WWF No Mercy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Tony Chimmel and I'd like to introduce the
hosts of.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
The game Marks podcast, George Feast and Johnny Clash.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Hey everyone, this is Johnny Clash and George Feast, and
together we're the Gaming Marks and you're listening to the
game Marks Podcast. Each week, on this podcast, we break
down the good, the bad, and the ugly of wrestling
video games and we tell you if we would play
it forever or future endeavor.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Oh man, I have so many great memories of playing
this game. It is a classic in my library. Why
don't you tell us a little bit about this game today, Johnny.

(00:58):
Welcome to the game Mars Podcast, where each and every
week for the last six years, we have taken a
deep dive into the good, the bad, and the awesome
of all things wrestling video games. My name is George Feast.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
And I'm the man they call Johnny Clash. And today, finally,
we are playing WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo sixty.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Four And as always, please make sure to subscribe and
leave a five star rating and a review for this
podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you choose to listen,
and you can follow along on all forms of social
media at Game Marx Pod. But also don't forget to
go ahead and follow Johnny fn clash. Oh stop it,

(01:46):
because that is where all of the creative content will
be after today. Make sure to go and follow John
on Twitter and YouTube and all that good stuff. John.
How you doing, man?

Speaker 3 (01:59):
This is this is a weird feeling, like we've prepared,
Like I prepared these notes yesterday and I was just
like not getting choked up.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
It was just kind of like.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
A strange feeling because it was the same thing I've
been doing for six years, Like these notes I could
do the back man this game specifically No Mercy. I
don't even think we need notes.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
But we were saying before during the game it felt weird.
The notes for this game are basically a formality and
make sure that we at least stick to the normal
structure of the episodes that we've we've put together on
the past couple of years. But in terms of content
and discussing, you know, the impact of this game and
the roster and the legacy of this game, I don't

(02:40):
think we really need notes for that part. But before
we get into this game.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
I'm gonna say, after we do this game, we're gonna
do this game like normal, We're gonna have fun, and honestly,
we just did to play through. Nothing puts a smile
on your face and gets you in a good mood
like playing in game you love and no mercy does that.
We're going to get into the GMP stuff, the history
whatever after we play this game. So let's go ww thirteen.
That's where we were.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yes, yes, so before we get into this week's episode
will follow up from last week, we played WWE thirteen.
How are you feeling two weeks out?

Speaker 3 (03:15):
I I think I still agree that it's a great game.
And I actually came across a guy on Twitch who
was playing it, which is weird because he's probably the
only one on Twitch that was playing it, and through
him I was able to see it. I think it
was on a different console than we were playing it on,
so watching I was just like, Yeah, this is still
had those roots of like SmackDown and all that.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
This is still a really fun game. Oh yeah, we've
talked about We talked about it on that episode and
live streams and other places that we've we've talked about
that game. That's just one of those games that if
you ask like people what their one of their favorite
wrestling games are, Like that's you know, people talk about
today's game. People talk about here comes the Pain. I
know a lot of people that would also say thirteen

(03:55):
and just the content within that game, everything that we
covered last week. I know that for some people that
ranks very highly on their lists.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yeah, it's a shame it was the end of THHQ,
But I mean, look what we have today. There was
many flaws and hurdles to jump through to get there,
but we got there and I think this is all
where it began.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
So but is it time? I mean, there's a lot
to cover. There's a lot to talk about. You know,
this is a game with the storied history and there's
tons of content to discuss. So, without any further ado, Johnny,
you're ready to put on those nostalgia goggles and take
the plunge into WWF No.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Mercy one last time and we never do this part.
I'm doing this part right now. This is sponsored by
our good brother med Cat Beardcare because he's fucking awesome,
has had our back for the past what two three years? Yeah,
and go buy their product because they're great and he's
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(06:02):
we go. WWF No Mercy release November seventeenth, two thousand,
developed by Asthmacace Entertainment and Aki Court, published by THCHQ.
And of course this is on the Nintendo sixty four
and other wrestling games you got in two thousand. You've

(06:22):
got Giant Graham two thousand, All Japan Pro Wrestling three,
Virtual Pro Wrestling two, ECW, Hardcore Revolution and Anarchy Rules,
All Star Pro Wrestling, WCW, Backstage Assault, WWF SmackDown, WWF
Royal Rumble, WWF SmackDown two. Know your role, John, you
gotta say this.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
One Fire Pro Wrestling for the WonderSwan.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Lovely Simple fifteen hundred series, Volume fifty two, The Pro
Wrestling two, and The Big Bang Pro Wrestling.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Now we've played this game a million times. We've even
discussed it on this podcast when we did Game Wars
in full detail. But this is the end all be all.
This is the No Mercy episode.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
We all know.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
This is the sequel to WrestleMania two thousand. This is
the last of the Aki wrestling games on end sixty four,
which started with WCW World Tour. We've played them all,
go check them out in the archive. No Mercy has
a lot of improvements from WrestleMania two thousand. Improved graphics,
it has more game modes, it has more match types,
more wrestlers, more costumes for wrestlers we can call them,

(07:31):
and it's just an overall upgrade.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
We did talk about this, I believe with Swaggle, or
maybe we even touched on it again during Game Wars
that there are people I believe Swaggle feels this way
that thinks that the face scans in WrestleMania two thousand
are better than the ones in No Mercy, but the
overall presentation of everything else in No Mercy is so

(07:54):
good that you almost let the face scans slide.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
I could almost agree. I think there's just something like
smoother about them. They're like easier to look at than
like tricks your mind into thinking they're better.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
That could yeah, I could.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
See it either way. I mean these like I've modded
this game before, attempted to like it's just literally skins
of a game, Like you could put a face on
it and re upload it and it's the real face.
So like this is mostly I guess, real faces, but
they like modified them to look like video game characters,
so you know. But we have Championship Mode in here,
which I think is the main mode, the bread and butter.

(08:27):
It's got branching storylines based on real life events, which
is really cool because you saw it on TV and
it was happening only a few months later in your
video game, which I thought was amazing as a kid
because I'm Mick Foley and now I'm Cactus Jack facing
Triple H at WrestleMania and uh in the four Corner
match and the Royal Rumble, Like how did that get
in the game so fast? That blew my mind as
a kid. On their SmackDown Mall with some new unlockables,

(08:50):
the Ever Loving Survival Mode, which is a giant Royal
Rumble where you unlock any wrestler that comes out and
that's how you earn cash to use in the SmackDown Mall,
which really cool mode.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
What a fun challenge that was back in the day.
I'm sure that we'll cover that we have in the
same place. Just oh my god. There were, like I
know people in my group of friends when we were
kids that that was the test of your skill at
the game, what difficulty you could go through it on,

(09:23):
how far you could get, and that was how you
measured your skill at No Mercy.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
But also it was something to do if you ran out,
like if you're done with Championship Mode, it's something to
do now for me, We're going to get into this later,
like kind of full detail. The championship modes back then
seem so hard and so long, but now playing them now,
they're only like four or five matches. You could run

(09:48):
through them in lest than an hour.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
That's very true.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
That's like the skill of us being old or what. Now,
let's talk about this quickly. The save data on the
basic USA car.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Behind me.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Now they re released it with the USA Dash What
a right or one?

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Why one?

Speaker 3 (10:09):
I think USA Dash one and that was the fixed file.
Now I have the old one as far as I know,
I haven't touched it in a while. The N sixty
four is in the closet, but it does still work.
I never experienced the save clips, but it's I almost
took out regrets in Paris because those are my only
two black cartridges. Here it is just USA.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
I don't know. You probably can't see it from here,
but so's the original. The issue was with the battery,
the internal battery. That damn.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
It still looks good, to be honest, like not even
like a scratch on the.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
On the sticker. Now you know Johnny Clash takes care
of his cartridges.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Now, modding is also a big thing. We've played a
lot of them and it's just so easy to mod
this game. You literally dumped the files and then re
upload them after you reskin them. I'm sure there's the
mods on on our YouTube channel. There's way more that
goes into it than just that it's not that easy.
But that's how like, if you're skilled, there are insane
mods at this game. And some of them do take

(11:11):
a little bit of a little hoops to jump through
to make them run, make them work, but they're there.
You could even buy them in cartridge form. They's some
on eBay. It's just crazy. Now, before we get into
the nitty gritty, the rumored Backlash sequel, we've all seen
this cover. If you're a wrestling video game fan, you've
seen it with Triple H on the cover. It has
the Backlash logo. Now, the rumor was that this game

(11:32):
was scrapped when it was thirty percent complete. They were
tipped off about the game Cube and we're starting to
build WrestleMania x eight, which is an okay game, and
you could also see the foundation of these games within
all of those games on the GameCube as well. But
in March of twenty twenty, as part of the Talk
Shit podcast, Pro Wrestling ex producer Dave Wishnowski interviewed Sanders Keel,

(11:54):
the THHQ producer behind professional wrestling games including No Mercy,
and he asked him about this equal and he responded
that corporate issues including Aki not wanting to work with
any Nintendo systems in favor of the PlayStation following No Mercy,
as well as THHQ committing towards a relationship with Yukes.
This game never happened. This was all a rumor. There

(12:15):
was a screenshot from a magazine. There are fireworks blowing
up outside my house. It feels like Monday night run here.
There were screenshots that were shown, but it was clearly
a modded version because you saw two thousand and like
two thousand and four Undertaker in there, like what he
looked like in that era. And I think there were
some other I think Sting was in one of them,

(12:36):
like why would Sting be He wasn't even there yet.
So clearly they were just mods and it didn't happen, unfortunately,
But we always wanted the sequel. I think we're happy
with what we got after the fact, and yeah, we
kind of took it from there.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
It's kind of hard to cover a game that's only
you know, thirty percent complete. You don't know how far
they got into it, and there's very little information. We
did our best to cover it in our in our
podcast what if episode That's true.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah, that was a good episode. Go back and listen
to that.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
It was. It was very different in the style of
of you know, every now and then over the course
of the podcast, we're just okay, well let's try something different.
That's how we have to change it in the video
game histories of the best and worst of and then
Marie Brothers and yeah started playing different game series, and
then at a certain point, John and I just kind
of just like you ever wonder about this and that

(13:32):
or whatever would happen or what if this happened? And
then it was just kind of like, you think we
could do an entire podcast on what ifs man.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
It was good that we use the Patreon to pull
them for questions too, and we got everybody involved, absolutely cool,
like this is what I just loved. We covered everything.
No one I said this, Okay. I just did an
interview with friend of the show. He's a listener since
day one. Fan of the show, Chris anders Coach see
check it out on YouTube. I posted it all over
social media and asking about the podcast, and I said,

(14:01):
the good thing is nobody's doing anything like this. There
are podcasts that cover games, and they cover them in
full depth. But I fully believe right now, like, yeah,
there are some that slipped through the cracks. We have
covered majority of everything. We are the end all, be
all compendium of wrestling video games right here.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
I mean there are some, there's you know, the list
is ever growing. We've said it from the beginning of
the podcast, is that every year there are new titles,
and every year the list grows, and that's always been consistent.
There's always a new Steam game that's coming out, or
a new main console release or something like that. And

(14:44):
we've done our best over the course of the last
almost six years to cover all of them, and they
are there are some that we're not going to be
able to get to. But like John said, we have
done a wide range of all different game types, and
I think we've covered the play styles. We've done RPGs,

(15:04):
we've done a couple of six consoles. We've covered consoles.
We've done the fire Pro style all the way over
to like the Arcadie button mash style and almost everything
in between.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
I think if we kept going, there's only a few
more fire pros we didn't cover, and everything else is
kind of like a booking sim or the simple fifteen
hundred series, like we don't need to play those even
like the UFC games. This isn't like MMA game marks,
MMA podcasts. So all right, we're doing the thing that
we said that we weren't going to do. We're okay,
podcast stuff. I'm gonna try to get us back on track.

