Fire Escape Cast #105

On this week's episode, Mike and Mary are out so Jeff Grubb and Mitch join Fire Escape.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Folks at home.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
As you can tell, this is not the voice of
one Michael James Maharty.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
No, this is Dan Reichert.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Mike Maharty, based on his most recent Instagram story, is
looking at maps of the Champagne region of France. I'm
not kidding. That is his most recent Instagram story is
he got new books about the Champagne region of France
and he.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Is pouring over the maps.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Mary is working, she's a professional, she's doing a traveling
for work right now. But I've lost my co host here.
I've lost my good friends Mike and Mary. But you
know what they say, when you lose your co host
on a podcast, You look to your blood. You look
to the click, You look to the Blake Club. That's right,
that we'll grub that was you're doing the nWo guitar.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
That was actually a DX reference.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, we're gonna mix our metaphors here.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Mike, Mary aren't here. So my fifty percent wrestling rule
is off the table. So it's rub bonanza. You don't
don't stop it. They're all scrambling in their cars to
hit stop on this.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
They're just driving off of cliffs right now. Well, then
that's the fascinating to WrestleMania.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
This is the roadblock, brother, Okay, this is this is
the one rest people get for me talking about wrestling.
I will attempt to honor that on the vire Escape
cast here despite it being literally WrestleMania week.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
How could this is cruel and unusual? I would say, fellas, Yeah, hey,
don't don't blame us. We're not gonna hold you do that.
I don't care if you break your rule.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
It's almost a part of me that's like, this is
like really old, growing up Catholic stuff. And I'm like,
they could just do WrestleMania on Eastern. Yeah, Like that's
a loud out.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
About being you know, many beautiful things about growing up Catholic.
I think getting like ninety days off for Easter was good.
A lot you got. You got your good Fridays, got
your silly Saturdays, you got whatever Easter is.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
They don't have Monday. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
Did you get a separate spring break?

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah? Yeah I think so. Yeah. Yeah. School sometimes days
blended together. I don't know, there's all sorts of stuff.
We just went to church one day a week.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Tuesday was my Mass day.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah, yeah, I can't remember you just kind of sat
there and like it was, you know, church was pretty
good compared to class, so you kind of took that
and stride.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
It was tough for me because in class I would
like doodle a lot. I got the office for doodling
mortal combat fatalities and stuff like that, and I kid
you not, what this is probably incredibly sacrilegious. What I
did to pastime in mass was because I couldn't doodle
and I just had severe add as a child. And
I would just look around at all the stained glass

(03:00):
and you would see like, oh, here's all the signs
of the Cross. Here's this guy helping Jesus carry the cross.
Here's you know, these dudes putting them up on the cross.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Sam.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Sam?

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Was that the guy's name who helped Jesus with the Christ?
Was he the guy who wiped his face with the
shroud of turn?

Speaker 4 (03:14):
I think it was specifically, like who helped him with
the cross? I'm sorry, crosscar Derek was the other guy.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
So I would just look around at all because I
always let stained glass looked cool as hell, and I was,
and I would just picture all of them coming to
life and jumping out and causing the scene, like if
you've seen an End of Days, it's almost like this
huge like fight inside of a church with like all
of these Catholic and religious figures and stuff fighting it out,
and basically it's his Mortal kmbat, Like this is the
period of my life where everything was Mortal Kombat.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Right, yeah, Simon, by the way, it was Simon, not
sam I was close.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
There were uh who were the signs of the cross?
He fell down, he needed help getting up, he had
to have his face wiped.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Right, Well, where did it start? Did it literally start?

Speaker 4 (04:01):
Like we won't talk about wrestling, everybody back to what
really matters.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
We got an email saying, hey, I listened to Firescape
for games talk, not for political agendas, which confused me.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
But let's get into religion.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
This is what they really Let's rank the religions of
the world. That's my favorite.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Oh yeah, honestly, And I said honestly instead of for shoot,
I stopped myself.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Look at me. I disgusting.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
No, Jesus like I went to Catholic school. I grew
up here in Catholic school.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
You went to school with Jesus?

Speaker 1 (04:31):
No, I knows day eighties, nineteen eighties.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
I don't like Jesus got arrested right or like put
to death, but like I couldn't. I'm trying to think
right now what he got like arrested for by the.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Well, the big thing was he went into so so
they turned the church into a market, right that people
are just saying something.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
He flipped the tables.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, so hey flipped the tables and he freaked out
and he got mad. So like there they're all real
happy like him. Now, yes, yes, let's get the tables
assignmon It's like, okay, now we actually got him for
a for a real crime. I almost said she they
got him for a crime, so they were real excited.
That was still, you know, kind of bs and Jesus

(05:15):
had a pretty good point. But I always laughed because
so many churches now mega churches, even some nice just
Catholic ones, have gift shops, and I'm like, man, this
is specifically the thing that Jesus like got really mad
at that one time.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
I remember, during high school, I wrote when I was
really getting into my student films and stuff that I
was making, I wrote a short film called the Jesus Project,
and it was about Jesus coming back and it was
about just him reacting to I guess that was.

Speaker 4 (05:47):
The name of Trump's political platform, I think, right, yes.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Jesus Project twenty five. Yeah, and it was about like, oh,
him just reacting. It was like a comedy, but it
was about him reacting to like, you know, it was
like nineteen ninety nine probably when I with this, and
but it was very you know, well, he gets like
I think he gets addicted to heroin or something.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
And yeah, it's like I remember my mom.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
I was telling my mom about this, and despite the
fact that I've never heard her talk about Jesus or
church or anything religious whatsoever, she was very much just like,
we don't believe that in this household, and like, I'm.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Very offended that you But I think it's because she
was married to a guy at the time. It was
very Catholic.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah. Oddly enough, I also wrote my own thing about
Jesus coming back in high school. It's called Jesus. It
was called Jesus to the musical. Yeah, I don't remember much.
One song went like It's a wonderful Morning for Jesus
something like that. I still had that one.

Speaker 4 (06:42):
All of the weird that you both share starts here
it's all school.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, I went to Catholic school. There's not a lot
of me and my keys. I don't know, man.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
Sure, yeah, you guys definitely don't or stand out even
from that crowd. But boy, something happened there.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Oh uh oh man, and other things about this is
a good guy, this is Dan, this is my dad's
high school best friend. And Katie and Kaylea, my sister's dad.
I grew up with him. Great dude, but very Catholic.
I just remember every once in a while it would
come out, even though we never, you know, prayed, we
never went to church or anything. Remember I liked the
movie seven when it came out, and he was deeply
upset that I liked that. He's like that is it

(07:19):
really disturbs me that you liked that movie. And then
the other one was we would always play Twisted Metal
two campaign mode together and at one point I learned
the code. It was called sell your Soul, and you
would type in a certain and you would sell all
your weapons for health. And so I was like dying
during the minion fight and I was like, I'm gonna
sell my soul and he paused, put the controller down,

(07:40):
and he said Danny, I don't ever want to hear
you say that ever again.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
It was like, oh no, yeah, well I remember. And
another song from Jesus to the musical it's called cult Terrific.
It goes it's called terrific. You know what we mean.
It's called terrific. Our heads are shafe clean, it's called terrific.
A barrel of fun it's called terrific. And a cachet

(08:05):
of guns.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Wait, Jesus comes back and starts he starts a cult,
starts a new cult because he's unhappy with the current
Catholic church.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Not enough guns, not enough guns. Yeah, yeah, right exactly,
so I forget what the yeah something about him just
starting a new new cult, and it got kind of
violent and weird.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
I think that's where the plot went.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, it came out.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
In a lot of weird ways. Was the main antagonist
a lot.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Of weird ways.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
Because we also had a fake we had to make
a fake band for a different school projects and we
called ours Last Rites. It was just mostly kind of
weird religious songs. The one I wrote was a song
about burning the Bible. It's called the Bible burns Better.
And that one was actually really catchy. I am still
proud of the Bible burns better. The chorus was fire,

(09:03):
fire down to every letter, and the dark of the night,
the Bible burns better. It's your dark desire, be a
trendsetter when your soul is cold. The Bible burns better tonight.
It's pretty good, right.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yes, but Mike, I have to ask for those listening
to the audio. Whenever Mike is singing this, he's looking
off to the left.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
When he's reading a Google duck.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Do you have a document of the script?

Speaker 3 (09:25):
No, I don't know why. It's just a sweet you. No,
I don't know why I'm looking to him. I actually
I am, despite what you might think. I am actually
just slightly embarrassed. And I can't look at you.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Why that's.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Shame.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
There is little bit no audible.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
No.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
I could probably do the verses for Bible Birds better
if I would.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Wait.

Speaker 4 (09:45):
It's not a Christian rock band, but like, no, it's not.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
I don't know if i'd call it.

Speaker 4 (09:50):
I want to call it that either, but it's like it's,
you know, somewhere in between a project.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
We had to sing the one song called Heaven a Blake.
We just went to Heaven and fought a bunch of angels.
We performed that one in class and we got an A.
Not in Catholic class, right, No, this was public high school.
I switched after fourth grade. Oh God, I bet, yeah,
I bet If it was Catholic high school, they would
not have liked it.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
That was the end of my singing career was Catholic school,
because we had to do the Christmas program every year,
and like, the main thing they teach you every time
is don't lock your knees because you're gonna pass out
and make us all look like idiots in a church.
So that's all I thought about every year at the
Christmas programs, like don't lock your fucking knees. But yeah,
a lot of silent Night, a lot of this is
the day that the Lord has made that.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Type of stuff.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
And I remember mine first or second grade, and at
the time, my dad was listening to a ton of
Bob Dylan, and he always had me listening to a
lot of Bob Dylan, and you know, doing impressions of
Bob Dylan so to kind of like pop the classmates
and stuff. I was doing a lot of net net
and then the teacher made me stop. It was like, Dan,

(10:59):
what are you doing? Like you're you're sounding like I'm
doing a Bob Dylan impression, and she like I got
in trouble. And then I was like thinking my friends
would think I was cool, and they were like, what
the fuck is.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Bob Dylan, Like a bunch of yeah, seven year olds
like Bob Dylan.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
Is could just said it was what Tom Petty, who
kind of sounds like Bob doing Anyways.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
I don't even know seven year old.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
No, that's still probably pretty of course.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, Mike, you uh, Janet Reno came up as she's
want to do Remember when that was like the craziest
political thing in the world, like on SNL, like the
wackiest political figure you will retire.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
You're promised, you promised that emo.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
You were going to.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Talk about get my political agenda across that podcasts.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
We are so pro Reno, Janet Reno. I want her
to just run Reno Mania on this country once again. Look,
I probably not I do.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Just think about the things that used to be big
political controversies in the nineties. We got let's do old bow, Yeah,
had a blow job in the nineties, like Obama wearing
the tan suit like that was well, like the biggest
things in the nineties that everybody in America was very

(12:18):
concerned about was Bill Clinton's blow job, uh Ellen, degenerous,
being gay in O. J.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Simpson.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Those were like the three things.

Speaker 4 (12:29):
The holy trinity of the nineties.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, right, what was the thing? It wasn't water Gate,
it wasn't water World. What was the Whitewater? Whitewater.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
I was very young and I basically just got my
politics through Mad Magazine, and Whitewater would come up all
the time on Letterman and stuff, and it was like
a land deal.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Yeah right.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
As a kid, I was just like, this doesn't seem
like anything. Uh So, yeah, I think it was probably
one of those ones where they were just trying to
trump it up because they were so always trying to
go after When.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
He said trump it up, what did you mean?

Speaker 4 (12:58):
Yeah, I mean that one.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Shit, I think that's a different meaning.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Now have you ever seen the clip from like the
two thousands where Norm McDonald is on the view and
somehow one of the Clintons comes up and Norm out
of nowhere. It's like, oh, yeah, you know the story
about like when the Clinton's killed a guy right just
in the daytime like joy Bay and be like oh,
and Norm's like, no, no, he killed a guy.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Let it go.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
I was thinking the other day, like it used to
be like this thing and all, like the sitcoms and
TV shows are just in general, like the biggest source
of pride for parents as if their child became the
president of the United States, And I'm like, oh, that's
like the last thing I would want to like it
just like even if you were a good president United States,
you know how many deaths he would be responsible for

(13:49):
technically your call, Like no, I feel.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Like the bar for good is way warped to like
I like Obama a lot, but he's definitely killed the people.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, yeah, all sorts of people. And it's like that's
what makes it disturbing because you look at Obamba, he's
like he like likes thro lean into the memes and
he has a bit of this like warm figure. He's
like still killed so many people.

Speaker 4 (14:13):
But that that thing what I think of is Marge
wanting Bart to be a Supreme Court the Supreme Court justice,
like and uh, and then he fails in her dream
and then has to become like a Supreme Court justice
themed a stripper.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
I think he's got that like stubble and they do
the great thing where it's like his spikes on his
hair are kind of like.

Speaker 4 (14:31):
Yeah, yeah, he's got the big beer belly like Homer.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
It's very funny. Yeah, like curling pistols or something.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, got it.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Love being on this podcast with people that appreciate the
fucking Simpsons, and Mary absolutely does. I'm talking directly about
Mike Mahardy.

Speaker 4 (14:47):
Well, we could probably we could just edit some wine
into it and then probably get him on board.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Maybe you know what, we were sharing some stuff today.
We we did find someone who was, as I put it,
Mike Mahardy if he wasn't so.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
Aware, Yeah, that's so fun. Thing turns out.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
The self awareness is a critical critical Do you need that?

Speaker 4 (15:06):
You do? I need important? Got where she had it.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
I think Maharty was doing trying to do my voice
two episodes ago on here and I want to do
a Mike Maharty impression, but he has a pretty normal
voice unfortunately, got a.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Very no he's got they always have like alien and
trailer and uh it's a little bit of JFK issues affectations. Yeah,
you got that East Coast fancy boy thing. Going on, Yeah, sure,
it was very fair.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
There's gotta be a Simpsons episode about wine, right, there's
a zillion.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
Episcourse they do go to aust Well, the astroliy one
is just like the frog stuff and everything like.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
The frog and there's the bit about you know beer, right.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
Is there a lacrosse episode? I bet there's a lacrosse episode.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
I mean at this point, I imagine anything we haven't
seen happen between like seasons twelve and one hundred and sixteen,
you know that no one has seen and I don't
even know.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
It gets really good again at one hundred and twelve.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
I've been saying that.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
You see that it got renewed for five more seasons
like a main cast by like I'm the waiting morbid.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Of them dies.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yeah, and then do you think they actually float the
AI thing?

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Oh god, well did you.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
See there's a clip? I don't know if there's the
birds or who. But Frank Azaria. They brought him in
and had him record a bunch of lines into like
an AI thing as MO, and they had had the
AI Mo read jokes back to Hanks Err and him
kind of criticizing. I'm just being like, no, you can
make it sound kind of like the boys, but like
the timing and all the human stuff is what you
absolutely can't do.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, oh gosh, I I hate so much that like
I am, you know, getting her forty and I am
becoming a everything's kind of getting worse as I get
older person, because I know every every generation has done
that for so long. Well boy, some things are getting worse.

Speaker 4 (16:51):
Like everyone's like, okay, yeah, it's the broken clock situation.
I think we happen to be right because like they
they like, it's one generation she took all the wealth
and kept it for themselves and it made everything else worse.
And then what's the chargest rents for everything?

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Let's try to be good old guys about this, okay,
because I think it is kind of for all of us.
And but I think, you know, I think when you
talk about real world stuff and wealth and things like that,
like there's some very legitimate stuff there, but I feel
like so much the time, it's like, oh, a generation
thinks Elvis is going to corrupt the mind.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Oh, it's gonna gat video games are gonna rot your brain.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
And then the.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Stuff like you know, every white.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Dude from the Midwest over fifty five seeing like Kendrick
Klamarr and be like, ah, this isn't music. You know.

Speaker 4 (17:32):
That it always goes down right, It's always the kids
are ruining the things I like, and it's like, well,
that's not what's happening.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
So can we parse out, like what is objectively bad
about the kids and the times with the youths? Sure?

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, I mean the AI suff's bad and less people
like I will say this. I don't think the Minecraft
movie or excuse me, a Minecraft movie, the a Minecraft movie.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, I don't think movie.

Speaker 4 (17:57):
Let's call it a mincraft movie. I don't think a
Minecraft movie is destroyed art as we know it.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
When I saw the Mario Brothers movie the nineties one,
I told my dad in the parking lot that that
was the best movie I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Like stupid fucking taste and stuff.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
I'm sure that my objectively sucks, but I don't think
it's a problem.

Speaker 4 (18:13):
I think I said that about Double Dragon to my
parents when me and Jason, my brother, were walking out,
and made my whole family go see it when we
were on vacation to see my brother who was in
the army, and like one of the few hours he
had to spend with us. We made him watch Double
fucking Dragon in the theater and we're walking out be
like that ruled in my family in pain.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
When I saw Minecraft, because my nephew nieces let me
go with them, I was just like, you know, my
parents had to see the Power Ridgers movie. I'm sure
they did not care about that.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
That movie's pretty good though.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
It wasn't bad though, got hitting the nuts at the end,
right that do guy. He had that great light about
missing the Monsters reunion or so that was, Yeah, that
was pretty good. Actually, they probably.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
Liked that well.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
I feel like I did that video a while back
with my dad and me at the fire talking about everything,
and he was talking. We were talking about like worst
movies they've seen, and my dad is like Shark Boy
and Lava Girl. I remember I had to take the
girls to that like when they were kids, and like,
oh Shark But clearly this is a movie made for kids.
I'm sure it's yeah for my dad, But like grub,
if you had that experience with their kids where it's
like they're excited about a movie and you are just

(19:17):
hating every second of it.

Speaker 4 (19:19):
No, I think a big thing that has happened in
the last uh well, I mean, your dad's not that home,
but like the last twenty years is the generation gap
has gotten a lot smaller, Like we just aren't shedding
the things from our youth, and the stuff from our
youth is like pretty similar to all the stuff the
kids are into. Like, you know, my kids will go
from one minute watching the bullshit on YouTube, which is

(19:41):
the strange stuff now, like the Shark Boys and Lava
Girls are unboxing videos and little girls making stories with
their toys and putting up on YouTube and it has
fifteen billion views and stuff like that. I'm like, I
don't know, all this stuff is kind of interesting. I
think it'll give my kids cool perspectives and like cool
ideas about how to create stuff. And then they'll go
from that to watching you know, tonight they're like, hey,

(20:02):
I want to watch Kieky's Delivery Service, so like they're
watching me azaki. I'm like, okay, yeah, and they're like
I kind of just let let them go where they
want to, and they, you know, they oscillate between some
real terrible bullshit that you know, doesn't really bother me
because I have a high tolerance for that stuff and
then back toward something very cool. So I'm like, Okay,
they got like a nice wide consumption here that I
think is going to do them all right in their

(20:23):
lives lives.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
I would assume that that's maybe not a common case.
I'm sure a lot are just like you know, garbage
kid tastes. They're like, you know, like Dylan Backlars, Oh
well yeah, h Backlarer is interested.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
In blueprints and zeld and stuff.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
I look, and he's probably a market Yeah, he's probably all.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I think they're kind of like that, Jeff.
We're like, they'll still you know, for us, like of
course they have easy access to audible Disney stuff and
they'll still watch that. I like it. But they absolutely
want to watch their YouTube junk. And hey, I'm sure
that that YouTube junk to me isn't too different than
what early nick toms seemed like to my parents, right,

(21:00):
Ren and simpy that probably.

Speaker 4 (21:01):
Slime or like yeah nicktoons, or that you can't do
that on television all that stuff, like what are yeah,
what is this weird gross stuff?

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Happy joy joy? Yeah right, like nonsense, Yeah, it seemed
like it. Probably they they're probably were convinced, even though
they may not have really cared, we watch it and
let us watch it, they're probably convinced. This probably isn't
good for them.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
Right, I mean even like the you know, the the
he Mans and the cartoon the cartoons that are just commercials.
It's like, well, that is a lot of stuff that
the kids have now, And I'm like, I don't feel
like that stuff really damaged me in any real way, Like, yeah,
having commercial shoved in your brain non stop, that there
probably was something. But they have way less commercials in
their life. And then sure a lot of the content
they're absorbing is stuff that is made to sell them

(21:43):
stuff and that like that's how those people make money.
But we do limit their exposure to that somewhat. And
then uh, yeah, they're just not getting regular commercials at
all anymore. They don't have that at any point in
their lives.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
That is one of my favorite weird Like, you know,
my dad has a million weird old man things. What
of him is He's like bitter that the kids today,
millennials don't know commercials because he'll ask me like, oh,
have you seen that State Farm commercial with them?

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Be like, no, Dad, I haven't seen like, oh, that's right, dude,
don't see commercials.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
He's upset that they made Jake from State Farm black.

Speaker 3 (22:15):
Is that what it is? You know? Yep, No, this is.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Very better that we're not all smoking cigarettes and watching
commercials all the time.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
But what is it about.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
There was a shift between like our parents generation and
our generation because you see, like like with our parents generation,
I feel like, you know, they're not obsessing over like
fucking Magilla Gorilla in twenty twenty five and there's not
new you know, like Captain Kangaroo movies and stuff. I
think with nostalgia. With our parents generation, you bring something
up and you're like, oh, I used to watch that
all the time, and like us three on this fucking

(22:48):
wowd CRTs and Genesis games and shit, well.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
Don't forget. In the nineties, like there was like the
Brady Bunch movie, the Flintstones movie, the Adams Family movie.
Like I and I think we actually are cresting Chris
for a while, and when we were in our thirties,
they were really catering to our nostalgia. A lot of
that stuff came back, was remastered, had new sequels, even

(23:13):
things like Beatles Juice recently. I do think that that's
going to maybe start dying down where we're going to
be like, they're bringing that thing back. But I didn't
care about that because that happened in the twenty tens
or whatever.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
Yeah, I think they're trying to I think that's actually
the generation gap shrinking. I think they're finding more fruit
from like video game adaptations because it hits us and
kids right, and so they can like get more more
juice from the squeeze there as opposed to you know
that the millennials are the biggest generation in the United
States that's ever seen, and that we were gonna have
like once you know, that previous generation dies, a lot

(23:46):
of that welth's going to come down. So they are
going to keep catering to us in a lot of
really like awful ways that are going to be pretty gross.
Because their corporation sin it's all they can do. But
I think for now they're like, oh, hey, this video
game stuff kind of hits all these four quadrants and stuff,
so we'll get a lot of that for a while.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Some of it is just like people have franchises and
they guess they think they got to do something with it.
When I saw the Minecraft movie. Excuse me a Minecraft movie?

