TWIG - Atari Gamestation GO - Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 - Razer Sanrio Cinnamoroll Collection! - ThisWeekInGeek

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
These raps should everyone has been destroyed because it's freak.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I won't allow it.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
These babies to save the sleep that find.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
More, don't do Howard Ali coming with me? One stand
one Fall. I we you guys so reckless? One stand
one fall? Wait fun s n Ai day a day,
always day. I'm going let me up right, we get up? Yeah,

(00:53):
up all the time?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Naowa day away day a day.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Dum jump jump up.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Hey guys, what's going on? You are listening to this
weekend geek dot ned. I'm your host, Mike the Birdman,
but I'm not alone as well. It's almost Halloween time, kitties,
and I'm joined by my compatriot, my spooky engineer who
makes sure everything works, keeps the laboratory running as the producer.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, it's it's.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Finally starting to feel like Halloween around here in the
lovely royal city of Guelph.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Anyway, I've been out in my wheelchair. It's getting definitely
goddamn cold.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Seeing a lot of really cool Halloween displays in my neighborhood.
I've seen a really cool Ghostbusters one not too far
down the street from me. There's another person who's like
this fully graveyard thing they're doing, and a friend of
mine who's a city counselor. Uh, they do this like
haunted backyard and they have this like gigantic like spider

(02:03):
thing that literally encompasses their entire backyard. It's really cool.
So that's pretty neat. Other than that, last week we
recorded on my birthday. Uh So for my birthday, kept
it pretty low key.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Honestly.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
We had a chance to hang out, which was a
lot of fun during the week. During the week, I
was gonna go see Black Phone too, but I just
couldn't get away from like all the other projects that
I was working on. I'm actually working on a review
for Magic the gatherings they said the Spider Man Worlds
Beyond set, so I'll be looking at that.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Probably later on this week.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Other than that, though, I've been just just kind of
vibing this week. I kinda took a lot of this
week just to be very, very very low key. I
took a lot of time off from some of my
other responsibilities for my birthday. My mother in law gave
me a check, and hey, money can be exchanged for

(03:02):
goods and services, So what I got by exactly, So
what I did is I bought myself Darrington Press's Dagger Heart. Now,
we did get sent a review copy of dagger Heart
earlier in the year and it didn't didn't get a
chance to cover it, but it'll likely end up in
our holiday gift guide as it's sort of the new
hotness in the tt RPG space. So I'll mean, actually,

(03:26):
this is something I'm planning on. Well, hopefully this will happen,
so I'm not going to promise it just yet, but
I'm thinking about doing a tt RPG holiday gift guide
as a separate thing, like kind of like how Alex
and Ken kind of do the Black Friday thing. I'm like,
you know what, there's not a lot of really good
things come out this year.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
So if you if you want to do tabletop in general,
you know, I've got asthma dy is senting senting over
a bunch of stuff that is like regular board games
for for holiday gift guide and consideration. Maybe we can
do it like a a a joint thing where all
includes a few of those in there as well.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, that's probably a pretty slick idea, actually a.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Play together guy for like for home gaming.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah exactly, So yeah, that's something.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Uh also so I bought myself the Dagger Heart Box
at physical, which is really hard to get in stock
on Amazon. Fortunately, I found a copy sitting at a
local Indigo bookstore, so I got it at retail, so
I'm really glad I didn't have to overpay for it.
And I also bought myself one of the other Dungeons

(04:34):
and Dragons. It's not exactly a source book, but it's
like a companion book, and it's called Lauren Legends, and
it's kind of like a visual history of fifth edition
and like some really really really cool stuff I'm actually
trying to get. I'm trying to get all the D
and D art style books. The only excuse me, the
only one I'm missing is Art in ar Kana, which

(04:57):
is sort of like the history of D and D Art.
I have it digitally, but I think, I think, if
I remember correctly, it has a lot of artwork from
the original A D and D D and D dragon Lance,
Dark Sun Raven Loft, a lot of Larry Elmore art,
who was the person who did the artwork for dragon Lance,

(05:20):
a lot of forgotten realm stuff. He also did some
Shadow Run. Most notably, if I recall correctly, the cover
of Shadow Run second Edition Revised, which is like a lot.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Of a lot of eighties and early nineties stuff.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah, like it's and he has a very distinctive art style.
And it's one of those things when I become my
weirdo in an airbrush wizard van phase of life, which
I'm very much answering. Now, that's the kind of artwork
I'd like on the side of my van.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Other than that, Oh, you're going the opposite direction of
the guys that are that like, you know, paint their
shag and wagon to look like they like, Hey, cool guy,
I hear with all the chicks, you want the one
that just says like, hey, here be dragons and unicorns and.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Come here for a quest, child, and I will tell
you how to save the kingdom.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, that's kind.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Of the vibe that I'm going for, and I'm fine
with it. Other than that, there was a convention here
in Gwelph. Griffcon did not go as successful as I
wanted it to. Unfortunately, just I find it hard. And
this will be just a mini not even a rant,
just an observation. And this is by no means anybody's fault.

(06:38):
I find that people are hesitant to learn new systems,
and I get it. A friend of mine had done
a video years back, and one of the points they
made in their video had said why he's like, oh,
I want to play this, I want to play that,
and like, okay, cool, but who has the books? Well
I don't, well, okay, I don't want to learn a

(06:59):
new system them.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, I guess we're playing D and D again.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
And I find that's kind of the most comfortable thing
people stay with since we Wizard's.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Also a pop culture thing, right Exactly, it's exactly what movies.
If there's movies, TV shows, podcasts, hundreds of popular streams
and podcasts, merchandise, nostalgia video games if they're all based
on one property or actually two we can say Pizo
stuff as well, you basically are shoehorning new players that

(07:31):
are not hardcore TTRPG players already. They're afraid to try
anything that they couldn't perceive as being cool or accessible.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Like, And it's it's funny because I kind of figured,
like my strategy going into this weekend was I was
gonna run Alien the RPG from freely because I did
an interview with them earlier this year, and I'm supposed
to have another interview with Freely talking about the Invincible
RPG that just finished its kickstarter a little while ago,

(08:00):
and the Evolved edition should be shipping to people around
the world I think this weekend next week. So I
was gonna show that up because because Alien Earth just
ended a couple of weeks ago, and I was gonna
do Star Trek second edition as an adventure, and I figured, well,
strange New World just wrapped recently within the last few months,

(08:20):
and people are still talking about Star Trek's like, all right,
probably should be pretty good. I had two people show up.
One guy, this was kind of funny. I don't blame
his person whatsoever, but he sits at my table and
we're talking and he's like, hey, I'm kind of interested,
and I'm like, all right, awesome, cool, So let's wait
fifteen twenty minutes and you know, we'll see if other
people show. And then then he's like, hey, I'm gonna

(08:42):
go to the bath. I'm like, okay, cool, do you
want me to watch your stuff? No, that's fine. He
takes his bag and he leaves never comes back. I'm like, okay,
I just got ghosted. Is this like how Tinder dating works?
So I did laugh at that, And then another kid
came up just as I was packing up, literally had
all my I'd just thrown everything in my bag, and

(09:02):
he's like, hey, what are you doing. I'm like going, well,
I'm just leaving. But if you'd been here ten minutes earlier.
But I sat down with this kid. We talked for
like fifteen twenty minutes, and we talked about Alien and
Star Trek. He might be joining my table down at
the Dragon, which we're finally having our first adventure next weekend,
which I'm looking forward to finally starting.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
So yeah, but yeah, that.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Was like, ah, it was trying to make an observation too.
You may please really bad weekend to do it. I
don't know why they would have their con right before
Halloween when every single like I was a party about
every party was this weekend.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Yeah, the reason it was this is sort of the
shadow event. This is sort of like the pre con.
The big one happens in April, which is after exams
but before people go home, and that's usually around the
second or third weekend in April, always before Easter or
just after I can't I didn't.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
I didn't even know. You know, I'm your podcast partner.
I didn't know this event was happening until like yes week.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, it was advertised mostly on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
I did as much as I could on social media.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
So although the attendance was not bad, I saw a
lot of Tube. I saw a lot of tables playing
other games though shut up to Piso. I did hear
another table playing Starfinder, So that was really cool.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
That's what I'm saying. I think because it was done
at the university, wasn't it. So what you're going to
have is, again, what does Pizo have. Piso's had a
bunch of video games recently, yep, was it al Kat
and a few of the companies with the Kingmaker games.
So they've they've got that. I don't think there's a
Starfinder game, or at least not a major one yet.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
I think there's discussions of one, but I don't think
it's come out yet.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, so you've got that, they have the press, they
have that, and you're dealing with, you know, younger players
that if this was a con twenty years ago, you'd
be dealing with players around you know, your group of
what you were discovering stuff, and there might have been
more exploration, but I think the big one was it
was the wrong day for them to run their event.

(11:06):
If you weren't if you wanted to get people other
than just you know, oh do you do, you'll check
that out other.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Than I think.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
I think because my wife Blair made this observation as well,
and I found this a very keen observation. She's like,
it's a lot of groups that tend to stick together,
but now they have a place to play. So I'm like,
all right, I'm trying hard not to take this personal.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Because I know we shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
To me, this sounds like this sounds like a really
cool thing if it was planned around a big family,
like if this was during March break.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Oh yeah, like like getting.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Getting younger players and college kids have their clicks. But also,
you know what college kids do. They they they they
go to the board game cafes, they go to places
where they have regular meetups. Yeah. So unless there was
like a bigger event like when they I think they
did a tabletop like room or something here at City Hall,

(12:02):
when they had like regular like downtown events happening, you
know what I mean, it has to be more than
one thing.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
Well, it's actually it's okay, weird how you mentioned that.
So there's actually a job I applied for in Kitchener
where they're looking for professional dungeon masters and it's from
a new place downtown. I'm not gonna say their name
just because I don't want to whatever, but yeah, I
was like, oh, that's fascinating. Yeah, so Kitchener does have
the community to support it. But like I've said on

(12:30):
the show before, Gwelph has a very interesting history when
it comes to the tt RPG industry. Obviously, we have
Tommy Gofton at the roundtable with Lynn Vader and they
do their RPG stuff, which I found out they're doing
the Army of Darkness board game.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Very cool.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Actually, when I first came to golf, Tommy gifted me
a copy of the Evil Dead board game, which was
really cool. And I found out they're doing a ThunderCats
board game or sorry not board game RPG, which.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Is fucking awesome.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
So yeah, my god, and it's I really would love
to work on an ip like that, Like yo, if
he could get silver Hawks' Son.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Wasn't the best of engine made there in Gwelph two?

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yes, that was done by one of the people who
works at City Hall Mark McKinnon. And that is trying
to remember Guardians of Order. Uh go look them up,
is what I will say. Not the throwshade, I just.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
I know that like stuff, it has a history there
and his wasn't the one. Is it the D and
D writer that one of the head guys that did
it way back in the day. Is he from Welfer
is a kitchener I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
I know Ed Greenwood is the creator of Forgotten Realms.
Lives close by where he's in twelfh several times a year.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, okay, he's the one whenever there's an event in
town he always pops up as a guest here.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
He's within you know, half hour driving distance.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, so that's super cool.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
I the next time Tommy has ed down at the roundtable,
I'm gonna make it a point to go. Because I
went to an event for battle Tech last year or
was it the Yeah, it was last year and they
had fuck I can't I can remember his last name,

(14:20):
but I can't remember his first name.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
For BATTLETEP.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
They had the community manager come on up for that
and that was really cool, just to meet more contemporaries
in the field Randall billis that was at Randall and
so that was kind of neat. So other than that though,
during the week though, I have been playing Assassin's Creed.
I finally finished the DLC for Shadows or Sorry clause
of a wadgie. That was a lot of fun, really

(14:50):
surprisingly long in terms of content. I think when I
finished the DLC, I think I'm level seventy one, so
I haven't quite hit level cap yet, haven't done a
new game plus run.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
I know recently there's a switch to Port that will be.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Coming out in December, hopefully I'll be covering that at
some point. I know there's new DLC dropping in I
think November, I'm almost sure of it, and some other
cool stuff. So yeah, that's been kind of my week.
I mean as of this recording, because we're recording this
on a Monday night, so depending on when Alex gets
this out, I'm probably playing D and D in like now.

(15:26):
So that's pretty much been my week. It's it's been
a lot of fantasy, but in my head vibing, I'm
feeling okay, Alex, what about you, FRIENDO.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
I went and saw Good Fortune, The as He's and
Sorry Seth Rogan Canna Reeves movie. It felt like a
nineties comedy. It's good, okay. I mean i'd say it's
basically Prince of the Popper life stinks any of those
like rich guy poor guys, which is you know, trading places,
that sort of things. They swapped their lives and you know,

(15:59):
people have to learn the morality that sort of stuff, right,
And canta Reeves plays a guardian angel that focks it
all up. It's fun, it's it's it's solid. It's not
necessarily any state in theaters, except for the fact that
I like the fact that it was a kind of
movie that you don't see that much in theaters anymore.
So it was worth smaller scale comedy, right, smaller scale comedy,

(16:20):
not as much risk you know, involved with it, but
also the kind of stuff that went to the wayside
like twenty years ago. So worth it. When it hits streaming,
it's probably gonna be out of theaters this week, I
would assume. But if it hits streaming, I'd say it's
worth your time to watch. It's just like it's got
some language in it, so it's not like it's completely

(16:41):
for families, Like, there's gonna be some swearing in that,
but there's no identity, there's no violence. It's there's you know,
some F bombs dropped, but it's it's I think here
it's like rated PG oh wow, because like swearing doesn't
really mean anything or it's unrated. But I know in
the States it got R rating because it had like
a couple F bombs and it's like, really, there's nothing
to like, it's whatever. Anyway, I saw that, and then

(17:04):
I went and saw the Chainsaw Man movie, which I
didn't care for as much as the critics. They're going
crazy gaga for it. But I'm seeing more and more
people watching and doing their own reviews. Thing, Yeah, it's
a seven out of ten, and that's pretty much. I
was like a six or seven for me. If you're
a fan of the first season that came out like
two or three years ago. Now it's worth it. As

(17:24):
of this recording, they just announced it was the number
one movie in the box office last week, and it's like, really,
I was not expecting that. So we now have two
anime movies. It's the first time ever that two anime
movies have made the top twenty it box office domestically
in a year.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
See, I think that shit is really cool.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
The fact that people are willing to take different risks
on stuff now, I think is really really exciting. I mean,
I haven't checked out. It takes a lot for me
to get into anime. I typically watch one series during
our our time off. In December, chainsaw Man is on
my radar Demon Slayer.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
I'm very curious about Demons Slayer.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
I would say it's worth it. It's not too long. You know,
you've got it's a few seasons, but they're like you
know anywhere. Yeah, and then like the one season isn't
really a season, it was the movie split Up, So yeah,
you can finish that in a couple weeks time. Chaine
thaw Man's only twelve episodes, oh okay, and then this
movie but it's it's fun. But Demas Slayer is is

(18:32):
like Dragon ball Z. That's why you like it?

