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August 26, 2025 90 mins
Micah’s Donkey Kong Bananza adventure has hit a roadblock—his son has now taken over the game, leaving him stuck early on in the journey. Brad is attempting to use Beat Saber as an alternative way into fitness after a long battle with disinterest in exercise. Can VR rhythm gaming actually help build healthy habits? The crew breaks down last week’s Gamescom event, which left them feeling underwhelmed by most announcements. Has the AAA industry drifted too far from what we actually want? The biggest headline of the week came from the long-awaited reveal of Hollow Knight: Silksong’s release date, and it’s arriving sooner than expected. Sony has finally raised the price of the PlayStation 5 in the U.S., citing tariff pressures. We explore what this means for consumers and the broader console market. We also cover weeks of upheaval at Cloud Chamber, the current Bioshock developer, and the addition of Rod Fergusson to steady the project. This sparks a deeper conversation about why so few games strive to deliver meaningful narratives despite the medium’s storytelling potential. In the Post Office, we dive into legendary gaming myths and the shocking ringside behavior of Raja Jackson at a recent wrestling show.
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
What's up, everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of the
dents Pixels podcast and we spread joined my co host
Micah Hey. We have quite a bit of talk about
this week. It was a bit you know, games colm
was last week that you might not have known it
by some of the lack of kind of buzz around

(00:34):
that I feel like, especially because all of games com
got swallowed up by the real big news that came
on Thursday last week, which we will we will discuss
before we get into what we've been playing, a little
bit of housekeeping. Don't forget to join our discord dncepixels
dot com. Slash fans join other listeners of the show.

(00:55):
We talked about not just video games, but also pro
graps professional wrestling for you non wrestling folks. We talk
about F one, which is coming back this week after
the summer break. We talk about Premier League football and
other types of football slash soccer as well, and of
course video games, so check that out if you're not

(01:15):
a member in there. Of course, you can also follow
the show on YouTube by going to YouTube dot com
slash dense Pixels, where we can you can watch us
put this pot of podcast, put this podcast out in
video format every week. I know how to talk IBA
podcast hosts. If you prefer your podcast in audio form,
just search TNP Studios on your podcast app of choice,

(01:37):
where you can find us that are Apocalypse Black on
Black Cinema and The Look Forward Political Podcast. If you'd
like to support us with zeal, go to denspixels dot
com slash Premium. It's just five dollars a month to
show that you appreciate what we're doing here over here
at TMP Studios. Micha, let's check in with you. It's
been a couple of weeks since we've gotten to talk.
Last you said you are still playing Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yes, I am playing Donkey Kong Bonanza. I was playing
it today and I just hit sub levels seven hundred,
okay after skipping six hundred apparently, yeah, because.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Well you'll have to go back to six hundred.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I chose the ice path instead of the grass path.
And I I can't remember when if it was you
kry it well both when you said it. I only
have two like like you know, drum beat transformations, but

(02:41):
the Zebra one slaps the Zebra song. The Zebra song
is really good.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
It's ironic because it's the worst power, but it has easily.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, it's like you can run like all right, you
can run on ice like it has the worst power
and it makes no sense and.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
In fact, like the charge Dash, it's actually kind of
annoying because it's hard to stop. So like it really
it really does stink. But that song is really really good.
I don't want to tell you where you're at in
the game, but because suffice to say, like it, you
have more than you probably think you do to go, oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I remember when I remember when we first started talking
about this, you were like, I'm I'm at sub levels
one thousand. I'm like, all right, well, one thousands like
a nice round. No, no, I haven't even hit orange yet,
so I'm nowhere near the core. So'm I'm assuming I'm

(03:38):
about you know, maybe a third, maybe a little more,
and I would be further along. But I made the
mistake of playing it in front of my eldest son
and he was.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Enthralled by it.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Right, So we play, we play. We play a lot
of Mario Kart, we play a lot of Street Fighter.
I bought it on the switch because I'm a hope
for Capcom and and now he all he wants to
play is DK Bonanza, and you know it's there's there's

(04:22):
positives and negatives to that, right. The positive is like
he found another game that he really likes. I can
stop like watching Mario Kart, you know him as Toad
playing the Saint Paining Warrior Stadium for hours and hours
and hours and he and he really likes Donkey Kong.
I'm like, okay, like this is like the thing that

(04:45):
makes that's that's like the genius of this game. Right,
Like so a little kid who doesn't really know what
he's doing, but it's figuring things out. Like I enjoyed
watching him figure things out. And he's you know, he's reading,
so he's like reading what's on the screen and translating
it to the controller. And I'm seeing in real time

(05:07):
him uh not moving his whole body with the controller,
right and just like focusing on just like moving the sticks.
It's like, oh, okay, you're getting it. You're getting it, yeah,
all right. The bad side is that, uh, you know,
he likes to make his own fun and then I
want to follow the objectives and it's real annoying because

(05:31):
I can't because I'm like, he's like, what's this purple
rock things doing? One Donkey Kong? Like can I get
it off? And I'm like, yeah, you can get it off,
but like you gotta, you gotta, you gotta go to
the exclamation point. I don't want to do that. I
just want to do my thing. I'm like, but I
want you to get it off, right, And and it's

(05:52):
just I don't know how people watch people play games
if you like, are into them and you want to
play them, right, like and and it's and I can't
be mad, right because I'm feeling the same thing that
he's feeling. Right Like, if I say, hey, let me

(06:13):
get you to this level, he immediately is like I
want to play it though, right. So I finally convinced
him to let me get him out of the tutorial
area and into sub level one hundred, which is like
the beach area, and he's just having a blast there, right,

(06:33):
And I finally convinced him to get him to sub
level two hundred. I'm like, okay, look, you got all
these new powers and stuff, right, and you could you
could destroy some of this metal natural like super Donkey Kong, right,
And he's like yeah, that's all great, but like I
want to go back to the beach. So it's you know,

(06:57):
if I'm sitting in here working and he he's you know, playing,
and it's fine, but like it's just kind.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Of frustrating a little bit, just a little bit. I get,
just a little bit. I get that. That's like when
I'm watching my son play Mario Kart eight and he
likes to just like cruise around the tracks explore them,
and it's like, well, buddy, there's a race going on,
like you're supposed to ri which is again why I

(07:26):
think that the free Room mode is cool in Mario
Kart world, that it exists for him because that's literally
what he wants to do in the game. But it's
funny because like I like, I've been letting him play
the Free Room and he'll play the Free Room now
for like ten minutes or so, and then he'll just
switch to the Grand Prix and do the Grand Prix
like he likes to do the Grand Prix, and I'm

(07:46):
just like, you do realize that, like it's the same
same track, like the same areas that but that encourage
you to freely explore, like you don't have to do
it within the confines of the race, but I think
he likes having any other racers around.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah items, So yeah, you got it, and you know
you get the you get the really good I let
I let Maxwell play the Grand Prix, and you know
he's okay at it with if I turn all the
guardrails on, he's good at it, right. But he's like,
why am I only getting mushrooms and pan appeals. I'm like,

(08:19):
because you're winning.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Bro, Oh, this is a great time to introduce your
son to the concept of democratic socialism. You don't get
like you do. You don't you don't need you don't
need the good items because you're already in the lead
like you should.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Because you are the superstar.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
You're winning, and if something happens to you where you
fall in the twentieth place, then you'll get the items
you need to help you get back to the top.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Get your politics out of my video games, trust me.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Unfortunately, those are going to be coming raging back later
in the news segment. But that's cool. It's a shame
that you haven't gotten to play it as much, because again,
like this game has so much in it and and
a lot even when you beat the game as well.
There's still quite a few things left to do, so
but that's good. It will keep you busy for.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Well. I got. I got a couple other games coming
out this week that I'll talk about next week. I look,
we talked about it when we did the episode on
the Men with the Golden Tongues. I've never played Metal
Gear to completion, right, I know the story sop solid three, Yeah,

(09:41):
solid three. I know the story and not far Man,
really not far and I don't. I have no idea
why I stopped. I have no idea why I stopped,
but I because I I think the story is the
most interesting part of that game, and I think all
of the like overstimulated like aspects of it, like oh

(10:04):
you gotta like patch yourself up, but you gotta wear
this specific camo and all the menu driven like like
like like if for some reason, I got frustrated. So
I know it's like some people's favorite game, like not
just Metal Gear games, some people's favorite game. So I
vow to complete this game and re experience this story,

(10:33):
and then coming out should looks really good. I'm kind
of excited about that. I wasn't gonna get Delta and
then I watched some previews of it, like some reviews
of it and stuff like that, and Giant bobbed like
a forty five minute quick look at.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
It, and I don't know, man, like I'm I'm kind
of wanting to like, it looks really good, it looks
really cool. It's it's one of it's funny because one
of those things like you mentioned that, you know, like
it has a lot of those systems that time hasn't
smiled well upon. But it's kind of like Clare of Scare,
where the the overall package and and the highs of

(11:09):
the game are so good that you could easily look
past some of the less optimal parts of the game
or some of the parts of the game that are
actually quite annoying. And they didn't completely apparently fix the
menu shit, Like you still like to heal yourself, you
still have to go into like this cure menu and
like apply the too, you know, the two or three

(11:30):
things items that you need to heal whatever injury you have.
I think the Camo's better because I think the Camo
has like a I don't know if it's like a
wheel or so. I think you don't have to like
pause the game to switch your camera out. I think
I think there's like a it was so annoying. Yeah,
like like like an on screen like it like a
weapon wheel almost of sorts that you can switch the
camo if you want to. So yeah, it delsa looks great.

