0134 Gaming Off the Beaten Path

Episode Transcript
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(00:09):
Channel 3 is the future. Welcome through to one of your
3A Channel 3 podcast where we take a member of the Channel 3

(00:32):
community, discuss three games of their choosing, go through
some honorable mentions and someother odds and ends for a nice
little video game discussion. I'm Dan with me as always, Ray.
Dan, Dan, we brought in, we brought in a professional
because you and I are not professionals.
So we have to, when we get a chance, we, we grab them when

(00:52):
and we, we trick them into coming here.
It is the host of Gaming Off theBeaten Path podcast, JDS 140 on
Channel 3. JD, how are you doing tonight?
I'm doing great guys. How are you?
I'm good. We we got you.
Know it's like my norm, I was like my default so I'm great.

(01:12):
We we got your baseball confessionals out of the way
before the recording. So I as the Phillies fan and
better than the two Yankees fans, I'm here.
It's true. I'm I I am starting upset
because of our our pre our pre podcast.
Conversation it got got Ray all right.
Ray didn't know he's going to get all riled up beforehand.
Just just, I figure I round up later, but no, we're going to
get, we're getting fired up now.That's the important thing.

(01:33):
Yeah, had to get that shared misery, you know, out with
somebody. We we both had a rough night
last night as a New York fans. Yeah, it's and I'll get it over
and done with. I'm gonna, I'm gonna wrangle
this back in there. We're gonna, we're gonna start
with your 3 here. And we were also joking just
before recording that, you know,as always, the game.
We don't pick the game. We just say to somebody.

(01:53):
We don't tell you like we don't.We want your three favorites of
all time. We don't tell you a theme.
We don't say. We just say give us three games.
Whatever you do, you do, and thetheme of this one I, I was
jokingly saying, is probably about 5° off of what I probably
expected for conversations. For some of these.
We're going to start off with Breath of Fire 2.
Not the original, not Breath of Fire 4, but we're going to two

(02:14):
in Capcom's sadly long forgottenRPG series.
They they someday, along with Mega Man, Capcom will remember
they have this property that they can do something with.
Like they'll make, they'll make another toy, they'll make
another toy or statue and tell you, look at this brand new
content we have this series we all love.
Feel the clip. Eight articles for a whole year

(02:34):
that way. Look at the new Breath of Fire
content they've got. It's just a statue of the
original cover and they're greatand.
There there's, they have their big, you know, their big would,
you know, kind of conference like the, you know, Nintendo
Direct or whatever they're doing, you know, they're and all
the, the fan pages right on all the the lesser social media

(02:56):
channels, just like, oh, maybe we're going to get a Breath of
Fire announcement. I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't be
holding my breath, guys. I can't imagine how depressing
the breath of fire Reddit is. I'm never going to go there
either though, now that I said. Well, they're still talking.
I will probably get a get a notification from Reddit to come
check out the Breath of Fire Reddit.
Oh God. I know, right?
It's yeah. But hey, listen, in all

(03:17):
seriousness though, like you know, Square Enix gets a lot of
the the Square End Enix, I should say, because that was the
the olden days get a lot of the credit for the the Super
Nintendo RPG cycle. But Breath of Fire was right
there with it too. And Breath of Fire too was
towards the end of the SNES lifecycle.
But here we are. Yeah, You know, the more I

(03:38):
review games, right, Because again, I started doing this
gaming off the beaten path thingin like 2019.
It was a combination like a of weird stuff where I never sold
any of my games or traded them in, right.
So I always, I have a huge collection of retro games not
from, you know, farming for themessentially.

(03:59):
I just still have them. You know, I was getting real
tired of like more modern stuff.I was getting too angry playing
online games, right? I was, I was big on Destiny.
It was raging all the time. I couldn't get more than two
games in with PvP without like having it was having legit

(04:19):
impact on my health guys. Especially if you're going in
with random people. Did you have a squad or was it
random people? It was when I went with random
people, forget about it. I would just lose my mind.
With a squad, with my boys, I could at least like, OK, they
would talk me down, right? They'd be like, OK, calm down.
It's just a game where no one isturning pro in anything.

(04:41):
Like just, you know, just relax.Oh, so you are fueling that fire
as much as OK, OK. Fair, we all have.
But we all have one, right? Every everyone's got the online
game that they play. You know, they, even though
they're just angry all the time,while they're yeah, we all find,
we all find one in our life at some point.
So, yeah, so between that and, you know, at work, I had taken
out I'm, I'm a writer, editor, like by trade.

(05:02):
You know, I was a newspaper reporter.
I've done all sorts of hideous stuff.
And I had transitioned into a role that was more straight up
marketing. So I wanted to keep my writing
skills sharp. So I started.
I was like, well, let's write about some games.
I'm playing them anyway. Why not, right?
You know, generate that content.But it got to the point where

(05:23):
it's like, I don't need to tell you or anybody that Super Mario
World's awesome, right? Or that Final Fantasy 7's.
Whoa, whoa. What?
Listen, easy. We're not going to go with the
hot takes here just a little. We're not ready for that kind of
heat here. We don't want to get aggregated
for that please. Yeah, but, but yeah, so, you
know, so I kind of like, I looked through my, my, my

(05:47):
library and I started, you know,started picking out those games.
Like, you know, not too many people outside of myself really
love this game or like, and and we'll get to this a little bit
too, I'm sure. Like, hey, this series used to
be huge during the 5th generation and now it's just
nothing. And to me, exhibit A game for

(06:10):
that was always Breath of fire too, right?
I love this game. It is one of my all time
favourites. It's a personal top five for me.
Just a lot of it was my formative years of RPGs, right?
I've been I was essentially bornwith a controller in my hand.
I've been gaming since as long as I I remember, but this that

(06:34):
was about the time I was starting to get into more story
driven stuff. I was always an avid reader and
so, you know, these games were kind of like, hey, you know,
you're not just jumping on a turtle anymore.
It's like, all right, there's a story and you know, these like
these characters are on this great journey and of course

(06:57):
works an. Emotional connection and yeah.
Absolutely world building and that's that's one of the things
that I think this game does exceptionally right.
Like it really puts you in that world of, you know, you're this
character, this orphan boy who, you know, starts going on a, a,

(07:17):
a, a low budget job to go find somebody's pet pig.
And by the end of it, you're facing your childhood demons,
quite literally your your childhood demons in in Breath of
Fire, too. But you know, again, I and I
love the entire series. It was actually the first game

(07:37):
that kind of led me to this. I saw as many of us discovered
games this way in those days, I saw a spread for the first game
in Nintendo Power. And I was like, you know, I had
played Final Fantasy four or twoas we knew it at that time.
We didn't know. We didn't know what they were
keeping from us. Yeah, I had no idea.

(07:59):
Absolutely none. And I was like, yeah, I really
liked that. I think I want to try this one
next. I actually went to the video
store. I had my parents take me.
I rented the wrong game. I rented Breath of Fire 2
instead of 1. And I was like, you know, this
wasn't what it what I was promised.
But honestly, it's really great.Wow, so it wasn't even the

(08:22):
parents making the error 'cause there's a lot of times where
like you'll see, Oh, there you mom tells grandma, Oh, he wants,
he wants the, the number 2 role-playing game.
He wants some something, something too.
And like next you get, you get the breath of fire too.
Like, oh, that's, that's funny how this happens.
You had no, there was, you had not played breath of fire.
You, you. The Nintendo Power hooked you.

(08:45):
And sure enough, you go and youryour fervor and excitement as a
youth. Just grabbed the first one I
saw. I was like, yeah, that's the
game. I was like, Nope, it wasn't.
But I, I, I, I know that a lot of people really have a lot of
fond memories of the first one. I think the second one kind of

(09:05):
outclasses it in in most ways. Not that the first game is bad
by any means, but just the levelof storytelling in the second
game, you know? Admittedly, the translation is a
little wonky, for lack of a better term, because I I'm
pretty sure that the way this went with Square actually

(09:26):
translated the first game, and for the second one, Capcom
elected to do it themselves. And as much as I love Capcom,
big Resident Evil fan, big Mega Man fan, you know, translating a
full RPG was not something that they were, you know, they were

(09:48):
pretty very familiar. With you also have like cultural
references and things that like you need someone who's nuanced
to understand how to translate those things.
So it's it's, it's never as easyas like, oh, what do you just
have to translate a sentence? Like, no, because they literally
translate something that would be like, oh, the night dove that
flies through the blue sky is actually like a Japanese saying
that means like, I don't forget to tie your shoe.