Speaker 4 (24:12):
A Minecraft movie.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Be a Minecraft movie. They had a trailer for a
new Smurf movie and that already had got rebooted in
the twenty elevens. They made like three of them. There's
no one new new reboots and Rihanna is Smurf FETs
and it's just a cartoon. Again. I'm like, who cares
about the Smurfs? But here it is.

Speaker 4 (24:32):
What what Zindia was Michi? What was that? That's her
character in a movie? I think I just Zindia is
me Chi?

Speaker 3 (24:42):
That was? And there was a DreamWorks movie about like
Yetti's or something. Right, it is something beyond the name
of a character.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
It's just the name of a character. It was okay, No,
there was a guy that makes viral videos and he
sang a song where he saw the sign. It's just
like he thought it was a funny phrase, and so
he sang a whole song about Zendaiah is me Chi
and so yeah, that's that became a meme on its own.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
I see, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
But the Spurfs.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
Who cares?

Speaker 3 (25:08):
How's that? But yeah, something's come back?

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Like Garfield had a new movie. Why why we kiss
about Car's original run. Was that the nineties or was
that already an old thing then?

Speaker 3 (25:15):
I think that was like an early eighties thing maybe, well,
because that's weird.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
It's like some of the shit that was actively on
TV in my you, like in the late eighties early nineties,
like Looney Tunes was always fucking off well, and it
would be like Copyright nineteen sixty three.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
Because we lived in the cable explosion, so there was
suddenly a lot more airtime, airtime to fill, and syndication
was the way they did. So that's why we had
Nick at Night. That's why I grew up watching a
ton of Flintstones and things like that. And I love
Lucy right, So it is why.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
I think it's why to the younger millennials we do
sometimes seem older than we are because we are very
well versed in happy days.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
Yeah some days, Mary.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Tyler Moore, it was with Nick at Knight because like,
I was obsessed with Nickelodeon, But when Nick Knight came on,
I think in my head, I was like, this is
old stuff, except for I watched The Witch because I
had a crush on the Witch. Now, she's a very
pretty lady. Yes, seven year old was like, something's going
on here?

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, she did that thing with her nose. Yeah. I
like to the genie more than the Witch, I gotta
be honest.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Well, I also did the Gilligan's Island for probably similar reasons.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Yeah, Tolkin's Island was great. Then they had all those
TV movies where they had to recast Marianne or something
because of drama. How many TV movies There's three, and
the last one was Gilligan's Island meets the Harlem Globe Trotter.
Is this the kind of thing wheref I search us
on YouTube, I'll find like seven, like eight hour long
documentaries about these things? I hope so, because gosh, I

(26:43):
think I think the Millionaire had died at that point,
so he's just mentioned off screen because they had the
first TV movie is they get off the island, then
they get stranded again on the same island at the end,
and the second TV movie they get off for real
and the millionaire opens up a resort on the island.

Speaker 4 (26:59):
What you just think of film franchises that eventually got
TV movie sequels?

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Film?

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Well, Mission impossible, Oh, I got what we're talking about.
That was a TV franchise that got.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
Well no, no, but I mean that started as a film
franchise and then sort of dwindled to the point where
like eventually they were like, let's make a sequel, but
let's just put it on TV.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
That the Child series, you're saying, just like a one
off or something.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:22):
So, like there was like, you know, several Revenge of
the Nerds movies that were released in theater, and the
first one made a lot of money even though it's
a terrible movie. And then Adventure They're like, well, we're
still gonna keep making these, but we don't have a
ton of money. Let's just put this one on TV
and had a seven to eleven crossover. You can go
to the gas station or to go to the convenience
store and get three D glasses and they had like
three D scenes or whatever.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
Problem Child remember that those movies. There's Problem Child one, two,
there was a Problem Child three. It was a TV
original movie. I remember watching it when it came out
because we loved the first two, especially the second one.
We watched it all the time in my house. Yeah.
The third one was just this sad directed TV thing.
I wonder gosh, Kevan watched that.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Note it's got to be.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
Somewhere it's directed direct to VHS, like, yeah, it's below that.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna into all my plex server.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
That was a whole thing though, like the the big
TV reunion thing, right, and it used to be a
big deal.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Did say by the Bell and Friends and stuff? Recently? Yeah,
it's a streaming thing.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Oh really, there's fat matter. The Facts of Life had
a big one. Well now it's like they do a
whole new show, right, it was like fool House. They
just ate a whole other.

Speaker 4 (28:31):
Show for TV.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, right, right, right. It used to be like the
TV movie reunion thing instead.

Speaker 4 (28:40):
Mean Girls Too aired on ABC Family in twenty eleven.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
What is that?

Speaker 4 (28:44):
That's weird?

Speaker 2 (28:45):
The confidence to put the number on it and like
Colon you know, the New Class or whatever.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
You know, Yeah, I love.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Would video games do that? Like Tony Hawk's pro Skater
fives on The Hedgehog four, it's.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Like you can never go back, you can, like we
can we all act like Tony Hot five didn't happen,
but like they couldn't, Like you could do a Super
Mario Brothers four right now.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, it has like a downloadable.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
No. I mean, let's be honest, they wouldn' they would
charge a lot if they made it. Okay, let's say
Nine did a Mega Man nine for Mario and they
called it Super Mario Brothers four any s style? How
much does Nintendo charge for that? Like for Shoot, I
think they charged sixty.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Yeah, I'd pay eighty.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
Are you joking.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
Like you're not gonna play the new Maari? Yeah? Well
Mega Man did such a good job with it because
Mega nine is so good, and then I don't. Everyone's like, well,
we'll do that too, but it'll be bad.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
It was on on the xbo A stream I did
where I played Sonic four episode four and ho Lee
ship it is worse than I remembered.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
It's terrible.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
That was the most angry comments I ever got was
Sonic the Hedgehog four episode two, when I you that
and gave it a bad score. Of course, being Sonic
fans are there just and look, I'm kind of among
their numbers in some way, but they are very very interesting.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
Did Sammy Sonic fan come after you?

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Oh? Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
That was eye opening to me because like I grew
up as a I love Sonic. I mean Sonic two
is one of my favorite games of my childhood. You know,
I kind of fell off after Adventure maybe, but I
didn't realize how crazy the fandom was until I was
a Game Informer and Tim Turry was absolutely our resident
Sonic expert.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
He like used to make his own ocs as a
kid and stuff.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Oh oh yeah, fucking Sonic game throughout the Wei era
and the three DS era and all this, like some
decent ones and then some terrible ones if they weren't
getting nines.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
Oh Tim was hearing about it.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
Oh yeah, every time I gotta meet Tim and Tim
have so much in common and I haven't meta.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Like you guys.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Out of any friends I've met, you were probably the
two that are the most like, have the most obvious
common ground.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Because I love Sonic. I watched all those shows. The
Archie comics were incredible for a while. I adored those.
I was definitely sending in like bad not trace, but
like eyed fan art to the comics, hoping that they
would post it in there and stuff like that. That
had a Sonic doll that I bought from best Buy
on its opening day, Like oh ah, Sonic was a

(31:21):
lot for me. And then I think Sonic Heroes was
my breaking point. Like Sonic if Etcher one and two,
I was still pretty good. Well, Sonic Pitcher two was
losing me a little bit because it was just so corny,
and they would make you play as Tails are robotic
and these ten minute long levels where you're slowly walking
around on a mech. Then you would play a cool
Sonic level and it was ninety seconds long and it
was back to Tails, just walking around and locking on

(31:44):
to stuff and firing missiles at it. But then Sonic
Heroes was like barely working. You would just fall to
your death through solid ground constantly and I.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Just couldn't do it.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Game Cube, Xbox in PlayStation two.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Kayla liked that one a lot. Sonic Colors was like
the DS three DS one right.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
Well, we could send this when you play it on
Blake Club.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
Yeah, Colors is Colors was we and DS.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
I believe, Oh okay that era, that's right, and it
did have its defenders.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
People like Colors.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
People.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Although some the Sonic fans aren't happy with that remester
that happened or was some issue. I don't know, but
there's a ton I will say this for the Sonic
fans they have the best fan game scene out there, Like,
that's very good fan right.

Speaker 4 (32:29):
It's kind of like the Star Trek to Star Wars,
like Sonic to Mario, where it's like Sega kind of
lets him go ham the way the Star Trek people do.
They're like, no, we're not going to stop any of
these fan films or fan TV shows or whatever. And
that's always kind of nice to see. I prefer that
to the way like Nintendo handles it, obviously, right, And.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
We occasionally get a gym like Sonic Mania where it's
like oh wow, and then they very quickly move off
of that.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah, like you've got Christian Whead right there, what are
you doing? Yeah? And then Christian White had did that
Pennies Big Breakaway game, which was like it's okay, okay, yeah, yeah,
but god, I would kill for a Sonic Mania too.
That game was freaking That was like one of my
favorite reviewing a game experiences ever because again I grew

(33:13):
up with Sonic and it was a two player game,
so I had my brother aj Common play that with me,
and it was this kind of wild We're basically playing
song like the Hedgehog, the real song Hedgehog four for
so many other people and experiencing all this wacky stuff
like that boss fight where it just became doctor. Yeah,
that was one of like the wildest things I'd ever

(33:35):
seen in a video game. But nothing like made me
pop harder than that. I was like, God, we are
just playing Doctor Robotock's mean being machine. Now that's genius.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
And then they followed that up with what was it?

Speaker 3 (33:48):
Sonic Sonic superstargf.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Right, and I don't think I played.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
It after that.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
I played it, and I beat it because I said
I would. I would beat that game before I could
play Super Mario Brothers Wonder and uh, it's it's rough.
It's just like I like, I love I like Mania
a lot someone who doesn't like a lot of Sonic games.
Mania is so good, so much fun. And then they're like, well,
we got it now, don't worry you guys, go do
something else. We'll take Sonic back. And then they did

(34:15):
this and it's like those boss fights where you can't
hurt Robotnic for very long periods of time after you
heard him one Like, initially, it's just so bad and
boring in so many ways.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
It's kind of a nothing of a game. I barely
remember anything from it.

Speaker 4 (34:27):
Yeah, it's nothing. The kids don't even ever bring it up.
They like they were playing with me for a little
bit and they're like, Sonic Frontiers, that's real shit, but
get this out of my fight.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
I still kind of liked Frontiers. Didn't Aniers?

Speaker 3 (34:37):
Fine, I like Frontiers. I hope that, like the next
one is basically just that, but refined. I thought they
had something going on there. Fact, like one of the
things I didn't like about where those moments where they
try to just put those boost style levels, like those
kind of you know, Sonic Colors style levels, Like no, no, actually,
the thing you got going with the open world, that's
pretty good, and give me more of that.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Like weird puzzles and stuff in there.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
Yeah, I think, just give little more refinement to like
the look of the world and that.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Then yes, yeah it did have that like default unreal
engine look and there's draw distance problems and things like that.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, whatever, Mike you mentioned sending in fan art and
stuff like that, and it maybe I was thinking, like
I have I ever saw it because I was the
envelope art guy at Game Informer for years. Oh wow,
And which that was that that seemed like it was
gonna be a great deal at first, because I loved
the envelopear growing up.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
But oh boy, the amount.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
Of shit you have to wade through, and every time
you go through it, your hands are just a crime
scene by the end, with like like paper cuts and
just ink and pencil ship and it's just like and
you'll maybe find one usable thing out of every hundred
things you open, and it's just like, what if Mario
was at c O and also smoked weed, you know, like,
so that's.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
The usable one ship all the time? Sounds good to me.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Master Kief, what if master chiefs weed? You know.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
I was looking at the EGF Compenium the digital archives
out and like literally was literally looking at the fan art,
and it is it's all just that. It's like metal
gear solid but Sonic the Hedgehog is Snake gets.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
Just that street fight. Yeah, right.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
Envelope art in some magazine is how I learned about Goku.
That's the first time I ever saw Goku, and it
was like, yeah, that's every issue would have like one
or two Gokus and.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
I'd be like, what the fuck is this?

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Yeah? Yeah, I remember getting really upset at Envelope art
on an e GM or something. When I was like
it was a Nintendo piece, something you would do. I
got very upset because I was a bit I was
a bit more of a Sega fan back then, obviously,
and it was like it was Mario and a giant
Yoshi and he like stomped tails to death, right he

(36:39):
saw his tail coming out of Yoshi's like foot and
sonics like all scares like tales you see like the
blood dripping out. And I was like, this is fucking bullshit.
They should have read this. I was I think that's
around the same time, like because I knew about that.
There's robotics, bead bead machine, and I saw something in
a magazine about Kirby's Avalanche and I did it know,

(37:02):
So I was like they just freaking copied and ripped
off Sega. Why is nobody doing something?

Speaker 1 (37:12):
I remember I was.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
I was so pissed off about PlayStation coming out, and
I told you, guys, I remember the like Yoshi's Island.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
No crying, screaming.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
That's what the guys should have bought new consoles they're doing,
because like I just thought Superintendent would be all I
need forever. So anyway, I went from being very pissed
off at PlayStation coming out because I couldn't afford it,
to playing at a blockbuster. I played Twist the Metal
One at a blockbustered Kiosk and loved it so fucking
much that I went home. And this is still in
my mom's house somewhere up and looking for this notebook.
But it's like a big drawing I did of Mario

(37:41):
and Sonic standing in the foreground looking at each other
and like sweating and shaking, and then in the background
it's Sweet Tooth and Warhawk coming in shooting missiles at
that you are not ready all over it.

Speaker 4 (37:57):
That's when that's when you became a man and you
stopped playing child.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Yeah, I got an erection, and then I there was.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
In third grade for our spelling quizzes, like like each
kid had to kind of draw a picture and like
design the paper for the spelling quiz that day. So
just like had to put the six lines for the words.
You can draw whatever you want. So people were drawing,
you know, like Tommy Pickles or Mickey or all this stuff.
And I drew the Sega Saturn logo on mine. Oh,

(38:28):
I got into a fight my friend because he had
like just played a PlayStation Kioski. Like Mike, it's so
much better than the Saturn. It's gonna blow it away.
I was like, I'm hanging up. I not want to
hear it.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
I don't think I sent in any of my art,
but at one point and stopping. If you've heard this,
I don't know if I've ever told this on like
Giant bum but like I was watching SmackDown back when
it was on not cable. It was on like not
you was upnor whatever, like the CWUPN or whatever it
was on like network.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
SmackDown was on up It was called the c W
UPN then became seed.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
Does I think there was UPN and WB network came
together and became a CW.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
Right back was on UPN with all the Star Trek shows.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
I remember, yes, and Shasta McNasty of course, of course,
so it was on. It was over the air, so
you could get like news break ins and stuff like
that from local news, and living in Kansas, we frequently
got like tornado watches and tornado warnings and it was
some like you know, there's some Stone Cold angle and
I just love Stone Cold so much, and like they'd
been building up to something at the end. I'm sure
it was I don't know, stone Cold ships in McMahon's

(39:28):
coffee or something, but like I was just waiting for
like this big payoff at the end, and then the
fucking news broke in and it wasn't even like hey,
you're gonna die tornado warning thing. It was just like hey,
Tornado watch and Johnson County wine dot County and I'm like, okay, great,
it's a watch. It's not real yet. Just stone Colds
about a shit and his coffee. Like they didn't cut away,

(39:50):
they just stayed there. And I got so fucking furious
that I recorded. I popped in a VHS tape and
it was either Restumated two thousand or no Mercy.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
I create. He hated the fucking weatherman for the channel.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
It was like a s and everything, And I gave
him an entrance and I did a match where I
played as Stone Cold and I just grab a chair.
It's like a no DQ match and I grab a
chair and just it's like fifteen minutes of me whopoping
this weatherman's as. I don't because I sent it to
the fucking station.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Man.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
He either thought that was really funny or incredibly disturbing.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
I don't think I gave any context. I don't think
I was, like with your Tornado watches.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Next time VHS unlathled, it's kind of a threat.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
Oh that rules. Oh my god, that is such.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
A good way to release just get mad at people.

Speaker 4 (40:45):
I should just send them VHS tapes. No one would
ever watch them.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, you would have to imagine it's like a nick
Cage eight millimeter of snuff film or something. To the
authorities here. Yeah, O Jesus Christ, all right.

Speaker 4 (41:00):
Did you name it after the guy? So like at
least if he did watch it would know it was him.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
I was by the head went to Brian Busby, which
you probably do. I think he's still the weatherman in
Kansas City, but that wouldn't have been it because it
was upn Weirdly related to that, though, is Jonathan Coachman.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Do you remember the coach Oh? Yeah, he was the.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Weatherman for KMBC nine news growing up, the ABC affiliate
in Kansas City. So when he showed up in wrestling,
I was very confused as to why my childhood weatherman
was in wrestling, And many many years later I think
I was at Wrestlmingia thirty Access their convention and Coach
was there and I went up to him and go
k NBC nine.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
He just turned around, like what the fun is? Like
the news like in Kansas City was like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
My Weatherman's like holy shit, no one's ever brought that
up to me.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
That's crazy.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
I remember how weird it was because he was just
doing Sports Center for a while and I like always
had on kind of a hard time not just being
like that's that's the guy vits Mcmahonpete on that one.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
That's most people on most TV shows.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah, And that was always my move with any celebrities,
like always trying to like, Okay, what's the thing, Like
there's the stuff they obviously get asked about all all
the time, and then there's like the obscure stuff like
you ever see that like Nard war guy. Yeah, like
super super deep cut stuff. And that's why, like I
tried that even like when I would meet wrestlers in
more recent years where it's like first time I met Flair,
you know, he was shockingly at the JW. Marriott Bar

(42:25):
with three Gen and Tonics in front of him, and
I sat down next to him and I just kind
of like I.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Didn't want to immediately mark out. I just ordered a drink.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
I'm sitting there acting like I'm not there because it's
Rick Flair next to me. And then I turned to him.
I was like, oh, hey, Rick, I was going a
little bit of small tuck stuff. He's looking at his
phone with gigantic that I didn't know iPhones could have
that big a font. I was like, hey, remember remember
I think I actually worked at Game in Former at
the time. This is like a while ago, and I
was like, I work, I work in the video game world,

(42:51):
and I thought it was really cool when you remember
when he did that Command of Conquer commercial, he did
that Red Alert three thing and that series of commercials
with you fighting a bear a guy, and he was
like you didn't even like look up from his phone
and he's like what And I was like, yeah, I
remember the Flair versus Barrett commercials, like you know, you
fighting the bearsicca, I don't know what you're talking about,
just absolutely And he's just no selling everything I said.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
Not like even interested that he like film commercials with
a bear and doesn't remember.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
He believed me. I think he was just like whatever kid.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
And then it wasn't until I just I just pivoted
to like the Eye. I was like, oh, man, I've
been watching some of those old eighties promos lately. And
he like put his phone and I was like, oh,
we were running in the eighties, brother, we were.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Going the eighties. Yeah you got We're.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Talking about like fucking Dusty Roads and Greg Valentine or whatever.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
He perks up.

Speaker 4 (43:32):
It's like, that's when people want to talk about the GameCube.
We were running in the GameCube.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Ear guys, we were you brought up like winning the
finance scure thing to talk about someone. Drew Scanlon was
on uh last week on the FI Skip as you
are Out, and I do I feel bad. I feel
like a bit of a goof because the one time
I ever interacted with him, I think it was on
a stream and I was on a call and it
was this you and him was the first time I
ever was on anything with them, and I think somehow

(43:59):
within a minute I brought up the Blinking Guy. I
was like, why it's wrong with what? Why am I?
Chris Barley showing.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Also the thing you think about all the time with this,
like don't be the Chris Barley Show.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
I know, and it's like, I'm usually so good. I
was like, Drew probably thinks of some kind of a
due fit. The nice human being in the world, I know,
incredibly nice.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
He is sort of like, goddamn, yeah, he was awesome
here he's flying planes now, yes, I mean more so
than usual.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
More so than usual.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
I mean he's talking about it on the show. I'm
not all the way through last episode yet, but he
was talking about flying planes and.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
So he stayed like he got like back on track
with this, his lessons and all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Told me he was talking about like renting planes and stuff,
so I assume he mused to be doing it, Like, yeah,
he's he's the type of guy like I'm definitely older
than Drew, but like working with him, I would just
be like, ah, that's like an adult.

Speaker 4 (44:51):
Yeah right, that's when I know exactly what you mean.
That's alone who could figure out how to fly a plane?

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Yeah, that's it. Well, I just realized that in this
zoom call I misspelled my name, so.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
That I am.

Speaker 4 (45:05):
Makonchi.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, Mick, what Mike? So that's where I am.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
Well, w's right next to the e Mike, it happens.
It's difficult sometimes when you're in a hurri you know,
you had.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
To put an age on when you think.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
I'm not going to say when you we've all continued
to learn and grow as people. But like, ultimately where
the line kind of evens out, what do you think
the age is for you guys?

Speaker 4 (45:30):
Like, oh, like, what age do I get to where
I'm like, I'm still just that age?

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Yeah, okay, I'm thinking fifteen.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
Yeah, I'm like I remember Bruce Willis would say twenty
seven and that's way too old.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
No, No, I was yeah, no, no.

Speaker 4 (45:45):
I've never really felt older than like maybe twenty two.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yeah, I think like fifteen ish with when you sprinkle
in the like, oh I can drink now and I'm married.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
Yeah, that's right, that's an average. Right. There's some things
where I feel fifteen. Sure, some things where I feel
twenty six, Like I've rented a car once and that
like yeah, and like that was like okay enough to
be like okay, yeah, you know, but planning a family
vacation to Disney that was like a whole thing and
stuff handled a lot of that. But I'm like I contributed,
did what I could and had some help there, like

(46:14):
you know, I had connections and things like that that
made me feel a little bit older. But it's an
average it out to about twenty two.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
It's very it's hard to say, like twenty three was
big because that's when I like started actually going out
and trying to be more social. So that was an
important thing. So maybe after like twenty five, I don't know.
There's always weird little things and there's so yeah, there's
so many ways that I'm not that different from eight
year old of my key here, right.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Okay, let's say this.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
If you average out all the things you reference or
think about, like, oh god, a day to day basis,
I feel like I'm like ninety eight ninety nine, So
I'm like.

