NEXT Generation 5 - Kirby's Dream Course [S1E5] - FunFactor

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Aiden, have you ever spent literal years piecing together everything
you know about an upcoming Nintendo console, desperately hoping it's
going to be awesome, but scared it's going to suck.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I mean, the first thing I did, and all I
could think about after I got my game Boy, was
how amazing it would be to strap two game Boys
like an inch and a half from my eyeballs. Yeah,
so I'd get three D game Boy games. And well,
I mean, we know how that turned out.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
We sure did me. No, I've never ever spent years
and years wondering what the new Nintendo console is going
to look like. I can't imagine scouring the Internet for
rumors or reports or factory skews or retailers shelves or
secret pictures with stuff blurred out, and people arguing over

(00:45):
whether it's AI generated or not, or you've got fun factor.
Two old gamers reviewing old video game magazine reviews. I'm
Ty Schalter, He's Aiden Moher, and we're two professional writers
who grew up loving the video games and video game

(01:05):
magazines of the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties, and two thousands.
Every episode, we take a critical look back on the
games media that, for better and for worse, inspired us
to do what we do. First, go to funfactor pod
dot com and follow the show on your podcatcher of choice.
Leave us a rating, a review on iTunes, Spotify, or
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(01:26):
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cannot miss it. Then help us spread the word. Shout

(01:47):
us out on Blue Sky at funfactor pod dot com
or anywhere else at fun Factor Pod. You know, aiden,
I thought we were done with hardware rumors for a
while after one of the most drawn out, hyper anticipated,
leaked ahead of time console launches, the switch to actually happened.
Little did I know that was just the beginning of
that discourse cycle. Back in nineteen ninety five, the only

(02:12):
real source for gaming news were these professional monthly magazines
with production pipelines that were themselves multiple months long. So,
as we've talked about, it was possible for Sega to
stealth launch the Saturn in the US with basically nobody
having any idea that it happened. And yet not only
were hardware generations shortening, but there were about a rolling

(02:32):
dozen or so game platforms. As new ones got launched,
old ones died, and segments like PC and handheld took
bigger and smaller shares of the gaming pie readers and
journalists alike were all thrilled with the possibilities of the
post sixteen bit era. I mean, this magazine is called
Next Generation. What do you remember about reading rumors of

(02:53):
what these new consoles could and couldn't do.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
It's April twenty twenty five, where a couple of months
out from the switch To being released, after as you say,
just a crazy period of leaks and rumors and you know,
leading up to the reveal, like days before, hours before,
people were like, oh, I heard that switch to doesn't
even do four k AT, you know, like crazy stuff
like that. The other day, like two days ago, I

(03:19):
saw Switch three rumors already gray about chips that they've like,
you know, sign contracts they've signed with whoever in video.
I think it was for the chip for the switch three,
and so we're like at a point where, like going
back in time with these magazines, like there was only
so much space they kind of had to vet rumors
and stuff as well, right, there was no avenue to

(03:39):
be like, hey, like we're hearing, you know, in videos
sign a contract for this little tiny chip or whatever.
You kind of had to weigh like, do we have
enough here to use up you know, a call on
or a page or a half page or a quarter
page on this rumor section. But rumors abounded, Like you know,
we were doing PSM number one in our very first episode,
and in there they were talking about rumors about PlayStation two,

(04:01):
you know. And so like that cycle of like always
drumming up the idea that like, you know, what you
have is cool, be excited about this, but we're also
working on the next thing, or they're also working on
the next thing has always been so like central to
video games in that console space, because you know, these
technologies take so long to develop, to create, conceptualize, but

(04:24):
also to like nail down all the contracts and so,
like a big one from back in the day sort
of just before this era was this the Nintendo PlayStation, right,
and we would hear so much about the cdad on
CD based add on for the Super Nintendo, which of
course was created by Sony. It exists, there's one or

(04:44):
two out there that physically exists, and it was the
Nintendo PlayStation. And then of course there was that famous
falling out between Sony and and Nintendo. Nintendo sort of
Bass backstabbed Sony and went with Phillips and and like
it obviously just didn't work out. But the idea that
you had this Super Nintendo that you know, was gonna

(05:04):
kind of fix its biggest flaw, which was like cartridge
size and the cost of cartridges by aligning with Sony
was just tantalizing, right, And we know we can look
back now that you know there were games like Secret
to Mona that were meant to be on CD and
so they have a bunch of cut content that just
never made it onto the cart and seeing those like
rumors in hindsight and saying, oh, you know what, sometimes

(05:27):
the rumors were sort of just rumor mongering, just something
to fill the you know, the page, to get people excited.
Sometimes there was like a lot of truth in there
as well, And it just speaks to how much happens
in the industry behind closed doors that we just don't
hear about, and how business deals impact so much of
what's going on, Like can we imagine what would happened
if that, you know, Nintendo PlayStation had materialized, like gaming

(05:51):
and the entire ecosystem would be so different now, And
so kind of watching those and and like thinking about
them just from the perspective of a gamer, like, oh,
I'm really excited because of these opportunities as like how
you know, how could it allow people to make better games?
Was really exciting to me as a kid. Now I
look back and I think about the business angles or
the perspectives of the people involved, how precarious it all is,

(06:14):
as you have these huge companies trying to make decisions together.
That part of it's really fascinating to me. And so
I think about like, you know, rumors about Switch three
now where you hear about Microsoft believing the game console
business or launching you know, we always care about handhelds
because of the Steam deck and the Switch being so successful,
Like yeah, so Sony going to make a PSP two

(06:35):
or a Vita two or whatever is Microsoft can enter
the handheld market. It never changes it's all the same.
It's all the same rumors. You know, something better is
along the coming along the way, or somebody's going to
have the game Boy killer or the Steam Deck killer,
and you know it's all yeah, nothing changes everything. You know,
the more things change, the more they stay the same,
for sure.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
But I think this era had it different because there
were so many makers jumping in. I have talked before
on you know, a couple of podcasts about it seemed
like there's like a wheel like at every cees and
then eventually E three also where it would be like
electronics company, toy company, and then like what it would
be like spin uh, Magnavox is pairing up with uh

(07:19):
Whammo to make the Frisbee tron, you know, and they
just show a bunch of stuff and it's like this
is never gonna come out.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
You know.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
There are so many consoles being announced and rumors, and
actually this issue of Next Generation Next Generation five has
this big long section on the three D M two,
which of course did not exist. So this combination of
real stuff in vaporware was and hype for both was wild.
One rumor that stands out to me from this time

(07:47):
is one that's repeated later in this issue, was repeated
across multiple issues of Next Gen and other Imagine Media mags,
some of the other gaming mags. I saw Nintendo was
going to be aggressive in owning online play. I vividly
remember this. For years, people were saying, hey, Nintendo, they're
the console maker who are by far the most interested
in and hard at work on online play. Do you

(08:09):
remember that I.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Was deep into the computer like PC online gaming, Like
I was playing a lot of Doom uh Warcraft over
like land and the online and stuff, So I didn't
really care about online console stuff like that was not
appealing to me at all.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
I didn't I didn't get a computer in the house
that I was sixteen. I didn't even get my mom
the presser in and okay until I was seventeen. So
I was like, online, Oh my god, I gotta have online. Yeah,
and those in the no capt hinting Nintendo being last
to market might or might not put them behind in
raw processing power, but Saturn and PlayStation would look like
door stops. Once Ultra sixty four's network capability and Nintendo's

(08:50):
robust online strategy was revealed, I hung on to this
cope for years, right, it made sense at the time.
It will see the satellaview for Super Nintendo, the Japan
only satellite internet thingy I was about to launch in Japan.
But not only did the N sixty four never get online,
Nintendo stayed well behind Sega, Sony and eventually Microsoft in

(09:12):
both digital delivery and online play, and arguably remains so
to this day. And now we're in this situation with
rumors where the cycle is so fast and we're alluding
to there are YouTube channels, journalists whose entire careers are
built around hyper fixating on, you know, manufacturing details and

(09:33):
these partner contracts we talk about that, you know, we're
barely even discussed back then and trying to discern like
what is the new thing going to be, like when
is it coming? And it feels it feels weird to
me because with diminishing returns on graphics tech, you know,
it's not like the switch to is going to absolutely
blow everyone's mind. Like, it's not like the PlayStation six

(09:55):
is going to be you know, something you could immediately
spot that's a PlayStation six game versus a PlayStation five
game running over there, let alone the PlayStation five pro.
That's in between, right, But yeah, there's so much more
attention being paid to this. So that strike you as a.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
No, I mean yes and no, I think that. You know,
we've talked a lot about, like offline, about the digital
foundry effect and how people are you know, like when
the return on graphics is more about kind of subtle
detail and overall like vibe or technical performance than it
was in previous generation leaps. Like you look at the

(10:30):
Supernintendo to the N sixty four or the N sixty
four of the game cube, Like those were such obvious
generational leaps, and that's still what people sort of want
and expect, but that's not what we're getting anymore. It's iterative.
It's more like horsepower. It's more like you know, rate
tracing or path tracing or you know, uh upscaling, AI
app skyline and stuff like that. You know, I educate

(10:52):
myself on that because I find it interesting. You know, nowadays,
we just get rumors every time there's a new console
PlayStation five pro was coming out or in the PlayStation five,
and I'll switch to it's like oh, yeah, like this
is is this the point where we get locked sixty
fps in every game and every new console that comes
out is like no, like because they're always gonna kind

(11:12):
of push graphical texts as far as they can get,
and the mass market has accepted thirty fps as like
a standard that most people find fine. They're not gonna
push sixty fps as a standard because that's just never
how any business decision has ever been made. They're always

(11:32):
gonna push tech harder and harder. And yet these rumors
every single console generation is is this gonna be when
we get sixty fps in every game? Just locked? I
feel like there's a lot of dreaming in a lot
of the rumors that kind of pop up, in a
lot of speculation in terms of like not like actual rumors,
but hey, this is what we kind of hope and
this is what we could see this tech being used for,

(11:53):
which goes counter to the history of game development. When
Next Generation number five drop, it felt like a generation
leap in magazine technology, at least, you know, for me,
because this was the first one I saw. We will
dig into that, open up the cover and everything inside
when we get back. If you're not already a member
of Fun Factor Ultra and getting ad free episodes, just

