A Reimagined Demake | Quest: Brian's Journey (Ep. 144) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome back to Fixel Project Radio, the video game discussions
podcast where we do deep dives and analyze all of
our favorite games and some of yours too. My name
is Rick, and today the Quest continues as we discuss
Quest sixty four's sequel, Quest sixty five, better known as
Quest Brian's Journey. Since this is Quest Part two, I'm

(00:43):
joined once again by Mike, better known as Quest sixty
four Official. Thanks for joining me today. I'm my friend.
How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm great, Rick, Thanks for having me back for more questioning.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's gonna be fun. Uh. You know, I was checking
out my podcast app and I was searching for other
episodes on this and spoiler alert, if you search Brian's Journey,
you get a lot of wellness podcasts that are not
about the acclaimed game Boy Color game.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
It's true. There's a lot of self help books too.
If you go try to purchase a copy of Brian's Journey,
you're gonna get a lot of books.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Did you buy any you want to talk to some
self help journeys before we get into the game. I
know audiences love it. Whenever you've got a long free amble.
How's your self help journey?

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Then Mike, it's good. This is my self help journey.
Going from sixty four to sixty five is what I
do to keep me mentally prepared for the hellscape we're
living in right now.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
No, no, no, no, don't tie it back into the game.
This is unrelated conversation. Audiences love this. I've got some crystals.
Do you want to buy some? They'll heal you, They
heal malaria, heal at all.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
This is a Spencer Pratt joke.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
No, I don't I Why do I know that name?

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Anyway, it was he sold crystals. He was on MTV's
The Hills and a bunch of other things. Said an
ex girlfriend of mine watched a long time ago that
I absorbed incredible. So getting away from that was self help. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Hey, we are talking about Quest Colin Brian's Journey. This
is a Game Boy Color sequel to Quest sixty four,
but it's also in terms of story, a retelling dmake
however you'd like to say it. It's the same game fundamentally,
just a little bit expanded in terms of the story.

(02:27):
They try to do a little bit more with the
lore that they just didn't have time to get into
in the Quest sixty four version on the N sixty four.
My personal history with this game is incredibly short. I
played it for this show. This is the first time
I heard of it. Mike. I know you are no
stranger to Questing. You're no strangers to this game or
Quest sixty four. You see it as a challenge. When

(02:49):
did you first become aware of this?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I was trying to tie it down. I know what
house I was living in when I found out about it.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
It was probably I'm sorry, we wanted a specific room.
We're going to have to redo the recording.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
I probably have a picture of the of the room
that contained my Quest Tower at that time when I
added the game Boy games to it. But yeah, it's
it was. But it was well after my Quest sixty
four journey started, so years and years after I was
in my thirties. I actually found the other game Boy

(03:24):
Color game, first Fantasy Challenge and then this one. Okay,
and after Fantasy Challenge, I wasn't convinced I was going
to love this one and was really hesitant to play
it because I didn't want it to ruin the stigma
that Quest sixty four like has in my head, or
you know, the power it has over me, but I
enjoyed it. It's just not it doesn't have the same

(03:47):
the same effect on me that Quest does, so probably
because I was older and more experienced and not Quest
pilled from my teenage years.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Sure, sure you didn't reach that milestone yet that every
young boy goes through. Before we get into this episode,
we should say, first of all, I wanted to say
thank you to everybody. The Perplexingly the Quest sixty four
episode got a lot of positive feedback, like just a lot,
not I mean not just folks interacting with the posts online,

(04:17):
but people reaching out to say like, hey, this was
really good. I really enjoyed this episode more so than
you would expect for Quest sixty four. I mean, no offense, Mike,
but it's just, you know, it's not a game. Whenever
you cover games around it, like Claire Obscure or you know,
Outer Wild, you don't expect to do Quest sixty four
and get a lot of praise, you know. So I
wanted to say thank you first of all to everybody

(04:39):
for the for the kind words. I hope you like
this one. And speaking of this one, it's going to
be a companion piece to the Quest sixty four episode,
So if you haven't listened to that one, it would
be pertinent to do so. A lot of what we're
going to talk about today is going to be based
on that game. A lot of the times we might
refer to that game. A lot of the times we
might just say, yeah, it's the same as in sixty four.

(05:01):
Moving on. It's not because we're doing this game a service.
It's because this game did come out after we just
did an episode on sixty four, and we don't want
to be redundant, So little disclaimer. Go check that episode out,
let us know what you think, and then come back here. So,
speaking of Brian's Journey, I was thinking about this, Mike,
and I'm curious to know what you think. Do you

(05:22):
have a preferred playing order for these two games? They
tell fundamentally the same story to a point, they're quite
different in the hands, though. Do you think listeners should
play one before the other? Do you think order doesn't matter?
What are you feeling?

Speaker 2 (05:37):
I think sixty four is probably the best to play first,
besides being shorter. It If you get drawn in by
that game, you'll probably like Brian's Journey. But if it doesn't,
if you decide that it was a you know, everything
you've heard about Quest sixty four and it's stale and
unenjoyable and unimaginative, then you're probably not gonna like the

(05:59):
game Color one as much. Unless you're really into this
style of eight bit classic RPG, then maybe start on
the game Boy. But I would suggest to start your
quest on sixty four.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, you know, I don't know. I mean, I defer
to you. You are the expert. You've got more than
sixty four quests under your belt. I am but a novice,
a novice apprentice. If you want to be a technical hey,
I first of all, sixty four took me longer, for sure,
I kind of you know, I don't think the order

(06:34):
matters all too much, but I could see a compelling
reason to play this one. First. I do think it's
significantly easier up until one battle, and then it's not anymore.
But at that point it's like, well who cares, But
you know, it's a comparatively significantly easier. I think it's
much more navigatable, navigatable, easier to navigate. I really should

(07:00):
rearrange my words to make them easier for everybody, for
me and you. That's called compromise. I'm good at that.
I think it's much easier to navigate in this in
the Game Boy Color version, way less map issues than
in sixty four, which really, I mean it comes down
to just, you know, partly the layout and then also

(07:22):
the perspective, which we'll talk about here shortly. I don't know.
I don't know that I have a strong opinion on which,
so listeners maybe defer to Mike, who does have a
strong opinion and is more knowledgeable on these things. Yeah,
play Quest sixty four and then try the Game Boy
Color version community for them. We got nothing. Shocker, I

(07:44):
straight up, I'm gonna be honest with you all, egg
on my face. I didn't even put one up. I
figured that nobody but you and me Mike would know
about this game.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
It's hard to get feedback for it, and finding people
that have played it is pretty pretty few and far between.
Finding people with opinions was probably going to be even harder.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Anyway, I will say, in some ways I like this
more than the sixty four version, so it's it's definitely
worth your time to check it out. Let's talk a
little bit about what this is development. This was released

(08:27):
for the game Boy Color. As we said in January
of two thousand, a new millennium of gaming is upon
us for the game Boy Color, developed by a Tellier
double published by Sunsoft in North America and Imagineer in Japan.
And I'll be goddamned if I could find anymore. That's like,
really it, Mike. When we were in the green room talking,

(08:48):
you turned me onto something that I missed in the
game's credits. This is a different composer. Technically, the composer
on this one is Izumi Shimizu for Brian's Journey, although
I will say I think it's more of an arranging credit.
They use the same compositions from sixty four from a Mono.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, he didn't I like you said, he didn't compose
the music, but he does get the music credit for
this game, and he's I think we talked about he
only I could only find one other game he has
any credit on. It's called Monkey Puncher, and I have
no idea what that game is outside of the cover.
That is exactly what you think it is.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
I couldn't tell you. It was my nickname in high school,
but I have no idea why they call me that.
Thank you, that silence is encouraging, Mike, let's move on.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
I was waiting for the soundboard to cue me into
how to feel about that?

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Sure, okay, this is going great, laugh laugh laugh. Now,
So I mean, I tell you, I'm pretty sure that's
the same team from QUES sixty four, right.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, a lot of the same people had credits on
this game as well, so that it had to have
been being developed near side by side with Quest sixty four.
It probably was meant to come out about the same time,
but just like Quest sixty four delay, so two years later.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, if I can find any more development info before
this episode drops, I will edit it in. My suspicion
is that it's buried in gaming magazine articles, perhaps even
Japanese magazine articles, so I'm not sure that I'll be successful. Plus,
this recording is kind of close to when I'm dropping
the episode. We'll see if I can, you'll hear it now,

(10:33):
and if not, well, life goes on. That being said,
let's talk a little bit about how this game differs
differs from sixty four. That is to say, so, Mike,
I'm going to kick it to you. What do you
think about this game's mechanics?

Speaker 2 (10:45):
I like it. I like that it's the same style,
the same like battle arena. You're able to move and
dodge attacks, all like the same stuff as Quats sixty four,
but every element is much more viable in this game. Ye,
so it plays more like what people want Quest sixty

(11:05):
four to play like. I guess is the best way
to put it. I feel like it's a lot harder
to dodge the two D sprites on this game in
the battle arena, especially when you get to the later
bosses in the game. The size of the arenas and
the size of the sprites is harder. But in general,
it plays like really well. If you're familiar with the

(11:26):
Quest system, this should feel right at home.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, it really does play like a pure distillation of
Quest sixty four. The real difference is the visual presentation.
This isn't on a three D grid. Obviously, you're still
within that battle arena. You know, it's a square this
time instead of an octagon, but it's a sort of

(11:49):
not top down, but you know, a two D game
boy approach. You know, left and right you still have
you can still move in all of the cardinal directions
and all the diagonals, but you're not from a three
D perspective. This makes things much easier to hit and
sometimes dodge. To be honest, Mike, I never really tried

(12:10):
dodging in this game, not really, so I wouldn't you know.
I can't speak much to that, but I've found that
accuracy was not nearly as big of an issue as
it was for me in sixty four, which, as you'll remember,
I did complain a little bit about.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
I do remember.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
It's kept me up at night. I can't believe you.
I put a picture of you on.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
My dartboard, Brian or me.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
No, you put a picture of me an old dartboard.
I would never Brian didn't do anything.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, the homing spells, especially in this game, are you know,
never miss I guess the best way to play like,
were very very infrequently. Though it does have the same
fun quirk as Qus sixty four. We're casting buffs on
yourself occasionally misses, which is funny as another Apprentice Magician

(12:58):
trait where you can where you miss casting something on yourself.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Now, I mean that was one bugbear of mine in
sixty four was that buffs could sometimes miss. That just
doesn't seem like yeah, like I know, we joked about
it being diegetic, like, ahha, he's like an apprentice, you know,
to the magician, apprentice to the regional magician. It's fine,
like okay, But another thing that can miss in this
game or items, if you use an item on yourself,

(13:25):
like let's say the giants shoes. The giant shoes is
a really useful item that makes your movable distance. It
makes your little box in which you can move much
much bigger. It's a very useful item if you're trying
to put distance between yourself and an enemy that you
know hits hard up clothes great. However, they can miss.
Items can miss. You can use your expendable items and

(13:48):
it will just say miss. What What the hell is that?

