Flat Polygons and Virtual Reality

Fred and Mike talk about NieR Automata, Beat Saber, Age of Empires II Definitive Edition, Quake 3 Arena VR, Death Stranding 2, the buckwild prices of old video games, and answer some questions.

Episode Transcript

(00:11):
Hello, Welcome to Level Select,a show about games in game development.
I'm your host Fred Wood, andI'm your host Mike Devir Michael. How
are you doing? I'm doing allright. Um. This week has been
uneventful of not in a like notgood things and you know, not being
busy capacity, but just like nomajor events, you know. I've just

(00:34):
kind of been focusing on some hobbystuff, painting miniatures, focusing on some
tabletop games, taking some time awayfrom video games, which is going to
be great because I also have alot to say about video games, of
course, but yeah, I'm justkind of I like a lot of tabletop
stuff, So I've just been doinga lot with that and wrapping up some
projects and also taking care of abacklog of miniatures that I have that is

(01:00):
is are these are these ones youpaint? Yeah? Yeah, Yeah,
there ones I paint. I doa lot of like custom building and kid
bashing with them, which is whyit takes me so long to get through
them, and which is why there'slike nearly a thousand I have to make.
Yeah, I I would give youcrap, but I've got a large
collection of Gunham model kits that Ihaven't put together either, So what's what's

(01:23):
your gun? Tom backlog looking liketall Yeah, that's all we talking like
small child, small child, smallchild, not like person, but small
child. I guess small child thisperson when you think about it. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, children are people. Children do become people over time.
Yeah. Yeah, it's been ait's been a week. It's been

(01:44):
kind of a hell week. Thisweek kind of sucked farts out of a
butt for me. Why why's thatmy air conditioner broke on? It was
like Wednesday morning, No, itwas Thursday, and Thursday when I woke
up, I realized, huh,it's kind of warm in the sass.
And then I got around and Iwas like, oh, our central air
stopped working. And so I waslike, well, this has happened before,

(02:07):
Like I did the it thing ofjust like waited a while, turn
it off, and then like alittle later turn it back on again.
It's like, oh, yeah,it'll work. Did not work. So
it was about like three in theafternoon. And in Texas right now,
we've been hitting or in San Antoniospecifically, we've been hitting one hundred and
one and one hundred and two degreesevery day, so it just it just

(02:29):
got real rough, real fast.Yeah, and thankfully a guy came on
Friday, So it was like thirtysix hours of bad heat and I had
to I couldn't work because I couldn'thave my computer screen on or my computer
next to me because it would justgenerate too much heat. So I just
was kind of like staring into afan while sitting on my couch wearing a

(02:53):
tank top and boxers. And thatwas it just like miserable because I didn't
know what time the pair of personwas going to come. But then the
nice thing was that when he gothere, he popped into the attic,
which is something I still haven't reallydone because of the nightmare that it is
to get up there. Yeah.It's it's like a small hole at the

(03:14):
in the ceiling of the closet thatis very narrow, so I had to
have a special ladder to get upthere. Oh. So he guys out
there and I wait for about fiveminutes and the air kicks back on.
I'm like, all right, cool, great, and he's like, yep,
the circuit popped. I was like, oh jeez, he like tossed

(03:36):
me the fuse that was there.I was like, oh wow. He's
like yeah, so that's the problem. This time, I was like,
what do you mean. He's like, oh, it's real bad. Oh
no, So I'm gonna have toget a new system, which is gonna
be and in order to an amountof money, and I'm just gonna not

(03:57):
think about it too much right now. But part of me also is like,
you know, the housing market ismessed up right now, sure,
and me investing ten to twenty tothirty thousand dollars into this house isn't actually
going to grow value over what itis right now. So what if I
just sold my house and moved toany other country on the planet. Where

(04:19):
would you move? I mean,Japan would be nice. But I know,
I mean, I'm not actually goingto do this, but I don't
know. I see a lot ofboxes in the background of this video that
we're sure I don't want to getinto it. Yeah, it's just it's
not feasible. Yeah so that sucked, But otherwise, like things are fine.
I got some time to play ThirteenSentinels on my couch because that didn't

(04:44):
generate too much heat. But yeah, I just, uh, it sucked.
It was a bad week because oftwo very bad days. Yeah,
yeah, it sounds like it.I'm sorry that happened. It's fine,
these things they happen. That's whywe're recording on Sunday instead of Friday.
Hopefully this goes up on time.We'll see if it doesn't. You know,
we're sorry about that. I guessthat's a bad show for the third
episode of a new podcast. Butyou know, I mean your you know,

(05:08):
life happens. Dances are those areout of your control? Right,
Yeah, of course people will understand, right. Yeah. So other than
that, the week was fun,I think. So we're gonna get into
the games that we did play whilewe both had air conditioning, and we'll
do that right after this break.All right, So what games have you
been playing this week? Mike.I've been playing playing a couple of stuff

(05:30):
in between you know, work andother things that I've been working on.
One of them was I've been havinga hankering to go back to this game
for a while actually, and Ifinally kind of felt like I had the
time and that the time was right. And also a couple of friends of
mine had never played it, soI was like, oh cool, I
can like stream it for them onlike discord. So I've been replaying near
Automata or near Automata or you know, however you choose to pronounce it.

(05:54):
That's what I've been playing. That'sawesome. I I adore that game,
and it's been so long that Ikind of almost don't remember the parts of
it that I love so much,which is exciting. Yeah, no,
same. I played it like ayear after it came out for the first
time, just because it was oneof those games that I wanted to sit

(06:15):
down, soak in and really takemy time with. And then I haven't
touched it or even you know,I've thought about it since, but I
haven't really gone back to it atall since then. And now it seemed
like a good time, so,you know, I played through it.
I streamed most of it for friendsand you know, just kind of letting
them experience it because for a lotof them, they might not have ever

(06:38):
gotten the chance, you know,just gotten around to playing it just because
of how busy their lives are.So that was really nice. And man,
that game still holds up. Yeah, like just as good as I
remember better in some aspects. Thatgame is just incredible from from start to
finish. And now with like allthe DLC features added in and some of

(06:59):
the other their stuff that they didfor the PC version, because the first
time I played through was on PSfour. Yeah, it is just a
complete package of a game that justfrom a design perspective, the amount of
like stuff that is just in there, Like it's baffling that the whole thing
works, And it seems like itmust have been a nightmare to program in

(07:21):
QA because there's just so many likeinterlocking features and systems and subsystems and like
there's a player what's sort of lookingfor a player available, debug menu and
other things, you know, andit's just like there's so much video game
in the video game on top ofall the endings, all the different playable

(07:45):
routes, the three playable characters,you know, all the items and upgrades
and stuff that you can do.It is such just a masterpiece. And
then all of the songs, whichare all the best song in the game.
Yeah, like every song in thatsoft game just rules. Yeah.
Yeah, Yeah, it is sucha phenomenal game on top of being like

(08:07):
a deep for me anyways, beinga deeply emotional and moving experience. You
know, there are not a lotof games that I've played that have made
me cry on that list is likeZeno Gear's Shadow of the Colossus, the
original Nearor, and then this gameI think might eclipse all of them,

(08:30):
aside from Shadow of the Colossus.Yeah. The the emotional notes in this
game are incredibly powerful, yeah,and incredibly incredibly hard hitting. It is
a game that kind of, likeall of your Kotaro's games, to varying
degrees of efficiency, are not afraidto tackle difficult subjects and not just difficult

(08:54):
and like oh it's edgy, butlike you know, stuff that's just like
hard to talk about, Like howdo you talk about like the ruggles of
the human experience, Like that's kindof a hard thing to talk about,
and like, you know, yousee game developers constic, Yeah, our
game's about the struggles of the humanexperience. Now go John machine gun man,
Yeah, and defeat the batties,you know, and that kind of

(09:18):
stuff. So it's it's one ofthose games that manages to sort of thread
the needle on that in a wayI think is very elegant at some points,
purposefully irreverent at others, and justultimately incredibly charming and bleedingly sincere.