(12:15):
hang tight through the break we'll get to Next Generation
five right here on fun Factor. Welcome back to fun Factor.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
We're two old gamers review old video game magazine reviews.
Of course we want you to review us. Do we
get a full five point zero in fun Factor? Leave
us a review on Apple podcasts or a comment on YouTube,
and we'll read the best, funniest, kindest, and most entertaining
ones on the air. Aiden Back in our second episode,
the one on Gameplayer number seventy five, you asked me

(13:01):
if I had any core memories of game mags, and
my response was the first time I saw an issue
of Next Generation and it was this issue number five
with this dark futuristic spaceship and a big teaser feature
about Nintendo's upcoming Ultra sixty four quote unquote. Next Generation
was so much slicker and cooler than the other mags,

(13:23):
with these cardstock covers that had like a satin finish overlay,
really clean and modern design elements, and was obviously targeted
at the small but growing like mature, intelligent gamery demographic
at oh Yeah, cover price four ninety nine in both
the US and Canada, which is about ten bucks in
today's dollars. Now, you and I already talked about a

(13:45):
different issue of Next Gen as it would come to
be called in one of our quote unquote lost dry
run episodes. But the good people still need to hear
the info. So Imagine Media, which is now Future US,
launched Next Generation in January nineteen ninety five. It ran
till January two thousand, something I didn't know until researching
for this podcast. The company that had long published game

(14:05):
players became Imagine Media when it was bought by the
UK's Future Publications. So next Gen actually shared editorial staffers, content,
and a lot of design sensibility with the UK's Edge magazine,
which at the time I did not know even existed.
But here we have May nineteen ninety five, the fifth
issue of Next Gen's debut year, one hundred and eleven

(14:28):
pages plus a two page advertisement. After that, fifty four
games reviewed for ten different systems PlayStation, three, d Oh, Jaguar,
segond thirty two X, Neo, GOPC, Macintosh, SEGACD, Genesis, and Sness.
Review table of contents lists Saturn, CDI and Arcade, but
those three are referenced at the end with sorry. No

(14:49):
new games were made available for review this month. On
the following systems and like for the rest of the magazine,
no bylines anywhere in the magazine. The staff said are
that they wanted to collectively share credit and blame for
everything published in the magazine. So outside of like the
regular columns where like one author is specifically writing it, uh,

(15:12):
there's none of the content in the magazine is a
sign to anyone writer. And it's too bad, because I'd
like to talk to some of them about some of that.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Next Gen is a magazine I appreciate a lot more
in hindsight than I did at the time. I was like,
I was deep into you know, as we've talked about
game players and EGM, Game Pro Game Fan, and I
was like, I liked a lot of the like humor
and sort of the like adolescent targeted writing and a
lot of those magazines, Like I was the core audience

(15:40):
for that stuff, and I honestly found Next Gen a
little dry. Like I liked the personality driven stuff, and
I think that's the defining feature that you just highlighted that,
like those other magazines were starting to define the personality
of the people who wrote them, and Next Gen took
the exact opposite approach. And it just didn't really work
for me specifically. But in hindsight, I think it was

(16:03):
really bold to target that older audience, that more mature
audience that was, you know, probably five years older than
I was at the time, and looking for something that
was a little bit more you know, adult driven, and
I think that was smart, and I think an Aged
really well edged I think is one of the best
gaming magazines of all time. I was not aware of

(16:24):
it in the mid nineties either, but Next generally took
that lead from the kind of North American perspective I think,
and I really like that it exists now, even if
I didn't really appreciate it at the time.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
I also liked some of the more juvenile stuff in
Game Players. I liked their weird, you know, letters to
the editor and you know, kind of collective fever dreams.
But I also really felt like, ooh, yeah, I'm getting
in with the grown ups. I am a grown up now,
I'm cool. Made me feel cool for reading it, made
me feel smart for reading it, and looking back at
it now as we're about to flip through this, it

(16:59):
feel like they're making a magazine for each other rather
than a magazine for fourteen year olds, right, and you know,
we can say it hits and misses in various ways,
but I really do appreciate this. Publisher Jonathan Simpson Bent
per his LinkedIn, came to the US in nineteen ninety
three as the first full time sales employee of GP Publications,

(17:20):
which is the original parent company of Game Players. Simpson
Bent rose to the top, becoming president of Future US,
then moved on to co chair a Bay Areas Marketers Association.
The most recent gig for him was being the chief
revenue officer of some streaming video app called twitch Tv.
Ever heard of that?

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Aiden, I knew, I recognize that, Namen. I was just
recently reading Nathan Grayson's book stream Big, which is all
about the history of Twitch and the streamers who kind
of helped create it. And yeah, that's interesting. There's always
those connections. Like people in this industry, you always seem
to pop up, you know, they you think they disappear,
you think they're gone, and then you realized no, like

(18:00):
you know, they just kind of ended up elsewhere, usually
on the other side of media. And that's the whole
discussion for another episode, is the way that media is
unable to retain people through their careers, even back in
you know, in the nineties, I guess.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
But yeah, well, it looks like Jonathan Simpson Bent took
his money and got out. He left Twitch in twenty
twenty two. His LinkedIn now lists no current job or
anyone after that. His bio starts with father, farmer, physicist,
footballer and refers to his former life as a revenue
officer and in digital media. God bless you, Jonathan, hope

(18:38):
you are enjoying your physics and your football. Editor Neil West,
according to the Magazines of the Past Wiki, started at
UK magazine Sega Power in nineteen ninety became deputy editor,
then in nineteen ninety two was picked to be the
launch editor of a Sega Center magazine called Mega presumably
referring to the Sega Genesis UK name of Mega Drive.

(19:00):
Nineteen ninety four he moved to the US to launch
an edit Next Generation, which he did till nineteen ninety eight.
He edited Future US's Arcade magazine for a year, spent
some time at some site called GarageBand dot com, and
for the last sixteen years has been head of Apple
Music's UK and Europe division from his home base in Madrid.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Not bad ty. I think I should have gotten into
games journalism in the mid nineties, not not twenty nineteen.
I think I might have missed I might have missed
the window here.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
No doubt other imagined media regulars will pop up throughout
next generations run. I wanted to cite this one. We
get a Trent Ward in here. Who I suspect is
the mysteriously mononymous Trent from Game Players Number seventy five
from our second episode.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
I mean, possibly there are a lot of gen xers
named Trent. It was a That's true, it was quite
a gen X name. So jumped to too many conclusions.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
All right, it is time for the flip through. First
of all, I think the swing at Prestige magazine design
just pops off the page from the very beginning. You know,
we have this big graphic intro, a lot of San

(20:25):
Sarah fonce clean design mixed with like you know, solid color,
subtle details here and there, boxes and lines. It just
it really looks like you're taking a swing at grown
up design making a magazine. Writers and editors in their
mid twenties are trying to make for each other to
impress each other.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
I honestly, like, looking at this magazine, I think it
still looks good. Like a lot of these magazines from
the mid nineties did not age well. I appreciate them,
but they're not strong from like a design standpoint, next
Gen still looks good. What it really looks like is
sort of like two thousand in five era EGM, which
is wild because this is like ten years earlier, and

(21:05):
at that point EGM was also trying to like market
towards you know, an aging and maturing audience. They were
getting a little bit you know, older, And I think
it's interesting and you know, shows a lot of foresight
that Next Gen like had this really clean design that
holds up nicely, but also you know, was a showcase

(21:26):
of what other magazines were going to be doing literally
a decade later.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
But we need to start where the issue starts with
a banger of an interview with Sony Computer Entertainment America
CEO Steve Race. Again, we don't know who actually conducted
this interview because of their no byline policy, But unlike
the issue two months earlier, where Nolan Bushnell seemed not
only to trample the interview but warp all the features
around it into an Atari is so back narrative totally

(21:53):
belied by facts. In reality, the interviewer here is not
afraid to push Race, and Race, to his credit, does
not shy away. Next Gen started the interview asking why
Sony didn't make a sixteen bit console, and Race is
frank about their failed attempt to collaborate with Nintendo, the
one that you referenced earlier. Aiden, can you read this
follow up exchange?

Speaker 2 (22:14):
So next Gen asks, but could Sony be too late?
Many people argue that the sixteen bit video game boom
was just teenage fashion and that there may be no
mainstream market for thirty two big game machines. Race replies,
there are always those nagging doubts, especially when you're trying
to make a buck the size that someone is making
in this industry. However, if you go back and take

(22:35):
a look, the video game industry has been around for
well over a decade. Each generation of hardware tends to
sell more and more units. We're talking now about sixteen
bit systems that have sold upward of thirty million units
domestically in the United States. That's about one hundred percent
penetration of your cohort group. I don't think that that's
a fad or a trend because the penetration is too deep.

(22:58):
There's a famous quote by Charles Revlon, the cosmetics tycoon, who,
upon being asked if he sold cosmetics, replied, no, I
sell hope. Similarly, I think that what we provide is
entertainment value, and we do that in the form of
video games. We measure ourselves in hardware and software, but
really what we sell is the greater experience of entertainment.

(23:19):
There's always a market for that.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
First off, what an answer, But second, what a question.
I can't imagine any other gaming Magan nineteen ninety five
asking an executive like this a question like that. Like again,
the magazine is named for the excitement at potential to
the thirty two bit era, and the question is what
if it turns out the sixteen bit era was just
baby toys for little babies and all this is fornaught.

(23:44):
I mean, I'm struggling to imagine a game journalist today
sitting down with Hideyaki Nashido, the new CEO of Soda
Interactive Entertainment, and asking whe they're gonna bother making a
PlayStation six since people think consoles are dead. Yeah, I
mean two things that could never happen because like, you know,
it's so locked down by PR now, especially like the

(24:05):
console stuff.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
But even like as I go around trying to get
access to like smaller games and try to nail down
interviews and stuff, you know, I have I have trouble
getting creators to talk on record because I just run
into brick walls with PR. Or you know, I've worked
on features about Final Fantasy and they've been great and
really encouraging, but all the questions get run through PR first.

