announced and those
have been like the massive, massive undertakings.
So hopefully things keep rocking, yeah.
And will they be for other stuffbesides steam?
You do get PS5 or any Evercade or?
All of our modern stuff's alwaysPC console.
These are going to be a little big for the Evercade,

(20:30):
unfortunately, but. OK, that's it.
Yeah, Freddy's is Freddy's is everything.
It's got the four or the five. The Xbox is the Switch, the the
PC. It's all gonna be there.
Just make sure it's on your wishlist so that way when there is a
date announced you're ready for it.
Yeah, You know, I don't know if you guys ever do this, but you
know, one of my favorite things to do as a Steam user is when I

(20:51):
find like an indie or a publisher that I really like,
you can actually follow their page and it gives me
notifications, you know? So I do like Devolver's the
first one I did that with years ago and it's it's awesome
because I do consume a ton of game stuff, given that we make
games for a living, but there's so much I can never keep on top
of all of it. So the, you know, the people
that I just think are just trulyfantastic and I want the extra,

(21:12):
you know, something because they're close or they're in the
same genre I love or they have an art style that always speaks
to me. I just follow the publisher
pages or the dev pages and it gives me the direct e-mail like
when they have a sale, when theyhave a a beat, an update.
It's it's about it's awesome. Yeah, we all got that e-mail
yesterday for the Steam sales, so we we're all too familiar.
Yeah, the Steam sale wrecks me every year, man.

(21:32):
We have, I have my own Steam account and then we have a
company Steam account we use forplay testing, but it's tied to
like our our Sir Meow face e-mail, which also forwards this
group inbox. And I can see like the diverse
interest from the team just transactionally appear every
Steam summer. Sale and they're just like.
You know, 50 games pile in. I'm like, Jesus, I'll never
finish these, you know? It just goes into the backlog.

(21:55):
We're all at that point in our lives.
We're like, no, I'm going to diebefore I play this game.
We just accept it at this point.That that's the truth, man.
You know, I don't know if this is feasible for you guys or if
you do something like this already, but we started
scheduling like Friday game nights with an agenda.
I don't know that thing that everyone does where you sit down
and you're like, oh, like what should I play?
Well, I guess I have this one new thing.

(22:17):
Or I can just do you. Do you.
Scrolling B Yeah, just otherwiseyou'd be doomed.
Scrolling, yeah. And it's like now I basically
come up with like a 90 day plan that has like a 6070% of it
mapped out. And then we, we follow it like
it's a prescribed routine because it actually makes us
jump in and dig deep in a genre and do it in like AI want to

(22:37):
say, almost like in a, in a timeblocking capacity because it
just and it feels so satisfying because there's so many of these
games that would not have actually spend time with if I
didn't can, you know, impulse bought it because I was into a
genre six years ago, but now that genre phase has passed me.
So it's it's been awesome, man, because I can kind of get into a
mode where I might, I might justlike right now I'm in
Metroidvanios really hard. So I'm just going hard with

(22:58):
Metroidvanios for a couple weeksand it's just like.
It's the only way to go about those.
It's hard. Yeah, dude, it's awesome, man.
And it's like doing them in thatkind of, you know, schedule
capacity has been really good for the team too, because you
end up in that I guess we can just sit down and play over
cooked as a team, right? But it's like, it's definitely,
it's definitely been awesome as like a collector because I had

(23:19):
backlogs of stuff that I would have never ever gotten to.
So it's worth considering. That so we have a thing on
Channel 3 where we have a, we, we have a list and you can put
which games you've started for the year, which games you've
completed for the year. And I'm, I had, I had a goal to
beat 52 games this year just 'cause I was, I had like 10 last
year and I'm looking now I'm at,I'm at 42 for the year so far.

(23:39):
Now most of those are retro gear.
I know I'm plowing through advocate stuff, I'm plowing
through emulated stuff maybe or,or just PS five stuff or
something like that. But I'm trying to get through
'cause I have so many things I just have bought and have sat
there digitally forever or on the shelf that I haven't beaten.
I'm like, I have to just finish these games.
I owe it to myself or my wallet.So it's been, it's been nice to

(24:00):
like, oh, I, I can put that awayfinally.
But it does it, it helps Like you feel a little better.
Like I bought all this stuff. Let me just finally beat it
down, you know? That's actually my, one of my
favorite, you know, reasons to keep buying retro games, whether
they're just team only or cartridges is like, I, I know I
can sit down and in like one to three hours I've consumed it,
you know, and I can go back to it and it's like, I don't have

(24:20):
to play finger karate. I don't have to use a strategy
guide because I'm stuck and I have two, two kids.
I work a ton of hours. Like it's, I'm definitely not
quick to jump in and play like an MMO at this point in my life,
but it's like, I'll, I'll kill for a good quick retro bite
because I it's kind of like two energy levels too for playing
games. There's like the lean forward
and then the lean back. So like on a Friday night, I

(24:42):
don't really want to lean forward and start sweating and
like play like a fighting game. I.
Just want to like. Consume something, it's fun.
Yeah, dude. And.
It's the retro games hit that 100%.
Wait like like 5 minutes ago yousaid like you, you made me park
up when you said this game. You, you know, you mentioned
it's 2345 hours now. It's not 50 hours.
I'm like, that's what I'm old. I need a 2-3 hour game that I

(25:05):
can play. I can't put 75 hours into a game
anymore. I would love to.
It's just not in my schedule or my, my, my, my time awake like,
you know, so 30 minutes an hour.I love it.
I love it, you know? Do you guys play beyond the
average kid? Do you guys play anything
handheld? I mean, I have, I have this
RG556, which I just got. I love this thing.

(25:28):
I I love this man, yeah. We have a couple this at the
office. It's like Steam Deck's been
great for that too, actually. But yeah, the handheld stuff's
been like really good for that too 'cause I can be like semi
present, you know, I don't have to like be like hidden in the in
the game cave. You just bang it out, you pause
it, just put it aside. It'll be right there when you

(25:48):
get. Back, go to the go to the
bathroom, beat you, you, you beat a few levels, you know,
whatever. That's great.
Yeah, I I'm with you on that, dude.
You had another big one last year with Renfield also.
So you, I mean, you know, we're gonna talk some more about some
of the smaller games you guys have done through the course of
time too. But in a game called Renfield,
bring your own blood tied into the movie last year with a

(26:10):
couple of necklaces with Holton Cage and Aquafina.
You you went you went with the bullet hell set up.
So like, I have a question for you, because you know, we are we
are all of an era movie tie in games had we'll call a mixed
history, no doubt. And let's make a movie tie in
game. Like this is another big one for
you guys as far as like visibility goes.