Speaker 3 (18:34):
Okay, Yeah, Like I want to try getting this stuff
because like I've been working with like Ken and Dave
and all them for a really long time chatting about
different things, and I'm always curious to hear different things
to check out which before we go any Further, I
got to send a special shout out to Dave Denoyer.
Dave is one of the guys we work with on

(18:56):
Luce Cannon. He's moved over here from Do You Even Movie?
And I got a phone call from Dave the other
day at three o'clock in the morning, and first question
I pick up, are you okay? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm fine. He's like, I wasn't even sure whether you
were gonna pick up, but I needed to call you, thinking,

(19:17):
all right, what's kind of going on? And he's chatting
with me, and what I got. I'm not going to
share every detail of that conversation, but what I got
was one of the most authentic and genuine, non drunk
thank yous and appreciations I've ever gotten in my entire life.
And he was sharing with me how you me, Ken,

(19:40):
Adam and everybody else who's on the team here at
Twig has made him feel welcome, has made him feel heard,
has made him feel like this is the creative outlet
he really feel.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Like he needs in his life right now. And I'm
not gonna lie, Olex.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
It was one of those when you and I hug
it's rare but we know it means something. This would
have been one of those moments where it would have
been one of those thank you for being a friend moment,
So big shout out to Dave. Yeah. I was like, honestly,
because I was having a pretty crappy day on Saturday.
When I got that phone call from Dave, I'm like,
you know what, I got one more day in me,

(20:17):
So that made me feel pretty good.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
It's a huge shout at to Dave. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
So I guess guys, we have a lot of show
to talk about, even though we're only covering two stories
a piece this week, we have a lot of cool
reviews coming up from Alex. He's gonna surprise me this
week because I don't know what they are.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, I've had it. I've been mentioning, and I've got
a bunch of things I was juggling. And also now
that the postal strike is quote unquote over, things have
started trickling in at once and I'm like, oh no,
we don't have like seven weeks worth of mail in
the course of like one week. So I've still got
to sort of reach into my you know, my magic sack,

(20:55):
which take for that what you will, and figure out
which ones I'm going to be talking about. But there
there is some cool stuff and a lot of the
stuff that we're getting now for anybody listening, we're gonna
be doing reviews of and it's stuff that is also
for consideration for like gift guides and that sort of stuff,
because this is the time of year when companies are like, hey,
would you like to check out this cool product that
we've got for the holiday season, And we go, Okay,

(21:18):
why yes, I would, Why yes, I would. And sometimes
it's things that we were you know, wouldn't even have
in our radar, but then afterwards we're like, whoa, wait
a minute, this is pretty neat. And sometimes it's like,
you know, the hot ticket items. So there's gonna be
a mix of that over the next few weeks.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
Yeah, Like it's gonna be a lot of cool stuff
from us kind of coming up. I know, I've got
a bunch of role playbooks. I just got the D
and D Stranger Things box set, the hell Fire Club thing,
and then there is the not Here's of the Borderlands.
There's the Forgotten Realm set, which is very much based
upon Balder's Gate three.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
I'm very excited for that so yeah, a lot of
good stuff.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
But anyway, guys, we're gonna take a break on this
week Geek. I'm gonna throw thanks to one of Alex's
amazing reviews. What this is turn turn turn, I don't know.
We're gonna find out. We'll be back guys right after this.
Only on this weekn geek dot Net.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Alex the producer here and I am reviewing something really
neat that you might want to consider for your holiday
gift giving, maybe even if that means getting something for yourself.
And that is the newest collaboration between My Arcade and Atari.
This is the game station Go. You might have heard

(22:39):
us talk about this when it was announced I think
probably a year ago actually when we first saw it,
I think showing off at cees. We have reviewed some
other My Arcade things, including the My Arcade Asari fifty,
like the miniature what's it called one o their miniature
like Arcade replicas as well as we did like the

(23:00):
misspac Man one and a few other stuff things last
year and for this holiday season. They're big thing right
now is a whole bunch of new cool stuff coming.
But in particular, what we were sent was a press
package for the game Station Go portable gaming system. Last year,
the year before, I think it might have been, they

(23:22):
came out with the game Station Pro and that was
the sort of tabletop, you know, mini console that plugged
in the HDMI and then you had a couple of
wireless controllers put batteries in, and that was sort of
a pretty hot ticket item when it came out. This
is sort of a portable version of that, which is
introducing pretty much everything I've wanted in a retro handheld

(23:46):
in that it has a seven inch screen, full color display.
Unlike some of the other stuff that Mayor Kaid has
put out in the past, where the screen is of
middling quality, it seems to be a step up. Like
we're not dealing with like per really high high, super
high end the stuff. Here. We're dealing with a solid
seven inch screen that has pretty good viewing angles. From

(24:06):
what I've seen, pretty good color reproduction. I didn't encounter
any major ghosting or anything like that. And what you
get is two hundred and plus, you know, a little
more than two hundred built in games, including pac Man
and interestingly, the Atari Recharge games, a series of those
games which have been released previously on PC and other consoles,
but are modern games. Modern takes reimaginings of classic titles,

(24:32):
as well as some stuff from Jellico, Picoinderactive, a couple
pac Man variations, and Balls of Steel, which is a
virtual pinball recreation. And it's a pretty good variety on here,
so it's not just Atari. And also it includes games
from Atari twenty six hundred, fifty two hundred, seventy eight hundred,

(24:55):
as well as like Arcade variations and also Ourcade versions
of Jellico games, some arcade games from Pico, as well
as some sixteen and eight bit stuff, which it basically
entails mostly stuff that was either on nes There's a
couple of things that were on like Super Nintendo, and
then there's a couple things that were like Sega Genesis

(25:16):
style sixteen minit games included here. It includes an AC
adapter charge cable charges via USBC. You'll get four to
five hours of playtime. I got actually slightly more. I
turned off the Wi Fi on it and had the
brightness down a little bit and just plugged in my
headphones and I got about a little over five five

(25:37):
and a half hours, which is pretty darn good. Charges
up about an hour and a half or so. It's
not like a super quick charge. It's just that's just
how long it takes. It advertises that it has built
in Wi Fi, which I can confirm because you can
connect to get firmware updates. I will mention something here.
At the very beginning, I was shipped something sort of

(25:59):
a pre release version of the operating system. As of
this recording, I'm still waiting on like the day one
patch that is without in everybody's retail copy, So anybody
who buys a retail will have a newer version of
the software than what I have. The version that I
have does not want to play the Atari seventy eight
hundred games, and that includes both what's built in or

(26:21):
there is a micro SD slot. And I formatted my
card the same way I've done with other releases from
my arcade. Put the you know, put a seventy eight
hundred ROM file on there to see if it would load,
would not load, would load you know backups of my
other games. No problem, it's just it isn't the seventy
eight hundred software emulation built in isn't working. So I

(26:44):
contacted them. They said, hey, sorry, we should mention that
to you. That is because you have a pre release
version of the operating system. Anybody that has a retail
copy has a newer version than what I have. So
I'm just waiting on an OTA update over the air
update to download, and because once I have that, I'll
have the full retail version and not encounter any issues

(27:05):
with that little, you know, small grape side, because sometimes
happens when you get pre released hardware. Everything else works great.
The big selling feature here for me is the control schemes.
So it has an L one R R one, L
two R two, sort of like a modern controller would have.
It's shaped like a sort of a blockier almost, I

(27:27):
guess like a Nintendo switch shape, if that makes any sense.
But you have your your ayx abx Y buttons top right.
You have a dpad that's actually it's not bad. It's
not the best one in the world, but it's actually
pretty good. But what's interesting is it also includes we
thought initially was a paddle, but it's a full spinner

(27:47):
paddle and a roller ball and a number pad, meaning
you can get proper controls mapped with the built in
games for any games that use like the fifty two
hundred controller that had the that number pad built in,
so it has that. It also because it has proper
paddle slash spinner, you can use it for things like

(28:09):
Breakout or any game like Tempest or anything that would
use the ability to in the arcades to spin around.
And the roller ball means that things that would use
it like bowling or certain other games have the proper
use of a track ball for it. And what's really

(28:29):
neat is any of the games that are built in,
when you go to launch it, it will actually light
up with what they call their smart glow technology. All
of the buttons as well as the number pad buttons
and the control scheme like the dpad the roller ball,
the paddles have a ring around them and they light up.

(28:52):
Will they light up to let you know what buttons
are able to control. So if the game you know
only uses the track ball, only the track ball will
light up to let you know that's the control you're
supposed to use. If a game can use both either
a D pad or a paddle, it will light up both.

(29:12):
If it's a game that only uses the A button
for shooting a single button like on an Atari twenty
six hundred only that button on the control scheme will
light up, along with whatever other control buttons work. So
if a game uses the control the number pads but
only a few buttons, it'll only highlight those buttons that
are in use or can be used. Same with the

(29:33):
trigger buttons and everything. It's really neat something that's really
cool now as well as all of this stuff, it's
everything here is licensed. Everything seemed to load just fine.
I encountered a couple of glitches with which again are
probably going to be patched out with the recharged games

(29:53):
that they I had one that was playing pretty rapidly
on and end up crashing out to the main menu
and I had to re boot to load it up.
But that was the only time I encountered anything that
that was in one of the recharge games, which is
I'm still pretty surprised is included here in the first place.
But it's pretty darn sweet. I've gone through and tried

(30:15):
pretty much every type of game on here. It has
most of the things you'd want. If you're looking for,
specifically the stuff from some of the licensed companies, you're
not going to find the Activision games, so you're not
finding Pitfall on here. Or anything. Obviously, if you do
own copies of Pitfall, you know, you own the physical
copies and you want to and you have a backup
of them that you've made yourself. That's what the SD

(30:37):
card slot it's for. If you plug it into the
SD card, pop it in, it's in the right file format.
You can look it up on forums online. If you
do that, it'll pop up. What you won't get is
you won't get the ability to have it light up
and telling you which buttons are which, like, it's not
been curated that way. But if you wanted to do that, great,
if you've got backups, if you look, when you plug
the SD card in, it'll pop up telling you which

(30:58):
consoles you can use. For instance, you know, if you
want to make this your entire Atari, you know, backup
player for all of your big massive physical collection that
you have, you can put things like your Atari links
games on here that aren't you know, on here. It's
the one major Atari console at least home consoles las
Chandel that isn't included, but it has the built in
support for it. It just didn't have the games on here.

(31:19):
So yeah, if you own all the games yourself and
you're backing up copies of your games, you can play them.
Or if you're part of the homebrew community making brand
new games for any of these Atari systems, no sweat.
You can make your own game, you know, or go
to a lot of websites things like itch dot, i
ow and that people are actively making brand new games
for these consoles. And you know, you pay a dollar, donate,

(31:41):
do whatever you got, get a legal copy of your
own pop it on, you can play that. It works
just great. So it's a pretty good alternative. You're not
going to play anything, you know, more modern than that.
Even though it has the recharge games on here, those
have been specifically ported and curated to work on this system.
The audio quality of the speaker is okay, not great.

(32:04):
It will have some emulation and crackingling issues with some
of the Arcade games and some of the more advanced stuff,
some of the Pico interactive stuff. It's sort of a
hit or miss on some of that emulation, especially for
things that aren't aitoring. Anything on here that is Atari
specific seems to work flawlessly. Anything except for you know,

(32:25):
the recharge. It might be a little hit or miss,
but again, wait for an update if that's the case,
because again it can get firmware updates, which is great.
They've got that ability here and unlike previous consoles and
stuff that they've released, you're not having to fiddle with,
you know, downloading a thing onto a file and using
a special patcher program. It has built in OTA updates.
You can just go to the menu, connect to your

(32:45):
WiFi boom, you can go. It'll tell you if there's
an update or not, and go there. I'm having a
great time with it. The only thing that you know,
it doesn't have that I would love is an official
case or something for it. I'll have to probably look
for a third party online. We did do an unboxing
of on our social media that you've probably shared around
and we've mentioned it a few times, and it basically
came in the retail box and there was a little

(33:08):
package here with advertising some of their there are twenty
twenty five items that they've got coming and I'll briefly
mention some of that here in this review as well.
But it also came with like a cool little my
Arcade sunglasses. But they've got a few other a few
other twenty twenty five products. But this is sort of
the flagship one. They've got some stuff from Sega coming

(33:29):
with Sonic the Hedgehog. I'll put some links into our
shows if that's the case for them. They've got some
pac Man stuff and a lot of the stuff that
they've got releasing now is sort of repackaged the stuff
that they've done in the past in slightly new packaging
with carrying cases. There's a casino pocket one which is
in my mind it's more of like mom and dad
or grandpa which would want that. There is different Atari collection,

(33:54):
Space Invaders, collections of stuff really interesting. What also you
and get for for this particular station is they have
other controllers. So right now it's it's single player, it
does have the ability to hook up to a TV
and then also has the ability to to play with

(34:16):
other controllers. And I'm trying to pull up on the
seat here if I pull up the page in my
little documentation here to talk about it briefly, it's pretty
neat that they've got a few other control schemes that
sort of recreate what's built in to this device, and

(34:37):
what they they've done is just sort of make a
portable version of it. They also have like an arcade
stick coming, So where is that? And this this sheet
that I've got here right, It is the game station
game pad. This is a wireless controller for the game
station now. It connects to the uh the game station
go or the game station meggots call. It integrates the paddle,