(10:10):
Like it's just something ridiculous.
Like you, you see something like, what does that even mean?
Like just your mom telling you to tie your shoe.
Like what? What are you talking about?
Like there's stuff like that that happens, so.
Oh yeah. And it's just, it's another
thing I deal with with at work alot is, you know, various
translations and the stuff that gets lost.
People don't understand how, youknow, there's sometimes even

(10:34):
between, yeah, even between American and British English,
things can get completely lost in the cycle.
And when you're translating a game with a fairly complex story
that is, you know, and that's the another thing about Breath
of Fire too as well, is it kind of took on, you know, I'm not
going to go super detailed into it, but you know, it's a very

(10:58):
kind of targeted look at a certain organization that this
actually got me down a big Japanese culture rabbit hole on,
you know, how this organization is becoming a lot more popular
in Japan in recent years. And you know, there's certain.
Yeah, you know, go ahead, you could Google that, kids, and

(11:18):
figure that out here. We'll leave that aside here.
But yeah, understand what you'resaying.
But yeah, and, and that was, youknow, that was very ambitious
for the time, right, nowadays. Well, the the cycles are also so
long now you're like, you can't make a topical reference that's
going to come out six years later.
Either. That's right, right?

(11:39):
It just doesn't happen that way.Did you?
All right, it's not I I have to ask because so you rented this
and this is an RPG that is 30-40hours probably to to play.
Did you just like bang it out? Did you repeat rental?
Did you say no? I got to buy this thing now.
What? Well, I guess, yeah.
What? What happened?

(12:00):
Yeah, it was so one of the benefits of growing up in a
small town where, you know, culturally RPGs were not really
a big thing. And again, remember, this was
the early 90s. You weren't cool for like.
They weren't they weren't big things in big towns.
As someone who grew up in. Philadelphia they were.
Not big things in big towns either, yeah.

(12:20):
But yeah, I, I got about four rentals in before somebody saved
over my my file. And then finally I was like, I,
I have to buy this. I scrounge together every dime
that I could get. You know, it was one of the
things my parents very much tookadvantage of, right.

(12:42):
Oh, you want to earn some money?Well, I've got, I've got chores
around the house that that need to be done so.
Longbow or broke, but I got thispair of scissors boy and it's
got $5. Is your name on it?
Hey, we heated our house with wood.
I chopped a lot of wood. I should not have been that
young holding an axe, but you know.
What a lot of wood and a quarterof a finger.

(13:03):
Yep. Called character building.
So you see. You did, you did.
You got there. They're all there for everybody
who's listening on the audio medium.
They're all present and accounted for.
Well, OK, so you. So you, you scrounged, you saved
you, you put it together to makeit happen, Huh?

(13:24):
Yeah, absolutely. It just like I had to.
This was really one of the first, I would say the first
game that really like spoke to me on like a deeper level.
You know, I consider another Capcom game Mega Man Three, kind
of the reason that I play video games, right?

(13:45):
That was the first one that like, oh, this is so cool.
You know the kid down the streethad it.
David, David say we will be revisiting that whole whole
time, kids. He will be.
He will be coming back to that, I promise.
I will be but but this was the first one that was like, OK,
this seems seems like something more right than just a game.

(14:09):
And then, you know, that kind ofgot me because a lot of this
stuff was rentals, right? I would rent Final Fantasy 2,
Final Fantasy 3, you know, play a couple hours of it and really
enjoy it. And but you know, it was like
you could never get invested. And again, as a kid, right?
You're not entirely sure what's going on sometimes, right?
Like there's different differentreferences that will go over

(14:31):
your head or you know things youdon't understand.
Weird translations. Yeah, so once I got through
this, it was like, I really needto go back and kind of like, you
know, study that some of these games with a with a more
critical eye. And not only that, it, it always

(14:54):
left me with that feeling that every time I played it, I was
missing something. So even when I go back and play
some of these games, I play Breath of Fire 2 every couple
years. Right now that I've got kids
myself, It's, you know, you onlyhave so much time to game and
you got to keep up with the stuff.
The save points were not convenient, yes.
No, absolutely not. Oh, that was, yeah, did not hold

(15:17):
your hands. And especially the the end game
in one of the nastiest final dungeons I think I I've ever
seen in an RPG. It was, you know, it was pretty
brutal. Encounter rate was also through
the roof. I think you don't see any more

(15:37):
either with these things like the random encounters.
I was wondering like when the last time you played this was
and how it was like going back into like just random
encounters. Yeah, thing.
That's one thing that I just, and I tell people this when I I
do reviews. I've even had blog posts.
I think I might have done a podcast episode 2 about like

(15:59):
reviewer by genre bias. You know, certain reviewers like
certain games, right? I love RPGs, but if you don't
you might not feel the same way about this game.
The reason I don't review the Call of Duty series or I don't
do shooters like, yeah, just no,I know I will not care.
Yeah. Right, so you know, I, I say
this too about the you know, I'mgoing to recommend this 30 year

(16:21):
old game, but if your first RPG was, you know, something with
touch base encounters, this might bother you.
It doesn't it? Random encounters have never
bothered me. Gonna give me all the XPI will
farm all the XP you want to giveme.
Bring it on. ABS absolutely, especially if it
has good combat. You know I want to be fighting

(16:44):
right? So, so that's never bothered,
that never really bothered me again until that end game, the,
you know, the final dungeon, because it's been a couple
years. One of the things I'm doing on
my blog is, you know, to kind ofkeep some of those more like big
name games visible. And you know, I, I like a lot of
them too. Is I'm playing through all my 10

(17:04):
out of 10 games, my personal 10 out of 10 games.
And it's, you know, taken me a couple years because a lot of
them are RPGs and I just don't have that much time.
But Breath of Fire too, I have something planned for it and
it's going to be last, so it's going to be a while before I get
to it again. But yeah, you want you wandered
in and here you are now. Yeah, absolutely.

(17:27):
All right, let let's let's try not to get whip last year as we
jump into the future. Wait.
Well the way future but also thefuture of gaming is they use X3,
which you know, they're not numbered games.
So are we talking Human Revolution for this 1 then?
Well, so I really was talking the more the first one.

(17:48):
OK, the original OK the originalgame OK because they're out of
order too. Because human revolutions are
prequel to the original. Like, yeah, so it gets it get
the timeline's weird. That's why I was like, but I
also didn't want to ask because I kind of wanted to hash this
out in the in here. OK, so you're, you're so you're
talking the original Deus Ex, the PC or PS2, Would you?

(18:10):
So another, you know, story. I have a lot of these.
Yeah, he went. He went in to get Breath of Fire
3 and came out with days. So I know Amazon Prime is
basically goodness tries to go to every day.
It's like possible. These guys look similar, but so
at this point now I'm a little bit older, I've got myself some

(18:33):
disposable income and I played this game well after it came
out. I, I was at the point where I
was just going to GameStop and Iwas getting as many PS2 games as
I could find. 3 dollars, four dollars, $5 I would just get
stacks. Oh yeah, 'cause they just
cleared those things out of there and we'll get highest
selling system, but also the highest amount of just games

(18:55):
that were getting turned in. Yeah.
Right, so I you know, I still have my huge PS2 collection and
this game is 4 or 5 bucks. I was like oh that looks cool.
I think I saw a review of that once.
They say never judge a book by its cover, but my God, do we
judge video games by their covers, Right?
Sure. Oh, 100%.

(19:16):
But it's a cool cover, yeah. Yeah, this kind of like
futuristic looking guy. I had just watched Terminator,
like it's like, let's give that a shot.
I was instantly hooked. And you know, I'm not a PC guy,
a big PC guy, but and I'm not also not a big like need to play
the optimal version of the game guy.
As soon as I finished the PS2 version, I immediately went out

(19:39):
and purchased the PC version andplayed through it again on PC.
Well, look at you big shot, having the PS2 and having APC
compatible to be able to play that too.
That's that's no small feat at that point too, because that
thing was hungry. Yeah, Oh, it it was.
And we had actually just gotten a new computer.
We were a very tech averse household.

(20:00):
And that year? We had the collective, my both
my parents, my brother and I hadagreed to give up all Christmas
presents. We're too old for that.
Nobody needs any of it. We're just, we're going to all
pool our money and get the best like family computer we could
possibly afford. And I was like, oh, thank God we

(20:24):
did this because now I can run. I can't run Dave sex And I, you
know, the second one too, which was, you know, less, less
excellent. Still a solid game, but.
Yeah, that's that's the story ofthese games going onward and the
reason why we haven't heard fromit in 12 years or so, give or
take. Yeah, every other game, right.