(09:39):
Yeah. And as it's probably alreadythe trend three episodes in if a game
is ambitious but a little jankie orjust really sincere and what it's trying to
do, you know, just takemy whole heart? Why don't chill?
Yeah, so you mentioned Yokatara,but like I don't think you mentioned that,
like Platinum was on this one,yes, yeah, yeah, oh
yeah. The gameplay was mostly handledby Platinum Games, which is like,

(10:03):
you know, if you're on theInternet or Twitter in any meaningful capacity,
you've seen the Metal Gear Rising revengeancememes, and it's those guys they made
Bonetta. They were formed out ofpeople from Clover Studio and Capcom who made
such amazing games as you know,Okami and Godhand and Beautiful Joe. Before

(10:24):
they were Clover Studio, you know, the's a bunch of those guys worked
on things like Resident Evil and DevilMay Cry, you know. So it's
like there is a lineage to whatthose guys did and then the company they
founded, and then the people thatthey are now you know, managing and
I'm assuming probably you know, workingalongside and helping build up to take over

(10:48):
when they're you know, old andgray and out of touch. Yeah,
yeah, and the game just handlesbeautifully while still being very inviting for new
players. You know, obviously ifyou play a game like Bayonetta, you
play a game like Metal Gear RisingRevengeance, or you know, if you
even play like even though these guysaren't involved, like the more the latter

(11:11):
three double mcry games, they're hard. Like they're hard games, they're punishing.
They require a lot of precision gameplay, precision knowledge of what to do,
and you're doing a lot of calculations, I guess would be the right

(11:31):
word, but you're doing like alot of calculations on what you're supposed to
be doing, not even just minuteto minute, but second to second.
You know, like you're dealing withthis one enemy, but this other guy's
coming up behind, so you've gotto figure out which one on your vast
arsenal of moves is going to bethe right choice. Near Automata kind of
strips a lot of that away,and you know, keeps the flash but

(11:52):
doesn't necessarily grind you and dust inthe early parts of the game, right
for not knowing that game gets hardon its own terms later on, Right,
And it does get hard on itsown terms, but it gets hard
on its own terms while being like, hey, you've had a lot of
time to get used to the factthat, like this is how combat works

(12:13):
and how your dodge is so generous. Yeah, it is so giving.
It's like a tender It's like atender caress from a blanket, just out
of the dryer. And then youhave all these additional things that you can
build into, Like you know,every time you hit an enemy, you
get health back. Every time youkill an enemy, you get health.

(12:35):
You get tons of health back whenyou use healing items, a heal firm
ork. Yeah, you're doing likebuild crafting on top of it being a
character action game, right, whichI think is sort of one of the
coolest things ever, honestly. Soin the games, you're playing as androids,
and as these androids, you havewhat are cold chip sets, and

(12:56):
you have three sets of chipsets thatyou can build using a mishmash of varying
abilities and systems and support systems thatyou can utilize to basically create your own
play style. So for me,my base chip set is high damage,
high speed, high dodge, andall healing. I want to just be

(13:20):
in I want to be fighting.I want to be hitting, you know,
once the violent ballet starts, Idon't want it to end until I
am the only dancer on stage.That's such an eloquent way of putting it.
Yeah, but you might want somethingdifferent, right, You might want
to be playing a little bit moresafe, a little bit more defensively,
so you might spec in a lotmore into your dodging into your like you

(13:45):
know, if you don't take damagefor a couple of seconds, you start
healing automatically and other things like that, to mix and match and build out
how you are going about things andhow you're playing through these various these various
systems. And it's also since youhave three chip sets, you also three
playable characters, you can have setsup that are you know, tweaked and

(14:09):
optimized for each one. And it'sjust the fact that it all works is
insane and awesome and I love itso much. They're not all balanced,
but like they don't have to beright right, And it's like that's the
thing that you had mentioneds, Likethe game gets difficult on its own terms,
and it does. It gets veryhard at certain points, you know,

(14:31):
where it's like an enemy might clipyou for sixty percent, but that
becomes a lot more easy to managewhen your support machine gun character is blasting
away and you're just watching your healthbar refill yeah, real quick alongside every
one of your attacks. You canafford to take that hit, just so
long as you keep playing intelligently.God, it's a good game. It's

(14:54):
a really good game. If youhaven't checked it out, please do so.
I would like to talk about themusic for a second. Like you
you mentioned, it's very good,but it's not only just like very good.
It's incredibly well implemented. So likeeverything in the game like operates on
a compatible bpm like beats per minute, So the game very smoothly and very

(15:16):
cleanly and very smartly transitions between differentversions of songs or moving from one song
to the next just like seamlessly.There's a boss battle pretty early on in
the game where the things that thecharacters are saying quickly become part of the
music, and it becomes the likerhythm of this music. It's just it's

(15:41):
a phenomenal game. It is unfortunatelylike just about to leave game pass.
But the good news is it's cheapas heck. It's usually like ten to
twenty bucks online. So yeah,yeah, and it goes it goes on
sale pretty frequently when it's not,you know, on it's cheaper price points.
I'm not I'm going to try torefrain using this word often on this

(16:02):
podcast because I think it gets thrownaround a lot into hyperbole all the time.
But like, I don't think itis a big stretch to say that
the game is a masterpiece. Iwould agree. It has some very rough
edges that are very visible. Themost of the world looks like a PlayStation

(16:22):
two game. Yeah, there's someThere's some points in one of the zones
where I like looked up into theleft and I was like counting the polygons.
Yeah, tild, And I waslike, oh no, I don't
know that I'm supposed to see thatthis clearly it's nice though the PC version
as put out like some higher resolutiontexture packs. Yeah, that make those
flat surfaces look a little bit nicer. No, I was on my recent

(16:44):
playthrough, I was playing the gamein four K. That's awesome. Yeah,
it was great. What about you? What have you been playing?
I have been playing an also oldgame. I think it came out the
same year Beat Saber. Oh didDidier come out in twenty eighteen or twenty
nineteen seventeen, I believe, allright, well, I'll just be wrong
then. So Beat Saber released inMay in twenty eighteen for PC, is

(17:08):
exclusively for VR. It was oneof the first VR games that I played
that I quickly was like, hey, guys, guys, it's a VR
game. Like, it's an actualVR game. It's not like one of
the games that we've just made workin VR. This was developed for the
concept of a virtual reality platform.That said, as I described the game,

(17:30):
it sounds pretty basic, which isyou have two legally distinct lightsabers that
are red and blue, and blocksfly at you, and you cut the
blocks to the pattern that is onthe block to the beat of the music.
Yeah, I know, but butin actuality, when actually playing it,

(17:52):
it gives you some pretty incredible vibes. The soundtrack. Okay, so
the game released in twenty eighteen,The soundtrack was only ten levels, and
it was thirty dollars, and thatwas a pretty bad value proposition. I
put on the headset and played everysingle level from start to finish in the
first like hour and a half,I think, and I was like,

(18:15):
oh, that was really good.I wish there was more and so you
can like play it again on likeharder difficulties for each track. And like
for a while I was playing thatgame like it was going to the gym,
because it is a very physically intensegame. You are sure moving around,
jumping, dodging, I guess notjumping necessarily, but like no,

(18:37):
but in the same way that like, you know a lot of people,
especially people around our age, youknow, if they had whether they had
it at home or at their localarcade, were playing like dance Dance Revolutions.
So this is this is dance DanceRevolution but for your arms. Yeah,
it really is. And so thething is that they've continued to support
this game. I Beat Games gotbought by Facebook, which is now Meta,

(19:02):
and they've continued to put out DLCfor the game, which is paid
DLC. They've got a lot oflike track packs that are not music that
I really would want for this kindof game, such as Fallout Boy Green
Day. But then they also haveLincoln Park in Lady Gaga, which are
also a pop but start to getinto that kind of weird beat style music.