(24:28):
So I just like I think that there was still
sort of like an openness in the industry, and I
think Sony, wanting to really establish itself, was maybe willing
to be a little bit more open, a little bit
more aggressive in their communication. And second of all, like, man,
did this guy call his shot like Babe Ruth Like

(24:49):
he was spot on? And then the PlayStation two went
on to become the biggest highest selling console of all
time with way more than thirty million units, And so
like I think, you know, it was like he sat
there and he said, no, like this is how we're
thinking about it, and that like connection to the Revlon
quote is just so good because I think it is

(25:10):
spot on that to you need to recognize that, like
video games aren't competing just against themselves, they compete against
television and film and movies and music and just going outside, right,
playing baseball with your friends, or playing catch with your
your mom and your dad, right, like it is entertainment
and it competes against that. And when as they position
themselves in that regard, you know, they were able to

(25:33):
understand how to grow in that market. And that probably
led to the PlayStation too, including a DVD player, which
was one of the huge selling points and allowed that
market penetration that was like he says, like, you know,
when you have that deep market penetration, you have lasting appeal.
And the DVD player creating an all in one like

(25:55):
entertainment unit that could play music, that could play movies,
that could play video games was so integral to its success.
So I think, you know, like you could see the
seeds of what Sony wanted to do and recognize that
they were more than just a video game company. They
were making more than just a video game device. They
were creating an entertainment device.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah, and the interview goes on, like this next gen
pushes race on price point release date, Sony's place in
the market, and Race offers surprisingly Frank answers. The interviewer
even challenges Race's statement that Sony's a creator driven company
by referring to George Michael's contract lawsuit against Sony Music.
It's a good distressed, Oh, George Michael would have something

(26:34):
to say about that, Like that is incredible that I
have such a hard time seeing that happening today.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Amazing stuff. Yeah, And I think like we would be
in a better place if we had more open communication
like this and just like more freedom for the press
to be covering games like we've as we watched the
games media sort of collapse. All of it's been taken
over by PR and PR approved you know, outlud and

(27:00):
influencers and that, so that they can control the message
and so they don't have to face hard questions. And
I wish that there was a way that we could
kind of roll things back where companies were more willing to,
you know, sit down and talk and have these sorts
of interviews with you know, with journalists. We have a
couple of people who can still nail, you know, nail
down some pretty impressive interviews. Jason Schreyer at Bloomberg can

(27:20):
still get some pretty good, you know, interviews and stuff
like that, but it's just so much more rare now
that you get open dialogue.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Like this coming from sports journalism, which is another entertainment
industry where people take their secrets.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Way too seriously.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Access helps, right, because we see we're talking about the
Nintendo switch to launch them. Picking a price out of
a hat and having people be furious is something where hey,
if a couple months ago you'd sat down with a
journalist and they says, hey, so what are you thinking
two three ninety nine, like it might be four fifty,
you can get a uh, maybe it shouldn't be four fifty.

(27:59):
You know, you can get that. Like those sorts of things.
Information can help you both ways, having access and transparency,
and you have a chance to go, hey, well here's
why we did four fifty instead of shutting out the public,
shutting out the world, stealth dropping the info after your
Nintendo direct and then being flummoxed and spending days taking
l after L after l after l in public opinion

(28:20):
because you didn't talk to people, you tried to make
it secret. And so this is something I am absolutely
hammering on video game companies for and PR people tell
me I'm wrong. I'm telling PR people you're wrong.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
I mean, we're going to get to it in a moment.
But there's another big feature in this issue about another
game console huh that you know, sort of tried to
just surprise everybody and it didn't go very well.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Two huge stingings to this interview. Number One a decade
ago twenty fourteen, Cyril Lachelle of defunct games dot com
and Brad Galloway of Game Critics dot Com did a
dramatic reenactment of this interview is still up online. I
encourage you to check it out. And two, a month
after a very successful launch of PlayStation in the US,

(29:08):
Race abruptly resigned to take over Spectrum Hollabite, a mid
sized publisher best known for their military PC Flight sims
and console star Trek adventure games, and then after merging
it with Micropros and selling to Hasbro, Race seems to
have become a corporate turnaround gun for hire. Since twenty fourteen,
he's managed a hedge fund that specializes in turning around

(29:31):
like this medium sized companies. We could spend forever on
this massive five page interview. That's like straight text. Let's
keep moving. Aiden you teased it page sixteen in the
Internet archive. Think of this US Saturn to launch on
September two.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
This was the thing. As you told me we were
doing this issue, I was slipping through it. I was like,
this is the thing I want to talk about. So
we're looking at the May nine, ninety five issue of
Next Gen magazine. There's a big feature on how the
US Saturn will launch on September second, nineteen ninety five.
Ty what else happened in May of nineteen ninety five. Uh,

(30:13):
the US Saturn launched in so as this issue was
hitting news stands with a gigantic feature about it. September launch,
the Sega Saturn was hitting store shelves.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Incredible toys r US is absolutely I saw this magazine
and picked it up. Probably the toys r US buy me.
Within a week or two of me reading it had
Sega saturns for sale.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
And I had no idea one hundred percent, one hundred
percent and nobody knew, right, And the fact that they
were like this is so okay. The title here the
head is US Saturn launch on September second. The subhead,
Sega of America announces Saturn Day and throws down the
gauntlet to Sony and Nintendo. So they were like aiming

(30:58):
at a September launch. Are enough in advance that they
gave like a big feature interview with Sega of America
President Tom can't read that it's too small, And they
gave a big, big interview with their president, the president
Sega of America, and then launched. And like the fact

(31:19):
that that would happen, that there'd be an interview about
a September launch and a May issue of a magazine
and the concert would launch in May just speaks to
how like reactionary and fast SAT decision must have been made.
Like that interview probably happened in so this May. It
probably came out in April, so maybe you're looking at
like February January, February for that for that interview to

(31:41):
have occurred. So they were looking at that September launch
and somewhere in between they decided to just go for it.
I can't even figure out the manufacturing like pipeline that
allowed them to like jump the queue like that, but
whatever they did. You know, this interview starts off with
Sega a US gamers will get their hands on Sega

(32:03):
Saturn on September second, nineteen ninety five. Sega of America
has revealed priced quote unquote between three hundred and fifty
and four hundred and fifty dollars. Saturn will be nationally
available at twenty titles available on store shelves. So the
month that it released, they still didn't have a price
that they were willing to communicate out to magazines. Just
incredible stuff and incredible, like hindsight at how disorganized that

(32:28):
Saturn launch was.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Absolutely wild. Also a free little bit as we skim
passed here, not a pull quote because it's not a quote,
but with the cost of CD manufacturer less than two dollars,
Sega is in the unique position of being able to
include two, three or even four games at seventy dollars
retail value in the box with Saturn hardware. Like what
they did not do? That I not what happened they.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Know, No, how do you even get boxes manufactured fast
enough to like turn around a September like a May
launch when you're aiming for September, you know, let alone
getting games and stuff. They definitely didn't have twenty games
available when it launched, So like, you know, they just
seem positioned and like lower down, they just seem well
positioned for September and they maybe could have built off that,

(33:13):
but like the May launch was just such a nightmare.
But you see a little bit of a hint of
like maybe why they decided to do it later on
in like the second paragraph, the second section in the interview,
it says, and while Sega remains skeptical of Sony's ability
to launch it two forty nine, confidence of Sony's ability
to make it happen is growing in the gaming industry.

(33:33):
And this is quote, we have pretty good information as
to what it costs to make each PlayStation, and I'd
be very surprised if they made it, argues Tim Dundley,
Sega's marketing manager. Meanwhile, Nintendo is sticking to it's quote
unquote blow two hundred and fifty dollars story for Ultra
sixty four. So we'll seg Saturn find itself fatally overpriced.

(33:54):
You can see that like Sega didn't want to lose money,
you know, they weren't willing to aggressively sort of put
you know, like an aggressively costed console on the market.
Maybe they didn't have the cash for it, but you
could see that they were getting nervous about that price
point and they felt like their only option was to
get out first, yeah, and hope that people were so
desperate for that next generation that they would get in.

(34:15):
And it goes back to like racist point about market penetration.
Sega was banking on the idea that if they could
get out early, they could get so many Saturns on
the market that the momentum would just build from there,
and it just never really happened. Like four fifty for
a Saturn just was never going to work, and then
putting it out early without any marketing and stuff was
just like.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Such a brutal, brutal I want to move on. Can
you get a page twenty four? Here? Parallel Technology enters
vrcades and this, I mean, this is like so nineteen
ninety five. There's this big splashy you know, rendered three D.

(34:56):
It's like a deep sea submersible with like a lava
ocean floor and there's some gigantic look and eel thing
in the background of big teeth spyfish taw systems. First
four into the Arcades, the finished game will shift over
one million polygons per second in real time. It's big, long,
super super technical article about Tao Systems and their TOUSE
operating system and risk and SISC and Glint and a

(35:21):
bunch of super super technical stuff and shows off this motherboard.
It takes a Pentium motherboard with four PCI slots and
then basically they have four daughter boards like video cards,
basically with power piece chips and a Glint processor. And
basically they're saying, hey, our our code, our TOUSE operating

(35:43):
system can run on any processor. So we basically have
a cheap but high end PC motherboard and then we're
gonna put power PC chips and they're like Mac chips
in there, and it'll be able to run on both
and we'll have massively four way parallel graphics and have
all this stuff that d D D da da da da.