(26:30):
But you know, you're out there like, hey, let's make a bullet
hell game out of this, out of this and add some extra
characters and have a little funwith it.
Again, you're again killing wallets with another $2.50 game
in the Steam sale out there for people to, to add to that
backlog that you're personally taking shots at now.
But you're you're creating it too at the same time.
Well, you know the couple thingsabout first thing, you know, I

(26:53):
actually think that the cheesy movie stuff is super fun to
explore. I think I think there's like, I
can think of a lot of cool IP license games.
There's a lot more that are not cool of course, but I I see a
resurgence happening with the IPlicense stuff because there's
already this like. There were clowns.
Yeah, that's true. There's a fan base built in,
yeah. There's like just this insane

(27:14):
dearth too, of like the now thatit's so accessible to release
games. And I love experimental indie
stuff. It's the reason we have all of
random. Or.
Just some itch, but but it's like there's a different, it's
like a different type of nourishment.
Your games app, it's like, you know, it's the difference
between having like a steak or having like a cookie, you know.
So it's like I love having the IP license stuff as a studio

(27:36):
because we get a chance to explore collaborating with like
people that have had much more significant multi platform
creative success and we can learn from some of their tricks
and and bags, and then we can bring some extra spice to the
dish on the game side. So with that game specifically,
we've been wanting to make something in that genre for a
while, which is like a like a one touch rogue like.

(27:56):
So think vampire survivors, but with some unique, unique twists
as far as like gameplay hooks and whatnot.
There's like an extraction mechanic in that game.
We have to save the survivors, which parallels how the the
movie works. So, you know, we'd approached
like the Universal folks about doing something.
So I saw that they were doing this resurgence of the movie
monsters in general. They have this big plan with all
the movie monster franchises that all get new energy.

(28:18):
So the first one had the big announcement for Enfield, and I
think Nicolas Cage is awesome. So when I saw like the trailer,
we talked to some of their IP licensing team and gave them our
pitch and they were happy to kind of work with us.
So we ended up working with Skybound on that.
So Robert Kirkman of Walking Dead fame, also like the writer

(28:39):
for Enfield the movie. So we ended up linking up with
the kind of the three parties wemade the game and you know,
actually went really, really great for us.
I know that the best, worst headline for us was we had a
couple of different press folks that had pretty decent
followings give us headlines with the game was better than
the movie, which didn't make us feel great about our, our

(29:00):
universal or our our Robert relationship at the time, but it
was a lot of fun to work on. We also did it rapidly.
I think we made the whole game in like 8-8 or nine weeks.
Wow. And then all the rest of it was
post launch content based on what the community asked for and
what they wanted. So talking about a game that you
can pick up and play, it's like that that whole genre is built
under the intent that you can play for 10 minutes and feel

(29:23):
pretty satisfied and then do a couple runs.
So that's probably one of my favorite games, but pure for fun
capacity that we've ever made because you can just pick it up
and jam and it doesn't require any massive onboarding or or
long tutorialization. It's like you can just know
exactly how to play the game in a minute.
Yeah, that's so that's huge nowadays.

(29:45):
It really is. Sometimes I'll, I, I, I look at
the clock first before I'm like,dude, I, I like, what can I play
now? I can't play.
I can't dive into Last of Us too.
I I need something quick, you know what I mean?
Like once I've told people like I've I've had Baldersgate 3
there, but like I need an hour and a half to just like get into
the mentality of Baldersgate 3 and there's no point in time
where I have 90 minutes to be able to play a game.

(30:07):
Give. Me this give me the give me the
15, you know, 1520 minute run inRenfield, you know, starts off
kind of nice. You're kind of getting your and
by the time you get 15 minutes in, you're just blasting stuff
everywhere and and it's a mess on the screen.
But like, like you said, just I can come in.
I can't get out. I don't have to worry about
like, OK, I remember what I haveto do what I have to do a skill
check for would I got to roll dice where?

(30:27):
Oh, wait, I remember I can throwAI can throw a sword at that.
I don't need any of that. I just.
Craft something I can't. I can't craft anything.
It's all that's so we just. You mention Last of Us like it's
funny, like I love that franchise.
It's easily one of my all time favorites.
But I think Last of Us too is the best game ever made of.
All It's awesome, dude. Yeah.
And it's like, I I think got to wear Ragnarok's best whenever.
Maybe we can do it out. I could fight you.

(30:49):
I, I, you know, I'm fine with that too.
Yeah, there's neither one of those are wrong answers, guys.
We're all good here. Yeah, but, but you know, but
it's like my biggest gaming heartbreak I've ever experienced
that was, you know, a bazillion hours in to Last of Us.
And then my save got bricked in the last 30 minutes of the game.
And it was like after, I remember, like after I it was a

(31:09):
bug that comes out at launch andit took took a while for it to
get resolved too. The first game and the second
one. The first one and after that
happened, I didn't play not justLast of Us, but I didn't play my
PlayStation for like a year and I was like, well, you're.
Just mad at it I. Was like, well I just don't know
if I'm ready to trust again. Someone from Duquesne wouldn't
have done this, but somebody from Carnegie Mellon sure would

(31:30):
have. Sorry, that's a Pittsburgh.
That's a Pittsburgh college jokefor anybody who's paying
attention, no? I I, I get that, man.
I get it, I get it. Oh, that's so great yeah 'cause
after that, it's like, you know,that's a 12/15 hour game.
You're like, I don't want to do this again and.
I'm like I'm like a Sony super fan too.
I like turn my kiosk around. I like turn my Sony shirt off.