(35:02):
the track ball, and the keypad and has the smart
glow and the controls everything. It's just basically a compact
version like a little square pad that you're holding onto
that let's you control everythink. It has a built in
rechargeable battery with twelve hours of play on that, so
you can have this sitting down. You hook it up
and you're able to have a second player basically play

(35:23):
with you or use it as your main control scheme.
And the other thing they had that I thought was
really neat and hopefully maybe we can get our hands
on as well, is the game station arcade stick. Now.
This is very cool looking. It integrates basically the same stuff,
except it's a little wider. It integrates extra face buttons

(35:46):
that are like more like arcade style layouts, and instead
of a dpad, it's got like a proper joystick thing
on top. Very very cool. Interesting again, twelve hours plus
of gameplay on that something you know, where when I
want to look at the future, as it's Dan's, this
is a pretty compelling gift. Pricing is going to vary
depending on your country. You can, you know, look at

(36:06):
the main site for it and see how that translates,
but it's gonna be, at least in Canada a little
over two hundred bucks for what you're getting. It's actually
pretty good and I could see this being a pretty
cool gift for any retro gamer' out there. Keep an
eye on it. We'll probably include it in our holiday
gift Guy, But so far, I'm really impressed with this.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
The Prime Minister of Sweden visited Washington today and.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
My tiny little nipples went to France. Gossip, rumors, panic
in the streets. We're lucky this weekend Geek new News.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
Hey guys, welcome back to this week in geek dot Net.
I'm Mike the Birdman. He's ox of Producer and it's
time to well take a look at a couple of
stories that happened around the entertainment industry this past week.
As this is the nerd News Network only on this
wee can geek of dot net. This first story has
been reported by multiple outlets, but this one comes courtesy
of Deadline. This was an exclusive, but Robert Kirkman's Skybound

(37:02):
Entertainment has team with Hasbro Entertainment to produce The ener
John Universe, an adult animated series based upon the comics
of the same name, created by Kirkman and published by Skybound.
Joe Henderson Lucifer Is this has to write the adaptation
and service showrunner on the series, an epic crossover of
Gi Joe, Transformers and Void Rivals mythology which is expected
to take which is expected to be taken out to

(37:25):
buyer shortly. Despite featuring the family friendly Hasbro characters of
Gijo and Transformers, the Ener John Universe series will be
broad with adult sensibility, in the vein of Kirkman's gritty
adult animated series Invincible, based upon his comic which has
been a hit for Amazon, which has been a hit
for Amazon Prime Video, which was renewed for season five
ahead of its season four premiere next March. Kirkman, a
Transformers in Gi Joe, Fans and Childhood, won the comic

(37:48):
book publishing rights to the Signature brand in twenty twenty one.
He went on to create a cohesive shared universe in
which Transformers in Gijoe coexist along with original ip Void Rivals,
which Kirkman co created with Lorenzo de la fit DIFFERENTII.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Two years in.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
The energy On universe has become one of Hasbro's best
selling comic book lines ever, with over seven million combined
units sold worldwide. It launched in June twenty twenty three
with Void Rivals, which featured the surprise appearance of Transformers
character Jetfire on the final page. This followed in October
twenty twenty three release of Transformers and Foro g I
Joe character focused mini series to a ten poll. Gijo

(38:25):
series launch in November twenty twenty four with Transformers number one,
GI Joe number one and Void Rivals number one, setting
sales records and Transformers winning two Edgar Awards in twenty
twenty four. Comic book and TV series writer Henderson previously
served as showrunner on Lucifer, the successful Fox Netflix TV
series which was adapted from comics. His TV credits also

(38:46):
include White Collar and Almost Human and then it basically
just goes into Hasbro shit. I'm really looking forward to
this several reasons. Obviously, the Skybelle Universe does not fuck around.
And what I mean by that is Robert Kirkman kills
Bumblebee literally in the first few pages of the thing,

(39:08):
and he's pretty much said, yeah, he's not coming back.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
We're like what.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
So literally, Jetfire comes to Earth brings the Transformers back online,
and he's like in Starscream because it's always the Decepticons
come back online first, and he's like, oh, Jetfire, my
good friends, You've brought us back.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
And he's like, yes, I have. We can help save
our friends.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
We can go back to Cybertron and he's like, yeah
about that, and he just takes one of his null
rays and blows Bubblebee's head clear in half and Octimist Prime.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
As much as I do like the character, obviously as
a kid, he was the audience standing he technically, I
guess you, you would have been a G one yeahs er,
I was technically a G two.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Oh right, because you came on around ninety one to
ninety two.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
Error.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
I started watching the first Transformers thing I ever saw
was the movie, so I watched it in reverse orders,
so I was like, wow, you know tells you about
my brain? How like in my head all the cool
Transformers died right away, but I was I was, actually,
I guess what you would call a G two kid
because it was in syndication. It was on Saturday mornings.
But when I was watching was that Morphing cube thing.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Oh the cyber planet Cube.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yeah, yeah, where optimists would like narrate old stories, and
it was just episodes from the early in mid eighties,
so like it was still I guess technically first run,
but like I was, yeah, I was a G two kid.
And then when I was nine was when Beast Wars started.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Yeah, like it's gonna be a really interesting like, like, I'm
very curious to know what the animation style is gonna
look like, because Skybound has a very almost like pencil
crayon kind of looked and I'm not saying that to
be derivative. It looks really good, but it's not the
same sharp lines as some IDW stuff.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
Or I didn't know that. Marl is how detached I've
been from comics really since the pandemic started. Is that?
Which is funny? You think I would have gotten more
into comics, but I sort of. I just I gravitated
way more towards gaming as my escape I think during
the pandemic and you started reading a heck of a
lot of digital comics around that time. Yeah, so, like
I didn't know that they had like I knew that

(41:25):
G I Joe didn't have the same license holder anymore. Yeah,
because because we had covered the stories about how like
wasn't there like a road comic company that tried to
get the rights but it turns out they only got
the rights to like the like Sunday Afternoon cartoon rights
or something like that.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah, Yeah, there was something. Yeah, there was something a
couple of years ago. I vaguely remember what you're talking about,
because I know with like G I Joe, it's bounced
around from Marvel Image, Devil's Do Publishing and IDW at
one point, and I think.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
It was, Oh, was it that there was like a
brit series that they had the rights to or something.
There was something weird. I think it was that G
I Joe had also existed at one point as a
like Saturday or Sunday newspaper comic strip, and the company
had like bought the rights to that and they're reissuing

(42:18):
them but as like regular comics, and they misrepresented themselves
to like to say that they had the rights to
the comics, and in reality they didn't. They had rights
to the comic strips.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah, I think I vaguely remember this now actually. Yeah,
Like so there's that I didn't know that. I like,
IDW had everything cool for a while, so I didn't
maybe they had gone to Skybound.

Speaker 1 (42:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yeah, like the Skybound comics, they're a really good read,
and there's some really fantastic writing in there, and it's
like one of the big images that most people know
from the Skybound run is there's Optimist Prime but he
has Megatron's arm for some reason, and in the comics
it's really.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
I just I didn't know that it was from Skybound.
I thought it was still light W. But yeah, so
I mean, this is cool that they're they're doing this.
And I say, you know, as much as I love
bubble Bee as a kid, he was just an he
was just an extra character. Like when I was a
little kid, you know, a lot of the stuff that
I was watching was reruns the season three, So it
was like for me, my guys were hot. Roden Springer.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Oh yeah, And it's cool because the Skybound comics have
a wider cast. I mean, yeah, you've got your Elita one,
your wheel Jack, your Ratchet cliff Jumper.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
But they're not afraid to kill people.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Like the books are brutal, and that's kind of what
makes them appealing because the fact that characters can and
will die. Like there's one point very early on the
run where the cannibalized Thundercracker, one of the Decepticon seekers.
They're like, hey, we're gonna kill you because we need
your parts, and he's like, what, like, to serve the

(44:03):
greater good, you have to die. And it's really fucking brutal.
And Megatron does not fuck around. He beats the shit
out of Astro Train and he's like, look, the only
reason you live is because.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
I need you. Don't do it again.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
They form the Autobots, have the aerial Bots, they form Superior,
and they pretty much mangle slingshots. Who is one of
I think he's one of the limbs. And it's just
it's such a good read. The series just started issue
twenty five or twenty six recently, and they're gonna take

(44:42):
a new direction.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
I think.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
I think the new storyline is called Generation One. I
do not know what's gonna happen in it, but it's
a really good read. Now, It's funny when it comes
to the Energy on Universe. I do read Gi Joe
because I've got two titles for that. There's the Image
Ones and there's the Skybound Ones and I re Transformers,
but I.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
Haven't read Void Rivals.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
I've been kind of meaning to get on that because yes,
it's involved in the IP, but look, transformers, Gi Joe, Guy,
do I need it to understand it? Not necessarily, but
it would certainly help. But yeah, regardless, this is gonna
be awesome. I'm super excited to see how this all
turns out. I'm hoping we get a trailer by next summer.
I doubt it, but we'll see. Regardless, it's gonna be awesome.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
I can tell you this. I just went and looked
up because all of my toys were like garage sale
transformers when I was little, all the G one stuff.
I did have two G two toys mmmm that were
when it was airing, the ones that changed color. I
used to use them in the bathtub. I stunned to
cons right, Da Luge and Jetstorm. I just looked them

(45:48):
up because I was like, I don't remember the names,
but I can if I see the Transformers, it automatically
triggers memories in my head. So those are the two.
And I mean there are color trains, like you're supposed
to hold on them, but in reality, when you're four
or five years old, you're with them in the bathtub.
Oh yeah, yeah, like I would play with those, So
like that's that's my era. But also I'm thinking of,
like just back to the thought of killing off Bumblebee

(46:12):
when I say it at the beginning here, like, I
think that's good. It's because it's been the crutch of
the franchise for twenty years now, that character being well,
Bee's got to be the main connection to all the
kids out there.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
No it doesn't, Yeah, exactly, be willing to expand it
and you might just get some real magic out there.
So I'm really glad they're taking a risk on this, Like,
and they actually re is they reprinted issue one for
Transformers where it's literally Bumblebee's corpse on the cover with
his head destroyed. I'm actively hunting for that comic, but

(46:49):
I don't want to pay a lot for it, So
it's the one comic Like I don't hunt variant covers often.
That is one I really want because I'm a say.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
So was all like fried and mashed up.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Uh well, half of his head's gone.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
He's lying there in a heap with like circuits exposed
and everything.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Oh it's so brutal some reason expected.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
I'm just picturing like A's main sure walking up and
going bubbaly Tuna sees it.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
It is certainly a vibe when you see it. So yeah, honestly,
I think that's an amazing team. If it's if, if
it's gonna be Kirkman putting it together, and if it's
at the same level as Invincible on Amazon Prime, this
SERI is gonna look amazing. And I will say this
before we move on to our next story. Amazon Prime

(47:39):
Animation knocks it out of the park. I've seen about
half of Invincible season one. I'm gonna try to finish
that before March.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
You are far behind.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Oh yes, I am, And I also want. I was
very hesitant to watch the critical Role series Voxmacina. I'm
very glad I did. I powered through that first season
really quickly well.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
And Invincible You'll love you get to a point where
Lieutenant Wharf is battle beast and he just wants to
kill and fight and he like kills people, crushes their
heads and he's like, I need more, and it's just
it's just in Wharf's voice, but it's just like more,

(48:24):
I need more. And you saw him a little bit.
They tease him in season one. I think he like
comes in through like another dimension whoop's ass, and then
leaves and then they find him like again, he's like,
I'm gonna kill you because you're strong, and he's like, well,
I found the one point. They're like, well, there's these
other guys that are like way stronger, and he's like,
I'd like to go kill them essentially now. And then

(48:45):
they're as they're fighting, they go into space and like
they're like can he breathe out there? Like I don't know,
and all you hear is he's just like more more
as he's like floating away into space killing these things. Yeah,
Poppable killing me and that's just one cool character.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
Like, I have seen some stuff for the Invincible Universe,
and I've been really curious. I mean, my first real
exposure to it was Death Battle by Rooster Teeth where
they had Omniman versus Homelander from the Boys, and then
there was.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
Oh, I don't even have to watch that to tell
you that Omnimn just destroys them.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Oh yeah, it was not a good It was not
a good finish for Homelander.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Omnimn's people can destroy entire planets on their own just
because they're angry. They're also they're also like they're somehow
more Nazi than Homelander. Yeah, you'll see it. They are
more so, like to the point where like like you're

(49:52):
not only are you slaves, Like, wait, you said something
to me, You're not supposed to look me in the eye.
All rip the legs off of your children in front
of you and not let them die, but let them
scream for a long time, just so you know you're
not supposed to look at me.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah, it was pretty pretty intense what I've seen. And
I think the other one is I think they had
Omnimn versus Bardock from Dragon Ball Z, and I think
that was he was a little closer.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
But yeah, Omniman grossed him.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
He is like the only one that would probably be yes, and.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
It's only because he has ultra instinct, and only.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Then it's only because Goku has killed universes.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Yeah, Like it's pretty cool just to see I'm I'm
really happy. I'm really glad to see universes and comic
properties taking a risk where it's not just the marvel
in DC way. And I'm not saying I need everything
to be violent and gritty. I just want different types
of stories. And the fact that you can bring grittiness
and a unique take to sue to a property like

(50:52):
Transformers in G I. Joe is interesting because, like in
some of the earlier G. I. Joe comics, main characters die.
Like it's not just oh, Duke Duke, he's in a coma,
He's okay, but it's like cover Girl or like they're
not gonna kill Snake Eyes. But you could kill a
character like Doc. You could kill a character like Roadblock

(51:13):
and shit like that, or Bazooka or Dusty. There are
options to do stuff like that, and when you take.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
You can totally do that. You can also, like, the
word mature should not automatically mean, you know, hyper gratuitous
sex and violence. It can just mean mature as in
thoughtful writing. Yeah, for all ages, and that and that
is what like when it comes to television. That's why