(19:26):
Yeah, yeah, that is reallyengaging and every DLC pack that they've
put out, like they do thedifferent versions, like the different difficulties for
every single song, so it's abit like accessible to all players. They've
added new features to the game,so now there's a version of the game
where instead of just like looking straightforward and hitting blocks that are coming at

(19:48):
you, the blocks come at youfrom all three hundred and sixty degrees,
so you're turning around as you're playingthe game. Okay, I don't think
I knew that. Yeah, Andthey've added a bunch of like new modes
for the game or new kinds ofblocks. You know, in DDR you've
got the hold pattern, so it'slike you're just supposed to stay on that
panel. So in this you're supposedto slice the block and continue going with

(20:12):
the line that comes off of thatblock until you slice the next one.
So it'll be a nice little trailpattern shades of DJ Hero. It's very
exactly DJ Hero. It looks almostexactly the same. I was kind of
doing the joke, but yeah,no, no, no, its great
though. I'm glad, yeah,yeah, because DJ Hero was very underrated.

(20:34):
Um, not only did they keepadding features and DLC tracks, they
also added a bunch more music,So now the game has forty three tracks
when you buy it. There's alsoa lot of like user generated content too,
right, that's something I'll get to. I'm going to get to that.
Last. I did want to shoutout the Living Tombstone, who did

(20:55):
one of the tracks for the Volumefive soundtrack in Beat Sabers. So yeah,
it was very exciting to play myfriends music in this game. So
yeah, that's aweso. Yeah,so user generated content. Pretty early on
people thought ten tracks is not enough. It'd be great if I could play
other music in this and we had. There was another VR game called Audio

(21:18):
Shield, which would automatically generate abeat map based on the rough BPM of
what you're playing, and when itworked it felt really cool, but usually
it didn't work very well. Thisgame doesn't work with that. You need
very specifically choreographed patterns, and sothe mapping community for this has been really

(21:41):
involved, to the point that IBeat Games eventually put out a level editor
for the game to make it's thetools that they used to make their tracks.
They also let the community do it, and that is cool for PCVR,
but the right way to play thatgame in my opinion is on the

(22:04):
occhios Quest or the Meta Quest now, which is a completely standalone wireless VR
headset so you don't have to soyou could just like be in a room,
throw on a headset and play thisvery active game without any cables.
That version does not support custom tracks, oh no, so and when it

(22:26):
launched with only like sixteen tracks onthe KOs Quest, that was a pretty
frustrating thing. Like going from thePC version with the thousands upon thousands of
custom maps that everybody had made,and then moving over to to the occuous
Quest has been like I was depressing. Yeah, that's a rough switch.
Yeah, thankfully moters have come inand they have just hacked the hell out

(22:51):
of the chos Quest. The processfor getting it going is a little ridiculous
though, Like you have to registeras a developer within Oculus or Meta,
you have to switch your headset overto developer mode, you have to download
separate software that uninstalls and repatches andthen reinstalls your version of Beat Saber.

(23:15):
But I did all of this againthis week and now the process is fairly
straightforward. You still have to doall that stuff, which is obnoxious,
but once it's moded, They've builtin a like custom song browser in the
headset, so you can just searchfor music or browse the latest songs that
people have made and just download themfrom the menus in the game. Oh

(23:37):
that's really cool. It's freaking phenomenal, man Like. Oh yeah, yeah,
that's red. Also, people havegotten so much better at making these
levels now, and they just releaseda new level editor tool this week,
I think like three days ago,which I downloaded today. And what I've
been messing around with today is Imade a custom Beat Saber level to the

(24:02):
music for our theme song. Whoa, that's neat with like custom light shows
stuff and everything. It's awesome.So I'm gonna try to figure out the
best way to release that. Shouldprobably check with Toby to make sure I
can. But yeah, it's it'scool as hell. That's really neat.
I love Beat Saber and I havekind of stepped away from it for a

(24:26):
while just because I wasn't doing alot of VR. But who boy,
I'm feeling like it's back. Stillplaying the same game since twenty eighteen,
but you know VR is here.Yeah, VR finally made it. VR
finally made it again, I guessyeah, yeah, speaking of playing old
games. Yeah, I mentioned I'vebeen playing a couple games. How familiar

(24:48):
are you with the game Age ofVampires Too? We have played it together?
Yeah, I am not good atthat game, but I have.
I've played it since it came outhere in the How familiar are you with
the Age of Empires too? Definitiveedition? Is that different than Age of
Empires to h D? Yes,okay, I am not at all familiar

(25:10):
with the definitive edition. All right, so the definitive edition was what it
says on the tin. A definitiveversion of Age of Empires two released in
twenty nineteen. Because that game refusesto give up the ghost. It has
an iron grip on the real timestrategy. Didn't we get a new Age
of Empires two years ago? We'lltalk about Age of Empires for in this

(25:33):
conversation. Sorry, it isn't Itis fine. It is not what I
want. It is fine. That'sit. We talked about it. Okay,
this game for me anyways, ithas an iron grip on the crown
of RTS is that it refuses tolet go. And apparently the developers think
the same thing because they keep releasingnew DLC for it. Yeah, and

(25:56):
like the DLC isn't just like oha matte pack, it's like new armies
with new tech trees and stuff like. Age of Empires is a game that,
if you look up its players rightnow, has a healthy community,
possibly even a growing one. Imean you can find like multiplayer games,
like match made multiplayer games, prettyeasily huge tournaments for it, apparently,

(26:18):
which I had no. I thoughtlike it was just people sort of playing
nostalgically with their friends, and likethe way that people still play like you
know, Halo games and still aredoing like that kind of stuff. You
know, it's like it's a goodgame, but it's mostly just for people
that are just like I want torelieve this relieve this memory, or I
want to share this memory with afriend, right, Yeah, but no,

(26:38):
it's like this game is just goingand going, and it seems to
be eternal. Yeah, and it'sneat. I'm not going to get into
the particulars of Age of Empires.It is a it's a you know,
base building, army building, sortof quick advancement through the ages from like

(27:00):
the Dark Ages through sort of likewhatever your society's renaissance would be. Um,
it's very fun, It's very good. I kind of just like pull
it up to play every so oftenwhen I don't have anything else to do,
but I want to be doing somethingwith my hands, which means I
usually have something else I need tobe doing and I just don't want to.
Yeah, that's usually what the caseis. But that game, honestly,

(27:25):
fred I would say check it out. It goes on sale pretty frequently.
I mean it's also on game Pass, so oh yeah, then you
just do that. I just nevergot around to it, but yeah,
no, I definitely should. Andthey have they have a feature, and
I'm going to talk about Agi Vampiresfour in this because I'm gonna celebrate what
it does in Agi Vampires too.You can zoom in real close, and

(27:45):
you can zoom in real far zoomout rather real far. Oh yeah,
and my chief complaint with Age ofVampires four is that I cannot zoom out
far enough. That game puts meway too close. I was like,
I like my strategy games, likenot Empire Building, you know, CIV

(28:07):
styles zoomed out, but I liketo kind of get more of a macro
view of what's going on and thenkind of have that dynamic control and I
will say that is a direct resultof being spoiled by the Age of Empires
too definitive addition, Yeah, thatgame is great. That's that's really all
I have to say about it.If you want to play sometime, I

(28:30):
would love to. And I guessto any of our listeners, if you
want to see me be bad,don't ask me to play, because I'm
not actually good. It's just ajust one of them relax and games for
me. Yeah. I did playone other game that is worth talking about,
and it was released a couple ofmonths after Age of Empires too.
Oh what game? And I sinceI had bared it up my VR headset

(28:56):
and was interested in playing some games, I remembered that somebody, I think
his name is doctor Beef, I'mnot sure about that, did a full
VR remake of Quake three Arena.Oh, and it's the whole game with
motion tracked aiming and everything. It'sit's Quake. It's Quake three Arena.