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah? I don't know. It's good. It's good fun though, right,
I guess that's about it.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
No, that's the opposite.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Another item bugaboo that gets me in this game is
your inventory. I don't know if you had any problems
with that, but you fill up pretty quickly and there's
no way to really drop items, just the ones you
don't want, or when you open the chest, there's no
way to swap an item for the one that's in
the chest, and a lot of times you're gonna find

(14:23):
chest late game that have stuff you want, and you're
gonna end up just trying to heal yourself with bread
just to make space.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, you know, they said, we're turning into a new millennium.
Why don't we bring gamers into the two thousands with
a resonant evil like items system where items don't stack.
Is it's a little perplexing. It never really bothered me
simply because you find just a bountiful surplus of items
throughout this game. You're never gonna be wanting for anything.

(14:53):
And thankfully too, they gave the wings the items if
you'll remember that we get from ends that will take
us all the way back to whatever town. That's a
separate item like box and a separate item menu, so
those won't take up space. But if you've got five
health potions or five honeybreads, so that takes up five
slots and you've only got I didn't write down just

(15:15):
how many off the top of the dome. Once you're full,
you just can't pick up any more items and that, Yeah,
that's kind of annoying. But at the same time, you know,
like I said, there are just items everywhere. I never
felt wanting.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
So I played Earthbound for the first time, probably a
year and a half, two years ago, and one of
the questions I had I thought I was playing wrong
was why is my inventory constantly full? And the Internet
made sure to inform me that that was a feature
of the game, and that's supposed to mimic the pockets

(15:50):
of the players. And what kind of child would have
infinite pockets for infinite items? So I guess this is
the same thing Rick, right, Like Brian only has so
many pockets spaces, he can't stack things in his pockets.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Don't come at me with that. You can put like
ten loaves of fresh bread into your inventory. No child
is putting that much bread into their pants. I can
promise you this. Parents, do not reach out to me
trying to prove me wrong. I don't want to see
your child do things like this. It's you know, I
It wasn't a bother. It was a little annoying sometimes sure,

(16:24):
but like you know, oh, I've got too many of
these great things, and I can always come back and
pick them up whenever I need them. Woe is me?
You know, That's a little bit how it felt to me.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
The side view of the sprites on the field. I
just want to touch back on that. It's it is nice.
There's no switching the camera angles like in sixty four.
You know, the sixty four wanted to take advantage of
what it could do graphically, and to its credit, Quest
sixty four does look very, very nice. It looks very pretty,
but the constantly changing camera angles of the battle system

(16:55):
did sometimes give a bit of a herky, jerky or
disjointed experience. It is the smallest of nitpicks, but it's
one worth saying. The static camera angle of the two
D game, you know, where it's just you're looking at
it like their action figures. I quite liked it, you know,
And that's going to come down to taste totally. It's

(17:16):
not a pro. It's not a con. It's just taste,
you know. There's no accounting for it. It's nice, I agree.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Before we finish up the preamble as you like to
say here and get to the actual game, I do
want to point out that this game has one of
the best titles if you buy the Japanese version, It's
Elemental Tale, Jack's Great Adventure, Satan's Counter Attack. There's two
colons in the name.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
That's true. That's where their budget went was was for
a typeface of the title. Yeah, I learned, I learned
some kanji looking at that title. Actually good stuff. Yeah,
l tail, very cool, very cool title. And they do
a little bit more with you know, I mean, they

(18:02):
don't do more with Satan in this game, but they do.
They do a little bit more with the baddies, a
little bit more interesting and one twist that genuinely made
me laugh out loud. I cannot believe they did it.
And you know, we'll get there. We touched on visuals.
Let's chat about that for a moment. Largely. I mean,
you know, if you've played Links Awakening, if you've played Pokemon,

(18:24):
if you've played Godzilla for the game Boy, like I
know you all have, it looks pretty much the same.
I mean, it's a game Boy Color game. You know,
it's you've all experienced this. It looks good.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
I totally agree. And opposite of Quest sixty four, where
the game comes rip roaring out of the gates with
all of its best stuff and then kind of trails
off at the end, the game just looks better the
further you get into it. The later stages and the
boss brites are awesome.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
On this.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
I loved it. And kudos to imagine you and Altare
for finishing a game as opposed to just finishing a game.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah. Yeah, I did get the sense that some stuff
wasn't how to say this, I still got some of this,
a sense that some story stuff maybe wasn't fully baked.
But front to back visually this is very nice, and
I agree with you some of those late game enemy sprites.
There's one in particular, Guilty, who is a very very

(19:25):
minor character even in this one, and extremely so in
sixty four. The sprite just looks so badass in this one.
Mammon looks way better than he does in sixty four.
And Mammon's world too that you get to at the
very end looks killer. It looks really really good. I'm
also you know, I'm a big fan of this era

(19:46):
of handhelds. I love, love, love game Boy and game
Boy Color and game Boy Advance too, But like you know,
game Boy Color is what I grew up with, game
Boy Pocket and game Boy Color or what I grew
up with. I'm such a big fan of this right
work of like this and Pokemon and links Awakening. I
will always think it looks good and they did a
great job here. You know, Brian looks like a little

(20:07):
guy if he's if he's walking with his back to you,
you can see his little hogay hair, notably not a
he go hair, something different. You can see that wiggling
back and forth as he moves, which is a really
cute little touch. It's great. A lot of the enemies too,
look very good. The scarecrow that like demonic looking black

(20:29):
ball with legs and legs and arms that looks horrifying,
looks very very nice in here. The cobolds, the enemies
in the forest, they look great. They look like little
guys in here. And we meet some surprise enemies like dragons. Yeah,
look really good.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
I was also a big fan of Shannon's little sprite
in this one. She has the side swept hair in
both games, but in this one it much like Brian's hair.
It's got a little wiggle to it and it looks like.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody translates to this visual style very nicely.
You know, it looks good. It's going to look as
good now. Level design is something that I'd be curious
to talk about with you. One of the things about
sixty four that I had mentioned as a bit of
a criticism from me was feeling like a lot of
the game was either hallways or just platforms. You know,

(21:24):
they felt like they felt like they were still under development.
They felt like they were a concept piece rather than
a fully realized world or environment. Now, even factoring in
the notion that this is pared down in terms of
the levels and everything, how did you feel How do
you feel the level design and the levels in general

(21:46):
compared to sixty four. Do you think they're a good representation.
Do you think they exceed in some areas? What are
your thoughts?

Speaker 2 (21:53):
I really like them. It's not going to give you
the like wow factor of the sixty four game, you know,
like coming out of Call Hazard through the through the
vines doesn't look like doesn't have that weird like sci
fi tunnel effect. Yeah, I mean it does in this game.
It's just significantly different. And places like the Blue Cave

(22:14):
and Mammon's Realm are pretty good representations in the two
D area of what the game look like on QUES
sixty four. But the level designs were better in this game.
I mean, they're laid out better. It's a lot easier
to traverse and find your way through and not get lost,
which is you know, a huge gripe about Quest sixty

(22:37):
four for a lot of people. So I mean, did
they do a good job. Yeah, but it doesn't feel
as to me, it doesn't feel as you know, like
Vast and Grandiose's Quest. Does. It just feels like a
good game. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
It doesn't have the X factor that sixty four does.
It lacks that genesse quest that sixty four has. Thank
you again, the sile is so encouraging. I love it.
I agree with you. I think it's a good representation.
You had mentioned you had made this comparison in the
last episode that I thought was very interesting, that Quest

(23:15):
sixty four. It was one of the first three d
j RPG attempts, and you know, certainly the first one
on the sixty four. And because of that, you know,
they were going off of two D models like Chrono
Trigger and like Final Fantasy six. Now Here we see
the D make going back to that, and I think
that is fascinating because you know what we lose in

(23:36):
that grandiosity, let's call it of Brian standing by a tree.
We're seeing the vast Holy plans all across and you know,
we have to walk across the whole thing. We have
to dial that back now. Now we're just a little guy,
you know, we're walking great distances in a matter of like,
you know, two minutes. It is a little bit. It

(23:57):
does lose that I can agree with you, for sure,
but that sort of top down perspective that comes with
two D. Yeah, you're not getting lost nearly as often,
although there is still one area that is a bit
of a pain when it comes to navigation. Color palette's

(24:28):
nice to looks terrific by the way I played this
on my MEU Mini plus, It's not my preferred way
to play anymore. It's man, I don't think I'm getting
that old. You know, there's a trend. I don't know,
you're older than me, you might feel differently about this
than I do. There's a trend of like young thirty
and late twenties calling themselves like super old, and it

(24:50):
kind of bugs me, you know, like I feel like
my foot's being put into the grave, like one foot
into the grave before I even hit forty. And I
don't like it. And I'm still young, still him, I
still got it?

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Is it because the screen is small, it doesn't hurt
your eyes.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, that's that's where the try hard funny tangent came from. Yes, no,
it's it's not that it hurts my eyes. It's just
like the device is tiny. The screen is tiny. Like
I don't want tiny anymore, you know, like I'm a
fan of big phones. You know my computer screens they're
not huge or twenty seven inch, but you know my
laptop screen is seventeen inches. I don't want tiny anymore.