(51:41):
Beast Wars holds up. It holds up because it's it
was a show for children to buy toys first. That's
number one, first in and you know, Hasbro's minds, but
it wasn't first in the writer's mind. They said. They
were like, let's write something we would be interested and
seeing as a duets m and that just so happens

(52:03):
to sell stuff to kids. Yeah, and they didn't have
to swear, they didn't have to have ultra violence. They
had stories that parents could watch with their kids. The
big goal I think with properties that are you know,
should be mature, not necessarily you know, r rated, is
can the parents watch with the kids and not roll
their eyes.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
Like, one property that I think could stand a mature
treatment and it's done so in comic books, but it's
still maintained its broad stream appeal was the Boom Studios
Power Rangers run. It's still fantastic now I prefer the
original run. I haven't gotten too much into the new stuff,
but it's really cool. Which, by the way, sidebar the

(52:47):
Pig Power Rangers coming to my comic book store on Saturday. Okay, Yeah,
Amy Joe Johnson's come in to the town to do
a signing, so I might get her to sign my ID.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
So it's signing for Is it for like just that
stuff or for a book or anything? Because I know, yeah,
it's actually for her book. She wrote director now that
she does most of TV directing.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Yeah, she along with another writer. I can't remember his name.
I don't want to even try to say what it is.
I don't want to fuck it up. But him and
her wrote a book called Power Rangers The Return, and
I think it deals with the aftermath of Tommy's death
in universe. And if I'm recalling it right, I haven't

(53:25):
picked up the book, so I may buy it. But
what I'm going to do is get an autograph. Hopefully
I can make it down on Saturday, because I want
to get my Power Rangers RPG books signed. And my
goal will be whenever I can make it to a convention,
because I'm really going to try to go out next
year to a couple more conventions, and I'm going to
try and get as many Power Rangers cast members to

(53:47):
sign my role playbook. And I was inspired by one
of the guys I work with on Star Trek the RPG,
Michael Dismute. He brings a copy of his Captain's log
to every convention he goes to and he gets star
cast members to sign it. So I'm thinking, well, I
love Power Rangers. I'll get my Star Trek stuff signed eventually.
But Amy's coming literally twenty minutes from my house. I

(54:11):
have to go, So I'm gonna try and do this
on Saturday, one way or another.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
I'm really.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
I know that she like she had done you know,
a bit parts, and she did a couple of movie
stuff in like the late nineties, right, and then she
got cast in Flashpoint that was like four or five
years in Toronto. For anybody that doesn't remember, that's one
of the few cop shows in Canada that got popular
with your grandparents in the States. And it was a
good show though. It was you know, like a special

(54:45):
like sort of Task Force mixed with Swat Team kind
of show.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
And I think she's lived in Canada for like the
last ten years, like permanently, and she does like directing
TV episodes and different things. Yeah, I believe I think
she's Toronto based. She's not one of those people. Yeah,
because like a lot of times when you hear like,
oh an actor moved to Canada, they moved to b C. No,

(55:11):
I think she's one of the few that moved like
east coast the state here because I think she's mentioned
before she's from like the Boston area or something originally.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
M hm.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
So you know, it makes more sense if you if
you're still East coast, you can still at least communicate
and travel quickly to your family. So it makes sense
that she's going to do a book signing run. She'll
do it in the you know, the Ontario area first.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Yeah, like, I'm really excited for this. I'm glad she's
literally coming to my little dirt mall. I mean no
shade at the old Quebec Street mall, but still just
the fact that I could get this signed.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
You say that it's it's a it's a small mall
in the center of downtown that looks nice inside.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
One comic store. Yeah, it's kind of the store.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
It's got the comic store that has like the card
playing area next to it. I think, right, yep, yep.
There is a dollar store that's not really a dollar store.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
It's everything that is gone that is gone.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Now, Oh that is Is that a good thing?

Speaker 3 (56:05):
Because I don't remember it being very It kind of
sucks because we used to buy cheap snacks there before
we go to the Storm Games.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Oh. I was gonna say there is a nice cafe there,
not that co Uh. There's a sock store that sells
just socks.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
Yeah, and there's like a weird mushroom place too. It's
it's really oh and you're in there. Isn't there a
is it a tie place or is it? Yeah, Red Papaya,
which ovid have hosts wrestling events and comedy shows.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
And but attached to the What keeps that mall alive
other than the fact that it's, you know, a small
mall downtown that'll have some stuff in it, like smoke
shops and that is it's attached to the the hockey arena, right.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Yeah, it's attached to the sleem And Center, which is
pretty cool. Like I actually met John Slaman, the owner
of the sleem And Brewing Company, a couple of years
ago when I was working for the Guelf Mercury trib
Really really nice fellow. But yeah, just the fact that
it's happening, that's really cool. I'm really looking forward to
meeting Amy. So I run D and D on Saturday,

(57:09):
but I'm telling them that, yeah, one o'clock I'm leaving.
I'm gonna go hang out with the paining Power Ranger. Goodbye.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Also, the reason that your comic store is pretty awesome
is every other comic store, at least that I know
of in southwestern Ontario is either in an old standalone
building or like ours, are all like in the downtown course,
like carry On is up in Waterloo, but it's like
right on the downtown strip, you know, looking for heroes

(57:39):
here is right downtown, right where it used to be
a good location because it was across from the bus terminal,
but that's been closed for years. So a lot of
them are like that or in strip malls. But your
story is inside a covered mall, so it's always a
good signing place because they can have lines and everything.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
Yeah, it's true, and we've like our store.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
The Dragon has won multiple Iiny Awards, and it's one
of the longest. I think it's one of the longest
running in Canada. It's been over it's been open for
over twenty five years. It's it's a phenomenal place. And
the fact that I get to work there as a
freelance DM it's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Like it's it's one of the longer ones, the two well,
I think the three oldest actually are here. You'd think
they'd be Toronto. But originally the there was the books.
It was it was considered a bookstore. But the comic
book store downtown Kitchener open in the seventies and they

(58:37):
were at one point in the Guinness Book is the
longest running comic book store. And funny fact that you
couldn't get a license like a local one to sell
comic books. You used to have to get like a
license to be downtown and have different businesses. So they
licensed themselves as a used bookstore, kept a single shelf
with used like paperback books. They used them at like

(59:00):
five hundred dollars, so nobody would ever buy them. And
they're like, yeah, that's that's our our used book sections. Well,
if you want to check out the rest of our section,
it's comic books. And it was a whole store. So
how they used to have to get around those things,
you know, forty fifty years ago was interesting. And you're right,
like your store there has been around for quite some time,

(59:20):
at least twenty some maybe thirty years.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
Right, Yeah, Like it's kind of amazing it's been there.
It's pretty much like a pillar of the DWN ten commute. Actually,
as of this recording, they had a really really successful
trick or treat this weekend with the entire community. They've
had pretty substantial signs there in the past. I actually
met Brian Lee O'Malley. I helped fix his glasses. If

(59:44):
you don't know who that is, that's the inventor of
Scott Pilgrim. So that was really fun. He signed a
couple of my Scott Pilgrim art things. I really should
have gotten to sign my Nintendo Switch game, but mine
sealed and I'm not opening it.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
So I thought you were going to say something vulg
please sign my sack please, and then and then and
then when he looks at you, funny, you pull around
your backpack and you're like, oh, he goes, oh napsack.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Surprise, motherfucker, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Surprise vulgarness, reverse vulgar all right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
Our next story again has been reported by multiple outlets.
This one comes Curtis you get the Hollywood reporter, Warner
Brothers Discovery is up for sale after all, as quote Martable,
as multiple parties circle sounds like Warner Brothers Discovery is
for sale after all, amid swirling reports of the bidding
interest by Paramount Global, the WB board of Director says

(01:00:36):
it quote has initiated a review of strategic alternatives to
maximize shareholder value. That's the first acknowledgment of a metaphoric
for sale sign hanging on the iconic WB water tower.
In a press release on Tuesday morning, so last Tuesday,
the Wonder Brothers Discovery Board of Director said it had
it had received quote unsolicited interest from Quote multiple parties,

(01:00:58):
and it's listening each. Options include continuing with the previously
announced split and spin ala NBC Universal and Versant's Quote
transaction and for the entire company, or separate transactions for
its Warner Brothers and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Or Discovery Global businesses.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
There is potential for Quote all for an alternative separate
structure that would enable a merger of Warner Brothers and
spin off Discovery Global to our shareholders, but basically it's
all on the table. We continue to make important strives
to position our business to succeed in today's evolving media
landscape by advancing our strategic initiations, returning our studio to
industry leadership, and scaling HBL MAX globally, said David Zaslau,

(01:01:40):
the president and CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, said in
a statement, quote, we took the bold step of preparing
to separate the company into two distinct leading media companies,
Warner Brothers and Discovery Global, because we could, because we
strongly believed that this was the best pass forward.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
It is no surprise that the significant value of our
portfolios is receiving increased recognition by others in the market.
Zaslof added, after receiving interest from multiple parties, we've initiated
a comprehensive review of strategic alternatives to identify the best
path forward to unlock the full value of our assets.
Earlier in the month, Bloomberg had reported that Paramount owner

(01:02:16):
David Ellison had made a twenty dollars per share bid
for Warner Bros. Discovery, which was dismissed. It's currently unclear
who's making these other unsolicited bids, added David Faber at
CMBC mentioned on air Tuesday that Comcasts and Netflix have
also made inquiries. The Hollywood Reporter has reached out for
comment to both of these companies.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
Our decision to initiate this review underscores the board's commitment
to consider all opportunities to determine the best value for
our shareholders. Samuel A de Piazza, Chair of Warner Brothers
Discoveries Board of Directors, quote, we continued to believe that
our planned separation to create two distinct, leading media companies
will create compelling value. That said, we are we determined

(01:02:59):
taking these access to broaden our scope is the best
interest of our shareholders. There's no deadline for this review.
One of Brothers Discoveries continued to work towards its previously
announced separation, which will keep its studios HBO and HBO
Max in one bucket led by Zaslav fuck Off and Boot,
its basic cable companies, the Turner Channel and Discovery Channel,
and streamer Discovery plus to a new company led by

(01:03:20):
current Warner Brothers Discovery chief financial officer Gunner Widenfels. As
of Tuesday morning, one of those, Discovery announced a price
hikeriach HBO Max streaming service. So there's an extra dollar
per month per subscriber in value for the buyer.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
You know what this is? They were already two separate
companies before. Yeah, you know what. The reality is, nobody
wants Discovery, which they thought everybody did because Discovery had
all the reality TV, They had the thousands and thousands
of hours of cheap programming that they thought people remember

(01:03:57):
when they used to have Discovery Plus as a separate
thing for like three or four bucks.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
M h.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
Here's the real. The reality of the reality stuff is
nobody cares about reality shows once they've aired. Yeah, like,
once they're not new, nobody goes, huh, I want to
watch season five of Toddlers and Tiaras or some bullshit.
They don't care because anything that they want to see

(01:04:23):
that's important or culturally significant or entertaining from a reality
show gets spliced up and thrown up for free on Instagram.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
Like honestly, like, I still subscribe to Discovery Plus and
the only thing my wife and I watch is Naked
and Afraid. I'll watch the the documentaries. Shark Week is
still massively culturally significant, and I don't know if i'd
so much call it profitable, but it's one of those
things you can It's one of those things you could say, yes,

(01:04:55):
we have Shark Week, and it's randomly we're Ghost Adventures,
and so it has to.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Be it has to be live reality shows either have
to be live or current of the week, or they
don't have any significance really at all. And when they
were merging and they bought Warner Brothers and they merge
them into Discovery and all this, all the thought was, well,
we can parley this thousands of hours of programming into

(01:05:22):
subscribers for HBO Max or what they wanted to rebranded
as Max, and look at it'll be so attractive. We'll
have thousands of exclusive hours. Here's your reality check. Nobody
gave a shit about your reality shows. Yeah, and they
like they thought, they thought they would bring in like
it was specifically the women demographic into streaming. They were
they thought they would pull them away from Netflix because

(01:05:43):
in general, if you look at the demos out there
when they do release numbers, because Netflix is private, more
women watch Netflix than any other streaming platform. And it's
just because of the programming. But if you look what
are they watching, usually it is dramas that is geared
towards them, not reality shows, because there's no reason to
go back and watch random seasons of a reality show.

(01:06:04):
So they thought that HBO would be like their prestige
and like HBO and Warner Television in general would be
their prestige stuff, and they would bring in some people. Well,
they lowered the budgets of some of those things, and
a lot of the prestige programming moved to Apple and
Amazon Prime. So they ended up losing some of the

(01:06:24):
people that normally would have wanted to keep their stuff
because they merged them in price hike HBO. And now
what they're realizing is HBO is worth more money. So
what does Aslov want to keep. He wants to keep
HBO and he wants to sell everything else because he
knows that's where the money is gonna be.

Speaker 3 (01:06:40):
Yeah, Like, I don't know what properties they can really leveage.
I mean, yeah, there's a significant portfolio of good ips
in there. I mean it lows me to say this,
but the Harry Potter EEP is still worth a fair chunk.
I mean, you've still got mad Max, You've got the
entire DC thing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
And there's even some people talking.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
There was a statement that came out of James gun
and I think people are reading a little too far
into this, but he was interviewed recently.

Speaker 2 (01:07:08):
And he was talking.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
I can't remember what precisely the quote was, So I'm
going to get some of the details a little wrong.
But the intention of this is he basically says, well,
when I mean if, and he kind of stutters any
backtracks on his words a little bit, and people are wondering,
is their talk of Gun already leaving because they don't
know what's going to happen. Because Man of Tomorrow is
supposed to come out in twenty twenty seven, we do

(01:07:31):
not have a firm date for Peacemaker season three, if
it's even going to happen. The Amanda Waller Show is
still in active development right now, though he did speak
about that recently.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
I think Peacemaker gets upgraded to a movie because they
can schedule around a movie and it's harder for them
to schedule around a show.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
Yeah, which it's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
Like Peacemaker season two was pretty good that I don't
much care for the ending, but I'd liked it overall
as a whole. But I'm excited to see what Gun
can do because I do trust yeah what I've seen
so far, Like I like Superman was an unexpected joy.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
Yeah, piece really good Peacemaker two. All the characters were underutilized.
There was a lot of like why are they filming
to like in the final episode without going to spoilery,
why were there two full musical numbers where nothing was
happening but them just slow motion dancing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Yeah, I mean I get it because it was fun,
but no, it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
Was that was not it. Man this this it screamed
of last minute budget cuts and they had to stretch
it out to make to make it work because of budget,
either in time or in money. But like, it was
a very in co it wasn't as cohesive as season one.
Good performances, some funny moments, but if you ask like people,

(01:08:58):
what really happened is.