(15:38):
But let's talk about these match types here. How cool
were the fact that we had a ladder match, the
fact that we had an iron man a guest referee.
Guest referee is cool in any match. I'm glad it's
back finally.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Guess really is the is the match that I put
the most time in? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (15:57):
It was just fun.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
It was just it's chaos.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Chaos. You get to superkick the wrestlers. If they touch you,
they're decuted or whatever. You could make who you want win.
But there's exhibition mode within there. Of course, there's your
tag team match, your Fatal four Ways and whatnot. You
could turn any match into a hardcore match. There's the
Royal Rumble, which goes all the way up to forty wrestlers,
a pay per view you can create on your own,
a King of the Ring Tournament, Guest Referee Ladder, Iron

(16:21):
Man Championship, which is your branching storylines, and your survival
which we talked about earlier. But I think what the
coolest part in here is you get pretty much every
arena for the entire year.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Here.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
You get Raw No Mercy, SmackDown, King of the Ring, SummerSlam,
Survivor Series, Royal Rumbolt, WrestleMania two thousand, Backlash, and Armageddon.
That firework was so loud that I just almost craped
my pants. But some of these you have to unlock
in the smack Down mall. I think you start with
maybe the top three, but as you go on in
championship mode and all that, you're able to unlock these.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Ah man, It's just it's one of those This menu,
these match types, these arenas are just straight nostalgia from
the I don't want to jump ahead and talk about
the graphics and the presentation of them, and it's hard
to because it's it's one thing to talk about a

(17:15):
list of things and you know, show that and talk
about what's available. But if you've played this game, this
is a game that you know, you put a lot
of time into. Just seeing the main menu screen is
a huge hit of nostalgia. You know what.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
My favorite part about this whole thing is how quickly
this game loads. It is could be in a match
in like ninety seconds, maybe under even on like the
old cartridge. Like it's so fast, And I think that's
what was so good about the N sixty four. The
low times were quick. You're a cartridge, smaller file, smaller saves.

(17:49):
It was beautiful.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
It was just beautiful.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
But now let's talk about the championships because this was
so unique. Yeah, yeah, there was some There was some
weirdness in here. Some of them have Michael Cole talking
with some awkward speech bubbles. Now, I played through this
on stream maybe a year ago. Some of the stuff
that is said in Championship Mode could never be said
in a video game.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Again, no way.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Something about the trash bag host Chris Jericho's line about
the trash back hose with Stephanie and all that, Like
that's all in here. I played this game as a
twelve year old, which is fine. You know, I didn't
like repeat it. But there's just something weird about like
it does not hold up well in that aspect. I
mean it's the attitude era, of course, it doesn't even

(18:36):
like when you jump into the women's storyline, you're immediately
thrown in a swimsuit competition. Now, I don't know if
you did what I did, but if it was hard
to beat, which sometimes you know, the matches are hard,
like you have to do them timed or whatever, I
would go into like viscera and switch him to female,
and I would enter as viscera and he would come

(18:57):
out in the beginning.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
I did not do that.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
I don't think I knew that you could do that.
I didn't do that.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah, I definitely played a bunch as a viscera. That's
the same as like say I wanted to do the
heavyweight title with like Jeff Hardy, he wasn't strong enough,
I would make him a super heavyweight.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
I do know. I think I did that. Like I
would take Jeff or Edge through and make them their
weight class differently.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah, I mean that, you know, that was just the
fun of it. I still wish I'm gonna set up
the N sixty four one day because I want to
see my cartridge. I know I took all of my
backyard wrestlers, like my cousin and all that, and I
made all of us in here.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
You have a battery colectric cartridge, don't you.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
But as far as I know, it still works. It
could happen on a random reset, it could.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
It could we made it this far. No, but if
we made it this far, that's fine.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Fine.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
If it's gone, I'll happily start over. But let's go works,
we'll see, I'll test it. I'll let you know. But
as far as the championship mode goes, you had your
World Heavyweight, Intercontinental, European Hardcore, Women's Tag and Light Heavyweight. Yeah,
and branching storylines. They resembled real life storylines. Some things
were a little skewed. I think there was a table

(20:16):
match with the Dudleys that you had to use the
announced table for because there were no tables in the
game during a ladder match. I think there's a like
I said before the Mick Foley Triple H storyline, there's
some hardcore stuff in there too, and as there's a
like a branch like you see the branch. So if
you want to get to a certain point, you know,
if you have to win or lose. But I think

(20:37):
that was the trickiest part. List part and the trickiest
because you would think you did it right and all
of sudden it would shoot over to where you already
were and you wouldn't unlock that part. I think I
got like eighty nine percent done on this one, so
I don't know where exactly I'm matt. I would love
to one hundred percent them all one day, but I
don't have the time for that.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
That sounds like a good stream challenge for a YouTube video.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
That could be fun. But there is a there's a
lot of I almost said recipes. We're gonna get into
that later. There's a lot of like cheat sheets online
telling you what to do in order to unlock them all.
So yeah, it's pretty cool. There was nothing like this
at the time. I mean, SmackDown's story mode of this
era was really lackluster. You only had like a few

(21:20):
little segments, few matches. It wasn't really much. I mean
the load times on those were insane. SmackDown two then
around the same time, same thing. I mean, there was
some storylines they resembled the real life storylines, but they
weren't so drawn out like this. You had backstage cut
scenes that led into matches, You had mandatory matches, You
had matches that would sway which way the story went,

(21:42):
win or lose. Like it was just really cool. There
was nothing like this.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
I think the big thing in the debate, I guess
I don't even know if it's really a debate. You
said you had both. I knew people that had both.
It was just a matter of what your play style was.
Like you could be good at both games, but maybe
you preferred the play style of SmackDown more, or you know,
I played both down, but you enjoyed the play style

(22:08):
of No Mercy.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
Easily played both like equally, maybe this one even more.
But I've mentioned before that this was my sisters and
sixty four, so it was in her room on her
little TV. I didn't know until years later that there
was like good music in this game because her TV
was so glitch that it was like who like everything

(22:30):
was muffled. Only in this game that I thought that
it was this, but it turned out it was just
a TV. But you know, she was younger than me,
so she would go to bed early or I wasn't
able to play like maybe a little bit after school,
SmackDown was in my room on my PlayStation, so I
put just enough time into that. But also I feel
like it's almost saying like right now, I either want

(22:51):
to play Fire Pro World or I want to play
two K, Like they are two different games. They have
two different feels, two different looks. SmackDown's more on the
realistic side, and you know this is this has its
own unique style. So yeah, it's it's fine playing both.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
It's not for I guess you could say it about both.
There's some people that's just whatever that art style is
or whatever that game style is and the presentation of it.
It's not for everyone. There are some people that prefer
the University. There's some people that prefer the SmackDown. I
know that a lot of the biggest complaint that I
always had about SmackDown was the create a wrestler. It

(23:30):
was hard to make because it was like you only
had like you can change the individual parts of people's face,
in their hair, you just picked from the premaids and
then you have pre made towards it. That was always
my like, you definitely could do more and no mercy Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
And we're going to get to that too. We wanna
talk about the whole thing. But yeah, let's what do
you say we talk about this ever loving roster here.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Let's get into it. You want to kick us off
and then tag me in when you're ready.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Yeah, I'll tag you in. You have Albert Al Snow,
Big Boss Man, Bradshaw, British Bulldog, Bubbare, Dudley, Bull Buchanan,
Chris Benwas, should I beep at full time? Sake? Kiss
people Up? Chris Jericho, Christian Crash, Holly, Dilo Brown, de Malenko,
Devon Dudley, Eddie Guerrero, Eddie Guerrero, Edge s A, Rios,
Feruk Funaki, Godfather, The good Father.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
That's a different costume option.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
Trammester, Sexe, Hardcore Holly, Jeff Hardy, Caine, Kurt Angle, Mankind,
Matt Hardy, Did I say Mark Henry Already? Mark Henry again?
In case I did it? Mister ass, Billy Gunn, Harry Saturn, Rikishi,
road Dog, The Rock, Scottie Two, Hotty, Steve Austin, Steve Blackman,
Steven Richards, Taco Michinoku, Tazz, Test, Triple h, The Undertaker,

(24:44):
Valvenus Viscera and x PAC Europe.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
All right, and then for the women's roster, you have Alita,
trishtra Terry Stepping with Man the Cat, Deborah, Jacqueline, Ivory,
China and Tory. And I'm just gonna continue going because
John read that really long roster. For the unlockable wrestlers,
you've got Andre the Giant, Cactus, Jack Babulous Mulla, Jerry Lawler,

(25:07):
Jim Ross, Ken Shamrock, Linda McMahon, Earl Hebner, Jerald Frisco,
Power Finkle, Pat Patterson and Paul Bear May Young, Michael Cole, mcfoley,
Shane McMahon, The Hoe, Sean Michaels, and Vince McMahon.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
That this is it's all place and all be all
Attitude era roster right here.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
It's all over the place, but in the best way possible.
You've got light heavyweight, You've got the mid card, Howard
Fine Card, You've got tag teams, you've got announcers, managers.
It it has in you know, for playing a wrestling