(36:04):
So in this fascinated me as a kid. All this
talk I this is all new to me. This kind
of level of hardware depth was not gotten into very
much in you know, like your EGMs and your game
pros and game fans, right, and then interviews with these
creators it felt like so cutting edge and so like wow,
like these are the movies. Go to the page twenty

(36:26):
six twenty seven. Look at these look at these sa monsters.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Aiden, look at this stuff, spooky man.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Yeah, for those of the video, this is this looks
like spore Like. These look like spore monsters, both in
terms of design and in terms of graphical quality.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Right, it kind of looks like, you know, like when
they'll they'll get kids to draw like a deep sea
animal and then a three D modeler will model, yeah, drawing,
that's what they look like. They're like hilarious. There's like
a it's like an angler fish with like bright neon
green fins and then just like a bunch of spiked

(37:03):
teeth like sticking straight out like horizontally from its mouth.
It's like it's truly But again this worked on me,
you know little almost thirteen fourteen to fifty one.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Wow, Like just the detail. I mean, this looks like
what even was beyond pre rendered stuff at this time, right,
stuff when you're getting FMV of pre rendered things in
you know, PlayStation. Obviously I didn't have a PlayStation yet,
it wasn't out yet, but like this looked so much
better and the idea that is gonna be in the arcades. Aiden,
this was all vaporware. This did not exist. This whole

(37:34):
exact article in fact, read basically exactly as is in
Edge the year before I scoured the internet. The only
references to this or this company or this technology that
are not just references to these two magazines are one
a white paper written in like nineteen ninety two about
their like Unix based operating system that could run on

(37:55):
any processor. And then also the City of sand and
Cisco's paperwork acknowledging the disillusion of the company in nineteen
ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah, I mean the grift has always been there, right,
Like You've always had people touting their technology and how
it's going to change things, and they need a bunch
of money, and a few people make a bunch of
money and then it disappears.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
You know, and VR VR and the other thing like
that that's supposed to be a VR headset in an arcade.
For all the vrcades that are definitely going to be popping.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Up, they kind of exist now. I see them around,
but I don't know if they're any good. Those vrcaides
where you're sitting in the super grimy like you know,
ORB with a VR headset and you probably get hand,
foot and mouth disease. Ah, But like I, you know,

(38:49):
I was like, I don't know, I was not in
on three D graphics when it all first started cropping up.
Like I wasn't impressed with stuff like Starfox on the
Super Nintendo. I like Super Mario sixty four, but that
was also like Mario and a new way of approaching Mario,
and so like I was never really like on board
with that, like, oh, three D technology is like the

(39:10):
future and we're ready, Like it never really felt like
we were ready to leave really beautiful two D video
games behind. So stuff like this, I looked at it,
and you know, I didn't ever think that that was silly. See,
animals looked good. It never really excited me. You or
maybe I was just ahead of a curve, or maybe
like maybe I was behind the curve and still just

(39:31):
sort of like a little bit younger and just wanted
something that felt a little more cartoony or something. But
like that hyper realistic idea of like early three D
tech was just it never impressed me at the time.
And I'll be honest, I think we've only gotten to
the point now where we're in a place where like
three D gaming technology can create the level of like

(39:55):
graphical fidelity and detail that matches up with like what
pre rendered backgrounds we're doing on a PlayStation, you know,
like where where we can support enough detail that it
makes my brain feel like I'm in that world, the
same way that like Follo Fantasy seven backgrounds. Get this
stuff even in a VR headset, was never really gonna

(40:18):
make me feel like I was in the deep sea.
It was gonna make me feel like I was in
a weird rendering of like, you know, a deep sea
aquarium ride or whatever.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
It looked like it was gonna make me strap sequest
DSV the TV show to my head. I was completely
completely into it.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
How are your you know, AI investments doing time?

Speaker 1 (40:37):
Oh man, Okay, believe it or not, We're gonna get there.
Jump ahead, page twenty seven. I had to do this
joy riding by Bernard Yi, dude, this is so great.
I love this so much. Gaming Updates from Cyberspace. This
is a monthly column about how gaming is happening on
the Internet and you should check it out. Aiden. Can

(40:59):
you please just try to read this?

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Hell yeah, okay, this is my If I did not
like three D technology in nineteen ninety five. I really
liked Internet, like online massive bards and stuff. This is
this is my kind of shit. Okay, here we go.
The World Wide Web is another part of the Internet,
which provides a more graphic environment for users with hypertext
links to related subject Click on a highlighted phrase to

(41:23):
get entries on that subject.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Who.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
The locations for websites are a bit arcane, since the
backbone of the Internet is Unix, an operating system navigating
the net maybe a bit intimidating for users without a
good navigator. There are several web sites devoted almost entirely
to computer gaming here or a few to check for
doune fans. You shouldn't miss HTTP colon forward slash forward slash,

(41:51):
w WW dot, cs dot, h MC dot, E DU
forward slash, people forward slash, TJ forward slash, docs forward
slash doom. So I guess this is like TJ's like,
you know, a direct socket connection to TJ's docs folder

(42:12):
with all his uh, with all his doom notes. Uh.
You know. Yeah. If you're looking for game hints, check
out w C L dash RS dot, b h A
M dot, AC dot UK forward slash tilda DJH forward
slash walk through w A l K t h r

(42:32):
U dot h t m L. We are jo writing, Yeah,
here we go. This is the good stuff.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Hints.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Check out this college.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Kid in Birmingham, England's personal share of their computer. Their
servers walkthrough dot htm L. That is the place to go.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
That's it man, that that was living and that's what's
you know, Like I in nineteen ninety five, there was
nothing better you could do with your time than check
out T Jay's doom talks.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Oh yeah, absolutely, there's there's more. We got to move on.
But the FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol FTP. Gamet
cheats from this site and use this path and let
and you go to a fac on computer games is
available at this FTP. It's like I, it's so funny.

(43:22):
And what's Bernardi up to? Just today? Just this year,
after eight years Oculus and Meta, Bernardi left to co
found wind Up Mines of E our startup.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
I go, it's the future?

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Uh huh?

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Who wants to live in this world when we can
live in you know, a digital world.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Tomorrow is always six to eighteen months away.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly right. Just give us more money. Well,
we promise, we've got to get to the cover story.
Ten pages on Ultra sixty four the story so far,
we are here.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Stick with us. If you're not paying for ad free episodes,
we will be back right here on fun Factor. All right,

(44:24):
we are back at fun Factor to old gamers, review
old video game magazines and reviews. I cannot wait to
get into Ultra sixty four the story so far. There's
a huge, huge, beautiful pre rendered Silicon Graphics spaceship. It's
kind of like a Frisbee meats fighter jet kind of

(44:44):
looking thing with like a plasma trail behind it. And
this is just so SGI. I don't know where this
comes from. I couldn't find a credit. I don't know
if it's original for next Gen or if they're sourcing
this from somewhere. I have no idea about what this
feature is. Is a ten page, meticulous Pepe Sylvia style

(45:04):
reconstruction of the timeline of n sixty four development from
the nineteen ninety three Nintendo Silicon Graphics dual announcement of
Project Reality to all the hardware and software acquisitions and
partnerships Like with Rare, each news item in this layout
here is followed by the official line, which is quotes
from the people involved, and the next gen's take is

(45:25):
called the bottom line. Just for a taste here Aiden
mind reading this.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Bit, Rare Limited, the development arm of Rare coin It
Toys and Games, Inc. Signs an exclusive development deal with
Nintendo to create Killer Instinct, the first in a series
of video games for Project Reality. Official line. Rare has
been working with Nintendo and Project Reality for some time.

(45:52):
Howard Lincoln, Chairman, noa bottom line who was pretty much
the unanimous response of both game players and the gaming
industry alike. Rare, famous only for the Battle toad series
on any s games, seemingly came out of nowhere to
sit at the right hand of the most powerful partnership

(46:15):
in gaming. In fact, Rare's involvement in gaming dates back
twenty years, having made its most significant mark in nineteen
eighty five as the first NYS developer outside of Japan.
It was still a surprising choice. Nevertheless, what a wild quote,
like there has been around for a long time, and
like Battle Toads was like, I don't know, Battle Toads

(46:38):
was pretty big. It was I was a kid renting
an nes and stuff like it wasn't like a random
little like no nothing game. What a strange quote.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
It's a strange, very weird. I also think later in
the feature they refer to Rare as the producers of
Donkey Kong Country, so like, what what are we doing?

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Well, yeah, of course donk Kong Country. You would have
been out at this point like what this is so strange?
Huh what and like introducing them as like the development
arm of rare coin It toins toys and games like
post Donkey Kong Country, like by nineteen ninety five, like
we probably would have had Diddy's Conquest. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
It's funny because I do remember playing any S games,
and I think even in the Donkey Kong Country it
still had you know, like trademark to Rare and they
did like Rare Dash rare coin It, and I remember
being seeing that being like what is rare rare coin It?
Like I do remember that entity existing, but it's this
is this is bizarre. But that aside, I was beyond

(47:44):
excited for the potential of the system, not just as
a Nintendo fan, but as a budding geek who was
seeing Silicon graphics machines both depicted in and the power
behind like every geeky movie, TV show project. What do
you remember about the idea of Silicon Graphics teaming up
with Nintendo?

Speaker 2 (48:03):
I mean as much as I was dogging on three
D graphics five minutes ago. Yeah, the three D rendering
of the Final Fantasy six characters as like a tech
demo for the Ultra sixty four and the Nintendo sixty four.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Was like, we'll get to that everything.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
To me, so like that to me when I think
back to this period and this announcement, like that was
it was like that tech demo Final Fantasy six and
that got me excited, you know, Like, did I think
it looked as good as a Supernintendo version. No, but
it still seemed pretty impressive. And maybe the familiarity helped
with that for sure.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
And it's it's so funny as we go through these
because all these announcements end up including a lot of
things that were exactly as advertised for me, like whoa
extra amazing port of Doom, though of course, by the
time it came out, a Port of Doom was like
the least amazing thing imaginable. And then also a lot
of things that never came to pass, but for callback reasons.
I wanted to highlight Spectrum Holobite announcing a top gun game, which,

(49:03):
according to Unseen sixty four dot net, was spiked and
moved to PlayStation with snarky comments about the Ultra sixty
four the N sixty four's viability after Steve Race left
Sony to take over Spectrum HoloByte.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Oh yeah, that's wild, that's fun. I like that.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Yeah, Top Gunfire. It will please PC in PlayStation. In
ninety six after being announced and developed as a N
sixty four exclusive, another one here it includes there's an
announcement of an N sixty four exclusive remake of Sierra
Online's Red Baron, which was a PC PvP air combat game.
As next Gen says, this felt like another big sign

(49:45):
that N sixty four was gonna go big on online play.
And the game never came out, and N sixty four
never came online. If you jump ahead to page forty
five here you will see N sixty four or whatever
it's called. Yeah, Ultra sixty four hardware features featuring screenshots
of a CEES demo of emulated N sixty four hardware.

(50:07):
I think every magazine got these same screenshots, and I
looked at them. And obsessed over them in every magazine anyway,
I just been there, so tantalizing to me. But here
these explanations of these features are just like wrong, like
quote hard to see here but without anti aliasing, images

(50:27):
flicker as they approach, Like what that's not what anti
aliasing does? What?