(20:46):
First one Great Human Revolution, great second one
Mankind Divide or yeah, Mankind Divided.
But yeah, the the first one is it was definitely I get very
ahead of its time. Right?
Like that shooter with RPG elements again, sounds dime a

(21:09):
dozen. Now every game has a RPG.
Elements and the visuals of it too, like it was playing with a
different color palette at the time that if you go back and I
really get every game picks likea brownish goldish, like right,
just trying to show like you're in a dystopia.
It's giving you some brownish, greenish grayish palette.

(21:30):
And I don't know, this was like,no, you didn't have this at the
time. We're coming off of like bouncy,
colorful games galore and like no, we're getting we're getting
dark. Like the PS2 is like, you know,
this is your adult console and like, and again, I reference it
that way, but like PC everythinglike no, it's a it's adult
gaming time. Right.
Even more mature games would have certain levels of like

(21:53):
bright areas and like things that that would pop.
And this just was not like gritty Blade Runner esque, like,
you know, New York City falling apart.
Like, you know, you're dealing with, you know, they, you know,
all sorts of unsavory characters.
You're battling terrorists. But are they really terrorists?

(22:14):
Oh yes, this was another series that I that's why I was kind of
curious if if we were talking about Human Revolution, because
when you base a series off of conspiracy theories and you make
game after game after game, likeat some point the snake is
eating its own tail. And I wholly lost track of the
narrative in this one. Like this is probably one of

(22:35):
those games. Like what?
What series needs a reboot? This is probably, I should
probably go back. I don't think I answered that
quest. I need to go back and answer
with the Davy sex series. Let's just RIP the Band-Aid off
and restart it 'cause I just, yeah, Idus is out there.
They're still trying like a gamegot cancelled this year that
they were working on. They're still out there trying
to to push Davy Sex series and Ithink they need to just RIP the

(22:58):
Band-Aid off and just like just start over guys, just.
Oh yeah. Yeah, because your conspiracies
about conspiracies about like it's just you're layering on and
like, it's so cool the first onetoo, because you get to that and
you find out like, oh, you couldhave at the beginning of the
game stumbled into the conspiracy if you went through a
different door that would make no sense to go through.
And that's cool, but you start layering it, it gets weird, man.

(23:22):
Right, Yeah, well, and and like the, you know, the first game
definitely had its its foot firmly in, you know, the door of
like actual conspiracies. Whereas by the time you get to
to Mankind Divided, it's just completely like.
It's it's Saint Rose as like, yeah, how Saints Row just
becomes like a ludicrous series for those who are aware of that.

(23:44):
Like it goes from like, oh, we're doing like street level
action to know now everybody's asuperhero.
It's kind of like that level of jumping the shark with what
happened. Oh yeah, And I just, it
disappointed me so bad because as you mentioned, the the third
and fourth games are actually prequels to the 1st and 2nd.
And when the 4th game, when Mankind Divided didn't end with

(24:11):
the start of the first game, that's when I was like, all
right, like they needed to closethat loop.
And then just. They're going to try and shovel
wedge in here and do something else, aren't they?
No, no. No, there, there wasn't that
much, that much time even in in the in the timeline of the
story. Like they're already at the end

(24:32):
of that game. They're already referencing
like, you know, Paige and you know, the Denton project and all
that. And it's like there's not a
whole nother game in between here.
There's not that much that we need to know.
Just, you know, start us with, you know, the end of of second
game, Invisible War. That's the second game, you

(24:52):
know, or even give us a whole new story entirely.
Just stop doing whatever this is.
Yes, it was time to it was time to move on, but still just like
again, something where I I I kind of want to go back and I
probably have it on GOGI feel like this is one that's on GOG.
It's always on GOG. It was like a free.
Amazon Prime game. I think I'm pretty.

(25:12):
I have at least two of them on there probably.
Yeah, so I have so many of them and Saints Row, they both, they
toss them. All in Saints Row.
I have like 3 copies of every Saints Row for.
I've never paid for a single onebetween three different sets of
Yeah. And just yeah, I just went
through and I probably annoyed my wife because the Prime emails
go to her and I just like, oh, Igot like 12 games to click on

(25:33):
Prime. Let me go ahead and just gather
those in her phone. Probably just while she's trying
to work to go. Yeah.
I got yelled at because how muchdid you pay for this?
Nothing you. Got the receipt there.
Absolutely nothing. Yeah, through dollars.
Don't ask me how the economics of this work.
They're just trying to get me into their ecosystem and 330

(25:55):
games in the Epic leader, I still haven't bought a single
game in that ecosystem, but I'llplay their games.
It's just yeah. Anyway, let's go to one that an
entirely different history and narrative to it legacy wise.
But I'm kind of curious how you wandered into to Legend of
Lagaya after hearing that the video store was apparently the

(26:16):
driver of your first 2 answers here.
Is is that what happened here? No.
So this was. It wasn't a Nintendo Power.
I knew that. No, that it was that it was not,
you know, again, this is kind ofbetween these two games, right?
Where you know, I'm not little, you know a young kid anymore

(26:38):
with Breath of Fire, but I'm notthat teenager, you know, with
Daew sex by this point I'm a full blown RPG addict, right?
If if I see that double disc. And you're eating good on the
plane between the end of the Super Nintendo and the
PlayStation era, you were eatinggood.
Yeah, we got a Final Fantasy every year, 9798992000.

(27:03):
You people understand. Like we had four Final Fantasies
in four years, now we get one every decade.
Right. And they and their action games,
not RPGs. No, they're not.
I agree. And like all this growth too,
like every time I see that, you know, that that give, you know,
or what meme or whatever you want to call it of like Final
Fantasy 7 versus 10. And it's like these games came

(27:25):
out four years apart. Yeah, like real, meaningful,
just crazy growth in genre and thanks to Final Fantasy 7, you
weren't getting stuffed in lockers anymore For for saying
that you like the stuff so it. Was like it was like when Star
Wars became popular like wait a second, why are the normal
people saying they like Star Wars now or like after JJ Abrams

(27:47):
Star Trek Like wait why are people what did Chris Pine do to
Star Trek that I'm not getting shoved in a locker in my 30s
now? What is this?
All the, all the because I was 9when Final Fantasy all about to
be 10 when Final Fantasy 7 came out and all the sudden it was
just like all those kids, you know, that kids that would

(28:09):
harass me for, you know, you know, you like all that nerd
stuff. It's like, bro, bro, you got to
check out this game, right? There's this guy with this big
sword and it is a guy and his arms are gone.
Again, judging a book by its cover, it's just him staring off
into the horizon with a giant Buster sword on his shoulder and
like, that's all people needed. Right.

(28:30):
And so now, like you said, you're eating good with RPGs.
You know, they're, they're starting to localize games that
they never ever would have thought of localizing in the
Super NES days, in the, you know, 5th Gen. day or 4th Gen.
days. So I see this thing at the store
with the and I'm like, huh, thisis cool.

(28:51):
This looks different. And I actually passed it by.
I got a demo disc and I don't even remember where it was from.
And this was a thing in the PlayStation, original
PlayStation era of these, like, right Battle Arena.
Toshinden was one of them that like, I remember there was that

(29:11):
and a couple others like you just got in like magazines and
stuff like Game Pro, just like, oh, here's a disc attached.
Or like PlayStation would just like mail you like, oh, here's a
demo disc. Here's a demo disc that comes
with like a random game. Yeah.
Yeah, that demo dude, that purple one with Toshindin, I
remember that one very well. But this was like a standalone
thing. I don't even remember where it
was from. And you know, I'm also, I'm a

(29:33):
big lover of fighting games. So when I first saw that combat
system where you know, it's not exactly fighting game combos,
but you know, the way it works is you'll get you'll go to
attack and rather just than justattacking, you'll have, you
know, up, down, left, right. And you can, you know, enter
input a combo. And if you do it correctly,

(29:55):
you'll do like a special move and you can eventually learn
super moves. But it's weird.
It also had that, you know, thisis post Pokémon now where you're
not capturing the monsters, but how you would learn magic here
is certain enemies would have a little elemental symbol.
And if you defeated those enemies, there was a chance that

(30:16):
you would absorb that spell, right?
And you could summon that that creature to help you.
Oh, careful talking about summoning creatures because
otherwise the Nintendo's going to rise.
This was around 30. Years ago, and that one too
come. On we.
Got to re record. We got to re record this guys.
I'm sorry I. Sorry censor, I apologize for
the censor button of the last two minutes had nothing to do

(30:37):
with pending legal matters of the Nintendo.
Go on all. Right.
Well, now that we've avoided litigation.
Yeah, we just really hurt their case of saying like, Oh no, so
many monsters. That's absolutely our system.
Shut up. No, this is not.
This. Is not the system that's like
buried at Warner Brothers now because they did actually make
that happen. But no.
Have they packed CART racing yet?