(25:26):
I want to give my eyes a break.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
I tried playing it. I have an ambernick RG you know, whatever,
something something something, because they don't name their things, they
just number them. And I tried playing it on there
because the screen is brighter and I could play it later.
But like you said, they're it's tiny, and not just
the screen being tiny, but the layout of the buttons

(25:48):
and the shoulders. It's hard on old man hands like
mine in yours. So I moved back to my game
Boy Color and my original game and play down there,
which felt better in the hands. But then I had
to get the worm light out.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Which I consider a pro. Yes, you do, you have
a nice version of this physically, I looked into that.
There are a few listings on eBay, and I do
mean a few. The only one that I found that
I was interested in buying was just the game, not CIB,
which is terribly unfortunate New Battery. But it was like
sixty to eighty dollars, which for game Boy, I'm not

(26:27):
spending that much unless it's CIB like kind of period.
I'm not interested in that, so I did not buy it. Unfortunately,
maybe next time.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
I don't blame you. That's expensive for a game, and
people like to I used to get poked every once
in a while saying that I was driving up the
cost of Quest sixty four for everyone by by buying copies.
I only own two copies of this game, so if
it's expensive, not my fault.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Not this one. I paid a little more for my
copy of sixty four, But in my defense, it is
Pristine's CIB it's good, any who's it's Let's talk a
little bit about the sound of this game. As we
mentioned before, these are Amano's compositions, and as Mike pointed
out to me, Shimizu is Zumi Shimizu's arrangements. What are

(27:19):
your feelings about this soundtrack? On the sixty fours sound
font sound font versus the Game Boys sound font.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
I don't like it as much. That's probably a given, Okay.
I have a strong draw to Nintendo sixty four music,
so it's definitely a me thing. If you like like
low fi, chill game boy music, there's nothing wrong with
this soundtrack. And if you recognize or if you remember
the Quast sixty four songs, the ones here are fun

(27:49):
to hear a different arrangement in a from a different system.
But I don't really like I can't say I like
them more, but they're not bad by any mean.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, I can see that. I you know, you have
a particular fondness for the n sixty four's sound profile.
I have a fondness for the game Boys. I quite
like these. There are some, especially the later ones, like
the boss fight with Mammon at the end, Amano tries
to do some cool dissonance in the sixty four version

(28:21):
that translates, okay, and on the game Boy it gets
kind of abrasive. Now it's abrasive in a way that
made me like kind of pull my head back and
smile like the stank face, Like yeah, okay, but I

(28:43):
don't know that that means it's necessarily good for the
average player, you know, a little too crunchy. I do
have to say, though, overall, I quite liked it, and
it was perplexing to me to see how many people
online said it was terrible. If you search Quest Brian's
Journey just on Google, I don't know if you've heard

(29:04):
of this Google dot com. If you search Quest Brian's
Journey on there, one of the first reddit posts. Actually,
for me, this is the first search result that comes up. Well,
my query is Quest Brian's Journey interview, because again I
was trying to find as much as I could about this.
But the first Reddit result that comes up is titled
Quest Brian's Journey game Boy Color featuring absolutely awful, awful

(29:28):
all caps music, new sentence awful. Like I think that's
a little bit of an exaggeration. I think they're getting
into history onics just a little bit.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
It's the same symptom as Quest sixty four. One person
decided they wanted to type out their thoughts and probably
don't have a broad enough view on the video game
landscape for what is good and bad. But it's, you know, whatever,
it's subjective. They hated it. They didn't like it at all,
so they can type it. That's up to them.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
They don't even have a podcast. They don't even have
the good graces to start a podcast to spew their
dumb opinions.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Like us, right, redhead.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yeah no, I mean the Internet decided the quest got
the hall pass for, you know, being the whipping boy
of our dumb comments. So it gets dog piled a lot.
How many metaphors can I mix in there? It's you know,
I think that's particularly unfair. The music is perfectly fine.
I think it's really charming. I do think that, you know,

(30:31):
if we're trying to be objective as objective as we
can about art, which is to say not at all.
But even still, I think the n sixty fours is better.
But I have a real soft spot for hearing like
Limelan in the Game Boy Color Sound Fond. You know,
it's cute, it's nice.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yeah, there were some real hits for me too. I
really like boil Hole on the n sixty four and
it was fun hearing this version and then hearing the music,
which is not the best on the Nintendo sixty four
version between the last few bosses, and then the rung
up to Mammon and his Realm. I was really surprised
by how much I liked be Mammon's Realm post guilty

(31:21):
music on this version.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Mm hmm. Yeah, some of that later music is really
quite nice. Some of it does feel a bit crunchy,
a little bit too. There's too much going on, so
I mean, so it goes. I think it was a
better decision to d make the sound track into the
game Boys sound funt rather than compose something wholly new.

(31:44):
I think that would have taken a bit of the
identity away, and I don't know, I think it would
have been a lesser product overall. I don't know, and
maybe I'm wrong on that. I'm not convinced even as
I say this. But all this to say, you're going
to be hearing some of that through here. It's been
a long time since I've done a podcast with exclusively
game Boy music, so I hope the balancing has been

(32:06):
okay and isn't like, you know, blown out anybody's ears.
But you know, people see we fly, we fly by
the scene of our fans.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Here. I'm going to give you a big high five
in an audio format here, Rick, I did have a
lot of people reach out to me and say that
the Quest sixty four music behind the podcast that we
recorded sounded really good for podcast background music. I don't
usually listen to episodes I'm on, so I'm going to
take their word for it, but awesome. I hope more

(32:37):
people use Quast sixty four music behind their podcast.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Oh that's really nice to hear. I was a little
self conscious that a few of the tracks were too hot,
like too loud in the background. So that's good to hear.
That's that's nice feedback. You'd be surprised. I don't really
get a lot of feedback like that for the show,
even when I ask specifically, which I realize can be
a little bit off putting, and you know, maybe isn't
the most nice mannered thing to do. Could be uncomfortable.

(33:02):
But yeah, that's thank you. If you're listening and you
are the ones that said that, thank you, I appreciate it.
Well again, if you haven't listened to the Quast sixty
four episode, please do a lot of what we talk
about there, especially in the opening stuff, you know, talking
about the overall mechanics the world. A lot of that's
going to apply to this game too. We're going to

(33:23):
reference that episode a lot. We've already talked about some
areas and such. They're highly recommend checking that out. If not,
then you know, keep enjoying this episode because we are
going to talk through the plot, which is largely the
same but not totally of Quest Brian's Journey. So the

(34:13):
start of this is just a little bit different. We're
starting with Brian. Brian's outside, He's taking care of some
monsters before being sent home by LeVar and Gabriel. Was
Gabriel in sixty four?

Speaker 2 (34:25):
No, this was kind of all in an exposition. You
were supposed to assume that it was LeVar that took
the book because you'd find him much later in the game.
But no, no, Gabriel, new character.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Okay, yeah, Brian slays a monster. You don't get to
play at that point, but LaVar and Gabriel send you home.
Bart is here at this time as well. In sixty four,
he wasn't here in the beginning. I don't think he was, right. Nope, okay,
I didn't think. So the next day comes about and
Serious tells you that LeVar and Gabriel stole the l

(34:56):
Tail book and Bart is going to go out and
search for the but Brian's not going to be far behind.
He can't just stay around here. Before you actually depart
on your quest, you go around town just looking for
rumors and gossip to report back, you know, just and
you run into a monster, a spirit named Tim.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Call me.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Terrific Tim. This is where you get your first fight.
I apologize this is on me. We neglected to talk
about how the spell system works here, and I did
kind of want to talk about that. It's largely similar
to the sixty four version, but I don't know something
about it here. I just I kind of like it
just a touch more. You press a button, I think

(35:45):
it's b to bring up your spell menu, and then
you've got your four cardinal directions that correspond to your
elements fire, wind, water, and Earth. And when you're starting,
you get like one press in any direction. You know,
you can press one time for fire. But as you
go through the game, as you level up your spirit points,
you can press up to three buttons in a row,

(36:09):
but they can be any combination. You want to press
three wins for wind Cutter level three, my best Friend,
my Savior, my Roman Empire, you can do that or
if you want to do healing in this game, it's
a little different. You press one for water and then
one for rock and then two for rock, or maybe
I might have it backwards, one for rock and then
two for water. That'll give you healing you want to

(36:31):
press I don't know, rock, water, wind, you can do
that too. Now, it doesn't tell you the combinations like
in game. I think that might be in the manual
or you just figure it out, but I don't know.
I really like that. It was a delight for me
to just try things out in experiment.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah, and it's got a cute little pixel pictograph at
the bottom right that shows you what combination you pressed,
and you can back up one element at a time
and try something different, And then you can write down
your favorite combinations for your favorite spells. Like when you
figure out that spirit armor and magic barrier are awesome
later in the game, you can write that down.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
Oh yes, spirit armor becomes necessity. Becomes a necessity for
a couple of fights. I one of my favorite things
to do in this game, because, as we're going to
see soon, this game is much easier. So what I
started doing was as soon as I got access to
Spirit armor, and I don't remember the name of the
spell power staff. Maybe that like boosts your melee attack.

(37:31):
I just started doing that and playing a Barbarian. It
was fun. It was good fun.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
One thing that I would be remiss to talk about
story wise before we get to Tim is that when
Brian is woken up, could you take a little nap
after the book thing? And you are awoken by Gilmine
is the lady's name? Is that Brian's mom? I can't
find any does anybody online know of this is Brian's mom?

(37:57):
Please come at me because I can't I find any
information on this character whatsoever. And that's the only scene
she appears in is to wake Brian up. And there's
no Brian's mom in sixty four. So we could have
gotten Brian's whole family at the beginning, the first ten
minutes of this game and not even knowing it.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
I had a brief moment where I started to sweat,
Like it's like when the professor asks you a question,
like can you double check me on this? Like why
are you asking me? You're the expert.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
There's no This game doesn't have a lot of info,
like you said, so we're making the lore here as
we go, we're just going to say it's Brian's mom.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Grand Abbott is going to tell you that he had
a dream about your upcoming adventure and how you were
going to save us all. I made a note here.
I think it is cool and kind of bad ass
to send children on continent wide quests facing beasts on
their own based on your dreams. I think this rules.
I think this builds character. I think the youth of
today are soft, and I think it's because they don't Quest.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
I agree, you should trust the children.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
They are our future, and the only way they can
prove it is by going out into the woods and
searching for spirit points. No, Tommy, please don't pick that up.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
And if they died, then they're just the past.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Right, So it's yeah, they didn't have a making the
makings of a varsity wizard.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
So just like in Quest sixty four, our first stop
is Donderin. I have a note to talk music if
we haven't, but we kind of did. It's nice, it's pleasant,
you know, it's not awful awful awful like Reddit might
have you think. Just like in sixty four, bandits have
been razzling the town. Princess Flora has a larger role
here and in this game, in this town right now

(39:31):
in Donduran, she's being married off at age fourteen, and
seems to be the only person here that's against that idea. Yes,
there's a night named Gibson that's gonna yell at you
for peeking in on Flora while she's changing, which is
absolutely not what is happening. Do not cancel this podcast.
He takes you aside to wait to talk to the king.
There's a man that comes in named Dorley who's been

(39:53):
escorted by a man named Ham to marry Flora. That's
going to talk to the king just before us, Mike,
I would like to talk about Ham.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
I guess I would like to too. What would you
like to talk about?