(11:55):
That looks fucking phenomenal and uh yeah like and like
you saidbe looks like uh Didn'ja Guiden rage Bound didn't like.
I was kind of on the fence with that one.
And I played the demo and I was like, yeah,
it's okay, but like Shanobi, I haven't even played the demo,
but like I just saw a lot of videos in
that game. I'm like, Wow, that looks really fucking good.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
I played the demo. I played the demo and I'm like, oh,
I gotta get this. This, this is this seems like something. Yeah,
this seems like something. This seems like something Terrence would
really like. But he probably liked Ninja Gouyden a little
more because Ninja Godden seems a little more difficult. I
I was more of a I played Ninja Goarden because

(12:35):
I didn't have a genesis. But I was always like
a shutnob guy. When I went over to my friend's
house to play it, like it just I don't know,
there's something about it about the guy named Joe, name
is Joe Mustasha. It was like, I don't know, that's
that's that's that's funny to me. And it's very you know,
I like the and I like the aesthetic. I can't
remember the name of the developer, but they did The

(12:57):
Streets of Rage four, which I went back to replay.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
And man, that game's fun and it's probably it's probably
the best uh uh like beat them up period. Yeah, yeah,
like it's really it's really fun.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
So uh yeah, I'm looking forward to uh yeah, I've.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Still been playing the same old ship. Like, I haven't
really been playing much new for me lately because I'm
still kind of stuck in City Skylines and I'm playing
uh Civilization of course still because they've been dropping some
new updates for that. Another but a game that I've
returned to is Beat Saber. And the reason that I've
returned to Beat Saber, uh is because so like as
as many you know, I think I talked about this before,

(13:44):
like weight has always been a struggle for me and
specifically trying to keep it off and one of the
things that makes it a struggle is I fucking hate exercise, hate,
fucking fucking despise it. Not because like it's hard or anything,
like obviously, like walking on a treadmill is pretty easy year,
you know, going out for a walk or whatever, or like,

(14:05):
you know, I have a rower as well that I
use sometimes, but it's so fucking boring, Like that's that's
the problem for me, is that like my ADHD brain
can't handle just sitting there for you know, thirty forty
minutes or doing whatever. And so I picked up my
my madequest to update it and I was like, yeah,
I'm playing, haven't play beat Saber a little bit, so
let me play. And I played Beatsaber for like a

(14:27):
half an hour, and when I was done, when I
look down at my fitbit, I had like fifty zone
minutes for the day for having played beat Saber for
like half an hour. And I was like, huh, that's interesting,
cause it's fucking hard to get zone minutes during the day,

(14:49):
especially now that like I have a nine to five
job where I'm just you know, sitting my ass on
a desk all the time. And so I'm gonna try
a little experiment where I'm gonna try to play Beatsaber
for half an hour every day and see what happens.
And I'm not going to change too much else besides that.
But I'll just do a half an hour beat Savior,
which is apparently a good cardio workout, and we'll see

(15:12):
what happens. Because there's a lot of a lot of
songs in Beatsaber. Now, if you haven't visited beat Saber
in a while, like, they have a shitload of free songs,
and then they also have these like albums that you
can buy from famous artists and stuff like that that
would be you know, relevant to the type of game
that Beatsaber is. So I'll report back, probably in my
newsletter about how that goes, to see if Beatsaber is

(15:37):
a viable exercise alternative for people that find exercise to
be tremendously boring.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
More to come on that. Let's get into the news
because there is quite a bit of it this week.
Like we mentioned, games Com in Cologne, Germany was last week,
and of course, as he has done the past couple
of years, Jeff Keelly hosted an Opening Night Live, which
is basically like a two hour you know, presentation showing

(16:09):
a lot of the games that are coming out, as
is typical, We're not just we're not going to go
blow by blow through this. We're going to talk about
the things that stood out to us. And I gotta
tell you, I don't have a lot to talk about
with regards.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
I really don't. You know, the second season of Fallout
looks good.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
It does, it does, it looks very interesting. A lot
of the big features were games that we've seen before,
and this is another one of those shows, I think,
even more than Summer Game Fest were like some of
the games, like he'd show like a bit, like a
three minute trailer and then it's like, hey, let's talk
to the developers for five minutes, and it's just like,

(16:59):
that's not why any of us are here, Jeff, Like,
I appreciate that you're trying to give these people this time,
but like, if it's a game that you don't personally
give a shit about, then it's just like like you're
looking at your phone, you're doing other stuff. Essentially, the
games that stood out to me. So they're coming out

(17:19):
with a new Warhammer forty K Donna war game for
the first time in many years, and this one is
a return to kind of how the original Donna War was,
which is more of a traditional RTS, whereas Dona War
two was like a squad based RTS and then Donna
War three was a fucking travesty that shouldn't be mentioned

(17:42):
by name. So it's gonna be interesting. A new studio
is taking hold of it. This studio did a RTS
game a few years ago called Iron Harvest that was
pretty well received, so people are cautiously optimistic about how
that's gonna go. And then the other game that looked
cool is a new game from Ron Gilbert of Secret

(18:04):
of Monkey Island Fame, which is a vertical roguelike like
Vampire Survivors like called Death by Scrolling, which just looks
like an interesting twist on that genre. The trailer looked
pretty good, and so I'm looking forward to that as well.

(18:29):
And then there's a new trailer for a game called Absolom,
which is a new beat him up that's being published
by dot Emu, which I played the demo of Appslom,
and I was very interested in it. It's like a
fantasy based brawler and that looked pretty fun, and that's
like the extent of the things that I gave a

(18:50):
shit about from this presentation.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yeah, that's I mean, the only things that I was
like really interested in are the things that like have
been covered at nausea at this point, Like I'm not
I don't know Lego Batman. Maybe I'll get a maybe

(19:17):
I'll get Lego Batman. Let my son play play that.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
It's it's cool. It's cool that they're dipping into like
the bail films in that, which is which is a
unique twist.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah, there's not there, They're really there really isn't much
here that that you know, piqued my interest in even
if it even if it did, like like that Indiana
Jones Dale c like, I just want to watch it,
Like I just I just wanted to be a movie,
you know, like especially after having played the game. And
I know everyone like absolutely like loves that game, like critically,

(19:58):
but I I I fell into the I fell into
the Hinterland's problem where you know, I got kind of
burnt out in the first area for the first area
is too big. Yeah, and and maybe that's maybe that's
a meat thing, right, like you know, maybe I should
just have followed.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
I think you can blame I think you can blame
the designers for that a little bit. It's it's it's
not a I mean because like you by you calling
it the hinterlands problem shows you that it's not like
it's not like a novel problem. Like it's a problem
that you know, designers should be aware of and can
work around.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
So yeah, yeah, it's not that hard either, like don't
make your opening area like the big sprawling area right right,
like don't. But anyway, games come, yeah, not much here.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
For me, uh, not not much new, you know, well,
and and the challenge is, like you know, Keely has
to sell, you know, like sell this stuff to you know,
make to be able to present it and and do
these shows. So you know, you're kind of at the
mercy of who's willing to put out money to showcase

(21:14):
their game. And unfortunately, like the developers that are more
inclined to do that are going to be folks that
are developing some sort of multiplayer shooter or some kind
of gotcha game or some kind of anime game that
has micro transactions in it, and so you get like
a slew of those things and so likes as I'm
finding out is that, you know, if it's a game

(21:37):
where that comes up during this presentation, probably not going
to care too much about it in general, like there
might be one or two believe it or not. Like
there's actually things in the pre show that looked more
interesting to me than anything that was shown on the
main thing. And that's kind of the byproduct of having,
you know, the fact like every every publisher has a