Speaker 3 (01:09:01):
It was an emotional It was a story about emotion,
but nothing happened.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
In it was kind of it was very much like
a Marvel show in that it was three episodes of
plot spread over multiple extra episodes.

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
Yeah, like, I will say I liked what I saw,
I really did, But what I would say is them
trying to build up this leads directly into Man of Tomorrow,
and yeah, kind of, I guess. There is a pretty
big cameo in season two which I did not see coming,
but I do think.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Is pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
But they promised the finale it was gonna be this
amazing thing. It wasn't there's some nice emotional payoff. Yeah,
but that's I come for the funny, not this is us.
And that's not to discount what John Cena can accomplish
as an actor, because honestly, he really blew me away
in terms of what he put on screen this season.

(01:09:57):
But it's like, I don't know, and if DC wants
to maintain any momentum, don't fuck it up, like, let
gun cook, let Saffron cook, and get other people involved
before you think about selling shit.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
I'm very afraid they're falling into the Marvel thing now,
which is far too long between seasons, far too long
between seasons that connect to movies. Yeah, like, are we're
talking a movie that hasn't even started shooting this is
the prequel or leading directly into a movie that we
won't see for two to three years.

Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
Yeah, Like suppose I think super I think Man of Tomorrow.
I want to say twenty twenty seven, Supergirl's done, so
we're gonna start to see something.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
No, it's not. The talk was they had to do
reshoots and bring in Superman to that now this past week. Okay,
So that is bringing up concerns as to why if
he had all his scripts and everything written, why is
he having to redo things now?

Speaker 3 (01:11:01):
Well, from what I understand, sometimes you do take in
audience feedback, but you also take in the fact, like
we are more successful than what we are like, and
I think a good example of this is Mortal Kombat.
They looked at that and said, oh, yeah, it's gonna
be successful whatever, But then it fucking blew up and like,
we're not gonna dump us in October. We can use
this to compete against the Mandalorian in uh May, which again,

(01:11:25):
that's gonna really make Warner Brothers look attractive because they've
got a couple of really solid hits ready to go.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Probably was not expecting the loud response to the collection.

Speaker 3 (01:11:39):
Yeah, which I'm hoping the collection sells stupid good because
I want the three D era stuff. But Digital Eclips
has already said, we don't know how we're gonna do
it because it's hard to do well.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
I think it will.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
They would have to be hired because right now they
was contract work. They would have to be hired to
work with nether Realm on making the games work they
would have to do. They would have to not do
an emulator. They would have to do ports proper ports
of those games, so luckily that newer stuff is I believe,
unless they've done something like they were pretty good about

(01:12:15):
having archives of their source code. So this is something
that you know Ed's team would have to look at
because any of the three D stuff was more than
likely designed on computers in mind, it will be a
lot easier to port than some of the esoteric arcade
stuff from the nineties.

Speaker 3 (01:12:35):
Yeah, Like I've heard them talk one of the harder
games they're going to have a hard time porting was
oddly enough, Shaolin Monks on the PS two. Because I've
been following the development for this pretty closely, which again
I'm super excited to see what's going to happen with
with the collections. By the way, full disclosure, we have

(01:12:55):
reached out to Atari, we did not receive our review
code as of this time. I have purchased it on
PlayStation five and Nintendo switched to so I don't have
to review it. I can just play it and have fun.
So really looking forward to that. And I don't know,
And now with this involving nether Realm Studios, there's been

(01:13:18):
talk but are they going to do Injustice three. But
does that work with the current direction of the DCU,
because it's not as dark and depressing as the Snyder
verse was, and Injustice is literally built upon that whole
idea of Graham dark bullshit.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
Could they maybe take a break from just a fighting
game and like it's weird as it sounds, could they
make a like a Peacemaker style game in the style
of mythology subshero.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
Well, there were some ideas people were kind of chucking around.
There was a game that came out years ago and
I can't remember what the subtitle of it was, but
it was a Justice League game for the PSP and
it was like a beat them up and it was
really solid.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
It was fun. Now, if you could do that with
modern characters, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:08):
Because like like if they could make their own Like
was it not marvel Ar Ultimate Alliance?

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
But was it Justice Similar? Yeah? Yes, it was similar
to that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
Actually, uh, Justice League Unlimited or something?

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
Ask No, that was the fighting game on the s nest,
But I know where you're going.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
There was one there was. It was Justice League something
or other. Yeah, How why don't they just make a
cart racer?

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
Yeah, Well, it's not like another realm, doesn't know how
to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
There was Kart Combat, but I was thinking.

Speaker 3 (01:14:39):
But yeah, it's like I want them to do a
good job because rock Steady knows how to pump out
good games, with the exception of Kill the Justice League.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
But whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
For more on that, Go wants the Matt mcmussels episode
on YouTube. It's fantastic. I don't know what I want
out of another realm. I would like another DC fighting property,
but I want a good story mode.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
I want something like.

Speaker 3 (01:15:07):
If you're gonna do the Injustice route, you could reboot
it in a certain way, but get rid of the
Snyder aesthetics. But I want it to work concurrent. It
doesn't have to be Cannon, let's get that straight. I
think you could do something with like maybe other storylines,
Like you could adapt I don't know if you wanted

(01:15:28):
to go that dark route. Yeah, maybe you could adapt
Blackest Night or something. Honestly, I feel like this is
a conversation I should be having JT in the room for.
But I think there's possibilities to do something interesting. I
just I don't want it to be a cash grab.
Take your time, do it right. But if another company
wants to buy up wants to buy up Nether Realm

(01:15:50):
or if they go completely independent.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
I'd be okay with that too.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
I don't want the Mortal Kombat I to just sit
with the company that's not gonna do anything with it.
I know they've already talked about making Mortal Kombat threes
already approved, like they're gonna make another one after Mortal
Kombat two comes out. But we've also heard this before
with Mortal Kombat Devastation in the nineties.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
So we'll see.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
From what I hear that the test screenings went pretty well,
there's some things that are going to have to go
back and reshoot.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
That is the.

Speaker 3 (01:16:24):
Nature of movie making. It just that's just how it is.
So I don't know, I'm cautiously optimistic. I just don't
know what company I want to buy.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
Warner Brothers Discovery, if you yeah, sticking with another Realm.
We know that, Like you know, before Warner bought all
the old Midway assets except for I believe it was
the Cruise and games were bought by the Roth Like
when they made the split, the guy that ran Roth
Rills now got the rights to all that. So like

(01:16:55):
the racing division was saved, but like I'm thinking of,
like how great would it be. I'm sure I'm thinking
of other titles that they had made that might be
like out of nowhere, because back in the day, Midway
also used to publish like atari games, but like stuff
that they made themselves in house that what like with
their own engine that wasn't that wasn't Mortal Kombat. What

(01:17:21):
if they're like going to announce their next game and
it shows and it's all this blood stuff, You're like,
oh my god, it's gonna be another Mortal Combat and
it zooms out that it's Bio Freaks two.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
Oh God Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Because that that was a game they made with their
engine in house and it's not owned by anybody else
and they would still own it. That or War Gods, Dude.
I think those are the two games that they made
that were completely their own that aren't owned by like
any other company anymore, that was from that same engine.

(01:17:52):
And I think, Oh, and and Ready to Rumble Boxing
that was theirs too.

Speaker 3 (01:17:59):
Oh, that was a fun one that I kind of
wouldn't mind seeing like a port throw up on like
downloadable services or I don't know, maybe limited rend games
could pick it up or something.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
So that stuff, But like, but how great would it
be if they're like they're like, you know, nether reelm
was back, you know, with their next great fighter something.
You know, we know the fans have been climbing for
for a long time. War Gods too, And you're like
what and they seem about it because wasn't War Gods
the game that they ended up basing uh the reboot
episode on when they get stuck in the games.

Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
Yeah, there was something weirdly, yeah, I know, vaguely what
you're like talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
Yeah, like it was, it was they made fun of
moral combat in it, and like he had where Enzo
was like dressed like Scorpion and they all look like
different characters. But I believe that like the Satan character
that he's fighting is modeled after one of the characters.
And War Gods of all things so badly and I
looked up. I was like, oh, they also did Mace
the Dark Age and Dark Rift, but like that was

(01:18:55):
those apparently were Atari games that they just published, but no,
they they own War Gods and they own Bio Freaks,
two games that were like synonymous with N sixty four
fighting games. So maybe that's like I mean, porting them
would be funny, but how how great would that be
if if they trolled everybody, they're like, oh, next Mortal
comm it's gonna be so bloody, zoom out, and it's

(01:19:17):
just and you just hear like deep voice war gods,
You're like, you collectively hear everybody under the age of
thirty five, go what you know?

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
Well?

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
And that was that Well.

Speaker 3 (01:19:26):
That kind of makes me think, though, because of all
this that's happening, and we'll probably get some decent we'll
get some sales numbers by the time the Game Awards
happened in December. I don't expect we'll see any kind
of an announcement because it'll be way too soon. But
if the Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection sells like it should,

(01:19:48):
and I think it'll sell more than what people expect,
I would be curious to know what the Digital Eclipsed
team's gonna do next.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
And this won't be a situation like with uh there,
with the Atari one that they did where they just
release DLC packs, where it's like, here's an expansion with
the whole new story stuff for this publisher that worked
with the target. It won't be that they would do
a full separate game because they would want to get
full retail for any other Well.

Speaker 3 (01:20:18):
Yeah, because like there is a couple of people online
that I think, I can't remember the channel, but I
know there's like testumite dot com. There's a YouTuber and
they go by the aliases Ketchup and Mustard, which references
Sector and Cyrax, and they were like, well, could they
make a whole new game that's just all the three
D and era stuff? And I'm wondering I would be

(01:20:41):
very curious to know what that would look like, because
you then run into rights issues when it comes to
the DLC characters, most notably Krados. You run into that
problem with the PlayStation version and Freddy Krueger, Jason the
alien leather Face. If you start pouring the later stuff
from Mortal Kombat nine forward, I.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
Think they would have to do an addition where they
stripped them out, and either you'd have to pay for
them separately or even then, I don't see that. I
think it's easier to license the console game characters than
it is to try to license those horror game like
I have a feeling that you wouldn't get those at all.

(01:21:24):
You'd have a special edition that doesn't have them.

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
In it, Yeah, which would really suck, because like it's
really weird. I fell down the Mortal Kombat meta rabbit
hole and I didn't mean to. I fell asleep with
my YouTube auto playing on, and I was listening to
all the Mortal Kombat meta tears for like separate characters
and just realizing how high up certain characters are. I'm thinking, Wow,

(01:21:49):
if you don't have Alien and Mortal Kombat ten, you're
gonna piss off so many people. But then again, it's
not like he's essential to the storyline. We all want
our kuwand cheese, our shinos are you know, Takeata's whatever
you want. The main Mortal Kombat here guest characters are cool,
but they're not necessary. The only one who even made

(01:22:11):
a remote bit of sense, and I say this with
a huge grain of salt. You could basically drop a
mountain on might be Credos. Right beyond that leather Face
doesn't exactly make a whole lot of fucking sense.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
I keep saying it, let's do war Gods too, and
then Credos is in it? Have have you know, have
I think to be like war Gods too? And then
it's like with special guest character Credos, people lose their
goddamn minds.

Speaker 3 (01:22:36):
It would be pretty funny just to see I have
killed greater gods than you and fucking the war God asole.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
Who else I was gonna say, I think he's dead.
Otherwise they get the guy from Hercules, the legendary journeys
that played the War God in that show up, a
bunch of you get like, just get like every you know,
war god from every nineties pop culture thing you can
think of and have them show up. It would be
pretty wild. So actually, actually fuck that. Just give us

(01:23:07):
Mortal Kombat. And when you think it's gonna have Ash,
you hear like Bruce Campbell's voice, you're like, that's awesome,
and it's but it's not Ash. It's a Toolicus.

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
No, I was gonna say, it's fucking Briscoe County Junior.
For fuck Chris fun.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
He goes hey, buddy, and he turned out it's brisco
County and you're like, ah, scratch that, and that it
was it zooms out that has them fight, and it's
it's it's the King of Thieves from from Hercules. It's
every character. No, let's just make a Bruce Campbell fighting
game where it's every one of his characters.

Speaker 3 (01:23:39):
The final boss is just it's it's it's like a
real fun andro Shrum star Fux and it's his fucking
chin you have to fight, but.

Speaker 1 (01:23:46):
It's it's just every character in the fighting game is
just a different Bruce Campbell character.

Speaker 3 (01:23:53):
You know what, I imagine someone in Moogen has probably
done this by.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
Now board that that or what's that? The uh Beats
of Rage where it's all it's the engine that makes
your own Streets of Rage games.

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):
Oh god, yeah, like or Brawlhalla or some shit like that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
Yeah, you can do some shit.

Speaker 3 (01:24:14):
So that So that's gonna be our news for this week.
We're gonna take yet another break here on this week
in geek dot Net.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
And this is gonna be yet.