(25:52):
game on the N sixty four in two thousand. It's
got the ins and outs of everything, Like you said,
everything you want in an Attitude roster.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Now, who do you think is missing right off the bat,
I think the Big Show's missing.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Well, there were people that were removed. I scanned it removed,
Main Street Posse's supposed to be in here, Big Show, Gangrell.
I think there's there's assets within the game file now
for folks that were removed.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
This is when the Big Show was moved back down
to Ohio Valley Wrestling, and they didn't think he would continue.
But his shirt's in the game and I think he
was replaced by Steven Richards.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Right, Ah that I don't.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
I think that's what it was. Stevie Richards replaced him.
And I also don't know all about you, but right
to censor really annoyed me as a kid, and I
would always change Steven Richards back to Big Stevie Cool,
because I didn't want that guy in my game anymore.
That's another cool part.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Big Show was sent back down to OVW, but you
could add add him back in with the use of
a game shark. Other wrestlers that had the head scans.
You've got the Headbangers, Midian Gangrel, and the Mean Street Posse.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
And all of those little icons are in the Creator Wrestler.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
YEP for you. To choose. So Aki Man and Aki
Woman are in there.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
That's right, and a bunch of scary monsters. But let's
take a quick break, let's pay the bills one last time,
and we're gonna come back. We're gonna talk about Creator Wrestler.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
All right, here we go. I think Creator Wrestler here
not too in depth, but it gives us a glimpse
of what we see today. It's as in depth as
you can get on the hardware you're given. You start
off by the parameters, the name, you know, all of
that stuff, the height, the weight. Then you get into

(27:56):
the actual creation the rest what the wrestler looks like.
You have many options. Most of it is just parts
from other wrestlers, but you could recolor them, which I
think is cool, so you can think outside the box.
Like I used to always make RVD. There was always
that single itt with like the dragon on it that
everybody used. Same with sting. There was like a scorpion
pants and it's.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
The mooda pants. I think the mooda pants. Yes, and.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
You could do your whole move set as well, like
it kind of looks like today, like where you have
on the right side of the screen. Your wrestler testing
the move out, which was always super cool because you
could actually see what it looked like. Some of the
old games didn't have that. You didn't really know what
you were working with there, your music, you change absolutely everything,
your parameters. And now let's talk about one.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
Of our favorite parts here, the recipes. Oh, I was
ready for you to go. Let's talk about John's least
favorite part, selecting your move set.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
No, it wasn't bad in this game because there was
not many options. It's not like now where eat there's
like seventeen options for each button.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
It was just kind of one finisher and finisher.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Yeah, it wasn't that bad. Sure, Okay, I still haven't
done mine in twenty five and I probably never will,
to be honest, But recipes online. I have a binder
in my basement still. It has guitar tabs in it
and in the back is what's it called. Oh, you've
got recipes, recipes for No Mercy and anyone you wanted

(29:25):
you would look up on like cheat CC or one
of those websites. They would tell you what pieces to use,
what parameters. I remember making RVD sting anyone you wanted
because sometimes it was hard to do it on your
own and you didn't know what to pick. It would
give you every move list at out the Big Show,
Raven another guy who should have been in this game.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Everyone was there. It was so cool. It's oh man,
And there's a lot of assets from Revenge as well
and Resume in two thousand obviously, so there's a lot
of taunts and you could make with some a little
bit of create activity. Like you were saying, following those recipes,
you could make a lot of the wrestlers from uh,

(30:05):
you know, Revenge or if there were people that were
in Restum in two thousands that didn't make it over
to No Mercy. The moves, the taunts, they're all there,
so it's you could. You could make it work.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Absolutely, and some of them you had to squint a
little bit, but some of them, like Big Show because
his parts were in there were Yeah, it was pretty
much there.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
I don't know. I think you only had to use
the game Shark to get the his his actual face scan. Yeah,
I mean you could make it work with you know,
without that, you didn't need to have that.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
I think even Raven they had the the leather jacket
with the flannel shirt hanging out they did.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, it's crazy, man. It's like you said, there were
so many recipes, so many different creative wrestlers that you
could make, and they were seemingly endless. I mean there,
if you do a quick Google search, you could still
find you know, very old forums with you know active
not active, but like there, the links are still live

(31:12):
of recipes and different wrestlers that you could still make
within No Mercy in there, you know, little time capsule
from from the time early earlier days of the Internet.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
I'm on no Mercy dot fandom right now. Oh dude Love,
did we.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Mention dude Love? His assets were his?

Speaker 3 (31:31):
Dude Love is his d His face tattoos, tied die
ring attire are available, Raven his face tattoos, biker jackets,
flannel Yokozuna his ring attires in here yep, Ultimate Warrior
is original one ring attire and serpent face paint. It
wasn't exact, oh yeah, but it was. There was some

(31:51):
stuff in.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
There, a lot of a lot of different assets. Like
we were saying, you can make a lot of a
lot of step even some VPW stuff.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
Yeah, look at this, there's parts from Kenta Kobashi a
caratal Stan Hansen, Bruise of Rody Muda, Doctor Death, Kevin Nash.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah, those thing pants. I'm I'm fairly certain those thing
pants are the mudha. I think so too.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
All right, let's move on.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Let's talk to find that if you could, if you
could find that binder, I'll post that that would be
I'll definitely look. Did you have one character that you
always made in like like after the cartridge reset? Did
you have a cat? Mad Cat?

Speaker 3 (32:37):
Mad Cat was me, and I feel like he always
looked different, even through like day of reckoning, always different,
like I always was changing. I was like trunks. Then
I was like, oh, I like the bikers, like Billy Kidman,
like I feel like in No Mercy, though, I wore
like a white tank top and jeans because that's what

(32:59):
I wrestled in and back wrestling when I was twelve
because I didn't have wrestling gear. I always tried to
make it like as realistic and like close to life
as possible.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Okay, Wildcat is in my game as well? Here who
is TK wild so oh even back here we were
still in the game together wait with the with like
wild Spell the way that it is now wild out. No,
it's regular wild And then K A T T like
my m A B K A T T say if
he was.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
If that that's a deep cut. If it's it's that
far back that is where he got the wild from though,
which is pretty cool. Hell yeah, yeah, that's a fun
little t K fact. Let's go. Let's talk about this
artwork here, iconic iconic roster or iconic cover. It has
the same background and the same logo obviously that you
would see on the cartridge itself. You've got Edge giving

(33:49):
a spinning kick to Matt Hardy, We've got the rock,
and you've got Triple H doing a pedigree. Man, oh man,
it's just who's the pedigree? Two? Yeah hmm, that's a
strong fist. But it almost looks like Bubba Ray Dudley's gear.
I can't tell if it's gear. If it's a shadow. Yeah,

(34:13):
I'm sure somebody knows and can tell us. Let's ask chat.
Do you think I've ever.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Who is Triple H pedigree on the cover of WF
No mercy, There's no way it knows this, no way
at all. It's been searching the web for a really
long time. Oh Fans have long debated who Triple ITH's
given the pedigree to. It's confirmed to be Al Snow

(34:39):
on the ten, twenty ninety nine episode of SmackDown.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Al Snow was wearing a black Job Squad shirt and
white wrist tape, matching the cover image. The pedigree scene
aligns with the match on October twenty first SmackDown look
at that it knew. Other speculations include Mick Foley and
road Dog.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
And I don't think that's crazy that you it was
able to figure that out. Pulled.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah, it showed it pulled it from Reddit.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
That's wild.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yeah, that's too slim to be Mick fully and not
tattooed to be real dog.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Yeah. I don't think i've ever I've always just thought
it was a shadow. Like I didn't think it was
someone in the shirt. I was like, oh, they just
like how you can only like barely see the color
of the rock shirt mm hmm. I was like, Oh,
it just must be like the shadow. The way that
the photography was taking that, it's like that's someone that's

(35:28):
not wearing a shirt, but the shadow is just so bad.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah, I mean it's not the greatest cover, but it
is iconic. You see it, you know. I remember going
to I could picture the store, but I couldn't tell
you what the store was. I want to say Target,
because it looked like Target, but I don't think Target
was like a thing back then in ninety nine, two thousand.
Maybe it could have been Walmart, could have been. I

(35:57):
do remember like the look of the case, and I
was so happy to get this. And then my sister
was doing the ultimate little sister thing, like when I
get home, I'm playing Ruggrats. It's like, hmmm, no you're not.
I'm playing No Mercy. I'm probably gonna play for the
next five days straight, so don't bug me. Oh man,
I probably got up a Christmas money, so I was
a little late. And this is definitely a game that

(36:19):
everybody talked about in school.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Oh yeah, Like.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
I remember distinguished times people talking about Revenge and I
didn't have it, and I felt left out because I
was such a wrestling fan. But then finally No Mercy
came out. This was the game. Everybody loved it. I
was in sixth grade.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
This was a great time. I remember. So the first
N sixty four wrestling game I played, I talked about
in the podcast. I think we rented an N sixty four.
Remember when you could do that. You could rent it
N sixty get a console from Blockbuster. I used to
rent Priss twos all the time, rented at N sixty

(36:56):
four and we uh and I picked World Tour and
that was it. I was hooked. I was like, this
is like I had played the SNES games, I had
played Rumble, but I never had them. I just would
played with friends houses. And then we rented the N
sixty four and man, oh man, this this like that

(37:18):
was the first time that like I felt like a
record like that. I could remember that a wrestling game
clicked and I was like, this is really cool, and
that was it. Like was super interested in everything that
came after that, like super interested in revenge, were interested
in restling eighty two thousand and obviously, Man, over the years,

(37:39):
this has stood the test of time as a game
that I never stopped playing, and over the course of
the last six years, five or six years, has have
even played more than I maybe did back as a
kid because of all the stuff that we did with it.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
I don't think I have a game in my life
that has been more timeless than this one.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Oh it's that I've put.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
More time in to I've told the story on here,
I'll tell tell it again. We used to download the
emulator on the school library computers in high school. Yeah,
I know this story, and we would be able to
like land in and play with each other somehow. I
don't remember how we did it, probably how me and
you do it, some some sort of remote software. But yeah,

(38:20):
like through the school like we were idiots. But I
remember doing four versions of Billy Gun in the match
in a fatal four way. And remember when you would
taunt in the beginning of the match against the computer,
the computer would taunt. So I did that right away,
and every single Billy Gun did the moon taunt. Every
single one of them dropped their pants and showed their
ass right as my teacher froze the screen. Oh, because

(38:44):
they would freeze the screen and then come over and
be like, what are you doing? They froze the screen.
There was four billion guns with the censor blur given
the full book, and I panicked and had to turn
off my computer so fast. And I remember they come
over and I was just like, well, well, they're like yeah,
but man, yeah, we even used to play then, we's
played on the keyboard, which is crazy.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
I mean you've done that before too, but it's so hard.
It is, it is. It's definitely difficult to do to
play this game or any I think most N sixty
four games are probably hard to play on a keyboard.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah, I mean hard to play on any other controller,
but an N sixty four controller. Because the way it's
laid out.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
It's true, it's very true. All right, let's talk about
this back cover here, John, a lot of screenshots of
matches and all the things that can happen. It says
reek havoc on the Federation, jump into the ring with
the biggest, badest Ja Bronis around, and experience brutal WWF
action never seen before in a console game. You've got

(39:49):
a screenshot of the ladder that says all new ladder match.
You got a screen shot Triple H doing the pedigree.
It says take on the entire Federation in survival mode.
And then you have the load of the backstage where
which was so cool. Ground brooks, Oh my god, backstage
area is so so cool. Take the action out of
the ring in ten different backstage areas, and then you

(40:12):
have the Dudley boys doing the three D to XPOC
and it says, oh new double team moves like the
Dudley three D death drop. And then you have the
last screenshot is Kurt Angle and it says over sixty
five WWF Superstars.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
Crazy, just crazy, tells you it's a wrestling game, and
you get to see I think the coolest part was
seeing the SmackDown arena in here.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Oh yeah, there were like this, to see tag team moves,
to see a backstage area, to see the scale, That's
what I was just gonna say, to see the scale
of the camera pulled out so you can see the
entire entrance ramp and Jeff Hardy on the ladder jumping
off onto edge like it's It not only tells the

(41:03):
story that it's a wrestling game, but it shows you
exactly what the cool features of the game are.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
You know, one features they should have highlighted because it's
one I definitely needed and w restulmated two thousand running
grapples run, Yeah, running grapples finally, which is amazing. And
now the cartridge as we've seen, it's literally just the
no Mercy logo with the cool little scratchy background.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yeah, that's it. Damn, this cartridge looks really nice. I
gotta protect it with by all calls. There you come
a little a little stand for it.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
Now we've talked about the graphics a little bit. I
don't think they're great at all. They've got the you know,
the main parts here. Let's be honest. The graphics suck.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
They're on par with everything else that like from this,
like uh the hq Aki series. It is you you
take the platform of World Tour and you just slowly
get more features and the textures get a little better.