(31:50):
I'm like, I'm done with this house.
I'm moving, you know, tell my wife I don't know what to do
with with anything anymore. Our directions got but it was
like. We're an Xbox family now.
Yeah, it was, it was such a, it was such a punch, the gut and I
thought, man, I hope I don't do this to players.
You know, we've, we've had some bugs like that too that like QA
is easily the second most painful thing in games.
And it's a, and it's like you just never, you can never be

(32:12):
prepared for the stuff that customers do.
It doesn't matter how many thousands of hours, like someone
will hit you up and just be like, well, they push all the
buttons at once and I pet my dogand hit power.
It actually turns the lights offof my house.
You ruined everything. Not my wife's leaving me.
And I'm like, I'm sorry, we didn't have that in our test
coverage plan. I had no idea that was it, you
know, and it's or sometimes you end up chasing your tail with

(32:33):
these really obscure bugs to make sure you're satisfying
every possible corner and playertype.
And then you have this new insane regression that services
because of it. And it's just like that.
That's the problem with big games too, is they require a
much bigger like QA test coverage plan.
It's like rest request. We have our last patch coming
out pretty soon and it's like we've been patching doing

(32:53):
quality of life of dates and taking fan requests since launch
last August. And, and it's like people want
to know why the patches take twomonths to drop.
I'm like, guys, it's it's 50 hours for critical bath.
That means if I have 5 people full time testing it thoroughly,
including regressions, it takes full time, multiple weeks for
multiple people because the bestcase scenario it's like a week
and 1/2 for them to really go through.

(33:16):
And it's just it's never as quick as you want it to be.
And gamers are pretty reasonablefor the most part.
I'll disagree, but it's like. I know that would be, yeah.
I mean. It's Brian.
We don't make junks here, remember?
You know, it's funny, I found myself, I try to be like a truly
like empathetic. We are like a, we are fans of
our fans. We just want our fans to be so

(33:37):
excited and so happy and see allthe love and and passion we put
into our projects. But I find myself being a better
community member by actually just telling them like, well,
here's how this works. The biosiminal patch today, the
best case scenario is 2 weeks from now, someone reviews the
patch but then it takes them another one or two weeks to play
and assess the patch and that's before anyone actually does the

(34:01):
bug fixes and the quality assurance testing.
So that's like a month of guaranteed minimum.
And that's why even the AAA games have months in between
patches because the the games are so big, you might have test
coverage to really properly support it.
To be good to the community requires all this extra time and
effort. And I found that if you actually
are willing to open the kimono alittle bit and like dive in to

(34:21):
that kind of position, it probably 80% of the time they
become the most reasonable superfans.
We don't, I don't want to like over and overextend this.
We actually had someone last week that reached out and said,
hey, like there's a trophy. I'm having an issue with a
PlayStation and I was hesitant to buy, you know, wrestle Quest
because I'm a trophy hunter. You know, when do you expect it

(34:42):
to be fixed? And, and I responded back to
them and said, hey, like, actually our final patch is
coming out pretty soon. And in the meantime, what we
ended up prioritizing was the significant quantity of fan
request for accessibility and quality of life requirements.
I sent them to list. They sent me like one of the
nicest emails we've had in 10 years back.
It was just this long e-mail. It was like, this is amazing.

(35:04):
Thank you so much for listening.I'm going to buy every mega cat
game that exists in the platform.
And he sent me a screenshot of like all of our stuff on his
dashboard. It was like, it was like
Saturday night. I showed my wife.
I was like, this is exactly why we do this.
This is like the best response Icould have ever imagined.
And that took you and that response took you 2 minutes and
it was a genuine normal responseversus if you ignored it, this

(35:25):
guy's next day mega catch sucks,blah, blah, blah.
You know what I mean? Like, but but that's all like,
yeah, like 90% are will get it. But the I got that 10% and
they're just insane. That root of everybody.
No doubt, man. It's like, well, all of us
actually. Still, many of us respond to
customer service still, like myself included, like that's so.
That's so cool. That's that's rare and that's
awesome, man. It really is.

(35:45):
I'm, I'm sure like we're always going to have some of that
because the truth is we just care so much about our games and
our community. We're just blessed to be able to
even make them in the 1st place.You know it.
It shows, It really does. I appreciate that, but dude,
it's like that that definitely made my weekend.
I was just thinking about that this morning.
I was talking to one of our teammembers about the the August
release game we talked about with Freddy's and how, you know,
there's there's some new requests about some adjusting

(36:07):
these vignettes and doing these things.
And at some point in a game's development, towards the end,
you lock content, you lock features and you start tabling
this kind of wish list exercise of backlog and all the backlog
stuff. You start planning your day one
patch and your one month post launch patch.
And it's like, this is probably the the worst possible time to
be ahead of schedule in a game because we have enough time that

(36:29):
we could sneak one more thing inbefore launch.
Exactly. Exactly the thing that like
removes the skin from your body because you're like, what did we
do, Piper? You know, like, why don't we do
this, Dan? And.
It's like, anyway, it's really exciting to see that, see that
project close up and also get paralleled with some of the
like, the fan sentiment has beenso positive even for that game
because the track record we havewith our community for always

(36:51):
like years later updating stuff still.
So it's, which is not easy to do.
It's like, imagine if you're only making like $100,000 on a
game, but you have to spend 150 to make everybody happy.
We've done that so many times. Yeah, like you think just just
just kind of reminds me of like remember the game Fez that came
out? It's the opposite of that where

(37:13):
like he got so much, I think he was pretty aggressive with the
fans, but he was probably just getting bombarded with these
annoying. So he he just snapped, which I
understand too. You know what I mean?
You just there's two ways to go about it.
One is to snap at the fans, one is to do what you guys did, I
guess. You know, you know, man, we, we
went through that phase and luckily I never actually snapped
at fans, but there's been there's been phases though where

(37:33):
we'd sit there and just. Look behind closed doors.
We look at each other down first, like, what am I supposed
to do? What are you supposed to say?
Like it's like, you know, it's funny with coffee crisis, it
used to be described. It was originally described as a
neo rogue brawler. And, and I remember it was
because we have a brawler mechanic in the game on the PC
and console version, not the Genesis version.

(37:56):
And we get to the screen lock brawler areas.
There's like a randomization rule of modifiers that can
happen to the enemies and, and to the to the player, Like, you
know, you could spawn unique weapons.
And it takes like a pretty sometimes stale genre because
like retro brawlers don't have ahuge set of move sets to get
unlocked. Like your variety becomes like
your weapons and your power ups and whatnot.