(21:57):
YouTube channel now, right, so like like you and and
and case in point, Like one of like one of
the first announcement Jeff Keilly had was like, hey, I
can confirm that Silk Song is coming out this year,
but Team Cherry will have more to show you on Thursday,
like like like they like Team Cherry easily could have
give Like there's no reason that they couldn't have shown

(22:18):
that because all they showed on Thursday was a trailer,
which we'll talk about in a second. But there's no
reason they could have just given Jeff Keilly that trailer.
He wouldn't have probably even charged them for it, like
he would have been like yeah, like like this is
the game everyon wants to know about, Like you can
have the spot for free, and there's like that was
put on our on YouTube channel, like it's whatever, right,
like we we don't we don't have we don't have

(22:38):
to share the stage with anybody, like we know we're
pretty right, and that kind of that kind of tells
you all you need to know, we're the biggest game
that was announced last week, or or the biggest news
that was announced last week. Game Wise didn't even happen
during this presentation. It happened two days later. So yeah,
so yeah, like games Colm was kind of a dud
for me, and yeah, I just like it sucks, but

(23:01):
I just don't have a lot to say about it.
I was kind of bored during the presentation. And it's
not the presentations fault. I mean, they kept it moving there,
there's nothing crazy in there. But it's just the type
of games that Jeff Keey is going to showcase during
these big these big presentations are generally not the type
of games that I'm into anymore. So you're not in

(23:22):
a busy well that was actually shown before that that
was a pre show game. No, I'm not excited for
the return of Bubbsy. I gotta tell you, like I'm
I'm a little befuddled by like a lot of these old,
like nineties mascot games that weren't very good then somehow
like coming back around and like people are like, oh,

(23:44):
like we have to put out a GET trilogy, Like
do you do that? Like like do we need a
do we need a Guest trilogy? Gets Remaster trilogy? Do
we need a new Bubbsy game? Because those games weren't
good back then?

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Like right, like are the kids that were like born
in the nineties like pining for They're not marketing the people.
That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
They're marketing their marketing. Toss what.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
I mean. I guess I I'm I'm I'm a little
I'm not old for Bubbsy, Like I know what Bubbsy is,
but like you might as well put out a new bonk.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Game, Like I think, honestly, I think that would be
received with more excitement than that new buy. It's been
a minute since we had a box adventure. Think think,
think of what they could do with that with new
like you know, Crow Magnet, we haven't seen Bighead physics, right,

(24:46):
what if they made what if they made a bonk
game in the style of like remember bomber Man zero
when that came out. Yeah, that terrible fucking Xbox three
sixty game that would be that that that's that's what
I want to see. I want to see a bonk
game in that in that style. So it can't be

(25:07):
any worse than Bubbzy four D, the game that nobody
has for again, like I have to point out for
people that aren't aware, like Bubbzy three D is famously
like one of the worst games to ever release, famously
and it's like and like they just released like a

(25:27):
Buvezy collection and one of the big features that they
added was in Bubbzy like they have Bubbz three E
in there and you can and they finally added like
analog controls to the game, and like it makes it
more playable, but it's still a piece of garbage. Like
it's just not a good game. It's not a good game.
It was a game that was kind of forced to

(25:48):
come out because Sony was like, hey, like look at
that Nintendo's making this Mario sixty four game. It looks incredible.
We need our three D platform game, as if anyone
can just.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Do it, Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I'm looking
on a list of mascot platformers and I feel a
shame that we haven't covered this on the moment of
the Golden Tongues. Do you remember James Pond?

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, I remember James. Gex Gets also had
a Bond themed game. I can't remember which one it was,
but there was a gex game where he was supposed
to be like a secret agent as well.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Tie the Tasmanian Tiger.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Wow. Man, Yeah, that's gotten re released like like have
like you know, what's what's what's next? I'm sure that
we're waiting with baited breath for someone to come out
with a new like Arrow the Acrobat game of some
kind that might we might see that again soon.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
That is, is seven up still around?

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Seven is still around? I don't know. I don't know
if this I don't know if the cool Spot is
the is the like representative of that anymore? By the way,
cool Spot not a bad video game.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
I actually really enjoyed cool Yeah it was.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
It was a game.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
It really was. And as much as you know, I
hate uh, you know, just product placement, that was an ad, right,
it was an AD for seven Up, But.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
It was an actually you know what, I want to
see the return of where where Where's my new Pepsi
Man game? For the for the for those young bloods
out there that haven't haven't been graced by Pepsi Man.
Go check out the so like a like a play
of Pepsi Man on YouTube somewhere.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
You know, give it a give it a couple of months, man,
you know the way things are going in this country. Uh,
regulation what's that?

Speaker 1 (27:54):
And then just you know, I don't know, maybe r
K the final Pepsi Man sequel. That'd be fantastic. The
big news next week was we finally, finally, finally have
a release date for Hollow Night Silk Song, which they

(28:16):
had showed a new trailer for and announced at the
end of the trailer. Uh, Team Cherry did that it
is coming out September fourth, So at the time of recording,
it is less than two weeks away from the release
of one of the most highly anticipated games of the year,
if not the most highly anticipated game of the year.

(28:36):
Considering that this game has been highly anticipated for several
years now at this.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Can I make a confession never played Hollow Night.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
And I think I said on the show, how I
don't think that I like Holla Nite like I like
holl of Night is one of those games that I've tried.
I've tried playing holl of Might three times now and
I think that I've at most made it a third
through the game, give or take. And Hallowite is a
game that I have a lot of appreciation for, but

(29:08):
I think it is just not a game for me,
like like like when I'm playing a Metroidvania, I don't
need combat to be that difficult, and the combat and
Hollowite is pretty difficult. And it also does like the
Soul's thing where you know, if you if you die,
like you drop your currency, but if you go get

(29:30):
to if you go to where you died before, like
you die again, you can recover it essentially, So it
has that mechanic as well. And that's pretty That could
be pretty brutal. That could be pretty tough.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah, that's annoying.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, that could be pretty tough. So for the people
that were really excited for a Silk Song, I am
very happy for you that you finally are getting the game,
this game that you've been waiting for such a long
time for, and that it's coming sooner rather than later.
I'm sure that this will end up on a lot
of game to your list, uh and going coinciding with this,

(30:07):
Jason Schreyer announced like announced before this announcement, like, hey,
like once this announcement comes out, I'm gonna be dropping
a article on Bloomberg that details the development of the game.
And people are like, oh, ship, like Jason's Ryer's coming
out and like like you know what that means, like
we're gonna get some dirty details and the fucking uh

(30:28):
and like the article drops and turns out like it's
like hey, like no, like we loved we had a
great time developing this, Like the reason it took so
long is because we were having so much fun putting
stuff in the game. That was basically the reason that
they that they that it took as long to develop
as he did, because it's because we kept adding stuff
and we were having a great time developing it.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
So not exactly the hard hitting expose people.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Were the anti Shryer posts as it were. So that's
cool though, because like I said, I I again, even
though I'm not a fan, I can tell Howlite Is
is a very exquisitely developed game. So I'm sure that
this will be exactly as good as people are anticipating
it's going to be. I can't imagine it's gonna come
out and be a dud. So we'll know in a

(31:16):
couple of weeks when review scores hits. But some people
are very excited, and a lot of indie studios are
doing like are basically treating this like the indie version
of Grand Theft Auto, where a lot of indie games
like quickly scattered from the from the Impact site and
delayed their game by several weeks just so they don't

(31:36):
have to release it the same week as Holidight.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
That's funny. Look, if I'm gonna play a metro style
game that's not metroid give me, give me another guacam Melee.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
How about that? I think you're I think you're about
to get it in the in a game called Shanobi
so apparent apparently like even though this is not like apparently,
even though Shanoby is not a like tradition metro Vania,
each stage is kind of very metro Vania esque in
terms of how you explore it from the reviews that
I've seen, So you might be able to scratch that

(32:09):
inch through there, you go through that, or just play
Lost Ground again. Probably one of the best games is
out in the past several years, So there's that this
week in politics affecting video games, Sony finally joined the
party and have raised prices on PlayStation hardware in the

(32:33):
United States, just that they had done in other areas
around the globe several months prior to this. So now,
if you want to go get yourself a PlayStation five
console here in the US of A, you can get
a regular PlayStation five for five and forty nine dollars
in ninety nine, sets up fifty dollars from its regular price.