Speaker 2 (50:33):
No? And like the Nintendo sixty four is like famous
for being blurry, Like I counters a like real anti
alia scene, Like they just kind of blur everything. That's
what a strange yeah comment, it's.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Easy to forgive. They call it load management, lad management.
It's actually lod level of detail management. It's effectively the
same thing. It's managing how many managers pop in. Basically
load management.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
That's where you don't play your best games right all
the time. You kind of like put them on the
put them on the.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Bench basketball jokes. Lebron's taking a breather. Sorry everyone, next level,
Mario'll come back next level. Don't want to get an injury.
But the last thing I really wanted to highlight if
guilt to page forty seven here this unsubstantiated rumors section,
which just everything about this aches of like legacy print journalism.

(51:29):
I fortunately I've copied it out for you, inden, because
this is almost unreadable black and red text on red.
So just read through all of these things that we'll
deal with them afterwards.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
I just like I need to paint a picture here.
This is a big red box, sort of like a
blood red color. The main copy is like kind of
the color of dried blood. Yes, And then they've highlighted
random words their names of companies or Steven Spielberg, and
they're kind of the color of like you know, I
don't know, light blood. Yeah, And you're meant to be

(52:05):
able to read this somehow, but in any case, I'll
read ties copy here in our in our outline, rocket
Science is working in Silicon Studios, the content creation arm
of SGI, to produce a game for the Ultra sixty four.
It's false ish. Rocket Science was a buzzy company that

(52:26):
raised a bunch of money, shipped to flops, and disappeared.
Silicon Studio was spun off of SGI in two thousand
and made games for many platforms, but never than a
head of sixty four. They were is that Silicon Knights right,
Like they're not eternal darkness. This is a different study,
but I.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
Put down because it's Silicon Studio, and it looks like
it operated internally and then became its own company with
a former VP of SGI at the head of it.
And they made a lot of I mean tools and
utilities too. It wasn't just games. This is like, okay,
Silicon Graphics content arm. Maybe they worked with Rocket Science.

(53:03):
Maybe they didn't rocket Science. Interesting, uh, like imploded like
ninety days after, like the CEO has this, there's this
big story and Wired, and then another big story and
Wired like years later, going oh, yeah, this was this
company I raised a ton of money for and it
blew up because we didn't make any games. So I
have no idea if they worked with Silicon Studios. Silicon
Studios probably best known for making Bravely Default and apparently

(53:26):
is involved in the Bravely Default remake. But they so
they made like the same Lush and three DS games
but never in sixty four.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Huh all right. Next rumor, thhq's Akira project has been
scrapped on the SNYASI and will appear on the Ultra
sixty four. Our verdict true ish it would never come
out for the Nintendo sixty four either.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
Yeah. THHQ was just grabbing every license it could at
this point and announced a bunch of games, and there's
a very funny article where their developer is like, this
guy was going out and buying all these licenses and
being like, make a game on this, make a game
on this.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
This is the anime Akira.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yes, yes, so apparently it was a huge Akira fan
and spent years and years trying to adapt a Kira
through multiple different companies.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
And then your sweet Yeah, but it's kind of one
of those things that can't really be adapted. It's just like,
can you imagine an Nintendo sixty four version of Akira
would be wild? Next rumor this is what I was
kind of talking about earlier. Squaresoft, one of Nintendo's oldest allies,
is working on an Ultra sixty four version of Final

(54:36):
Fantasy seven. Our verdict true. Wish Square put together the
famous nineteen ninety five Final Fantasy six tech demo and
SGI hardware, which was never meant to be a full game, no,
but it looked cool. And so you had Shadow and
sell Us and Locke fighting against the Golum and if
I remember correctly, it was using the analog stick you

(54:58):
would draw shapes to different moves, so you draw like
a star to do magic, which is kind of neat.
And early development of Final Fantasy seven was for Nintendo.
It actually was a Super Nintendo game at one point
setting and it was like set in New York City
with hot Blooded Joe and went on to sort of
become You can see remnants of it in the real

(55:19):
Final Fantasy Seven's mid Guarb but also Parasite Eve. But
the decision by Nintendo to stick with cartridges pushed Square
to Sony, and that's obviously well known history at that point.
Next rumor, I want to jump it real quick.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
You did mention it. I had not seen the whole video.
It's out there on YouTube. Sigraph is like a Japanese
computer conference from the nineties and they put together this
they get I watched the whole thing. I had never
seen it. Oh, it's it's really really amazing in a
lot of ways. But there are like two screenshots of
that thing that circulated around that I was so obsessed

(55:58):
with it and then and poor I can't decide if
it's Terror or sell Us because it's blonde and not
like the green hair it looks. It looks kind of
more like sell us. But then it's got all this
red and actually the camera goes like right up her
bought at one point and she's got like a thong on.
And again we're talking about like n sixty four, so

(56:21):
this is like seventeen polygons and shading and use your imagination.
It's very weird, but the potential of it was was
so agonizing for me as a Squaresoft fan and a
Nintendo fan, absolutely, and it just kind of spoke to like,
you know, the progression of games and wanting to see

(56:43):
more tech, you know, and you look back at it
now and it's so rudimentary and like it. You know,
it never would have been suitable technology for the Final
Fantasy series.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Like what Saka Gucci was able to do on the
PlayStation with the pre rendered backgrounds, these cinematics and all
that never could have happened on the the Nintendo sixty four.
And if you had had a three D version of
Final Fantasy seven, like you know, think about three D
RPGs on an Nintendo sixty four, like Quest sixty four,
like if you were in that realm, like Final Fantasy

(57:13):
never would have taken off. Japanese RPGs probably just never
would have taken off in the West, and like, where
would we be at at this point? But it was
pretty cool looking at the time.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Next or the next like eight, true, we haven't even
got to there.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Yeah, okay, so here's a bunch of true rumors that actually,
uh that that came true. Acclaim is not only producing
tu Rock, but also Batman Forever and Alien Trilogy for
Ultra sixty four. UH Interplay signed the rights to produce
the game of Steven Spielberg's Casper and is keeping the
project on ice until it's possible to release the title
on Ultra sixty four. Rare the producers of Donkey Kong

(57:54):
Country Who maybe you've heard of a little no nobody,
the Battle Toads guys, the Toad's guys. Oh yeah, sorry,
a little editorializing there. Is currently working on six new
Ultra sixty four games. I didn't I didn't count them.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
I'm pretty sure that's true.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Banjo KAZOOI.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
I mean Killer Killer in Stick two. I mean, I'm
sure they got to six at some point.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Yeah, I mean, Viva Pinata was probably there. It didn't
come out for like, yeah, it came out way later,
but I'm sure it's rare. It was probably in there
a Donkey Kong sixty four. I can think of lots
of rare yeah sixty four games. Both Capcom and Konami
are producing Ultra sixty four games, but refuse to either
confirm this or comment as to what the titles may be.

(58:44):
We know one of those is Ultra sixty four is
Castlevania title. Yes, so they made a Casowayia.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Cap Com didn't do much, but they made Resident Evil too,
And there's a Mega Man Mega Man two thousand.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
On the Ultra sixty or is honestly one of the
most impressive releases like ever and Insing Go Onto a Cart.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
It ties back one of the announcements here Angel Studios
because they're the lawnmower Man people. So there was an announcement, Hey,
the graphics house that made the lawnmower Man is gonna
work on an N sixty four game. They announced that
and people went wow, okay, but like if they're just
a pre rendered like graphics company, like a visual EFCTS house,
what kind of game are they going to make? And
then Capcom tap them to make Ari two and it

(59:28):
was like what.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
And technically impressive, like really impressive stuff getting that onto
a cart. An Ultra sixty four Mario game is in development,
but is awaiting the attention of Shigaro Miyamoto, who is
currently busy on other projects.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
That is true, as they put in this feature, he
worked heavily on the Pilot Wing sixty four. So I
don't know at this exact instant in time what Shagiro
Miyamoto's schedule is. But Mario, you know, Super Mario World
did get his attention very heavily, and he did work
on other stuff, so that all seems to add up.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
And finally, the last confirmed true rumor says, and finally
expect the joypads to offer some surprises, which it did.
Oh wild like the three prong thing still confuses my kids.
They have no idea how to hold a Nintendo sixty
four controls.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
It was this, This is all funny to me. I
want you to read the one about the virtue.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
I hear that. So this one rumor the Virtual Boy
may be adaptable for use with the Nintendo sixty four.
Don't ask how or why how why? That one surprisingly
turned out to be false, And that kind of seems
like the one where that people had you know, like

(01:00:47):
how long is this is, like you know, like an
eight inch column or whatever. They probably had like you know,
an inch and a half had fill, so they like
actually they didn't even feel it. There's just a bunch
of sank space at the end, so like you can
you can feel the places where they probably just made
up some rumors. I know for a fact that sushi X,
like all the rumors in EGM and stuff, like half

(01:01:07):
the time they were just made up because they needed
to fill space. And I think you can feel where
maybe that's happening here.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Yeah, this reminds me again sports journalism brief story. Back
in two thousand and eight, the sports like bloggers versus
mainstream media thing was like so huge and a lot
of the old school people just did not understand how
blogging worked. And so there's a guy Rob Parker who's
you know, nationally somewhat known not on ESPN a bunch,

(01:01:34):
and you know, he was getting on at at sports Blogger.
So we started this section of his column call he
wrote for one of the Detroit papers at the time,
rumors and lies or whatever, and just like mixed rumors
in with just making stuff up, and he put in
there that Kirk Cousins, the good boy quarterback of the
Michigan State football team at that time who went on

(01:01:56):
to a very long and pretty successful NFL career, had
gotten in a fight with a bunch of members of
the hockey team, which makes absolutely no sense. And then
of course it became a huge story and they had
to address it, and there was saber rattling about libel
and it's just like, if you're a print journalism outlet,

(01:02:18):
just just printing rumors like this just makes no sense
because either you know something and you can put it
in print, or you don't and you can't. And putting
even in this huge red box that's like this is
all rumors. Any of it may may not be true,
you still just even throwing it out there has this
weight behind it that to me is just so hard

(01:02:38):
to navigate.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Yeah, you have to be careful. But video game journalism,
like or media games media in the nineties was like
fueled by rumors, right, Like so many of my predominant
like memories are like you know, reviving Earth or unlocking
gen Long or all the rumors that we're talking about today.
And there's maybe a little less liability there when you're

(01:03:02):
just talking about like rumored console specs and not this
happened to some specific person.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
Yeah. Uh, that's true. That's true. It's just it's just
a tricky spot for me. Oh my gosh. We could
spend we could do like three episodes on this issue.
I'm sure. Do you want to jump ahead to page
sixty We're gonna get through the previews pretty quickly, but
there're some once we just can't skip. Daytona USA. This
is a preview of the conversion for it that skip

(01:03:30):
one more page I think sixty two? Aid, can you
read the pull quote here?