Speaker 4 (46:51):
It is, and it's it's totally like a bell curve too, right,
because like as you get closer to today, there's fewer
things from each year I'm probably thinking about. Yeah, I
will say, if you say, Mike, think of a year,
nineteen ninety eight is probably going.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
To be the year I have. Yeah, that was a
big one.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
That was the year for whatever reason, and like, yeah,
ninety eight, like just show me those numbers, and I
feel good.

Speaker 4 (47:13):
Yeah, yeah, I can think of a specific time, but
like I mentioned this before, the weeks before Phantom Menace
came out in ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Sure, nineties, we're all a couple of years apart and stuff,
But like I do feel like that late nineties was
hitting for all of us.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Yep, absolutely good time.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
In sixty four coming out, that was another time. Yeah, yeah,
sixty four, Oh got dreamcast. I was so freaking excited
for all of that.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
But then do we all agree that that next generation
was objectively better?

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yeah? It was probably the besttionaries, but you know it
had that whole nine to eleven thing souring stuff.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah, well, here it comes Mike you with his political
agenda eleven.

Speaker 4 (47:50):
Us from our video games.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
Bad. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
I did change the tone of like even the fun
stuff afterwards.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
The tone of everything changed a bit.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Of course.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
Earlier Mike you mentioned like wanting to hang up on
your friend because he was like, you know, talking bad
about the Saturn. I'm like, it wasn't directly because they
were insulting the n sixty four, But I definitely eventually
fought the kids who like, at first, I'm like, hey,
I got the INN sixty four, come over, my house,
Like we ride the bus home together and we played
the N sixty four and they were like, this is amazing.

(48:21):
And then a few weeks later, other stuff had happened,
and I was I was probably like provoking them in
some ways, being kind of a little shit. But eventually
they're like, oh, you know, PlayStation so much better than
the N sixty four. And then a few weeks after that,
we all just fought on the bus. It was these
two kids and me, and yeah, I'm like, okay, well
I did not lose. Yeah, like there was one kid

(48:43):
I really beat up and the other one stopped me.
Basically is how it went.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
We didn't really have like a Saturn contingency. We definitely
had PlayStation in sixty four back then, like there'ld be
kids who owned them, but like nobody was like Saturned
the winner.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
You know. I was definitely very lonely on my Saturn,
and you know, it died pretty early. But that was
I never really like when the Dreaming Cast died, I
was like, okay, game cubes were mitching my wagon. When
the Saturn died, I would I played PlayStation. I played
sixty four, but it really that was when I got
into PC gaming, it was I was doing like Half
Life one just happened. I was almost playing gryffin Dango

(49:17):
and a lot of those old loog stars at Veture
games like those. That first wave of weird MMOs like
ever Request and Assurant's Call wasn't too long after that,
So I was like, I was deep into that world
back when it was still kind of weird in its
own thing.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
It was still pretty interesting, arg you, maybe more interesting
when it was weird. But yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, definitely. Uh,
speaking of that, do you want to talk about video games?

Speaker 3 (49:41):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (49:43):
All right, video games?

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Boy, it's just it's a delight, you know, it's uh
a mic and grub of known you for a while now,
and it's rare that we get to just sit down
and talk about video games.

Speaker 4 (49:55):
I know, it's never for once.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, yeah, I didn't talk about everything. Were playing, yeah yesterday.
Which if you want to hear us three talk about
video games on a many times a week basis, check
us out over at giant bomb dot com. Subscribe to
the giant BombCast we're over there. Definitely subscribe Blake Club.
We'll touch on that in a moment here. But yeah,
since people have probably heard us talk about people. Okay,

(50:19):
I'm sure I've got a lot of people's around me
right now.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
I don't have a single PEOPO.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Look at the people.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, I kind of because I heard Mary is playing
a lot of Blueprints. I have not heard her thoughts
on it yet, and obviously she's not here this week,
so I want to save a larger me and Mary Blueprinces.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
Yeah, I want to hear that too, so definitely save
some stuff for that.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Is Mahardy going to check it out?

Speaker 2 (50:42):
I think he said he's going to check it out. Yes,
I don't think he started yet. I know Mary has
been playing.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
I'm feel it curious because they were like, you know,
I think the people really love this game, love it,
But then there are some who some who I suspect
would have I'm not surprised they don't like it.

Speaker 4 (50:53):
But some them like, oh you don't like this? Okay,
can I just tease a little bit for your guys show.
I'm just I've seen her on been playing a lot.
She's at ninety one point eight hours in Blue prius O.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
I think she likes it all right, that's well. I
think she also leaves stuff on for a long time.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
So she definit left it on one night.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
Yeah, you can say.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
My thoughts are she probably likes it.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
I feel like I've seen some people in Blue Sky
be like, oh yeah you got married and do it
a river. So well, I'll need to talk to her
next week about it. If you want to hear us
three and Jan talk about it, listen to the last
two or three bomb casts. Probably yeah, And we put
up videos plenty of us talking about Blueprints. It's an
incredible game. We're all in camp pro Blueprints, very plow
Blue Prince.

Speaker 4 (51:33):
Just like only slightly annoyed that people think that's like,
this is one of those things where like, oh, you
just played a game early and you felt like, no,
that's I'm forty two. That just doesn't happen anymore. I
just God, I love this game.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
It's like I like, I still am appreciative of that
sometimes for sure, and like I can't be aware of it.
But uh yeah, the point in life where that would
have colored my opinion on a game is very long past.
If ever, like come.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
On, yeah, and I can't.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
I can't get mad at the folks that are not
it's not clicking with because I got no there's gonna
make balders gates and stuff like that that are universe beloved,
and I just like, look, not everyone's gonna like everything.
You know, I'm not gonna take a personally if someone
doesn't like a game I like, but exactly we all
like it quite a bit here, I U, I guess,
just to quickly touch on it, I think I'm done,
uh in that I definitely saw credits a long time ago.

(52:21):
I've played a good amount past that. I can see
where additional things are and a lot of things that
are very deep that I barely scratch the surface of.
But like, I'm at the point where I'm kind of
fine looking stuff up or talking openly with you guys
and like discord and stuff like that. Are you guys
still actively playing?

Speaker 4 (52:36):
I am, But I I am feel myself kind of
coming to an end as well. I uh, I think
I have six of the eight bread letters now, kind
of like finding Safe, I didn't even know we're there,
which is surprising. I am still also discovering new things
to like begin like oh, I could spend time investigating
this as well that that early metapuzzle with the you

(52:57):
know the letters or whatever, like oh, Okay, that did
have a double meaning, and I didn't realize. I'm like,
I thought I solved it and was I had moved on,
and then I went another room. It's like, oh, this
relates to that too. Okay, I'm sure you send a
picture of that in our discord. I was like, oh, yes,
realize that. Yes, so yeah it's that, and then yeah
the other one exactly. So I am still really enjoying
all of that. I have a very lightly begun like

(53:18):
looking for hints, not exactly just tell me straight out
what's going on, but I'm like, you know, Chris person,
tell me a little bit, pointing me in the right direction,
that sort of thing. But it's definitely when I sit down,
like to think about playing a game, it's like, man,
this is all I want to play still. I want
to do another run. Even if I don't have a
goal like earlier, for like the last you know, fifty

(53:38):
hours it's been, I have set goals I want to do.
Now it's like, let's just see what happens and then
I definitely have some things I want to touch on,
but I'm just happy to kind of like lay rooms down,
see what happens, and then oh, yeah, there is that
one thing I can do now that I have this tool,
I'll see if I can manufacture the RNG to get
me there. And if it doesn't, oh well something else
will probably happen.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
Sure, I feel myself also slowing down. I did have
like the first puzzle that I just straight up looked
up and when I looked at it was like I
wasn't gonna figure that out with it was the gallery, right, that's.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
A glad I did that.

Speaker 4 (54:13):
Yeah, yeah, I got that's one where I got the
tiniest hint from Chris where he's like a thesaurus is
what he said. And uh so when I got the
first one, everything else clicked into place.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
But it's like there is so stuff I would like
to do and want to do, but it is I
do sometimes eventually feel almost guilty, like I gotta play
some other games and I can always come back to this,
like I want to beat a Vout especially you know,
there's rumors that that I believe in remake could come
out next week, and I know if I start playing
that might be hard to go back to a Vout
something that's pretty similar. And there's some other games coming

(54:44):
out soon, like you know clear obscure, I gotta I
want to make sure I'm playing that. So, yeah, I
probably am slowing down here a bit. And I don't
know if that means I just stop or if it
means I go really deep on just looking stuff up
and quote unquote trying to max out my safe I'll
get those letters and whatnot. Probably the former.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
Yeah, I think I could do the thing now where
its just I just look up like the craziest puzzles
and just watch it. Like I think I'm probably done
playing it. But that's certainly not an indictment. That's like,
oh gosh, long pass credits on that game. I got hours,
like fifty sixty hours or something like that.

Speaker 4 (55:17):
So and I think I've like at this point, have
like seen more than either of you, and there's still
so much more for.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
Me to see.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
So it's like, if you want to throw yourself in there,
there's gonna be so so so much, but you can't
have a satisfying experience without having to worry about doing
all that. At the same time, I think it's I
think it's good for a puzzle game like this, Yes, totally, Yes.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
One of the best, uh, Mike, you are playing Tales
of Grace's f What the fuck is that?

Speaker 3 (55:41):
You know?

Speaker 4 (55:42):
The Tales of Games, right, it's probably kind of similar
to your favorite, The Ease.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Well, yeah, I'm a big eashead, but yeah, but uh yeah,
so tail I've heard. Can I guess tales? How many
Tales games are there? How many like different words are
there at the end of tales that are part of
the same series.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
It's like fifteen or something like that.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
Well, there's like a bunch of mobile ones that know,
nobody really played. Let's say there's like twelve important ones,
maybe mainline ones. There's one you have to know. I
bet there's one that you know the name of.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
Who makes them?

Speaker 4 (56:12):
Damn co.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
Tales of Simonia, that's right. Is that the one you
thought I would know?

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Yeah, because that was the big game cube one.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Okay, Tales of Arise.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
Tales of a Arise. Yeah, that was the newest one.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
I remember.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
I already talked about it on here and I actually
tried that out briefly. Tales of Simphonious, Tales of a Rise.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
I'm trying to think of any other one.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Yeah, that's about all I got.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
There's Tales of Destiny, Tales of the Sparea of Bursaria,
Tales of Zilia, Tales of Zilia two, Tales of Fantasia
was the first one, Tales.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Hid Zone.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
I'm a big JRPG guy. The gimmick with these ones
is that they lean a bit more in the action
RPG thing, but they still have most of the trappings
of traditional JEPYG and that you have like a battle field,
like the way you kind of equip items, and the
party set up and just the structure of everything. Great
classic JERRPG. Ease is almost more of a straight up

(57:14):
action RPG, I think, because again it's not this is
a oh you touch an enemy in the field and
then you go into like the separate screen, the separate
thing going on there. So that's why this feels. Yeah,
it's a bit more traditional in essets. And I played
some of these, and I've really liked Sales Simphony I
played back on the GameCube. Really liked that Tells of
Vesperia was the Xbox threet sixty one, and they remastered

(57:36):
that one not too long ago from modern platforms, and
I love that one. That one is great. And I
played like half of a Rise, the new oor one
Kid that came out. This one Tales of Grace's was
the Wei one.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Oh, it's a remake of a wee game.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
So well, first they brought over the PlayStation is three
and that's when it became Tales of Grace's F. And no,
I do not know what the F stands for. But
then this is now Tales of Grace's F remastered. Okay,
so it's a remaster of a p S three version
of a Wii game.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
What is the through line with the TAILS series other
than the tales word?

Speaker 3 (58:14):
It's kind of yeah, it's that gameplay set up.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
Really, it's like characters like a no, it's.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
A final fancy thing. So I think some of them
are tangentially related and like separated by eons, right, But
generally it's like a fun fancy situation where most of
them are completely different, separate things, but they have like
always the same art style. Generally, it's some other weird quirks.
There's this skit system where a certain point you can
push select and you'll just see the characters kind of

(58:43):
talking to each other about what's going on. It's completely optional,
but they're usually kind of funny or cute. They just
give you more flavor or something like that, but I've
liked some I like to Vespari a ton of like
some funny a lot. This one is okay, Okay, yeah
it is. If you are a big Tales of Like
fan and you just want to play the new one

(59:04):
that got remastered you haven't seen before, I think it's
worth it. If you're curious about the series, please play
Tells of Vesperia instead of this, or play Tales of
Our Eyes, the newest one. There's nothing super wrong with it.
It's just all kind of normal, right.

Speaker 4 (59:21):
Is this the one you were losing steam with a
little bit a few weeks back again, Yeah, I almost.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
Just dropped it, and I was like, I think I'm
so close to the end that I will go ahead
and finish shit. And I am glad that I did.
But it was like it was a little bit of
a push, like, all right, let me just get through this.
Like I kind of knew how the combat worked. It
wasn't really getting any more complicated. It has like a
crafting system of sorts that's not very complicated. I was

(59:47):
a little surprised because all the tails heads are like
this one has one of the best battle systems in
the series, and I wasn't really getting that sense at all.
It seemed there was roughly some complications to it and
the kind of a taxi can do, and some dodging stuff,
but also it has that problem. I think a lot
of these games sometimes do have or because it's an
action like real time combat system and you have a

(01:00:10):
party of four, but you can only control one person
like and often you're not playing as the healer. It's like, well,
the hero's trying to cast attack and it's getting attacked
and there's like five enemies on the field. You're trying
to deal with them. So you're spending a lot of
time just trying to get enemies off the Healer, but
sometimes you can't, and it's a bad feeling. And other grpgs,
when a party remember dies, you have to revide them,
but you know you're controlling them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
It's your fault.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
It's extra annoying in this when you're playing the kind
of item menu game a lot at that time, like, oh,
someone die, let's get them up with the potion, Let's
get them up with the whatever. This game called Phoenix
down Life bottles things like that. But again it was
all fine. It's weird. You could still tell some of
the ways it's a weak game, Like there's zero controlling
a camera in this game, interesting, right, because like oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:00:56):
there wasn't a right analog stick when they first made
this game. So also means no overworld, which is something
that Simphonia and Vesperia have and I like that. And
this is more just a bunch of kind of long
paths connecting all of the area, so the world feels
surprisingly small.

Speaker 4 (01:01:11):
The whole thing felt kind of small in some ways,
in a nice intimate way for a game that took
me like thirty five hours to beats, which I guess
on the short end for a JRPG these days, but
still felt like a pretty long game. There's actually even
an epilogue I thing that I think they added in
the PS three version, and I was like, I'm not playing,
that's fine, I'll I'll go, I'll go read a description

(01:01:34):
of what happens there.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
I've had enough.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
It's building a house at the end of Red Dead two. No,
I wish it was that good.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
I think it's like even for Sona three, which I love,
has that episode I guess thing right that they added
to the remake, and it was originally part of that
fest version of the game. As much as I love
Persona three, by the time I'm done playing that game
for eighty hours, I'm like, oh, I'm good. I don't
need to see the playable epilogue.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
No, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
Uh, Mike, you mentioned the you know, the we not
having the right analog stick, you know, not to bring
news into this show, Dan, But there was some headlines
that went around this week because shoe Hey Yoshida, who
formerly a PlayStation said Nintendo is losing their identity because
the switch to is not weird, and I like, I
just kind of fundamentally disagree with that because it's like
Nintendo has done just follow up consoles in the past

(01:02:24):
and that has not stopped them from being very Nintendo.
But how do you guys feel about that? Is there
any part of the switch too that feels like it's
disappointing because it's not weirder?

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
No, because my thought is, like the gimmick stuff, Like
even the ones that were successful the Wii, the games
I like from the Wii are not because of the gimmick,
you know. I like there's a handful I like boom
Block Galaxy. Yeah, boom Blocks is fine. Stuff like that,
but like, you know, it's not about the gimmick. And
then they tried to do the gimmick follow up to
the Wii. Instead of doing the same thing, they did

(01:02:54):
a different thing and it sucked. And there were great
games on the WIU, but there weren't games that you
needed the gimmick bore you moved to the switch out
the gimmick, and then this is not to you. Well,
of course, yeah, and the switch I mean, you can
call it a gimmick, but I really don't think it is.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
I think that is just like an evolution of a console, you.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):
Know, and it's meeting a need. Yeah, it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
It's not oh, waggle controls, not so I can swing
the tennis racket or I got a game pad.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
It's oh I can take my game on the bus.

Speaker 3 (01:03:20):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
That's totally So.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
It's people like, first off, conflating the innovations with gimmick
because when I was kind of complaining about this, piss
about this a bit, people are like, well, like, you know,
some of the gimmis have been like D pads and
things that they invent them Like okay, yeah, I'm not
talking about that. You know, there is weird stuff with
the switch to like the mouse, but what is always
so much more important is just software innovation and creativity.

(01:03:46):
Like the big thing with the switch one wasn't HD
Rumble or even the wild It.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Was a plane.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
Yeah right, well it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
Was like it's far more influential than any of the gimmicks.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
Yeah right, And look at Donkey kunkin Nan. So look
a what they're letting us do in that game, Like
that's what's important. So there's a lot of things to
criticize Nintendo about right now. I do kind of hate
the Nintendo's not weird anymore thing. I don't, but I
don't care about that at all.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
You know, it wasn't weird the fucking Super Nintendo. Yeah,
like exactly, that was that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
A problem for the Super the nes Like, no.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
Wasn't weird weird either. This is kind of a relatively
recent thing. It's a hold over from the Wi era.
I think it was, you know, help them with weirdness.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
It was their expression of like the Blue Ocean strategy
of like, let's go someplace where everyone else is not.
And really what they ended up realizing the reason it
worked with the Wii is because it was less powerful,
and so they saved a ton of money and so
they could just focus on software innovation. That's the thing
that has survived from the WI because that's the first
time they did that, Like though all the other gimmick
stuff did go away, but stay in a generation behind
with their hardware, so they could like put more money

(01:04:55):
into making software that stayed and that's what mattered from
that generation. So yeah, they're they're actually just as weird.
Putting out an underpowered console is still weird. So yeah,
I'm totally happy with it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
And I guess, like, you know, you could argue that
the DS and the three DS were gimmicky, but like
again the game like they did some clever stuff with
the dual screen stuff, but it did but.

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
Like probably top tier gimmick, and you know, hard to
define gimmick, but that'shy would put that one in s here.
There's always so much like kidro revisionist history people, a
lot of people did it, like the three D I did,
but they barely supported the three D effecting games.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
By the end of the three D.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Launch, consoles didn't have the fucking three D on it,
you know, Like it's telling though that like the best
games you can still play without that, Like look, yeah,
you're not going to see that block in the foreground
in Mario three D Land, but like you can play
through Mario three D Land, you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
I think there's Pokemon games that just straight up did.
The later Pokemon games straight up did not have three
D enabled at all. Cool.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Uh, Grub, you have mainly been playing the river Hillsoft
game over Blood for the original station.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
Yea, yeah, I beat this one today. Yeah, this this
was our this is my Blake Club game. I uh,
you know, four episodes. Last couple were not two long
episodes either. We kind of had a rush last week
and rush this week. So you know what, Dan, you
were right? Not too bad?

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Right, it's but also appropriate, like it's not too oh
it's a bad game.

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
I just mean like relatively, it's not like Katana come on, like,
you know, that's terrible and a gauntlet that never ended.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
And for those that I guess you don't know Blake
Club and just listen to fire Escape, it is US
three and we play two completion the worst games of
all time. We have turn I did Superman sixty four
and Sonic O six Grubs Done, Dake Katana and Ride
to Hell, Mike Mortal Combat Mythology three D, Mortal Come Mythologies,
Fester's Quest, Mike just destroyed in one sitting, which was easy,

(01:06:49):
one of the more impressive things I've ever seen.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
I beat.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
After that, He's faster now, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:53):
I am faster. Uh, Jeff. Here's my big question, because
I've been kind of thinking about this almost all day.

Speaker 4 (01:07:00):
What genre would you call over Oh my god, yeah,
I mean I I would probably put it, especially if
I was working in a magazine back in that day
and I had to review it, I'd be like, this
is basically an adventure game. It's an adventure horror.

Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
It's barely survival horror.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
Horny to call everything.

Speaker 4 (01:07:22):
Well, okay, you're right, you're right. If I was actually
working in a magazine back then, I probably would have
called it survival horror. But so now I would call
it adventures.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
We joked at the beginning when you're playing, I'm like, oh,
this is kind of just grimfin Dango down to the
tank controls, and it basically was that. There was some combat,
but ninety percent of the combat was in like the
last ten minutes of.

Speaker 4 (01:07:44):
Yeah to get into the combat, you had to still
still go into the item inventory, that Grim Fandango item
inventory and bring it up. And even when combats started,
you had to do that and the combat wouldn't pause.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
It what a weird take combat encounters. Yes, yeah, I had.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
Resid Evil where you're like side stepping a bunch of
stuff around. There's like two things in the game you
have to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
I was shocked how much it wasn't Resident Evil, because
I think they thought it was like Resident Evil, but
it just really isn't.

Speaker 4 (01:08:10):
Yep, it was. It's just a very strange game. It's
you know, disorienting. You do expect it to be a
little bit more like Resident Evil. Even like Resident Evil
one back on the PlayStation had some like context sensitive
button presses, right, Like you could walk up to a
door and if you had an item, it would use
it or did you have to go in your inventory

(01:08:31):
and you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
If you had the key, Like if you had a
key to a door, it would be like do you
want to use the club key?

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:08:38):
Right, And so this is like, you know, it's just
like a level above that in terms of being a
little obtuse, and so you do it. You have to
kind of go through everything and just be like, okay,
I try everything on everything, and then you know it
does present as a survival whore and it's never scary,
it's goofy. And then you know it's a sci fi
story and it's a you know, a telegraph everything from

(01:09:00):
a mile away.

Speaker 3 (01:09:01):
It's you know, it's very much the Clones.

Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
It's it's you know, one of those games from Gaming's
three D infancy, where like they're just like, can we
do even do this in a game? And it's like, well,
you couldn't, but we will eventually figure this out.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
It was a ton of fun to watch you play.
I had one of the more fun Blake Club games
to watch somebody play. It is a lot of that story.
And the story is so cheesy and hokey and stupid,
and the characters are so ridiculous and dumb. I don't
mean like like, oh like this is this is dumb.
I mean they have low IQ's, they are not very

(01:09:36):
smart people. That whole aspect of it was incredible, or like,
you know, there's that you got your little robot front Pepo,
and I genuinely feel good about people. I like imagining
Pepo and I think it's it's that you're in a
special club if you know who Pepo is.

Speaker 4 (01:09:53):
Exactly that right that now, like knowing that, yeah, there's
people right there for video watchers for like no knowing
that this does have so much love for people who
watch that super replay and like now I'm like very
excited to go watch that myself. And uh like we're
seeing the comments of people on that being like, oh,
doing another rewatch of this? You know, it's Christmas time.
I'm gonna sit down. I'm I'm gonna rewatch it all

(01:10:13):
the way with, you know, beginning to end. I'm like, yeah,
I get it that this game would be a fun
thing to just you know, it's very MST three K.
It's that kind of bad game. Towards the end, I
compared it to Space Mutiny with the classic ms T
three caps and I'm like, yeah, that is exactly what
I said.

Speaker 3 (01:10:29):
I'm like, yeah, that is what this reminds me of.

Speaker 4 (01:10:32):
You know, we have gotten into some real rotten games
at this point. I think recognizing that there should be
a space in Blake clip or stuff like Overblood is
like crucial, right because like hokey goofy bad like b
movie bad like no actual B movie bad is should
be represented and so like it gave me a bunch
of ideas likely what it is some games I want

(01:10:52):
to recommend for the show going forward.

Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
Please let me play Blue Stinger. I've been a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
I know it's your Oh well, Grub has now seen
what you're gonna look like and he knows what the
game is.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Grub, I'm jealous.

Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
Have you do?

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Are you familiar with the game, Grub?

Speaker 4 (01:11:07):
I'm going to make myself familiar. I gotta find out
what this thing's about. I gotta see look like I
do know. That's why I'm jealous.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
It's not a.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Particularly tough costume to wear, Mike, We've all worn way harder.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
Yeah, we've all worn I've worn I'm the one who
always has to put face pain on something like.

Speaker 4 (01:11:24):
And I think that's a rule. Now you're the only
one that ever will.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
Yeah, fantastic? Was it? You think it was the best
Blake Club game you've played? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:11:34):
I mean, you know what, that's not how thinking about
when I'm playing it, But it's like it's it was
the least painful for sure. Like I definitely was like
happy to be like playing that rather than Blues Brothers
or some of these other games we thought wouldn't be
as bad, and like, no, Blues Brothers actually is that bad.
This one is that bad. Had all those weird defenders
and they're wrong games. Yeah, they just don't. They played

(01:11:55):
it literal different game than what I played.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
Yes, it's funny, like in a weird way, Like over
Blood is like really important to me in my career.
And also like I don't know if Blake Club would
exist in its current form if I had not pulled
that out in like twenty ten, because it was the
thing that taught me that like, and I've mentioned before
like super Replay was originally supposed to be like we're
in new full playthroughs of you know, first two were
like Mario three and Link to the Past, and then

(01:12:17):
like we just I pulled it out of the vault
one day over like what the fuck is this? I'm
gonna make ten play this And it was the funniest
shit ever and we played it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
But the running joke when we used.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
To record super Replays to completion before we even started
airing them, before we're doing a lot of stuff or anything,
and I just made a running joke throughout where it's like,
no one's gonna fucking watch this, this is such a
bad game. And I started doing this like password system
every episode, like, all right, if you've made it to
episode three, the password is wienerless Steve. If you've made
it to episode five, the password is insane in the

(01:12:47):
comments if you know all the passwords. And like we
were all just joking like, yeah, there's gonna be like
ten people to watch this whole thing, and it was
far and away the fucking most popular one. They started
this whole like replay fan group on Facebook that I
think is still active called I watched it entire Overblood
Super Replay.

Speaker 3 (01:13:01):
Yeah, because it brought that up to me.

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
Yeah, so it was just this huge thing.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
And like, you know, Navarro came up with like the
Blake Club name and stuff back when when he was
a giant bomb. But when I started playing Sonic O six,
you know, it wasn't I didn't have Blake Club in mind.
I was just like, let's play this bad game. And
I don't think I would have picked up a bad
game to play in its entirety if I had not
seen so long ago that that can be super fun
for me, and also the audience likes it so like

(01:13:27):
in a weird way without overblood and obviously Alex like,
I don't know if Blake Club exists the way to,
but it's still so funny, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
Blike Club is like probably the favorite, my favorite thing
that I do right professionally.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
Thing I look forward to every single week. It's the same.
It's the thing I look at my calendar and I'm like, shit,
we're gonna I got two weeks until the next time.
I can't wait to, like Jesus costume, I can't.

Speaker 3 (01:13:48):
Yeah, I do. I do for some reason. I think
it's important also.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
Weird like wise, Yeah, you know, we're learning things like
we've talked before about like Superman Explore. Everyone just talked
about the Rings and we showed everyone that like a
lot more going on than that exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:14:05):
Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like important, like I feel
like for me personally, where it's like I my perspective
on games has widened, like playing all these bad games,
and I always liked playing bad games, but I would
just do the thing where I'll I'll play the first
level and I'm not going to actually beat this game.
But being you know, we commit to beating the game
that's the whole thing. And seeing credits on so many

(01:14:25):
of these really terrible things, it's like, man, I playing
bad games is always fun in retrospect, having played a
bad game is like, man, remember when we when that
thing happened. It's like and having that and be like
I don't always feel that way when I play a
game that disappoints me. That it's like a big budget game,
that's like and then it helps me identify, like what's
the difference here? Like what is this game missing? And

(01:14:47):
so when we talk about that stuff, I feel more
informed because I've played Diakatana.

Speaker 3 (01:14:51):
There was it was a part when I had to
play that bad RoboCop game for the original Xbox so
I just needed to rant and I was screaming about, like.

Speaker 4 (01:14:58):
Look at this right now. This is a virtual world
that was created with what is it? Zero's It's a miracle.
It's a magic and I and I hate it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
I think about all the time that even these awful
games are somehow miracles, and in some way they're almost
more special because nobody cares about them.

Speaker 4 (01:15:18):
Wait, I mean, like, yeah, go, how do they even
get across the finish and we know how hard it
is to make games. Of course, it was easier back
than than it is today in a lot of ways.
But still, you know, it took a village to get
these things done. And you know what was it like
working there? Like to get it across that finish line.
It must have been like pulling teeth And somehow so
many of these games actually did accomplish exactly that. Even
the game Mike's Gonna play next? Are we just gonna

(01:15:42):
after that? Have damn played the nine to eleven games?

Speaker 3 (01:15:46):
Watch one with Osama Bin lauded as the final pod.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
I know I've got the beard, but I will not
put my foot down undressing. Does that want to be clear?

Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
Yeah? I want to be clear, Dad, I have zero
interests and seeing you dress up as Osama did allotted.
I'm not even going to do the obvious name. But
I do think I was at a Halloween party one
year in like the twenty tens, whereas like Dan, what.

Speaker 4 (01:16:16):
What is that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
Mean?

Speaker 4 (01:16:20):
They were about trying to figure it out? Right, I'll
do it. I was at a Halloween party at a bar.
It was like the costume contest. It was like, oh,
we go, we got the Ghostbuster and the Joker.

Speaker 3 (01:16:32):
Some guy dressed up as Osama Bin Wanden like he
didn't go over very well.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
It's real weird.

Speaker 4 (01:16:40):
Although the number number three most sexy fictional character Osama
bin laden right there behind Batman.

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
Oh going to it? Yeah, one god, I'm sure it's
still like this.

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):
I remember going to a comic con in like twenty
ten and half the guys were Deadpool and half the
girls were Harley Quinn.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Oh of course. Yeah, there's a big stever when you're
in college. When Irwin just died, I never thought they
were hilarious by doing the sting right thing.

Speaker 4 (01:17:02):
And they have the sting ray sticking out of their
heart or whatever, just like very cool.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
They should have all stopped because nobody was gonna match Norms.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
Steve Irwin, how you do that? That's how you do that,
Dirk Joe.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
It was like, I died so young. I think he
died at a ripe bold age for a.

Speaker 4 (01:17:19):
Crocodile was tragedy at the time.

Speaker 3 (01:17:23):
Two days later.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
We're just making please please don't make me laugh at this.

Speaker 4 (01:17:29):
I'm not laugh Tragedy at the time is I don't know,
maybe the funniest thing anyone's ever said I got.

Speaker 3 (01:17:36):
I think about it every day.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
He who can laugh?

Speaker 3 (01:17:38):
Frank, you don't want to know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
God, that's what we joked about Overblood or like Blake
Love being important, But it really is like we work
for a corporation that has all sorts of ever changing
ideas about how to make video games content, and I
swear to God the thing I'm like, no, you were
not fucking touching. This is Blake Club. We aired the
finale today and I was not kidding. I was specifically

(01:18:07):
told like, do not let Blake Club go late. You
need to be in this meeting when it starts, and
it was clear that we were running a little behind.
I was just like, look if I get fired, because
I wanted to see the end of over Blood today.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
So it's a good way to go out.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
I guess that's how it happens. The tune in next
week on the game Best channel for bad.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
Game Clubs, We'll club.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
I don't care, just we even download the videos and upload.

Speaker 4 (01:18:38):
I don't give a ship.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
Yeah, glad, we're all liigned on that, Okay, for like hell, yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
Mike, you played Castable Illusion while you were taking a ship?

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
I did, so, Yeah, I have received from Dan a
Chinese handheld on my own. I know that you two
love these things. Jeff gave me one to mess around
with a little bit. Which one was that, Jeff that
I just left at my house.

Speaker 4 (01:19:04):
I think that was an early Ambernick one.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
Maybe, yeah, the.

Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
One that I had you play in the steam room
grub you know what.

Speaker 4 (01:19:12):
It might be. I think it might be, Yes, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:19:15):
This is the Ambernick SP so it has that clamshell
shape of the Game Boy Advance SP. One of the
best handhelds ever and just the best form factor for
one of these. The reason I asked Stan for this
is because I knew he was like sort of preparing
them and uh for for family members, and I was like,
I'll buy one of these from you if you still

(01:19:35):
have one. I'm doing this Disney World trip soon. And
it's funny because I used to always love having my
Game Boy Advance or my DS in my pocket because
sometimes you're in Disney and you're in a line. There's
not much to do. It's like an hour long line sometimes,
so you just play something on there. And it's weird
that that's actually something I've lost now that you know

(01:19:56):
those aren't modern systems. I don't really have them ready
to go like I used to. So sometimes I you know,
I'm not saying I can't talk to people or look
at my phone. I'll do that stuff with the phone.

Speaker 4 (01:20:07):
Oh yeah, look at what the little game boy in
your pocket said. I was like, yeah, of course, that's
why I want them to. I imagine myself in a
line at Cedar Point with my Game Boy Advance.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):
Sp like that.

Speaker 4 (01:20:18):
It makes that feeling is I don't know something about
it's magical.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
I kind of go there real quick. I kind of
go the opposite way.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
Mike is such a like innocent uh, like you know,
like I'll play it in the line for Pirates the
Caribbean or whatever. I use mine a lot, But you
know what, I think about a lot about like why
I'm glad I have it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:35):
On you Like the old game Boy Advance SPADs where
they're like having sex or whatever and what.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
No, it's because they say, if you ever witnessed something
unbelievably traumatic, that you should start playing Tetris and it'll
help their brain process it. So it's like I will think, like, oh,
if I'm ever like a a mall and there's a
mass shooting.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
I could just play Tetris real quick.

Speaker 3 (01:20:52):
There you go. What the hell?

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
I never heard this?

Speaker 4 (01:20:57):
Wait, they say you should play Tetris.

Speaker 3 (01:21:00):
That is a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
That's the thing awful that I have.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
I've seen some fucked up stuff in real life that like,
oh I wish I could have just been able to
play Tetris after seeing that body that just fell off that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
Roof of New York City.

Speaker 4 (01:21:12):
Okay, And then the next step of this is that's
why you want to game Boy Advance with you.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
That's a little bonus. Okay, angled corpse and the sidewalk.
I could be like, I'll play a little Tetris, that too,
all right?

Speaker 3 (01:21:28):
Cool? So I bought it for for for Mickey's house.

Speaker 1 (01:21:37):
That's not why.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
I like the outside Chinese handheld for preparation of corpses.

Speaker 4 (01:21:44):
For the impossible pivot.

Speaker 3 (01:21:45):
I was excited you had this green one because that's
the one my childhood one was. I was like, oh.

Speaker 4 (01:21:51):
Yeah, I did. I did immediately. So you preloaded a
lot of games on here already, which I appreciate. But
I did immediately go and add Ridge Racer type on the.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Foot right, because the thing is it can do PlayStation stuff.
But it's a little picky because it doesn't have an
analog stick. So I think I just feel like something
the night maybe and like twist.

Speaker 3 (01:22:09):
Yeah, you put sim and I crushed Bandicoot one resume
on one. But and I was aware of that. I'm like, well,
I actually play Regester type four of a D pad. Yeah,
that's I like to play it. So and I already
played a race on it and it worked great, So great,
that's good.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
And I also but yeah, they also take up the
most space too, so that's why it's like I loaded
everything up so full sets of like any s and
superintend Like.

Speaker 4 (01:22:28):
Have you explained your process of like uh, you know,
uh imprinting the cards and stuff like that, and like
how you do this and buying all these and.

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):
You've done it once and I've got the image saved
to clone these SD cards. But I'm gonna have to
redo it, I think because there are a couple of
settings and they're weird things where it's like I don't
know why super metroids down on it here or whatever.
But I think the most important thing I did do
it is when you get it just from the factory,
it doesn't do the sp thing where it's like if
you shut it, it goes into like about that.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Because it did do I was like, is it gonna
do that? And then it did.

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
I'm like, oh good, I hacked.

Speaker 2 (01:23:02):
It doesn't initially do that, but like if you installed
it is this the one has like MoU os.

Speaker 1 (01:23:05):
It's like muos or something.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
You put that on there and you can go into
some power settings and it loads you straight to like
the emulator list and all that stuff. So it's like
it's just a much cleaner, better interface than it comes with.
And I just bought four more, so I'm gonna have
to like do this again, so I might go in
and try to refine like this first batch like that
you got Mike that was in my first try, so
I'll probably do it again.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
But it's already pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:23:27):
The only other game I added right now is actually
the uh is Mother three with the fan translation, because
I finally played Earthbound relatively recently after years of not
being able to get into it and freaking loved it,
and people go off about Mother.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
Three also and straight yeah, so I actually excited after this.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
I have a couple questions related to that, but yeah,
these things are awesome. I just love like you know,
I was on a next Lander thing a couple of
days ago and I was talking about these and Alex
was like, oh, these things are probably really cheap and shitty, right,
It's like, no, they're actually awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:24:01):
Place.

Speaker 4 (01:24:01):
They started off cheap and shitty, and then they the
competition of like all these companies working against each other
forced them to make it better.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
And it's you know, it's it's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):
It's good screens, good USBC chargings. A lot of them
will just come with the like tempered glass screen protector.
There's a million great YouTube channels and videos of just
like here's how to load this up in the right way.

Speaker 4 (01:24:19):
And I mean it's it's all the manufacturing plants that
make the expensive stuff as well. They're all made in China.
So it's like this is like when like one of
those products gets like deprecated or whatever, someone just comes
along as they're like, well, let's makes what can we
do with this place that makes a bunch of LCD screens,
And someone has the bright idea like, well let's make
tiny little you know, Chinese handhelds. And it's it's the
same stuff, just now it's being like sold at a

(01:24:40):
lower cost because that doesn't have the overhead of like
an American corporation needed to get it's cut. It's yeah,
it's a good situation.

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
I'm I'm pretty excited that there's a bunch of Sega
Master games on here, because as much I love Sega,
I never really played much. Master System wasn't much of
a thing in the US, and I watch a lot
of retro gaming channels and a lot of them we'll
talk about best Masters, syste some games. It's all these
things I haven't played. There's a lot of Disney games
on the Master System. There's two Mickey Mouse ones, there's
two Donald Duck ones. They're all supposed to be good,

(01:25:09):
a bunch of other weird stuff. So I'm like probably
gonna play a lot of Master System games on this thing,
and that's very exciting to me.

Speaker 2 (01:25:16):
Yeah, And I've had people ask that, like, look, you know,
I have an analog analog pocket and it's fantastic, and like,
you know, I've had people ask, oh, and thats supposed
to be the best one.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
Why don't you just use that? And it's like, I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
I like to play old games in any circumstance, not
like people to take them on the go and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
And for me, it's like different use cases.

Speaker 2 (01:25:32):
Like the pocket is the one where it's like recently
I've been playing through the Warrior Land games and stuff
where it's like I'm gonna sit down, like while I'm
sitting here at home watching raw in the background, I'm
playing on the analog. But that is the more kind
of high end expensive one. It's also a little bigger,
a little heavier and stuff. So like something like this
like the sp where the screen is not exposed, or
I love the the trim Ui brick. That one's actually

(01:25:53):
Rick's awesome. That one's so awesome. And they're smaller you
can literally fit them in your pocket.

Speaker 3 (01:25:57):
It's so tiny. It's such a good form factor. The
show is so good.

Speaker 2 (01:26:01):
Yeah, and if something the worst case, which I've never
had anything like this break, but like if it did,
this isn't two hundred bucks like the right you know,
you get these un sale for like fifty you know.

Speaker 1 (01:26:09):
So yeah, it's a different use cases.

Speaker 4 (01:26:13):
Yeah, I've never bought any of the ones that are
like one hundred and fifty plus that can do like
you know, maybe PS three games. And I know there's
some people interested in that, but like, whenever I get
to that point, I'm like steam Deck, I got my
steam Deck. I will just go back to the steam
deck because the price is getting a little bit questionable
at that point, and the use case becomes a little
like sure, I would like to be able to play

(01:26:33):
I guess PS three games on the go, but those
games aren't really made with that in mind, and.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Resistance exactly, pware. I'm playing Tetris during Master.

Speaker 4 (01:26:42):
Tietiflood on the sand, I can wait until I'm home.

Speaker 3 (01:26:45):
Yeah, there's so many eight bit and sixteen bit games
that I'm interested in. We want, like want to play
for the first time or replay. That's that's enough for.

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
They're the best one, or yeah you got twenty minutes
until you're playing lands. Yeah, boot this up for a
little bit, and I got a couple of Warrior where chunks,
you know, and.

Speaker 4 (01:27:01):
Then if you need something else you can Yeah, Tony Hawk.

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
Will work great. Yeah, Yeah, it's a They're They're fucking awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
I love my get a lot of use out of them,
and even just the ritual of like getting a new
one and like looking up the videos on the best
way to like switch out the UI and load up
all the games. Figure out like, okay, I've got this much,
I got sixty four gigs. Here's what I'm gonna put
on this one. You know, Like I.

Speaker 4 (01:27:19):
Think these things are only going to become more prominent
as I think consoles in general are going to become
more and more of a hobbyist thing, right, sure, so
it's good that we're all getting prepared for this reality.

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
Honestly, yes, all right, well I think the covers, Like
like I said, we we're talking about the new games
all the time. We want to check us out on
Giant Bomb and also game mess decides last than in
ten Dogs. That's a thank you for the podcast that
Greba and I put out there.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Great stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:27:47):
And uh, I want to ask you maybe this is
a different angle here. I'm about to spend dozens of
hours on planes, like in the next month, more than
one overseas strip I've got pack, I've got a lot
coming up, and I always, as someone who doesn't like flying,
I like to make sure I'm like over prepared in
terms of games. But there is that like choice paralysis thing,

(01:28:09):
so I have I'm planning on bringing the first one.
I'm going on is actually by the time this episode
goes up, I'll be in a different country. So I'm
bringing the Steam deck and I'm bringing I can't said
I'm doing the analog or maybe the trim. You why,
but let me here's here's what I'm looking at here
and tell me what you guys would think in terms
of like a playing game, because I want to, like

(01:28:31):
I have a billion ready to go and downloaded, but
I want to be able to focus on something and
be like, oh, I'm gonna beat this or I'm going
to really spend sure, sure, sure, Okay, the dominant collection.
I haven't gone through order Evercclesia, that's an Oh, that's
a no brainer.

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
That's gonna be good. Crash four never really played through that.

Speaker 3 (01:28:45):
Crash four is great. I love Crash for it. I
like it's my favorite Crash game. It's definitely the best
one best Crash game. Okay, yes, no, it is. It
is beyond good and evil. The twentieth anniversary Mike told
me about that. I said it was really good.

Speaker 4 (01:28:58):
It was, yeah, it's surprising good. I think that game
falls off a little bit towards.

Speaker 3 (01:29:02):
The end, so but still it's when that first hour
is actually fantastic, you know, that's just what you play.
It is magical, just thin, like, man, this was really
good for you know. Of course the log games are
good back then, but it almost feels like the first
three sixty era game to meet in some ways. I wonder, oh,
if you'll agree when you play it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:21):
It's just it's a little bit XBLA. I played through it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:24):
I just haven't played through since the XBLA version, and
I think it's really neat.

Speaker 3 (01:29:28):
We're all going to play the sequel here any minute now.

Speaker 2 (01:29:30):
Right that next month, I think, yeah, I got a
hat in Time, which h er let me. I'll solve
an old giant bomb mystery that people have wondered at
one point. You might have seen a coming soon or
later this week, a quick look of hat and time,
and then it mysteriously disappeared.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
And there were some Reddit threads and NeoGAF things. What
happened here?

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
I don't remember the deal, but I did prep a
quick look for had in time, and I remember really
liking it, and it was ready to go.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
We recorded it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
I think I was a giant bumby at the time, maybe,
And there was some sort of like internet drama, some
socialmedia thing.

Speaker 3 (01:30:05):
It was like what.

Speaker 4 (01:30:06):
What's the name or something like what was his name?
The guy that was on John Tron? John Tron, Yeah,
he was. It was like about the creator. No, that
was you're thinking, you're thinking of ukulele and the voice
John Troun did a voice.