(32:54):
You can get the PlayStation five Digital Edition for four
ninety nine ninety nine, which is a one hundred dollars
word than that console costs when it first came out
five years ago, more than five or no, it's about
five years ago. And then if you want a PlayStation
five Pro seven and forty nine dollars and ninety nine cents,
again a fifty dollars increase over its original price. Sony,

(33:19):
in announcing this cited a quote challenging economic environment end quote. Boy,
I really wish companies could just fucking say just.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Say it's the tariffs mancause because they if they do,
then you know, yeah, there'll be a target if they
do that.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
So they have to they have to talk around it,
even though we all know what that fucking means. They said,
for now, the price of PS five accessories are not
going to change.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
That's going to be where it hits people. Yeah, right,
that's gonna be where it hits people. The console going up, okay,
but like the console is usually a one time purchase, right,
once those accessories start getting hit, controllers and all the
peripherals and storage and all that other stuff, once that

(34:16):
starts going up, that's when you'll see people get really pissed.
Like the price of the system going up. I mean,
you know, at this point, it is what it is.
I'm not buying another one. I'm certainly not buying a
pro for seven hundred dollars seven point fifty. But if

(34:39):
you need an extra controller, control is already like what
ninety dollars or something like that, eighty ninety dollars.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
Controllers I think are eighty I want to say, I
could be wrong about that.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
That's I mean, that's already, you know, really really expensive
for people. I only got one. I'm the only person
that plays games in this house. But but you know,
once the accessory is start getting hit, that's when that's

(35:11):
when you'll see real backlash. I don't think there's gonna
be a bunch of I think they'll be like, I
think they'll be like, you know, performative outrage for this,
but on successory is start getting danged.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
That's when the reason, I gotta be honest, I haven't
even seen a lot of performative outrage on this. I
think people are just like, I can't believe it took
this long, especially after Microsoft did it a couple months ago,
you know what I mean, Like, I think I think
people understand the reality of the situation, or at least,
you know, people that aren't insane understand the reality of
the situation. And you can be mad at Sony if

(35:48):
you want to, but they're not honestly the ones you
should be mad at in this case.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
I mean, you can be mad at corporation. That's I'm
fine with that. But at the same time, like you
can be mad at a bunch of babes you've been,
you can be mad at multiple people would.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
At the same time. Sure, But again, like as as
we've as we've talked about before, like for for console makers,
like hardware is not only the cost of entry for you,
the player, it's the cost of entry for them as
a supplier to you, like Sony doesn't make They don't
make money off a ton of money off of off
of hardware. They don't like it's that's just a matter

(36:23):
of fact, and they either do retailers. Again, I can
I can tell you that the retail margin for the retailer,
Like if you go to a PS five at Walmart
or Target or game Stop, they're getting five percent of that.
So if you buy a PS five, you know, and
I'll just say five hundred just to make the numbers
a little bit easier game Stop, like, the retailer makes
twenty five bucks. That's it. So you can imagine how

(36:46):
much Sony is making or not making if the retailers
only getting twenty five dollars. Normally, a typical retail cut
for games is twenty percent, just to just to kind
of give a point of comparison, and in most brick
and mortar industries the retailers getting fifty percent. So again
it's just it's just to get you in the door,
that's it. And the retailer does it like especially you know,

(37:08):
like Walmart, Target, because they want you to buy games,
and games Stop does it because they want you to
buy use games, so right, yep, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
That's where the money is and that's where and that's
where things are going to really that's what things are
going to really like affect you. Like I'm into toys,
action figures and stuff like that, and you know some
of the stores that I buy these things from, like
I can't buy imported toys anymore, Yeah, because you know.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
They are they're I mean, they're.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
The markup is crazy. The markup was already crazy depending
on where you go. Like if you go through a
US store and and they import the toy and then
you buy it, there's a mark up there because like
the store, the brick and mortar has to make money.
And now there's a markup on that markup, right, And

(38:02):
if you buy directly from a store in China or Japan,
there is one some of them won't.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Him send it to you because it's not worth it
well anymore, because they got because one of the other
things that happened with the tariff problem is that they
also mixed the diminumous exception that used to be on
packages that came directly from China. So it used to
and we talked about this and look forward. But for
those that don't listen that show, there used to be
a law in place that if you got something directly

(38:35):
shipped from China that was under eight hundred dollars in value,
you did not have to pay import fees on that item.
Like it basically got to bypass without getting hit with
any import fees or tariffs or anything like that. That's
gone now. So yeah, So like to MICA's point, like
a lot of these companies that ship direct from China

(38:56):
to consumer used to be able to send that stuff
with out worry because it's under a hundred bucks, no problem.
Well not anymore now anymore, with all of the tariffs
and all that jazz.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
So yeah, they'll get hit with a bunch of tariffs
or they won't send it. They're just like, no, we're
not gonna we're not gonna do it unless they like they'll.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
They'll send it to like a retailer because like or
worse yet, they'll send it and then you, as the
person importing it, gets to pay us customs, uh, the
tariff fee when the item comes into the country for
them to release it to you. So that's the other
that's the other, uh.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Popularity with the man.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, I mean again, like, that's what happens when you
have a whole group of voters who don't believe, who
did not believe us when we try to tell you, like, no,
it's the person buying the good that pays the tariff.
Oh no, no, no, that's not what he said. Well
it's what actually fucking happens. And he's still out here
trying to convince people that that's not how it fucking works,
which is insane to me, Like what, like why, like

(39:52):
we obviously know this is what's going on, Like why
do you keep on this line of this line of
tact here? Yeah, but I but I digress. It's just
I mean, but again, this is this is what we're
stuck with for right now, until sanity can prevail again.
So and you're not being one mich Like I've been

(40:14):
wanting to think, you know, thinking about getting into photography,
but I'm I sold my SLR body that I had
because it's just too bulky and it's not very practical
to carry around. So I was looking for like a nice,
you know, compact camera, but like Fuji, Reicho, like Sony,

(40:35):
like all of them have been increasing camera prices like
crazy because there's a lot of shit inside of cameras
that are subject to tariffs, and so like Fuji's, you know,
raised their prices twice in the past two years. And
Reicho just announced they just revealed their kind of entry

(40:55):
level point and shoot camera. When they came out with
that model for years ago, the most recent version of it,
it was I think nine hundred nine nine dollars. That's
basically the upgraded model for that camera is sixteen hundred
dollars now this time around.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Man, and the photography is an expensive hobby man, like
good god.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Right, and and again because the prices of the new
shit's going up, the price of the old ship is
rising up too because they know there's a demand for
that stuff in the marketplace. So people are selling their
used ones for more money because they can like like now,
like I mean with with some cameras, like if you
bought a camera five years ago, you could probably sell
it for more than you bought it for five years ago. Used. Yeah,

(41:40):
that's that's that's very possible. So it's just it's just
a fucking nightmare out there. The last story this week,
so we we didn't talk about this one. A couple
of weeks ago. I'm kind of glad we didn't because
a lot more stuff has happened since then. So Cloud
Chamber which is a studio that two K Games formed,

(42:04):
made up of many former members of Irrational Games who
were the developers of BioShock and BioShock Infinite, and they've
been working on BioShock four for quite some time. So
a couple of weeks ago, basically there's a story that
came out that two K had turned over much of

(42:26):
Cloud Chambers leadership in the studio after viewing a like
the most recent build they have of whatever upcoming BioShock
game they're working on, and essentially the game was so
poor that, like said, they turned out studio leadership and
are basically re defining like the scope of the game

(42:49):
essentially and like and naar developments and things of that
nature as well. So that was a pretty that was
a pretty crazy story. And then following that, we have
the prizing kind of sudden announcement from Rod Ferguson, who's
a big industry veteran who was with Blizzard as the
general manager of the Diablo franchise kind of announced suddenly

(43:13):
He's like, hey, like, I've had a great time here
at Blizzard, but you know time's come for you know,
to for greener pastures elsewhere. And I've got a new
challenge lined up and I'll tell you about it later.
And a lot of people were hypothesizing that, like, I
wonder if Rod Ferguson is gonna go to Cloud Chamber
because Rod Ferguson has a reputation in the games industry

(43:36):
as being they call him a closer essentially, So he's
the dude that you bring in to a troubled studio
that has a big game that they're working on, and
he's the guy that you get into get shipped together
so that the game gives to a state where it
can be shipped. He used to manage the Gears of
War franchise for Microsoft. He then went to BioShock Infinite

(43:58):
to get or to a rational to get BioShock Infinite
shipped out, which Ken Levine credited him hugely for being
the reason that that game was able to get shipped
because he basically came in there and refocused the project.
He then from there went to a Camera where he
landed in between there. But he then he went to
Blizzard when Diablo four was going through some shaky development