Speaker 3 (01:24:23):
Another review from Alex from our review wheel of Mystery.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
What it is, I don't know, but you're gonna hear
it right now.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
Our friends at Nintendo Canada sent review copies of Super
Mario Galaxy one and two for us to check out
here on the programming. It's the latest re release remaster
port sort of a remake, not really remake, it's it's
a definitely enhanced over the previous version of Galaxy that

(01:24:52):
have come out on the Nada Switch. But this is
Nintendo Switch one. Software does play on on Nintendo Switch to,
which is what I was playing on. They sent over
review copies now digitally when you receive it, they come
as two separate games. So if you get the physical addition,
you know you're getting a game card that has both
games on it. If you're getting it digitally, like I did,

(01:25:13):
you end up activating it and it has two separate
downloads to get. They're not overly large. You know, it's
not gonna you're not gonna have to worry especially on
like a Switch one or Switch to unless you have
like a really big memory card or something. You don't
have to worry about that. The games are, you know,
somewhere around between three and six gigs to download, depending
on how much it expands onto the storage as you're

(01:25:35):
working with it. They're definitely enhanced from what I remember.
I actually never played the original game on we For
the Galaxy two, I played a bit of Galaxy one.
Initially my brother owned it. I owned the Wii, but
very quickly it became my brother's system because I was

(01:25:56):
focusing more on PC and PS three At the time.
He was a younger person than me, so he was
very into it. So he played a crap ton of
Galaxy One when it first came out. I had only
ever beaten like the first Galaxy Area and maybe a
little bit longer than that. So this is the first
time for me for playing both games, and I can

(01:26:17):
say I have it a great time. I am right
now as of this recording, about fifty percent done the
second game. The first game I've completed. I haven't done
like one hundred percent playthrough. That's going to be something
I probably focus on during the I guess break in
the holidays for us, But I'm having a ball. I'm
a big proponent of platforming games. It took a little

(01:26:38):
bit of getting used to for anybody that's new to
this or new to how they sometimes port we titles
over to Switch. It is motion control focused. I can
say this. I had a harder time playing it than
I was expecting initially using the Switch to pro controller
because you have to use the motion controls to aim

(01:26:59):
the what would be the pointer, and you can still
jump around and do stuff with buttons. But it's kind
of weird that you have to use the motion controls there,
because it's how it's built in the game is much
more designed obviously to use the Wii mote and nunchuck initially,
so I found it it was better to play with
the split controls of having the right and left joy

(01:27:22):
cons In doing that, it was overall better, which meant
that it was harder to play the game like laying
in bed at night, because it's just it doesn't always
orient itself in the right way. I found myself having
to reset the pointer a whole lot of times. Eventually
I got used to it and it was fine. I
did encounter one bug, and that was sometimes when you're

(01:27:43):
reorienting yourself around the gravity in the game, when the
camera changes angle, you'll get if you're moving already in
a direction, your character gets stuck and Mario We'll be
running in circles until you completely let go with a controller,
let them come to a stop, and then you can
continue moving. This is something I've seen happen with Wei
games that get poured it to switch and something about

(01:28:04):
how the design was done with it. It's not something
that ever happens with first party or even third party
titles that are switch or switch to design and on purpose.
I think it has to do with just the way
the game engines were different on the Wei versus the
more modern consoles. So that's a little hiccup here and
there that I don't think can be fixed. And it's

(01:28:24):
not really like it's a bug bug. It's more of
a of a issue with the port, and I don't
know how that can be fixed. Just if you find
yourself running in circles, just basically stop using the controller
for a second then move on. It is a visual feast.
It's much better looking than the originally that I ended
up contacting family. I hooked up my Wi you and

(01:28:49):
then popped in Maria Galaxy one original version and just
to see for a comparison how that looks, you know,
playing it, because it's still HDMI out and it is
night and day. The new version is way better resolution,
there's better textures a whole. It's so much clearer, the
audio is cleaner sounding, everything seems to work. Just pretty fantastic.

(01:29:14):
They've added more stuff, as you've probably heard from a
bunch of other outlets, they added more stuff to the
storybook and Rosalina Storybook there's just they've added the what
is it the assist mode to give you a more
extra extra hits before you die, as well as a
cyst where you if you get knocked off of a planet,

(01:29:36):
it'll drop you back where you need to drop, unless
there's like you know, a fail state scenario for certain missions.
But it's overall just a very delightful game to play.
Loading times are fast because it's obviously loading from a
much faster drive. Even if you're playing it on Switch one,
it'll load faster than what you had originally from a
disc back in the day. So it's just a solid,

(01:29:57):
solid game. The same with the second one, and the
the controls are a little more concise it Again, you
still feel that you really should be using the split controls.
If you find yourself as somebody who like me, who
usually plays games with pro controllers, I've got big man hands,
I end up finding that using the joy cons themselves

(01:30:20):
separately was a much better control scheme for it. So
if you're struggling, that's the way to go. But if
you can get around and you're sitting in a good
proper posture position upright, you can have the motion controls
enabled on the pro controller. You'll be perfectly fine playing
it that way. Outside of that, it's a small little
quibble that I have. It's a fantastic series. The only

(01:30:44):
concern you might see people talking about is the price point.
Is it too pricey at the pressure. Honestly, with the
way the games have gone now, I don't see it
being too pricey. You do get a pretty good deal
if you buy them together, especially if you get it physically.
It's a little bit cheaper than buying him individually, So
you know, take that as you will. But again, if

(01:31:06):
you're looking to be a little more budget conscious and
you're maybe concerned, you can just buy the first game
and then see how you like it, and then if
you want it, you get the second game. This isn't
a limited time thing like last time when they did
the three D All Stars collection, where it was you know,
buy it before it's gone. So this is a full
physical retail release as well as digital, so you can
pick it up if you're looking to celebrate Mario's anniversary.

(01:31:27):
It's a great bundle to pick up. I do think
it's going to be a pretty sweet hot ticket item
for the holiday season, so I check it out it's
not too difficult for anybody to get into it. I
end up having my father get into it, and he's,
you know, in his late sixties and he's been playing
it for him. But he has had a good time
with the two. He was laughing trying to figure out

(01:31:48):
the physics of how things are jumping around because he's
used to like Mario on the Nintendo and Super Nintendo.
But he had a good time. So I think it's
fun for all ages. Kids are going to love it.
You'll love it if you're you know, one of us,
So check it out. It'll be on our holiday gift
guide if you don't check it out now, so keep
an eye out for it. Maybe there'll be a sale
on it. If not, it's still a good good deal
at the full price.

Speaker 3 (01:32:10):
Oh crazy, don't mind it by do human Sacrifice, Dogs
and cats living together, Massistaria. Welcome back to this we
can geek dot Net. I'm like the Birdman, he's out
of producer. Tend you weird, but not that weird.

Speaker 2 (01:32:24):
But maybe it is anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:32:25):
This is the weird news only on this we can
geek dot net and our first story comes COURTESYFCNN dot
com student handcuffed after Dorito's bag mistaken for a gun by.

Speaker 2 (01:32:36):
School's AI security system.

Speaker 3 (01:32:39):
Aren't police handcuffed and starts a student at a high
school in Baltimore County, Maryland this week after an AI driven.

Speaker 2 (01:32:45):
Security system flag the teen's empty bag of chips as
a possible firearm.

Speaker 3 (01:32:49):
Baltimore County officials are now calling for a review of
how Kenwood High Schools uses an AI gun detection system
and why the team ended up in handcuffs despite school
safety officials quickly determining there.

Speaker 2 (01:33:01):
Was no weapon.

Speaker 1 (01:33:02):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (01:33:03):
They made me get on my knees, put my hands
behind my back, and cuffed me. Kenwitz student Tacky Alan
told excuse Me CNN affiliate w ABL describing what happened
on Monday when police arrived to the school while he
was waiting for his friends for a ride home after
football practice.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
Quote. They searched me and they figured out I had nothing.

Speaker 3 (01:33:23):
Then they went over to where I was standing and
found a bag of chips on the floor, Allan said.
He described a distressing scene with a heavy police response.
The first thing I was wondering was was I about
to die? Because they had a gun pointed at me,
Alan told WBAL, saying about quote, eight cop cars pulled
up to the school. I was just holding a Dorito's bag.

(01:33:44):
It was two hands and one finger out, and they
said it looked like a gun.

Speaker 2 (01:33:48):
He told WABL.

Speaker 3 (01:33:50):
The AI Powate security system at the school is just
one example of how schools are approaching safety in the
age of mass gun violence. AI tools have exploded in
popularity in recent years, including tools to help monitors surveillance footage.
CNN reached out to the Baltimore County Police Department for comment.
The department told WABL officers responded to a quote report
of a suspicious person with a weapon, but determined the

(01:34:12):
person was unarmed after a search. Kenwood Principal Kate Smith
said the school's district security department reviewed and canceled the
gun detection alert after confirming there was no weapon. According
to a statement sent to the parents that was shared
with CNN, Smith said she reported the matter to Kenwood's
school resource officer, who called local police for support. The
principal didn't immediately realize the alert had been canceled. A

(01:34:33):
spokesperson for the Baltimore County Baltimore County Public Schools told
WABL quote we understood how upsetting this was for the
individual that was served, as well as other students who
witnessed the incident. Smith said in a statement, Please know
that ensuring the safety of our students in school community
is one of our highest priorities. On the alert, the
company that operates the AI gun Detection system expressed regret

(01:34:56):
over the incident and mpsize that its system is designed
to identify a possible threat and elevate it to human review.

Speaker 2 (01:35:02):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (01:35:03):
We regret that this incident occurred and wish to convey
our concern as the student in the water community affected
by the events that followed, the company told CNN. While
the object was later determined not to be a firearm,
the process functioned as intended to prioritize safety and awareness
through rapid human verification, the company added.

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):
The AI gun.

Speaker 3 (01:35:21):
Detection system has been used in Baltimore County Public schools
since twenty twenty three, analyzing video from the schools existing
security cameras, Superintendent Miriam Rogers said during a news conference
on Wednesday. Rogers called Monday's incident quote truly unfortunate, as
the district never wants to put any of its students
in such a frightening situation. The heavy handed response to

(01:35:42):
the false alarm has sparked outrage in the community, with
Allan's grandfather, Lamont Davis, demanding accountability. Something has got to
get done, he told WABL. Changes have got to be
made and people have to be held to held accountable.
Baltimore County officials said they want to review of the
process that led to Monday's police response. No child in
our school system should be a costed by a police

(01:36:02):
We're eating a bag of dorito's, Baltimore County councilman said
is He Patoka said in a statement on social media,
calling on the school district to quote review procedures around
its AI powered weapon detection system. Baltimore County Councilman Julian
Jones called her review of the use of the AI
system to make sure there are safeguards in place so
this type of air does not happen again. According to WABL,

(01:36:24):
Superintendent Rogers said, reviewing the system and security practices in
Baltimore County system is part of our regular practice. That's
this could have gone catastrophically wrong. Like I'm not saying
police are trigger happy, but I gestured everything that's happened.

Speaker 2 (01:36:45):
This could have went really bad.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
It starts to bring into question things like you know,
we don't know what the person looked like, we're just
reading it, but here's a question. Is this also triggering
things like if it is it a white kid with
a bag of chips, it's going to get detected in
the same way profile. That's what That's what I'm trying

(01:37:09):
to get it, Like we don't know what the race
of the kid is, but like it's gonna raise questions
to be like why would it assume that a bag
of chips with figures and is a gun or like
reaching for a gun? Well, I, as a parent, regardless
of my kid's ethnicity, would would start to question like
how did it come to this conclusion?

Speaker 3 (01:37:28):
Because think about how closely it would have to watch
you and all that surveillance footage like that, Like you
and I both have security cameras and we know they're
placed at such a distance, So how close would this
camera have had to be to see this hand gesture?
Like that's a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:37:50):
We have, Like you have a slightly better one than
I have. I have just you know, a regular doorbell camera.
Because of my the way my apartment building is I
don't need a fancy one h to be aimed directly
in front of my door. But I have thought about,
you know, getting different systems and put in and you're
you'd have to have like a several hundred thousand dollars

(01:38:11):
system to have something that is clear enough to make
a distinction from at a certain distance away. So if
they don't have a system that advanced, like their software
may be very advanced, but if their cameras aren't up
to snuff, you're gonna have issues like this. And and
you know, I'm hoping that it's an issue of it

(01:38:32):
was too blurry for it to figure out, and it's
a system that they can fix by having a better camera.
I'm hoping it's not a system where it's like this
person is of this color or this this shape or size,
and the AI goes well in our system. We believe
more people of this particular you know, demographic are more

(01:38:53):
likely to have weapons. So we'll just assume, yeah, that
it's this. You know, we don't know like if it's
unless it's an open system that explains its algorithm.

Speaker 3 (01:39:03):
Yeah, what data has been fed into this to train
its AI model? Right, Like there was something I saw
the other day, and again do not know how true
this is, but they were saying certain ethnic colors of
skin don't respond well to facial recognition technology. And I

(01:39:26):
know one of the big jokes is if you want
to go through airport security, where jugglo makeup because it
confuses the camera.

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
It's been frequently reported and it's by many outlets that
facial recognition software does not work on people of Southeast
Asian descent.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
Yeah, for whatever reason, from.

Speaker 1 (01:39:45):
Southeast Asian as well as East Asian. Like specifically, they
said that Han Chinese, which okay, car honking.

Speaker 2 (01:39:56):
Outside like crazy, Yep, that was fun.

Speaker 1 (01:40:01):
The Han Chinese, which is, you know, the predominant demographic
in like mainland China, it has a hard time with
their faces. And it's like it shouldn't because I can
look at two people from from China and be like,
you look different. But the way that I guess the
apps have been trained and the AI is trained to
like do facial differences. For whatever reason, it's almost always

(01:40:23):
been trained on white Caucasians European is how it has.
Maybe it's just like it sees that as the most
easily diverse people to check out. But like we've seen
it before where people of African American descent have it
has a hard time, you know, checking them out. Think
about this when we were in school, even before the
days of pure digital. Do you remember, I don't know

(01:40:45):
how many people you had in your school that were
African descent. If during during picture days, they used to
have to change the backgrounds that they would be interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):
I've never heard that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
It was a contrast thing. Sometimes I would talk to
my black friends so like, yeah, they have to change
the backgrounds every time we take a picture because otherwise
the cameras will have a hard time focusing.

Speaker 2 (01:41:08):
On them interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:41:10):
And I was like, really, but you you going to
school for production, you'll probably know this. There's a different
style of makeup you have to use for different.

Speaker 3 (01:41:18):
Different I actually used to get different makeup because I
used to be in front.

Speaker 2 (01:41:23):
Of the camera.

Speaker 3 (01:41:23):
As much as I hated that, but yeah, I used
to have different type of makeup put on me.

Speaker 2 (01:41:28):
And it was just it was a lighting issue. And
that's you know, I didn't take it as anything, but
it's a.