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Yeah? This is my you know, this is my wheelhouse.
This is a CRT resolutions Oh we've got. Due to
technical limitations, AM two has been forced to produce the
Saturn version using the machine's lower screen resolution of three
two twenty four. Ooh, well, the rest of you are
out there in enjoying your four k TVs two hundred

(01:03:58):
and twenty four lines of article. Relsolution doesn't get better
than that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
Brutal, rudal. We skip ahead a little bit more past
interesting Prisoner of Ice PC adventure game based on HP
Lovecraft story. This actually looks sick. I don't remember this
preview at all, which is weird because this is one
of the ones I would have looked at and go, oh, man,
I wish I had a gaming PC. The story mirrors

(01:04:24):
actual events when possible, and is based in part in
the actions of the Aharnebe, a Nazi organization created during
nineteen thirty five in order to study the occult Oo
Boy lots too unpack about a HP Lovecraft story about
the Nazi occultists, but we go out your Panzer Dragoon.
This made me want to Saturn more than any other game,

(01:04:47):
more than all the other games combined, just looking at
these graphics and thinking about a rail shooter with speed
and beauty like this. There's three four pages full of
just absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous screenshots. On page seventy six, we
get Jumping Flash. I didn't. I didn't pull out the

(01:05:08):
pull quote here, but in Jumping Flash looks like an
idiosyncratic combination of Motor Tune, Grand Prix and Pilot Wings.
What the heck?

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
I don't. That's actually a pretty good like summary. I
kind of like that. Not that that's gonna like sell
a lot of people on the game, but that's that's
pretty interesting. I think Jumpy Flash is a cool game.
I cannot even imagine what the like sort of pitch
meeting for that would be, Like, oh, we're in a

(01:05:41):
You're in a bunny, a mechanical bunny, and you can
jump really high. Like it was clearly designed to show
off like just big three D worlds and like verticality.
But it's just such a.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
Funny technically an FPS but it was fun somehow. Also,
by the way, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Yeah, that's not what I remember it for.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
You want to go to pages seventy eight Secret of Evermore.
This one stupid space ship got me so horny for
video games. I it's this so imaginative, so vivid, the red,
the little vent pipes like carbon looking pipes coming off

(01:06:21):
the back, like it's got a V six in there,
even though it's rocket engines, the big chrome grill with
the handlebars. But it's like this cat looks kind of
like swat cats. The radical squadron over like the Earth,
but like a moony Earth over the star. It's just
this gorgeous again silicon graphics. It's everywhere right now and
being a US developed and then this this like octopus

(01:06:44):
pipe thing on the next page. You know, seeing this
just made me absolutely astonished by what it looked like
in the pre render is what it looked like in
the game. I wanted this so so badly, and the idea, Hey,
they're developing it in the US. US, it's not going
to be a Japan only exclusive. This weird little bipedal

(01:07:08):
firebomb monster that drinks gasoline, I mean, ah, I looked
just absolutely astounding. Aiden there's a great thing. The follow
up this say is I never saw this in stores.
I never bought this. It wasn't available. I could never
see it. I don't think today I've even seen a
copy of Secret of Evermore.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
Ah well, coming over to my house, I might. I've
got it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
I will someday.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Yeah, but I did not have a copy as a kid.
I rented it a lot my grocery store, rented video games,
and I remember renting Secret of Evermore quite a bit,
but never really being able to get too deep into
it because of that. Yeah, it's interesting. It's a it's
kind of a funky take on Secret Manna did some
interesting things with like alchemy, where you mix like collectibles

(01:07:52):
resources for like spells and stuff. It's not great, but
it tried something new, which I like. It kind of
plays with like real war, old history and settings in
a way that something like Terenagma might have. But it's
one of those sort of Squaresoft RPGs that you know,
wasn't really quite as popular as some of their others.

(01:08:14):
What's interesting the way it ties in the next gen
is they used SGI rendering techniques to create a lot
of the designs, which are then sort of digitized into
two pixel art that would fit on like a two
five P display, and so you got like some really big,
interesting looking sprites that were maybe a little more unique

(01:08:34):
than what you might see even another Squaresoft games. Some
of it holds up better than others at this point,
but it's pretty neat. It was all based, like all
the levels were based on different like movie stereotypes, which
was kind of fun. So there was an Americana aspect
of it that you know, might have appealed to some
Western players a bit. At least it felt unique in

(01:08:54):
the style of game.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Page eighty six obligatory have to mention it chronic trigger.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
That's oh yeah, that's just that's it. That's the stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
Absolutely. The chief designer Horri Yugi which hory. Yeah, okay,
I would be like, oh, maybe they're trying to do
the like honor the like, you know, except they misspelled it.
I'm pretty sure. And then also get Ironobusaka Gucci with

(01:09:27):
no h in front like I uh and not reversed first,
so who even knows what's happened.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
And these were like names that showed up in the
credits for Corona trigger spelled, so like you had somebody
who was maybe doing translations on their own. Ah, I'd
have to go look at their names in Japanese. But
but yeah, that's not not great. I remember actually, like
when you and I for this is like inside baseball
type stuff. But one of the things like when you
and I first started kind of connecting and I was

(01:09:55):
showing you some of my games journalism for feedback, I
had spelt I think I spelled Eugi hory name wrong.
It might even have been in a draft for Fight
Magic Idols, and yeah, like and then I can't remember
how I spelled it, but it was a typo. And
you're like, if there's one thing you do, it's get
people's names spelled right, like, do not misspell people's names,

(01:10:16):
And that always stuck with me. So seeing it here
two of the names misspelled is interesting, whether that's a mistranslation,
whether that's somebody who wasn't quite paying attention. The fact
that they reversed the surname and the given name tells
me that they were probably trying, you know, putting effort
in and maybe translating these them selves. And that's why
it's a little bit different than than what we usually see.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
Yeah, and it's as we've talked about before, these you know,
zero typos was not the goal. These are not shelf
books designed to stay in libraries forever. They were designed
to be read and forgotten about. But even so, that
one still stands out to me today because immediately credibility
takes a huge hit. It looks like you don't know
what you're talking about, and it looks like you're not
trying to honor your subjects, even in what appears to

(01:10:58):
be inexplicit attime to honor your subject. But we've got
to get to the main event again. Subscribe to fun
Factor Ultra. You get ad free episodes. We skip right through,
we come right back. In the meantime, hang on, we
will review Next Generation's review of Kirby's dream course. Stick around.

(01:11:19):
We'll get to it right here on fun factors. All right,

(01:11:39):
we are back. We are having five stars of fun
Worth today, aren't we aiding ten stars?

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Yeah? Have fun? I think there's ten stars worth of
content in It's magazine at least.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. And folks, if you are getting
five stars of fun worth out of this, go ahead
and tell Apple Podcasts leave a rating and a review.
We will read the best, funniest, kindness and most entertaining
ones on the air. But now it is time next

(01:12:11):
generation's review format. Aiden. We've talked about this before is
my favorite review format of all time. I thought this
is a brilliant way to do it right on the
heels of you know, some of these we've talked about
game players using like a six category weighted average. We've
seen you know, game pro doing four different panelists all
getting their own out of ten score, all these various versions. Right,

(01:12:36):
this is a five star rating one through five, no halfs,
and then they say what the metric is? So five
stars revolutionary, brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed, a new high watermark.
Four stars excellent, a high quality and inventive new game,
either a step forward for an existing genre or a

(01:12:57):
successful attempt at creating a new one. Three stars good,
a solid and competitive example of an established game style.
Two stars average, perhaps competent, certainly uninspired, and then one
star bad crucially flawed into design or application and aiden again,
I think if they could stick to this and avoid

(01:13:18):
the great inflation, if Amazon stuff was rated like this,
if all the five star ratings in our lives worked
like this, where it's basically one to four and then
we keep five for like the cream of the crop,
I think things would be a lot better. But I
think for reasons we've talked about, it doesn't end up
staying this way.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
No, And I'm looking through like every review in this issue,
and there's quite a few of them. There are no
five stars, Like, there are some good games in here.
Hairtake is in here. The game we're gonna review later
is in here. It's a good one. Or some Gym
is good, Kirby's Avalanche, Metal Warriors, like, there are some
good games in here, but there are no fives. There's
a few fours, and that is you know, like, if

(01:13:57):
you're using the scale, you don't want to rate on
that bell curve, right, You don't want to make sure
you're dropping a couple of fives every issue, like, hang
on to that until it's you know, the game.

Speaker 1 (01:14:08):
Yeah, And they also weren't too frequent with the one either.
You didn't see a ton of ones, which I'm actually
surprised that this one didn't get a one because this
is great before we actually get to Kirby's dream course.
And can you read Fight for Life for the Atari
Jaguar with a screenshot if you guys are watching on
the visual version, I it's.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
So bad Man. Atari's first entry into the next generation
fighting game Arena displays some great features new to the
punch Out world, as well as some of the worst
execution in gameplay we've seen yet. Eight fighters, polygon modeled
and armed with a scattering of special moves, compete in
various nether worldly arenas in the Virtua Fighter Toshinden Ring

(01:14:52):
Out tradition movement is just silly characters shuffle around the
ring with all of the grace employees of an injured hunchback.
Despite the innovative idea of awarding characters with special moves
after each round, the ending gameplay is almost completely unplayable
no matter how many tricks you learn. Although the game
is a step in the right direction, the horrible fighting

(01:15:12):
movements are reminiscent of rockham Sock and Robots Damn, which
leaves Fight for Life unable to even compare to the
excellent titles currently available. If you own a Jaguar and
you're looking for a fighting title, you'll need to keep waiting.
Rating two stars two stars, I can't like, I cannot

(01:15:33):
really think of a stronger one star review because like
so going back to like, you know, the very objective
definitions of two star average, perhaps competent, certainly uninspired. Now
Fight for Life sounds uninspired. It does not sound average

(01:15:53):
or competent based on the text there. That's that's wild.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
It's no crucially flawed and design and.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
Application huh huh. And then right above it you have
a review for Tempo, which is a platformer for the
thirty two X. And Tempo wasn't excellent, but it was
pretty pretty like it had big you know, like colorful
worlds and sprite art that looked okay, like that's one
that like, even if the platform is not good, even

(01:16:21):
if like you know, the level designs bad, or whatever.
At least it has a defining feature that looks attractive
or is interesting, like it's a visual design, whereas Fight
for Life doesn't sound like it has any of that.
But maybe when you're on the Jaguar, maybe it's a
two for a Jaguar game, because the average Jaguar game,
it was, that was a low bar.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
If you own a Jaguar, you're looking for a fighting title,
you'll need to keep waiting like the cavalry is not coming.
If you own a Jaguar, this is your fighting title,
you know, like I don't even, I don't know. That's
weird to me. Okay, now, actually the review, we actually
need your view. One of the things about these next
generation ratings is they put some much into the features
and into the previews and commentary and all that other stuff.