(29:18):
Yeah, which was real cool.Let me tell you that that is a
game that is a twitch shooter.And if you take a mouse out of
my hand and then instead put thegun in my hand, it becomes a
very different video game. For one, I can aim a lot better,
but also people are still moving aroundvery quickly. Do you remember the arcade
game Police nine one one? No, it was like the one where you

(29:41):
had to like do the It hadlike the kind of like lame motion tracking
and you have the light gun andso you could like dodge bullets around.
Sure, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, is there is there like
any of that in the game.Well, so no, because it's I
wasn't just like playing single player maps. I was jumping into online server and
playing with some other VR people,but also just people who are still playing

(30:03):
Quake three right right. The firstmap that I booted up was Q three
DM seventeen, which is called theLongest Yard. It is the map that
if you've ever played Quake three,you're you know, you probably know this
map. It was in the demofor the game during Q three test.
It's the one with the giant bouncypads that send you flying all over the

(30:25):
place. Right, that was maybethe wrong place to start in VR,
sure, especially if you have likemotion sickness or anything like that. Yeah.
I do not normally get sick fromgame from VR games, but oh
boy, I felt my stomach,leave my body for a second while when
getting on the pad to the MegaHealth because it's like, this is not

(30:48):
a slow game, Like it's not, but if everybody's playing it in VR,
then the game ends up kind ofslowing itself down by necessity. Sure.
I was just nailed dudes at thethe railgun though, because the railgun
is just a hit scan weapon,so boom oh yeah, just given everybody.
Yeah, it was right playing playinggames that have had full VR remakes

(31:14):
of original games. So like Quickone, Quick two, and Quick three
all are on their half life onehas a full VR remake of it as
well. Uh, these are reallycool ways to play these games that that
I've known forever, and I imaginethere are PC mods for each of these
as well, but like there's anactive community of people that are doing full

(31:37):
recompilations for the Oculus Quest. Soyou're you're running on a fairly low power
Android phone that is, you know, also a VR headset, so as
long as it can run these games, it runs it well. And it's
just it's kind of an amazing wayto play these old games. Yeah,
no, that's really cool. It'sI've said this said this in private a

(32:01):
bunch. I've always been pretty harshon VR because I feel like it never
quite had the the killer apps thatit needed to to make it viable.
So the thing is now it hasthose killer apps, but they haven't released
more killer apps. It's been BeatSaber, it's been half li f Alex.

(32:22):
I don't think I have any othergames. Um, what I was
gonna say, and it's defense,was that the DIY community that has grown
out of VR, I think isfascinating and I think it is very innovative.
Like you know, it's it's youdo get releases on platforms like Itch

(32:42):
and on Steam from developers and stufflike that of you know, varying quality,
but the fact that people are outthere and doing it, the fact
that the technology is available to doit, you know, and that people
are taking those risks and making thosegames, you know, it's like,
yeah, VR may ever become themain thing when it comes to video games,
right, Like we might always beclacking buttons and twist and sticks,

(33:07):
you know, and that sort ofstuff. But I like the world where
people are encouraged to experiment and totinker around and to you know, set
up turn the gears and twist theknobs and see what they make out of
it, even if it's you know, taking a game that's ancient and twenty
years old and almost old enough tobe able to rent a car and making

(33:30):
it a VR game, because thatcompletely, like you were talking about,
completely changes the context of how youeven interface and interact with that game.
Yeah, gosh, yeah, Iwas thinking, like, there are no
number, there's like no small numberof games that could be improved or changed
by adapting them to VR. Iwas thinking of Age of Empires. It

(33:52):
wouldn't work because their two D spritesbeing placed on a two D field.
Right. A game similar to itwould be very cool where you've got pieces
on a board and you've got likeif if you have touch controls or mouse
controls, then you can just aseasily use a measure control or to select
and grab things. One of thecool things when you die in Quake three

(34:15):
Arena is it, I mean evenin the original is it does a zoomed
out view for a second of themap. So it does that in VR,
and so you can see the entiremap as like a small diorama that's
in front of you that you cankind of like move your head around and
look at everything in the world.It's just neat. It was like when

(34:36):
I had done the GameCube emulator thathad been modified for for VR, playing
Smash Brothers in VR. As theselike toys playing on a field. This
is like very cool to see.Yeah, I think VRS getting there.
I wish that somebody other than Metawas doing the work, but I guess

(34:57):
there have been those rumors that Valvehas been doing a lot of work on
a standalone headset using the Steam deckguts, so that would be pretty cool.
I'd be interested in seeing that.Yeah, a completely wireless, self
contained half Life Alex Machine sounds prettyneat as well as you know every other

(35:19):
game that's been really stun seen.But uh yeah, I think that's it
for the game talk. Well,that's never true. We're always going to
talk about games, but we'll comeback and talk about news in just a
second. So, uh so we'vegot some we got some interesting news going
on in the world today. Theworld around video games is around video games.

(35:45):
I mean this, this first itemon our ticket is uh, I
don't think it's gonna be so mucha video game as it is going to
be an interactive experience. I mean, okay, let's let's it'll be the
the third Strand type game. It'llbe the third Strand type game. Yes,
I mean presuming it it takes,presuming other games don't come out before

(36:06):
it. But so the other day, Norman Das was having an interview,
an interview about The Walking Dead,and the question was posed, Okay,
so you got the book going on, you got the final season coming in,
then the spinoff, and you're filmingDeath Stranding the video game, and
to which he responded, without thinking, I believe we just started the second

(36:30):
one. Oh so, Norman Rediskind of sort of accidentally announced Death Stranding
too, the sequel to Death Stranding. Hideo Kojima tweeted some photos of himself
hanging out with Norman Reidas with thetext go to your private room, my
friend, because the private room andin Death Stranding. Oh okay, okay,

(36:55):
okay. I was like, Hideo, I think it was maybe a
little bit of translation, but yes, it's a phenomenal I guess, mister
Kojima, I guess they're making anotherDeath Standing. How Yeah, that's a
very good question. Did you playmuch of it? I didn't, So,
Okay, this is I'm gonna puton my controversial cap here for a
second. Are you gonna say it'sbad because I don't think that's controversial.

(37:19):
No, I am going to sayI did not like it. Okay,
Sure I played. I played adecent chunk of it. Nothing about it
was clicking with me. I'm gonnakeep my my more inflammatory opinions to myself
because they just don't serve any anyfunction to the dialogue about the game.

(37:43):
And then I but I did windup watching like a full playthrough of it,
right because I was I was curious. I wanted to know, and
it was one of those things whereit's like, Okay, I know from
the mechanical standpoints the things that aren'tclicking with me, But if I'm going
to have a critique on this game, I need to at least have some
kind of informed opinion, right.I am very much against being like I

(38:06):
don't like it. Why you know, like, if you're gonna not like
something, have something intelligent to sayabout it. Yeah. Yeah, So
the game just did not land withme. But I did watch it,
and then nothing else about the gamereally landed with me outside of how good
it looked. But it seemed likeit was a pretty finite contained story.

(38:29):
Yeah, so I loved Death Stranding. It is. I'm there's a lot
to apologize for, but that gameis like, really it knows what it
was doing, and I liked whatit was doing, although I don't think
I can quite put into words whatit was doing other than being like really
terrible to women, which is definitelysomething they did a lot in that game,

(38:49):
and oh my god, and thatwas rough and bad and who boy.
But the game also has die hardMan, which means that all sins
are forgiven. Die hard Man isdie Hardman's performance at the end of the
game, Like was you talked aboutgames that make you cry? I like
teared up at at his at hisscene where he talked about how much he

(39:13):
gave of himself, and yeah,it was. It was just a very
good performance. Very no and you'reyou're right, I probably did too.
But when I think about that game, I'm not thinking about that. I'm
thinking about Monster Energies and Princess Beach, and there's no forgiving Princess Beach.
Monster Energy has been patched out ofthe game because somebody didn't renew their advertising

(39:34):
fee, I guess, but Yeah, you know what I'm saying all this,
I still haven't played the director's cut, So I guess I need to
go back to death stranding and wecan. We can touch on death stranding
again sometime in the near future.What else were we going to tell?
Oh? God, death stranding toois happening. Yeah, there is another
item on this list that is veryparticular to you specifically. Yeah. So

(40:00):
the Halo TV series finished the firstseason. Yeah, sell me on it.
I'm not going to. So weare going to talk a little bit
of spoilers because Fred has finished thefight. No, it's so far from
over and that's the bad. OhNo, I already confirmed a second season.