Speaker 1 (01:41:33):
Camera lighting issue. So that's what I question here too,
is these are things that people have had to tackle
issues wise, black and white photography has actually been fine.
There's lighting people of all color types. It's fine black
one for whatever reason. When you enter, you know, color
into cameras, there's always been a thing where there's a
lot of ai work that has to be done in

(01:41:53):
modern digital cameras to properly get the details of people
that aren't quote unquote white white dudes. So I'm wondering,
you know, you can have the sophisticated system, but if
it's gonna start I'm not saying it's it's it's a
profiling system, but questions will be raised. This is a
school where kids are eating all the fucking time. When

(01:42:14):
you're a teenager, you eat all the goddamn time, and
you eat junk food a lot when you're a teenager. Right,
so this will not be the only time that a
kid gets the cops called on him for eating doritos.

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
Yeah, like this is this isn't great.

Speaker 1 (01:42:28):
I mean, like I'm thinking, like, was it worth having
the cops come up? What did this cost? Several thousand
dollars to deploy the cops at minimums? At minimum so
I think it's gonna become costly enough to the school

(01:42:49):
board that they're like, wait a minute, we have to
do something different with this. Uh. Beyond that, I put
it as a weird story because I thought it was hilarious.
Do you know how many times I was eating doritos
at the school actually back in the day, do you
know how many times we would you know, do finger
guns at each other in the hallway, Hey, how's it going?
And just this one like true like shooter because like
remember like happy Gilmour and stuff was still new when

(01:43:11):
we were in school, right, so people were doing, like,
you know, making jokes like that. I'm thinking, can you
imagine if if you made finger guns at somebody now
and they just call the cops on you because the
thing thought you were having gun in your hand but
you were wearing gloves or something.

Speaker 2 (01:43:24):
Yeah, I mean I wear gloves all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:43:27):
Something like if you're like, if it can think of
a two a finger and a thumb going into a
bag of potato chips is a gun? What happens when
you're wearing black winter gloves you and you do like
a finger point at somebody?

Speaker 3 (01:43:39):
Yeah, Like it's just it's it's infuriating that this is
where we are now, and it's just like.

Speaker 1 (01:43:49):
Noll, the hardest question hasn't been asked yet. What flavor.

Speaker 2 (01:43:57):
I'm gonna say, cool ranch.

Speaker 1 (01:43:59):
Honestly, I'm gonna I don't know. I think it would
have to be something spicy. I don't cool ranch is
a pretty universal flavor.

Speaker 3 (01:44:06):
Those bold barbecue because it's because they're that gray bag.

Speaker 2 (01:44:10):
I could see that happen.

Speaker 1 (01:44:12):
Either the gray bag or I don't know if they
have it in the States, but sweet chili heat, yeah,
black leg at the black bag and with a black
bag with a chip bonnet that has smoke coming off
the top of the chip.

Speaker 2 (01:44:23):
Yeah, I mean it might just be dumb enough to
fucking trigger it. I mean that's Please.

Speaker 1 (01:44:27):
Don't be something lame. Please, please don't be like you
had the cops call down in you because you had
like actually do they even have I guess Natcho is
a standard flavor down there, but like, yeah, in the
States they have like Dorito's is like a regular flavor,
Like there's a we don't even have like the original
like you know, taco flavor whatever, that's not a flavor here.
Did you know they don't they don't have the zesty

(01:44:47):
in the States.

Speaker 3 (01:44:49):
Yeah, I think I I think I might have seen
it rarely, like extremely rarely, so.

Speaker 1 (01:44:55):
Like you know, inquiring minds need to know what flavor
of chips was it?

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
Yeah, what happened?

Speaker 1 (01:45:01):
I had questions because joking aside, I wonder if the
packaging had something to do with it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:06):
Well, yeah, because that like that's not unreasonable.

Speaker 3 (01:45:09):
Also, and again this is definitely getting inside baseball. But
what was the size of the bag. Was it the
tiny halloween type bag? I doubt it was it the
dollar fifty bag, which is actually I've got a bag
of chips on my desk right now.

Speaker 2 (01:45:23):
I know he's fat.

Speaker 1 (01:45:24):
I'll bet you. I will bet you it's what they're
probably still a buck in the States, the ones that
you get at the corner store that are like sixty
or eighty grams.

Speaker 3 (01:45:31):
I don't know how an That's what I was just
about to say. If it's the sixty gram bag, I
could see that triggering it. If it's the bag that's
the bigger version, you know, maybe not so much.

Speaker 1 (01:45:41):
I think not the ones from like the dollar store,
the ones that are like a little thicker. I think
it's the corner store, because if it's at a school,
talk shop or whatever, it would be. Do you remember
those Dorito's bags, They're thinner and taller, So maybe I
thought it was a barrel.

Speaker 2 (01:45:56):
Yeah, I mean it's it's possible, or or.

Speaker 1 (01:45:59):
If it was a black bag, if it might have
thought it was you were pulling it out out of
a holster or something.

Speaker 3 (01:46:04):
Yeah, Like, there's so many things like I've got serious questions,
and I hope this wasn't a case of racial profiling
me too. I hope, I really hope this was.

Speaker 2 (01:46:15):
Just a AI doing AI shit.

Speaker 3 (01:46:19):
But this could have ended with somebody being over zealous,
the machine creating a false flag, and if someone the.

Speaker 1 (01:46:30):
Kid's gonna be terrified, his friends are going to be terrified. Now,
if you want to turn this into a win, I
don't know what the school can do, but I can
tell you what Freedom Lay can do. Freedom Lake can
can you know, send this kid a big care package
saying you know, we don't and you know they could
turn into a positive not making a joke out of them,
but saying something like you know, we you know, nobody
should ever you know, have the cops calling them because

(01:46:51):
you're enjoying you know, you know, our tasty treat or something.
Here here, kid, hope you enjoy blah blah blah. You
could turn some good pr into this.

Speaker 3 (01:46:59):
I would be very careful about doing that because of
the optics with it. However, though, I might reach out,
as freed O lay and say, hey, are you okay, like.

Speaker 1 (01:47:10):
That's what I'm saying, reach out ask if he's okay,
you know, and then be like, you know, this is
this is bad. Here, here's some you know, here's a
care package from us because we feel bad that this
happened to you. You know, we don't want no. And
again they say something like nobody should have you know,
any nobody should have their day ruined like that because
you were enjoying one of our snacks.

Speaker 2 (01:47:29):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:47:30):
So that is more continued AI, which it's funny. I mean,
I'll admit I've been using AI over the last couple
of weeks just to do stupid, silly things like who
would win in a fight between these two people?

Speaker 2 (01:47:43):
Or generate me something stupid.

Speaker 1 (01:47:46):
I don't do dick all with that. I am not
touching any anything.

Speaker 2 (01:47:49):
Yeah, like I'll like, I just do it for silly stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:47:52):
I mean, it's nothing I would ever use to like, say,
here's podcast research or something.

Speaker 1 (01:47:56):
But I'm actually it's weird. I'm kind of doing not
even so much as that because I don't want the proliferation.
I don't want it to fill my fiend with stuff. Yeah,
it's the energy cost you asking a question. I could
use less energy by searching for it myself. Yeah, that
having AI answer it for me.

Speaker 3 (01:48:15):
One of the things I do find it useful for
is when I'm trying to generate a name for something.
I'm like, I need to know what sounds like from
this region, and blah blah blah blah blah, because I
don't have time to dig through thirty books. And I've
done it that way. But still I know what those
models are trained on. Again, I probably shouldn't be doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:32):
But and I say, actually, I do use I don't
use AI. I've used large language or large models. We
use local large models for some of our audio editing,
but that is not creative thing. It's for things like
noise cancelation and isolation and YadA YadA. So I can't
say I don't use the technology at all. I don't
use any of it online.

Speaker 3 (01:48:52):
Yeah, like it's and there was something where actually there's
a fairly there's a good person that I that I
use to work with.

Speaker 2 (01:49:00):
His name is Nash.

Speaker 3 (01:49:01):
He does Radio Dead Air and he posted a few
weeks ago how there's an AI setting in Windows eleven
that is turned on by default. You can turn it
off in your settings, and.

Speaker 2 (01:49:11):
You should do that, folks. Long story short, but this
next story caught me by surprise. Now it's funny. I
was in the middle of posting this when you beat
me to it. So this one comes courtesy.

Speaker 1 (01:49:24):
Sometimes this happens.

Speaker 2 (01:49:25):
Yeah, sometimes great minds do think alike.

Speaker 3 (01:49:28):
So this story comes courtesy of Ours Technica dot com,
but has been reported by multiple outlets and is in
a medical journal right now. So, but breathing may soon
be a real medical treatment. Last year, a group of
researchers won the two thousand and twenty four Big Nobel
Prize in Physiology for discovering that many mammals are capable
of breathing through their anus. But as with many Big

(01:49:51):
Nobel awards, there is a serious side to something seemingly silly.
The same group had conducted a new study on the
feasibility of adapting this method to treat people with blocked
airw clog loans, with promising results that bring rectal oxygen
delivery one step closer to medical reality. As previously reporter,
this is perhaps one of the most unusual research developments

(01:50:11):
to come out of the COVID nineteen pandemic and it's
associated shortage of ventilators and artificial lungs to assist patients
breathing and prevent respiratory failure, The Cincinnati Children's Hospital medical
research team took their inspiration from the humble loach, a
freshwater bottom joying fish found throughout Eurasia.

Speaker 2 (01:50:30):
And northern Africa.

Speaker 3 (01:50:31):
The loachs, along with cqcumbers employees, intestinal breathing i e.
Through the anus rather than its gills to survive under
hyper hypoxic conditions thanks to having tons of capillary vessels
in its intestine. The technical term is internal ventilation via
anus or EVA. With such a novel breathing method work

(01:50:54):
in mammals, the team thought it might be possible and
undertook experiments with mice and micro pigs to test that
high aphesis. They drew upon earlier research by Leland Clark,
also of Cincinnati Children's Hospital, who invented a.

Speaker 2 (01:51:08):
I'm trying to pronounce this what I'm trying to think it's.

Speaker 3 (01:51:10):
Basically a fluorocarbon liquid called oxocite as a possible form
of artificial blood. Oddly enough, this was a plot point
and I think the movie The Abyss. That vision never materialized,
although it did provide a handy plot point for the Wow.
Although it did provide a handy plot point for the
nineteen eighty nine film The Abyss, which also which a
rat is able to quote breathe in a similar liquid

(01:51:33):
and oxacite was the idea for the group's twenty twenty
one Nobel winning efforts. The experiments involved intraanally administering oxygen
as a gas or liquid oxgen perforated fluorocobbon in to
the unfortunate rodents and poor scenes. Yes they yes, they
gave the animals enemas. Then they induced respiratory failure and
evaluated the effectiveness of the intra anal treatment. The result

(01:51:56):
both treatments were pretty darn effective at starving off respiratory
failure with no major complications.

Speaker 2 (01:52:02):
So far, so good.

Speaker 3 (01:52:03):
The next logical step is to determine if EVA could
work in human patients too. The patients with severe respiratory
failure often need medical ventilation to survive, but these therapies
could cause further along injury, the authors wrote in their
latest paper, EVA could quote give the lungs a chance
to rest and heal. The team were recruited twenty seven
healthy adult men in Japan. Each of them received a

(01:52:23):
dose of the non oxygenated fluorocillin via the ans. They
were asked to retain the liquid for a full hour.
As a dose, it slowly increased from twenty five to
fifteen hundred mili liters.

Speaker 2 (01:52:35):
Twenty of the men successfully completed the experiment.

Speaker 3 (01:52:38):
Apart from some mild abdominal bloating and discomfort, which provided
to be doses dependent and resolved with no need for
medical attention, they experienced no adverse effects.

Speaker 2 (01:52:49):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (01:52:49):
This is the first human data and the results are
limited solely to demonstrating the safety of the procedure, not
its effecting, the said author Pekahore Takabe of Cincinnati's Children
Hospital in the US, University of Osaka in Japan. Now
that we have established tolerance, the next step will be
to invide how I affected the processes for delivering oxygen
via the bloodstream.

Speaker 2 (01:53:09):
This is actually kind of cool, and it's weird.

Speaker 3 (01:53:12):
I kind of seen something like this before, not in
the ABYSS, but I remember watching Neon Genesis Evangelian that
they flood. The entry plug was something called LCL liquid,
which allows you to breathe through this liquid because it
oxygenates your blood directly. This is interesting because I know

(01:53:35):
obviously during COVID there were shortages of ventilators, and if
you're ever put on a ventilator, it is not a
fun experience at all and can really hurt you. So
if you're willing to take this enema, this is a
really fascinating way. Obviously it's not going to be widely
deployed or whatever, but this is a really good option

(01:53:59):
for people.

Speaker 2 (01:53:59):
I think think this is wonderful research. I really do.
Unusual for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:54:04):
I mean I read it and all I kept thinking
was blow it out your ass.

Speaker 3 (01:54:09):
Well, it's it's weird because like you think about like
how often people are in respiratory distress and like like
are there lungs tore up?

Speaker 2 (01:54:17):
Can they breathe? Is there a hole in your neck
or something?

Speaker 1 (01:54:20):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:54:20):
What do you do?

Speaker 1 (01:54:21):
I mean, I mean, it's a thing. I get it.
I understand the research behind it because it technically, you know, yes,
things hit the inside and blah blah blah blah. But
you know, you could draw a line through the twisty
turns through your whole body and go from the mouth
all the way to the butt. You know what I mean.

(01:54:41):
You could do that right, you go through the whole
GI track. So I get it at some point. It's
a roundabout way to do it, but it is an
access point mm hm.