(01:17:03):
These reviews are pretty pretty punchy. They're pretty concise, and
especially the ones that our average are, you know, not
bad and bad but not in a fun way. We
just kind of, you know, breeze past them. They're usually
one hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty words.
And here's here's one, Sweet Kirby's Dream Course. They pull

(01:17:25):
out some of the highlight like either best and worst
and give them like this one word slug along with
the screenshots. So page hundred and four, let's just go
ahead and read the whole thing if you don't mind Aidan.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
All right, Kirby's Dream Course is too cute for its
own good, but this game is still surprisingly unique and fascinating.
You play as Kirby, that lovable little puff who's already
had three games to himself. Kirby can launch himself in
the air or roll along the ground with the idea
of bumping into little monsters and turning them into stars.
After the last one remaining, sorry a little bit there

(01:18:01):
after the last one remaining digs a hole you aim
for it to reach the next te It's sort of
like miniature golf, but each area is littered with strange
obstacles like fans, conveyor belts, warp tiles, ice, and spikes,
and each of the eight courses becomes progressively tougher. Plus,
Kirby can add backspin or rotation and move in something

(01:18:22):
other than a straight line, not to mention the special
powers he can acquire, like turning into a tornado. Suddenly
you're playing a game that's a lot more complex than
the superficial Candyland exterior would lead you to believe. If
you can keep from choking on the sacering on the sacering,
how do you saccerin saccerin?

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
Yeah, that should happen.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
That's spelled wrong right in the review. Yeah, that's that's
not you spelled it. It's spelled wrong in the actual review.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Yeah, it's spelled wrong in the review.

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
I was like, I don't think saccharine saccharine saccharine.

Speaker 1 (01:18:55):
Yes, saccarin is.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
A wed outtake. If you can keep from choking on
the saccharine, this games, that's sorry. This games is so
No that's also in the well.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
This games is so unique.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
If you can, I'm going to read this review straight.
I'm not going to add it for them. If you
can keep from choking on this saccharine, this games is
so unique. It rates at four stars just for being
unlike anything we've seen, rating.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
Four stars four stars. Okay, so before we get into
reviewing the review, and what is your history with Kirby games.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
I didn't play a lot of them back in the day.
I was most familiar with the first one on game Boy,
which I liked but never owned, Right, but I was
always sort of like curious about them and appreciated that
they were there. I hate the it's too cute for
its own good thing that just like bleeds into the
hole like Nintendo is for kids and games you know,

(01:19:56):
like should be mature and all that kind of stuff
that started cropping up around this time. I always really
liked Kirby and it seemed appealing. I loved its visual design.
I really got into the series with the Nintendo DS
and Canvas Curse, and that one I thought was really cool.
I loved the fact that you drew and it drew
it like in a rainbow color. So in that game,

(01:20:18):
you used your stylist to move Kirby around the world,
and when you drew it with the stylist, it would
leave a line that was like a platform he could
roll along, so do looped loops to get them to
get up speed ramps to like get around, and it
drew a rainbow and it looked cool. So that was
like really appealing to me. But again, drawn to those
bright colors, and Kirby's always been that dream course. I

(01:20:40):
think I rented once did not understand it at all,
but I really like going back to play it out.
I think it's a really cool game, and it's pretty
impressive on the Super Nintendo to have, like I don't
know if they're really physics or not, but like, you know,
it is mini golf course and so there are lots
of like ramps and you know, bulls to go into
and obstacles get around, and it uses some sort of
like you know, very basic physics to emulate all that,

(01:21:03):
which is pretty neat.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
Yeah, And I'm kind of similar because Kirby's Dreamland nineteen
eighty two. I did not have a game Boy. I
was actually overall, I didn't travel much as a kid.
Like my mom liked to stay in. You know, we
ran errands on Saturday or whatever, but my mom liked
to stay in. I like to stay in, And so
I didn't have a game Boy. I didn't play Kirby's Dreamland.
I associated Kirby with the game boy. Kirby's Adventure for

(01:21:28):
the NES came out in ninety three, two years after
Super Nintendo was released. I think it came out probably
the same summer I got a Super Nintendo. I was
not hunting down ANYS titles in nineteen ninety three to
play Kirby's Pinball Land also game Boy also again, so
for me, Kirby was like a game Boy thing, Kirby's
dream Course. This review, I was like, yo, like four

(01:21:53):
stars and it looks it's really cute and attractive. It's
three D in the like isometric like polygon asque style, right,
it looks like Marble madness kind of. And I went okay,
and I rented it and I had a blast with
this thing. I love Kirby's dream Course. I rented it

(01:22:13):
two or three times. I never bought it, but I
got pretty far in it. And it's it's this weird
mix of like pool and golf. So had the like
multi point adjustment of like oh and then like you
add English ad spin control your arc. You know, you're
arcing around things and sometimes you're arcing and bouncing off
something pall spin so like scoots really fast. Yeah, Like

(01:22:34):
it's pinball, it's golf, it's bouncing, it's pool, You're and
it it teaches you really well. There's a lot of
great conveyance in the design of the game where it's going, okay,
do this, ha, Now there's a thing in your way.
What are you gonna do? Oh? You can kind of
bounce it. Oh, like, now there's this treat, how do
you curve around it? Right? So it's like it gives
you those tools and then it ramps up pretty quickly

(01:22:56):
and these obstacles, and it's it's puzzly in that way
because you kind of like, all right, cool, I'm around this,
I'm over that. And they have a little one shot
here where you see there's three enemy trees, two pits
of spikes, like eight different tiles of conveyor belts that
are forward and backward and running into each other, and

(01:23:16):
a warp tile and you're just sitting there going like
how nuts does this get? And it gets It gets
pretty nuts, and it's it's kind of like you know
what if Angry Birds had, like you know, it's that
same sort of thing of like, oh, trial and error,
figuring out, getting further, getting just getting to the end,
and then being like, oh my god, that took me

(01:23:37):
eight par is three? How am I supposed to do
that in three shots? And you want to go back
and immediately replay it to get your you know, your
three stars sort of a thing. And I think it
was on a switch online at some point a few
years ago and I went through it. Oh yeah, Kirby's
Dream Course, and I've laid it again. I had a
blast with it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:55):
It's like, one of the things I really like about
Kirby is the way that it's never been afraid to
experiment and put Kirby in new situations. Yeah, and like
he's a ball. He can do and you know, and
he gets these power ups. He can basically be anything
that they need him to be. And I think Kirby's
Dream Course was the first example of like, oh, Kirby
can be more than a platformer, right, And the three

(01:24:16):
platformers before that were really good, but they were, you know,
fairly traditional, fairly easy platforms. They were beautiful. One of
the kind of interesting things about the Nes and the
Super nes ones, in my opinion, is they were both
very late titles, like you said, but you know, as
cute see as they were, they're some of the best

(01:24:38):
looking games on those consoles, and people don't necessarily always
recognize that because they're so cute. He certainly didn't at
the time. But just putting Kirby into like interesting situations
was really fun, I think. And I think it's also
worth noting that with Dream Course, It was also directed
by Kensic Tanaba sorry ken' skatana bay And he worked

(01:25:05):
on a ton of fantastic Nintendo games, including like he
did map design on Kirby's Dream Course, but he was
also a scenario writer on Link to the Past Links Awakening.
He did course design uh and directed for He directed
and did course design for Super Mario Brothers two, He

(01:25:26):
did course design for Super Mario Brothers three. And he
also went on to work on stuff like Okaine, Out
of Time, you know, a whole bunch, Eternal Darkness, apparently
Metroid Prime as a co producer. So like, this was
a guy in Nintendo that was, like was and continues
to have, like, you know, a hugely impressive resume. The
list of games on his Wikipedia page is incredible. He's

(01:25:49):
working on Metro Prime four beyond, you know, he worked
on the Metro Primarymaster. He was the creative director of
Super Nintendo World, which is really interesting when you think
about Kirby's Dream Chass because it feels almost like a
theme park in that way, right, And so you have
somebody like, you know, people might not think of Tanabe

(01:26:11):
when they think of Nintendo, but he's been involved in
so many of their amazing games since the late eighties,
so it's no surprise, you know, in my opinion that
Kirby's Dream Course was weird but also just well executed
and good. And to review the review, I think the
review really recognizes that. Like I like, sometimes what I
talk about is reviews that will like be glowing and

(01:26:33):
then they'll kind of try to get their criticism in
at the end to show objectivity. This one sort of
like launches with some some you know, negativity. They're like, oh,
it's too cute for its own good. But I actually
found a game here that's really surprising and interesting and fun.
And I think that that like is Kirby right, Like
you look at it, You look at these screenshots, you're like, how,
like how do you even play that? Like I don't really,

(01:26:55):
you know, like it's not intuitive when you look at
it necessarily, but as soon as you get your hand
on the control, you're like, oh, whoa, Like this is
not what I expected it to be. There's so much
more depth than challenge and you know, like ability to uh,
to inspire the player to come back and beat their
par courses and get further into the game. Sorry, pars
on courses and get further into the game. So I