(40:22):
The second season got confirmed before thefirst episode came out. I think
that if it if it hadn't beenif they had shown that first episode first,
I don't think they would have renewedit for another season because that first
episode. Here's the thing. Ifyou want to watch the Halo Show and
not get things spoiled for you,don't listen to the next five minutes of

(40:45):
the show. I'm gonna hit starton my timer right now. Everybody else
buckle up. So they have redconned everything in the Halo Universe like from
the word go on this except thatthe War Crimes where doctor Halsey led an
initiative to kidnap a bunch of children, leave flash cloned babies behind to quickly

(41:09):
die in those parents homes while theyturned those children into soldiers spartans, which
is what Master Chief is. Theykept that part and there's still some aliens.
But the aliens also have this kidnappedhuman child because the kidnapped human child

(41:30):
can interact with fore Runner stuff,which is not a thing that they had
ever done otherwise. And so far, the only two people in the show
that can interact with the with thefour Runner artifacts are very white people,
and they have shown people of colorfail to interact at the fore Runner architectures.

(41:52):
So I'm not sure what they're tryingto say. I just only know
what I see when they make thatvery clear thing as Chief. At one
point bones the kidnapped alien lady,the kidnapped human lady working with the aliens.
Yeah, and then while his momis watching, and then hold on,

(42:14):
you can't just gloss over while hismom was watched. Okay, excuse
me. So the way that theydo the way they do Cortana, and
it's not actually his mom, it'shis mother figure. Cortana is no longer
an AI in the suit because henever wears the suit. Sorry, I'm
swearing. They drill it directly intohis brain, so Cortana lives inside of

(42:36):
mass Chief and can take over hisbods instead of the back of his helmet
like a Nintendo switch cart. Yeah, she permanently lives inside his body and
can control his body. That's gonnabe problematic if they keep a certain plot
thread involving Qurtana, going, yeah, I don't think they're going to do
that one. Um, I meanthey read con to that well, didn't
red con They abandoned that in thevideo games. God, I'm like,

(43:00):
it's I'm sorry, I'm a jumbledmess when it comes to this because it
is just so awful. Like I'mnot sure who the show is for,
because it is not for fans ofHalo, because fans of Halo watch it
and they're like, you got everythingwrong. You got everything wrong, down
to like the sound effects that theguns make. Oh no, and like

(43:21):
that's that's such an easy thing toget, that's such an easy win.
The special effects are bad, likethey it's not for Halo fans, but
it's also not for people who don'tknow anything about Halo, because they do
rely on some knowledge of the ofthe series to understand what's going on.
Interesting, like kind of a lotof information about the series, like some

(43:45):
of the stuff from the books,but at the same time they're they're jumping
all over the things that they wrotein the books too. So the series
or the season ends with them notgoing to a Halo yet, which is
cool. Master Chief goes unconscious,perhaps permanently, while Cortana is now driving
his body and yeah, none ofthat. Oh, and they shot They

(44:09):
shot the alien lady that he's leftwith, so she's dead. Why you
even have that? They said itwas to make Master Chiefs seemed more human,
but we knew he was human becausewe have seen him naked multiple times
in the show. At this point, he's a he's a human, asked
dude. So I don't know thatshow sucks. That's four minutes. Um,

(44:32):
I could go for another twenty,but we'll just not. I I
look forward to the next season ofthe TV series. Yeah, you saw
you saw the CG on what peoplewere calling the coolest scene you sent it
to it's oh, it's rough,like it's badly shot. There are multiple

(44:55):
sequences were like zooms into the hoodof Master someone mastered Chief adjacent. Yeah,
and it's in the most like cringeylike doom movie House of the Dead
directed by uve Bowl Chalock, andnot in like a fun way, just

(45:15):
like really bad. I'm honestly baffledby it, like it was one of
those things watching it, and especiallybecause my obviously my relationship with the Halo
franchise isn't as deep as yours.I don't know many people's relationship with the
Halo franchise as deep as yours.And I don't mean that in a negative

(45:36):
context, you know, but likeyou deeply love this franchise for all of
its birds and barbs that come alongwith that, and everything I've seen from
this TV show seems like people withI don't even want to say malicious intent,
but who think that they can justyou know, do it better,
which is wild concerning that we hadcommercials that completely haptured the spirit, the

(46:01):
tone, this sort of sense of, um, what's the sort I'm looking
for? Because the Halo the atleast the first three and I would say
reach because that's kind of where myknowledge of the narratives lies. This this
this sort of I guess nobility tothings. There's this kind of regality and

(46:22):
pump. Yeah it's all military,like it's just right, but but it's
all it's all military. But likeyou could argue that, like Master Chief
isn't just a super soldier, he'skind of like a nightly figure because like
the way that people treat him andthe way that he has seen in the
way that he has talked about.Yeah, he's you know, he's talked
about as this almost mythic entity evenwithin the world, to the point that

(46:45):
like the the alien raised the cabinetcall him the demon, like specifically him,
not any of the other hundreds ofspartans, like right, like you
know Chief has has he's the Demon. And then you know, always constantly,
uh, this is the UNSC.Yeah, the UNSC soldiers are like,
oh my god, it's you know, it's the Chief and they're they're
they're not just happy to fight withhim. They are just like, yeah,

(47:08):
do take my gun, you youneed it more than me. Yeah,
Well, you know they might ifyou give them something garbage, they'll
have something to say about yeah,yeah, but but you know it's like
there there is this this again,this almost nightly quality, this is this
almost medieval regality to it all thateverything I've seen from the show just nah,

(47:29):
yeah, no it it It doesn't. There's no dignity. That's the
other restaurant I was like, forthere's no dignity to the show. Definitely
not so like the people that thatmade this show specifically said that they were
going to do their own thing withit. They that they didn't really look
to the video games for for context. At that point, it's like,
come on, just just make yourown thing. I think the Halo TV

(47:52):
series that I'd want to see,not that I even really want to see
one, because it doesn't need it, like the games doing good job of
telling that story, but I wouldwant, like, say, say it
takes place during Halo one, afterHumanity has crash landed on the Ring for
the first time and they've found theHalo, and you've got just a small

(48:15):
group of soldiers who found themselves inthis like fore understructure, trying to survive
because they're pinned down by Covenant liketrying to trying to kill them. And
then halfway through this small war story. Master Chief comes and saves the day,
and you get to see people havetheir interactions and then be saved by

(48:36):
Master Chief, and then you getto see like a cool escape thing and
then you have to end it therebecause everybody dies at the end of Halo
one, and so we should probablynot finish that story. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, no, it's it's everybodyexcept for Sergeant Johnson, who didn't
get off the ring, but heis definitely alive in the second game.

(48:58):
Yeah, it's fine, don't it'sfine. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah.
We were also taught okay, let'sget away from Halo. Let's let's
talk about something else depressing. Ohno, not really. And you know,
I know that we said that theshow is going to be Pozsi vibes.
But this affects you more than affectsme, though I don't know that
it affects me anymore. Like,yeah, so you see the garbage behind

(49:21):
me, but like I'm on myway out, I feel like yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the state of video game collecting
and selling is bad. It's rough. And we talked about this a little
bit before the genre. I waslike, oh, well, you know,
we could have this conversation. Yeah, but the collector's market for classic
video games has gone insane. AndI'm not talking about like the sealed copy

(49:45):
of Super Mario sixty four that wentfor like two million dollars or whatever,
because which is already insane, butit's insane. But that was also probably
not incenter trading. I forget whatit is, but like self inflated sales
selling to you her self for yourdifferent parties and things, and like,
there's no, that's just my conjecture. I have no proof of blah blah

(50:07):
blah whatever, but I sure seemsunlikely that anybody would actually pay two million
dollars per seals copy of Super Mariosings before. That's what I'm saying.
Um, but I you were talkingabout the local shop that yes, yeah,
I mean it wasn't a shop specificallylocal to me. It was,
you know, in a Discord serverthat I'm in, there's you know a

(50:30):
couple of people who talk about youknow, game trading and game collecting and
stuff like that that they do fairlyoften, and one of them had snapped
some some shots of you know,some games that were that they were looking
at and that we're on a counter. Most of them were grpgs from the
PlayStation era. You know, soyou had your Xeno Gears, your Final
Fantasy sevens and eights, um,your Legend of Dragoon, and then there