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Well, that's where my note ends. I was hoping he'd
take the reins. No A plus name love the name Ham.
This this game has a series of just stellar names.
We've got ham Apawna, an area called Boiled Hole, just
a plus terrific.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
I'm glad you like the extra exposition of the Game
Boy version. There are a lot more NPCs with a
lot of great names.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
So they're talking. Ham wants to marry the fourteen year
old standard quest stuff, and Sulfuring actually makes his appearance here.
He like does a teleport into the castle and a
puff of smoke, he overpowers everyone there. He kind of
throws them to the side. He declares himself the King
of the Beasts. He kidnaps Princess Flora for himself and

(40:53):
leaves some monsters in the wake for you to fight. So,
of course you take care of him. The king, understanding
that you're probably stressed from the l tail books kidnapping,
asks you to please rescue Flora, and since we are
a good boy, of course we will.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yep. And there was an implication in there, you know,
per the implication that Solver Ring was supposed to take
the hand of Flora from the king, but there was
some sort of some sort of misunderstanding when he took
the orb. Wait really, yeah, yeah, that was that was
somewhere in the in the text there. Oh, he was

(41:27):
banished to the forest. He returned to take her hand
like he was promised, but he had already stole the
earth orbs, so maybe that deal fell apart. Can't trade
a fourteen year old for a circular piece of magic
stuff exactly.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
I don't think we need to explain that to these
to our listeners. No Silvering is in Connor Forest as
is typical. This is where I made a note here.
Everything in this game is significantly easier to navigate. It's
still like, don't get me wrong, there are still dead
ends and you know, wrong paths, but it's not even
to the complexity of like Rock Tunnel and Pokemon Blue,

(42:04):
mainly because you know, it's not dark and there's not
multiple levels, but it's not exactly linear, but it's it's close.
I welcome that, though you know the a game doesn't
need to be needlessly obtuse in its level designer obfuscate
the path that doesn't translate to good you know what
I mean? I do Shannon. We find Shannon for the

(42:25):
first time in a little cottage in the in the forest.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Here.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
She doesn't do much outside of introduce herself. You know,
she's aware of what's going on, just making her presence known.
We confront Solvering. He is as you'd expect, just like
sixty four. He reveals a little more this time around,
though he says, quote, I was once a spirit tamer.
I was exiled when my plan to create a massive
Army of Warriors with the Dead was exposed, but I

(42:48):
got the Earth orbe and became the King of the Beasts.
This game does this a lot. It adds a little
more life and color to the characters. It's not in
a way that creates a cohesive and realized world like
you know, Zeno Gears are even legend of Dragoon. But
Quest and its compatriot games weren't trying to be that.

(43:09):
You know, this is Pokemon levels of world building. It's
perfectly serviceable. It's not attempting to be a video game.
Dostoyevski and Pokemon is a great example. I know I
keep drawing back to that, but it's like that. You know,
the NPCs are there to talk to. Sometimes they might
talk about the town. Sometimes they might, you know, talk
about their grandma. It's fine, it's serviceable. It's better than

(43:31):
I mean, to its credit, it's a little better than
sixty four in this regard.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, you get to talk about necromancy, which we didn't
talk about in sixty four, So I mean dropping good
magic stuff in this game.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
I would love to see a fan like remake of
Quest sixty four, just integrating everything from this game into
that you know what I mean to like a combination
of the two. Yeah, pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
You're not the first person to say that they would
be awesome. And there are some people working on some
remakes of Quest, so maybe, just maybe we'll get some
of that in there.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yeah, you're not the first person to say that. I
haven't had an original thought in my life. I know
Solvering gets hit by one of my wind cutter threes
and is instantly annihilated. This will this will become a
theme of this game for me. I am basically Dennis Reynolds,
a golden god, but not of manipulation and implications of

(44:25):
destruction with my wind cutter tools. This is a duct
tape zeptizon wind cutter.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
I have to have my tools.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
It was actually pretty comical. I remember messaging you about this. Mic.
I did a bit of grinding, a normal amount of grinding,
not excessive, just a little, and then I went to Solvering.
I used one wind cutter three and did did like
three hundred damage this early in the game, and just
instant chao. It was I was. It was at that
point that I realized that grinding breaks this game.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Yeah, And like we talked about unlike Quest sixty four,
you're going to hit almost every single one of your
shots every single time. So when something like wind Cutter
three fires fifteen wind Cutters, you're going to do a
massive amount of damage.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Mm hmm. So we save Flora, we save her from solvering.
She gives us the Earth Orb, and at the request
of the King Scott Furt by the way, that's his name,
we rate his back room like in sixty four, and
we're off. I don't remember how we're told to go here,
but we are now going through the locked door in
the forest. There was a previously locked door on our

(45:31):
way to Laura Pool to get the Mermaid Orb.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
You you meet Shannon at the end by the boat
again too, and she kind of gives you the nudge
towards well, she's still saying nothing, but it's at least nothing,
and you need to go to.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
Yes, yeah, yeah. Before you get to Laurapool, you get
on the boat with Murray, just like in sixty four.
By the way, the inns still do. Remember we talked
about last time, how the screen just fades to black
and it says did you have a night's sleep? You know?
And with the sailing you just go into a room
and then exit and then boom you're there. This game
still does the black screen with sleeping you know, fine,

(46:08):
but you get a little gangway view of the ships
sailing across the water, which you know, it's great. I
like it.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
I did. I wrote myself a note later in the
game that Rick got his ship exposition that he really wanted,
that he wanted to see from Class sixty four.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
I like seeing them sail, you know, just shooting across
the water.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
You know, it's nice, it's good waves.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, gnar get that NARNR. We meet Colleen. We meet
Colleen on board. She mentions that her father is a
spirit tamer too. Do we know I made a note here?
Do we know who that is? I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
No, But she also kind of implies that she is
also trying to become a spirit tamer and is some
sort of wizard as well, So I guess she's the
more important person, not her father.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Spirit Tamers in this game are like wildly expanded upon.
And maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolic here. They're expanded
upon quite a bit, like you know, in the in
the Quest sixty four version, And I will admit I
didn't talk to every NPC, but I kind of got
the feeling that Brian was like the special boy, whereas
here it seems like Spirit Tamers are like kind of

(47:15):
like the Blades in Elder Scrolls, you know, like multiple
people can join it's but it is like an elite
kind of a group, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah, And like you said, just having the amount of
NPCs we already have in the first twenty five minutes
of this game, you're starting to see that maybe that
was what was going on in Quest sixty four, and
they just didn't say the the quiet Spirit Tamer part
out loud for us.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, Yeah, that's probably what happened. Speaking of sixty four,
we get a pretty big departure from that right now.
We're attacked on ship while we're sailing over towards Laurapool.
It's the pirate known as Killiak. You remember Killiak. We
run into him in sixty four. He's robbing us. He is,
I am the captain nowing us. He was actually a

(48:01):
little bit tougher for me than solving. I still won
with only a few hits, But this is where I
started using Spirit Armor to try to like bonk my
way through. Before I realized that I am basically Sayaitama
from One punch Man with my wind cutter.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
I was just glad that he was an actual pirate
here for you, and not like some sort of pirate
magician combo that gives you the the hebgb's just regular pirate. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
Yeah, As we all know, pirate wizards simply too powerful.
They're up to no good. And here's another total departure
after the battle, it's actually Colleen that drives Killiak and
you know, his goons away. We can assume that he's
got goons. Uh she summons lean on a literal luckness monster.

(48:47):
Is Colleen way more powerful than we are?

Speaker 2 (48:50):
It certainly seems that way.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
That was wild. I was not expecting this at all,
Like she could she should be going on this quest.
Let Brian study to like, you know, get his marks.
She is crazy. That was awesome. But the ship makes

(49:29):
it back to land, and just like in sixty four,
the wind and the sea has stopped. We can't make
its nor moon just yet, so we are heading to Larpool.
Just like in sixty four, we're helping Layla here. She
frames it as the Mermaid or basically breaking down and
we just got to go get her another from Crystal Cave.
They cut a lot of the travel out in this version.

(49:52):
She just takes you to the entrance basically right away.
And what happens she like lowers the water in sixty four. Here,
I don't think that's even a thing. She just kind
of takes you to a path. You walk down the
path and you're already there, you know.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Correct, It's and it was weird in sixty four, but
that was a lot of people's burden with the game
was not knowing where to go, and if you didn't
leave her and then come back, she never changes the
water level, so people got stuck there. It was nice
to just have a literal place to go in this
game Boy version. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah, I went back into town in sixty four to
just you know, talk to people. And then I came
back and I was like, what I've got to ask
you again? Come on, come on, Colleen Leyla. You've got
me on my knees.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
In such a magical area there too. Yes, Yes, we
were getting really we were getting really getting lovely there
in the in the waterfall room with her. I'm glad
you brought Clapton into.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
It the well, I mean, to sixty four's credit, the
Waterfall room. I mean it doesn't exist in here, does
it not? Really?

Speaker 2 (50:56):
No, it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
And oh man, that's one of my favorite rooms in
the sixty four first And I'm not it sounds like
I'm being being an ass. I'm not like that room
looks really pretty. Speaking of pretty, Crystal Cave, you'll be
thrilled to know that Crystal Cave isn't nearly as annoying
as it was in sixty four, not nearly as bad.
There's also an optional NPC in town. I think it

(51:18):
is Mike, I don't quite remember Naltese or Naltes. That
tells you a little bit about the day of grief.
Here's what Naltes says. Says, quote long ago, a dispute
arose over a book which had enormous powers. All who
lived in the country which won the book perished. And
this kind of paints the l Tail book as like
a horrendous force, a biblically powerful artifact. We don't get

(51:44):
a lot of this characterization or see any demonstrations, but
it does kind of make it a little bit less
of a mcguffin like, we get that a little bit
in sixty four. I don't want to misrepresent sixty four,
but we don't get that really until what that tower
in the desert in sixty four.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
I think, Yeah, lots more references here to the book,
to the Spirit Tamers, and to the all Caps thousand years.
Then you get in QUES sixty four, which all kind
of come in the last like twenty five percent of
the game. So it's it's nice to have the build
up in this game compared to the dump that you

(52:22):
get in QUES sixty four. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Yeah, And you know, to be in fairness, I still
don't have a grasp on what the l Tail Book
is exactly. The game doesn't go to great lengths to
really fan that out. I don't know that that's a
con necessarily, you know, my knee jerk is to say
it is. But at the same time, stories don't need
to explain and over explain everything. I don't know, I

(52:46):
would need to think about it a little bit more,
But at any rate, Shannon is here again just making
herself known, telling us what the town's up up to.
You know, there are mimics all around the Crystal Cave
that'll disable your magic. I immediately run away, like flee
if I run into them, because it is just not
worth the time it would take to fight them.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Not worth it. And it seems like it works every
time too, Like they never miss with that stuff.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Oh of course they're not apprentices.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Nope, full blown magicians.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
I think this next part is different too, Mike. I
don't one hundred percent remember. As you're traversing, you get
washed away by an incoming wave, like it just comes
off to the left side of the screen and washes you,
and a talking owl named Chappie finds you. You might
remember Chappy, and he literally says, as you're coming to
you should not be here. You are in the way.

(53:36):
Terrific yeap.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Obviously, well yeah, yeah, sure sure.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
He takes you to see a pawna whose house slash
abode cottage happens to be just a few steps north
of here. Ipana knows about your compatriot taking the altail book.
She knows why you're here, she knows everything that's going
on with Leila. She knows everything. Basically, she says as much.
She'll give us mermaid Orb and teleport us back to Laurapool.
We give it to Laila. She spins around and around

(54:05):
and right round like a record baby, and magically everything
is fixed. I love game Boy games.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
So now that we've helped Laila, it's time to go
after the wind Orb. We can get to norm Moon
now through cull Hazard. We I did not I admit
I did not take any notes on cul Hazard outside
of this next upcoming pretty big difference. There's a talking
dragon that pops out while we're in this area.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
Yeah, the l Tail Dragon.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Oh is that its name?