(30:58):
Don't give them ideas. Seriously, that was a bad
choice. Is Garfield Cart 2 just came out
last week and now you're going to bury that one, Ray?
Thank you. But first of all, that game's
already got a lower score in theworld.
Everyone listen to you. Everybody can go.
You can go go play your Sonic racing game for two months and
then when no one plays it, come you come let me know.
And this is the first and I don't even care about Mario Kart

(31:20):
and it's. Like you shouldn't get aerial.
Apostle round I'll get back to sorry, sorry you got sorry
they're celebrating and and 83. And the demo just was purely a
thing of that, like that PlayStation era because also,
like I can't emphasize enough again, you sound like the level
of nerd where I was where you you were getting the game game

(31:43):
pro or something. Oh, yeah.
And you were following along like, huh, Sony's actually going
to make this PlayStation thing. And like we're coming out of,
you know, you're still in the middle of Sega, Nintendo R the
console wars. There was the Philips CDI.
They were like, OK, whatever. The Atari like my son saw an
Atari Jaguar in the, the game store the other day.

(32:04):
He's like, what is that? I'm like actually the the Neo
Geo was the one that was like 1000 dollars, $800 or $1000 back
then or something. But yeah, it was ridiculous,
which those games are excellent,but man, that was.
Yeah, we, we saw all these like third tier consoles come along
and die. And like Jaguar was Atari too.
So I'm not trying to like disparage it in that regard.

(32:24):
Like it was Atari, but Atari wasalso kind of like whatever, but
like, yeah, you see the Phillip,you see the Phillips CDI come
along and just dies with a whimper.
Didn't even come with a bang, just died with a whimper.
Like OK, well what's PlayStationgoing to do?
So there was the combination of them, like coming in, be like,
no, this isn't a kids toy. You're here.
We're here for the big boy games.

(32:45):
And then also like because of CDs being so cheap to produce,
they just figured out this way to put like 5 games that were
unique to the PlayStation on these demo discs.
And like, you played them because you only had like, it
wasn't like, now we're, you know, kids today MM is of access
to a bunch of like just ancient games and, and all that.

(33:07):
But like, no, you didn't have that.
So these demo discs were huge. No.
And it you, you had to play whatyou had.
I mean, I grew up 30 minutes, probably 45 from the closest
Funko land, you know, So it was.And that was not walking
distance. Yeah, no.
Like you had to, you know, I'm I'm begging my parents to drive

(33:29):
me because I'm still, you know, young at this point.
So you, you had to play what youhad.
I spent so much time on demo disand but they were great because
you would discover stuff like legend of Lagaya where you know
this wasn't a square RPGI think like if you follow the the the
money of like pro coin or pro Keon or whoever, it was actually

(33:52):
like an in house thing. Yeah, it was.
It was. So it was basically in house for
Sony or like it was at least contracted by a Sony like the
the connections there to your point like if you follow the
money it was exclusive to Sony. Yeah, So, you know, it was like
how how will this be? And I just again, it's another
like really great world buildinggame for me.

(34:13):
I'm big, I love world building. And it's how like you've got
this ominous threat of this mistthat will make the these
creatures go insane. Like any, you know, any human
that's melded with them will also go insane.
And just how the different places in the world deal with
the mist. The one town, you know, the von,
the protagonist hometown builds a huge wall because they don't

(34:36):
know what else to do. You have the one that everyone
just decides to go live underground.
There's the one you get to laterin the game, the soul tower
where the mist is. The way the game explains it is
the mist is lighter than the air.
And this tower is 25 floors. So as long as you stay above the
18th floor, you're golden, you know, So people just never go

(34:58):
downstairs, you know, and, and it eventually leads to, you
know, stopping this mist and learning like where it came
from. And it's actually, you know, Do
we give spoiler alerts for 30? Or it's it's listen, the statue
of limitations is 1/4 century I think, so we're good.
Yeah, that that essentially thisis all man made, right.

(35:23):
And I I think it was very different and ambitious in its
own sort of way from what was happening at the time, you know,
with like the Final Fantasy games even where, you know, they
had essentially gone full sci-fiat that point, right.

(35:44):
And you're, you know, a lot of people were trying to chase that
whole like stone cold murk that learns to love, you know?
Well, yeah, yeah, they were headon the steampunk in sci-fi.
Like that was always their theirelement was always there, right?
It just continued to grow. Yeah.
So, you know, this was a a little more traditional, kind of

(36:04):
like traditional fantasy, but italso had it's like steampunk
elements to it. You know, the one I had I
remember going to with like the giant windmills.
It had a great soundtrack too. It's just, you know, very earthy
for, for lack of a better term. I, you know, I, I'm not, I love
music, but I'm not a musician. So I don't know any better way

(36:26):
to describe it than that. But you're you're among friends
in that case. We have done several music,
really a podcast. And they just go like, oh,
that's very cool. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, no, yeah, some of the last, the one a few weeks ago,
the I don't recall the name of the guest.
It was awesome, but like you could I, I could tell, like I
really want to hear what you have to say, but you were on

(36:47):
such a different level than me when it comes to this stuff,
which is good, you know, but I know a good video game
soundtrack when I I hear one andlegend of the guy, it definitely
had one, you know, a very underrated villain as well, you

(37:08):
know, Kourt and Sanji, you know,all those villains, you know,
again, I hate to keep bringing up Final Fantasy 7, but for a
lot of of people at the time, that was their base in RPGs in
a, you know, everything was getting, you know, compared to

(37:28):
that, you know, I love it myself.
I'm not A7 hater. It's probably 1 of if breath of
Fire 2's not that might be my favorite game of all time, but
you know, that was the frame of reference for a lot of people.
So. Did you did you dive into two at
all for Lagaya and and all time fall off the Cliff as far as

(37:50):
like the the creatives were all whacked.
I have even more, yeah. I have I got so before the the
blogging days. I got about halfway through it
and now that I'm doing this because that's his off the
beaten path, I feel like as it gets right, like that's one of
those like epitome of what I'm trying to cover.

(38:11):
It's it's hitting in a vault fora reason, yeah.
Right, yeah. And unfortunately for for that,
yeah, it's definitely the combatis at least still there.
And that was kind of what was pulling me through, pulling me
through last time. But it's like, I know I have to
play through it, but I'm not sure I really want to.

(38:32):
No, there's no good like 'cause it's not even like a finished
game. Basically it's I, I, I did not
get far in it, but my understanding is like it's, it's
almost an unfinished game. Don't.
Don't waste your time. Yeah, I know, right.
It's it's things are getting so and and you know, I will say I'm
starting to get way more into modern games again, right.

(38:53):
Like, I feel like I was like, oh, I am done with a lot of
this, you know, this stuff. It's just not interesting me.
But now all of a sudden it's like this RPG revival, you know,
you're getting all these. I finally got my hands on
Expedition 33. I I need that, that remember
that save point thing in time. Yeah, that's another.

(39:13):
It's it's that and metaphor refund Tazio that I'm like, I, I
don't have, I get like 15 minutechunks to be able to do these
things and I can't leave the place that like I can't leave
the same station state in the PlayStation because the kids are
going to use the PlayStation. So I can't just leave it.
I can't leave it running. Can't do it.
My boys are on Astrobot hard, like if they see that thing on

(39:36):
like, can I play Astrobot? And because mine are still
pretty young, but yeah, I, I, I can't, can't for the life of me
get time on the PlayStation Now.They have completely monopolized
my PlayStation five. I was like, yeah, it's a night.
It was a nice gift I got once. Did did you see of stars?

(39:59):
That's the one that I. I did, yeah.
I, I, I played Sea of Stars and Chained Echoes.
That's actually one of my best. My best viewed or I'd rather
listen to episode is actually a comparison between Sea of Stars
and Chained Echoes. I did it with almost like a
boxing match, right? 10 rounds, 10 categories and you

(40:23):
know, winner gets 10 points, loser gets 9 or less.
So that I definitely I really enjoyed both of those games and
like they definitely went a longway and kind of hooking me.
It was those two and like a dragon.

(40:44):
Oh wow. And that went a long way.
And hooking Like a Dragon had a lot more of that.
Like modern game. I don't like this kind of stuff
with the amount. Of there's so much in those.
Games right like I that that game single handedly broke me of
being a completionist right likethat broke that habit, Jay.