(50:52):
was a copy of Valkyrie Profile therefor four hundred and forty five dollars.
Is man, that's too much,way too much like game collecting. I've
you know, I've worked in momand pop shops in the past, and
I started to see the beginning ofthe disc era inflation, as I'm calling

(51:15):
it, you know, where alot of collecting stuff was starting to hedge
away from the focus of your cartbased snass on back era stuff and starting
to look towards I guess like peopleour age and younger, or maybe like
you know gen xers as well.Collecting you know, PlayStation game you know,

(51:36):
your disc based titles, whether they'rePlayStation, Saturn video you know,
so on and so forth, andwatching those games start to steadily increase in
price, and now they are startingto reach ludicrous levels, like games that
have no business being as expensive asthey are reaching prices like for example,

(51:59):
the one I always is the firstDragon Guard game is a game that is
like steadily climbing towards being over onehundred dollars. I mean, it's well
over it now. I saw thatat too many games being sold for one
hundred and twenty five dollars, whichis baffling to me on a multitude of
reasons, partly because like I gotmy the copies I have for like free,

(52:20):
but also I love that game.I love that game. I defend
that game. I will fall onmy sword for that game. It is
not worth that, right, Like, I get it, I get wanting
to have this thing, and Iget that for these games, they are
in many cases limited release with dwindlingsupply. It's it's do anything to supply,

(52:43):
and then like a fear of scarcity, right, and a fear of
scarcity, but like four hundred dollarsyeah, Now, so last summer,
I think it was last summer thatthey soty hit said we're gonna stop selling
PSP and Vita games did really andI think last three games as well,
and so all of a sudden therewas a run on them where people were

(53:06):
selling them for ludicrous amounts of money. I took a look at the rates,
and I took a look at mycollection, started pricing things up,
and I decided, Okay, youknow what, I'm gonna sell a bunch
of these games, and I'm goingto buy all of the best ways to
play these games, because I don'tthink there's any any shame in purchasing a

(53:28):
flash cart for a Nintendo sixty fouror a Super Nintendo or whatever. So
I went and got a bunch ofthose and nice video cables for each of
them. And I did that byselling some of these games that I'm gonna
I've I've got a spreadsheet that Ithat I made when I did this,
So let's start Wild Arms. Ihad picked it up at a good Will

(53:50):
for three dollars. It was inbad condition. After shipping and eBay fees,
I made sixty dollars and fifty sevencents. Oh my god, that's
too much money for Wild Arms.One Near for the PS three sold for
forty bucks. I kind of regretthat now because I think that's gone up
in value. Metroid Prime Trilogy forthe Wii one hundred and fifteen dollars,

(54:12):
Persona one for the PSB one hundredand seventy two dollars. Yaka is a
Dead Souls which I accidentally bought twocopies on Amazon for ten dollars a piece
when I ordered it, and Isold that for eighty five dollars and eighty
three cents, Rhythm Heaving Ds foreighty bucks. Ace Attorney Investigations for one
hundred and ten. Persona four Ultimax, which just got a re release for

(54:37):
one hundred and thirty dollars. Ohmy god, Persona three Portable in poor
Condition for two hundred and ninety fivedollars. Yeah, and Persona two for
the PSP for two hundred and sixteendollars. Yeah, it's nuts, it's
nuts, and it's something that forme, bad condition Pokemon Blue Box only

(54:57):
eighty dollars. Right, just likeI get wanting to have things that are
important to you, right Like I'vegot a small collection of games, and
I'm more into like art books andthat kind of stuff that I own.
Then they're you know, I willsay this, they are near and dear
to my heart. I adore them. I'm actually literally in the process of
getting some of those art books individuallyensured, just in case, because some

(55:20):
of them are some of them,and they're going for obscene amounts of money
as well. So right right,you know, and so there's there's that
value to it. But it's justlike I hate the fact that it's come
to that personally. I don't likethe fact that, you know, when
I look up and I see mycopy of like Lunar the Silver Star Story
Complete for PlayStation, a game thatI adore, and I'm like, oh,

(55:44):
that's like I've got to be carefulwith that now because now it's you
know, X amount of money,you know, and it's like, let's
be real, if I play itagain, if I play it again,
I'm just gonna like emulate it,right, And that's the thing is,
like, there are great ways toemulate AM one PC. There's the Mister
Project, which will we'll probably doingan entire episode on at some point,
But mister just got a PS onecorps so you can have your exact PS

(56:07):
one replica experience with slightly faster discloadingtimes because it's just running off a disc
or an SD card. Yeah yeah, And it's it's for me just seeing
like the wild price inflation on thisstuff. Yoshi's Story for the Nintendo sixty
four is not worth eighty five dollars. It's not right. It's a great
game. I love that game.Yeah, love it to death. Got

(56:29):
to a point where I was like, you know, beating it in like
twenty five minutes. You know,I just kind of like knew that game
really well for a while. Eightyfive dollars, No, mister Mosquito,
not a very good game. Notworth ninety five dollars, oh if you
yeah, yeah, like what youknow, Like it's because it's like,
yeah, mister Mosquito, mad Maestroand Get to Rooman or three games that

(56:49):
I'm all just okay, Get toRoom Man deserves a couple hundred is worth
money, but like over one hundredbucks. Like that game was like a
bag been titled when it came out, right, yeah, I mean literally
it was. It was sold asa discount title. Yeah no, that's
yeah, I'm not being hyperbolic.It was literally sold at that you know,

(57:10):
and again that's like nothing to savethe quality. Get Your Roommate is
my favorite Rhythm game ever. LikeI will see that game's praises. I
would marry that game. If someone'slike you want to marry a video game?
Yeah sure, um, you know, I I'll buy you Get to
Room in. But yeah, butit's like seeing those prices is just absurd,
and I know, like the counterthat it's like, well, they're

(57:30):
you know, they're rare, andthey're hard to find. They are you
know, so it's it's a it'sa buyer sorry, it's a seller's market.
And I'm like yeah, but likethe problem is that people are buying
them, Like right, he was, Who's going out there buying these games
of these prices. In twenty twelve, I spent too much money on a
video game and I bought a copyof earth Bound in its box for two

(57:53):
hundred and fifty dollars. It's like, that's that's too much money to spend
on a video game, Supernintendo game. I am glad I did because now
it's worth twenty four hundred dollars.That's and it's only going to keep going
up. Yeah, yeah, welluntil people somehow come to their senses.
Yeah. It's ridiculous if you aresitting on a collection of rare video games

(58:14):
that you don't play, instead ofholding onto that thing forever, waiting for
it to go up in value,or just collect dust and have the disc
rot sell your games, sell themfor what you think they're worth, or
as much as you possibly can forthem, and invest in ways to play
those games instead, and it's reallynot piracy because Nintendo is not selling these

(58:37):
games to you. Sega is notselling these games to you. A lot
of these companies don't exist, anda lot of these people are dead.
Just play video games for fun.It's I think that's my big thing is
that like video games for me,I am like my collection of older games
only comprises of games I know I'mgoing to go back and play. And

(59:00):
if I have a game that I'mnot going to go back and play.
For example, I have a copyof the game for Fighters for the one
it was a DREAMCASPS two gas.I have it for both, okay because
there are little differences between them,only because I like that game. Okay,
well because I play that game.Yeah right. You know. It's

(59:21):
like I've got a copy of gunGrave. GUNGRAVESM is a good game,
but I love Yester Hear a NightOut the guy who created a try Gun,
and I think that game is fun. You know, It's just a
fun blast them up arcade style title. So you know, I will boot
it up and I'll play it everyso often. My PS two is about
to give up the ghost, Solet me tell you about a new project

(59:43):
where you can just get a smallSD card slot that fits in your memory
card. Yeah, and then youjust run your games off that, right,
right, you know. But it'sit's for for uh all the games
I have. It's like, youknow, for me, they are high
ticket items. They're just games.I like that. I want to I
want to play again. Like,yeah, I've got a copy of Zeno

(01:00:05):
Gears. You know, Gears islike top five for me. So I'm
going to boot that game up everyfew years. And you know what,
I don't have a copy of ZenoGears. I do have a Japanese copy
which costs me a dollar, anddon't I can't read that one. So
but I've I have purchased that game. So I'm just gonna go get the
English version off of archive dot org. Right. And it's like, I