(01:27:17):
think I think the review is pretty spot on with
my experience with Kirby stream Course, and like you say it,
it also communicates that in a fairly punching and tight
like I don't know, yeah, one hundred and fifty two
hundred words.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. Yeah, one hundred
and eighty six words. That's that's that's pretty tight. But
it gives you everything that you really pretty know. And
like I said, it gave me the itch to go
out and get it for myself, right, Like I was, like,
I want to rent this, and I rented it and
I had a great time. So I think, and you're
absolutely right to call this out. And it's it's both

(01:27:54):
to the reviews credit and against it that they mention
it repeatedly the oh well, it's cute for babies, it's saccharin,
it's candy Land, you know, blah blah blah blah blah.
We're all very serious grown ups who want to have
a very serious time, and we want to see blood
and guts and murder and sex, and like this is
like cutesy QT. But like, hey, first of all, it's

(01:28:15):
Kirby the second of all, this is legitimately cute. It's
not shooting for cute. It's not marketing to babes. It's
really adorable. It's it's very well done. The art is
executed really really well, and you play it and there's
so many little touches, Like the UI is cute, the
levels are cute. You're a little you're like riding stars

(01:28:37):
up to the to the next level. You know, you
shoot away, you like your last when you get the
last hole on a course, because like each course, each
level is like a series of holes. Right, So I
can't remember if it's nine, Like you play nine and
you go to the next world and like you rocket
star up and it leaves like stars in its path.
You know, it's just like so much and so I

(01:28:57):
think it's really really successful. But even so, oh, even
with that bias against a game with this kind of
packaging and presentation, they still give it four stars, as
high as any game this month. Got heretic got four
stars too, right, and it goes with it think a
successful adept at creating a new one. This is unlike
anything they've ever seen. It's surprisingly complex, and they I

(01:29:22):
just think they did a great job. So I'm gonna
give this one nine out of ten star rods.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
Nine out of ten star ods. I think nine out
of ten star ods is pretty good. I can agree
with that. Again, I don't like that they ding it
for being cute, because that's what Kirby is, and video
games have always been for everybody in cute games exist,
So I'll dang it a point for that, but I
think nine star rods out of all.

Speaker 1 (01:29:44):
Alright, that is our review of Next Generation's review of
Kirby's Dream Course. Did we get it right? Leave our
review a review at Apple Podcasts, post it as a
comment on YouTube, and we will read the best ones
on air. And hey, go ahead and pass the show
around to all your friends like it's third grade. We're
on the playground. Shut us out on blue Sky, at
funfactor pod dot com or anywhere else, YouTube, TikTok, wherever

(01:30:08):
at fun Factor Pod. But unlike these old magazines, you
won't have to wait a whole month for your next installment.
We are dropping new episodes every two weeks. So go
to funfactor pod dot com to follow our show on
your podcatcher of choice, and please consider becoming a member
of fun Factor ultra our premium tiers that unlock ad
free episodes, bonus episodes, and the members only channels of

(01:30:29):
our community discord. Just go to funfactor pod dot com
and you cannot miss it. If you become a member,
you and we will have a maximum score in fuck Factor.

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
For the outtakes. Can I just point something out here?
My favorite thing about this issue in this review section though,
is at the very bottom, just below the the Kirby's
Dream Course review. There's a box, a little sidebar with
a title sorry, with big exclamation mark. No new games
were made available for review this month on the following systems, Saturn, CDI,

(01:31:14):
Arcade And if that just wasn't the most present little
like sidebar, they're like, you know, yeah, of course there
were no games made available for those. One of them
wasn't even supposed to be out and was doomed to fail.
And then the CDI was a CDI, and of course
Arcade I probably had another decade before it really started

(01:31:34):
to die, But you know, the writing was on the
wall maybe for some of those.

Speaker 1 (01:31:39):
Yeah, have you ever watched the ninety five the Cigarefe
Fantasy demo Final Fantasy six Demo?

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
Okay, yeah, I've seen the actual like the video footage. Yeah.
I mean back in the day, it was just the
screenshots out of it, But I've since I had not
seen it before, even though I've been obsessed over every
time they ran those screenshots, I would just start to yeah,
like come on, give it to me, you know. And
so to be just trying to get lot.

Speaker 1 (01:32:11):
Episode was like, oh my god, I cannot believe. And
again some of it was like really cool and and
and some of the music and the animations, and it's like,
you can see where they ended up in Final Fantasy seven, right,
some of the like the wind up shot on the
character and the animation going, you know, and you're thinking, wow, absolutely,
they're really you can see how they're on the path

(01:32:32):
to making Final Fantasy seven. And also, oh, well, this
is where close to where Final Fantasy seven ended up.

Speaker 2 (01:32:39):
No, And you have to wonder if like the limitations
of the technology at the time became evident to that
team and they said, hey, like, we've got some things
we want to do. We just can't get there in
real time on the sixty four. But look at what
we could do if we could yes, pre render all
of these videos, put them on a CD and uh,
you know, ship it that way, right, And so Nintendo

(01:33:01):
sixty four was impressive because it did impressive things in
real time that the PlayStation wasn't really able to do.
But sometimes that wasn't just good enough, right, And for
something like five seven, it just didn't really allow Sakagucci,
who you know, had these dreams of being sort of
a movie guy, you know, very cinematic. It was like, Okay,
I could make this leap, but I could make a

(01:33:23):
bigger leap over on the other console. Kind of see
that in that tech demo.

Speaker 1 (01:33:28):
I'm sorry, I was literally just scrolling email in from
Brody McDonald. Oh and they're printing these people's whole email addresses.
By the way, BMC DNA at bg net dot BGSU
dot edu. I think that's bowling green shout outs to
the middle of nowhere, Ohio. I am outraged at your

(01:33:48):
recent coverage of the Atari Jaguar and Next Generation number two. First,
you gave the most space to the worst of the
three games reviewed. If that wasn't bad enough, you showed
no pictures for Iron Soldier, the best of the There's
so much more space here, nauseated me. Your anti Atari
bias showed, and I am disgusted by it. Unless you
can come, you can count me out as a purchaser

(01:34:10):
of your magazine. I know many other Jaguar owners who
feel the same way as I am in an owner's club.
Brody McDonald.

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
Was Brody McDonald a pseudonym for Nolan Bushnell. Has he
taken over again? Here's another letter? This is fantastic. In
issue three of Next Generation, page sixty seven, Doom is
rightfully honored as a landmark game. The paragraph from that
issue describing the game in part reads, Dooms spread throughout
the PC world faster than any game previously, largely due

(01:34:43):
to ID Software's innovative shareware policy of distribution. We ad
Apagee are happy to accept your praise. It was Apagee
who invented the trilogy method of marketing games as sharewear
back in nineteen eighty seven. It Software was brought into
the world of shareware through appage first Commander Keen, then
Wolfenstein three D and the guys at ID have done

(01:35:05):
nothing with Doom that Apagee did not pioneer. Marketing. Wise
goes on like this for about three more paragraphs before
it signed off. Scott Miller, president Apage Software Next Generation's response,
we stand corrected. Wow yeah, man, Like, so we've got

(01:35:26):
that interview with you know, the Sony guy earlier, and
then we just had a president of like slapping their hand,
you know, like this is the type of thing that
would happen, you know, via PR in the background, and
you know, like you have them threatening to pull ads
or whatever like nowadays. But but this was just like
you know, Scott Miller sending out letters yeah, editor love it,

(01:35:47):
and they printed it instead of like being like, oh shoot, sorry,
we'll offer correction. Yeah, and they instead just printed his
whole letter that's in the Next Generation.

Speaker 1 (01:35:56):
And also because you're like, oh yeah, normally this would
be handled through PR, Like what fucking PR for apare?
Like what ads were they running?

Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
Yeah, was probably h Scott Miller. I mean their whole
thing too, was like going around sort of traditional distribution
methods and stuff like that, using the Internet at the
time to get their games out there. And so it
doesn't surprise me that they would be the ones writing
into magazines to be like hey, hey, hey that wasn't
you know the ID guys who like helped you know,

(01:36:28):
like APAG was doing some cool stuff, but like it's
the one that really kind of made them rocket off,
like you know, into the stratosphere thanks to Wolfenstein and
Doom and stuff like that. But you know to kind
of also get in there and be like, hey, like yeah,
our partner, it's offered pretty cool guys, but.

Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
Like we shirwear games that never took. You know, it's like, yeah, cool,
shareware is the marketing is cool, but you if you're not. Yeah, literally,
the id guys, Jill was not off of shareware games.
This is a Oh my god, Wolfenstein three D is
the most sickest thing I've ever seen. I have to

(01:37:05):
have it. Like that was the level of execution you
had to have to work.

Speaker 2 (01:37:09):
Yeah. Yeah. Nintendo of Japan is working on an Ultra
sixty four Castlevania title. Nintendo worked on that.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
Oh no, sorry, Konami. That should say Konamic.

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):
Okay, that one's sorry. Does it stay in there? It
says no, that's false, that's false fact checking the fact checkers. Yeah, okay, Rare,
are we going to keep that in or do you
want me to read that again?

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
Hold on, let me double check.

Speaker 2 (01:37:39):
This episode's getting very long. Do we need to like
skip back.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
No, it's Nintendo of Japan. No, it's that's what it says.
Oh okay, yeah, okay, yeah, okay, so.

Speaker 2 (01:37:49):
Yeah, no it says Nintendo of Japan is working on
Ultra sixty four Castlevania title. But now we need to
uh determine whether they actually worked on it or not.

Speaker 1 (01:38:02):
This will this will be a good outtake at least.

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
Yeah, Tie and Aiden.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
Developed Konami's Kobe Branch for the Nintendo sixty four.

Speaker 2 (01:38:15):
Mm hmmm it was published by it was yeah, I
know it was developed by Economy and yeah, published by Economy.
It's so no Nintendo in there.

Speaker 1 (01:38:28):
Yeah, it looks like it was a separate like not
Konami headquarters, like as the Konami's Kobe Branch, but like
it's still Konami.

Speaker 2 (01:38:39):
Yeah, okay, do you want me to just re record
that then? From the or I'm going through true ones right,
so after the interplay Casper one, Yeah, I just should
just skip that one, okay, Okay,

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NEXT Generation 5 - Kirby's Dream Course [S1E5]

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}NEXT Generation 5 - Kirby's Dream Course [S1E5]