(38:18):
So we, we added in that that like hook and just because we
had this kind of marketing description that included neo
brawler, we were getting slammedwith people asking for rogue
like elements and like guys likewe have videos and tutorials and
walkthroughs and, and it's like brawler all over the place.
It looks like a brawler plays like a brawler.
It was just like we were gettinghundreds of messages of people

(38:40):
that were asking for refunds from from a rogue like community
because the post had gone an. Entirely separate group of
people all together, yeah. And a post had gone viral on
like the like a subreddit for rogue likes and a ton of people
bought it. And it was just this they
started infighting each other where there is like this group
that people are like this game'sactually pretty good.
I was expecting a rogue like, but it was this instead and then

(39:01):
and then together, very vocal people that were like, there's
no permadeath. I don't have anything to roll or
reroll, let alone these guys don't understand what a rogue
like is. Someone needs to educate them.
And it's just hundreds of hundreds of thousands of people
were coming to our website that day.
And it was just that it's the most insane moment what happens.
Like, so I cannot imagine what, you know, Jonathan from Fez went

(39:21):
through or like what Scott from Freddy's went through during
those initial viral moments because just the just a small
ripple effect that we get to experience is just extreme.
Like, the hardest job in games is community management because
you're never going to make everybody happy no matter what
you do, you know? I'm a big starter Valley fan.
I love that game and what what he's done is incredible and it's

(39:42):
so fun when people get mad. It's like this game is supposed
to be the most peaceful, chill game.
What are you getting mad at thatyou can't change the color of
your socks to the color you like?
Come on, people. It's also a game you paid $5 for
10 years ago and he's still updating and adding entire new
games to it's. It's really funny people do
that, but I I can imagine what you went through that's that's

(40:03):
crazy. That is the dream that you have
a game that you can actually from a financial perspective,
like warrant the long term forever support.
Like we, we recently had to suspend support on like Renfield
as an example, because the way our, our licensing terms are set
up with Skybound and and Universal, like, you know, we
were basically paying for everything for many months.

(40:24):
It was just us and we were, we were never getting anything from
it at this point. But how the deal was structured
and I remember like talking to the team about it and the team
was really first of all, the team loved making it.
So they wanted to keep working on it because when those games
work out really well and they have really high commercial
success, you can basically add playable characters for like a
year, right? And we have a big backlog of

(40:45):
content we wanted to go through,but it's when you have this IP
license projects too, there's multiple layers of approval and,
and steps and costs. And, and it's like just by doing
this for now over nine years, it's like we've, you find
yourself having these like 2 hour round tables trying to
remind the team like here's how it works for us as a business.
We have these four stages of green light.

(41:06):
One of them has to include the financial component.
We have to at least make back 75% of our cost for us to be
alive and ideally 100% to break even.
And it's this constant battle oflike, how do we maintain this
position of like fans of our fans and give them everything
they want and also stay around because like indie studios, they
don't last that long. The last 2-3 years maybe.

(41:27):
It's like it's hard and we have a lot of cats.
You know, there's, there's probably 60 people here in
Pittsburgh and then several, several 100 remote.
So it's like it's a constant, it's a constant stressor for
sure to make sure we're balancing things out.
I know you were that big. Is that from all the other
licenses and like you said, other developers you're helping
out, is that all combined with all that?
That's awesome. That's just that.
Big we we do a lot of work fryerfor people still.

(41:48):
We do a lot of service work kindof in that product mix.
We have like big cat originals, retro publishing, like service
work for hire with things like porting web apps.
And we did some, you know, we wejust did like a cool stadium
interactive for the Miami Marlins, you know, some cool
stuff with the notable Japanese publisher that just purely work
for hire right now. Or we just did the art for the

(42:10):
vampire survivors last year seatback with all the Konami stuff
to do with Contra. So it's so we do a lot of stuff
right, But it's like the realityis like we live in an industry
where like the people that join our team, they joined it because
they want to share the same North star of like, let's make
games that we love and let's do projects that we're excited
about. Let's not just, you know, make

(42:31):
every random educational work for hire that the services and
sometimes you get to fit one of those in.
We're we're pretty blessed. We're at a stage of our company
where we don't have to fit many of those in, but we have to be
smart that we're not just, you know, taking every single dollar
we've earned and work for and just tossing it into, you know,
for fun stuff because it's easy to do.
It's like it's too easy to do. Right.

(42:52):
Sometimes the fun stuff won't keep the lights on, but it's
like, man, it's so fun to do, but.
It's a mixed bag, yeah. Totally.
There's this, there's kind of funny saying, I don't know if
you guys have had other game to have shared this before, but
there's this feeling of like in every project at some point, if
you're doing it as a business, like the dream dies somewhere
and it's like sometimes it happens after lunch, sometimes

(43:13):
it happens on the first day of development because it has to be
done so quickly. You don't really have the time
and the resources needed to sit there and really dream up what
the best absolute version would be.
Because the hours that go into it and it's it's like kind of
one of the most interesting and saddest parts of making anything
creative. Whether it's the same thing with
music, like I've heard a saying before that like no music track

(43:34):
has ever done. It's just abandoned, you know,
because everything can be consistently constantly iterated
on. And games are absolutely the
biggest version of that because games are immersive.
They're not like, it's not the same as like a web website or a
web app. It's like you have to, you get
to feel something that has to berewards and stickiness and
excitement. And it's like all those things

(43:55):
just cost a lot of a lot of man hours, which means it cost a lot
of money. So there's this like, there's
this really harsh reality of like at some point the dreams
have to die and someone has to step in and say 30 enemies, not
700 or, or you know, and the good news is you can always look
at what the players will expect by looking at the comps and the
genre. It's OK.
These metro Vanias have 7 levels.

(44:17):
So if we do somewhere between 5:00 and 10:00, we're in the
sweet spot. We don't need more than 10 if
everyone's doing 7. And we look at the gameplay
length and the diversity and allthe other pieces.
And as long as we're delivering something that's scoped within,
like what we know players will be satisfied with as far as
content, we can just focus on polishing it up.
Because like, it's always betterto make a smaller good game than

(44:40):
it is to make something just hasa ton of stuff shoved in.
And it's, it's almost like part of the maturity of making games,
you want to start off with smallstuff and then you scale up into
the size and then you start looking at the P&L and you're
like, man, Dan spent a lot of time last month tweaking that
monster and he's really fun now.But it's gonna be hard to cost
that out for 30 more. And it's, it's tough.
Yeah, we, we, we, we've all played those games where it's

(45:01):
like, well, that was unnecessary.
That whole 30 minutes, like, youknow, I mean, like that, that
last three hours didn't make sense.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like you said, I don't need 100 hour game anymore.
You had my attention like 5 to 10.
I'm in, let's go. We don't need, I don't need 600
hours of sorry for the Fantasy 7Rebirth.
I don't need 800 mini games off to the side.
Just let me play the game. I stopped Assassin's Creed

(45:23):
Valhalla because it was just like, it was literally just 7000
side quests and I'm like, I, I don't know what to do.
I, I just, I have no idea where to go anymore.
Like I'm just lost. So yeah, it's too much.
I, I totally get that, you know,today there's a Final Fantasy
expansion that drops today. And I've, we used a platform
called Gusto for our like PEO org for scheduling and time off
and HR and stuff. And I saw all the notifications

(45:46):
go through this week. People were.
Costing time off today and I waslike what's going on Friday and
all those people were like I'm not aware of and it's like I
looked over and I I got a message from one of our our
technical director and he's likehey dude I'm taking Friday off
because the Final Fantasy expansion I'm like I bet This is
why everybody's. Taking.
Off Yeah. And it's, it's funny, it's like
those games are so big, like youreally can't dabble.