(42:09):
They don't menal jumps, it's not anything crazy, but they
do get a little better. The stage is very much
so that you can really see the upgrade to that presentation.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
There's just so many broken pixels. Yeah, so many tears.
Like ah, it annoys me. In almost every N sixty
four game, how they did not care how pixelated stuff
looked or how.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Oh I thought you were going to say about how
the like repeated textures aren't the same, like they don't
match up, yeah perfectly every time.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
I mean that too. But like graphics would go over
the screen and they would be they would look like
boxes stacked on top of each other. They are so bad, Like,
why does that look like that when, like say Super
Mario Warrio, a wrestler on the screen doesn't look like that. Like, yeah,
there's pixelations within the costumes and all that, because there's
not great layering in these games. But man, some of

(43:11):
it you really have to look past. And I think
that is one of the biggest things about this game.
The arms aren't attached to the body for a certain
piece of paper, for certain like uh types, I think
smaller wrestlers.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, I think it's like the super skinny body and
I think every everyone on the women's roster. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
But that speaks volumes to how good this game is.
That we were able to look past, like how bad
that stuff was. Like right now, if a game looks
bad or even I mean, think about aw Fight forever.
Nothing in that game plays bad. Yeah, there's just lack
of updates. Maybe it looks a little Fortnite, a little cartoony,

(43:53):
but it gets so much hate, Like this didn't get
any of that, even with SmackDown and SmackDown two coming
out in the same on a rival console with better hardware.
I mean, I guess to each their own terrible graphics
and it's still regarded as one of, if not the
greatest wrestling games ever.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Yeah, it is. It's got that I don't know exactly
how best to say it, Like it just has that
intangible factor. It's it's the No Mercy is a game
that is truly like the sum of all the parts.
Like it's the the control it's the it's the controls,

(44:39):
it's the animations, it's you know, that certain level of
it's not the worst graphics, but it's definitely not the
best graphics. It's like that combined with all the other
parts and just the replayability and the different game modes
and the different match types, like it truly is just

(45:00):
all together. This feels like a very complete, packed like
game from start to finish. There's something for everyone. If
you want to do nothing but the survival mode, if
you want to do create a wrestler, if you want
to run through the championship and do all those like,
there's there's something for everyone, which is crazy to think
that on an N sixty four you're getting such a

(45:23):
complete package in a wrestling game.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Not only that, but like how much fun is it
to play the matches like something? The momentums actually swing
like how much fun is it to knock somebody out
or make them tap out or they're losing it, or
hitting your special, hitting your opponents special. You didn't need
move thief back then because you just press A and
B together.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
And your opponent's taunts too.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
Yes, like figuring that stuff out as a kid was
so great. That's like I said, I was going to
say it before Survival Mode. Back to the recipes. I
remember reading online you want to unlock everything, take a
chair or take a really heavy piece of tape. If
you don't like your controller, tape down A and B
and choose either x POC or Perry Saturn. Perry Saturn
has the sweep kick and all he does is just

(46:06):
sweep people out of the ring. But he was not
as good as x POC because x POC actually moved
with his spin kick, so as you're doing the spinkick,
he actually moves like towards the rope, so you could
just leave it on for as long as possible. Nobody's
getting near you because you're just throwing that kick and
that's it. I think I briefly did it, but it

(46:27):
wasn't like I was just watching. It wasn't fun like
I actually sat there and played Survival over and over again.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Like we were saying before, it's there and the other thing.
I'll make my point about Survival in a second. But
you could also make your own rules, like if you
were playing against your friend, or even if you were
just playing against a computer, like you could say like, oh,
it's a tables match, you have to go through the
announced table, like it's not officially a tables match, like

(46:55):
it's not a selectable match type. Or you could make
it a TLC man or you could do you know,
finishers only or TKO only like there. You could make
different you know, using the match rules, your own imagination
and you know, agreed upon terms with If you were

(47:16):
playing with someone else, you could make your own match ties,
which was always fun, always creative, and especially when you're
getting into like the special guest referee and stuff like that.
It's just endless. It's so cool. This game had it all.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Did you know?

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Damn that was the last one?

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Did you know? WWF no Mercy's Hold Mechanic revolutionized wrestling
gameplay by introducing counters and reversals that required timing and strategy,
making matches a little more tough and less button mashing.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
There you go. Did you know? WWF No Mercy remains
a cult classic, often hailed as one of the greatest
wrestling games ever made due to balance gameplay, deep gameplay mechanics,
and a faithful capture of the nineties WWF attitude era.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
Did you know WWF No Mercy is on eBay for
nineteen to thirty five dollars used ninety to two hundred
sealed now, whopping five hundred to eight hundred gated now
And those grades I only saw seven point five I
think was the highest.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Damn.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
It was like a fi from like a six to
like a seven point five I saw. So there could
be others out there that are graded even more, which
is absolutely crazy. Let's talk about that whole mechanic, and
let's talk about a few other things before we get
into the ratings and reviews. I think it was super cool. See,
I don't think you played this way, but I do.
I use the left trigger or bumper for grapples, and

(48:55):
I use the right for strikes, and that seems to
work better for me. If I try to use the
regular right for grapples, it doesn't usually.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Work for me. Wait one more time, I.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
Use the left bumper for grapples, the right bumper for strikes. Oh,
that might be just like a timing thing of my hands.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
I don't know if that's like how it was intended.
I'm looking at the book right now.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
I always thought left bumper was was only for the
breaking of the grapples, and that every other block happened.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
On the No, that's how I always do it, and
it seems to work better for me.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
I'm trying to find like a like a controller layout.
I can't seem to find it though, like the one
that explains it. I see like the layout here, but
it doesn't say what it does. But see like defense
llen r us reversals and grappling. Yeah, I don't think
it matters. It might just be like I'm used to

(50:03):
that timing with that like finger.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Interesting. Yeah, that's how I do it.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
That's how I've always done it, and it seems to
work better for me, because even when I do get
caught using the ripe bumper on like a grapple, it
seems to like just not work. But you do have
the strong moves, which are great strong grapples, strong strikes.
That adds a lot to the games. You can't usually
use them right away. It's kind of like fire pro
in that sense, you have to beat your opponent a
little bit to finally get them. They're easier to reverse

(50:30):
in the beginning. But it's just like match progression.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
It's great. It's everything. This this game is just everything.
Like I said, it's a it's a it's a complete
it is truly I think the best sum of all
of the parts. Like it is. It's just very interesting.
It's just a it's such a very familiar even from

(50:53):
like like it's a very easy pick up and play
kind of game, like even if it's the first time
you're ever and this goes for Tour Revenge Prust me
in two thousand and this game it's very intuitive, like
you just pick it up and within a couple of
minutes you already kind of have a general baseline understanding
of the controls.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yeah and yeah, I really have nothing, like I just
love this game. I I'll skip ahead a little bit
right now. I filled in play it forever for us
on our spreadsheet.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
We had like five weeks ago.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
But that's let's uh, let's sit back now. I want
for one last time, give me the hands behind the head,
give me something. We're gonna We're gonna sit back, relax.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
You want one of these? With some r and on
some ratings and reviews.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
All right. Across Metacritic, it has an eighty nine out
of one hundred see net game Center eight out of ten,
EGM with an eight point one seven out of ten
I'm Sure you love that decimal game in Former with
a nine point five out of ten, Game Revolution a
B plus Game Spot seven point seven out of ten,
IGN nine out of they finally rated a wrestling game
of nine, nine out of ten on IGN and sixty

(52:07):
four Magazine a ninety two percent, Next Generation four out
of five, Nintendo Power seven point three out of ten,
and x Play four out of five stars. Now overall
critically well received, and it would become one of the
best selling titles for the N sixty four, as well
as the third best selling wrestling game for the N
sixty four, and in the years since its release, No

(52:29):
Mercy has been regarded one of the best wrestling video
games ever and in game Marks podcast lore in our History,
it is the winner of Game Wars, where we had
a tournament to find the best wrestling game voted on
by you guys. It defeated SmackDown Here comes the Pain
in the finals, and I think it's the greatest wrestling

(52:50):
game ever made.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Man, it's hard to it's hard to, you know. Besides
tea impact, I just had to hit him one last time.
There you go.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
But with that, George, you know.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
What time it is? Is it time one last time
for us to rate the game?

Speaker 4 (53:11):
Look, Oh, I'm gonna miss Drowning Pool John.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
I have never felt more confident in what I am
about to say. We're gonna do an old fashioned three
to one John, three two one forever.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
There's so bad we have that now, like on this
recording software, because when I used to have to line
that up in garage band, it never worked.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
I actually think we we have done enough of these
that the delay, like when I asked the question, I
think over time we've slowly gotten better like to make
the delay of the audio, so hopefully you don't have
to fix too much. And it's just right on the money.

(54:14):
But yeah, it's what can you say about a game
that we already said it's widely regarded of one of
the best wrestling video games ever created. It is it
is on people's It may not be everyone's favorite. Some
people may prefer Here comes the Pain before it is

(54:35):
on the Mount Rushmore, I think for sure for most people.
And yeah, it's like we've said multiple times it is.
It's just one of the most replayable wrestling games available.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Like I feel like I've said it all already, but
playing this in our play the this is probably our
longest play through other than that one last man's standing
match we had where none of us would get up.
There's just this is just one of those things that
just makes you smile. Like playing this game, it's not
even that it takes you back to your childhood, which

(55:19):
it does. It's just fun to play, like it takes
me back to like last year or the year before that.
Like I've probably played this game every year of my life,
which is insane. And I don't know if I could
say that about many other games. I mean, maybe Gears
of War comes close. I've played it every few years though,
and every year. Maybe the original Super Mario Brothers comes close.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Mickey Maska paids that's record saying that you love that game.