(41:06):
Klein went from perking up a bitand hearing the Like a Dragon
series to feeling sad again. Yeah, I was like, no, I will not
This this Kart racing game actually seems kind of fun.
I do not have time. I'm trying to make get content.
I have all these kids. They're starting to have

(41:26):
activities now like no more. I'll I'll do the you know, I'll
do the side quests when they come to me, but there's my my
chance of 100% in this are or nothing.
But I really did like the main story.
I I liked how the main story wasserious but like the side

(41:46):
missions were just so. Just out there, it's all the
time. Yeah, completely goofy and, you
know, just ridiculous. But, you know, those three were
kind of like big on getting me back on the the the modern game
train. And now we talk about a couple
of extra games. And you know, after saying the

(42:07):
modern games, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Dan.
I screw the timing up on that. Darn it, Dan is trying to mess
me up in these notes. Hold on.
I was like wait, but now I don'tknow.
Dan changed my whole thing out there.
It's back. It's back.
Dan tried to change. My notes and mess me up and like
pulling out a meta joke for for an episode that no one's even

(42:32):
heard yet and he's throwing in another he's throwing in a joke
in this episode. Now, now I'm all over the place.
So as soon as JD talked about we're going to do modern gaming,
we we jump and we say we're going to talk about Fallout 2.
No, we're we're how did you go fallout in Borderlands again,

(42:52):
Ray It had a week. It's been a it's been a week.
It's been a day or a week. Ray What?
Are you talking about paging thetitle of the notes?
I I can't. I for some reason so so people
understand now, and I apologize JD for this now.
He has no idea. A week before your.
Episode releases when it will have released this Wednesday.
What was recorded yesterday for us?

(43:14):
Somehow Ray messed up Borderlands for Fallout and and
started talking about like he was interchanging them.
And when your list had Borderlands on it, I was like,
I'm going to give Ray, I'm goingto tell Ray it's Fallout 2 and
just and just carry this bit that you have no idea what's
going on. That will have been a week ago

(43:35):
now. And I'm prepared to discuss
this, Ray and I. I don't know what Borderlands 2.
I wrote a bunch of notes about Fallout 2 ready for you.
He was going to do this and thisis This was how committed to the
string I. Trusted the Google doc.
I trusted the Google doc. And yes, I have notes so I have

(43:58):
an like thought process. So Fallout 2.
I have to be careful because nobody's going to laugh so hard
and pass out. I have separate notes prepared
because I also was like, I have to prepare to talk about
Borderlands 2. I don't.
Know anything about? Borderlands ready for anyway.
By the way, I don't know anything about Fallout 2 either.
I learned a whole bunch about the other.

(44:20):
Part is, I know when Ray opened the notes, he goes, why the heck
did they give me Fallout? Fallout's his department, not
mine. But he also saw the RPGs.
Really. OK, fine.
I just got it by default. Yeah, I just got got it by
default and I screwed it up. I hit it too.
Soon the late 90s games it fallslike 9898.

(44:42):
And Fallout 2 falls into that like you're 5° off of either
people talking about 3 New Vegasor 4 like any last.
Three would qualify. That was exactly my whole
conversation was gonna. Be And this was just purely so I
could play a joke on Ray JD and I'm sorry for that to you, but I
promise you the week long wait for this joke punchline is going
to be worth it to somebody besides me.

(45:05):
And I can't wait for when Jedi or O22 or Jay Klein is my
money's on. One of the three of them.
To be the first to to go and pick up on that and.
I have to say I've actually beenwatching a lot of Fallout 2
content because I'm kind of getting myself prepared to play

(45:27):
that because like you said, it fits with my.
You know, five years off, like, yeah.
This, you know, late 90s. Hurt PG I'm I'm gonna put my
notes out there 'cause like you may, I came up with the whole
notes of Fallout 2. As someone who had never played
it in Fallout 3 with the 3/4 ISOgame, probably, yeah, no idea.
I was like, Oh my, in my hand. I was like, oh, this is like

(45:48):
Grand Theft Auto 2 'cause they actually came out at the same
time. It's that like just that
different overview. And what a jump.
Listen. We go in Grand Theft Auto 3.
That's great. In your notes, Ray.
I had so much preparation, the reputation.
System this is worth. It new system.
This is worth it for the punchline, for someone out there

(46:09):
will appreciate this punchline coming.
It will be delayed by It's a dayfor you, but a week for
everybody else. Go talk about Borderlands 2.
I don't know anything about Borderlands 2.
I barely, I barely knew about Borderlands 3 yesterday when we
talked about it, or 4, whicheverone we talked about yesterday.
So so I am kind of curious because Borderlands 2.
This is probably the the most onpoint game you have on your list

(46:32):
cuz. People love Borderland, I just
have not played. Well, and I think between two or
three, you probably won't get, you're probably not gonna get a
that's the wrong answer for the Borderlands series of the game.
I'm gonna talk about with this one either, but Borderlands
choose her based. Not a based combat.
Not based like I roll here, no. No reputation system like I

(46:56):
wrote here. No, nothing like that.
Didn't lose, didn't lose. They didn't lose to Baldur's
Gate because apparently. This all because chicken burping
wanted to talk about tiny teen as Wonderlands yesterday and
somehow it was a spin off that Iwasn't even.
It wasn't even Borderlands proper and Ray started talking
about Fallout and that. Was a fall.
I knew it was a spin off. I thought it was a fallout.

(47:18):
And here, a week later, I get todrop an elbow, a punchline that
this is that this is that will work for maybe nobody else for
me, now that I think about it. And I don't care.
But Borderlands 2, JD, let's getback to you.
Ray's because it's all about himfor some reason, but well, so so
Borderlands 2. Did you play Borderlands one
first of all? Because I the comparison points
are certainly something to talk about here.

(47:39):
I did and you know, this, this one, I is more a situation where
I didn't I liked, didn't love Borderlands 2 or Borderlands 1.
Excuse me, I liked it. I had a friend that I played
with going, you know, we've beenfriends since we were kids.
You know, we're both RPG guys, so for whatever reason he

(48:01):
Borderlands 1 he really loved. So when 2 was coming out, he
started peer pressuring me and to get it, you know, into buying
it because he wanted somebody toplay it with one.
Of the squad. I've done the same thing.
You have to buy this game. He's he's like, I will buy it
for you. I was like, no, I'm not letting
you do that. If you really want like I had, I

(48:23):
had just. I don't want the obligation.
I don't want you to give me an obligation, no.
Like I, I will pay for it with my own money.
I had just finished college. He was, he, we had both just
finished college. He was starting law school.
I went and got myself a job. But so, you know, pick up
Borderlands 2 and instantly, like, I was like, all right,

(48:44):
it's still got the game play that, you know, sometimes you
just like to, you know, do a little shooting.
I I like that whole looting donealmost dungeon crawling right?
Yeah, it's it's borders on a rogue like Dungeon Crawley.
Yeah, the the way you go about it, just trying to get the loot
pieces together, Yeah. Right.
But this like the characters just felt a little more

(49:05):
balanced. I've, I've always been a siren
player, you know, Lilith in one,Maya in two, and you know,
Lilith would get to the point where she was so overpowered,
where you would just walk into groups of enemies, come out of
your phase lock or phase walk and just break the game
basically. And that was fun for a little
while, but it's like, OK, well, this power seems a little more

(49:28):
balanced. I mean, you know, and, and at
the time we didn't know all the degenerate things you could do
with Salvador. But you know, at the time it
felt balanced. There was a little bit more
narrative, right? Like, you know, it kind of I
always a. Lot, a lot, a bit more
narrative, I think. Right, and like they did it in

(49:48):
such a way where they almost expanded on the characters from
Borderlands one. It's almost like a their story
through the eyes of the new vault hunters, you know, where
Roland and and Lilith and Mordecai and Brick get all this
development and you know, we're learning about what they did

(50:10):
after they opened the vault and they're this resistance group
now and they're fighting this new, you know, this new villain
that you he kind of set you up basically, right?
You learn the origins of Angel and all, you know, all that
stuff. Handsome Jack, just an
absolutely despicable villain, right, Just and and different to

(50:34):
right, you know, not that brooding the way like we had in
the last couple games we've beentalking about that brooding like
RPG, you know. Shadow over everything.
Feeling Yeah, this is just like that person that we all know
that you just want to knock out except he's in charge of a

(50:57):
massive corporation and throws people into a parts grinder for,
you know his own personal enjoyment like just an
absolutely great villain that I love to hate.
You know the game is huge, way bigger than the first way more
variety in in locations than thefirst, right?

(51:18):
It not all sand and and dunes, which that setting is kind of
compelling to me, but when it's area after area after area like
that. I like seeing a little color,
yeah. Right.
You know, when you're going fromthe the, the southern shelf and
with the ice and you're in the city with Sanctuary, you've got
the Highlands, which is green and you've got your dust.

(51:39):
And, you know, having somebody to play with.
I'm not a big multiplayer games guy, but it was just nice to be
able to, to play by myself, but also squat up with somebody and
squat up with people from time to time.
And, you know, talk about, hey, did you get this loot?