(01:00:28):
don't know, play video games,enjoy them. That's kind of what this
whole podcast is about. And videogames are to bring this yeah, to
bring this two a positive note.Games are meant to be enjoyed. Games
of all lineages are meant to beenjoyed. Now, I do want to
say I don't condone piracy of moderngames. I want to. I want

(01:00:49):
to say that very there are officialway if there are official ways to play
the games that you want to play, support those versions, um, you
know, or or find a wayto support that franchise and somewhere or another,
like Xeno Gears, I don't thinkis available on anything past the PS
three, but occasionally Square Nix throwsout merch for it, so I wonder
if that'll end up being part ofthat bad PS five collection. Oh god,

(01:01:12):
you know. And so occasionally SquareNix throws out stuff for Zeno Gears,
and if I am in a placeto purchase it, you know,
I'll pick it up. Yeah,support modern releases for games, Support modern
games, Please support indie developers.But if like you're looking to play something
that is just not available, soI'm going to throw out most of the
Armored Core franchise. Sure, Motherthree, you don't have options, like

(01:01:35):
sorry, you just don't. Butlike, games are meant to be played,
not to be hoarded like a dragon. Yeah, all right, So
we're going to take another quick breakand then we're going to come back and
answer a couple of questions from thelisteners. So stay tuned. Yeah,
you want to take some questions yeah, man, that'd be great. All
right, let's take some questions.Where do you Where do people send questions

(01:02:00):
in? Yeah, if you wantto send us a question, you can
do so at a level select dotcool or at mail at level select dot
cool. A couple of perfect adreads. Thank you so much. Definitely
not the third time we've done that. Got it in one, Got it
in one. Our first question todaycoming to us from Spencer. Any thoughts
on time based games, games thateither use real world time of day slash

(01:02:22):
year as a mechanic or games thatprogress over a determined amount of time.
I'm thinking primarily of The Longing.I find those mechanics equally fascinating and off
putting. Have you played The Longing? I have not. Actually, this
is something that I put on mylist actually to check out after we pulled
this up. But I don't knowof a lot of games that I have

(01:02:45):
played over the years that have usedlike real real world clocks outside of like
MGS three, right, because there'sthe whole thing with the end where if
you advance your clock. No,that's a lie. I've played a bunch
of Momos over the years, andthose that's not the same thing. I'm
gonna specifically use PSO because I thinkthey have their holiday events that they that

(01:03:07):
they had in the original. Umbut even then, yeah, those weren't
like specifically tied to like core gameplay, um stuff that use like in game
timers and stuff like that. I'ma bit more familiar with with, like,
you know, farming games like HarvestMoon, Starting Valley and those games
always have their in world calendar mechanicsthat usually determined like the passage of certain

(01:03:29):
events, certain in game holidays andthe like that are usually pretty plot relevant.
Um yeah, but I'm not reallyother than that, Like, I
don't really have a lot of knowledgeof of this. How about you?
Um So, I don't usually likegames that have that kind of limited time
mechanic. I'm sure it can bedone well, but it's it just puts

(01:03:52):
a level of stress on me thatI usually don't like. I like games
that play with time. I wasthinking of the Kid Attack Hashi game for
the the play date, which isyou're you're a guy trying to get to
a date on time, and youcontrol time with the crank. Oh cool,
Yeah, so you're like rewinding andprogressing time by just cranking it.

(01:04:15):
It is it's cute and cool.I was thinking, like, oh,
well, Animal Crossing is a goodexample of a game that uses real world
time day quintessential one for many people. Um, I don't like games that
that have fomo in them, andAnimal Crossing kind of falls under that,
the idea of like, oh man, if I don't log in and do

(01:04:39):
this now, then I'm gonna gonnamiss out on something. But sure,
but you know it's it's still coolwhen it's done. Well uh yeah,
yeah, yeah, I like gamesabout time travel, but that's not exactly
what we're talking about here. No, yeah, yeah, Like I this
is like probably not the greatest exampleat all, but it's like the game

(01:05:00):
I have the most fondness for thathas like a time component is like Harvest
Moon sixty four. You know thatgame is ancient, and you know,
not again, not the best example, Like the game is very easy to
cheese and sort of abuse its mechanicsto just really advance quicker than you're supposed
to in certain aspects of you knowwhat you're doing. Um, but yeah,

(01:05:24):
I'm kind of with you where it'slike I'm always interested in seeing it,
but I just for me, Ialso share the sentiment of like the
games that have like a limited timefocus or have that sense of fomo.
I'm usually not really all that into, especially nowadays where my time at least
feels a little more limited for games. Uh, you know, I've got

(01:05:47):
I've got to be really picky andchoosy with what I'm playing, right,
I've got to be you know,which probably why Okay, Mike, why
why don't you just not play gamesyou've already played before? Then? Listen,
that's get out of my house?Um? Why? Yeah? Yeah?
Well let's let's let's talk about somethingwe know a lot about. Yes,

(01:06:10):
sales rights in this spot is aboutlevel select menus and hub worlds.
Right, since this is definitely thecase, what's your favorite instance of selecting
level? That's definitely not what thispodcast is about, but I love me
a good hub world. Oh same, Yeah, I'm gonna be real.
The hub world in Demon Souls ispart of why that's my favorite Souls game.

(01:06:30):
Oh yeah, of course that thattotally does have that the mega style,
like, okay, this is thelevel I'm gonna go. Yeah,
this huge zone to explore that likeit's largely empty, which I kind of
love. I know that there arepeople in the past. Word, I
wish, you know, the Nexuswas a little smaller so it was easier
to get to certain things. SoI'm like, nah, I wish I

(01:06:51):
knew how to traverse it a littlebit better. But sure, yeah,
but like, no, give mea vast, vast hub world that is
ancient and mysterious is and then yeah, and then you just go and you
choose your level, like you know, have to have that free form.
I think, love me a goodhub level. I think my favorite hub
world in a video game is it'sit's not for selecting levels. So maybe

(01:07:15):
I'm already answering this question wrong.But in Sonic Jam for the Sega Saturn,
it was it was just a rereleaseof Sonic one two three in Knuckles
for the Sega Saturn. Yeah,but there was a it was the first
time you could play a Sonic gamein three D where you played a Sonic
running around this very small, littlegreen hill Zonus esque world going to like

(01:07:39):
a movie theater. And so it'sa lot like the one in the latest
Kirby game, where like it's thestarting area where you can like go and
like look at videos or look atsome concept art or whatever. Would I
would say that counts because I wasgoing to say, like another little hub
that I like, and it's notlike the main hub for the game,

(01:08:00):
but like the Little Child Garden Huband Sonic Adventure to good hubs. I
was gonna say the other like thebest level select I think is uh two
you type in nineteen sixty five nineseventeen. No, yes, nineteen sixty
two nine seventeen is the password toget into level select for that game.

(01:08:21):
And it's just the most charming,like blue background with little icons that you
select each act and stuff. Thisis my favorite one. So before we
move on to our next question,I do want to pose would Peaches Castle
in Mario sixty four count as okay? Cool? Yeah, that's also like
one of arguably the best, probablybecause it's so well integrated into the core

(01:08:45):
game. Um just technically a seriesof like four or five levels because you
go into different instances. But butyeah, definitely it is a yeah,
man, video games hub worlds.Heck yeah, video games speaking of heck
yeah. Mark Lentz writes in fromChew High Labs, ancient cave paintings are

(01:09:05):
a one way portal from the past, echoing the hopes and dreams of our
ancestors. What is your favorite DukeNUKEOM three D stage. That's a great
question, um, and as aconnoisseur of the Duke, I think it
is impossible to choose just one.It's a DM Zoo. DM Zoo is

(01:09:27):
the best one because you know,it's the one where you can go into
a hallway and get every gun inthe game, and then you go into
these little Zoo habitats that just havea collection of that type of enemy,
so you can go kill everything inthe gun using whatever guns you want.
I was going to try to takesome diplomatically standing stating on I hate that
I have an answer for this question. I feel like I fall into Mark's

(01:09:49):
trap every week. But here weare. Yeah, um, yeah,
DM Zoo it's a it's fun.Yeah, that was I kept loading that
map into build and then like extrapolatingfrom there and making that level bigger and
bigger. That was fun and good. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I
haven't answered that one. This isa weird one that I don't totally understand.