(46:07):
It's like you got to play for a couple hours, right.
So it's, it's like, I miss doingthat stuff.
Like the last Diablo I definitely spent some time with
on some Sunday nights to try to get an inkling of what it used
to be like, you know, and it wassuper fun.
Like Baldur's Gate, same thing when I came out.
I, I snuck in plenty of scheduled hours with a couple
team members, do some runs. But it's like, I'll probably

(46:27):
never again in my life have a phase where I could spend
hundreds of hours in any game ever.
Like I would just so many other things I'd rather do.
But it's like, man, I wish I could do both.
I wish I could just stop sleeping, you know?
Yeah. You know, it's, it's it's great.
You're still playing, you're still enjoying games.
That's really it. It shows like you're making it.
You're still playing. You're not like you're not,

(46:48):
what's the word? You're not, you're not like
desensitized from it all. Like I just do this.
This is my job. Like you love doing it.
And that's, I think it shows allthe games you guys do and all
that stuff. Yeah.
You know, it's, it's funny too, like sometimes you ask folks who
are making games like what they're playing.
That's one of the first things Iask people when I talk to
colleagues or or team members. And it's always shocking to me
when someone who works in games and they're not playing any

(47:10):
games and it happens all the time.
It's like what are? You doing?
It's tough, man. It's like, you know, not quite
the same thing when we were at aan indie wrestling event here in
Pittsburgh about two or three weeks ago that we sponsored and
brought the team down. It's called Enjoy Wrestling.
It's like really, really high production value, local
promotion and went down with about 20 team members made made

(47:31):
it a thing on a Sunday and actually on Father's Day, which
is a weird day to have an event,but I'm sure that's how they got
the venue for a good price. So I'm mentioning this because
we ended up sitting with a couple of our friends that are
like, we'll, we'll say like further along in their wrestling
career. They like the wrestle.
They wrestle in AW cards, not like super indie cards.
And they're sitting here with us.
And as we were sitting there, I realized there was this really

(47:52):
strong commonality of like they were watching independent
wrestling on a Sunday night and an indie show and and like
picking it apart while also likejust consuming it because
they're they're such significantwrestling fans.
And I'm like, man, that's exactly what it feels like to be
like a team member at Mega Cat, because we like, love making
games. And it's, it's like there's not

(48:14):
a single person here that doesn't spend time playing
games. Part of that's like part of our
interview process, but part of it's also like there's this kind
of cultural component of I thinkfor indie stuff to be
successful, you have to just love games, otherwise you're
gonna just never make something people wanna play.
Yeah, I'm one of the biggest indie.
I was screaming from the mountaintops like play an indie
game like all the time because like I I just like things like

(48:34):
Grease and Celeste and just things like that.
I love it, you know, and it's itwhen people say I don't under.
County Public Television. Brian yes, like you have to play
that. Like it's so weird when people
don't know what to play. I'm like, play an indie.
Just pick one. They're weird.
They're fun. They're they're made like people
who love maybe, maybe three dudes in a, in a, in a, in a
basement who just love, who justmade something creative and
weird, you know, like that's what I love.

(48:55):
And now that you mentioned before, it's so it's easier now
than ever to make an indie game,which is great.
And that's where you get the weird stuff to come out that
maybe would, could now have beenmade, you know, 1520, thirty
years ago. And that's what's awesome about
it. I agree, man.
You know, so a lot of the retro stuff we do on cartridges kind
of scratches our itch for like the more experimental truly for

(49:15):
fun because we can manage them from a commercial basis in a way
that doesn't have us like get too far over our skis.
Like the wrestler quest, you know, we had like like 80 people
on it or something. So it just requires that much
just the art required like 25 people for for a couple years
full time. So it's the the smaller scope
games you can just you can just make anything, you know.
I'm pretty good friends with with Patrick Hickey, by the way,

(49:37):
who did, yeah. He did a lot of voices for you
guys with that. We, we call Pat, we call him Pat
the Cat because you've been likea, he's been like, I want to say
one of our first ever fans, we first started and he's like, oh,
I want to be a, I'm going to getinto voice acting eventually.
And then once he did his first one or two gigs, we we've
probably sent him maybe 80% of his his resume after because it

(49:57):
that's easy to. Work with I think you have Hey,
if if, if you want to talk afterwith me, by the way, let I'd
love to talk to you about that. But yeah.
Yeah, you know, he's great to work with because he just loves
doing it like. He does.
He's got hustles. No doubt, man.
Yeah. He hustles his ass off.
Yeah, I've known him for a long time and he's just always been
that the go getter. Like he's always doing a book or
always doing something, the comic, whatever it is, you know?

(50:18):
Yep. Yeah, I'm working with people
like that's the dream. Totally, Yeah.
I bet did. We lose Dan.
Oh, he's. There.
No, I'm here. I I have never been this quiet.
That's the best, That's the funniest part.
Like Brian's in his bag right now.
And like. There's times right now I just,
I just step aside and let thingslet things.
Be on one interfere with this. I I love I love talking to
developers. And there's one, I mean, I'm not

(50:38):
gonna say his name, but there's one down here in Raleigh, pretty
famous. You probably didn't know him.
He used to work at Epic, but he's made some big stuff, right?
I was talking to him and I've, I've, I've become friendly with
him and I was like, what are youplaying?
He goes, I really don't play anything anymore.
All I see is the budget when I put a game on and he and he made
billion dollar franchise. If you know who it is maybe.