(52:02):
Yeah. I've been farming this boss for
10 hours, and I finally got one to drop.
Well, yeah, well, I got one to drop the first time the raid
bosses. Loved, loved the raid bosses.
And you know, and it's such a a point where it's like, all
right, when you first meet them,you first meet Terren Morphus or
Pyro Pete or whatever you need your whole squad, you're all

(52:25):
four of you to take this guy down.
And eventually you just get so into the game, so good at the
game. You learn all the glitches
because as you know, as we, we learned more and more about this
game, all that balance I talked about that it initially felt
like it had went out the window and you start taking down raid

(52:46):
bosses by yourself, right, You know, and there's always, always
something to farm for, you know,perfect parts.
And that's not something that isnormally compelling to me, but
for some reason I can just kill the same boss over and over
again in Borderlands on my, you know, my main character, but

(53:09):
then also go back and start a new with somebody else and, you
know, experience the story again, learn a completely new
play style. I I think everybody is different
enough that like, it really makes each playthrough feel
different. I feel like I'm always
discovering something unique on each playthrough.

(53:30):
I do like, hi, I never noticed this over here, you know, and it
might be something small, right?It's not always like a big game
breaking. Like what do you mean?
There's a Minecraft Easter egg, you know, but it's like, oh, I
never knew that echo was over there.
That vault symbol was over there.
So you know, it just I love my old school games and I mean I

(53:58):
guess guess at this point Borderlands 2 sort of old school
as well. Yes, 13 years old now.
That's right, terrifying part. Yeah, I know, right.
I was. Yeah, as as I talk about quote
UN quote modern, but. Way back on the Xbox 360, the
PlayStation Three, yeah. Back when we weren't sure if our

(54:18):
systems would turn on because ofthe red ring, you know?
I'm safer on PlayStation 3 than I was on.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's those.
There were some great games, butthose they all those consoles
were terrible hardware. Yeah, they I I just got to shout

(54:38):
the rating for two, which I I did not realize until I was
doing the research preparing to cover for that joke on Ray that
Ashley Birch's brother Anthony Birch with this and like bottled
Handsome Jack off of himself. He said it's just like a a
complete a whole personality wise.
And I'm like, Oh, this, this allmakes because like I also want

(55:00):
to understand too. They would be 1 and 2 because I
feel like there's a lot more personality into.
And apparently he was like just the main writer for two as
because there were like 3 or 4 people that wrote the first one.
So probably just kind of like ina room throwing stuff together,
like, OK, I can see where the personality's here.
And like they just knew what worked with the first game about

(55:21):
just like make the extreme personalities and let it like
just fill the world. And they kind of just let it
work and like made the world, like you said, made everything
bigger, made everything more fun.
And like, I don't know how they did it.
They're like they made the gameplay loop more fun too, like
for chasing the loot boxes and stuff.
And like how they got the multiplayer.
Like there's just something about like what they did with it

(55:41):
all that made it all come together that that's really
cool. I think it's just the sheer
amount of like interesting loot that drops, right?
There's so many drop sources forlike the legendary stuff and
that you're always bound to likeget something right.
It may not be that like top end,you know, unkempt Harold
Norfleet, like those, you know, big time the B shield or

(56:05):
whatever it is, you know, legendaries that everybody's
chasing. But and you can get it right
away. Like I feel like with the first
game, like you were lucky to seeanything drop.
I think the DLC was a little bitmore interesting.
You know, the first game had hadsome cool stuff, but, and the
second one definitely had some weird, you know, weird DLC as

(56:28):
well. But the whole Dungeons and
Dragons thing with Tiny Tina andall the the characters playing
D&D together, it's just like yousaid, just so much more
personality. It was.
The first game felt like it was written by video game writers,
and the second game felt like itwas written by, like you said,

(56:49):
like a writer, right? Here Yeah, he he was a video
game reviewer at one point also too, and like just, you know,
lifelong gamer. So he just kind of he kind of
got it. What?
He right to do with it. All right, now we jump to WCW
First NDNWO World Tour on the onthe Nintendo 64.

(57:10):
Right. Now I had to.
I had to look this up. No, this was this was actually.
Can't use something right now this I had to look up I didn't
know there there are 10 wrestling games they came out on
Nintendo 64 on a system that waslike had like a four to five
year lifespan somehow had 10 wrestling games on it.

(57:32):
I mean, the hype of of Monday Night Wars at Nitro and, you
know, the end of the attitude area or kind of like the, you
know, right there in the middle of it into the next one.
And we've got WCW versus NWO World Tour, the grappling
system. Yeah, and it's just, you know,
I'm that was the one like cool thing that I was like I've was

(57:57):
and still am a big wrestling fan.
I'm actually, you know, I was like an amateur wrestler, you
know, got into jiu jitsu and allthat stuff because I was a
nerdy, scrawny kid and I had to learn how to defend myself.
And you know, that kind of came from watching wrestling, you
know, WCWWCW House, right? I know we were Northerners,

(58:18):
right, But the Sling promotion, but we were WCW House, you know,
full on, you know, quote UN quote marks, right, Boo, the
NWO. We, you know, just hated them.
You know all about Sting and cuzit was so cool, right?

(58:38):
Like you had to be there during the Monday Night Wars to really
experience some of the They weren't even half the time they
weren't even wrestling. Right.
I mean that you were that you really started putting the like
the storylines and the drama that that kind of really taking
over today. But you saw it there like we're,

(58:59):
we're just, we're watching a show and then and then once in a
while they wrestle. Right, just to the pop that
would happen when Sting would not even say a word and he would
just take the baseball bat and point it at Hogan's chest and
the crowd would absolutely go completely insane.

(59:20):
And you know, it was as popular as it had ever, ever been.
And you know with the rowing technology in games.
I love pro wrestling on the NES,but like it's a really fun video
game, but it doesn't really approximate Pro wrestling,
right? Or like, you know, WWF, the

(59:41):
arcade game for the, I think it was on the PlayStation Saturn.
And also I had on a Super Nintendo, but that was basically
a fighting game with WWF. Now WWE guys, like this was one
of the first times that it really felt like a wrestling
game, right? Because like as you mentioned,
the grappling system, you know, heavy grapple versus weak

(01:00:03):
grapple, all the guys had their signature moves.
You could hit Scorpion, Deathlock, Jackknife, Razor's
Edge, Outsider Edge, whatever you want to call it.
I was always a big fan of the cruiserweights.
As a skinny kid, I was like, hey, this little 5 foot 5 dude
in a mask, you know, Rey Mysterio, Yeah, who's still

(01:00:26):
doing it. It was 1617 years old at the
time. And like, hey, maybe I could do
that. And then I realized I wasn't
athletic and couldn't. But you know, a young Chris
Jericho back before his current days when he was, you know,
bouncing off the ropes and then flying around the ring like a
crazy, The Lionheart, you know, those guys were all the game.

(01:00:48):
And you know, one of the reasonsI, I decided to go with, well,
I'll give 2 reasons why I decided to kind of go with World
Tour over revenge. Number one is the AII think the
AI in Revenge is very cheap. I think the world, the AI in
World Tour is a little more fair.
But as I became, you know, 'cause I'm a nerd at heart and I

(01:01:10):
have to become a nerd at everything.
And as the Internet became a thing, so did my access to other
wrestling promotions. You know those I know we've got
some Philly area, you know, folks here, Ring of Honor.
You know, I was going to a lot of Ring of Honor shows in the,
you know, the aughts. I watched CM Punk wrestle in

(01:01:31):
front of 50 people at the EdisonConvention Center in, in New
Jersey. You know, I, I watched Seth
Rollins when he was Tyler Black and you know all all that.
But I also started getting into like Japanese promotion, New
Japan, All Japan. A lot of those guys that are are

(01:01:52):
in World Tour that you know, because you had the WCW and NWO
guys, but it was adapted from a Japanese wrestling game and they
just took all of the New Japan guys, took their names off and
called them something else. I didn't know that when I was 10
when it came out or a ladder. I think it was closer to 12, but

(01:02:13):
going back I'm like, oh, that's Hayabusa, that's Misawa like.
And so it kind of give it almostaged better than the the roster.
And there's a couple of those guys in the in the revenge
roster, but it almost like aged better than revenge's roster.
And again, you know, no Mercy and WrestleMania 2000 are great

(01:02:35):
too. The same grappling system.
And it was cool that they had entrance music, but I was just
never like a AWWFWWE guy. I've gotten more into it in in
recent years. You know, that was, I had a
little dip of it and then I, I sort of picked up with them.
I turned on Nitro, what was supposed to be Nitro when there

(01:02:56):
was a movie playing and I was like, what's going on here?
And then I turned, yeah, I flipped over to USA just in time
for I now own WCWI can't do the back voice, but it's.
A great. Music man.
Yeah, yeah, So, yeah, that. And then I was like, well, I

(01:03:21):
guess this is what I'm watching now because, yeah, I wonder how
they're going to, how they're going to treat our, our oh,
look, it's TDP, another Jersey guy.
Oh, yeah. He they completely buried him.
Great, you know. It's funny when you talk about
how the like that this game agedis somewhat better way, but at

(01:03:42):
this game it was just gameplay, right?
There's there's no story. They don't even have belts.
They they raised, they have trophies when you win like their
their tournaments. It it was just, hey, this is
here's a like a new system, essentially, here's a new
wrestling system and here's a game and, and you're just going
to enjoy the gameplay and hopefully we'll build from here.