(44:22):
waters and he got that team kind of refocus. So
this is this is what Rod Ferguson does. And sure enough,
Rod Ferguson is now back at two K Games, heading
up Cloud Chamber and becoming a producer on this BioShock game,
supposedly to get the team refocused on the new projects

(44:42):
that hopefully they can get a game shipped in the
next couple of years here. But as a result of that,
there's also apparently layoffs coming at Cloud Chamber now as
well in the wake of this. This is a big mess.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
And you know, he's the He's the Winston Wolf of
the video game industry. When when Sam Jackson blows a
guy's head off, you call him and he uh, he
comes in and gets your you know, gets your ship together.
It's I've I've yeah, I remember Rob Ferguson. It's it's weird,

(45:21):
like following his career to be that, to be that
kind of mercenary to come in and like get things
back on track, because it doesn't seem like a Whenever
I hear of people like that, I I I think
of the Wolf, right, I think of like task masters, right,

(45:41):
And he just doesn't seem like that type of guy.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
He just I don't know that he I don't know
that he's a fucking asshole, but he but he makes decisions,
you know what I mean, Like like whereas a lot
of developers and especially a lot of people who don't
have strong management backgrounds that are in charge of studios
and and this is why Ken Levine, you know, credited me,
because Ken Levin is a writer, he's a he's a creative.
He's not he's not a manager. Like that's not right,

(46:04):
that's not that's that's not his forte. So if you
let ken Levine like go back to the drawing board
all the time, like he's gonna do it, because he's
always going to find something to fix. And you have
to have people like Rod Ferguson who's like, all right,
we have to get a fucking game out, so and
and like one of the one of the you know,
when he went to a rational basically like he said,

(46:26):
all right, like I'm stopping the creation of new ship
in this game. He's like anything that is close to
being able to finish, like let's get this finished and
and work it into the game. And if it's not
anywhere close being finished, we're not putting it in the
game what like that, and like like you know, the
like a lot of you developers like start to start
testing so that we can you know, actually get this

(46:48):
thing put together. And you know, that certainly led to
some issues for by A Shock Infinite in terms of
how the story was presented. And you can see points
in that game where you know, it was obvious there
was something else in the game that got taken out
and they didn't really do a good job of patching
over from a narrative standpoint to make it make sense.
But you know, unfortunately, unfortunately, game publishers are not you know,

(47:10):
wealthy patrons with infinite large s, like. They're in this
industry to make money. So eventually you got to put
a game out the door and let people buy it.
And I guess that's where they are here with this
Bioshot game that they're working on, is two K didn't
like what they saw from this gameplay demo. I don't
know how long this game has been in development, Probably

(47:32):
a very long time, I would imagine at this point.
And I think two K, especially because they've seen this
sort of thing before, could see what this could potentially
turn into if you don't get somebody in that's gonna
get the ship back on the right path. And so
that's why they way I got Rod Ferguson, And I
think Rod Ferguson was happy to leave because he somehow

(47:53):
ended up at Microsoft for like the third time by
working at Blizzard, and so he's just like, you know, like,
I don't know if I'd like working for Microsoft that much,
So I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go do this
thing over here. Honestly, that's what he should just do,
Like like he should just be like the Winston Wolf
of the game industry, just be like, hey, like, and

(48:13):
you have a game that's troubled, like you know who
to call, Carl, Rod Ferguson. I'll come in there. Fucking
he's got to tear shit up for two years and
then move on to the next thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Man, he's got a he's got a ton of games
under his belt, Like he's he's got a long list
of games that he's credited on with helping and he's
you know, he's Gears Gears, Gears to Infinity Blade, Bullet Storm, BioShock,
The Diabolos, three Diabolo games like it's you know, and look,

(48:49):
he seems like a good dude.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
And I haven't heard anything Dad said about him, you
know what I mean, like like and and certainly like
in this industry the way that it is right now,
there's certainly ample things people could potentially say if he
was sucking up anywhere. But you know, oh yeah, bye bye.
By all accounts, he seems like a dude that just
it is a good project manager. And as someone who

(49:13):
in their day job has dealt with some pretty poor
project managers, dealt with some really good project managers, like
it's invaluable having someone that knows what the fuck they're
doing at the helm then not having someone that can
get things going in the right direction. So yeah, are
you Are you interested or excited at all about a

(49:34):
new BioShock game. I've never been a huge fan of
the BioShock series.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
I think I think BioShock is a little overrated. I
you know, the the original BioShock I think was was good,
but it's like I can't think of a movie to
compare it to right now. But I I enjoy it,

(49:59):
but I think it's a little over rated. Book two
I think did not need to happen book Infinite. I
think they started. I think they they started off very provocatively,
and it led me to like, oh wow, like what

(50:19):
could this possibly be? Like like what I imagined in
my head did not end up on the screen. And
you know, I think they kind of copped out on
a couple of you know, story beats, Like they made
this big deal about this like inter racial couple and
like these bigots in this in Colombia, like like no,

(50:40):
none of that, but like it was just like a
one time thing, and then just like rolled on and
didn't you know. I think it's like it's like they're
like the metal Gear games without the without the message
behind them, without the themes behind them.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
I don't know, Yeah, over it, yeah, I would agree.
And we were pretty critical and Infinite when it came out.
That was around the early beginnings of this podcast, and
I remember that we kind of bucked a lot of
the trend at the time and said, hey, like actually
that story was kind of dog shit and it was
pretty bad. And eventually, like I feel like the rest

(51:26):
of the industry came around to that line of thinking, yeah,
after the after the afterglow was you know, dissipated a
little bit around it. So nothing, it's a bad game.
It's a perfectly crop not a bad game, but it's
it's fine.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
But like people are like, oh my god, like a
bile shock, Like all right, man, all right, I get it.
What happened to that other game he was making Judas
or something.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Well, remember Ken ken Levine's not part of Cloud Chamber,
He's not with two K anymore. So Ken Levine has
his own studio now where he's working on Judas. And
then this is a studio that two K is running
that is still working on like BioShock proper stuff.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
So I'm very curious to see what BioShock isn't is
going to be.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Then well that's well, that's the problem is that you
do have Judas coming out, which from what we've seen,
what little we've seen a bit looks like BioShock in
all but name just from just from a kind of
a thematic standpoint. So yeah, I always feel like it's
a race to get for Judas, just because you know,

(52:35):
like Ken Levine still has an air of you know, uh,
I guess gramatas to him among a lot of players
and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
So yeah, he hasn't like he hasn't reached like Kojima
levels of like you know, smelling his own farts.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
Well he might he was capable of, you know, releasing.
But yeah, like for as much as we give Kojima
crap about his his lengthy uh, you know, stretches between
games like he's last I checkeddeo, Kojima has released three games,
uh since BioShock Infinite has come out. Yeah, and and

(53:16):
for if you want to count PTU generously as something
that is released, uh, in the space is BioShock Infinite
was released. So we'll see. Like I said, I'm I'm
I think the I think the concept of bioshocka like
kind of the overarching like what if this utopian civilization,

(53:39):
you know, was led to its logical end state because
there is no such thing as you know, being as
like utopian libertarianism or like utopian exceptionalism like that kind
of thing like that. That part of it is interesting
to me. And I'm also just to see what the

(54:00):
gameplay looks like BioShock one and two and BioShock Infinite
are very different playing games from one another. M So
we'll see.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
I'm looking for somebody, I'm looking for somebody to do
I'm at a point in my life where you know,
I love video games as a and I think, I
think there's so much potential for them to be this
incredible like storytelling medium, like for all those ship like
we said, for all the ships to give Kajima, like

(54:34):
he he does say something, and I think I.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Think, honestly, his a lot of his commentary has aged
gracefully as we talked about like Fine Wine, Yeah, Metal
Gear two like Metal Metal Gear Soul too, like and
if you haven't listened to that episode of Then with
the Golden Tongues where we reviewed that game, Like at
the time when he came out, like people were just
like this is fucking off the wall. It's hard to follow,

(55:01):
Like what is he trying to say? This is kind
of crazy. He's way ahead of his time, and now
it's like wow, like he was actually it's it's it's
it's prophetic in oh.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Yeah, he was quite prescient man like he so and
and I'm I'm I'm looking for that and it's much
you know, like I'm I'm looking for I'm looking for
stuff like that. Like I think that video games can
be used to incept different concepts into people without you know,
without them realizing it, and and you know, just have

(55:33):
something to say. It doesn't have to necessarily be something,
you know, like about race or anything like that. But yeah,
because I wouldn't trust a lot of people to have
a death enough hand to handle something like that, which
is why BioShock Infinite was really disappointing. But like, say