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Yeah, that's what I think. That's what it said. That's
the note I took was time to kill the ltail Dragon,
well known from Quest sixty four.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
It's a you know, it's just the standard trope, like
it's a force of mystical nature that wants to test
her power. That's pretty much it. This was the first
like tough fight like you have. This is where spirit
armor comes into play. You're gonna want to use your bread.
It's it's not easy, you know, you'll game over here.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
It's very cool looking too, and it's the first time
where the enemy is significantly larger than you. Like before
we've had bosses that are you know, it's like adult
to child size sprites. This is the first time where
the game shows you how large these monsters can be,
which was you know, didn't really happen in Quest sixty
four until you got to Mammon. So it was nice

(55:22):
that they started throwing at you this kind of thing
earlier in the game here too as well.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
That's a really good call. And I wonder if that
wasn't due to you know, them being on the game boy,
they have less to work with, so they could do
that a little more often. I imagine it would have
taken a lot more time and effort to make more
of those scales of monsters in Quest sixty four, you know,
or even you know, that's even why like big Mouth,

(55:47):
you know, the best enemy in Quest sixty four isn't
really all that much bigger than you, you know, when
in reality he would probably be about the size of
a real crocodile compared to a real child. One would think,
one would hope, one would dream.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
We do dream in Quest.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
We all dream of Quest. We're growing boys. This dragon,

(56:31):
the l tail dragon, is really just a strength check,
like they're just checking to make sure that you're you know,
playing the game. That's really all and you get to
norm Moon. Largely the same as sixty four. We've got
to get the wind Jade. One thing that's different here
is we find Leonardo. So, Mike, you and I talked
about Leonardo in the sixty four episode. You entertained me
a little bit in wondering what his role would have been,

(56:53):
even though you knew already and you know we were
both right. He's kind of like your rival sort of.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah, he definitely is a little sassy boy in this game.
He likes to try to one up Yell a little
bit every once in a while. But you do have
a lot of shared goals, so I guess it's kind
of like Pokemon. You're going for the same kind of thing,
but he ends up being a campadre instead of a rival.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
You get into a little duel with him here. One
thing that I don't think we pointed out in combat,
your sprite is always the same, but enemy sprites are not.
They're like they get the Final Fantasy six treatment. You know,
you run into Keefka, he's got the little sprite, and
then in the battle he is a golden god of
a Michelangelo masterpiece. It's not quite to that level, but

(57:42):
like Leonardo. It's Leonardo's sprite here is like you know,
in battle, it's twice your height. He's got more proportioned limbs.
Things like that. Also not a hard fight. You kind
of wipe the floor with him. It's not even a thing.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Yep. And then he immediately talks about zels like, oh,
the spirit tamer zels You'll have to be the one
to go and fight him, because obviously you're beating me
and I was going to do it. So spirit monk
Zels's next.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Yeah, it's here that I'm realizing how many former spirit
monks were fighting, kind of like we're fighting our former
compatriots who have become corrupted. I'm just putting that together.
Speaking of Zelsa, you find Zelsa tussling with Leo in
the forest. I will call him Leo from here on out.
We're on that kind of relationship level. We step in
because Leo's having some trouble beating Zelsa. We win the fight.

(58:36):
He fades away, which presumably means we killed him. We
do a lot of killing in this game of people.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
There was a little exposition here too, Zelsa or zels
whichever way pronunciation you want to use. He hates Bearagoon,
and he's trying to protect normOn from Bearragoon, which is
apparently Barraguon trying to kill all of the spirit monks.
So there was some like extra stuff in there. Oh,
I'm not just a guy in the forest. I have

(59:02):
motives and things.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Yeah, exactly. The hatred of Barragoon is gonna come up
more in a little bit.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Yeah, we do way more killing of you. Look into
Brian's eyes and it's just nothing but malice. It's crazy.
Before you can talk to Leo about what this means,
you don't know what this means. He runs off and
Leila comes back, like just right at the same time, saying, yeah,
this old orb that you got me, it's a hunk
of junk. I need you to get me another. So

(59:34):
without even asking, she just teleports us back to a
Pauna again, and my note says, can you believe this shit? No?
Shout out, yeah, yeah, shout out to our friends Eric
and crisp uh Ipauna does not have an ORB this time.
She's gonna teleport you again. You're just getting passed around,

(59:54):
she says, use your use her teleporter to go to
the aisle in the sky, but it takes you to
kill in the ship instead Killian Killiak. Did I miss
write that Killiak?

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Yep. Yeah, she sends you to get one from Colleen
because Colleen apparently has one.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Oh true, right, I mean you're going there by means
of Killiak ship. There's another ship fight here, it's just
with a regular monster, no biggie on shore. We're back
in the shack, just like in sixty four with Colleen
and Killiak. She just can't stop talking about how much
Killiak sickens her.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
She hates right to his face, hates him just as
much as the n sixty four version. Just like, get
this pirate out of here, please. This is just the
worst thing that ever happened to me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
And he's just like, Hugh. It's kind of funny. You know,
we're going off to get the water Jewel from Nepty
once again. You know she's taken it. She's down inside
of a fissure inside of the ocean depths. It's not
as epic of a quest to get there as it
sounds like from that, but you know, we actually find

(01:00:57):
it really quickly. My only note wind Cutter three.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Yeah, the Blue Cave is a lot less daunting in
this one. And you know, I really like the shade
of blue that the game Boy color palette used for this.
One of my highlights of the game was how cool
the blue looked here. It wasn't just plain all like
blue walls and a slightly different colored blue ground.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Yeah, yeah, I agree, it looks it looks really pleasant.
It's really nice. So Colleen takes the water Gem. The
Water Jewel sends us back to a Pawna, who then
sends us back to Laila. I think a Pana gives
us another Mermaid orb. She I guess she found one, whoops,
sends us back to Laila. Layla dances. It's like Una
Layla dances, she always dances, and all is well once again.

(01:01:45):
I have a note here that I wanted to get
your thoughts on. I'm not sure I'm missing some of
the lore here. Upona mentions here and in sixty four
that the Water Jewel specifically seals the power of the
l Tail Book. And it's here that I wrote I'm
not one hundred percent convinced that I understand the functions
of these orbs. Do you have any insight into this?

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
So the way I understand it, is that. You know,
there's the diamond on the front of the book. You
stick the orbs into the book, and then that releases
the book's power, kind of like a like a nice
ronamicon instead of a necro namicon. It's meant to do
things for good, but nobody has like nobody has enough
power to control it, which is why all these bad

(01:02:29):
things have happened as well. But I don't know why
she specifically calls out the water one, because you still
need all four and the book to do the thing.
But maybe she just really likes the water one.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Sure sure Limelin is going to be our next stop,
not one hundred percent sure how we get there, to
be honest, I don't quite remember. I was also at
this point following a guide. I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Oh you sail again, it's more Bolt music. I really
like the Bolt music, so I made a note here
that I just said bolt.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Music, boat music, boat music, boat music, boat music. So
much like Qus sixty four, there are rumblings around town
that your pops has been through here previously. You also
learn that Fargo is on the loose, a fiery serial killer.
We're not explicitly asked, but that's who we're going to
get now. This is also where Shannon begins to opine

(01:03:20):
on human nature, just like in sixty four, This is
where she begins to ask these questions. Here she says,
I wonder why people built such and useless capital not
a typo? Well, well it is a typho.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
It's just a AI learning. She's getting there, she's learning
our language.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
No. No, there are people that believe that any you know,
you see it with an historic a lot of the times,
like they believe that anne should precede vowel sounds. But
the problem is is that useless isn't a vowel sound.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
You know, I get it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
It's a y sound which doesn't function as a vowel
in this case, just like historic is not pronounced historic,
so anne is not applicable. It's archaic, you know what
I mean? I do am I nerding out too much? No?

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
I do like it. This is the kind of learning
I need to do on podcasts instead of some of
the podcasts I absorb.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
So if you want a video game podcast that does
an okay job at video games and a kind of
okay job at amateur grammar, you could probably do better
than me. But you're here anyway, so stick around. It's
the easiest choice, and the easiest choice is the best one. Yep,
finish it out anyway. Shannon continues, Shannon didn't say all

(01:04:31):
of that such an useless capital. While the capitol might
be here a thousand years from now, there is no
one who can live that long. She's beginning to question humanity.
This is also okay. This is also where we find
the lottery, which is I cannot believe I typoed soul
like what is in my body? Which is the sole
use for spirit points. That's a pun. Oh my god,

(01:04:53):
No that was Listeners, don't listen to what I just said.
That was on purpose soul here, that's purposeful. I'm very
f Subscribe to the Patreon, Patreon dot com slash FiOS
project Radio, which is this lottery is the sole use
for spirit points, which you've been finding in chests throughout
the game. They do not take up inventory space. They
get their own little screen. You use these to play

(01:05:13):
the lottery. You want to talk about the lottery.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Like I do. The Lineland lottery is great. It's something
that would have been really fun in the N sixty
four version. So you can give up your spirit point
gemstones to enter. There's a bunch of things that you
can put them towards. Most of them are normal items
like mint leaves and things, but there are four special
items at the bottom. Three Warriors items, a badge, a cape,

(01:05:41):
and a staff, and then one that just says orchestra
and gives no further explanation whatsoever, but they are all
very useful. The Orchestra gives you if you can win
the lottery, The Orchestra gives you all of the music
from the game to listen to at your leisure. And
then the Warriors ad cuts enemy encounters in half in

(01:06:04):
the wild, so drops the the abrasive quest encounter rate
to fifty percent less.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
It is high.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
It is high in this game too, and yeah it's
not as bad because the walking isn't as far so
it feels, but it's still it's high for any RPG.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
That's interesting. I didn't know that those did that. I
want to share my experience with the lottery right now.
I played it once and I don't remember what. I
didn't have enough spirit points for any of the good
stuff at the end, like you had mentioned the warrior stuff.
I think I bought like a dragon's pot. It was
a dragons potion. So I did that and they said,
all right, we'll let you know. And how it works

(01:06:43):
is after a certain amount of walking, I think, you
have to progress through what do you call it when
you like go through the right side of the screen
and then it transitions to a new board, you know,
and you're on the left, just a transition. You have
to do a certain number of those, I think, or
like go into battles stuff like that, and after a
while a bird will fly in it. It freezes you
in place. And a bird flies in from the right

(01:07:04):
side of the screen and you say, oh, there's something
on this pigeon's leg. And I thought, okay, they're they're
sending a bird out to me. I won. I grabbed
the note and it says sorry, you lose, and it's
here that I throw the game boy and I hit
a real bird. No, I didn't do that. I didn't

(01:07:24):
even play on a game boy. I thought that was
hilarious that they said that they sent a bird to
find me in the forest just to say screw you, bozo,
you lose.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
It gave me strong hey, arnold vibes. I watched a
lot of that. I don't know where where I got
this from, but it felt like one of the pigeons
from Hey Arnold that just said loser and then that
was it. That was the only thing that was on
the message out. But yeah, I liked it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
Oh man, that's like top three, top three Nickelodeon show.
For sure.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
I'm a big angry Beavers fan. I don't know if
that of angry beavers uh listeners and viewers in the
audience here, but we stand angry beavers.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Oh for sure. My gut reaction for like, so if
we can agree to leave SpongeBob out of the conversation,
that doesn't feel fair. You know, it's it's kind of
a generational show. But if we can leave that aside,
like my gut reaction, Top three Nickelodeon shows, Hey Arnold, Doug,
Angry Beavers.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
That's a good three. What was the one that was
that had I had the smaller shows in it, and
the one I really liked was Prometheus and Bob. It
was like like coublamb that's what I couldn't really like
kablamb too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
It also had Action League now with the flesh he's
super strong and super naked yep.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
Man, that was I still find myself stumbling on little
clips of that show and forgetting where it came from.
I'm like, who would put this on Nickelodeon, Like, oh, yeah,
it was in it was a variety show. We're good.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
It's that. It's that it's surrealist kind of humor, like
sketch humor. It's man, what a time, dude, Like, I
know everybody says this, but we grew up in such
a goddamn great time.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
Agreed, Well, I grew up. You were a little older
than me, Yeah, I was semi growing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
I mistook this next note as saying that we're back
in Bearragon, but I don't think that's correct. Where do we?
Where are we that we run into LeVar for the
first time? Here? Do you remember?