(01:10:13):
It comes from Dan, says highFred and Michael. This is targeted
towards Fred and his game Love.I couldn't submit a question via the website,
So here's an email. Back whenI was making custom levels for Love,
I had to ask you via aVidmi video how the game knew what
color to use for the background.How is anyone supposed to know is the
bottom left corner? Ha ha,Now that vid me has gone, Oh

(01:10:34):
poor vid Me. I need anothercitation source for this in the Love's Wikipedia
page. Maybe an audio snippet ina podcast work Lots of Love, Dan,
Yeah, here's your video game.I so Love custom would would pull
in sprites at runtime. Every timeyou started the game, it would load

(01:10:55):
in all the assets, and theway that gamemakers GameMaker eight I think it
was a GameMaker seven. The waythat it had handled the default transparent color
was the bottom left pixel. Sosorry it was It wasn't my choice,
but there you go that. Hopefullythat updates the Love Wikipedia page. Is

(01:11:18):
me answering it here on a podcastin twenty twenty two, thirteen years after
I made that. So cool?Do we want to take one more?
Um? Yeah, we can takeone more. Okay, this one's coming
to our, to us from ourwe're good at talking. Yeah, no,

(01:11:39):
it's here, we're out of practice. We got this though. Yeah,
this one's coming to us from ourfriend Liam High Fred Hi, Mike,
longtime listener, first time caller.Did you guys ever have any ideas
that seemed incredibly obvious for platform specificgames that nobody ever released and it's now
just too late? For example,I always thought it would have been incredibly
cool to have a title that usedthe game pad as a sort of Dungeons

(01:12:01):
and Dragon style DM screen while theother players used we remote sideways to do
the dungineering. How did this sortof thing never happen? Love leam ps.
I love that you were able tohave the Denny's guy on episode two.
Denny's is great. I can't believewe didn't talk about Denny's while Zolivier
was on the pod. Yeah,missed opportunity. Well, we'll have him

(01:12:25):
on sometime soon and maybe we'll maybewe'll meet him at a Denny's recording episode.
Oh my god, we have to. Yeah, what about this seems
more your alley than mine, becauseI seem to be very much like give
me a game, then like giveme it in a weird way. Yeah,
I mean a little bit more theWEIU is definitely like a platform of

(01:12:45):
missed opportunities, because absolutely that likethe fun of asynchronous multiplayer where you're like
everybody's looking at the one main screenand they're playing off of that, but
like one person's playing on the tabletlike that. That leaves that leaves a
lot of room for like fun ideasof like you've got your um dead by

(01:13:06):
daylights or maybe dead by daylights notthe right one, but the I'm going
to use evolve as the point ofreference, although it would also be appropriate.
Um, the one player is superpowerful against the rest of the players
playing on the TV. There weresome of those kinds of games that happened,

(01:13:28):
but I wanted more of that,and also the lost opportunity of not
having multiple U tablets. I knowthat, I know that functionally that doesn't
slash barely works, but um thatthat kind of game also, I don't
know. I had an idea fora WEE game a long time ago,
and then the Week came out andit couldn't do the things that I actually

(01:13:49):
wanted it to do, So likejust really positionally accurate motion controls for for
a three D platform, or youcould actually like punch stuff by punching with
the Wiimot. But you know,we'll get there, it'll be VR eventually,
we'll have the good motion controls andthat kind of tracking. Yeah,

(01:14:11):
yeah, I'm trying to I'm genuinelytrying to think because like I'm kind of
just set on Liam's idea because it'sgenius. Yeah, And like, genuinely
I think that is like a verycool idea, not even just for something
like the WU but like I thinkthat's just a fun, fun idea for
a game in general, that thatwould be really interesting due to explore.

(01:14:32):
But I always feel like multiplayer gamesfor the DS never fully took advantage of
that consoles strengths and whether it wasjust like the limitations of developing for it
or anything. And I don't havelike a specific idea, right, but
you have this two screened clamshell thingthat you know, games like Warrio were
always had a lot of fun with. But I always feel like it could

(01:14:56):
have been pushed a little bit more. I don't know how, right,
but if you're going to look atlike a console that had a huge install
base, tons of of people thatthat owned one across the world, that
one seems like it would have beenrife for the opportunity to play around with.
Um. I think another one,and this is one that just came
to mind, would be either likethe PSP or the Vita somehow finding finding

(01:15:20):
ways to integrate the other media functionsinto a game. Oh yeah, like
a veit ribbon for either of themthat used audio files off your remember right,
yeah, exactly exactly, or somethinglike that, or or like if
you know, if you had likeimages on your screen and obviously like cold
get really hairy really quick. Soyou know, I am existing in a

(01:15:42):
world where people I mean we gotthat a little bit with a taraway for
the VIDA, yes, yea,but yeah, I mean, just something
that integrates more of the features becauselike I you know, like I didn't
get as much into the Vida asI did the PSP. But like my
PSP was like, man, Iused that fee four hours every day.

(01:16:03):
Like me and that PSP two thousandwere tight. Yeah. My PSP took
me through college. Yeah, same, Um, And you know it's like
that theme was like my MP threeplayer because I was still using like a
clamshell phone for a good portion ofmy early college years. Um. You
know, it's like I just usethat thing for everything. And so I

(01:16:23):
think, like, you know,we're way past the time for that to
be viable, because I was like, oh, you're handheld gaming. Cool,
you're developing for the switch? Yeah? Um, or the play date
I guess, like or yeah oryeah, or the play date. If
before you if you're going to rejectmodernity, you're gonna go to the play
date or you're gonna boy game.So I think with like a more modern

(01:16:44):
concept, like what I would wantto see on the switch is are things
that the switch can't do right?Right? It's so um because it would
be things I would what the weyou to do? Yeah, that's the
thing is for a switch too.That's kind of all I want is is
the ability to cast as second screenor something that said, I don't want

(01:17:05):
to I don't want it to getin the way of making a good platform
that runs games really well, whichthe Switch doesn't always do. Um,
that's not really the point. Iwas going to say, one missed opportunity
that I don't actually I still don'thave a good answer for what to do
with it. But like we didn'tsee them do much with the backtouch pad

(01:17:26):
on the Vita, like they usedit for emulating a second analog trigger,
but that was like it. No, it is a feature that until I
use it by accident. Yeah,I forget. I forget it's there,
and then I get mad that it'sthere. Yeah, like, how dare
you interrupt my gameplay experience I'm doingsomething. The only time that I remember
it being really good is with theKatamari game that came out on Vita,

(01:17:51):
because you could squish and squeeze yourKatamari either by using the front touchpad or
by using the back So it's likeif you wanted to get under something and
you needed to like shrink your thing, you could making a bad hand gesture
that. Yeah, it's a badvideo. It's actual the Internet, but

(01:18:12):
it's uh yeah boy the Vita.The Vita is a good system. But
then again we get the switcho letnow, so I guess we're good.
It could be a little smaller.I guess a little bit. Um.
I guess that brings us to theend of the episode. Yeah, if
you can, and we would reallyappreciate it, please review us on Apple

(01:18:33):
Podcasts and tell a friend. We'vealso got a discord channel if you'd like
to make some new friends like us, and you can also write into the
show with questions, ideas, orwhatever else you've got by visiting levels like
dot cool, writing into mail atlevels like dot cool, or sending us
a message Vida the discord Um.We're still very fresh. This episode's getting

(01:18:58):
less editing done to it than usualbecause of a lack of time to get
this out on time. But ifyou have feedback for the show, we'd
love to hear that too, Like, we have really enjoyed hearing what people
have to say about this, soright in um. But yeah, that's
uh, that's all from us.This has been Mike and this has been

(01:19:20):
Fred. Thanks for listening, Seeyou next week. I almost read that
this has been Mike part because becausethat's what's written down here. Oops yeah,

(01:19:45):
yeah, oopsie doopsy