(55:55):
something about the state of the world and like geopolitics,
and it doesn't even have to be like anything like
super heavy, you know what I mean. Like Superman spoke
about this new Superman movie said something about current geopolitical
you know, relations, and it said something and it's a

(56:19):
dumb Superman movie, right, I'm looking for video games to
do that because I feel like video games can really,
like really have the potential to make you think. And
we do get it, but we get it. We don't
get it from people like we don't get it enough,

(56:41):
like Kajima is the one that does it well. But
we also get it from like David Cage, you know
what I mean. And it's just like, come on, bro,
like I need something. I need someone who knows how
to tell a story and you know, not necessarily you know,

(57:03):
be Detroit, become.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
Human, make the androids sit in the back of the bush.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Right, That's what I'm saying. Man Like, like, you can't,
you can't, there's not there's not enough. You don't have
you don't know enough black people to do that game.
Man Like, you don't know enough minorities to do that game.
Like it just doesn't. I don't know, I mean maybe, I.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Mean, honestly, this is a this is a problem less
of video games. Well, it's a problem of video games
because of the point that I'm about to make, but
it's it's less a problem of the medium and more
indicative of the industry as a whole, because you could
easily get some of these stories, but it would involve
like more large studios having leadership and like writing and

(57:52):
narrative leads that are that are people of color and
not just white men all the time, Like if you
like like if like, if you want a depth story
to be told in video games about you know, racism
in America, I feel like you need someone who's experienced
racism and can understand it within themselves to be leading

(58:17):
a studio. And like having Ken Levine said, you know, hey,
I you know I wrote the you know, the Devil
in the Castle or whatever book inspired bioshotg Infent, Like, Hey,
I read that, and I want to make a cool
story that's kind of based on that.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
You're not going to get that from him, I mean,
and even if it's even if it's like you can
even make it something that is a little more universal,
right like that that that game Tales of Zendera or
Canzera that was about fatherhood and grief and you know

(58:53):
it was and it was one of those metro style games,
but like the story, it was the thing that kept
that kept you're going because it was you know, uh,
it was about grief and the guy lost his dad
and decided to make this game because he has something
to say, you know what I mean, Like I need

(59:14):
more stuff like that, and I would love to see
like like big, big budget stuff like that, Like I'm
not because like you know, it's it's you gotta you
gotta hit a massive audience and you gotta like you
know this Also it's it's interesting to me too, because

(59:34):
you know how.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
So like for and I'm gonna make a weird analogy,
but this is this is how it kind of makes
sense to me. So like the rest of the world
looks in America right from a sports standpoint, and literally
like talk to people around around the world who understand sports,
and they're like, we're so fucking lucky that you guys

(59:58):
in the USA don't give a flying fuck about soccer,
because if you did, like you would kick the shit
out of all of us, because, like you, like, you
guys produce like a lot of the best athletes in
the world. But the reason that we don't have to
worry about it is because those athletes are always going
to go choose to play football or basketball or you know,

(01:00:20):
maybe baseball before they consider playing soccer. And so we
never get like the cream of the crop athletically coming
up in the US that are like, like, you know,
we we haven't had that American like generational soccer player
come up that's set the world on fire, right, Like,
We've come close a couple of times, but you know

(01:00:41):
we for the most part, we've never quite gotten there.
And I feel like the gaming is in a similar situation,
whereas if you're someone who's like super creative and you
have really good writing chops and the ability to tell
a really incredible story, you're not going to video games
like you're going to movies, you're going to TV. Even

(01:01:02):
even ken Levine, Like ken Levine didn't start as being
in a guy in the game industry. He started he
moved out to LA because he wanted to be a screenwriter.
And the only reason that he went to the games
industry is because he couldn't find like, he couldn't get
picked up as a screenwriter. So he's like, well, I
like video games, so let me go go work as

(01:01:23):
a game developer, something that he had never done before.
And also I'll you know, tell you know, I'll work
on narrative stuff as well while I'm being a game developer,
and that that's what led him where. He was like,
you need someone that has those capabilities that says, you
know what, I'm going to actually go to this medium
first because I find it more interesting. I think you
might see that as time goes along, because as more

(01:01:47):
and more people grow up, now you know, they know,
you have more people that come from a gaming background
than we ever had before. I'm most aptle worried about
it because right now that gaming background that people are
coming from, especially you know, people that are younger today
that are gonna be the future. Here are people that
have played like Minecraft at Roadblocks and and things of
that as well. So like it's yeah, so junk food.

(01:02:11):
But that that's why we haven't gotten there is because
the cream of the crop from like a storytelling and
writing experience with with a few exceptions, like obviously you
can throw like an Amy Hennig in there as someone
who's kind of like a luminary in that regard, and
I'm sure there's a ton of other people that I'm
that I'm missing. But if the best that we have
to offer is Ken Levine and David Cage, like, that's

(01:02:33):
not gonna it's not gonna cut, Yes, but I agree,
I would love it if we could see, you know,
more deaf storytelling in a medium that seems perfectly aligned
to be able to to handle that sort of thing. Yeah, well,

(01:02:55):
let's lighten the mood a little bit by going to
the Dense Pixels post office. You have to be of
our discord in order to ask us questions, but we'll
answer him if you do. Dnspixels dot com slash fans,
just like Cam did, who showed us a picture of
a new Pokemon that's gonna be in Pokemon Legends Z
to A and asks anybody else can to nickname their

(01:03:16):
victoried Victory Bell, which I'm assuming is the name of
the Pokemon David Carridine for when it mega evolves or
am I the only sickoh here? For you listeners out there,
just google Victory Bell Pokemon and you can see what
looks like a plant Pokemon of some kind with one

(01:03:37):
I it looks like it wrote, but I think it's
actually like vine that comes from the plant that's wrapped
around its neck several times. So apparently we have BDSM
Pokemon now, which is uh, you know, we don't. We
don't think shame on this podcast. Like whatever, whatever makes
you happy, just practice makes you have a safeword.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
So yeah, trying to die.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
Good. Lord ta Wash asks what's your favorite gaming myth?
My favorite is Yoshi Mitsu and Techan could cut King's
tail off and turn him human. What I guess there,
I guess there's a tech and myth that if you
plays Yoshi Mitsu against King that you can somehow slice
off his tail and that'll turn King into a human.

(01:04:26):
A human man.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
You need to take the jaguar mask off, right, Like
I said, I don't know the like like in game
like myths like I would assume that's in game myth.
I have no idea, like the only the only myth
that comes with the myth of like the existence of

(01:04:51):
Shen Long.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Yeah that's I think that's like the go to one
that most people think.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's because you had all these ridiculou like
unlocked conditions and people actually did it in the arcades, right,
so you have to like keep feeding the machine to
do it, and when they did it, nothing happened, and like,
but I didn't know if that was a myth, would
that be considered a myth or just like one of

(01:05:18):
the best pranks in video game?

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Well, if you recall, I think the story is. And
for those that don't understand, we're talking about so they
were so when Superstreet Fighter to Toto was in the Arcades,
I think it was a mistranslation of one of Ru's
victory quotes where he says, yeah, he must have featured
Long to stand a chance. And I think it was

(01:05:42):
a mistranslation of like like he was trying to say,
like you must have feed like my shirt you can
or something like that to stand to stand a chance.
And I don't remember if that's what caused the rumor
to happen or if game Pro or Game Pro AGM,
whichever which AGM took that mistranslation and then made it
into like it made into their April Fools addition one

(01:06:06):
year where they showed like detailed instructions on how to
unlock shen Long and Super Street Fighter T Turbo instead.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
I think I think that's it. I think there was
the mistranslation, and then e GM was like, let's let's
run with this, right, and the article was by by
w A Stokens a waste tokens right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
Like it was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
It was a great it was. It was a great gag.
It was it was. It was one of the best,
like actual pranks and April Fools just because like April
Fools now is just like people lying and saying April Fools,
like shut up, like you're just lying, Like that's not
like an actual prank, right, But this was an actual

(01:07:01):
prank from a legitimate like.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Outlet for gaming news.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
And it came out and it's like you couldn't do
this now because it came out in a time where
like everything was analog and you got all your information
from this and you know, it was they they drew
up like art and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
It was great. It was.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
It was a wonderful prank. Uh. And then they had
I'm looking at the ad. I'm looking at the the
the the the article now and they literally the article
is literally taught tricks of the Trade. And then at
the end of it it says, hey, here's the e
GMZ April Fools contest. Guys, Like they couldn't have made.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
It more like of a gag.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
But yeah, I mean it was.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
It was great, man, Yeah, I mean that, Like I said,
that's the one to take, you know, certainly the most famous.
I was gonna sae the Mario Minus World, but I
think that's actually real. Actually, Like I think the Minus
World is something that you can make happen in the
original Super Mario Brothers didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
Uh didn't Diabolo have like some sort of like cow
world or something like that, well put in the game
because of like a like a myth or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
That Well, so Diablo two does have a cow World.
I can't remember why the cow world existed. They they
kind of threw a wrench into an in Diablo three,
or maybe it was Diabolo one was rumored to have
a cow level, and it didn't, and so they put