(01:04:02):
Right, like you just, you know, completely the into that that
Japanese mindset. And, you know, like you said
that I remember playing it with other kids from the
neighborhood. It's like, why is he holding a
trophy? And I remember that, like I said
at the time, thinking the same thing, like where's his belt?
Where's the belt? Oh, it makes it as I got older,
it made more sense. But yeah, they just and almost

(01:04:25):
from the ground up, just completely built a I think it
still holds up today. And it even held up for non
wrestling fans. Like that was one of the not
shared interests I had with my that was my brother and I were
both big wrestling guys. Like that was more, you know,
the shared interest he and I had.

(01:04:45):
But I could get my friends to play, you know, WCW World Tour
any day because it was just suchaddictive gameplay, easy to
learn, like it's to what, Grapple strike run, but very
difficult to really master. And you know that that is to me,
like, again, this is the that game reviewer hat talking.

(01:05:09):
Like that's one of those objective markers of game
quality, right? Like, yes, you can pick up and
play it and anybody could. My son picked up and played it
the other day. But you're not a master that
game, right? It takes some learning to
actually get good at it. I'm going to jump there.

(01:05:31):
We talk about games that you can't just be good at.
We, we've got Mega Man 3 here. We one.
We don't talk about Mega Man 3. I don't.
I don't know if anyone's broughtup Mega Man 3.
We, we, we have because that's, that's Bitstads.
Bitstads is 3 / 2. Yeah, his is because I'm, I'm a
two guy. He's a three guy, yeah.

(01:05:52):
I all I I only, I only think about it because, you know, Mega
Man three if finally we get and I guess I must have said this
for it the first time they hiredan artist that that knew what
the game was. Right, Yeah.
Blue guy was a gun. Blue guy was a gun.
Got it. Blue guy was a gun.
He could actually, we actually have Mega Man his little blaster

(01:06:16):
on on the boxer and not dude who's yellow for not yellow guy
with a gun or or second game or yellow guy like just shooting a
laser gun and say like we've we finally got Mega Man here.
Quick, man. And as a guy in purple spandex
with a boomerang on his head, no, this was a real proper game

(01:06:39):
cover. And that was one of the things
that drew me in. You know, this was another game
that the kid, one of the kids down the street owned.
And I was very young at the time, but you know, the Super
NES had been out. But this was also a time that
not everybody had a video game system, right?

(01:07:02):
You kind of had what you got. I ended up with a second hand
NES. My cousin received a Sega
Genesis for his birthday or something.
And as was with many families atthe time, there was a one system
per household rule. So I got handed down in NES with
a couple games and, you know, most of them were cool.

(01:07:24):
It kept my attention. But I, you know, I played Super
Mario Brothers dozens of times. You know, most of those games
have been out 7-8 years at this point.
But I played Mega Man 3 for the first time and it was, it was
those little victories. Like you can pick your own
level. It's not just like level 1,

(01:07:47):
level 2, you can choose any of these guys and they look pretty
cool. And like there's, you know,
Sparkman, who was the first one I picked and, you know, he's got
this level with all these like blinking lights and, you know,
zaps of electricity, all sorts of stuff going on in the
background, You know, just constant simulation, always

(01:08:10):
running and shooting, having to move and but also, you know,
having to slow down and actuallythink about what you were doing
at times. Right.
I think Mega Man, all the games really do a really great job of
giving you good variety of running gun and also running gun
platforming and like almost some, you know, strategy, you

(01:08:33):
know, obnoxious Yoku block sections not notwithstanding.
But yeah, this was, this was themoment and I, as I alluded to
before, that I just, I was, I knew I was a gamer, like I was
hooked for life, like it was always going to be something I
did. But this was what got me on the

(01:08:55):
path of like, this is my primaryhobby.
So what what was it about this? Like you said, you had played
Mario stuff. So like, so yeah, I can play
platformers, I can do this. And obviously we're not in the
RPG stage yet. So So what what happens with
Mega Man 3 that you like this? I like I have to play games now.

(01:09:15):
You know, I just, it always feltto me like I was making
progress, no matter how many times I died.
And anyone that's played it knows that's, you know,
frequently And but I just like, I always felt like I, I was
making progress. One of the games that that came

(01:09:36):
with my NES was Battletoads. And you know, again, there's no
Internet. I didn't know what the heck I
was getting into. I'm a 5-6 year old kid, probably
not even 5 yet. And she's like, oh, this cool
game with the frogs, right? And it's just like you get to
that second level and that there's that wall.
No Silver Surfer, another notoriously difficult game that

(01:10:00):
came with my dad. You just played Silver Surfer,
didn't you? That thing is unplayable.
It's absurd. Like you, you can't be that
without a Game Genie. Like I, I, I, I want to see
anybody who tells me they can dootherwise.
One of my early blog posts is one of the only times I've ever
attempted to do video was me recording myself trying to be

(01:10:22):
the level not not the game beat a level in Surfer and I did end
up successfully doing it. I beat the Fire Lord level.
But like those games, it was just like I felt like I was
banging my head against the wall.
But you know, there were a lot of games too that, you know, I
was like, this is getting a little easy for me or, you know,

(01:10:45):
it was 3 levels and you were done or five levels and you were
done, right. Mega Man struck that balance for
me between it was always challenging me.
But like, you know, it it, it was never a walkthrough.
It was the visuals. It was even my parents found the
visuals to be striking. Like, that's one of the few

(01:11:06):
times they were, you know, my mother would ever grab like,
hey, can I play that? She was able to probably to this
day can beat Snake Man's level in her sleep.
Because I don't know, something about it was just, you know, and
that was one of the few times I could ever relate to my parents

(01:11:26):
on a video game. Yeah, actually, WCW was in one
of the other ones 'cause they, you know, kind of scoffed at
wrestling, but it, like, as, youknow, it was just so cool at
this high. And they were like, that's
interesting. But and then it was always like
something, I know they're the doc robots, right?
Are a much maligned part of MegaMan 3, but I always thought they

(01:11:48):
were cool, right? It was just what, just
completely out of what at the time for me as a kid, I was
like, all right, I beat them, let's see what's next.
And then it's like, wait, who are these guys?
You mean I got to go back and dothat level again.
And I actually had played three before I played two.
So of course, you know, the dockrobots are the robot masters

(01:12:11):
from two kind of, you know, souped up.
And you know, that was one of the, the, the, that I even like
recognized there was a 2 like, oh, who's that?
And is that, you know, because they would have the animation
where the robot would drop into like the body.
And then, you know, that kind ofgot me on the series.
Like I had to get 2, had to grab, you know, had to get 4,

(01:12:33):
had to get 5. I don't think 6 was even out
yet. But yeah, that's that was right
there in my lifelong my lifelonglove of gaming beginning and.
You know, and you talked about earlier what you were renting
games in the save states, you didn't have to say you had you
had passwords. So you so you definitely could

(01:12:54):
make progress and come back to that progress.
Absolutely. I had a a whole box of just
passwords where I we would, we would draw out the grid and
actually put like with marker little stamps with red and blue
dots and Mega Man 3 actually. And of course, this is one of
those things you'll I've learnedlike much later in life what

(01:13:17):
where there's like a very set pattern to what dots go where.
And like, if you want this robotmaster corresponds to that, like
this weapon, this many like E tanks and whatnot.
But yeah, right. Yeah.
But yeah, at the time that that was a big deal because you you
could, you could rent it, play it for a couple days, take it

(01:13:41):
back to the store and you alwaysknew that your progress would be
there. And then I moved right on to 4,
right. And four just always I, I think
is great too. I really think all of all of the
NES Mega Man games are at least good, right?

(01:14:01):
You know, 234 I I consider to begreat 5. 11 is probably the
worst of the bunch. Yeah, absolutely by default, and
it's not. Yeah, it's not to insult, just
by default. Yeah, it lacks some stuff they
added for quality of life and movement.
Right. It was a great effort for having
absolutely no idea what they were doing, but they had
absolutely no idea what they were doing.