Speaker 3 (55:47):
Without this podcast, I don't know if I'll ever play
that again. But I'm glad I introduced a lot of
you to it.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Yeah, that's that gift to the world. The double play forever.
I don't think has ever been more deserved this game.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
No, I don't think it's I also don't think it's
ever been more predictable, after all the time that we
put in play game and all the content that we've
made with it.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Like most literal play it forever we.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
Have because we have been playing it forever.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
Crazy crazy It's but hey, George, we just finished our
last ever deep dive. But are you ready to get
into a big soft lock?

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Hold on, I'm still letting the We just did our
last game, all right, Well, here we go. It's time
for us to get into the soft lock. All right.

(57:00):
The soft lock it's a segment on the podcast where
our mega marks in our discord give us a topic
to debate, a question to answer. Is a question of
the week with a fancy name, and like John said,
this is a special soft lock segment. We have a
couple of questions from a couple of different people in

(57:22):
our discord. We are going to kick it off with
the Elder Spork and sports. First question is what's something
in your daily routine or life or work that is
now something you do all the time because of the podcast.
And I already have an answer for this. As I
was reading the question, I knew exactly what it was.

(57:43):
I do a lot more video stuff than I ever
did prior to doing the podcast.

Speaker 3 (57:48):
I think we learned a lot video audio. I mean,
think about the first ever episode. I had that little microphone.
We were using garage band.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
We were on I think were we on Zoom? No,
we did. We did discord and I recorded the video
for a while. Well we we were on video so
that we could eat each other. You know, you're right.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
I remember a point call I was like, all right, George,
sounds like yeah, that sounds like we're reading we need
to be more like friends.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
But no, there was there was a point where I'm
trying to think of what the you were you recorded
in garage band because I did Audacity.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Yeah, I didn't trust Audacity because garage Band had the
feature on my MacBook where I could command s and
save while it was recording. Oh yeah, so every once
in a while I would go over and just like
command as while that was happening.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Remember it was for the for the first couple of years,
it was three to one, I'm hitting record, all right,
and one more time, three two, and then you would
say and then the audio was SYNCD up and there
we go.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
So, you know, what's crazy. Two hundred and eighty three episodes.
I think only one time we said I don't like
this episode, We're doing it again, and I think it
was an Ultimate Muscle game and we tried to do
two in a day, and the last one we were
just dragon.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
I think. Yeah, I think the first one went longer
than we expected and we were just like, oh, we've
you know, we could breeze through this and get like
a But it ended up being that when we did
the playthrough, there were so much more that we wanted
to talk about in that first game. Yeah, that by
the time the second game came around, we were just like, hey,
that first episode went a lot longer than we expected,

(59:42):
and I, yeah, I don't think that we could keep
doing this. And I remember you just being like, I'm wiped, man.
I was like, I'm glad you said it, because we doe.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
The episode though, and I think that's the only one
we like scrapped.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Yeah, that never happened before. Yeah, there's I think that's
a crazy statistic to think of it. You know, there's
a couple of replays. It's two hundred and eighty three episodes,
but there's a couple of interviews, there's a couple don't
replays and stuff, But yeah, all right, sports. Next question,
are there any games that you think would have made

(01:00:17):
for a better episode or review if you had played
them after playing another game? Think for John, it's fire
Pro right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
To be played. Fire Pro Returns as the first fire
Pro and I rated it poorly, and then people rated
me poorly on Apple. So I think if there was
a few before I got to the turning point, it
was the fire Pro Wrestling Joshi, I think was the
first one I actually like clicked and then I liked.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
No, that was like you need it, I don't need
think that. That's a good answer, Like I'm already poking
holes of my own because you had to play the
other ones to kind of familiarize, Like that's no, but
that's like the learning fire Pro.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
If I learned in the older ones and then came
to Returns, which is such a good game, then maybe
I would have appreciated that one a little better, which
is why we remastered.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
It's that's very true, you know that. Okay, thank you
for grounding my answer a little bit more to make
it make sense. Well, it does. Trying to think if
there's anything else we for the most part, with the
exception of the yearly released games, we tried to I

(01:01:29):
mean in certain cases we didn't, but we tried to
play things in order for the most part. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
I think in the beginning we kind of like went
off a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Yeah, and then at a certain point we tried to
keep it a little bit more on track.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Yeah, but for the most part we did get back
on track.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Do you have a different answer than fire pro?

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
No, that's literally what I was going to say, because
that's my biggest change throughout this whole podcast. But going
back something from my daily life. You know what I
do whenever someone says, oh, did you know? I just heard?
And sometimes it even happens out loud and they're like, huh,
what would mean?

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
Oh, I just hear when someone says did you know,
I hear you, like like I hear the lean into
the mic and then did you know?

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Even sometimes like we're ending a work meeting and I
want to be like game.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
Over, I don't do that. That's silly. That's the other
thing when someone says game.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
Over, yeah, mars, there's so many but sports. Third question,
how do you see the video game landscape shape out
in the next ten fifteen years? Are there are the
days of a wire to your living room numbered? With
all consoles being muld We kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Talked about this, we did a couple episodes ago, and
I I think there is that hybrid of the mobile
console or you know, with with the docking station, like
that seems to be the best of both worlds. And
I don't know, how do you feel like you've you've

(01:03:01):
never owned a switch, your handheld mobile gaming experiences, your
phone and a backbone, right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
Yeah, I mean I was a Nintendo Kit. The last
one I had was a DSN a PSP I think.
I mean, I mean, like modern days, I have no
interest in a switch too, but that's only because of
the games. But the Xbox ally, which is going to
have Windows eleven on it, which means you could play
Steam games on it, including your Xbox games through the
cloud or whatever. It looks like that's the future. Like

(01:03:29):
I want that. It's long if you could plug that
into a monitor, which I'm pretty sure you can.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
I don't think I need my Xbox Series X anymore. Hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
I don't play it really to begin with, because I'm
on this PC most of the time. But I think
like everyone's I was like, oh, the future is at VR.
I don't think the future's VR because it's the same
with like the Wii. Like people don't want to move,
like I want to sit here, sit on my couch
and play a game. I don't want to be interactive

(01:04:01):
like I played that punch like that boxing game on
the Medaquest. I was dripping sweat and that was actually
hard after like five minutes. Like I don't see myself
doing that, like sitting here playing for like an hour
or two.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Now. I think VR as a whole is great as
an accessory like it. I think that the console releases
with it as an option is good. But to your point,
you know, it's not for everyone. And sometimes when you
want to play a game, you sometimes just do want to, yeah,

(01:04:34):
and and you know just not like that. That's the
the break from moving around and running around is to
sit down on the couch or in your chair and
play games. Yeah, I agree. I mean the more handheld
is it better? Yeah, I think, I'm I do think
much like we talked about a couple of weeks ago,

(01:04:54):
that it is. It is something that is a more
handheld with a fucking station and bring.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
Any sidekick, but put Windows eleven on it and make
it my phone.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
That's what I want. It's actually a very interesting idea
for a console. Wow, I hate how much I like that.
That's really cool and everything. All right, Sport, thank you
very much for all of your questions. Uh, and here
we go. Next set of questions come from Germ, and

(01:05:29):
Germ's first question is what state or location would we
have chosen to put a GTA game in? Ooh, that's
interesting because they've.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
Done Has there been one in Vegas?

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
You know, it's funny you say that because that's the
first thing that I thought of. Two.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
I mean, they did Florida, they did New York, they
did California. I mean, Vegas makes sense. Texas makes sense.
But you have like red red Dead Redemption Texas.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
I've never played it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
No, I also haven't played it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
Where is red to taking place? Oh, northern Mexico? Okay,
so like uh yeah, I mean close.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
No, I think I like Vegas.

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
Uh, give me like Rhode Island, like make it the
smallest map ever, let's just do nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
I think I think I think Vegas might be the
answer because everything else just kind of could be could
look like other I'm trying to think of something that
would be unique and not look like.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Like what about like uh, I mean this is Europe.
You could do like Italy.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
I was gonna say, I was trying that you could
do Ireland, France or Italy or Ireland, or like Iceland
or Mexico.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
Yeah, spl rug cartel and all that, like make it
like a Narcos type thing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
Oh, that could be Columbia. Hm hmm, that's very interesting.
All right, I like it. Good good options. There a
couple of good GTA seven and thirty years. We'll get that. Jarem,
thank you very much for that first question. Jerm's second
question is how much money do we have to win
from the lottery to keep the pod going?

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
Pay for both of our day jobs so we don't
have to work. Build us a really nice studio we
could drive to and hang out, have some pizza and
record an episode, maybe some like Coronas and Limes on
Deck or something.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Are you making the pizzas. I'll make the pizzas. Making
the pizza. That upside down pizza that you posted in
the discord.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
Was surprisingly good for how bad it looked originally great.
That's why they with more cheese on it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
It looked great.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):
Someone brought up the other day soup soups from the cookbook.
We should have made the damn cookbook.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
What are some of the other things we had? The
TK onion rings. I could pull it up right now,
we had the Meyers margarita.

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
I'm gonna pull it up right now if I still
have it should Okay, So this is something kind of
said I've been thinking about. Oh boy, I'm gonna have
to move all my files into my z drive here
into like the archives of.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
The legacy, like your your backup. They go from being
in live files. Yeah. Yeah, actually, yeah, that's exactly what
I say.

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
I can't find the cookbook. It's all right, we'll find
it and we'll post it or something. It's got to
be on a social media somewhere.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
No, I'm I'm I think John's answer kind of nails it.
It's just a there's just a it's more than just
lottery money.

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
I guess we need time.

Speaker 1 (01:08:43):
Yeah, it's longer days.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
I think if we were able to like meet up
maybe like even once a month, and sit in a studio,
like a nice studio, not just like our office or something,
sit in a studio, have like a professional editor, like
we're not doing everything. I have like a social media guy,
then I think, uh, yeah, that would that would do it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's that's that's a hard, hard
question to answer, but I think I think Clasher's answer
is close. And then Jerm's final question is, if you
guys could have Dylan for the entire g MP ride,
how do you think the pod would have gone? I

(01:09:31):
don't know. If Swaggle would have had the patience him
that John and I had to exercise, I would have
the game. Oh. I was just even thinking from a
like how some of the games we played were like, oh,
you know something like some of the mechanics. How many
times you know with certain games, like you would do

(01:09:53):
your playthrough, I would do my playthrough, We would meet
up to do the video for the YouTube, and then
we would just be like, hey, did you also not
know what you're doing in this game despite having already
played it? And then like we were trying to figure
it out together, like it just yeah, it was a lot.
I don't see him for certain titles having the patients
to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
I don't know if he'd have the patience for us,
all of our blood pressure would be way higher.

Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
I mean we've we've done a couple episodes and he
gets fired up just because you know how to push
his buttons, because you've why not you You are, as
someone who did a podcast with him, you are really
good at pushing his buttons. Yes, yes, you and you
and choose really good.

Speaker 3 (01:10:42):
But he exposes my real name to the world every
chance he gets. Hey, we've said and all the front
Row creator pro guys who scream it every time they
see me at a show.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
We've said it on the on this podcast a couple
of times too. It'll live with me forever, go Ruse. Okay,
thank you very very much for all of your germ questions.
All right, next question comes from Adam Sauser and Sluser's
question is if you had to do it all over again,

(01:11:13):
who would you choose as your co host instead? No one.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
We are destined to do this forever. Yeah, I mean
we I don't think we really I mean we've had
what little little maybe not even arguments here and there
for me ever crazy Yeah nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
Oh no, we've had conversations, not even an argument. It's
just like we would be like, hey, I want to
do this, well I don't think that we should do that. Well,
I feel I really want to do it. All right,
you feel very strongly, then we'll do it. Like like
if you feel that strongly about something, or if I
felt that strongly about like you make the case and
you going, oh, all right, I guess I guess he's

(01:11:53):
seeing a bigger picture with this, and then we'll go
ahead and do it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:56):
Yeah. I mean we debated bring a third person on
for a little bit. It never got to discussions or anything.
It could have been swaggle, could have been filled, been CPA.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
Everything was perfect the way it was yeah, so perfect. Love.
It was the perfect setup just from from how this
started on on X That's all it was.

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
And I explained the whole story on Chris Andrews podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
Go check it out, and coach, I don't thank you
very much for that question. The next two questions come
from Techer. Techer's first question is what was your favorite
song to hear George play on his drum stream for
Saint Jude's and why was it Aliens Exists? Ye, walk

(01:12:47):
us through it?

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Uh so first tell us about it?

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
This what was it? Second third year? So we were
raising money during the pandemic for Saint jude Children's Research Hospital,
and one of the things that we did to drum
up a little bit more money for the charity was
I did a drum stream and people could request songs

(01:13:13):
and I put together a list of songs, and Aliens
Exist from my blink onin eighty two was on that list,
and I was like, yeah, I could play this song.
That's fine, and then our songs well. And then the
song started and it was a lot faster than I
have like thought about it or played it back in

(01:13:34):
my head, and that intro was really what threw me off,
and I just couldn't. It was one of those things
where I started offbeat and I couldn't get past it
and recover, and it was just I started and retried
it multiple times. At a certain point, they just said,

(01:13:56):
get through it and find it later on in the song,
just wherever you can. And so yeah, it's I mean
a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:14:02):
Of hardest song they could have asked you to play
so and on the spot and on the stream. I
mean I had some request, uh Tom Sawyer by Rush God.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
And somehow Aliens Exist was still worse than that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
All nine eighteen minutes of Tom Sawyer whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
Yeah, that was. It was. I will say that was
a highlight for sure, just because I think that that
was one of the years that we did really well
for Saint Jude's and did your solo stuff. I did
my own solo stuff. We did the streams together, like
we just like that was truly.

Speaker 3 (01:14:43):
Like I'm going to miss Saint the gamebery. It's so
much to put together, so.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
Rewarding the reward. Yeah, that that. I mean, there's a
question that that's the probably the last question that we're
going to answer that that's probably going to come back up.
But uh, Tecker's next question is who's your favorite wrestler
to play across all wrestling games? Ooh, I think my
most consistent is Razor Ramone, Scott Hall Bam.

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
If we're talking old games, I like playing his Liger.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
Yeah, we've done Bliger and Muda a lot. You did
Sting a lot, obviously.

Speaker 3 (01:15:25):
But if we're playing like now or a current game.
Brandy Orton is always my pick. I just think his
move set's fun. You could do the r KAO literally
out of nowhere from this first game on.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Who we always like it's always Sting, Vader, Scott Hall, Vader,
Muda Wiger, Who else do Eddie Guerrero Edge?

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
Those are definitely some of my favorites. AJ is one
of my favorites to play games. Popped up a couple
of times Sean not necessarily a fan, but I always
liked playing games as punk just a cool move set.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
A couple of times on the on the on in
matches as well. Yeah, it's there's a long list, but
I think your oh yeah, Canyon, Yeah, I mean I
think your most has to be stinking right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
I guess I think I do it mostly just for
the podcast, But I don't necessarily enjoy playing as like
older Sting, like he doesn't have a great move set
to play in a video game with.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
I think even some of the crew multiple matches, Oh,
I got to do them for one.

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):
Yeah, like even Kurrent whatever later on, Sting not the
greatest move set for a video game.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
Yeah, that's a that's a really go through the rolodex
of all all the games that we played and try
to think. But that's a good question. Thank you very
much for those questions, Techer, Love you, Techer, appreciate it.
The next set of questions comes from Will Befall the

(01:17:14):
baby was.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
Falling, waitit wait wait wait, okay, a little back started here.
Will was just someone who pestered us on Twitter for
a very long time about fire Pro Wrestling, what I
was talking about earlier, how I got roasted for the returns.
I think this is when Will happened. There was a
point in the podcast where I got a voice recording

(01:17:36):
for from Will to surprise George with we were talking
about him every week. There was a point where George said,
I think we need it's enough with the Will talk
on the podcast where we had to stop talking about
him because he was just pestering us on Twitter so
much about fire Pro and whatnot. We would go back
and forth all the time. He has been a mainstay

(01:17:57):
since the very beginning of the pod, in the discord
everywhere playing games with us, playing among us one of
the OG's for sure a point where I was up
near him for like around the time my wife's grandma
was passing, so it was not a happy time, and
he said, I am within screaming distance of you, Like

(01:18:18):
if I talk outside, you might hear me. If you
need to grab a drink, if you need to get
your mind off things, let me know I am right here. Fortunately,
you know, things happened and we couldn't do that. But
he sent me a gift when my baby was born.
I think I helped him with something with his will.
We've had our differences all along. Fucking love you one

(01:18:38):
of my I consider like everyone we just named, and
even more that didn't ask questions and those coming like these.
You guys are my good friends. Now we built a community.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
We've had a good, good group from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (01:18:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
Anyway, all right, Will's first question. If you could only
play five games for the rest of your life life,
what would you choose?

Speaker 3 (01:19:01):
Gears of War Halo okay, at this point, Fortnite.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
Mm hmm, No Mercy.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
And Dave Reckoning.

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
There we go. I'm gonna say I'll throw a Fortnite
in there. I'll say no Mercy, do Star Wars the
Force unleash the first one. Damn. I'm taking Day of
Reckoning on. I'm putting in GTA five. Oh, I'm gonna
say Need for Speed Underground two and yeah, I'll put

(01:19:38):
GTA in there too.

Speaker 3 (01:19:40):
Yeah, like you know you love them because that was
really easy.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
Yeah, well, I don't know which GTA. I think I'm
gonna go five.

Speaker 3 (01:19:50):
I'm going five because I've replayed the others and they
don't really hold up well the controls, the graphics.

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
All right. Will's next question is, of all the games
you played on the pod, which gets your strongest play
forever and which gets the strongest Future The strongest one
is the strongest player Forever's no mercy, it's gotta be.

Speaker 3 (01:20:12):
It has to be. I think TNA Impact number two
for me, oh Man, the strongest Future Endeavor. I feel
like there were definitely games that we absolutely hated. No, yeah,
I just can't think of what they were.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
I think I might have to look at the list
of the Future Endeavor games.

Speaker 3 (01:20:31):
And we futured endeavored the Second Fire Pro Uh sorry,
Rumble Roses game.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
What were we thinking? Uh? Strongest?

Speaker 3 (01:20:41):
That's tough, Like I do.

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
Remember, that's a hard one to come up with.

Speaker 3 (01:20:45):
I remember flipping out over a few. I mean, like
Iron Slam after Shock was so bad.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
What about Hogan's main event Dreamcast rumble that. I hold
that as I say, that's not so bad when you
think about it compared to other things. It's not so bad.

Speaker 3 (01:21:08):
Five Star Wrestling that was also one. Remember that one? Hey,
remember we got our hands on w you've what was it? Oh,
WCW game?

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
UWC. Yeah, UWC the unreleased that released wrestling game.

Speaker 3 (01:21:30):
Oh, you know, it's a strong future endeavor for me.
Brass Town Ooh what.

Speaker 1 (01:21:34):
About three sixty Firepro Ooh?

Speaker 3 (01:21:37):
That was bad too, man, there's some bad ones. But
to say like a definitive like I hate this game, man,
I don't know. It's like we played those John Cena
games and stuff. Bad Girls Wrestling was horrible, Jelly Wrestling.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
John, How do you feel about Nacho Lebra?

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
Oh, it's hard to consider that a wrestling game, to
be honest.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
That's so early on in the pod.

Speaker 3 (01:22:01):
Yeah, or even Rumble Verse kind of got us back
into b.

Speaker 1 (01:22:06):
RS so yeah, Rumble Verse, Yeah, that game.

Speaker 3 (01:22:09):
That game should have been more. I'm sad that game
was gone.

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
Man. When you look at all of the games, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:22:22):
Crazy that we've played so two hundred and eighty three episodes.
I think around the holidays. A couple of years ago
we started doing re releases because we deserve to break.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
There were fewery Masters.

Speaker 3 (01:22:35):
I would say. We played around with interviews and stuff.
Two hundred and fifty games at least, and one day
we'll have that full number. But man, that's more games
than I ever thought we would ever play on.

Speaker 1 (01:22:47):
Oh my god. Yeah, Well, what's the what's the rule
that they used to say about podcasts? If you get
past the first was it first ten for six? Man?
You could you could say that like a real rotation
of episodes and stuff, and you like build into your schedule.

Speaker 3 (01:23:08):
Maybe one day.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
All right, well's next question a part two. I guess Also,
what game on the pod was the most surprising to you?
Good or bad?

Speaker 3 (01:23:27):
See, there's a lot of those.

Speaker 1 (01:23:28):
To me, I know what I was the most surprised
that you liked what Saturday Night slam Masters.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
I don't think.

Speaker 1 (01:23:37):
I don't know that was for some reason. I didn't
think that I thought you were gonna like, this doesn't
feel like a wrestling game. It's not my style, like
because at the time, you know that's early on. That's
like first ten I think, and the only other Arcade

(01:23:58):
games that we had played that were some that were
in your house? And the arcade game.