(50:58):
And I'm just like, I was like, that sucks.
And he goes, yeah, he goes. I just see the budget now like
I'm like, he doesn't he he's been in for a long time.
Obviously, maybe he just lost the love of just sitting down
and playing something. But it's like I'm like I, I, I
said play an indie. I, I, I, I tell him to go play
Dave the diver. Oh, just put something weird on.
Go play something fun. It's.
Funny you said that man. We have a couple massive,

(51:19):
massive, OK, this is just an aside, but I would say that in
our e-mail list, maybe 5 or 10% of the people in the e-mail list
are just industry folks. And within that range, there's
like a huge, huge, huge gaming companies that grew up and were
inspired and some of them workedon things like original second

(51:39):
Genesis launch titles. And sometimes they'll, they'll
receive our monthly newsletter and they'll respond, you know,
to me directly and they'll be like, hey man, I love what you
guys are doing this and that. And it's, it's funny because the
that same sentiment that you're mentioning from the, the, the
guy in rally, it extends into all of the giant AAA studios
because you know, at that scale of business and that scale of

(52:00):
operation, you need hundreds of millions of dollars to make
these projects. And it's this like refreshing
reframe for them to dabble into people that are just surely
they've never lost the fun because all they do, they don't
even have the perspective of what it would be like to work in
these hundreds of millions of dollars of of size projects.
So it's, it's kind of interesting that you're saying
that. I would say that that's a
perfect advice. You're basically sending them

(52:21):
back to the for fun part. Like there's definitely a, a
world there that I think almost recharges the batteries.
And in fact, we've had some commercial projects that come
out of that unintentionally because they're like, wait, you
guys can make games for for how much?
And it's like, do you guys want to pick up this other thing I
have sitting over here and it's,you know, some that's been some
of our best partnerships. We've grown.
It's like, that's cool. Yeah, very few have the luxury

(52:44):
of, you know, Sony Santa Monica or Naughty Dog backing them to
do something like that. So it's like, you know, doesn't
it's a blessing any first? Though 'cause then they've got
they've got accountability for other things that.
Are that doesn't mean you can't make a great game though, so
that's. There's nobody I respect in the
industry more than those two groups, by the way.
Like I think that like Naughty Dog and Santa Monica are just

(53:07):
like the most compelling, talented, like world capable
teams and like to to build thoseteams knowing what's going into
even building mega cut. It's just like profound.
And and then like the gates theymust have to go through for
approvals being part of such a huge because like, I don't know,
once you watch first party things, but like Sony,

(53:27):
Microsoft, etcetera. When they buy studios and the
studios are not hitting the P and LS, they need like that's a
wrap, you know? That that's what scares me about
them is that like the Sony leadership changes, like I hope
they don't screw up those two studios like with the.
With those, those two seem to belike you guys can do what you
want. I hope that they're at that
point, but you never know still.Well, Big Jim let them go, sure,

(53:49):
like he let them. He let them do their thing.
But I don't know what's gonna happen with these new guys.
Yeah, you never know. You know it's like it's
constantly moving world and and we have a hit base industry,
right. So like, my, my, my assumption
is that to your point, there's probably a little bit of like,
we trust you guys. You have such a proven track
record and the fan affinity is higher than ever.

(54:10):
Like I think that those two studios specifically are like
they're permanent. Their fixtures are not going
anywhere. But it's like the fact that they
even have had the success and a repeatable capacity to have is
insane because the even the likelihood to have like a
Celeste is, is low. But having a Celeste equivalent
that, you know, hits the nail onthe head for, for over 20 years,

(54:32):
it's just like otherworldly levels of capability, you know?
So it's, it's awesome, man, you know.
Yep, nailed it. Love it, Dan.
I was gonna see how you're doingfor time because I know we're,
we're like up against it for youthere.
So yeah, I, I. Can do a couple more minutes if
you guys want to want to finish the other the other beats and
bits. Yeah, I'll tell.
I'll tell you what. Let's do I just want to run down

(54:54):
a couple a couple other games and just tell people like go
check these out. First of all, Wrestle Quest, as
mentioned previously, I did not realize how long that game was
the potential for it. Again, I have not gotten that
far. But again, $12.00 in the summer
sale. This episode's unfortunately
gonna drop on July 10th, so you've only got like one day
left to do it, but. You can put on the on Channel 3.
We'll we'll put on the site though to tell people to get it.

(55:14):
Yeah, go, go, go get it. Coffee Crisis again.
I I have it as a 90s arcade brawler.
I don't remember when I got it. It's one of those games that
just like a Switch sail appearedand.
It just shows up in your library.
It just shows up and it's there 'cause I, I saw the 49 saying
yesterday like, wait, I, I forgot I already played through
this game. And again, I don't know where
anybody got rogue like, but it'sa 90s arcade brawler for people

(55:35):
who are who are fans of that. I wanted to ask about World
Championship Boxing Manager too,because I don't know what
inspired you guys to pull up an Amiga PC game from 1990 and say
let's make a sequel to this in 2023.
So I mean, we're talking to the Ziggurat team who just acquired
a ton of kind of mostly obscure like backlog titles.

(56:00):
And we told them we had an interest in doing something
simulation management if they got something really cool,
really retro that was in their the wheelhouse.
And then they sent us some, we asked them to send us some, some
suggestions on like what's been most performant that they didn't
expect with fans and, and they, and they basically included a
short list and then at the bottom of the list included
world championship boxing manager.

(56:21):
I'm like, that's hilarious that that game is like over indexing.
And then I, I have such a love for strategy management games.
And I thought like, if there aresome super fans for this, like
fans of our fanservice is a big,a big kind of pillar for mega
cat. So it was an easy one for us to
jump into. And we ended up licensing like
Sugar Ray and Rocky Marciano anddoing some storytelling.

(56:44):
And then we have, you know, all,all the other kind of, I will
say that what's interesting about that game is that we took
all the existing mechanics that were fan beloved in that era.
I mean, I did some, some modern sensibilities to kind of tune it
up and end up creating like 2 camps.
Like there is the camp of like people that were, is exactly
what I wanted to new installation with some, some

(57:05):
extra sauce. And then there's the other camp
that was like, this is not 3D orimmersive.
And so dating some component andI really want to date my boxer.
And it was just like the most hilarious outcome.
That that's where you get put ona watch list at the same time.
Just gotta be careful, hey, but I do want to ask about just some
games from your past 'cause you know, the beautiful thing is

(57:26):
like you said, I mean, I, I workadjacent to gaming at this point
and I barely have the time for games.
But you know, I, I asked you, you know, we usually talk about
three games from people's past and you had three killers at the
top of your list. I don't know if you listed them
in order when I asked like, hey,what are some games from your
own past? But of course, so I want to talk
through some of those Super Mario Brothers 3.
It's always a battle. So I I gotta say first of all

(57:47):
though, 'cause most people are battling Super Mario World or
Super Mario Brothers 3, Brian's going to say 3D World as his
number one Mario game, but you mean the game it's.
The best Mario game It's a. Great one, don't it?
I love 3. It's definitely nostalgia's for
sure, like a component for and that entire list, but it's like
for Mario three, that was the first game that I was like
losing sleep over, you know, andit was just it just so fun.