(01:08:46):
it into Diablo two, like there's a specific like herodic
recipe that you can do Diabo two to get access
to the Cow level. And then in Diablo three they
kind of did a send up of the Cow level
by doing like a super colorful, like rainbow themed like
cowworld that you can get transport to. And then they
added an actual cal level of course later in Diablo

(01:09:09):
three as well, and in Diabo four. Interestingly enough, they've
been since the game released, they've been putting out easter
eggs that fans are pretty certain that there is going
to be a cowworld in Diabo four eventually, but they
keep putting. They keep like every new season that comes out,
they put out like new breadcrumbs that you know, the
most hardcore players figure out these, like very weird the

(01:09:35):
clues that they have laid out. So so that was
so that was one that ended up becoming true. Like
I said, I don't remember the exact progression of story.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
No, you got it, you got it. The Caliber was
originally a hoax about a secret level perpetrated by players
of nineteen ninety seven's Diablo and has been described as
one of the most famous one on urban legends related
to video gaming by publications uh and and the attention
surrounding the hoax influenced developers to acknowledge it as an

(01:10:04):
inside a joke. And Yeah, eventually they eventually put the
cow World in uh Andiapolo.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
Yep, so there you go. See here. Kirby kurb Forever asked, Hey,
is their apoculars podcast done? I hope the guys and
their families are okay. It's been about a month and nothing. Also,
as anyone played, Visions of Mana is a fun game.
A couple of shows have been slowed down because Jay
has been traveling a lot over the past several weeks,

(01:10:35):
and also like we've all had stuff going on as well,
so there hasn't been a good time to record it.
I mean, I know, look forward where we've only put
out one episode I think in the past month. I
haven't even I think Black on Black Cinema has been
on a similar hiatus over the summer as well. Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
We are coming back this week. Ja Jake came to
America to hang out with his family, and we saw
we saw weapons because we haven't we haven't We didn't
see it yet, so we're like, hey, let's hang out,
let's go see Weapons, which is a very good movie.

(01:11:16):
And and yeah, so but he's back in CPIA Toned Mexico,
and we're gonna start back up. We're already I spoke
to him earlier today. We're probably gonna do uh well,
you guys would probably do Look Forward tomorrow, I think,

(01:11:39):
and then we'll do Black and Black Cinema on Wednesday,
and then probably in Their Apocalypse on Thursday. So we're
back this week or whenever Jay finishes, you know, editing
and uploading.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
So yeah, so, like I say, a couple of weeks off.
And the reason this show kept going is because I'm
the one that produces the show and Jay produces. So
that's why that's why you had the steady drumbeat of
death Pixels to set you during this time. So but hey,
if I will tell you Curvey Curve Curve, if you're
not a premium member, there's a ton of evergreen content

(01:12:17):
in that premium membership as well, with all the extra
bonus podcasts that get put out, So that's always something
to keep an eye on if you're ever in a
dearth of content. Because we do run through this sometimes
because this is not our full time job of course,
so you know, life gets in the way occasionally. Visions Mana,
So the Mana series is a pretty big blind spot

(01:12:39):
for me. I've never actually played any of the Man
of games. I've always meant to play Secret at Manna
at some point, because that is kind of most people
will tell you that's the best one in the series,
and Visions of Mana like, I remember checking out when
it came out and it just didn't I don't know,
it just didn't look great, like if I want that

(01:13:01):
style of action RPG I I've kind of come across
the The Y's series just kind of scratch that itch,
and I really like that series quite a bit. Have
you have you played any of the man of games previously?
No cover Let's see e Jack asks, what's a video

(01:13:23):
game soundtrack you always go back to for a nice
Listen Sonic Adventure to butt Rock never gets old. I'm
sure if Carrie were on the show this week, she
would absolutely agree with you. I mean, Street Fighter is
obviously like a fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
Go to, specifically is the one that I keep in
heavy rotation.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
I really like the persona five soundtrack that gets pretty
regularly to play for me as well. Let me just
go through my my YouTube music just to just to
see if I'm missing anything else that's not just coming
to coming in mind ary way obviously, like Mega Man
two and three have excellent soundtracks.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
I got so many different like Mega Man like tracks
on my playlists it's not even funny.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Yeah, And and that's honestly the one of the greatest
things about having things like YouTube and Spotify now is
that there's so many great user like fan created like
remixes and stuff like that. I mean, all you have
to do is head over to oc remix and type
in your favorite game, and I'm sure that somebody has
done a soundtrack of a sub kind. Another thing that

(01:14:39):
I've really been getting into. I think the user name
on YouTube is Electric Wind to Go, But they've been
putting out several like synth wave albums of video game
of like classic video games soundtracks like the Ninja Guiden
franchise and Contra and tmn T two was just really
of the Arcade game just released, and that's really good,

(01:15:01):
So definitely check that shit out as well. So those
are just a couple I'm sure we could probably talk
about video soundtracks for quite some time. Uh, but we'll
move on to Johnny, who says, so, uh, Roger Jackson
under the jail on a serious note, is that the
worst thing you've seen in a wrestling match. I have

(01:15:23):
gone out of my way not to watch this because
I've heard that it's pretty brutal looking. So for for
as I understand it, Roger Jackson, who I guess is
a professional wrestler, also the son of Rampage Jackson, former ufer. Oh,
he's not just no, he's just.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
So my understanding of the situation is the guy that
he was in the ring with potatoed him, I don't know,
in like another altercation of some kind or previous match.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
So he he was doing a backstage segment I think.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
Okay, the way I heard it is that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Roger Jackson was backstage, a guy came up and you know,
they get into an argument that was that was planned,
right but or no, he thought the guy he thought
Rajah was a wrestler, right, okay, And and he took
a beer can and hit Russia in the head with

(01:16:22):
it on camera, thinking like, oh, okay, this is this
guy's a wrestler, he can take it right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Turns out no, he wasn't right, and they explained to
the wrestler, and the wrestler was very very apologetic. You know,
he's like, dude, I'm super sorry. I thought you were
you know, part of the show. I'm pleased, Like, forgive me,
I'm super duper sorry. Then the bookers were like maybe

(01:16:50):
and this was on camera, right, so the bookers were like, hey,
maybe we could turn this into something right, like, you know,
you can, you can kind of get your lick back.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Yes. So for those for those that aren't into pro
wrestling that don't understand this, So if you if you accent,
like obviously, like what's going on in the ring is
you know, even even though it looks like they're fighting,
they're fighting obviously, Like things are you know, like people
are working together and they're trying to keep themselves safe.
But sometimes like a knee or a punch goes errant
and stuff like that, and that's called like a potato

(01:17:21):
or you know, something like that where you accidentally actually
hit a dude. And typically when you do that, the
the kind of way that that is balanced out is
that the other guy that got hit by accident is
allowed to give you what's called a receipt, which is
where he basically pays you back by like getting getting

(01:17:42):
one shot in on you for real. But again, it's
usually done in such a way that like is it
gonna hurt, yes, but is it going to cause you
actual like physical harm long term? No, like the like
the best example of this that I can remember is
one time bron Stroman and Blackleasman we're having a match
and bron Strowman got a little out over his skis
and was kneeing brock Lessner a little too aggressively, and

(01:18:06):
you could tell, like while you were watching it that
brock Lesner was getting need for real, and it's like
holy shit, like Brock like braun Stroam and slow down,
like you're being a fucking asshole. And brock Lesner popped
braun Strouman in the side of the side of the
head with an obvious stiff shot. But everyone watch he
was like, yeah, I mean that was that was obviously.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
Right, Yeah, Like what the fu?

Speaker 1 (01:18:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
So so they agree, right, like you're gonna get your
licked back, You're gonna do a run in later on
in the match, and you can you know.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
It'll be good for the show.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
Right, That's why you see this very like so and
like Rada and his buddy were like live streaming the
whole thing for his social medium, right, which is why
you see this incredibly good camera angle.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
So the camera angle is the buddy in the crowd
jumps over the barricade right, going to get his back. Raja,
instead of doing like a double like takedown, fucking picks
the dude up, oh no, and slams him right, And
the guy was not expecting like to be picked up.