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
I see we already talked to Queen Deanna. Are we
still in Limelan?

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
We're progressing through Like it's right before we run into Fargo.
It's after we leave Limelan looking for Fargo we run
into LeVar, I wrote Aragon. I don't think that's right though.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
No, he says he'll be waiting for you in Bearragoon,
But I don't remember where we are either somewhere in between. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
Yeah, at any rate, we run into LeVar. It's shocking
your Your avatar even does a little jump and he says, quote,
it's been a long time, Brian, I have been cursed
and cannot even die. This is because I use the
Ltail Book to rule the world and called upon a
terrible power to accomplish my goal, the power of destruction.
Now stop with the so called with the power of

(01:10:12):
the so called spirit. Very fascinating. It sounds like he
wants to die and his soul, like his his ethereal being,
has been taken from him. You know. I mean, this
game isn't dark, but that's kind of dark for what
this game is.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Yeah, they kind of throw you on the one eighty.
It seems like they're giving him plot armor because you
just whooped him at that point. But then this is
what you get. You get actual like plot instead of
just random plot armor. So once again Brian's journey coming
through with things that we could have learned in Quas
sixty four but weren't given the time to learn them.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
Yeah, he does an impressive fifty plus damage to me
with a fire attack. I heal it. He does another
attack that does only ten or so. Huge mistake because
wind Cutter three is coming out and it does literally
eight hundred damage. I empowered to level fifty at this point,
and I don't think I'm supposed to be. It only
takes one more move to take down LeVar in what

(01:11:06):
I assume should be a climactic battle.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
I think I was over. So I started with Water
and then moved to Wind, and I think I was
approaching fifty on both spells at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
Yeah. You, I mean there's plenty of encounters and wild
spirit points, Like you're gonna end the game probably with
fifties across the board. Yeah, Fargo is not far behind
him inside this fuck maze of a cave. I hate this.
This is the one, like the one level that really
threw me off, Like it's kind of hard to navigate

(01:11:38):
in this one. I I got lost quite a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
Unluckily, there's like three distinct parts of it though, like
different color palettes, different like backgrounds and things around, so
at least you know when you're going backwards. But yeah,
it's long, easily the longest so far.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. Fargo says he's
not handing over any gems, especially not to Vegas, and
that he's the king of Cutland. Is this the first
mention of Vegas that we get.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
Yep. And then he dunks on you for being a
little boy right after that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
Yeah, which is funny because my next note is big
talk for someone who can't handle my wind cutter level threat.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
You know. So after we get out of that maze,
we reach Brannock. Just like in sixty four, it was
raised by the king just to test his own strength,
is what Shannon tells us, And she continues, why do
you protect humans? You know, she's continuing on this existential
stint that she's stumbled into. But yeah, it's cool this,
I mean, this town is completely I mean not entirely,

(01:12:38):
but it's like clearly in disarray. It's been slashed to bits.
Things are not going well. The innkeeper here makes me
talk to him twice to rest and save my game
and reheal, which I interpret as them forcing me to
pray for the dead, which is what they asked me
to do the first time. No currency only exchanges were

(01:13:00):
goods and services. Mike, how much is one prayer for
me worth?

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
One nap?

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
Thinking about that I got a chew on that nap.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
I do like the Shannon exposition that you said here too.
She asked why we protect humans, but then she goes
on the whole why do humans do such foolish things?
And man so much more. I love Shannon. I love
Shannon from the last sixty four version, so having her
just praddle off every time you run into her here
is just great. Love it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
It would be really great to see a spiritual successor
to this where like Shannon in All but Name reappears,
you know, she is an interesting character. We're onto boiled Hole.

(01:14:01):
I think it's called boil hole, but I call it
boiled hole. Throughout this whole thing, all my notes a
big red maze. That's that's all. It is, just a
big red maze. There are enemies here that look like
mummies that are called ghost stalkers that will fuck you
up like they are. They're tough.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
There's I think this is the first appearance of Rockies
in this one as well, which are the bane of
Quest sixty four speed Runners, because it's the the first
enemy that will easily beat you an initiative in Quest
sixty four, and they're really hard to run. From, which
is how you do the agility act. So seeing Rocky
with his weird face here too was a jump scare.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
Is this also where you run into those like blue
lions that almost always let you go first.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
I don't remember seeing them till I don't think I
encountered in here. Definitely later on near the Mammon part.

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
Yeah, I think I think I'm a little ahead of myself.
I think you're right. You just go through. It's not
you know, it's a bit of a maze, not too crazy.
But we get out and we arrive in Brannock, after Brannoch,
after exiting Boiled Hole, there's talk of an injured monk
having been taken to the castle. There's some spirit tamer
and a woman came through. We also hear about that.

(01:15:13):
And ever since the king has been acting crazy. Everybody's despairing.
The nights are despairing. Vegas is riling them all up
for war. One night, Andrew only wishes that he could
have dated a cute girl. Me too. Man Shannon is
here too, kind of unexpectedly, like we run into a room,
we see Begas like riling everybody up, getting them ready

(01:15:34):
for war, and Shannon just comes in and she says,
what are you doing here? LaVar is over here, and
she takes you to this new room with LeVar, and
he says, you're late. You may find everything baffling my
goals and the ambitions of Barrigoon. You say, LeVar, what happened?
I can't understand anything that's happening. And it kind of

(01:15:55):
just goes from there into another fight. He says that
he'll tell you everything if we win, which we do.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
I don't remember the exact moment in a game, but
this is the first part in this conversation where I
recognize that Brian is actually talking in the game Boy
Color version as opposed to just being talked at in
Quest sixty four, because he, like you said, he asked
the bar what's going on? And that's when the bar,
you know, talks about the burden of the l Taal book.

(01:16:22):
And I'm like, wait, this is a two sided conversation.
There's only two people here. It's me, Brian and one
person having a conversation in a quest game. How wild.

Speaker 1 (01:16:31):
He does talk throughout the game prior to this, but
it's just only a couple times, Like he talks to
Gabriel on LeVar in the very beginning a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
Oh yeah, but this was like, this was my first
realization that I was it's been a few years since
I played this. Where I was because I'm trying to
write down all of the dialogue when I was playing
this time, because I wanted to be a good guest
and have notes, And it was just maybe I was
tired and playing my game boy with my worm light
at night, and I'm like, what is why is Brian
talking so much much? What is happening here? When did

(01:17:02):
he get all these words? He's just a little lad.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
I want to make it clear that guests are not
required to write down all the dialogue and the games
we're covering and staying up late to play them beat
by beat.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
We're all.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
Show Yeah, we we beat him. We win, and by
win I mean we murder this adult man because he
dies here. I'm very sure once we're done, he says,
when Granddabot told me of the powers of the l
Tailed Book, I had to test its strength. I was
possessed by an amazing might that even overpowered the spirits themselves.

(01:17:38):
He goes on to say that he tried experimenting, but
he failed and that's when Shannon happened across them and
said that he could experiment all he wanted here in
the castle. She corrupted him, So she's she's the motivator
in all of this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Yeah, I put Shannon sent him to Barragoon to experiment
with the book parentheses bad.

Speaker 1 (01:18:01):
You're gonna say parentheses nice?

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Yeah, close, close to the same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
It is parentheses bad. Shannon is being a bit of
a parentheses bad guy. Okay, now this is this is wild.
Now we're really veering from Ques sixty four. Vegas and
his goons knock us out, They take LeVar away, and
a whole series of scenes happen. Vegas and his goon
named Dinaldo, his head goon. They fire cannons and guns

(01:18:31):
at Melroad Monastery and I shit you not, the monastery
unearths itself and flies into the air.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
And it's a cut scene and it's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
Yeah, what is happening here? This is insane. I made
a note here like that is the monastery that flies
into the air, right, because I'm pretty sure I'm pretty
sure Brandick Castle also flies into the air eventually. Correct,
Yeah it's the monastery Okay, but yeah, yeah, guns exist
in this world? What the fuck?

Speaker 2 (01:18:58):
Yeah, and apparently castles and things being able to float
as a defense is, like you said, normalized, because we
have both Brannick and and the monastery floating, which you
think would lead to a sky battle if everybody's got guns,
But those are the only guns you get to see,
so maybe just Brannick. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17):
Yeah, this was wild, dude. I could not believe they
were doing this. And yeah, like you said, there's a cutscene.
I mean it's not like animated cut scene, but it's
a series of like art pictures that represent what's going
on that comes out of nowhere. I think that happens
one other time in the game.

Speaker 2 (01:19:32):
Yeah, this was the first one where I was like, oh,
look they even drew it. This is nice.

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):
Yeah, yeah, super cool. I can't believe it. They're shooting
fucking guns. Incredible. I need to see this on the
N sixty four yesterday.

Speaker 2 (01:19:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
Agree, your dad along with Leo meet up with you.
Leo actually ends up saving your dad, you know, during
his travels, so they're a team. They meet up with you,
and you all confront Vegas. Leo managed is to fucking
evaporate Dinaldo with a spell and Begas fires one back,
but Bart jumps in front of it to protect all

(01:20:09):
of us. He sacrifices himself to save you and to
save Leo, and you pass out. You wake up, you're
any Pawnas she tells you the news your dad is dead.
Dad is dead, she doesn't really give you any time
to grieve. She's like, there's no time for that right now, Brian,
this is gonna this is gonna fuck you up in
twenty years, but for right now, you've got to save

(01:20:30):
the world. Kid. She points you in the direction of
a teleporter that will take you up into Brandick Castle,
which is now also in the sky. I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure that's right, right, Mike.