(58:10):
And I the original office way back, sometimes it'd be just,
you know, pop it in and play for20 minutes because it's just so
snackable too. You know, the levels are like
the right length, the power ups are diverse.
Like the the settings feel interesting.
And knowing what goes into making games on the Nintendo
hardware, it just did such an amazing job leveraging all the
strength. So it's just I'm able to get

(58:32):
that same opposite feeling of the rally guy when I play the
game. I'm like, this is the most
amazing and incredible experience.
It still holds up and it's just,yeah, it's just awesome.
I'll, I'll never forget the first time I saw Bowser in Mario
3. Just I was at my cousin's house.
I was inside the whole time. There's a party.
I couldn't, I just made it through the first time making it
through. I'm like, he looks incredible.
Holy cow. Was like 8 or 9 at the time, you

(58:53):
know? And I was like, this is so cool,
man. But yeah.
Yeah, you know, it's funny, I'm actually a Sonic fan first.
Don't. Don't start him.
Don't start him, James. He's gonna go.
He's going to get all riled up. He's going to take him on it
just. Don't let him finish.
Go ahead, just ignore. I'm going to mute him.
Just ignore him. I had that same moment with
Doctor Botnick the first time and I remember thinking like

(59:15):
Doctor, Doctor Botnick's Sprite is so big and he's so fast.
Like he looks like he could takeBowser in a fight.
Yeah, that'd be fun. I'll leave it to that, you know,
But it's just like, I remember that moment exactly.
But you know, the Mario 3 just kept me up for like a couple
days the first time, and that was just the most fun.
Have you done the Mario 3 Easteregg in Celeste by the way?
Oh yeah, so great. Blew my mind.

(59:39):
I was like, like, when you see that block, I'm like, is this
what I think it is? And I was like, I, I, I stood up
and cheered. I was like, that is awesome.
What an Easter egg. I think the genre specific
Easter eggs should be like a pillar for everybody making a
game. Let's do it.
Make it a decree. Do you ever bully people in the
office? Like if if you're playing Mario
3, just when they cross over youand you're playing two player,

(01:00:00):
just challenge them to the battle and take away their turn.
What are they going to do to you?
Back in the day, we didn't have HR.
I'd have a different answer, butit's like we, we do a lot of
gaming as a team. We have an NBAGMTE cabinet.
We used to use that to solve arguments when you're at an
impasse, to design things too. I agree that the people, the
people ask for it a lot. Actually.

(01:00:20):
It's like I I think hang time might be the only real spiritual
successor. Yeah, hang times and hang times,
some people don't know. It's actually almost better.
I think hang time's really good,you know?
Is that really good? I don't know.
I agree that it's like. A little more fluke, it came out
a little after, so it's a littlemore like just easier to
rebound, just things like that, you know?
But actually, you know, it's funny you said that because

(01:00:41):
within the simulation stuff, there's almost like a spin off
of the like NHL 94 and NBA Jam. Part of what makes them so much
fun is they're more accessible and it's easier to get into so
that what you have and you gain later in the fluidity and the
greater control. It's almost like it's almost
like an extension of the genre, right?
The simulation that's super, super immersive, stuff like

(01:01:02):
that. That's also has the caveat of
like if you don't know a lot about hockey, like playing a
current Gen. NHL game, a lot of figure
crudding. Yeah, for sure, dude.
It's like no, no fun to like jump into those genres with all
the all the the Super fans. Even Madden and and 2K are just,
they're hard to play now and I play them all every year and
it's like they're just stop adding buttons, stop adding

(01:01:24):
stuff like this is too much now.Like I just want to, I just want
to throw the ball. I know the Giants aren't good,
but I'm just trying to throw theball with Daniel Jones.
Let me see if he can get a complete.
But yeah, it's hard to hold thisto for a lob catch and for an
aggressive catch. I'm like, what?
Yeah, it's a lot. Well, I was just going to ask
what how much Diablo two is the next game You listen, I just
want to what what that cost you in life, Like what relationship

(01:01:45):
or what what class in college, what or high school, whatever
timing it was for you, what it cost you something.
I know that. I played in the original Diablo
one and then the Sierra expansion and you know, it was
like one of my first gaming loves.
I'd say I grew up with the Sega and then I ended up always one
generation behind everybody else.
But I I play I played PC from someone Sega PC.

(01:02:08):
That's when I get into command and conquer Age of Empires,
Diablo and I was consumed by those for so long.
When I came back later to the next Gen. with, you know, Sony
PlayStation and and N64, for me,N64 was all about multiplayer
and then Sony PlayStation was all about new genres.
And it was just like I ended up having this full mix of like,
oh, I'm going to consume every game.

(01:02:29):
I just love them so much. Right.
So, so Diablo two, like the hours that went into it were
just like super crazy because I,I played Diablo 2 for probably
10 years after it came out. I played on vacation sometimes
because I just wanted to hit, you know, I just.
There's a reason that's the one they remade.
Yeah. It's that it's that compelling.
They they have 3 Infinite's justa cash grab, but and four, like

(01:02:49):
they've not captured the things the way 2 did.
Like that's why they remade it. Yeah, yeah.
I'm with you man. Do you guys ever played Path of
Exile by the way you guys? Know.
Path of Exile is the true evolution of like the Diablo
stuff and it's definitely it's free by the way, you know, so
like check it out, but it's. That's like the third bit of

(01:03:09):
homework you've given me today that I've like had to make a
note like I got to check this out.
What are the clock time? I got to check these things out
but. Yeah, man, it was funny.
Like you mentioned, I think, I think Nate at one point was like
risking being expelled because he was ranked like 14 the world
for Paths of Exile. And it was just like, you know,
just just funny how you really love that stuff.
You you can get lost. Yeah, those, those games are too

(01:03:34):
much for me. Diablo when I'm just like, I
just can't even handle all that stuff.
I feel like, you know, I I'm more of a last if I was like
first person, not like like I, Imean like a single player story
type of player. I appreciate those big games,
but I'm just like, man, I just get lost so far.
Brian's finger cramps up too. He's got a cramping problem with
the mouse, so if he's just this too much like he just kind of

(01:03:55):
knurls. Up I'm a console, I'm a I'm a
console and handheld guy. I don't do PC really.
Yeah. Hey, the one other game I want
to ask you about was the Legend of Zelda linked to the past,
which first of all, correct answer.
Nicely done. You're you're 3 for three on
getting getting these answers right.
But I, I also wanted to ask about just kudzu because like
you guys nailed it remaking a top down Zelda game.