Speaker 3 (01:30:18):
You're right, there was there was. There was a drama
with a hat in time.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
It was so like because we're kind of fighting against
it because I was like, I don't think anyone knows
about this, because like I hadn't heard about this, and
I saw the guy popping up on other outlets and stuff,
so it's like it wasn't the thing where like this
guy was like roundly canceled. But I remember not really
knowing what the deal was, and I was like, let's
just put it up.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
It's not like a John Tron.

Speaker 3 (01:30:37):
Wasn't John Tron is also in a hatt and time
is he?

Speaker 1 (01:30:39):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (01:30:39):
I think it was John Tron because John Tron said
some white strim ship, because that I.

Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
Would have understood.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
This was something about like like creator like lightly docs
someone like years. I can't remember his accidental or something,
but I remember it was so kind of obscure that
like I tried to look it up and I was
struggling to figure out what the thing was. I remember
being like, like, we whyt to just put this up.
This isn't like some weird Nazi thing or something like that.
But the call was made to like, let's not put

(01:31:05):
it up.

Speaker 4 (01:31:06):
So for anyone who I remember something, I remember something
a with hat and time, and I was so excited
about it, and then it happened and I'm like, I
don't want to play it now. I remember feeling that way.
I don't remember exactly the details.

Speaker 3 (01:31:16):
I'm Chris, what you think, because like, I love three
D platformers and I tried to place on switch and
it just it ran very poorly on switch, so I
just couldn't really stick with it. But if you think
there's something special there, I definitely would try to play
it some other way.

Speaker 2 (01:31:29):
Okay, Yeah, I kind of want to go back here,
because I actually never went back after that quickly was recorded,
and I remember thinking like, oh, this is pretty fucking good.

Speaker 1 (01:31:35):
So I'm in a three D platformer mood lately.

Speaker 3 (01:31:37):
Right right, you started SpongeBob SquarePants Rehydrated.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
I did that quick stream and it was good. I
didn't keep going on it. I should have that downloaded.
Like it's just like on a plan especially, it's good
to just have some like turn your brain off type
stuff like that. I've got some obvious ones here that
I've played before that I know will be great. You
got into the breach Across three D with the stylus
on my phone say Across. Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:31:57):
I don't know if you guys ever played pick Cross,
but I've been playing. I played a ton of Pitcross.
I beat the Danny.

Speaker 2 (01:32:03):
You you know what's happening right Nowross on the switch online.

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):
Yeah. After years of.

Speaker 4 (01:32:09):
Not just me but primarily me being like, hey, Mike,
Pitcross is awesome. Pickcross three D one of the best
games ever, He's like, yeah, I don't get it. Then
three D he has not done three three Okay, you
gotta do that now. But like, yeah, why you would
least see Pitcross now because that's.

Speaker 1 (01:32:24):
He loves it.

Speaker 3 (01:32:25):
Yeah. I mean, it was like, it's not some short
thing to beat all the puzzles in the game Boy version.
It was like fifteen hours of gameplay or something. It's
the only thing I wanted to do.

Speaker 4 (01:32:36):
There's a great Konami mobile game that has a bunch
of of those, Well, I figure with that, like the Pixel.

Speaker 1 (01:32:43):
Collection or something. Yeah, it's yeah Pixel.

Speaker 4 (01:32:47):
They have that Japanese super Famicom one on Nisola. Tried
playing that, but I thought, like others, won't be a
game where the Japanese matters too much. But the very
first thing I did was it was like a Japanese
symbol was the Pitcross puzzle.

Speaker 3 (01:33:00):
It's clearly supposed to mean something. I was like, okay,
well maybe maybe not this one.

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
Well, I swear my try three D. It is the
pinnacle of anyone really likes an enthusiast three D.

Speaker 4 (01:33:09):
You're gonna it's gonna be It's if you like Pitcross
at all, You're you're gonna be blown away.

Speaker 3 (01:33:13):
But it's like, at first I was like, okay, I
just guys, I just only now understood Pitcross.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
I'm not ready.

Speaker 3 (01:33:17):
And now I'm like I'm ready.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
I'm ready.

Speaker 3 (01:33:19):
I got this.

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
Obviously.

Speaker 2 (01:33:22):
Slay the Spier is one of those games I started
and I was like, this is awesome. I never kept
going with it. Rogue Legacy two I never played past
early access Mario Golf. I played a decent amount on
the analog, and I want to finish. Oh do have
chib Robo on here, but I think now I'm gonna
wait for the switch to sure, yeah I should wait.

Speaker 3 (01:33:37):
I'm the opposite because I have a copy of gb
Robo for GameCube and I'm like, okay, I want to
maybe actually finally play that before the switch too comes in.

Speaker 2 (01:33:46):
Oh nice, I I so this is one here is
Warrior or no, sorry not Warland, Earthbound and Mother three.
So that's what I wanted to ask about, was so
those those seem like they'd be good playing games, you know,
And I was asking grub like, oh, would there be
an analog thing or should I play on like Steam Deck?
I think, like, probably good analog even even though earth

(01:34:07):
Bound was.

Speaker 4 (01:34:08):
From other three for sure, I've not I've tried earth
Bound a couple of times and I got started. I
was really into it one time, but I have not
played past that. I know that there are some quirks
of it being an older RPG that that might make
that better if you can have some safe states, like
you could.

Speaker 3 (01:34:22):
Say that's just on Nso so I played it on
switch and yeah, yeah, it's just on NFL.

Speaker 1 (01:34:28):
If I'm bringing the switch though, I mean, I've got.

Speaker 3 (01:34:31):
Right because like Earthbound is surprisingly more of an relatively
old school jeripey than you might expect, so that you're
going to do some things like grinding, and you might
have times where, oh I died to a random battle,
and do I really want to lose all that progress
and go back to the safe thing, or do I
just want to rewind a little bit before that?

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
It's kind of nice to have rewind.

Speaker 4 (01:34:54):
Just make sure that the emulator set up with rewind, which.

Speaker 3 (01:34:56):
You should not be against that to be clear. Yeah,
that's why you want to do something that has rewind.

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
And you know, I think the reason I could see
myself going through this game instead of finally playing through
Final Fantasy six or something is because, like I think
it might not so much be the j RPG menu
stuff that I always thought.

Speaker 1 (01:35:11):
I think I think the Fantasy stuff might be yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:35:15):
Different, that's your if that's your hang up. Even like
when I played through Earthbound just you know, a few
months ago, I still think it's whole suburban weirdness kind
of Twin Peaks thing is fantastic. The vibe and aesthetic
of that game is still really freaking good.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
Mark, I love them so good, Marion, Luigi and paper
Mari and stuff. I fucking love those, and those are
just turn based arbudies. I know they have the like
timing stuff and everything, but like Free.

Speaker 4 (01:35:41):
Has some time and stuff in it. That's what was
one of the things I like about it so much.

Speaker 1 (01:35:44):
Okay, So I do need to I need to get
that from someone.

Speaker 3 (01:35:47):
I may I may have sought you a message archiving
site on the internet.

Speaker 2 (01:35:52):
Oh cool, that's smart. Okay, Yes, I should play that.
And the translation is good.

Speaker 1 (01:35:57):
People who love the fan translation say it's amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:36:00):
Yes, okay, some early big emotional moments and the best
thing about Marther three is all like, remember it was
gonna be like it was gonna be a sixty four.

Speaker 1 (01:36:08):
GDA sixty four game.

Speaker 4 (01:36:10):
Yeah, and all the images of it is a sixty
four d D game where all these characters that had
like looked really distinct, well, it's like they took those
characters and just put them into the Game Boy Advance
and they made them Game Boy Advance distinct. So they
are all these really cool looking characters and they all
like either like in the little village, and they're all
kind of getting along and they all know each other.
But then something terrible happens and the characters are emoting
and really affecting ways, and uh yeah, it's it's good stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:36:34):
Now Here, here's the big question.

Speaker 2 (01:36:35):
If I know I want to do one of these,
at least on the plane, can I just go to
Mother three without knowing Earthbound?

Speaker 3 (01:36:42):
It's it is, it is a it is a sequel
in some way. It's not a ton so I think
you can. The one thing I think you're going to
bristle against him earth Bound even bother me a bit
is the inventory management is kind of a nuisence. It's
it's the Dragon questyle where each character has their own
inventory and it's a max inventory, and it's relatively small,

(01:37:05):
and there's a system in the game you can call
your sister and she'll come and pick up items for you.
But it's a little bit annoying. I don't know if
Mother three does the same thing, Jeff.

Speaker 4 (01:37:14):
Mother Three's got a limited inventory. But you're basically you
solve that just by feeling good about using items all
the time.

Speaker 3 (01:37:20):
Oh yeah, that's very part of my problem.

Speaker 2 (01:37:23):
Yeah, I'm a really yeah, scene like Chris Redfield and
Reside Evil one and just be like the eight is
not nearly enough with Jill.

Speaker 3 (01:37:31):
I've still never beaten resnievl one with Chris. I'm always like, look,
I think Jill's a better character and she's got way
more inventory space.

Speaker 1 (01:37:37):
I'm just gonna play as her every time. I never
plays Grace.

Speaker 3 (01:37:41):
No. Yeah, it's some part of me like, maybe I should.
I want to play that remake again. That remake is
still so freaking good for Resident Evil.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
Oh god, wellmake ther least favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:37:57):
Sorry, you know, like now that you're so blue, Prince Pote,
have you thought about checking out the mysterymake.

Speaker 1 (01:38:04):
I didn't really realize they remade it, but I would not.

Speaker 3 (01:38:08):
They remade that a bit ago, and then they remade Riven,
the sequel to Miss Yet last year. People actually say
that remakes great? Yeah, people raved about that.

Speaker 2 (01:38:16):
Yeah, oh I have to do that on record Roulette.
Oh wait, I don't think I have that anymore. Okay,
maybe I'll just play it for myself.

Speaker 4 (01:38:24):
Yes, yeah, we got our own Twitch channels whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
Yeah, we'll figure it out, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:38:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:38:29):
Okay, well, then yes I will start at least one
of those like Earthbound or Mother three on the plane.
Last question before we take a break for emails, here
is speaking on this plane stuff fellas. I Uh, this
is a tough thing, and I want everyone to feel
bad for me. But after going to the last twelve
WrestleManias in person, I will not only not be attending

(01:38:52):
this year's WrestleMania, but I will be on a plane
during Night two, during Cody Roads versus John Cina. I
will be home for Night one, but I'm leaving at
ten am the next morning, and I'm also flying that
in a place that does not have Wi Fi, so
that's not even possibility. So Mike, here, here's my two
options here, and let me know what you think sounds

(01:39:13):
better for me. I can either tell everyone I know
not to text me for a week and hope that
it's not spoiled, and I can download it to my
Peacock Gap before the flight home, and that sounds like
a sweet four or five hours on a plane is
watching WrestleMania for the first time. Or I am going
to a thing in Japan where I will have friends
there that are also into wrestling. Jake Beep, where I

(01:39:36):
said where I'm going, I guess, I guess that's not
an embargo breaker.

Speaker 4 (01:39:39):
Now people go to Japan all the time, you're fine.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Yes, I'm going to Japan for fun.

Speaker 2 (01:39:45):
Yeah, so all my several other friends are going to
be there for fun also at the same time. And
one of them, I was kind of dming, like, oh, yeah,
what are you doing about Mania? What do you know
about Mania? You're gonna be on a flight during that too,
and yeah yeah, and he said like, well, we got
to do like a watch party at the hotel when
we get there. And I was like, oh, that does
sound like a really interesting fun ways like watching WrestleMania.

Speaker 4 (01:40:06):
Japanese foods and Japanese beer, sit down and watch WrestleMania.
That sounds the hell of a night to me.

Speaker 1 (01:40:12):
Yeah, rather than just saving it just for the sake
of like killing time on a plane.

Speaker 4 (01:40:15):
And you can always save it on the other side. Yeah, yeah,
here's what I think.

Speaker 3 (01:40:19):
I think that instead of this stupid pity party for yourself,
you should think about me, who was kind of confident, like, oh, man,
Dan's gone to every wrestleing forever, but it's gonna go
to this one and I'll probably get to go with
him this time. It's gonna be great. Oh he can't go.
Oh yes, you go to Japan.

Speaker 2 (01:40:38):
That's really boring thing that I'm gonna hate.

Speaker 1 (01:40:41):
Mike, Yeah, very much.

Speaker 3 (01:40:45):
Fun. We had it all in.

Speaker 1 (01:40:46):
We went and we went to Summer Slam together.

Speaker 3 (01:40:48):
We wish at least go to a wrestling show this
year together with the figures of the Gether.

Speaker 4 (01:40:54):
SummerSlam kicked the ass with us three Summer's so much
for some stuff in the West again this year?

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
Right, aren't they doing a big show?

Speaker 1 (01:40:59):
Was mrre sliam Is next year? Indianapolis got all this
ship this year?

Speaker 3 (01:41:03):
Where are they?

Speaker 4 (01:41:05):
Like, right, that's between us?

Speaker 3 (01:41:06):
So right? That's that was the thing too. It's like
this wrestle is not even that far. It's like right
in between us. It's not even that far away far
the veggest right. Yeah. Restaurant bad, that's my bad, My bad.
Royal rumble was part of me was like, oh we
should go, and then it was just kind of busy
and ship.

Speaker 1 (01:41:26):
Got the Summer Slam and like Survivor sers or something.

Speaker 3 (01:41:30):
I also haven't been to Vegas and forever. I kind
of want to go to Vegas again.

Speaker 4 (01:41:33):
And we'll come up with the excuse eventually.

Speaker 2 (01:41:35):
Yeah, yeah, but yes, I would like to watch wrestling
with you fellas again. But yeah, so maybe I should.
Maybe I'm leaning towards washing it in Japan.

Speaker 4 (01:41:43):
I would That's what I would do. That would be
that makes much.

Speaker 3 (01:41:47):
Get me get me a jacket from Riberta.

Speaker 2 (01:41:51):
My hotel is an eight minute walk. I already have
plans with somebodys to go to Roberta, so that's gonna
be great.

Speaker 3 (01:42:00):
We did that show with Samoa Joe and that was amazing. Yeah,
and I kind of told my friends. I told my
friends I was doing it, and they thought it was
really neat. But I didn't end up like sending them
the link because we did end up we ended up
talking about my testicles a lot during it. I just
I didn't know how they were going to react to that, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:42:18):
Do they not listen to any of other stuff? Because
I feel like your balls come up plenty.

Speaker 4 (01:42:21):
Yeah, your balls are the main star on our shows.
The one does listen to nineties Disney even though it's
not that into it. But like a lot of my
high school friends and stuff were not very big into
video games, right, which is it's pretty weird. Like I
always in my house was like, okay, I like video
games way more than the other people I know in
my life.

Speaker 3 (01:42:41):
Even though other people seem to like the games. Fine,
yeah right, so no, like you know, they're they're very
supportive of me and things like that, but they don't
have any interest in listening to we talked about video games.

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
Some of them do, but I most don't.

Speaker 2 (01:42:53):
That's so interesting to me that, like, more than anyone
I know, you are the guy that, like I feel,
has no shame whatsoever, and like you'll get up and
bolt out karaoke in front of everyone you don't care,
Like it's I look, it's genuinely quality. I think it's
fantastic about you. It's funny that Smoejoe talking about your
balls is the thing that causes you. The two things

(01:43:14):
Mojoe talking about your testicles and uh songs from your
Jesus musicals.

Speaker 3 (01:43:20):
Part of it. Like like like the one friend especially
and he is one of my closest friends. But he
also I had a lot of friends in like the
advanced programs. They were like the smartest kids in the
school and stuff like that. And his friend he teaches.

Speaker 4 (01:43:32):
Classics now university and like he also loves wrestling. Right,
it's not he's like super hoity toity, but I know
he would be like a little off put and like
that it's some like weird way he would like make
fun of me for it. But I also I don't
want to have that conversation of him try making me
explain to him why it was actually okay that Samoa

(01:43:52):
Joe talked about my testicles.

Speaker 1 (01:43:55):
So funny that that actually just happened. Yeah, it's really
weird for me. I think it's a normal thing.

Speaker 4 (01:43:59):
Because it'll be in the history books.

Speaker 3 (01:44:01):
Yeah. Think he just the kind of person like if
I ever did meet him, he's gonna remember all of that.

Speaker 2 (01:44:10):
We're just gonna lead with the grape swallowing because he
definitely that made an impact on him.

Speaker 1 (01:44:15):
Okay, guy swallows grapes whole swallows.

Speaker 2 (01:44:21):
Look up boyemail dump truck with Samoa Joe. Fantastic fucking episode.

Speaker 3 (01:44:26):
Man, I've got to do some fun things thanks to
you two in recent years. I'll tell you what it's
been better. It's funny. I like I've been doing this
for a while. If there's some reasons, uh, like over
on the games beats and I had to kind of
like look through some old stuff. It's like, gosh, I
can't believe I've been doing this for twelve years or
more than that, because it's only like the last few
years where it's been this real whirlwind roller coaster rid

(01:44:49):
of just constantly doing weird, interesting things a podcast with
Samoa Joe or oh my god, I'm in Germany and
now we're all in and just weird, weird, fun stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):
That's interesting thinking about the stuff before. Yeah, because like
I guess, I was working for free from oh five
until Game Informer hired me in O nine and I
was going to E three but I'd like pay my
own way out and all that shit, and like I
wasn't getting paid directly. It was just so I had
like four years of just no big crazy stuff and
then Game Informer went crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:45:22):
Right, Yeah, because like you got yeah, you got a
gay four roads early. Jeff and I were low key
at games Beat for a long time there.

Speaker 2 (01:45:30):
Grub was like I mean, I knew Grubb's name and
everything for so many years before, like we've talked about forwards,
Like the first time I ever saw you in person
was your on stage at that Greg Miller competition thing
and me Mike and Mary, yeah, before fire Escape existed, Me,
Mike and Mary were brutally hungover.

Speaker 4 (01:45:47):
Yeah, and we came up and we sunglasses on and
I'm like olasses because we were fucking unbelievably fucked up.

Speaker 1 (01:45:55):
And then yeah, I remember seeing you there.

Speaker 2 (01:45:57):
I remember just giving me a pat on the back
because I was the first time I'd ever seen you
in person. I had hair at the time, I remember,
And we didn't. I don't think I saw you afterwards
or whatever, because I think we got knocked out. Then
we just went passed out of the hotel or something,
and then it was years after that that we started
working together. But like, yeah, I feel like we were
following each other back in the probably like early twenty
tens or something. You were tea Chicken dinners.

Speaker 4 (01:46:17):
And exactly just kind of talking on on Twitter and
stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (01:46:21):
For sure. Yeah. But the weird thing with me was
that I never used to watch Giant Bomb. Actually Jeff
was the one who liked it. It was Jeff was
the one who was following it up and was excited.

Speaker 4 (01:46:32):
To then Yeah, I needed it was like one up
yours and then I needed something after one Up went away.
So my Giant Bomb's pretty good. I'll go for that now.

Speaker 3 (01:46:38):
Yeah, that's kind of how it went.

Speaker 4 (01:46:39):
I'm so glad.

Speaker 3 (01:46:40):
The first time I met Dan in person was in Disneyland.

Speaker 2 (01:46:43):
I was telling them, that's right about the first time.
Not only was it a Disneyland, but our first in
person interaction was you giving me a stone cold stunner
at Disney Yeah. Of course it's on video too. It was.

Speaker 1 (01:46:57):
Right, There was no there.

Speaker 2 (01:46:58):
I don't think I've ever immediately hit it off in
terms of just joking around and like on and off content,
Like it's like YouTube and like Tim Turry, yeah, Mike
and Marry and like just rush more people that I'm like, Okay,
I just want to make videos of these people forever.

Speaker 3 (01:47:13):
This is the first thing we ever did was the
you did that video game Jeopardy thing over on our
our Patriot, right Jeff and ized and yeah, that you
were on there, and it was the first time. That
was when you The gimmick was you kept calling me
every name but Mike. You pretended you were hot shotting me,
and Mitch was.

Speaker 4 (01:47:29):
The one you really liked for some reason, and everyone
calls me Mitch, and I love it, and I've always
loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:37):
People finally stopped like that.

Speaker 3 (01:47:39):
I want to be like, do you guys understand, Like
the literal dollars he has put in my pocket because
of this? Do you understand for me?

Speaker 1 (01:47:50):
The crow hey brother got an idea.

Speaker 3 (01:47:54):
Exactly like that? Got so over. That was such a
what a gift you calling me Mitch? My god?

Speaker 1 (01:48:04):
It was okay.

Speaker 3 (01:48:05):
Plus, it's just more things that I could potentially rhyme.
It's the stupid puns now, because Mic doesn't work, If
Tocado doesn't work, I have Mitch.

Speaker 1 (01:48:13):
Now. Have you got content ideas based around the Mitch name?
Oh it's so good.

Speaker 3 (01:48:18):
Yeah, all the things, surprisingly large amount of things rhyme
with Mitch, not just bitch.

Speaker 4 (01:48:23):
Wow, you aren't something new every day?

Speaker 1 (01:48:25):
It's fantastic.

Speaker 3 (01:48:27):
All right?

Speaker 2 (01:48:28):
Well, uh, I guess uh that's it for the games
this week? Should we Should we answer some emails?

Speaker 3 (01:48:35):
Yeah? Sure, they're mostly drests the Mary and Mike.

Speaker 1 (01:48:39):
Yeah, several of them are.

Speaker 3 (01:48:41):
Oh I'm a Mic. I can answer those. I trik
wine once.

Speaker 1 (01:48:47):
All right, got a handful of emails here. Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:48:51):
Some of these might have had Mike or Mary in mind,
but you know, I got two fellows here that can
play the roles if needed. So who wants to call
DIBs on? I guess Mike Mike, and I'm Mary, okay,
and we got married there? Okay, great, all right? They
call it grubbing it all right, Here we go. First
one from Phil in Finland. Howdy partners. Since getting access

(01:49:12):
to the deadlocks ki Wo early development build, I put
in almost five hundred hours in a game that's not
officially announced yet, and if I didn't have a dog
and a girlfriend, that amount would probably be triple. This
will most likely be the game I spend the next
ten years with. Before Deadlock, I probably had thousands of
hours in Overwatch, and during my last few years of
that game, I could feel it draining the life out

(01:49:32):
of me, but didn't stop playing it. Since these days,
most Triple A games do nothing for me, and maybe
one or two indies catch my attention every year. I
love the depth, complexity, and sense of improvement and competitive games.
And while I haven't neglected my non existent kids because
of a Wow raid or put my mortgage into loot boxes,
I've definitely turned down personal growth in other areas.