(01:19:16):
He picks him up over his head fucking slam like
like an Alabama slam.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
The guy's head cracks on the mat, right because he
wasn't expecting, so he didn't he wasn't able to protect himself.
Then Raja mounts the guy and starts beating on the guy,
like the guy like the kid in the beginning of
Lean On Me. I don't know if you ever seen
that movie. That the beginning of that movie scared the

(01:19:41):
shit out of me because the student like just jumped
on his teacher and it was just like waiting was
just beating into a bloody pulp. That's what Raja was doing,
and it was and people didn't like they didn't immediately
stop because like it's wrestling, and it's like, okay, well
maybe you know this is what but like it's very
clear that the dude, that the wrestler was defenseless and

(01:20:05):
not he he looked like he was knocked out from
the slam, and Raja just kept going and going and going,
and he got like no bullshit, like he got like
fifteen to twenty hits in before people like like, oh shit,
like this dude's bleeding from the ear, get him off
of And it was gross, man, it was gross. I

(01:20:30):
blame I blame. I blame Raja first, right, because like
you train, you're an MMA fighter trained by Rampage Jackson, right,
and these guys are wrestlers. You should you should know better. Right.
I blame a promotion for even like considering the idea.
And you know, it's very hard for me to blame

(01:20:52):
the victim, you know, well, I mean I.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
Guess it's hard and searing that like he he fucked up,
but he also realized that he fucked up, and right exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
He apologized and he vehemently apologized. Now, look, I'm not
one of those people that's like that believes that if
someone apologizes, you have to accept it. Like I'm no,
what if I'm not ready to accept your apology? Right,
But like, at least that guy know he messed up
and he did make a gesture of apology and they
shook hands. Right where I come from, you shake hands,

(01:21:24):
that means you accepted the apology, right, But I blame
the booker, and of course I blame Raja, Like this
said was ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):
So what like did the Bookers like assume that he
was that that Roger Jackson was like smartened up and
like would understand the concept of of a receipt or
were they just like yeah, who knows?

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
But he apparently he came on his social media and said,
I'm gonna keep hitting him until somebody pulls them off him,
until they pulled pull them off of me, right like
because he's you know, he's got to be tough for
his social media or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
But he kept like.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):
It was pretty gross, man, it was pretty gross, And
did you know, yeah, I haven't. I have a newfound
respect for like those UFC refs who like immediately like
are able to spot when someone is defenseless and then
throw their entire body to try and protect the defenseless

(01:22:23):
person because nah, yo, like it was and these weren't
like these weren't like they were they were like trained
like like like Haymakers, but they were focused, right, it
wasn't just like like like.

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
Well and and ultimately like that's probably why, like I
heard that they like police are like investigating this now
essentially and treating it like its an assault like for
him especially like you should know as a trained fighter,
like when someone is defenseless and so for and so
like I understand, like you got a little exuberant about

(01:23:00):
you're you know too, about your double leg takedown slash,
you know, Alabama slam. Okay, I'm willing to realize that
like you fucked up and got a little too excited,
not realizing like like what the score was and maybe
like if you delivered like a punch or two afterwards. Okay,
I get it, But like at some point, like when
does the realization kick in, Like, heyah man, I'm just

(01:23:22):
fucking concussing this guy close to death basically because no
one stopped.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
Yeah it was it was not h.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
Yeah, it was it was pretty fucking bad man. Yeah, Well,
like I said, I I hope, I hope that. Uh
the promoters also have faced some consequences from this as well,
because again you said that apparently the ones that enabled
the situation.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
I think it's I think it's actually like Rakishi has
something to do with them. Oh really, yeah, I think
it's like his promotion or some ship. So yeah, man,
don't it pretty gross?

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
Man?

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
Pretty pretty gross?

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
Uh? Mad Coco g asked thoughts on the Shanobi art
a Vengeance demo, which you briefly talked about up top.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
I'm buying a game because of it. Yeah, downloaded that demo.
I was like, Oh, this is amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:24:18):
I'm by the way, quick aside. I'm so like my
brain has rewired itself into like getting so used to
publishers now not releasing early review code that when I
see like a review of a game that looks really cool,
when I go to buy it and it's not available
for another couple of days, like I get irrationally upset

(01:24:39):
about it. Like like I like I went to go
buy Shnoby, It's like, oh, this will release on the
twenty ninth. I'm like, that's that's four days away. Like
what the fuck? Why have I seen reviews today. If
it's not, if it's four days away, thank thank you,
thank you though for for putting out the review early
so people could make an informed choice before they go
to to buy the game. I do appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:59):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's usually what you want.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
Yeah, ideally. Finally, se can ask what is the worst
slash best food recommendation that a person has given to you.
I I.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
Can't think of a bad one because I don't eat
all the food that I eat is usually like crumulent
to excellent, right, Like people usually don't like, hey, you
gotta try this, and then I'm super disappointed. Right, But

(01:25:44):
at the same time, the food that I that I
think is like in my memory that's like, oh my god,
this is amazing. Is tied to experiences. So the best
stick I've ever had I was in Paris on my honeymoon,

(01:26:09):
and I don't know if it was the best sticke
I've ever had or if it was because I was
on my honeymoon.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
I have a perfect story that alligns with that specifically,
So like my wife and I honeymoon at disney World
and we stayed at the Boardwalk, which is one of
the resort, you know, places that they have down there,
and it's in that resort area that's like surrounded like

(01:26:35):
that surrounds like the lake that's down there, and they
have like three different hotels and they have like a
boardwalk as well that also surrounds that. And when we
got down there, obviously we were tired from the travel
and whatnot. We weren't gonna do any parks on that
first day, so we just wanted to grab like, hey, like,
let's get something to eat that's close by on the boardwalk,
something that's familiar, is just so you know, we're not

(01:26:57):
going crazier. And they had a big ESPN Zone at
the end of the board box. We're like, hey, let's
go to the ESPN Zone, you know, get in and
get like a known quantity. And because you know it's
it's in Florida, they had a Cuban cheeseburger on the
menu that I got.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
I have I have a.

Speaker 1 (01:27:15):
Particular affinity for Cuban sandwiches in general, and I swear
to god that is still to this day the best
burger that I've ever had. To the point where we
returned to the ESPN Zone on three additional occasions, on
that trip, and I got the same fucking Cuban burger
every single time, and it was just as every single time.

(01:27:37):
What is it actually the best hamburger that I've ever read?
Probably not, but like you said, I was on my honeymoon.
So so the experience, right, like.

Speaker 2 (01:27:47):
Yeah, everything, everything that was surrounding it was like okay,
like it was it was walking distance from our hotel.
There was a huge line. We got lucky because they
were like, hey, we need to people and like we're
two people and it's like and yeah. So it was
everything about it and I can still taste it, right,

(01:28:09):
But I don't know if it was because the food
was good, which it was, or if it was you know,
because I had good steak here, right, But I don't know,
it's I think that's part of it. I think, you know,
food and all that, like it's tied to experiences, which

(01:28:29):
is why I don't have a bad experience, right, because
I generally don't have bad food experiences. I can only
think of one, and it's because someone put like canned
mushrooms on a pizza or some shit and I ate
it and I'm like I had a violent reaction to it.
So I'm like, well, must be the mushrooms. Never gonna

(01:28:51):
have mushrooms again. And people look at me like, but
you had canned mushrooms on like.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
Shitty pizza, Like, well, nope, I harnished all all fun
fun guy for the rest of my life. That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
That's it, right, Like bucket I've had, I've had shitty
piece before, and I didn't have violent diarrhea until I
had it with canned mushrooms on it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
So na the other the other, the other best recommendation
that I can give is there is a of all plate.
I was on a work trip in Salisbury, North Carolina,
which is a small town located directly between Charlotte and
Greensboro in North Carolina, and for some reason, they have

(01:29:36):
one of the best pizza places. They have a brick
oven pizza rea called the Salty Caper, which is some
of the best pizza that I've ever had my life. Uh,
and it's all. They also have this like fried dough
appetizer called skabe that they served with marinera and Pesta sauce,
and that is also fucking incredible. So if for some

(01:29:57):
reason you ever find yourself in Salisbury, North Carolina, a
place that nobody will ever go check out the Salty
Caper because it is very very good. Well, there you go,
so that's gonna be it for the show this week.
Good show, good post office. Thank you all for submitting

(01:30:18):
your questions to us. Again, don't forget to follow the
show wherever you find us, and to put those questions
in to the discord if you are a member, that's
gonna do it for us. Thank you all very much
for watching, listening, and we will see you all the
next time. But yeah,
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