Speaker 3 (01:54:52):
And just the idea that you can oxygenate the blood
directly because your lungs, yes, like they trans her oxygen
into a deliverable system to be used by your circulatory system,
and you know and all that science. But the important
thing is you need oxygen in your blood to carry
out certain necessary biological functions. So by having this as

(01:55:15):
an alternative delivery method, this could save a lot of lives. Now,
having people trained to do this, that's gonna take some time.
I don't see this becoming medically viable for quite some time.
But if the theory and groundwork is laid, I think
this could be really really important. And again, you're not
gonna hear, oh, someone shoved a hose up my ass

(01:55:35):
and I lived. No, it's gonna be them doing something
to make sure that you're intestines because they have all
those extra capillary vessels and stuff that can absorb that
oxygen right away. And who's to say where this development
could lead next? Again, Like I'm very interested whenever we
talk about medical stories on the show. I'm always tremendously

(01:55:59):
interesting because one of my pet things I love My
sister in law's a nurse. She's a nurse practitioner in
one of the larger medical or one of the larger
regions here in Ontario, and I'm always fascinated to hear
what her experiences are. But also I work on Star
Trek and I love medical stuff, Like I'm a big

(01:56:20):
fan of doctor Crusher, Doctor McCoy and Benga, all those guys.
Really interesting stuff to see what medical technology is science
fiction now, but we're working towards science fact hopefully, Like
there's been talking about the hypospray forever, like a medical tricorder.
All this cool technology will eventually eventually exist, I hope.

Speaker 2 (01:56:46):
But yeah, I just think this is fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:56:48):
I think it was science fiction thirty years ago for
medical stints for Vince. Yeah, like for your ventrical stints,
where people would have like Vain collapse and then they'd
have to either re rout it or that part of
the body would die. Now, how many times have people
had a heart attack because of blaque build up or
a vein collapse and they just they go in laparoscopically

(01:57:10):
with little, tiny, tiny tools, put a little you know,
stent rubber band thing in there, expand it, and bem,
you got a working vein again. For the next twenty
thirty years, that was that was pure sci fi until
like the late seventies, early eighties at the and that
even then you know, now they do millions of those
surgeries a year, right.

Speaker 3 (01:57:29):
Yeah, Yeah, Like it's really just outstanding to see what
science can can accomplish when we're focusing on something medically necessary.

Speaker 1 (01:57:41):
That you and I had For bariatric surgery, they were
fully invasive, very dangerous prospects to happen back in the
day because they used to have to basically split you know,
wide open, and anytime that you're you're cut open that
white there's a risk of infection, yea and what And
but yet we got modern twenty first century surgeries where

(01:58:03):
it's six little indecisions. They use little tools, use microscopic cameras.
They're in and out, and yes it's invasive in that
it's a long recovery period for you as a recovery person,
but they're in and out, and after the scars are healed,
you wouldn't know they were ever inside you.

Speaker 3 (01:58:18):
Yeah, Like it's kind of amazing just to see how
quickly people can heal can heal. And now we're getting
you know, technological advancements and like artificial limbs, stuff like that.
Like it's we live in a very interesting time and
I hope we focus more on making each other's lives better, longer,

(01:58:39):
and not focusing so much on, I don't know, the
more silly aspects of medical technology. And you know what,
there's arguments to be made for advances in plastic surgery
because we've talked about people who've had massive burns and
we're able to recover miraculously from it.

Speaker 1 (01:58:58):
I like to hope and believe, even though it's not
necessarily true that all of those medical advances to try
to make you know, somebody in their sixties look like
they're in their thirties, even though it almost never works,
I'd like to think that those advanced techniques eventually trickle
down into the reconstructive emergency surgery. You know that those

(01:59:22):
techniques eventually make it into like surgical review and like
review documents and like different conventions that doctors and surgeons
can go to, and eventually some of those techniques can
be used to like save kids that were in a
bad fire, that sort of stuff. Right, So hopefully the
ass breathing eventually turns into that. Although I'll tell you

(01:59:43):
right now, how hilarious would it be in like forty
years if you see people with seepat masks around their butt?

Speaker 3 (01:59:48):
Yeah, Like, I'm wondering how this will eventually trickle down
into consumer technology, because eventually it will. We know that
will happen at some point. So like what's like South.

Speaker 1 (01:59:59):
Park where where they started eating with their button pooping
up their mouth.

Speaker 3 (02:00:03):
See, that's where I thought they got the inspiration for
this when I first heard this, or I'm thinking they
must have watched Southbark, But no, the humble Loach, So
thank you, Loach.

Speaker 2 (02:00:12):
We appreciate you.

Speaker 3 (02:00:14):
So that's gonna do it for this edition of the
Weird News only on That's we can geek dot Net.
We have one final review from Alex and then we
got a lot of Halloween programming to tell you about.

Speaker 2 (02:00:24):
We'll be back guys right after this.

Speaker 1 (02:00:28):
Alex the producer here and our friends at Razor send
over a really interesting collaboration package. It's with Razor and
Hello Kitty or Sanrio and specifically Cinnamon Roll. It's Hello
Kitty is something I've known about obviously since I was
a little kid, but obviously it wasn't something that I

(02:00:48):
was super into. And it's obviously become more and more
popular as the time goes on and as I get
older and more mature and more comfortable with who I am.
I can say I love cutesy stuff. Birdman, I think
is what really he got me hooked because he was
always into the cutesy stuff and pink and all these
fun pasted out colors, and I went, you know what,

(02:01:09):
I've started to embrace that more and more as I
got closer to middle aged, and I can say this,
it's not just for girls. I think it's for everybody.
So what was sent over, There's a few things in
this series. I'll just mention this. They've got things from
chairs and everything. Basically, they're taking some of their more
popular products and then having a branded collaboration with color

(02:01:30):
schemes and prints and everything on them, and they range
from a few different things. There's, oh geez, there's actually
a bunch. So in the series. There is a mouse
which is a version of the Cobra mouse that they've
done in the past, a wired mouse that way, there

(02:01:51):
is I think a gigantis yep that you know, like
mouse pads. They've got versions of the cracking headsets, which
is what I ended up perceiving here. I received a
wired headset, two wired headsets, actually a pink and a
blue one, patterned after characters obviously from the famous franchise here.

(02:02:14):
They are quite comfortable, have good quality. I've been sort
of daily driving for a few days now just to
make sure that everything sounded right with them. But they
are just absolutely cute and obviously they have the quality
that you're you know, Razor for at this point, so
there's not going to be any issues when it comes to,

(02:02:37):
you know, are these durable? They know, they're built well,
they function well, they have good audio quality. You know me,
I'm the audio guy here, and you know, there's also
a really interesting keyboard collaboration with them as well that
you know has cinnamon roll on it and that's what
one of the things I received. So I've been clicking away, writing,

(02:02:58):
doing emails everything with that. It is just beautiful and pretty.
Everything looks so good. Like I know, aesthetics shouldn't be
the first thing. I'm usually the guy in the group
here that's like for me, it can just be black.
It doesn't have to light up, it doesn't have to
do anything.

Speaker 3 (02:03:15):
For me.

Speaker 1 (02:03:15):
I'm always function over form and this is sort of
open the door for me where I'm just like I
kind of need cool colors and things in color schemes.
Now it's you know, bright, vibrant, not over the top
too much with them, but it's just it has that

(02:03:35):
flash and style and you could really decorate a table
and obviously you know marketing QTE, you know anime style
of aesthetic. It's clearly marketing and appealing to girls. Guys
are gonna like it too. We're in a day and
age where everybody can like anything. And I can say
this that you know, you're taking something that has already
been quite good. You know, I've I've always praised, you know,

(02:03:59):
the things that we received from Raiser that they're in
the very good for the price category for in a
lot of six A lot of companies you know, overprice
their stuff and ends up being overpriced junk. It's not
the case here. This. This is like medium level. We're
not talking audio file headphones, but we're also not talking
dollars to headphones. These are good solid headphones and headsets

(02:04:21):
as well as good solid computer accessories. I'm very happy
with them. I'm probably gonna keep using them. I might
with one of the headsets end up, you know, giving
a gift for Christmas, which is something I think you
should consider doing too. If you've got somebody in your
household that you know, you think would appreciate this, you know, bright, vibrant, color,
asthetic there, if they're fans of you know, San Rio,

(02:04:44):
Hello Kitty, the whole universe, this is kind of a
no brainer for you. Or if you're looking to have
this like unique fun set up for an office, you know,
home office, and you want to have just something that
is like bright but also pastel and just funky looking.
I do think this is one of the fun collaborations
that you'll probably.

Speaker 2 (02:05:04):
Like those magnificent color me Kookie. But something very odd
is going on around here. You're not allowed to talk anymore.

Speaker 3 (02:05:12):
Welcome back to this we can geek dot net. Thank
you for joining us on this short show this week.
But Alex has loaded us up with tons of reviews
of stuff you should check out or maybe not, depending
on how those reviews went. However, though, because it is
spooky week, we got a lot of stuff in preparation
for Halloween this week. I actually over prepared this week.

(02:05:35):
We were going to do a show on Beatlejuice until
Alx is like, hey, Mike, you know you have enough
stuff for almost every day this week.

Speaker 2 (02:05:40):
I'm like, wait what.

Speaker 1 (02:05:42):
You were trying to get us on board? You're like,
I don't know, we're behind. We got to do that thing.
We're gonna we're gonna record something with Aaron. Then we're
gonna record something with Dave, you and me. And then
I went, wait, how many Halloween specials do you have?
Where You're like, I need a couple more. I'm like,
but we've got like six.

Speaker 2 (02:05:57):
So I'm like whoops.

Speaker 1 (02:06:00):
So yeah, so because I had been releasing them every
Sunday as like a weekly thing, and then I went,
wait a minute, we're going to have a couple extra
at least, And You're like, oh, oh, so you were like,
so I can relax. I'm like, yes, yes, you chill.
So what we've got coming this week? You've have already
heard the Resident Evil Movies four to six discussion tomorrow

(02:06:23):
or I guess the next episode after this Hairs. Whenever
you listen to this will be the Resident Evil Movie
Franchise final rankings that you guys did. The following day
is going to be your discussion you did on the
Hocus Pocus movies. So there's some Halloween stuff. Then the
next day we have our regular Earth Versus soup and

(02:06:44):
it happens to be spooky themed. Interestingly enough, it is
the Avon and Costello meet Frankenstein movie from nineteen forty eight,
and this is the week that the gilmert of Del
Toro Frankenstein movie comes out in theaters. I think it
comes out to Netflix in a few weeks, but they
wanted to make sure it had something to come up
for Halloween. And I'm actually seeing it this week. So

(02:07:06):
it's interesting that you know, I've seen a Frankenstein movie
and I have not seen a single trailer for it.
I didn't want to see anything for it. I'm like,
you know what, dazzle me, motherfucker, because that's something that
he could definitely do. So there's that, and then of
course we've got our you know, yearly Halloween special that
we usually try to do with our friend James Rolf

(02:07:27):
and you did this this year with with Enrique on that,
so maybe you can tell the fans what is the
topic this year?

Speaker 3 (02:07:36):
Yeah, so this year we wanted to do something that
was different from like, here's a film franchise and we.

Speaker 2 (02:07:41):
Wax poetic about it.

Speaker 3 (02:07:42):
We wanted to share something a little bit more intimate
and maybe a little bit more wholesome, and it was
just kind of talking about what does Halloween mean to us,
what are some of our traditions that we've kind of
carried forward throughout the years, what makes the Halloween tradition
a part of who we are, how we identify And
yet it was a really good conversation, longer than I expected.

(02:08:03):
I think we're over, if not over two hours, very
close to two hours, and I typically don't get James
for more than an hour for these podcasts, but between
me and Enrique, we just we had a really good conversation.
This is no I'm really really proud of. So I
really hope you guys will enjoy that. So that'll be
available on our website and you should see it advertised

(02:08:26):
across hen social media as well as cinemasacres as well.

Speaker 1 (02:08:32):
Yeah, so we've got that, and at some other point
this week, probably after Halloween, we'll have another review show
coming out because there's a bunch of stuff that wouldn't
have been able to make it for this show this week,
and then I guess the Halloween if stuff is over.
But we still obviously have more spooky, sci fi horry
type stuff coming up on Earth Versus Soup, because following

(02:08:53):
this week's Abbit and Costello Meet Frankinstein, we have Abbot
and Constello Meet the Invisible Man, and then Habit and
Costello Meet the Mummy. They did sort of, they did
a block of those movies. Interestingly enough, I didn't plan
for this, but you know, we schedule everything for you know,
every Thursday, and it just so happened that some of
the spooky or sci fi, you know, comedy movies they

(02:09:13):
did happened to line up with Halloween spooky month. So
that's cool with that, and beyond that, we got plenty
more stuff, man, But we don't want to get too
overloaded with it.

Speaker 3 (02:09:23):
So yeah, I also have one show I did with
Adam Donaldson of CFRU.

Speaker 2 (02:09:28):
We did his show and credits.

Speaker 3 (02:09:31):
You should be able to hear that on Wednesday, so
look for me advertising that on social media.

Speaker 2 (02:09:37):
In the next couple of days.

Speaker 3 (02:09:39):
So yeah, that should be available to download via your
favorite podcatcher such as Spotify and the CFAU website. You
can also listen to it live on CFRU ninety three
point three I think on Wednesday afternoon, so yeah, be
checking out that. So so for this week in geek,
where we are going to get out of here. So
please have a safe and happy Halloween. Just be safe

(02:10:01):
out there, have fun, be responsible, but have yourself a
good time. Look forward to pictures off of my Christmas
tree on Friday night, because I'm that guy.

Speaker 1 (02:10:11):
So for this week in Geek, we have been Alex
the Producer.

Speaker 3 (02:10:15):
I've been Mike the Birdman, saying, once again, have a
safe and happy Halloween, but as always, be excellent to
each other.

Speaker 2 (02:10:22):
We'll catch you guys again next week. Right here on
this week in geek dot Net. At no point in
your rambling incoherent response were you even close to anything
that could be considered a rational thought. Thanks for listening
to this episode of This Week in Geek. Hungry for more,
check out our website.

Speaker 1 (02:10:42):
If this weekn geek dot net, You can subscribe to
the podcast, browse our Twitter and Instagram, and leave your
thoughts on today's topics. If you'd like to give us
some feedback, send us an email at Feedback at This
Week in Geek dot Net.

Speaker 2 (02:10:54):
Tune in next time, and remember, lower your shields and
surrender your listenership.

Speaker 1 (02:10:59):
We would be all that if you would join us.
Thank you for your cooperation. Good night,

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