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):
Yeah, I also had in parentheses. Were we teleported here
with like no exposition whatsoever? All right?

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):
Go on, yeah, yeah to a Pawna's yeah, I'm not
really sure. Uh, maybe it was Shannon.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
Maybe it's just stop stop vegas, teleport continue, they're just
getting you on your way.

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
It may have been Shannon, because we run into her
outside of here too, and she's seemingly not evil like.
She gives you direction to find Schilf and Schilf's mirror.
She tells you to and she's like, yeah, this will help,
but I won't tell you why. And then she leaves
and Flora and Leo run into you here too, and
the three of you are going to make a little party.

(01:21:22):
And this is I don't think I think I wrote
this later so but I'm just gonna say it now.
One thing that this game does that is noticeably absent
in ques sixty four is it gives you some semblance
of an entourage of a party that you don't get
to control them, but you know later on we're going
to see a scene with the three of us plus
Killyak plus Colleen plus Leela Leila. Like this game gives

(01:21:46):
you a party, like a group, a group of fellas
a group of people, whereas sixty four you are just
kind of the lone wolf the whole time. You know that,
Like that was noticeably absent.

Speaker 2 (01:21:57):
Yeah, which once again great because at the end of
Quass sixty four you seem like, especially when you're in
Mammon's realm, it gets like Lonelier and Lonelier. So to
have a coalition of fucked up dudes here to go
off and kill Mammon was great, and it leads to
a lot of like good traveling sprites and good semi

(01:22:18):
cut scenish dialogue expositions. It's fun. I love seeing all
these people together.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
Do not call the children fucked up dudes. They look fine.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
Well, Killyak's a little bit bigger, right, Colleen's got to
be sort of adult dish.

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
I mean still, she looks fine. They look fine. Maybe
Killiak I don't know, So yes, we go and find Schilf.
The fight with Schilf, just like in sixty four a
bit anti climactic. She really doesn't do much damage, like
like nines and tens of damage to my like five hundred,
six hundred. It's just not even a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
Did you use something other than wind cutter here? Because
it doesn't. She has some resistance to wind cutter, which
is the first time I also noticed. I'm like, oh wow,
it doesn't just do billions of damage, she does half
a billion.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
At this point, wind and water were at fifty for me,
and if fire wasn't at fifty, it was at like
forty seven. So and I didn't use fire because Schilf,
you know, she's fire. I think I used water.

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
Actually, I went back to the old standard and started
throwing big rocks at her. She didn't like that very much.
That also did thousands of damage.

Speaker 1 (01:23:27):
They never do they never do like that. There's one
piece of advice I can give you on this podcast.
Women don't like that. They don't like them to throw
rocks at them. And for the record, I don't like
it either.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
No, I'm not a big fan of getting Rockstar on
them me either, glasshouse, all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
You know. Yeah, yeah, there we go, Thank you, thank you.
We actually have to interact with an NPC for the
first time here. Flora suggests that we take this mirror.
We got Schilf's mirror, but it's broken, and she says
we should talk to Clay and Donderin. He's just in
one of the houses. He's just dude. He can't repair

(01:24:01):
it though. He needs dragon scales. And I wrote this
in all caps, wouldn't you know it? That dragon from
before isn't just a random dragon. You know. We got
to go back and talk to him, but it kind
of just serves as padding. It's just another fight, you know.
He says, well, I'm not going to give you my skills.
You have to prove your worth, and I think one
of your characters is like, you know, if the world

(01:24:23):
is destroyed, you go with it, and he's like, I
don't care. Yeah, really really tough fight though, like like
really tough for me anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
No, same, it was. This was a definite wall. It
was a wall the first time you fought as well,
but this time was something else.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
Yeah, we get the scale, we repair the mirror. This
is where Killyak shows up to take us to the
Ale in the sky. This is where I make a note.
This is where Colleen and Laila Layla join us too.
We've got the whole party together. We don't control any
of them, but you know, this is this is nice.
This is j RPG. I like this. We don't all
go to Mammon's world though, Leyla, Colleen, and Leo kind

(01:25:04):
of work the spell and they send Brian, Flora and
Killiak up to Brandick Castle. This is where we get
that get into that fight with Guilty. Way cooler sprite
than in sixty four. Way cooler. He looks like a demon.
It's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
Yeah, and good animation too. Also, I had a note
for this section. I didn't use the wings very much
in Quest sixty four like I did the first couple
times I played it, but later on it's much more
of a like a linear adventure from the point where
you go to fight Chilf all the way to this part.
I use so many wings to float back and forth
to cut down the time. I was really really excited

(01:25:41):
that they had like real use in the Game Boy
Color version.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
Oh yeah, I use the wings plenty, but I always
made sure to like, like, anytime I would use them,
I would immediately get another. Yeah, you know they're free.

Speaker 2 (01:25:53):
First stop is going to get the wings.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
Yeah. We Hey, we talked plenty about the capital free
society idea of quest you know that utopia?

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
Yep, use one get one anyway back to guilty. Sorry,
I didn't want mean to cut cut through there. We're
at the best part of the story here, and I'm
talking about flying around.

Speaker 1 (01:26:11):
No, it's it's okay. We are required to make one,
to make one vaguely anti capitalist remark in every episode.
It riles up and riles some people up. I know.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
Yeah, all three capitalists that listen to this podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
Oh, we don't have any capitalist. I'm not going to
get into that. I'm not going to get into that. Yeah,
shortly after, you get a confrontation with Vegas. I didn't
write anything, so I'm guessing it's anti climactic. Uh did
I miss something here?

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
No, he's waiting for you on the throne. He commends
you for being as strong as a spirit tamer, but
he says that he has the real power of the elements.
Brian tells him that he's just being used, and Vegas
is like, I know. He's like, yeah, I'm totally being used.
And then they fight.

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Yeah, the fight itself. I mean, it's fine. You you
go into Mammon's world. Very cool looking. It's like, uh,
it's still platforms on a black background, but it just
looks better in the Game Boy uh aesthetic like the
Game Boy architecture. It's like a starry not a starry night.
It's like black with some stars and there are large red,

(01:27:23):
green and blue like bubbles. Uh you know, you know,
like anime bubbles, you know, with the light reflecting off
of them. It looks very very surreal, very cool, and
it's and it's distinctly contrasting the kind of chippy, sort
of not campy. But uh, I'm saying all the wrong adjectives. Chirpy, chippy, campy,

(01:27:47):
chappy chu chuo, you know, like like those kinds of
It's a happy looking game.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
I called it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
I wonder if there's probably sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:27:56):
No, I called it Bubble Narnia. I'm like, how did
we get the Bubble Narnia all of a sudden? I
don't remember this in Quest sixty four. And then also
the the obelisk, I guess is the best thing. Gave
me some strong final Fantasy two vibes or two three vibes,
A lot of out of quest stuff near the end
of the game here that looks like it's from other games.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
Yeah, yeah, it's very neat. Like you said at the beginning,
the end design of these levels is good, very very cool.
Shannon is here she explains that she gave the power
to Zelsa's solvering Fargo Nepty all of them so that
Brian could defeat them, gaining strength himself. So again she's
the puppet master here and here she gives you the

(01:28:41):
l Tail book so you can open the path to Mammon.
And this is where she reveals what she did in
sixty four. She says, quote, it was not meant to
turn out this way. I'm a puppet created to guide Brian.
Humans die without knowing the truth and the divine will.
Humans are feeling and foolish beings. I don't understand it
is good about being human. It is because I'm not alive.

(01:29:04):
She notably does not say I'm sorry, I'm talking too much,
or whatever it was she said.

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
Flora takes care of that dope, because she immediately starts
beef with Shannon. Then about this whole thing, Shannon just
yea and kind of dots at her and that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:19):
And Killiak's response is I think she looks like an
okay person, totally like okay man, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:29:28):
That's he just likes the women. He's flirting with, Shannon,
flirting with Colleen. He just he just walks over there,
all look good.

Speaker 1 (01:29:34):
Yeah, sure, sure. I love a woman whose sprite is
for four pixels high and whose head is two of
those pixels. Love it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
Yeah, that's my type.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
You are told three times that this is the point
of no return before you go forth to confront mannon
fairly similar to sixty four, like in terms of like
how you get to him, in terms of like the
general design, but it looks so much more foreboding here
there's like a sort of a childish sheen or what

(01:30:09):
I wrote here in a phobic innocence that I associate
with N sixty four graphics. It's not even that they're rounded,
because it's not even that they're they're the simplicity in
them I associate. And maybe it's just association with things
like Mario and Ocarina and whatever, but there's an there's
an innocence to them, and it's difficult for me to

(01:30:30):
feel a sense of foreboding or dread or whatever seeing
those graphics. But here where it's more akin to like,
you know, final fantasy, the early final fantasies, it looks
really foreboding, and especially with what we've seen so far
in Quest, this is a great contrast. All this to
say really effective Sprite. Not to mention, he takes up

(01:30:51):
like the entire screen height, like he is huge.

Speaker 2 (01:30:56):
The walk up is really cool too. Besides all of
your and the battles being in space now, which I
you know, cackled out loud about, but the area before
just before you get to Mammon with the you know
where you get the village fake out and the in
and out of the house fake out, and then the trees,
the trees like the dead looking trees in the fake

(01:31:18):
world gave me strong like dragon quest one vibes. I
liked all of this a lot. And then obviously seeing
Mammon and having him laugh at my face at the end,
like this made me feel like teenage mic again with
all the classic RPGs I was playing.

Speaker 1 (01:31:33):
Oh thank you for bringing that up. It's completely surreal
going through Mammon's world here, like they're taking you through
the towns like it takes you through mail road, but
everything is like shut down and closed. It is uh.
It creates the sense of reality bending, like you don't
know what is real anymore. I mean it's j RPG, right,

(01:31:54):
We're going to fight God or Demigod, the Demiurge. It's
looked to this credit. This is cool, Like this is
really cool. It ends very strong. You go through and
it's time to fight Mammon. The difficulty scaling, man, We've
got to talk it is. It is out of control.
The consistency is out of control up until now, Like

(01:32:16):
we've had a couple of roadblocks, you know whatever. Mammon
is absurdly powerful. I did not feel prepared and I've
I was grinding a little bit. This was wild, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:32:28):
It was not okay if you got the the Warriors
Cape and the Warrior's Staff does help a lot. The
Warriors Cape gives you like permanent spirit armor, it might
even be spirit armored two. It helps it kills off
a lot of it. And then the Warrior's Staff is
like permanent power staff too, so that increases your blocks

(01:32:50):
while you're at it. Anything you can do to cut
down because his like lasers and his are just huge
on the screen. Too hard to dodge, hard to live through.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
Yeah, it's really insane. I didn't successfully dodge any of them.
Spirit armor is basically mandatory. It's just this. This was
a really this was a bummer to have happen considering
how strongly this game was going toward the end. Like,
this is just a poorly designed fight. Stinks. It looks

(01:33:22):
very cool though, like to its credit. Like you said,
this is where the items that buff your stats are important.
I don't think we mentioned that. You don't have equipment,
but you can use like silver amulets and gold amulets
to give you defense boosts. They're like consumables, which also
means they can fucking miss I'm pretty sure it didn't

(01:33:43):
happen to me, but I'm pretty sure it can happen.