(01:04:19):
And and this was one Brian, you,you did this one, Brian.
I remember kudzu there and also made it a game.
You made the physical Game Boy cartridge for this one too.
But just kind of like where doesthat all intersect at for you?
So like the the origin of that is Chris Totten, who's like a
games professor and a long time just indie super fan here out of
Ohio. And we met Chris originally at

(01:04:40):
Magfest, which is one of our favorite ever trade shows we've
run. The I've never gone.
I always, people always tell me to go.
I've never gone. I know I got to go one day.
It's great. And it's like, you know, Chris
has been there forever too. And it's probably the same like
20 or 30 people that have been part of that community for over
a decade. And, you know, we met there as
volunteers a long time ago. And I think Chris always had
such a deep love for the games that inspired that in that

(01:05:04):
genre. And a lot of us, like myself
included, are crazy like Gameboysuper fans.
So I know it's just a matter of how do you how do you take
something you love like that andscope it correctly and not, you
know, go crazy? And I think we just kind of slow
baked it with Chris for a while.Chris worked his tail off on
every component and I really liked the music in that game
too. Brandon, one of our our our

(01:05:25):
friends and team members like he, I think he did a great job
capturing like that, that that vibe energy and the chip tunes.
He did. He nailed it.
Yeah, that's some of one of the best parts about it.
And I think Gameboy games hold up.
A lot of them do. I love still playing Gameboy
games, you know? Dude, Gameboy was like my
renaissance during my first, my first boring because I could

(01:05:45):
like kind of consume them. These little bits, toss in the
pocket, come back later. Yeah, man.
It's great, Like the Turtles game still holds up.
The Mario games do Batman, even a Spider Man game.
It's silly, but it's still, it'sstill, it's fun to play in
little, in little chunks. You know, Revenge of the Gator,
that pinball game. I love a lot of good ones.
Oh, Revenge of the Gator dude, that was my first ones.
I had ERA and I remember like I don't even know how I got it,

(01:06:08):
but I was like I was easily addicted to that.
Sadly. I wanted a Game Boy and my
parents got me to Tari Lynx on QVC and I remember being like a
little bit let down 'cause I'm like, well, this doesn't have
any of the games I wanted, but Iplayed the California games like
I, I must have surfed 100 hours.I never met anybody who actually
had that thing. Dude, I I so I had a Commodore

(01:06:29):
64 growing up actually here in here in the states, which is
crazy, but I had that and California games easily my most
played game. I was I was a big hacky sack
foot bad guy with that. I loved I still play now on on
random stuff. I think it's the best one is a
Commodore version though. I.
Haven't played the Commodore onebut I have played on a couple
platforms. And I Lynx is good.
Well, well, Commodore also has like 8 events.

(01:06:50):
Lynx only has four I think on that one.
So there's more stuff on there, maybe 6, but it has more.
But it's really good on the Commodore.
You know what I like most about that?
We, we had no air conditioner atmy parents house when I was when
I was growing up And my my mom would pack my six brothers and I
into the back seat of this like station wagon, not that big car.
And and she'd drive around with the air conditioning on the

(01:07:11):
summer at night. And we'd be like, we'd be
handing off the Atari legs for rounds.
And it was like you would just sit there just waiting to play,
you know, and you finally can beyour time.
You're like, this is it. If I if I die really quickly,
it'll be at least an hour, you know, it's like.
You guys, you guys are you guys spent $1000 on batteries and gas
back then, No. Doubt you know, it's funny is
like I I can't remember the details, but I know it was like

(01:07:34):
it's like a buck a gallon or something like that, you know,
but it's it's like a different era for sure, but big handout
fan. That's awesome.
Cool. Hey, well, I I just want to say
thank you because again, we you you've gone over the time we
allowed on your calendar, which I'm sure is causing physical
pain, but it was I I again, I this is the quietest I've ever
been this the least I've ever interjected in something, which

(01:07:56):
is shocking. But again, that's why that's why
I wanted Brian here for this one.
Brian's not usually the the coast with you.
Brian hosts his own. If you ever check out Playable
Characters podcast, Brian does areally fun goofy like talk to
the soda Popinski's of the gaming world.
He's videoing characters on my show.
I have other comics come on, pretend they're a character and
talk to them. So it's.
Very. Yeah, it's awesome.
Yeah, that's great, man. But Brian's retro love and and

(01:08:17):
again, Brian, Brian has been head first in the to mega cat
studios on a number of occasions.
So thought he was the perfect guy to bring on.
And that's why I was like, there's times where I know I
just got to stay out of the way.That's that's quieter than I
usually am. But I want to thank you James,
for for coming on here. Just tell everybody again, Mega
Cat studios, you know we've got the game's old listed on Channel
3, but Mega catstudios.com you can you go on there.

(01:08:40):
Their shop is glorious. You can buy your Mega drive
slash genesis games with the with the box.
I don't know if you guys got thesmell authentically down from
the the actual plastic boxes back in the day, but Gameboy
game Super Nintendo like they'vethey've got cartridges for these
things you can get your hands on, but they're all over the
place. Again, you've got some some big

(01:09:00):
games coming up here, some some fun ones that are that are in
the sale right now. But thank you for your time,
James, Brian, thank you for jumping on for this on a on a
random Friday morning and. Thanks, James.
Yeah. And I think your love of games
clearly came across here, which I think it's huge for people to,
to really invest mentally in an indie studio.
And like you said, you know, the, the, the supporting the

(01:09:22):
fans as much as anything. Like you show you love the games
and you can, you can feel the games.
You can feel where there's, you know, you're not copying things
directly, you're paying homage. You're, you're showing your love
for these things. And I think that's important.
It's huge. I'm with you guys.
I appreciate having me on. I try to, I try to fit in
podcasts like once, once I'm up or something like that.
A lot of our team members usually jump in, but if they can
work with my wonky schedule, I try to, I try to say what's up

(01:09:45):
too, because it's it's awesome to see.
Anyone wants to interview us at this point?
Still we. Appreciate it.
Definitely. Love it and continued success.
Yeah, thank you. Have a good one be.
Different later. See you guys.
Bye. Channel 3 is the future.

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