Speaker 3 (01:24:03):
Yeah, I mean I was a Mortal Kombat kid. I
appreciated it. I think any of the all Japan games
shocked me because those are fun, like the Shinnee Pons
and all that. Yeah, a lot of those were fun,
and I, for some reason, throughout a lot of the
games on the podcast, I hold a lot of nostalgia
for that game style like that reminds me like I

(01:24:25):
could vividly remember where, like sitting at my desk playing those.
I don't know why, the Ultimate Muscle like stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
Oh yeah, Ultimate Muscle series. Who knew? We fall in
love with kinikomn on this podcast? What about I mean
it's the last episode. We have to mention it at
at one point. What about Cutie Suzuki Cuties.

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
Is another one. I found the shirt the other day
and I couldn't get rid of it. It's so small,
it doesn't fit me because whatever we used that website
was so bad. I never was able to wear it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
Horrible, just horrible. Oh god, Yeah, there is that. That's
a that's a very good question. Uh. The first part
and the second part is it's it's hard to think
about how many you know to go through? I mean,
I like, we have the list in front of us
and it's still hard to to pick. Yeah, but those

(01:25:21):
are all of Will's questions. End the final Thank you
very much, Will for all of your questions. And the
final question comes from the Soupy Man, Mister Soups.

Speaker 3 (01:25:35):
He's named Soups because he is the super GMP podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
Man, the man with the GMP man.

Speaker 3 (01:25:45):
He's just Soups.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
He's just Soups. Yeah, the man with the GMP mask
on his forearm.

Speaker 3 (01:25:50):
Another guy who has literally become part of my everyday life,
one of my greatest friends.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
Fucking love you, Soups Soups. Final question and the final
question for the soft Lock is all time favorite moments
on the podcast discord stream FWF everything I think, I mean,
last word everything. I would say that everything is very

(01:26:17):
very encapsulating and very very true because gamebery our favorite
thing every year Gamebrie. It's it's the best thing that
we did.

Speaker 3 (01:26:32):
The best thing podcast, literally, the best thing. I mean,
I posted it on our Instagram the other day. The
Eddie Guerrero moment in GMP sixty four when he was.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
Eliminary funny yow uh, the Truth, the f WF training montage.

Speaker 3 (01:26:48):
Those were so good. I wish more people watch those.
I'm gonna post them again all credit.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
That was so like you said before that doing wrestling
video games is a niche of two cates. It is
people who like video games and it is people who
like wrestling. We are a niche of a niche.

Speaker 3 (01:27:08):
Everyone likes video games, but not everybody likes wrestling.

Speaker 1 (01:27:11):
Yep, and vice versa. Not everybody likes wrestling, yeah, everybody.
So we are a niche of a niche. And then
that is another layer deep. It's do you listen to
the Major Wrestling Figure podcast? Are you aware that they're
putting on a pay per view? Are you aware that

(01:27:32):
these other guys that are on their network are on
the pay per view? Do you want to watch a
funny office style joke training montage of that?

Speaker 3 (01:27:43):
Like so many.

Speaker 1 (01:27:45):
Layers deep within the already like super niche genre that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:50):
We're in, just so good. We put so much time
and effort into that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
It was great.

Speaker 3 (01:27:56):
Everything we did we put a lot of effort in.
Like I remember when we started Patreon. We announced it
during a GMP sixty four pay per view on twitch yep.
I didn't expect anybody to show and people flocked in.
I mean, I think as far as biggest regrets in
game Marks podcast history, maybe it's the Patreon.

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
I was gonna say, it's kind of a double edged sword.

Speaker 3 (01:28:18):
It was like it started during a pandemic where we
were both home, but eventually when we were not home anymore,
things had to change. It was hard to keep up
with and then we were noticing I mean, I don't
care saying it, the views were down on some of
the videos we did, like people, maybe you didn't care
about this and that, or playing Golden Eye on whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
You just wanted The rest also probably the same thing
of like we were short on time because you know,
we had to you know, everything was going back to
the way that it was, and so was everyone else.
So it's just like, hey, I don't also don't have
as much time as I used to watch all the stuff. Yeah,
And it was ever a point that I ever felt
that what we were doing wasn't like like we appreciated

(01:28:58):
the effort and the and what we put into it,
and the people that were a part of our Patreon
also said, hey, appreciate everything that you guys were doing
just you know, I don't have to. I'm working on
catching up on stuff, Like I'm already, you know, a
couple episodes behind on this. I want to go back
and watch this as well. And you know, we're not
the only thing that people are watching, so.

Speaker 3 (01:29:19):
What No, But I mean everything from being a part
of that network, getting the chance with I mean, that
was your idea, your network was your idea. You pitched
that in a slide show to the major pod and
they liked it so much that they were in with
it for a while.

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
I mean, we were on there for a while. I
wish it worked out.

Speaker 3 (01:29:39):
They still are great friends, we still love them, We
owe a lot to them, and it was a great time.
I mean everyone we came in contact was so cool
on the show. There were other podcasts we became friends with,
and I never knew, like, are.

Speaker 1 (01:29:52):
You supposed to be friends with these people?

Speaker 3 (01:29:54):
Like is their heat? Like maybe that's just the wrestling
world you come from. Everyone was super nice. We made
a lot of connections, a lot of good friends. I never,
in my wildest dreams thought that we would be able
to talk to guys like Mike Herman justin the Leaper,
like I think Woggle, Like, yeah, you became good friends
with Swoggle during all this, Like we both like now

(01:30:14):
talk to him all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:30:16):
Like remember like and we had Matt and Brian.

Speaker 3 (01:30:19):
On Matt and Brian Mark like, and we had mjf
on as a favorite for me making a T shirt
for like Christatlander. Yeah, that was our first one. Like
we just were able to. I felt bad asking people
to do stuff, So I think we could have had
more moments, Like we always wanted Brian to play Aladdin
or something with us.

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
Oh that was the running joke. I feel like at
a certain point we talked about it so much and
we talked to him about it that it just became
the joke. You're like, yea, yeah, we'll do it one day. Yeah,
we'll do it one day.

Speaker 3 (01:30:46):
I just always felt bad bothering people like justin Leaper,
I would annoy for like smackdoun verus rough facts after
the fact, and he happily would give the information and
send us voice notes and all that. You know, Hall
of Games, we inducted him, he sent us a cool
video and all that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
Hell. Think about this. We had my friend Max make
the intro song to the podcast and then within the
first what year or so, maybe a little bit after
the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:31:16):
My friend Max.

Speaker 1 (01:31:19):
So the podcast was musically booke ended by Max's hell Man.
We even had Tony Chimmel do the leading to the songs.

Speaker 3 (01:31:30):
Dave.

Speaker 1 (01:31:31):
Let me tell you that was a that was a
huge you know, and it's all you know, we are
living proof that it's.

Speaker 3 (01:31:41):
Just so you know or who you ask, you know,
it was really stupid. Remember I made like a one
year or a thousand, one thousand, ten thousand was ten thousand,
uh downloads download? Why did I think Taylor Hendrix was
in that? Because she was five dollars on cameos.

Speaker 1 (01:31:58):
Yeah, there was a lot of cameos.

Speaker 3 (01:32:01):
It's like Aaron Rourke before anybody knew who he was,
Max Caster.

Speaker 1 (01:32:05):
CPA was in it. Yeah, and then Taylor Hendrick.

Speaker 3 (01:32:09):
Why would I do that?

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
I don't know. And the stupid things. And to think
about this was where I was leading with the with
with castor doing the otro song. To think about where
everyone was when we started the show and to see
all the incredibly cool things that everyone has gone on
to do, you know, m JF and Aaron Rourke and

(01:32:33):
I mean he He wasn't officially on an episode, but
Bryce was there a couple of times that we were
doing stuff. And think about us cast.

Speaker 3 (01:32:42):
And Bear Bronson, think about our growth, think about how
many gray hairs we've grown. I have a child, I
have a house. Like I used to record in the
bedroom of an apartment with a MacBook.

Speaker 1 (01:32:53):
And a peloton in the background. It's used to it
used to like be where you're staying, used to just be.

Speaker 3 (01:33:02):
I watched something we did the other day from that era.

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
It was so cringe to watch with So I watched
something that we did from the like one of the
first couple episodes, and both of us have so many
less grades, and I was just like.

Speaker 3 (01:33:15):
Hey, just for him, baby, get them. Oh man leaving.

Speaker 1 (01:33:21):
Me in the dust here, Man, you're just leaving me
to be, uh fox by myself. I'll tell you how
to do the box.

Speaker 3 (01:33:28):
All right, I got some facts here. I want to
spitball here.

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
Hold on before we do that. Thank you very much
to everyone for the questions, not just for today's but
for all the soft locks dating back to when we
started doing Questions of the Week. Hey appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:33:41):
Yeah, soft Flocks. Questions of the Week Gaming News. We
had a lot of segments on here. I'm happy with
where I think this is the best format we've ever had,
and I'm happy with it.

Speaker 1 (01:33:52):
And I will say, and it always makes John laugh
that we have a lot of bullet notes or the
points to hit on when we intro or outro a segment.
The soft lock has never had those bullet notes. And
every time John goes, I don't know how you remember that,
he remembers it. He just doesn't. I don't know how
you do it. Now.

Speaker 3 (01:34:13):
We'll get into our little thank yous in a little bit,
but here's some facts. We have played nineteen fire Pro
Wrestling games, twenty eight WWF games, forty WWE games, eleven
WCW games, three ECW games, three AW games. We have
played about thirty three consoles. That was hard to figure out,

(01:34:35):
but we're round about in the thirties. Double Future Endeavor
seventy seven, Double Play It Forever is one hundred and
twenty positive. Okay, yeah, I have played it forever one
hundred and thirty one games and Future Endeavored one hundred
and four. You have played it forever one hundred and
forty six A Future Endeavored eighty nine that's on part
with your record reviews.

Speaker 1 (01:34:57):
Styles.

Speaker 3 (01:34:58):
I have only flipped on one one game from a
future endeavor to a play at Forever, and that's Fire
Pro Wrestling Returns. You have flipped on two, that's Shin
Nipon Pro Wrestling, Tocanrat Sudan End, Day of Reckoning.

Speaker 1 (01:35:11):
Day of Reckonings. Yeah, yeah, I needed to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:35:14):
You future endeavor that one early. We have remastered Day
of Reckoning, Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, Saturday Night Slam Masters,
WCWNW World Tour, and WWF in Your House and Wrestling
the Arcade Game. We have had twenty six guests, with
the first being Chris Statlander and the last being the
Elder Sport Yeah joining us for what a dropoff, What

(01:35:35):
a big dropoff. We have had five video game History
of episodes which were Staying Brett, the Legion of Doom,
The Ultimate Warrior, and The Undertaker. We have had Best
and Worst of the Steel Cage, Backstage Ladder Match, Mini Games, Elimination, Chambers,
Hell in a Cell, and the Evolution of the RKO.
Our very first episode was WCWNWO World Tour and our

(01:35:58):
very lastf No Mercy.