(01:14:22):
So. So.
Yeah. And and that was another thing
too, is now that I go, what kindof keeps me coming to these
games is like I like to play them in order.
And like you can really see likethe learnings that they had,
like what they figured out as they went along, like what
worked? What didn't, you know, different
ways Capcom tried to innovate. I just I just finished up 11

(01:14:48):
actually. I finally got my hands on that.
And so review on that incoming. But but yeah, big fan of the
series and it all kind of started with.
Three, the art stinks on 11. Go back to 9's artwork.
I spoiler alert for my review, I'm going to agree with that

(01:15:08):
sentiment. 99's the one Ray where they have the they have
him with the the Buster and withthe handgun.
They're drawn in the old school style.
They did they, they, they, they joked with it on that one,
right? Yeah, they.
They were just hilarious. Well, now we're really going to

(01:15:30):
the future, because we're going to talk about a future game
you're looking forward to. And no surprises, we harken back
to the RPGs of the earlier end of the discussion.
The the future game you brought up is Final Fantasy Tactics with
the Ibilis Chronicles. Yeah, Run it back, baby, Run it
back. I can't wait.
By the time this this airs, I'llprobably actually be be playing

(01:15:50):
it because it's coming out very soon.
And I love the original Final Fantasy Tactics.
I like tactical RPGs. They're very like hit or miss
for me. I feel like I either get
completely engrossed in them or I just like, I play, you know,
one level later and I'm this is just too much for me.

(01:16:12):
Because you can also screw it up.
And like you, you may die a slowdeath, maybe survive a battle,
but like, no, you've just like scummed yourself into a corner
and it's over. Like you just no, you don't
know. You're already dead.
Right. And like, you know, even within
individual battles, it's like, you know, you lose, you die in
an RPG, you might it might set you back a couple minutes.

(01:16:34):
You die in a strategy RPG. Like, you know, that one battle
could have been especially end game for a lot of these things
could have been going on for an hour and a half and you just
lost all that time. But yeah, so I'm this is the one
genre, or one of the genres, I should say, where I'm kind of
looking forward a little bit to some of those modern

(01:16:56):
conveniences also. And now, Full disclosure, I've
never played the The War of the Lions remake.
Yeah, it's, it's just they ran it back basically.
But they same reason they had, they had to rebuild it for the
ground up because they don't have any of the original
materials. So.
And I've been told that the translation is much better in

(01:17:19):
that version. But the original, you know, I
don't think it catches enough Flack for how confusing it was
at some points. And some of that is down to it
being a very complex political story.
But there are points in that game where I'm just like, what
are they actually talking about?I, I was totally lost in that.

(01:17:43):
And I, it also probably didn't help that that was my first like
tactical RPGI had played too. So like I was lost on top of
being lost because it was also just like you're talking about
widgets and what's it and like fictional politics and I can't
keep up with this because I'm just trying not to die.
And then I would get back into acorner and like that happened to
me in that game a couple times. Like no, I'm just dying a slow
death. And I did not know.

(01:18:05):
I lost 3 battles ago and I didn't realize it.
Yeah. Oh yeah, that's one, two where,
you know, one of the things thatactually keeps that out of offer
out of my 10s list or two things.
Number one is the translation. But is that's got one of the
worst difficulty curves I've ever seen where you you have

(01:18:26):
that first battle on the plains and as long as you don't protect
Argath or Algus or, you know, depending on the version, his
name's different. And then they send you to the
that second or map that trade city and you've got Archers
standing on top of a building with no means to attack them
from range. Yeah, that was that was a real

(01:18:49):
early wake up call. And then, you know, it goes back
down and then you hit the execution site battle.
You got that one battle where you can actually lock yourself
out of the game because it lets you save in the middle of it.
And if you can't beat the boss, that that's one where.
Like the mill or the water or something like that.
I feel like, yeah, that's the one that that's the one that I,
that's the one that got me, yeah.

(01:19:09):
Yeah. So that's one of the ways that
I'm kind of, you know, I'm kind of hoping that Idolized
Chronicles or whatever you want to call it, where it kind of
does away with some of that stuff.
I'm, I'm ready 25 years later, bring it on like it's yeah, I've
got, I've got more knowledge, I've got more experience with
the, the genre. Let's do this.
I'm ready. All right.

(01:19:31):
Last, lastly for me, Ray's not done, but I've got a quest, a
question from the Channel 3 history books, good pick for you
to discuss. And we asked, hey, listen, you
know, if we're going to make a fighting game involving
musicians, what, what musicians getting thrown in there?
You know my answer for this was a little more on the jet, but I

(01:19:52):
want a fighting game with all black metal musicians, right?
You guys know like Norwegian, like Guy, The guys with the the
face paint and the big spikes. Yeah, you want.
Visual intimidation, yeah. And just no color black, grey
and white. And you have to have because all

(01:20:13):
those guys albums are in like they have when they write their
band names, it always has to be this completely unintelligible
mess that like no one in. There right now.
Oh so it's going to like look like insider limbo too.
OK, All right. Yeah, OK.
All right. Now I'm, I'm getting it now.
Yeah, like there's, I hesitate to name any musician

(01:20:34):
specifically because there's a lot of problematic people in in
that space, as you would expect,like very, very problematic
people. Yeah, listen, I got to be
careful about going back to the early 2000s, like pop punk scene
for that same read, for similar read.
Like, yeah, like, oh, no. Oh, I didn't know.

(01:20:55):
I didn't know. OK, no.
It sounded really great. You know, absolutely.
And again, we didn't have this stuff.
We didn't get out in those days.We had absolutely no idea that,
you know, that these people had these, Like you didn't know the
political beliefs or the any of that stuff for, like, criminals
pending criminal charges. Yeah, like you had no idea.

(01:21:23):
Oh man, last question, what's been your favorite feature on
Channel 3? You know, I tell you what the
best part of this community is that is the community, right,
That there's so much negativity in like online, the online

(01:21:44):
gaming discourse in a lot of these these spaces, and Channel
3 just doesn't have that. But at the same time, it's not
like saccharine either. Like there is very good
discussion. People have absolutely no
problem letting someone know or other people know, hey, this

(01:22:04):
game kind of sucks. I didn't really like it or
wasn't my cup of tea. You know, you get very honest
but also very respectful and positive kind of conversation,
which is, you know, something that you don't see in gaming
social media or frankly in non gaming social media.
So it's been really like a breath of fresh air.

(01:22:28):
Yeah. Or real life at this.
Point, yeah. You know, there's a lot of good
content creators on on here. There's a lot of, you know,
interesting games I discover. I try to throw in some of my
weird ones whenever I can, you know, I can get them out there
because again, like you said, it's that like 5°, you know,

(01:22:51):
difference. And you know, you, you have a
lot of games. And this happened a lot back in
the day too, right where you hadthat game that was like your
game. And you come to find, all these
years later as an adult, that literally nobody has ever heard.
Of it like incredible crisis forinstance.
Yes, like Incredible Crisis. That game was interesting to say

(01:23:15):
the least. That was one of that was one of
those ones. You talked about this before
with the parents. Had no idea I had a friend who
you know, he he's his parents were those people that money was
no object. And so he would just tell them,
hey, pick up a pick up some video games for me, which must

(01:23:36):
be nice. But you know, she, you know,
she'd come home and there was, you know, stack of a couple
PlayStation games and there was this one that I think someone,
one of the one of the commentersalluded it to it looking like a
hot sauce commercial, which is, you know, kind of what I thought
about it as well. And we're like, oh, what the

(01:23:58):
heck is this? Let's try it.
It's it's basically a mini game marathon, almost like A1 player
Mario Party, but it is very. Torturing one Japanese family,
something like that. Yeah, basically.
Like every weird Japanese game show you've ever seen, it's just

(01:24:18):
doing that to one random family of people, Yeah. 50 levels of
it. This is where this where the
Nintendo comes in and says we'reactually going to patent warrior
wear and that game. Now every game is this.
And on that note on on the on another pending Nintendo patent,

(01:24:40):
we've made it to the end of another one of you 3 podcasts.
Thank you, JD, for being with us.
You can find a podcast at C3 dotGG slash podcast dropping every
Wednesday morning at 3:33 AM. Eastern on all the major
platforms, including Spotify, YouTube Music and Apple
Podcasts. I'm Ray.
Dan puts this together, but I'm in the future I'm going to have
to check the actual notes. Our themes always by cast are

(01:25:02):
garden and for our executive producer, Joel Willis.
Have a good day everybody. First hit.
Channel 3 is the future.

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