Speaker 1 (01:49:50):
I'm four games. I'm mediocre at I know Mike that
to you.

Speaker 2 (01:49:54):
Mike has put an embarrassing amount into Warframe, But do
any of you have first hand experience, or people in
your life that have been way too into a game
that it became a problem take care of.

Speaker 1 (01:50:05):
It's still from Finland.

Speaker 3 (01:50:06):
It's I was actually just thinking about this because I
a size from Warframe used to play a lot of
kind of these forever live service games. I played a
ton of World of Workout in my life. It's it's
not something that's come up a ton recently. I was
until pretty recently, I was doing a ton of Final
Fantasy fourteen. I did play a lot of Overwatch too
when I was younger, tons of Team Fortress Classic and

(01:50:29):
early Counterstrike, lots of Heartstone, and that was the thing.
So I used to do these a lot. It's only
pretty recently that I've actually kind of backed off.

Speaker 1 (01:50:38):
That a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:50:39):
I think part is because I'm doing so much more
retro gaming now too. I'm streaming exactly and a lot
of those games. If you're like not a specialist in
those kind of games, oh nobody wants to watch you
stream an MMO actually, and I kind of get it.
I kind of get it. So yeah, I'm not doing
as much of those, but I don't know. In our
folly problem, I did have a friend who was really

(01:51:01):
deep into world of warcraft, but he like he played
up so much about that it was a problem. But
he also found ways to kind of make it interesting.
Like he made friends there that are still his friends.
There are people that I know of pretty well now
and like stall at his wedding, and these are people
he played with in Vanilla Days and he got married
a few years ago, right, and he would make like

(01:51:23):
videos in there and whatnot. So I don't know, like
when is it a problem. Right, It's not just the
amount of hours that makes it a problem. It's how
you sort of interact with the world around you. It's
about if you're shutting other people off, if you're a
probably I'll tell you if you're like doing like some
of these hardcore things in these games like rating, and
it's like, well, that is my obligation for the week,

(01:51:43):
not seeing friends or things like that. That's when it
became a little refer me was the idea that even
casual rating is two nights a week, nights a week.
That's not that I was like, that's time I could
maybe go out and see people or even stream and
like try to like make money off of that or
just do anything else maybe, but generally I think you're

(01:52:06):
probably fine.

Speaker 2 (01:52:07):
It's interesting because like when I first was hearing that you,
you know, you would bring up Final Fantasy fourteen and
wow and stuff like that. And I feel like most
of the time when I know friends that well, I've said,
I don't know anyone that plays Final Fantasy fourteen, but
you know, like they don't do anything but that they
don't play other games, they don't right social things or whatever.
And like you did always strike me as someone that like, oh,

(01:52:29):
you play these games, and do you play enough of
them to like, you know, you really get a good
time out of it, but you still obviously are you're
playing other stuff, You're doing things, you go out.

Speaker 3 (01:52:38):
You know, it's very important for me to like be
well versed in a lot of games. Like I still
feel bad sometimes like there's there's kind of a brand
a Triple A game that I'm not playing as much
of because I really am not as interested I used
to be, and I feel like I kind of to
force myself, like I didn't touch Assassin's Creed Shadows, and
I'm like, god of my career, I should probably at
least try Assassin's Creed Shadows Mike, I don't want to,

(01:53:01):
but at least like the Blizzard stuff day before I
met you, that was almost my beat exclusively in some ways.
I covered a ton of Blizzard, like Jeff knows when
I was working on them. I was going to the blizzcons,
I was going to a lot of the events. I
was revealing Heartstone cards like that, and it was like
they were so popular at that time, between World of
Warcraft and Herstone.

Speaker 1 (01:53:22):
And over Watch.

Speaker 3 (01:53:23):
That like that was my job almost covering Blizzard, and
I kind of loved it for a bit. But that
was a sort of unique time and place for.

Speaker 1 (01:53:31):
That sort of thing, like sites dedicated to it.

Speaker 3 (01:53:33):
Yeah, right exactly. And the thing is like those sites
were always going to do better anyways, but it made
some sense for us to do it. But even I
from facy fourteen, as popular as it is, like, I'm like,
how much coverage can I really get out of that anymore?
These days? A bit when an expansion comes out, but
otherwise not a ton.

Speaker 4 (01:53:51):
Yeah, I think there's a you know the guys who
do watch football all day on Sunday and they go
and do it by themselves in their basement like that,
that seems unhealthy to me. I don't think that's the
best way to do that, and I think if you're
doing the equivalent for any game, it's probably unhealthy. But
if you balance it out, you do find time for
other people, if you are engaged in other hobbies, or

(01:54:14):
if you make the thing you're doing social and like
include the people who are like your partners in life
and make it intimate in some ways, then you're good.

Speaker 3 (01:54:22):
You're you're solid.

Speaker 4 (01:54:23):
Like I've had the you know, I put a thousand,
one thousand hours in like every call of duty, like
from Modern Warfare on for quite some time. The you know,
Modern Warfare was like I think two or two and
a half thousand hours, something like that, Titan Fall, a
thousand hours, all these games where it's like that's what
I was playing. I was playing some other stuff, but

(01:54:44):
I was just every night was playing that with my
brothers or whatever. And Modern Warfare there was definitely like, oh,
this feels like a little bit of a crisis situation
I'm in now. I got to like pull myself, you know,
I'm in a little bit of a nose. I've just
got to pull myself up a little bit, look around,
figure out what I'm doing, and that's what I'm well,
I am enjoying this. I'll look around kind figure out
if I can make this games thing work and kind

(01:55:05):
of made it into something productive. You got to have
some recognition about making sure you're not diving down into
and becoming anti social.

Speaker 3 (01:55:13):
I almost find it more satisfying to be like, Okay,
instead of just playing this one kind of life service
game for one hundred hours, let's do a series playthrough
of some random franchise, right like back in when I
was in college, that's really when I fell in love
with Found Fantasy. I was like, I'm going to play
through foun Fantasy one through ten. Let's just do that,
And I was absolutely love that. I think you see
more people doing things like that, like I'm going to

(01:55:34):
play through all the Resident Evils and I'm going to
play through all the Legend of Zelda's. You know, there's
so many franchises like that stuff Like I still want
to do yah because I never really played those games.
So at some point I'm just going to play through
that series, and in some way that seems more enriching
to me. I'm going to gain all this experience and
knowledge about this. Really unique and clever series. I think
that's better.

Speaker 2 (01:55:55):
Yeah, it's funny because yeah, I always pride myself on
kind of playing everything, and I usually say, like everything
except for like not a big RPG or sports game guy.
But then like if you're meeting someone who's maybe from
outside games, yeah, what kind of games you play?

Speaker 1 (01:56:07):
And I usually yeah, I play pretty much everything.

Speaker 2 (01:56:09):
It's like, oh, I'm obsessed with you must play you
must know everything about Escape from Tarkov and like, uh,
it's like like they'll name like Valorant or Escape from
TARKOVS or like a Hunt Showdown, these games that are
like objectively huge.

Speaker 1 (01:56:24):
But it's so weird that like not as much in like.

Speaker 3 (01:56:27):
Our circles, right well, it's it is really weird like
where we exist where like you know, granted Auto six
is gonna happen LA this year and we're going to
talk about it and whatnot, but the proportion that we
talk about it isn't going to equal the proportion of
how much it sells and how much. Like it was
a democracy, and it's just like people voted for a

(01:56:50):
game they're playing right now, right be boring if we
did nothing but talk about that forever like we talked
about blue Prints for two weeks and felt bad talking
about it anymore today.

Speaker 2 (01:57:00):
It's funny when I was back saying dynamite for the
Smoe Joe thing. Oh, we went to the bar afterwards,
and like, you know, I'm meeting a bunch of these
guys for the first time, and like you know, like
h no knows me and EXCaliber and stuff, but like
you know, like Trent Burretta and stuff, and it's like
I didn't know he was a big gamer, and so
like all these guys are asking what are you playing
right now?

Speaker 3 (01:57:15):
What are you playing?

Speaker 2 (01:57:15):
And I'm just like, you're heard of blue Prince who
loves blue Prints now, like nobody had heard of it.
And I'm like I act like this big gamer. And
then like I mentioned this thing, is like what the
fuck is that?

Speaker 3 (01:57:28):
My one friend teases me still because somebody we were
out somewhere and he told somebody what I did, and
it's like, oh, well, you're playing right now, and I'm like,
I'm playing Shima got me ten Side Person of five.
This guy just looked at me like I play Candy Crush.

Speaker 1 (01:57:45):
I'll never forget get into that physical therapist and uh
in New York.

Speaker 2 (01:57:48):
That was like bending my leg up and like trying
to make small talk and ask him what I do
and he's like it's a real talk.

Speaker 1 (01:57:54):
What's what's better Halo or Mario.

Speaker 3 (01:57:58):
Man?

Speaker 4 (01:58:00):
Yeah, It's like we are so many degrees removed from that,
but it does feel like does he have the earpieces?
He being fed by chat GPT, Like what is a
practical jokers?

Speaker 1 (01:58:11):
What is this?

Speaker 2 (01:58:11):
Yeah to the guy's question that he was asking about,
like you know, getting way too into stuff. I do
remember and like I don't. Maybe this was part of
why I never wanted to get into MMOs or anything.
But I had one of my best friends through junior
high and high school. We were in all these classes together,
talked about video games all the time. He was he
was awesome. So like we're in the gifted program together.
He's like super smart guy. He was in med school

(01:58:33):
in college. Yeah, this awesome girlfriend. He was on the
football team. He was just like in it seems like
he's the guy you look at. It's like this guy
just has all of his shit together, super smart, He's
going to be a doctor.

Speaker 1 (01:58:42):
Everything's fucking out. Like love this guy. Uh, And then
like he got into Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:58:47):
Because remember I went to college in two so you know,
you can image a couple of years into college, Wow
blows up and he went from playing everything. We played
everything that came out together. He was a big and
sixty four guy coming up and then and all he
played like we used to go out and stuff all
the time. And all of a sudden, no, we're not
going out anymore. Oh we're not oh new games, the
multiplayer games coming out, We're not meeting up to play

(01:59:08):
Lego Star Wars together anymore. Oh, we're not doing this
stuff together. And his girlfriend dumped him. He like, I
don't know if he flunked out of school or quit
or what the deal was, but he just like withdrew
and withdrew and Withdrew and like he had everything in
his corner. And I'm sure it can't just be like
Wow came along, And I'm sure there had to be
other factors maybe people weren't aware of, but like, to me,
it's like that was the dividing line. Was he got

(01:59:29):
really into Wow, and then it's like, oh, kind of
just like all of us, all of his friends were
just like, man, yeah, he used to come out and
then Wow, happened, you know, so like there was the
cheap factor, like I don't want to pay every month.
There is the fact that like I don't want to
go all in on just one game. I want to
play everything, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:59:44):
No, I mean I had another friend at that time.
It was kind of a similar thing where he was
he was playing so much Wow and keeping really weird hours,
Like you'd go over there at like three pm and
he'd be sleeping and stuff like that. No, I talk
about like a body like an audio. At what point
his parents took away the mouse to try to keep

(02:00:04):
him for playing, so he learned how to play World
Wars with just the keyboard. It was getting real weird.
It's becoming it was.

Speaker 1 (02:00:14):
Like haha, good luck, sucker.

Speaker 3 (02:00:16):
At what point, like like what for it was over
there because like the college Invester started and like this
kid's bomb was like, oh are you ready for for
college to start next week? And he's like, what are
you talking about? I've been going to classes. Because he
just lied to her. It's like like, oh, yeah, I'm
going to college whatever. He's just playing World of Wark. Uh.

(02:00:37):
He ended up, he turned out, Okay, he's fine out,
he got married, he just had a kid a little
bit ago. He recovered.

Speaker 4 (02:00:43):
I think there's a lot of people who had a
really rough like two thousand and five more.

Speaker 2 (02:00:48):
Recently, Like I mean, that is why I'm terribly wary
of stuff like mobia stuff or like E sports type stuff,
or I'll never shi Brad Shoemaker tell me Doda, like, oh,
the first you know thousand hours, you're not gonna have
any other what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (02:01:00):
It's like, what the fuck are you men talking about?
Like that's insane.

Speaker 3 (02:01:05):
I consider myself like somewhere down like I play a
lot of video games, and I played a lot of
this live service stuff. I played some pretty hardcore things.
I played Dota two for a couple of matches, and
I was like, fuck this, Like it's like immediately like
the toxicity and like the fifteen subsystems you had to

(02:01:27):
try to learn, and it was like forty five minute
long matches where after two minutes you know you're gonna lose,
but you can't leave. It's it's that is one of
the things, like, Okay, I get that there's an audience
for this. I can't believe it's that big an audience
for this thing.

Speaker 4 (02:01:44):
Oh jeez, it's a lot.

Speaker 2 (02:01:46):
The game I probably played the most is Soul Calverer
one on Dreamcast, and that was like five hundred hours.

Speaker 3 (02:01:50):
I think, yeah, oh pro Fanacy fourteen its it's either
a while or Final Fantasy fourteen, because it is, it
is a lot. But again, like my friend like the
wanted maybe a problem like pre early on really five,
like not too long after that game came out, it
was like, yeah, I have a year of gameplay time
in that game. A year a year.

Speaker 2 (02:02:09):
I It's weird though, because like I think, there is
a part where that can seem like depressing, where it's like, oh,
that much gameplay time, But then there's also like I
also see it as a measurement of how much I
like a game. And I remember like Black Ops six,
you know, it was the one where it's like, you know,
because I not as much as like Grubb was just describing,
but like those early modern warfares and stuff, I was
definitely putting hundreds of hours and prestiging several times and

(02:02:29):
stuff like that, and like a Black Op six really
blew me away by how much I got into it,
and I would look like, wow, I got two days
of in game time I got the other day, you know,
two and a half. I prestiged twice, like shit, I
have done this since two thousand and eight or whatever,
and I kind of see that as like, sweet, all right, wow,
it really got me this time. I do feel like
if we'd gotten to like, oh, I have months or
a year of in game time, I think I would

(02:02:50):
not look at that and be like, oh sweet, you know, yeah, I'm.

Speaker 3 (02:02:53):
Kind of glad I gone on that train so early.
I think one of the reasons I didn't play a
ton of those Call of Duties I played a bit
was because I did play a ton of Tea Fortress
Classic in like nineteen ninety nine, right, like real early.

Speaker 2 (02:03:04):
Shit, all right, next one is coming in from Tom
from London. I fire skip Crew. I was listening to
the conversation with Mary, Drew and Mike about flying and
had a question. The older I get, the worst flying becomes.
It wasn't so bad until a few years back. On
an internal flight in Thailand, I experienced one of those

(02:03:25):
emergency flyaways where pilots readjust their landing line. For example,
you're coming down from thirty thousand feet we got to
about ten thousand and the pilot flew up, up and away.
Do not recommend these days. The worst part for me
is the takeoff. I started timing it from the start
of takeoff to when I feel relaxed, and it's about
three minutes. One thing I helped finds is find helps

(02:03:45):
his distraction. I look at the lights on the ceiling
and count them going up and down above the passengers.
I've tried playing my steam Deck or Switch Vampire Survivors,
but it's hard to concentrate on the game. Do you
have any tips for getting through takeoff, turbulence and landing.
Keep up the great work, Tom in London.

Speaker 3 (02:03:58):
Yeah, it's funny because none of those three people or
on this episode, but uh still, I know you're talking about.
In fact, my last flight to Orlando just about a
month ago, we were like landing, we were like it
felt like five feet off the ground. We just started
going back up right and and every it was like
everyone's looking at each other like what's this about. And

(02:04:20):
it takes them a while for the pilots that tell
us that hey, there's just an up draft, we need
to try it again. But you know, like they're busy.
I get it, they're flying the plane, but for a
while they're like, what's going on. Yeah, here's my recommendation,
xanax pills. If you want some over the counter stuff.
Just gets some dramamine. It makes you sleepy, like, don't
feel bad about that. That's what that stuff is is

(02:04:42):
there for. I think if you go see a doctor
and just say you get really anxious about airplanes, you
could probably get a prescription, like just just get just
get some pills. It's they're fine, you're you know, don't
abuse them, just take them for flying. You got it.

Speaker 4 (02:04:56):
Like, you know, this doesn't work for everybody, but you know,
you're what you your body's telling you stuff. That's what
anxiety is, uh, And there's ways like you can improve
that by having a healthier diet and stuff like that
and makeing sure your gut biomes in place because a
lot of anxiety comes from there. But whatever, you can't
control that entirely, especially based on the American diets. But
you know your body's talking to you. You can talk

(02:05:17):
back to your body, like verbalize it. You can tell
yourself I'm safe and your body might believe you. It
won't always, but it might, and that can help a
little bit. So like, just recognize you that you're in
a conversation with your body, your mind, and you're in
you're in the rest of your body. Those are all
just senses informing your mind to what's going on. You
can take control your mind and say, all right, senses,

(02:05:37):
I recognize that. Thank you for telling me that you're afraid.
But I'm going to tell you now I think we're safe.
Let's just kind of feel better about this and it
it becomes a feedback loop and it can and can
help you know, if you want to, like a little
another trick, there's like a five four three two one
thing where it's like name five things you see, Name
four things you can touch, Name three things.

Speaker 1 (02:05:55):
You can as you're hearing, and then yes four than
yeah that does.

Speaker 4 (02:05:58):
That's gonna take you through it. That take you three minutes,
for sure.

Speaker 1 (02:06:01):
That's a good plane one for sure.

Speaker 3 (02:06:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:06:02):
I you know, I've had anxiety. I've talked about a
plenty for many, many years, and I'm still working on it.
And like lately, you know, I've alluded to all this
flying stuff and like I'm not suddenly magically cured. That's
not how anxiety works. But like last year I had
a huge run of travel that I was fucking terrified of.
I remember I found out I was going to Games Calm,
and I just remember, for like two months leading up

(02:06:24):
to it, it's all I could think about. I couldn't
sleep at night because I was worried about these international flights.
Remember Bank and I went to go see Twisters and
we were like going to talk about it afterwards, and
I told her, like, honestly, I don't think I took
in any of that movie because I was just thinking
about that flight to Germany and worrying about like freaking
out and stuff like that. So it's so much time
in therapy, so much time trying to figure it out.
And I used to like do like I would just

(02:06:44):
get tanked. I would just like show up at the
airport bar lounge like three hours early, drink a shit
ton and stuff. Drink on the plane. I used to,
you know, bring little lairplaye bottles on there with me.
I was, you know, that was I would feel like shit,
the New Land where you're going, and it's like, oh great,
now I have a giant hangover in anxiety thing for
the next day and a half. I knew I couldn't
do that. Talk to the doctors about that. They gave
me xanax. Like Mike mentioned, it does work. It absolutely

(02:07:07):
does work. I've always been worried about it because you know,
it can be highly addictive and stuff like that. So
like when I went to Tokyo last time, I took
a point five milligram Xanax on the way out there,
and it's like a fourteen hour flight and you know,
kind of wear us off after like four to six hours.
And remember for four to six hours, it's kind of
like I'm doing okay here, okay, And I didn't want
to drink cause I'd just taken a x aana ax,

(02:07:28):
and I was like, I could probably just ride this out.
And I wrote it out and I landed and it
felt great about it. And then on the way back,
I remember getting to the airport and being like, well,
I should I'm boarding in a half hour. I should
take the xanax. And I was like, well, you knowest
it was kind of fine coming out here, and I
remember coming back stone cold, sober the whole time. And
now it's like now I'm about to do all these
international flights, and like I'd get a little bit nervous

(02:07:50):
but I think by it's the uh, it's the cognitive
behavioral thing where it's like, you know, just by doing it,
it kind of opens up exposure therapy. Yeah, yeah, exposure therapies. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (02:08:00):
I had the same thing. I mean I used to
take xanax and then eventually, like gosh, at first I
was taking like xan x and dramamine to get through
the fight. Then it's like, well, maybe I don't need
to dream xanax, nmark and just do the drama mean,
and like, now if I have to go on it cold,
I can't. I like to take the dramming just because
it makes me sleepy more than anything. Right, So it's
like because I'm bored on the plane and I don't,

(02:08:21):
you know, I'll just sleep.

Speaker 1 (02:08:22):
But like, yeah, I even if.

Speaker 3 (02:08:24):
You do the xanax, I don't think you're gonna be
using xanax for the rest of your life. It is
almost like a training wheels thing. Eventually you may not
anymore if you do need this though whatever. That's what
it's there for every flight.

Speaker 2 (02:08:34):
Like no one's like, I mean, that's not badly, it's
a problem if like you get home and you're taking
it when it's just right.

Speaker 1 (02:08:39):
Exactly or whatever.

Speaker 3 (02:08:41):
But like yeah, just like you know, that's why you
have to go through doctors and get prescriptions and things
like that. You know, to be clear, don't go getting
xanax off the black market or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:08:50):
But if and this applies to planes or anything you
might be anxious about, and all of my learning about
anxiety and everything, the thing that works for me most
now and it's not.

Speaker 1 (02:08:58):
It's not you know, I need to dannax.

Speaker 2 (02:09:00):
You don't need now, call, don't need anything for this
is just when you feel it coming up, when you
feel the heart and the heart you know your your
your hands get tangly, your feet get tingly, the breath
gets rapid, and everything. I for so long tried to
fight it where it's like, okay, I'm going to do this,
I'm gonna distract myself. I'm going to do this breathing technique.
I'm going to do this. I've done fucking everything you

(02:09:20):
can imagine to try to distract myself or stop it.

Speaker 1 (02:09:25):
Don't do that.

Speaker 2 (02:09:26):
Just fucking realize that, Like, look, you've probably had anxiety before,
you might have had panic attacks before. You've felt as
bad as it gets, and you've been fine. And so
what I do now is if I feel that, and
I still feel that during taxing and take off like
you described, Tom, and once I start feeling it, I
don't do anything to try to stop it. I literally
just like sit there and I'll like I'll put my

(02:09:47):
steam deck down, I'll put it in the little pocket
and i will just like close my eyes and I'll
be like, all right, I see you. I feel this,
Like hit me, just give me everything you got here,
Like let's just show me. Just do everything you got
and just get it out of yourself, out of my system.
And because I know it's not gonna hurt me, and
so you just let it do its thing. Don't try
to fight it, because I think by resisting it, it

(02:10:08):
does kind of leave us. Oh no, I'm still feeling this.
Oh no, I'm slow. It's not doing it.