Speaker 1 (01:36:02):
I remember Pitching World tour being the first game, and
you're being like, we wouldn't have it any other way.
We sure we should start with that one. I was like,
the only other option is that we start with No Mercy.
And that's where the it was. Before we even recorded
the first episode, how we came out swinging like that,
John already laid out either the last episode or the

(01:36:24):
episode that we never do is no Mercy.

Speaker 3 (01:36:27):
We didn't know how far this would go. We didn't
know how far we would take it. There were some
times we wanted to probably not do this anymore, but
we always hung on. I mean, doing this weekly. It hurt,
especially during the pandemic. We were recording GMP sixty four
three times a week. We would record the gameplay, then
we record the commentary I think, and then there would
be the editing then all so it would.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
Be we would record the matches, then I would have
to edit the matches, dropping the music and the crowd
noises and call all that up, make that file. Then
you and I would have to get together again to
do the comment Harry it was cut up and mix
that up again, then render all that out, then upload
it and then because that wasn't enough, then we had

(01:37:08):
a Patreon version of Game Over that you edited because
we each needed to be doing a show. But I
look at it this way, all of that set us
up for the smooth run that we had for GMP
twenty four and now everything that you're doing with Clash
Tube Wrestling it is. It has been a we had fun, right,

(01:37:33):
a learning experience, both in like the actual education of like,
hey didn't really do a ton of video editing, and
now both of us have made YouTube shows of you know,
varying content.

Speaker 3 (01:37:48):
And through this podcast indirectly, I was able to edit
Cody Rhodes podcast for him. Steph de Lander, I have
another one coming up. There's been others here and there
in the mix, Like that's all thanks to this when
you and Schwoggle didn't know each other from a hole
in a wall before this.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
Oh he met at the first FWF.

Speaker 3 (01:38:09):
To help him with his Twitch channel, right.

Speaker 1 (01:38:11):
And and he literally came up to me and said,
someone told me that you're the twitch guy. And I went,
I mean, I'm I'm not the twitch guy, but do
you need help with Twitch? He's like, yeah, I'm trying
to set that up. And that was it. I remember
his Twitch channel and then a couple of like a
couple of months later.

Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
Matt's reaction though, when he picked you to be his
co host, He's like, you can have anyone.

Speaker 1 (01:38:35):
You picked George Fees. That was my reaction. I was like,
why would you like? I am like pick Mark, like
Mark is at least in wrestling and a wrestler. And
then when you see how far like you know what
Mark is doing now like clearly, well I look at

(01:38:56):
it this way. The focus was supposed to be on
Schwagle in his career and all that stuff, So he
probably did it in the sense of if I do
it with you know, someone like a Matt or a Brian,
it becomes more about like our time on the road
and like their memories of the situation. And this was
supposed to be like a podcast format of Swaggle's career.

Speaker 3 (01:39:21):
Yeah, you gained a good friend out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:24):
Hell, yes, so did you. Now you're doing all the
ACW stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:39:28):
Yeah, that's true. Hey, we're always going to be in
our universe here. The GMP universe is gonna live on,
Like we said, the catalog is going nowhere. The only
thing that's changing is we won't be here weekly. If
you want to go back, listen to a game, it's
gonna be there. It's gonna be on YouTube or whatever
platform you listen to. That's not going anywhere. I was

(01:39:49):
gonna say something else, and now I forget. Oh, the
only thing changing the website's going away because I don't
want to pay for it anymore. Yeah, that's up in August.

Speaker 1 (01:39:55):
Makes sense. And at a certain point the change dot
Shop store is all.

Speaker 3 (01:40:02):
I was gonna say. Next that one will be The
store is still going to exist, it just won't have
the fancy U r L. So it'll still be there.

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
We'll post, we'll pin a a post on x about
all the permanent links.

Speaker 3 (01:40:16):
Pro wrestling t's will still be there. The discord will
still be there. Just ask us and we will let
you in.

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
Yeah, and then what else I'm trying to think is
there any I mean, the socials will still be there.

Speaker 3 (01:40:28):
Just probably won't see a post from them unless I'm
like promoting my own stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:40:32):
I was just saying, the post will be a lot
of Clash to Wrestling content repost about when Clash is
going live, Which let's just get this out of the
way now here we go go and do it. YouTube
dot Com Slash Johnny Clash, Twitch dot tv slash Johnny
F and Clash. That's Johnny F and the letters.

Speaker 3 (01:40:52):
F N like Flash but also like ec W.

Speaker 1 (01:40:54):
There you go, It's it's the meeting of both worlds.

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
I rated a guy the other day and he said, oh,
thanks for the raid john john Fortnite cash or something.
I was like, Okay, what we're gonna X out of
this one?

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
You knew that was that that could be old old
Johnny Fortnite yep. And then what else did I did?
I miss the plug? I did your YouTube, I did
your Twitter.

Speaker 3 (01:41:18):
Follow everyone you've ever seen on this show, our friends,
Wrestlers Games. Just you know what most importantly, keep fucking
playing wrestling games. If you have to bitch about two K,
go bitch about two K. If you want to wait
for the wrestling code, go wait for the wrestling. If you
still play a w fight forever, I applaud you keep
playing a w fight forever. Just keep playing wrestling games,

(01:41:40):
and you know through that will always be here because
if you want to, if you pick up a game
that you've never played before, chances are there's an.

Speaker 1 (01:41:46):
Episode on it.

Speaker 3 (01:41:47):
You can go check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:41:49):
Yeah, man, it's you think.

Speaker 3 (01:41:51):
Pro Wrestling X will ever like actually come out or
did it actually come out?

Speaker 1 (01:41:55):
I don't remember. There's the it's like the running there's
like the working version that they just keep patching and updating.

Speaker 3 (01:42:03):
Oh good for them.

Speaker 1 (01:42:04):
That's like the whole the whole platform is that they
just do like every quarter or something, there was like
a patch or something that comes out for them. Yeah, man,
this is hard. I don't I don't. I don't want
to end right and I don't want to just end it.

Speaker 3 (01:42:21):
Well, let's just say this. You're here, if you're listening
to this right now, you've probably been here before. We
cannot thank you enough for almost six years. We are
a month away from six years at this point, which
is crazy. We've been doing this for too long. We
fucking love you. You're all great. You've taken your time
out to listen to us talk about probably a dumb

(01:42:43):
fire pro wrestling game that you're never going to play
or can't have access to play. And we can't thank
you enough for just everything throughout the years, For every
single listener Patreon, every single person who's interact there's a
lot of people who interact with us on social media
that I've never seen in a discord or anything. Thank
you to you guys, we know you're there. Thank you
to all of our friends, our guests, just everybody. Yeah,

(01:43:06):
there is shedding a tear right now.

Speaker 1 (01:43:08):
It's you know it. Uh. I don't want to repeat
everything that you just said. And you did such a
good job at like summing everything up. Yeah, really, like
that's that's the number one thing is just thank you.
Thank you for almost six years for supporting podcasts. Listening,

(01:43:28):
if you've listened to every episode, if you've only listened
to a couple of episodes, if this is the first
time that you're listening to this because you saw that
it was about no Mercy. We got a whole catalog
of games. We hope you go and check out, whether
you left a review, or you made a comment on
a post that we did or anything like that. Thank

(01:43:51):
you for the support, whether you've donated, yeah, a dollar
to the Saint Jude's or you've donated, you know, hundreds
of dollars, Thank you very much for your support. Know
that from the beginning, this podcast was a labor of
love from two lifelong wrestling fans and two guys who

(01:44:15):
started this podcast not as friends, but are ending it
as really really good friends. I don't want to take
t K spot as best friend. We're gonna go get
a beer. I and of course I gotta thank you
for doing this with me.

Speaker 3 (01:44:34):
Dude, you put up with so much of my over
perfectionist is whatever the hell you want to call it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
No, I think that's why this works. I think we
both kind of have that same level of expectation of
the kind of product that we wanted to put out.
It's why I bought episodes in video. We we we
decided from the beginning that you know, and you touched
on it when you said that we went back and
re recorded episodes. We have always been on the same

(01:45:02):
page in that like, yes, we have annoyed each other
like that. That is probably the better word for when
we were talking about whether or not we had fights.
I don't think we ever had a fight. I know
that we annoyed each other a lot because something would
be done and then I'd be like, Hey, I listen
to this and I really like this part. Can we
can we edit that out? Or there you would be like, hey,

(01:45:23):
there's this thing that's in this episode of whatever. For
the playthrough and I that is, like, my controller clearly
wasn't working. Can we cut that out? And I'm like yeah, sure,
Like I fumbled the word or I got tongued down.
Controller issues, controller issues, there were latency issues, like and
I gotta say that I think that is.

Speaker 3 (01:45:43):
Let me tell you something. Oh boy, this man has
never opened an emulator, and how did it work on
the first triadh whoa boy?

Speaker 1 (01:45:54):
Yeah, but that's not new, like anyone who's listened to
the podcast or has seen a live stream that we've done.

Speaker 3 (01:46:03):
All right, George, I'll meet ye seven thirty for the podcast.
All right, it's a thirty. Can we play the game now?

Speaker 1 (01:46:08):
Yeah? There were there were some, and the worst is
when it was emulators that like had to work. Like
if we played two PlayStation games back in row, and
like week one, emulator work perfectly, Week two, something happen
with work every time? That sucks? How that happen? Everything? Ah?

(01:46:30):
All right, well here we go.

Speaker 3 (01:46:32):
Do the spiel even if it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (01:46:35):
YouTube dot com slash game Marks podcast for every playthrough
of every episode that we have done, the exception of
I think a half, very very few. We also have
GMP twenty four GMP sixty four all of the content
that we have made throughout the years as of now,

(01:46:56):
Pod Exchange dot Shop for all of the exclusive merchandise
for this show and going Postle Pro Wrestling Teas dot Com,
Slash Game Marx Pod for our shirt designs at game
Marx Pod on all forms of social media, and if
you wouldn't mind liking, commenting, subscribing, and ringing that notification bell.

Speaker 3 (01:47:23):
That was one of the best bells I've ever rung.

Speaker 1 (01:47:25):
That was christ That was really good.

Speaker 3 (01:47:27):
I didn't have a nice rever, but you know, meat
of it was good.

Speaker 1 (01:47:31):
We did it. John five, almost five and a half,
almost six years of the podcast, we finally played No
Mercy officially and there was only one thing left to do, sir,
whenever you're ready, do that thing.

Speaker 3 (01:47:45):
Game over. I'm just kidding you think I would do
that to you.

Speaker 1 (01:47:52):
Gameover Marx.

Speaker 2 (01:47:59):
Game Marks Podcast, put them on the radar, play a
rare game. Second Saturday, No Game Shark. Johnny and George
work hard and they play hard future endeavored games and
put them in the graveyard from the deep dive to
the clash in the face. I cannot give more ask
questions of the week, follow one Twitch There's nothing that

(01:48:20):
they won't play. Game Marks podcast every single Monday,

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