Speaker 2 (01:33:45):
One other thing as we're making the run up to
this fight that's gonna mess you up. We talked about
this in Quas sixty four, and it like in the
moment I didn't say anything. We talked about the key,
the dark Gale key. I think you said that it
was supposed to be and that it was like like
maybe misspelled, because that happens in plus sixty four all
the time, so you know, I get it. But I

(01:34:06):
looked up the word Gail after that. Did you know
It's like the name of an old like British jail
is a Gael, So it's like Gammon or Mammon being
kept in a a you know, eternal prison. So that's
what the Gail key is.

Speaker 1 (01:34:21):
I'm gonna be honest with you. When I was editing
that episode, I set out loud to myself, you moron,
it's Gate. I think it might be Gate.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
Well Gaol. Gail is like the proper name for like
what like sixteenth century British people called like a medieval
jail kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:34:41):
Oh ohhh, okay, okay, yes, you're right. I okay, I'm
the idiot. Then I'm double idiot, I thought in my head,
I was thinking g A l e okay, yes, yes, yes, yes, okay,
I did not know that. Uh look at you at
at amology Win.

Speaker 2 (01:34:55):
Hey, I have a magnet on my my work area
of the dark ale gale key, and I like push
it around because it frequently gets misplaced by people as
they walk by. And I was thinking about that the
other day and like, I wonder if there's like any
meaning to this other than this magnent on my case.

Speaker 1 (01:35:13):
And that's what it cares. After you defeat mammon, you

(01:35:44):
will if you believe in yourself and the power of
it's almost I almost said the power of the Holy
Spirit kind of I guess. I mean, yeah, Mannon's biblical
biblical connotations.

Speaker 2 (01:35:56):
You do get to talk to the fucking Spirit of
the Stone on the way up to hear the say
of too like it was was it Leonardo was the
last safe point in Quess sixty four and this one
you just talked to a big rock and it's like, hey,
you want to save your power here, Spirit of the stone.
So yeah, maybe it is the Holy Spirit?

Speaker 1 (01:36:14):
Oh sure, you know Moses talked to a bush, and
we talked to a stone, big rock Yep. Yeah, you
know we're something of a messiah ourselves just kidding, We're
just a naughty boy. Brandick Castle disappears and Shannon kind
of walks away to leave on her journey of self discovery.
She doesn't get a speech this time, but she does
walk away upon a teleports all of our party back together,

(01:36:37):
and we get the sort of cliche everybody stands on
a cliff looking over the land, all at Ceutland, and
we get the following epitaph. Brian, the legendary master of
Spirit tamer there is heart in his magic. This is
the story of the magic Heart, one of the stories
in El Tale and one of the fables of the spirit.

(01:36:58):
They said the same thing over and over again. The
story of Brian, for the time being ends here. This
is where we see the credits roll and we see
everybody returning to their respective homes. And of course I
assume when they say one of the stories in El
Tail they mean like the continued El Tail series of
potential and unrealized quest games, right, not the actual Like

(01:37:21):
we're not living the fable of the l Tail book
I'm assuming.

Speaker 2 (01:37:24):
Yeah, it's for people who played Quest like ten through
twenty seven. This is just one of those games.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
Of course. I can't believe they made sixteen, a fishing
game that was bold and.

Speaker 2 (01:37:35):
Brash as part of the River King series, and we'd
like to see the crossovers.

Speaker 1 (01:37:39):
Yeah, you're not gonna get me with another Detroit become
human reference. I won't let it happen. That would be
pretty neat though, you know, if it ended the game
and revealed that, like we were playing out a fable
in like this holy text, that would be a pretty
neat self referential kind of meta thing.

Speaker 2 (01:38:00):
Maybe that's what they're trying to build a franchise here,
and they were going for it and then they didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
Yeah, well, I would say maybe one day, but it
seems unlikely. As your Blue Sky handle says, you are
the source of new all things new in Quest, a
series that hasn't changed in twenty plus years.

Speaker 2 (01:38:18):
Yeah, I don't know what the impetus would be for
them to make a new game at this point, other
than to stop other people from making money off of
their game that they refuse to do things with.

Speaker 1 (01:38:29):
So well, that's Brian's journey to my knowledge, we might
be the first podcast to do this, which you know,
who better than Quest sixty four official to talk about it.
I think we're certainly the first one to do coverage
of this that isn't just a YouTube video shitting on
it because you know that's the popular thing to do.

(01:38:51):
It's Look, this isn't an amazing game, just like Quest
sixty four. It's not a groundbreaking achievement.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
It's not.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
But at the same time, it's not. As I said earlier,
they're not trying to be Dostoyevsky. They're not trying to
be Zeno gears right, It's a Pokemon level of storytelling,
and what it does is perfectly acceptable. Like this is
I personally I prefer this to sixty four in most ways.
I think this is a perfectly pleasant little game. It

(01:39:17):
does not deserve the like two stars that I see
it getting everywhere, like two out of ten, Like that's
that's ridiculous. This is it's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
IGN gave it four out of ten bad. But when
you go through and like read the review, it just
sounds like every other game, like I don't know how
you get to four. But we'll just let them have
their their historical bad game.

Speaker 1 (01:39:38):
I don't like, especially in the current climate. I don't
like shit talking video game journalism too much because like
they're struggling. But my advice that I always give myself
and everybody just find the reviewer, not the publication that
you like, you know, IGN, who knows what you're gonna get.
And I agree with you. Like it seems like every
review that I've read from them, it's just oh wow,

(01:40:00):
they hated this game and they give it seven out
of ten. Oh cool, Okay, what do I know?

Speaker 2 (01:40:05):
Yeah, that sentiment hasn't changed.

Speaker 1 (01:40:07):
All.

Speaker 2 (01:40:07):
People like to say that quest or that quest that
IGN either gives games nine or it gives them seven,
and those are the opposite ends of the spectrum. Nine
is amazing and seven is terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:40:23):
Yeah, that's a conversation. I mean, we did a whole
games criticism episode. We could do another one of that,
and I kind of want to maybe one day. But
that's Brian's journey, you know, pretty good, pretty good game.
Check it out. If you haven't played sixty four, check
it out. If you have played sixty four, and as
we said, be four. Check out the Quest sixty four

(01:40:45):
episode that we did on the show. It's the one
right before this. Mike's there as well. It's a good time.
Speaking of Mike, thanks again for joining me. Man, this
has been a lot of fun. I hope this was
enjoyable for you. I hope this was as good for
you as it was for me. You know, I know
you would voice a concern that, like doing QUES sixty

(01:41:05):
four content with somebody can be tricky because you know, like,
like we've said, there's a bandwagon approach where it's like
it's become such that everybody has permission to kind of
shit on it and it's okay. So I was like, really,
I made sure that I was really aware of going
through this to make sure that my criticisms were founded

(01:41:25):
and I wasn't just joining in to dunk on something,
you know, just like what the Detroit Become Human episodes,
like every I don't like that game. But everything that
we criticized I thought mostly came from a place of
like validity and like I can back it up, here's why.
And I hope that you felt that we did that
here and that nothing was like truly unfairly scathing.

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
Oh no, it's I always tell people, it's just fine
if you don't like Ques sixty four or Brian's Journey,
but I would much rather have that come from a
place of personal experience as opposed to reading one of
the millions of dunka on Quest sixty four headlines that
you can easily find, or the reddit awful music, awful

(01:42:07):
awful music for Brian's Journey post. Just go experience the
games for yourself, and if you still don't like them,
I mean that is what it is. You can't force
yourself to like games, but at least give it a
chance and don't live through somebody else's rage review.

Speaker 1 (01:42:24):
Yeah, we've got enough AVGN knockoffs. We don't need it anymore. Well,
thanks man, I appreciate that you joined me for these.
This was a lot of fun. Anything new on the
Quest sixty four, Well, we know that there's nothing new
in terms of Quest sixty four news, but in terms
of your online persona. We talked a little bit about
this last time Quest sixty four official on Blue Sky.

(01:42:45):
That's primarily where you can find Mike. Anything new that
you want to talk about.

Speaker 2 (01:42:50):
Yeah, this episode will likely be coming out in June,
which is Questiversary month, so we'll be doing all sorts
of Quest things, content creators and people with small businesses
that have Quest stuff to give away and sell. So
excited to drop these two episodes back to back and

(01:43:13):
get a drag. I shouldn't say get Rick. I have
drug Rick into the deep end of Quest and Quest Diversary.
So I'm excited. All of June, we'll be doing some
fun stuff on the account.

Speaker 1 (01:43:26):
So that's awesome. Make sure you all check that out.
You can find links to my stuff in the description
that's Quest sixty four official on Blue Sky. Especially the
small creators that are doing stuff, you know, whether it's
a small podcast like this one small YouTube channel, or
like a small creator that's making like physical stickers, magnets plushes. Oh,

(01:43:46):
is there a Brian plush that we can get? That'd
be pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):
Somebody's got to make it, please please make it, please please?

Speaker 1 (01:43:53):
No price is too high? Yeah, that'd that'd be super neat.
Make sure you check those out, and you know, supporting
some creators is cool and good. There's nothing wrong with
big creators, but a lot of the small creators that
you may have never heard of are oftentimes every bit
is good quality, sometimes better, you know, not always sometimes
check them out, you know, and you can check all

(01:44:14):
of that out on Blue Sky QUST sixty four Official.
So thank you again, Mike, I really appreciate it, and
thank you listeners for sticking around. As always, you can
find stuff links to our stuff in the description as well,
links to the free discord server that you can hang
out in with me and Mike and everybody, links to
the online presence Instagram, Blue Sky, TikTok YouTube, and of course,

(01:44:38):
if you would feel so kind, rating and reviewing the
show always helps push us into al Gore's rhythm and
helps us become discovered by new folks, you know, talking
about small creators. So thank you for sticking around to listen.
I think we're gonna call it for now. This has
been great. The Quest series has come to an end
until next time. I'm your host. I am Rick as

(01:44:59):
always is. We're signing off for now. We'll catch you
again real soon

All Episodes

A Reimagined Demake | Quest: Brian's Journey (Ep. 144)

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

The Breakfast Club

Fudd Around And Find Out

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}A Reimagined Demake | Quest: Brian's Journey (Ep. 144)