Speaker 1 (02:10:11):
Nobody like it's not working. Just let it, let it
do its thing completely.

Speaker 4 (02:10:15):
And label it even be like just say that's what's happening.

Speaker 1 (02:10:18):
Here's the brand, here's the heart, right, here's that thing.

Speaker 4 (02:10:21):
Yeah, exactly, just call it out and like it all
just puts in like a little bit of compartment for
you and like, Okay, I see it happening. I can.
I've handled worse what you said there, like, yeah, I've
been through worse.

Speaker 2 (02:10:30):
Yeah yeah, And like I'm not cured, certainly, I don't
intend on or I don't think I ever will be,
but like, I can do this stuff now and get
through the discomfort, you know, because.

Speaker 1 (02:10:39):
That's all it is.

Speaker 2 (02:10:39):
It's discomfort and weird thoughts and anxiety isn't reality. You're
gonna be fine. So yeah, so Tom, good luck with
your future flights. I know how you're feeling, all right.
Next up, we got Ben from Lexington, Kentucky. Says, Dan,
can you please explain how you came to love Final
Fantasy Tactics. It is one of my favorite games of
all time, but notoriously slow to build and very talky

(02:11:02):
in the beginning, so I'm always surprised to hear you
say you loved it when it's brought up, since it's
well known you don't like Final Fantasy or other Tactics games.
When I know, please answer this. It's been boggling my
mind for like the past eight years.

Speaker 3 (02:11:13):
I'm so glad i'm here. Look, I love this show, Dan,
but I hate it anytime Final Fantasy comes up, I
swear to God. At one point I concocted this giant plan.
Next time I'm on and we get to like, what, like, oh,
what are you playing? I was gonna be like, oh,
I'm playing this game called Final Fantasy one, and I
was going to talk about that for a while and
they're like, okay, Mike, what else? So I'm playing Final

(02:11:33):
Fantasy too. I was gonna basically fill a buster and
I was like, that's probably not great content.

Speaker 4 (02:11:45):
I would have enjoyed it, just based on how much
you would have been enjoying yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:11:51):
Probably a world where I go through those because like, look,
I like ten a lot, I like Tactics a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:11:55):
I like these games in the past.

Speaker 3 (02:11:58):
Yeah, it is interesting. I mean I believe you that,
like a lot of way these games aren't your things.
But you know, I was thinking like sometimes like like oh,
I like, you know, really actiony games, right, but then
you love something like Blueprints, And you know, I know
that you know that you like a wide variety games.
I think you like an even wider variety of games
than you realize.

Speaker 1 (02:12:17):
Sometimes that could be true.

Speaker 2 (02:12:19):
Yeah, and it's like, look, I know I don't like
talkie games and tactics can be talkie, but it's also
deeply like I like thinky and strategic games, and this
this email says like, oh, I didn't know you liked
other tactics games.

Speaker 1 (02:12:31):
Yeah, I like XKAM a lot. I love Into the Breach.
I love like chess. As a kid, I had a
Kasparov chess.

Speaker 2 (02:12:37):
Machine that it was like you'd play against an ai
and it was like, you know, this is the early nineties,
so it was just like two lights to be like, okay,
move the night to be four, and like I would
just play chess against the fucking.

Speaker 4 (02:12:47):
Net, you know, punishment. I'm making Mike play into the
Breach so fucking hard.

Speaker 3 (02:12:53):
I played it. Oh you did play it? Okay, I
played it, and I liked it. I don't know why
I didn't. I actually I don't know why I found it.
That's what it was. I don't know why I didn't
at least specific time.

Speaker 2 (02:13:04):
Yes, exactly, Yeah, yeah, it's but honestly it's a very
time and place thing because I it was O two
and i'd just gotten the sp and I got a blue.

Speaker 4 (02:13:15):
We're talking about techics advanced to be clearly right.

Speaker 2 (02:13:17):
Yeah, Well but I did I wound up reviewing more
of the Lions, the remake of the first one. But specifically,
the reason I found out I loved Advance was because
I it was my first semester of college, which means
it was the only semester of college.

Speaker 1 (02:13:31):
That I actually tried to go to class because I thought, oh,
this is important. It's college.

Speaker 2 (02:13:35):
And but all my classes were like these big you know,
three hundred class auditorium three hundred person class auditoriums for
like film classes and stuff like that. So it was
very easy for me to sit in the back and
just like, oh, it turns out I like portable gaming.

Speaker 1 (02:13:47):
I got an SP.

Speaker 3 (02:13:49):
That's right, you're anti portable gaming. It was I did.

Speaker 2 (02:13:52):
The SP changed fucking everything for me because the GBA,
I knew it had good games with the backline situation
I didn't like.

Speaker 1 (02:13:58):
So man, the SP I just gotten that.

Speaker 2 (02:13:59):
I got Linked the Past and four Swords on that,
and then I got like, I got great reviews Final
Fantasy Taxics Advanced. All right, people rave about this game.
I'll give it a shot. And I would just sit
in the back of class for that entire semester, and
I don't think I did headphones but I would just
play it and like, yeah, I got through the talkie beginning.
Probably didn't love it Everymber, like snowball fight or whatever,

(02:14:20):
but that got me through that semester. It's like the
one college class I went to regularly. I got through
survived because I had Final Fantasy Taxics advance and like,
you know, one good fight of that game is a
chess match.

Speaker 1 (02:14:33):
You know that'll last fifty minutes. You know.

Speaker 3 (02:14:36):
I can kind of see the difference between that and
a normal Final Fantasy. There's a lot of inconsequential battles
in a normal JR like that, right, oh oh, in
normal Jeopardies, I say, normal Jeopardizes, there's a lot of like,
all right, you're gonna fight three wolves, and you are
just kind of pushing x X attack attack, attack a lot.
And for me, it's a flow state and it's relaxing

(02:14:58):
and I enjoy it. I just kind of the progression
and the exploration of it. But it's a very different
from the game being dominated by this literal chess board
and thinking about these kind of big battles where every
decision really matters.

Speaker 2 (02:15:12):
Yeah, and I feel like I'm like leveling up all
these different things and everything versus like, yeah, you talk
about Final Fantasy, And I tried several times because FF
seven was such a thing that people like it was
held on.

Speaker 1 (02:15:22):
It's like it was like a middle year solid level
of a pedestal back then, oh for sure.

Speaker 2 (02:15:25):
And I tried several times to play it, and it
was like as soon as the overworld opened up, you know,
I remember, I think the farthest I got in that
game was the Golden Saucer all the times I tried
to play it, and because it would open up to
that overworld at some point, and it's just like I
remember every time it would we go into the fight,
if god fucking damn it, I'm just gonna hit X
and like I gotta wait for the load back out,
and like I don't feel like I'm really playing, you know.

(02:15:46):
But like Tactics was like I'm thinking I'm doing things,
you know, yep.

Speaker 4 (02:15:51):
Even like just seeing the Tactics in magazines, I'd be like, yeah,
that looks appealing. That just looks so much fun. I'm like,
I imagine myself liking Final Fantasy Taxics, but where I
ever played it, And then when I finally did, it's like, yeah,
this super click. That's that is uh okay, we joke
about Marvel Rivals. I did a red Light try to
play some Final Fantasy Tactics and kept playing it for

(02:16:12):
like ten seconds longer than I should have. And I
remember that like no way back in the day. I
was driving to my job at FedEx, and I just
remember being like, I'm driving, what am I doing? I
had to like close it and like throw it in
the seat. The worst driving it was terrible. I was
I'm like, I just like brought it with me. I'll
play it on my lunch break, and I think I
just was like, well, this red Light's taking fucking forever.

Speaker 3 (02:16:32):
I'll just play some here and I'm like and.

Speaker 4 (02:16:34):
I'm playing like Summer Zone and then it's like I stuck.
I'm like I just got to finish this thing. And
then I'm just like I'm like this is terrible. And
I closed it and I like threw it so I
couldn't even reach.

Speaker 3 (02:16:44):
It, and damn, where are you with firearm blew?

Speaker 1 (02:16:49):
I can't remember liked it a lot on GBA.

Speaker 2 (02:16:54):
I might have reviewed some of those GBA games and
then Battalion, like I don't know, I played all the
battalion wars, the ones that don't really matter no one
cares about.

Speaker 1 (02:17:01):
Uh. The one that I really loved was Awakening, making
the best one. That one's so fucking good. I played
ship out of that game.

Speaker 2 (02:17:10):
God, the actual like tactic parts of that and like
the way that like certain characters you know, working off
each other and everything, Like I love everything about it.
Between that game it's so good, and the stuff in
between was not so dominant. It wasn't like where they
lost me was you go to the newer games and
it's like, all right, half the game, if not more,
is like in between, I'm walking around chatting to animate

(02:17:31):
people and like, okay, I can deal with that if
it's like two seconds between fucking cool fights.

Speaker 1 (02:17:36):
But like the switch ones and everything.

Speaker 3 (02:17:39):
I was okay with it in three Houses and then
like engaged in it, but worse.

Speaker 4 (02:17:43):
And engage just like run around and go do five
things every time, and the tactics are so good and
engaged though it's the best final, it's the best Fire
Home has ever been in terms of gameplay, but just
everything in between so much.

Speaker 3 (02:17:56):
Everything is like the aesthetics worst, the characters are worst.
That in between stuff is bullshit.

Speaker 4 (02:18:01):
I wish I wish they would that would get a
special edition, they would edit all that stuff Downrob, you
got me thinking about this stuff when you were talking
about that Advance Wars like this week on the BombCast,
and it's like, man, I just want to play more
fucking advanced wars, Like I bring my analog.

Speaker 1 (02:18:14):
Maybe I'll just wind up playing blackmon Rising here. Yeah,
there you go.

Speaker 4 (02:18:18):
That Tiny Metal two is pretty good. That is a
good one.

Speaker 2 (02:18:21):
Oh I downloaded it, so it's an option while I'm
out there. Okay, yeah, alrighty okay. This is a quiz
for YouTube. Oh fun from Piston Hundai, who's frequent. He's
got a lot of good trivia knowledge, and uh we
got one here and it says, hey gang. A remaster
for the also ran nineties mascot platformer Kroc Legend of

(02:18:44):
the Gabbos came out recently, and while playing it, I
learned it had far more success than you would think.
With this in mind, I thought it'd be fun to
have a quiz one that cuts Marry at break because
even though you have to be smoking dust to think
that Diablo two is more important than Mario sixty four.

Speaker 3 (02:19:00):
I was so with you. I love Mary. I got
so mad at her listening to that.

Speaker 4 (02:19:04):
I sometimes you guys have arguments on the show where
people are like, no, you need to go listen to this.
I never listened to the Links Awakening one because I
couldn't hear listen to you guys talk about that. When
I heard that, I'm like, I can't. I can't even
listen to Mary talk this bullshit about Diablo being more
important than Mario sixty four.

Speaker 3 (02:19:21):
Why don't we real quickly me and you say that
Link's Awakenings won the best games ever. Just everybody, no.

Speaker 1 (02:19:29):
On the place you'll put that on the list. Yes,
Mike and Dance.

Speaker 2 (02:19:34):
Nostalgia might be clouding their judgment of the n sixty
four's impact to a degree, regardless, And so I asked
them which of these Nintendo sixty four classics sold more
copies than a middle of the Road PS one game
nobody under the age of twenty five has heard of.

Speaker 4 (02:19:52):
So, okay, but this is Crocs weird.

Speaker 2 (02:19:55):
But I have ten games here, and if you will
tell me what sold more the game, I'm gonna say
or Kroc Legend of the Gobbos. Okay, it's gonna be
sixty four game versus Kroc for PlayStation one. Are you
ready Yoshi's Story?

Speaker 3 (02:20:10):
I think there's no way Yoshi Story sold more than Kroc.
Yeats Kroc was supposed to be a Yoshi game, but
that's like the very first original idea for it.

Speaker 1 (02:20:18):
Anyways, Yep, the winner is Kroc. Yeah, Kirby sixty four.

Speaker 4 (02:20:23):
Probably, yeah, no one, No one played Kirby sixty four.

Speaker 3 (02:20:27):
I bet I woonderf Kirby sixty four sold better than
Yoshi's Story. I don't know, I bet not. I bet not.

Speaker 1 (02:20:34):
So your answer both Crock Kroc. The answer is Krock Okay,
Perfect Dark.

Speaker 3 (02:20:41):
Oh, it feels going. I definitely sold better than Kroc.

Speaker 4 (02:20:45):
But I'll just say Perfect Dark because you know it
should be it should it should have sold more. Let's say,
I bet it's somehow still is Krock. But yeah, now
for my own sanity, say perfect Dark. There are so
many games on the play that there's like a handfl
of games on the PlayStation that sold weirdly well, like
that Frogger game, Like like, what are we talking about it?

Speaker 1 (02:21:04):
Well, yeah, the answer is Crock.

Speaker 3 (02:21:07):
Okay, it's gonna be Crock for all.

Speaker 1 (02:21:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:21:09):
Star Wars Shadows of the Empire. Oh, that was a
big game too. It's a launch game. It's like the one,
like the other game you could well near launch, right,
It's like one of the other games you could have got. Yeah,
how the Star Wars, Yeah, it's still crack, but I'm
gonna say it's probably still I think it's gonna.

Speaker 3 (02:21:26):
Be Crock for all of them, but I'll say Star
Wars the winner is Crock.

Speaker 1 (02:21:29):
Yeah, Rock, Dinosaur Hunter, it's Crock.

Speaker 3 (02:21:34):
Crock.

Speaker 1 (02:21:35):
Pokemon Stadium too.

Speaker 3 (02:21:38):
Two Mmmm. It's a late and in second in Town
sixty four game. Yeah, I guess it's kind of like
to really get the most out of that, you need
already have gold and silver and like the link stuff.
I'm gonna say, Crock.

Speaker 1 (02:21:51):
It's Crock. Wit you have no mercy ship.

Speaker 3 (02:21:56):
That's crazy, It's insane. It's cross saying that it's Crock.

Speaker 1 (02:22:00):
Away is Kroc. Mario Tennis, that's fucking crah Man.

Speaker 4 (02:22:05):
Mario Tennis is so good, but fucking Kroc.

Speaker 2 (02:22:07):
Winner is Kroc. Mario Golf, It's come on the crock
of the final question. Mario party, Oh, Mario party, It's
a Mario party.

Speaker 4 (02:22:23):
Yes, stick it in at the end.

Speaker 1 (02:22:24):
I'm going to read this for Baidum. The winner is
Mario Party. Yeah, just kidding it. Somehow fucking Crock again got.

Speaker 4 (02:22:32):
So the places you fans do love to point this out. Uh,
and then you have to ask them, well, how well
did KROC to sell?

Speaker 3 (02:22:38):
Well?

Speaker 2 (02:22:39):
Exactly true, yes, but we have a bonus round and
it could be a tie breaker.

Speaker 1 (02:22:43):
I don't remember the score, but the bonus round is.

Speaker 2 (02:22:47):
Kroc is reported to have sold over three million copies
on the PS one alone. Of the three hundred and
eighty eight games released for the Nintendo sixty four, how
many of them passed this mark?

Speaker 3 (02:22:59):
The closest there aren't that many.

Speaker 4 (02:23:02):
N CC four is so like what they sold forty
million five. I bet the only ones that sold better
than it are Mario Offerin of Time, Gordon I, Mario Kart,
and Smash Brothers One.

Speaker 3 (02:23:20):
Maybe I'm at five. Yeah, five sounds good, but I
gotta do more. Maybe maybe like some other rare game
did well, I'm gonna say six.

Speaker 1 (02:23:30):
The answer is thirteen thirteen. Okay, whether I win.

Speaker 2 (02:23:34):
There you go.

Speaker 4 (02:23:35):
That's closer wild the Crock Yeah, yeah, like PlayStation just
has a handful of those anomalies and it's like, you
know what it was. They wanted their Mario sixty four
and they were desperate for it, so it's like they
were looking for it in anything.

Speaker 1 (02:23:49):
I mean, I was telling myself Crash was just as
good as Mario, and then it was.

Speaker 4 (02:23:52):
Yeah, and then just like the Crocks like that. But
it's got like it's actually three D worlds and you
run around and say, yeah, okay, have fun with that. Yeah,
you have a good time of Crock piss some great stuff.
Was fine Ques, Yeah, I like that. That's a good
I mean, listen, we do that with Luigi's mansion, right,
so medicine.

Speaker 1 (02:24:08):
That's scary to play.

Speaker 3 (02:24:12):
For you too.

Speaker 4 (02:24:14):
That's my favorite, by the way.

Speaker 1 (02:24:18):
That's a good all right.

Speaker 2 (02:24:19):
Next up, Hello, I am a thirty three year old
father of two. Love my family more than anything. Side
effects include getting so little me time sometimes you get
choice paralysis and do nothing instead. Let me tell you,
wasting your free time when you often feel this way
is quite regrettable. But what's not regrettable is using a
few hours on a Saturday evening after a tough bedtime
battle to soak in the goodness that is mcgruber. My

(02:24:43):
favorite part was when the spoiler warning nuke went off,
killing the main antagonist well and blowing up the warehouse.
Some editing guy must have decided to play a tiger
roaring during that really cool explosion. Bless that editing guy
at stage. Yeah, it's it's really like up there in
the mix too, It's.

Speaker 4 (02:25:01):
Like I love that movie.

Speaker 3 (02:25:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:25:07):
Yeah, everyone took out.

Speaker 2 (02:25:09):
The tributes to vel Kilmer that uh uh Will Forte
wrote and also I think on the Lonely Island podcast
did the whole thing about it. I did not know
that Will Forte and val Kilmer were roommates for months
after mcgoverer.

Speaker 4 (02:25:19):
That's you know, that most interesting man in the world.
That dose he's used to do. Melchilmer is maybe in
the running for that actual time.

Speaker 2 (02:25:28):
I read his autobiography like last year, it's like he's
like just incredible, like incredible life.

Speaker 3 (02:25:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:25:33):
Oh yes, rest in peace, Vell all right, next up, hey,
fire Escape. I had a friend this week, tell me
my taste in movies is too obscure. He provided several examples,
including The Big Lebowski. In no way, shape or form
is that an obscure movie?

Speaker 1 (02:25:47):
But to him it is.

Speaker 2 (02:25:49):
Would my family know what the Big Lebowski is, would
a random stranger on the street know it? It made
me think about what obscure is. You all have what
many would have considered obscure interests, and he gave Eames, wrestling, warhammer,
et cetera. But within the realm of other people who
engage in those hobbies, you may not go as deep
as others do. My question for you is what hobby

(02:26:09):
do you consider yourself to have the most surface level
understanding and or knowledge of? In Which hobby do you
have the most in depth understanding of ps and people
can brush your teeth in the shower, then Dan should
be able to clean his butthole in the sink, just
saying love. I don't know if that was from what
happens on this show. I don't know what happened last episode.
My butthole is just for the shower, a showering god,

(02:26:35):
and that's it.

Speaker 3 (02:26:35):
Yeah, that's wild, because like, like you, you can't understand that.
There's some people just look at Big Lebowski. You're like,
that's some obscure thing. But if you are even sniffing
the realm of being a sinophile, then the big Lebowski
is like so common it's so.

Speaker 1 (02:26:53):
Popular several decades. Right.

Speaker 3 (02:26:56):
It's like it's like in that pulp fiction like own, or.

Speaker 2 (02:27:01):
In a bar in Iceland a couple of years ago
when there's a big Lebowski you bar in Iceland there's
a big Lebowski festival.

Speaker 3 (02:27:07):
Like my my bar has Big Labowski Day. They so
mugs for it.

Speaker 4 (02:27:11):
It's not yeah, come on, no, it clearly you're clearly right.
But I mean I have had those friends who are
like every paycheck like this is a long time ago.
So this story is gonna sound out David. Every paycheck,
I'm just gonna go. I'm gonna go to best Buy
and I'm gonna buy a bunch of DVDs. He's like, oh,
this guy must really like movie. And he's like, yeah,
come in my room. And it's like, well that sure
is every Police Academy movie and every Mike Myers.

Speaker 1 (02:27:33):
Movie and man, no hate School for sure.

Speaker 4 (02:27:37):
School for sure like like maybe two copies, and it's
like anything else, It's like, no, literally nothing else other
than here are like the corporate comedies. And like, again,
I love these movies. I'm not like putting them down
by calling them that, but it's like, here's the movies
corporations have made for me. These are the movies I like.
And that's as far as they think about it. And
I've seen it, so I get how this happens.

Speaker 3 (02:27:58):
Some people just have I don't want to say simple.
We had a friend in my circle and we kind
of like always laugh because the Hobbit movies came out
right and we were like, man, tho zos are so
bad and she couldn't understand why we thought they were bad,
and she was like, all right, but they had the
biggest battle. It was like the biggest battle ever. And
in the movies the battle was so big, and like
to this day with like basically were talking about slop,

(02:28:20):
we're kind of like, yeah, but it had the biggest battle.

Speaker 2 (02:28:24):
I remember I was doing like a watch party on
a Twitch night or something, and it was like after
me and Kayla had been streaming something, so she was
like on the call on discord basically, and the movie
was Big Lebowski and I remember like we hit the
thing and me and Caleb Pinner's playing the game and
I'm about to start Big Lebowski and I'm like, Kyl's.

Speaker 1 (02:28:42):
Like I'll stick around. It's like I don't know this
is gonna be a Caleb movie. She was like, no,
watch it.

Speaker 2 (02:28:48):
And we watched like the first like forty minutes and
like I'm cracking up the chat's loving it. Kayla is
just like it's not even like registering how it's a comedy. Yeah,
and it's like I think there's a certain but she's
not a movie person at all. She's not like, I
don't know, b Lebowski is like a comedy snob movie
or a movie snob movie.

Speaker 4 (02:29:06):
But like it's it's a if you are not into
on its level, it's like, oh, you have to watch
it three times before it becomes funny movie. Like for sure,
I think I actually hated it the first time I
saw especially because I think I didn't get it the
first time. But I watched it as a teenager and
it was like I needed a little bit more under
my belt.

Speaker 3 (02:29:23):
Plus my brother was one of those people who really
liked even before I saw it, so I was just
kind of like going in already thinking it was obnoxious.
Then like when I saw it for the third time
five years later, I'm like, this is pretty It's a
pretty freaking good Yeah, pretty pretty fun. Well, it's it's
a perfect script.

Speaker 2 (02:29:39):
Yeah, it's so good, one of the most perfect. It's
maybe the comedy that's aged the best ever.

Speaker 3 (02:29:44):
Yes, in terms of like hobby, I am in the
deepest weeds of it. Might be the Disney theme park
stuff even more than video games.

Speaker 4 (02:29:51):
But what's the most surface? So I I do keep
music at a distance. I just uh, it's like I
enjoy hearing music. I like listening to it, but like I,
like I talked about with you the other day, Mike,
I don't really try to learn the tracks names. I
don't like I know the song when I hear it,
and I'll try to find it. I'll bring it up
every once in a while, but I'll be like searching
for some random lyric to try to find it, and I,

(02:30:12):
you know, don't even like know the names of the
tracks are some of my favorite band's biggest songs. So
it's like, but it's it has not been a detriment
to my enjoyment of music. But I don't pretend to
be someone who's like a music guy.

Speaker 3 (02:30:25):
I'm kind of similar with music a lot of other things.
If I like it, I do kind of like get
into it and I want to know, like how how
is this may like I can't just drink Scotch. When
I got into Scotch during the pandemic, I did want
to learn about the different regions and why, why what
makes p D scotch peatie? What is Pete? Like? What
are we doing here? And things like that. So yeah,

(02:30:48):
music's probably a similar one, and it's you know, it's
always kind of funny because I just don't know certain things,
especially about the Wutan group or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:30:56):
It's funny how you can simultaneously feel like I'm both
sides of like, you know, an expert or not about something,
because like with movies, I know, it's a common joke
where it's like, you know, I went to film school,
but like I don't get symbolism and and I haven't
seen this thing or whatever, but like I'm talking about
like you know, Big Lebowski and stuff like that. Like
I think a lot of people on the internet don't
know enough normies because it's like I am they battle

(02:31:19):
those normal people. I have definitely watched way more movies
and no way more about movies than most folks. But
then it's like there are times too where it's like,
you know, I fucking love Rocky and I remember it was,
you know, a couple of years ago. At this point,
Jess on a podcast was like, Oh, how do you
not know this thing about you love Rocky? How do
you not know that he like sold his dog or

(02:31:39):
whatever to the Rocky one or something like. I never
went deep on the making of Rocky really, but like
I thought about Rocky every day in my life and
seen them all a million times.

Speaker 1 (02:31:49):
But that like makes me think like, oh, wait, am
I just like a fake movie fan or something?

Speaker 2 (02:31:52):
But then you meet like normies and it's like, oh,
you don't know who scor says he is or something,
you know, like that type of thing. But like, there's
all going to be different levels to that, and I
think the end is always going to be super skewed,
like super online people are always going to be like.

Speaker 1 (02:32:07):
Oh, this guy doesn't know anything, and no, just go
talk to your neighbors. You know they're gonna know.

Speaker 4 (02:32:13):
Yeah, go go read them your letter box reviews, and
I promise you they'll get their shotgun and ask you
to leave.

Speaker 3 (02:32:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:32:18):
They probably have their phones out during a movie.

Speaker 3 (02:32:21):
Probably that's disgusting.

Speaker 1 (02:32:26):
Oh right, oh yeah, service level? Did I say?

Speaker 2 (02:32:29):
I'm trying to think like, because I feel like I
only kind of go super deep on stuff where it's like,
like the most he has got to be wrestling for me.

Speaker 3 (02:32:38):
I mean, yeah, you got wrestling more than anything.

Speaker 2 (02:32:41):
Especially now that I've like, you know, I have worked
there and know people that are like I have to
that has to be maybe more than video games because
I don't know anything about like making video games.

Speaker 1 (02:32:48):
But boys gave up a couple of guys putting match together,
you know, right, exactly? No, for sure?

Speaker 2 (02:32:54):
All right, final question of the evening. Hello, all, I'm
about to be an asshole, but I need to ask,
does Dan understand why the Hobbits are the.

Speaker 1 (02:33:04):
Heroes of the Lord of the Rings?

Speaker 3 (02:33:05):
Oh? God?

Speaker 2 (02:33:06):
Like? The whole point is that it's the smallest, the
physically least impressive, people who mostly love eating food and
smoking weed and staying at home and minding their own
business that are the only ones capable of saving the world.
And maybe that message continues to have relevance in twenty
twenty five. To put a very fine point on it,
he gets that he himself is way closer to a

(02:33:28):
Hobbit than he is to Vigo Mortenson. Yes, the Midwest
is his shire. Okay, love you all, even though you
make me shoot hot on a regular basis. That is
Nate from Bloomington, Minnesota. Okay, Yes, of course, of course
I'm closer to a hobbit tonight.

Speaker 1 (02:33:46):
But I also don't think I'm like a strong, cool hero.

Speaker 3 (02:33:50):
Okay, But like Dan, I would much rather see a
movie starring you than like, I don't know mister Tuffy
mc tough guy, whoever that would be these days. Right,
Like you are an interesting character who would be out
of his element and would have to rise above, kind

(02:34:14):
of like John Cena, right, Like, that's what's interesting about it.
And there's something more beautiful and inspiring about you facing
incredible odds and kind of being inserted into this battle
amongst gods. And here's just Dan Reichert. And actually he's
the one who's going to make the biggest difference and

(02:34:35):
say all that you don't have an ego. That's why
it's great because you're WoT you wouldn't, but you do,
because small things can create greatness in this world. Yes,
it's Rocky, it's Luke Skywalker, right.

Speaker 4 (02:34:53):
Luke Skywalker does long to be a hero, but everything
in his life has told him he can't be. His
situation has made it impossible. So even when confronted with
the possibility to be in a hero, Ben's like come
with me, every like you got to come with me
to Aldron and help me out looks like what, No,
I can't do that. So then when he finally does
agree to go and do it, it's like, oh, he

(02:35:14):
Now he's got to actually deal with the consequences of
believing in himself and he's got to overcome that, and
that that's what makes the whole arc work.

Speaker 3 (02:35:21):
Like Rocky would not be a good movie if Rocky
actually was the number one contender.

Speaker 1 (02:35:25):
A popular Rocky, Yes, it wouldn't be. Yeah, no, no.

Speaker 4 (02:35:30):
They picked him because he had a fun nickname and
he's a schlub and his life is depressing, right and
he had like lost the Spider Rico and yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:35:38):
Yes, yeah, yeah, he beat but he's beat. He beats
Spider Rico. Now, come on, let's just be clear here
about it.

Speaker 2 (02:35:45):
He can't be as simple as the difference is Rocky
seems real life and Lord of the Rings fantasy.

Speaker 3 (02:35:51):
I think it is. I think I do think you
have a hang up about fantasy, and I love I'm
not sure what it is. I like that.

Speaker 1 (02:35:57):
I like Thrones, Fine, I've read that whole first book.

Speaker 3 (02:35:59):
Yeah, I don't know, like something for some reason you
get past it. But there's something about this more and
always I don't want to say sincere, but archetypal fantasy
that does have its roots in Lord of the Rings
that bristles against you and I don't know why.

Speaker 2 (02:36:15):
And back of the day when I would hear led
Zeppelin songs and I'd be like, these are the coolest
dudes in the world, and be.

Speaker 1 (02:36:20):
Like more Door Dor.

Speaker 4 (02:36:27):
Led Zeppelin, famous dorks.

Speaker 1 (02:36:32):
This must just be some deep seated ball record stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:36:35):
Like everything is yeah, I have yeah, Like in my
mind though, like it's like would I root for Al's Like,
am I more excited about an AL Snow match or
a Kenney Omega match? Well, yeah, I'm closer to AL Snow,
but U N Mega is way cooler to watch.

Speaker 4 (02:36:52):
You know, it's an economy because like right, like everyone's
claims to like an underdog story, but you know, the
number one basketball team in most states, it is not
the team and that's in that state. It's the Los
Angeles Lakers. It's like they're people like front runners too.
So yeah, I think in a storytelling context, usually we
like the underdog.

Speaker 3 (02:37:12):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (02:37:14):
Story leading and the rest of you thirty like the
little Max story.

Speaker 3 (02:37:17):
That's what that is. Yeah, who is Brian Danielsen remind
you of perhaps a little bit, which is Little Mac. Yeah,
he's a little hobbitist.

Speaker 4 (02:37:24):
If you ask me that, Brian, he is the most
hobbitish wrestler that's ever existed.

Speaker 1 (02:37:30):
That beards, Hobbit score beards.

Speaker 3 (02:37:32):
Actually not usually but besides for the beard thing, come on,
it's kind of a short like he's like earthy and yeah,
he's very earthy the hemp Belt.

Speaker 2 (02:37:40):
There was something about the Hobbits because again I went
into those movies. I can't say this enough. I went
into them wanting to love them so bad. I got
the first book, I thought it was gonna be the
Star Wars of my generation.

Speaker 1 (02:37:50):
I was so.

Speaker 2 (02:37:53):
No.

Speaker 3 (02:37:53):
No, whether you like it or not, it is the
Star Wars of our generation.

Speaker 1 (02:37:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:37:57):
I don't like it either, but the prequels certainly weren't.

Speaker 2 (02:38:00):
Okay, So it's just something about the Hobbits themselves just
seem to suck so aggressively.

Speaker 3 (02:38:06):
Do you like not like a grarian.

Speaker 4 (02:38:09):
What's like lifestyles like the farming cultural societies Valley. Yeah, like,
I mean, like I think a lot of people they
see like they're like, oh wow, these people are like
of the earth and they have this kind of simple
life and they find something they kind of for that.

Speaker 2 (02:38:25):
I want to be an old, weird hippie just fucking
smoking weed on a farm or something.

Speaker 1 (02:38:28):
Times.

Speaker 4 (02:38:30):
I want to live in the Shire, so goddamn it,
I would get along with the Hobbits great, Yes, I agree.

Speaker 1 (02:38:37):
I don't want them as the protagonist of my action movie.

Speaker 3 (02:38:40):
Right, it's not like calling it an action movie again
is missing the point, Dan, Not an action movie, not
an action.

Speaker 2 (02:38:47):
There's an action pitched to me? What makes the Lord
of the Rings special? You have like four sentences, Max.

Speaker 3 (02:38:58):
Yeah, that's rough because I like Lord of the Ring.

Speaker 1 (02:39:00):
Do you like them?

Speaker 4 (02:39:01):
Yes, but I don't like I wasn't in love with them,
But I think when I rewatched the extended Edition quite
a few years ago, now like these are really good,
but like I'll like like Avacar more so that's what
I am.

Speaker 3 (02:39:14):
Yeah, there is good in the world and it wants
to help you, But you still have the greatest power
to inflict change on the world. And also the trees
can move and attack things, and that's cool, you know,
Like I think the message Okay, let me just go

(02:39:37):
get real with the here.

Speaker 2 (02:39:38):
I think the message is when you put it that way, like, yes,
even the smallest, you know, little guy can can make
big change in a.

Speaker 1 (02:39:46):
Big, scary, evil world. Yeah, that works for sure.

Speaker 2 (02:39:50):
I wonder if this is one of those things that
were when we're talking about when my opinions were formed
and calcified about the Lord of Ring was two thousand
and two to what two thousand and seven? When did
Return of the Game come out?

Speaker 3 (02:40:06):
And three is just one year apart all three the bank? Yeah,
just once.

Speaker 2 (02:40:12):
Yeah, I mean I can't think of a span of
time where I was a bigger asshole than those years.

Speaker 4 (02:40:21):
Maybe it's probably part of because when you weren't playing
an asshole, you were playing kiddie games, right.

Speaker 3 (02:40:26):
Uh no, I'm not.

Speaker 4 (02:40:28):
Playing my Ratchet Jack Kitty shit I played. Yeah, it's that,
It's just that When was the last time you've seen
them in the theaters?

Speaker 1 (02:40:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:40:36):
I thought about once and was like fuck this, and
I just every time it's come up since then, I've
been like fuck those and I really like I am.
I feel like I'm a totally different person than I will.

Speaker 4 (02:40:46):
Yeah, yeah, probably be able to get something out of
them now. And I don't think you're gonna love it, right.

Speaker 2 (02:40:51):
And Natiers in Minnesota, maybe we'll have a fucking trilogy
night listen.

Speaker 4 (02:40:55):
They'll they'll be playing in a theater sometime against you.
I would love to see.

Speaker 3 (02:40:58):
Talking about being in the weeds. There's a part. There
was a time where I was really really into it,
like when the movies were coming out, Like I was
reading The Simmer really.

Speaker 1 (02:41:06):
Which I thought I wouldn't get the pictures of you
dresses Peter Jackson.

Speaker 3 (02:41:09):
Going that was that was like my that was a
little that was kind of like that was me at
my most in that era was the night we saw
Return the King on opening day and we were all
just up and I dressed as Peter Jackson.

Speaker 1 (02:41:21):
I was kind of leading every.

Speaker 2 (02:41:24):
Picture of you from like high school and stuff like
it just I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 (02:41:29):
I look at that with deep respect. Yeah, yeah, he's
got this pride. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:41:34):
I finding a man with no reservations about who he
is and knows what he loves and he doesn't care
what the world things from and that is persistent to
this day.

Speaker 1 (02:41:41):
And I have deep respect for.

Speaker 3 (02:41:43):
Oh my gosh, the rizzing It's funny. Is like Jeff
in igh school, I wonder if you know, if we
would have been friends. I don't think we would have
been enemies or anything, but like, you know, his circles
were seemed a little intense to what I was doing
in high school.

Speaker 4 (02:41:55):
Man, I would have much been I would have been
much happier being friends with you than my friends.

Speaker 3 (02:42:00):
I think me and Dan would have been a similar
friend creep in.

Speaker 2 (02:42:03):
I would have totally like done my dumb that you
fight a fantasy, my magic, but like we would have.

Speaker 1 (02:42:08):
Hung out all the time.

Speaker 3 (02:42:09):
Oh yeah, he had a tummy friends like that. Uh yeah,
Like look, I liked Star Trek a ton in high school.
That's a ton of material for teasing. That was my
favorite I've got I liked a lot of that INRD Ship.

Speaker 2 (02:42:22):
God you, I really do think at this point, like
maybe I guess I have never really considered it until now,
but like maybe I should just watch those again.

Speaker 3 (02:42:29):
Like I mean, you know, do what you want to do.

Speaker 4 (02:42:31):
I think, you know, there's a cool dude sitting in
the corner of a bar, like wearing a hood, smoking
a pipe, and everyone's like, what is that gun? He's
a cool dude, and and uh that is you know,
he's going to be the hero throughout the three films eventually,
even though everyone really doing the super hard work are

(02:42:52):
the hobbits and they are the emotional core. There are
plenty of cool dude things happening in that movie.

Speaker 2 (02:42:57):
But I but I think I want to push myself
beyond the zone of like, oh, cool dude, gilling guys,
you know, yeah, do it for that, but like, yeah,
maybe expand a little bit there.

Speaker 4 (02:43:07):
I mean, I just view them all as Luke Skywalkers.

Speaker 1 (02:43:09):
That's honestly. Rocky is the closest brought me to like something.

Speaker 3 (02:43:13):
Yeahh god, that was so much fun. When CRE three
came out, you did that Rocky wheel and I just
was good. I hope they make another Rocky so we
could do that again.

Speaker 2 (02:43:22):
Well, my next thing is that we didn't talk about
the movies. I downloaded for the flight to Japan. But
how's your main how'd your Maine? How'd you make?

Speaker 1 (02:43:29):
No epo? Have you heard of this?

Speaker 2 (02:43:31):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (02:43:31):
Yeah, the boxing anime?

Speaker 2 (02:43:33):
Yeah, I remember I remember me and Gersmon does an
anime panel at that anime con once and we were
talking about anime and in the same type of conversations.
Here where's like, here's why I never watched this blah
blah blah. I liked Rocky, I like blah blah blah.
And somebody in the crowd literally screamed, like how did.

Speaker 3 (02:43:47):
You make no? EPO is literally Rocky and.

Speaker 1 (02:43:50):
Like screamed it, and like people have recommended that forever.

Speaker 2 (02:43:53):
And it's like, I as much like shit talk anime
and stuff the few anime things I've seen.

Speaker 1 (02:43:58):
That's pretty cool. So I downloaded. It's all on Netflix.

Speaker 2 (02:44:02):
So I downloaded like so much EPO and was like,
oh cool because you know what Kene Omega and Takeshta
that had a recent match and awesome match and they dressed.

Speaker 1 (02:44:11):
And like it was a homage to this, like oh wow,
okay match. So it's like I should watch that.

Speaker 4 (02:44:16):
Sports animes apparently are all very good. I've been meaning
to watch that.

Speaker 3 (02:44:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:44:22):
I like conventions.

Speaker 3 (02:44:23):
We should do more. There's there's that Midwest Gaming Classic
in Milwaukee. It happened, uh yeah April fifth, and I'm
like it wasn't that. I thought that was fun.

Speaker 4 (02:44:32):
Too many games in Philadelphia's apparently a pretty popular one.
Look into that one.

Speaker 2 (02:44:37):
Maybe I've always wanted to do the the Midwest gaming
classical thing, but it's always like WrestleMania Weekend or whatever,
and this year it wasn't.

Speaker 1 (02:44:43):
But I was in New York, so it's yeah, sure,
let's keep that on our radar.

Speaker 2 (02:44:47):
I would love to do that. It's like retrosaurs and stuff. Yeah, alright, well, ship,
that's a podcast.

Speaker 3 (02:44:54):
God damn it.

Speaker 1 (02:44:55):
I talked to you guys all the time every week,
and uh, you never run out of talk about it
was always a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (02:45:02):
Yeap, yep, folks, if you're if you're just learning somehow
of Jeff Grevin, Mike Manatti, let's just plug everything, fellas, please.

Speaker 3 (02:45:11):
Yeah. What do we do, well, Jeff and I We
do game mess the side. That's kind of our big
weekly show where we catch up on the news. We
always play a game of some sort, like the Mount
Rushmore of of apes and video games or fun things
like they do that one.

Speaker 1 (02:45:27):
Yeah, yeah, George Washington of course.

Speaker 3 (02:45:30):
Oh yeah, of course. And then we have a Nintendo
focused podcast called Last of the nintend Dogs. We do
that on Tuesdays. We have a Patreon for that stuff
and it gives you some bonuses, like our show about Colombo,
because we like that in the seventies Detective show a lot.
That patreon is that patreon dot com slash gay mess.
We are all on giant bombs you brought up. I
also do a show with my brothers about Disney. I

(02:45:54):
love Disney. I love theme parks, so we talk about
that on nineties Disney nine zero s Disney.

Speaker 1 (02:46:00):
If you have any.

Speaker 3 (02:46:01):
Interest in that world, it's a very I love that
world because even less so than wrestling, I felt like
there's a big crossover of wrestling and video games. Right,
Disney is kind of off in its own island. There's
a bit of it, but it's I like how separate
it is from the video game fandom.

Speaker 2 (02:46:20):
Sometimes the podcast you guys do are excellent, And it
took this long, but there's finally a video game podcast
I like to listen to, and you two guys. I
joined in while you guys are doing the live show
on Tuesdays and Thursdays and excellent, excellent stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:46:35):
Well, I really do love the show. I listened to
this I look forward to it every two weeks.

Speaker 4 (02:46:39):
I think it was like a couple weeks ago, like
Mike's like, oh Mike listens, They're like, oh yeah, and
I was in my car like, oh yeah, I do.

Speaker 1 (02:46:46):
It's great.

Speaker 3 (02:46:47):
It's great. So yeah, and it's always fun when we
get to hop in here. But looking forward to hearing
from Mike and Mary again soon.

Speaker 1 (02:46:55):
Absolutely they we will all be on an episode the
next time.

Speaker 2 (02:47:00):
But in the meantime, check us out on Patreon that
is firescape dot com, slash wait fires Oh yeah, Firescape
dot com.

Speaker 1 (02:47:07):
Usually Mike does this, so this is my first time.

Speaker 2 (02:47:09):
Fire Escape dot Com or Patreon dot com slash fire Escape.
You can join in as an ad free tier. For
the audio video tier, we've been doing more video stuff
and Mike and Vinnie from Next Lander have been doing
a warhammer gimmick over there.

Speaker 1 (02:47:22):
That's really fun.

Speaker 3 (02:47:23):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:47:24):
And you can also give us a smaller pledge amount
as a tip jar if you'd like. It goes directly
to the three of us.

Speaker 1 (02:47:29):
Uh. Yeah, that's about it.

Speaker 2 (02:47:32):
Check out fire Escape on socials, check out Mike and
Grub on Blue Sky, Twitter, anything in particular.

Speaker 3 (02:47:39):
Sky the says Tokoto I'm Tokoto everywhere. No, I'm not
gonna tell you what that means.

Speaker 2 (02:47:44):
Well, Joe he knows, Sojo does actually know. Joe is
signing it like wrestle con Like, what's Tolkoto mean?

Speaker 3 (02:47:54):
Did you hear about the penguin? Dan?

Speaker 1 (02:47:56):
What's that?

Speaker 3 (02:47:57):
Somebody? Uh so a listener like is working at a
zoo or something and they're trying to you have to
name a baby penguin, and he floated out Tolkoto and
apparently people like it. So maybe a penguin's gonna mean
named Tolkota.

Speaker 2 (02:48:08):
As long as they don't know the context. I think
that sounds like a great penguin name.

Speaker 3 (02:48:12):
Yeah, yeah, And I'll tell you what. I'm gonna go
visit this penguin.

Speaker 1 (02:48:15):
If that happened, you are a picture with the Tolkota penguin.

Speaker 3 (02:48:19):
My son.

Speaker 4 (02:48:22):
The family name lives on, all right, Grubb.

Speaker 2 (02:48:27):
And Mitch, thank you so much for next and thank
You's a pleasure, and thanks everyone for listening.

Speaker 1 (02:48:32):
Uh, we will see you all in a couple of weeks.
Bye bye