910: Pig Bones

Interactive Transcript

Speaker A B N M UIP V I O. We're getting there, folks.

Speaker B Hey, Everybody. It's Tuesday, September 30th, 2025. Holy smokes. Tomorrow means it's October. Welcome, giant bombcast episode 910. We're never gonna forget next week's episode, that's for sure, folks. I'm your host, Jan Ocho. Joining me co captain of the ship, Jeff Grub.

Speaker C Hey, happy to be here, Jan. We.

Speaker B Got the master of keys. That's right. He is our own keyblade enthusiast and keyboard enthusiast. Move over, Jeff Bacalar. There's a new key Ferber in town. Dan Reichert.

Speaker A I bought this whole keyboard cleaning kit with the intentions of this being how I clean my keyboard. And I wound up just using like, you know, like a reverse vacuum cleaner that just like that just cleaned it all up so I didn't even have to use this thing. The.

Speaker C The. The compressed air sort of thing.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah. I just blew all the gunk out of there, which. My keyboard was filthy. But it's. Hey, right in time. It's back to operating condition.

Speaker D Well done.

Speaker B Fantastic. Right in record time. Right in record time.

Speaker A Riker time.

Speaker B Speaking about Rikert. Oh, there we go. Rykert time. Okay. And speaking about gunk, we got the bad boy of games media. He's blowing your houses down with all of his hot air and his hot takes about Metroid Prime 4 in the desert. Mike Minati.

Speaker D It's me. It's Mike Minati. Have I been to the desert? Just that one. You have to drive to. To like go to Las Vegas with no name. Oh, that's a good song, right? People probably think that song's cringe now or something. I don't know.

Speaker A You know, in all these games, like you're uncharted and you're God of wars and stuff and movies where somebody's like, inevitably, like kind of going through the desert and they're just like really roughing it and just trying to get to water or land. I think you would be really bad at that, Mike.

Speaker D Yeah, I. I agree. I think I would drop first, for sure.

Speaker A I've seen you walk up a slight hill to go to a retro store and complain for 30 minutes.

Speaker C He was sick.

Speaker D I had Covid. Then we found out later.

Speaker B Oh, right, right.

Speaker A That didn't help.

Speaker D Yeah, I had. But I still agree that I would not make it. I would get way too hot, probably faint, whine a lot, and then die. The Mike way.

Speaker B Yeah, that expedited very quickly, Mike. I think you could last a Bit longer than that.

Speaker D I keep you.

Speaker A Last night. I didn't die. I sweat a lot in a song and didn't die last night.

Speaker B Well, we have emails later.

Speaker D I'll tell you what, Dan. After watching you try to put your keyboard together, I'm not gonna say I wish you did. We might have been spared some edit.

Speaker A Oh, boy. Reading in the song. I brought my Kindle in the sauna, which you're probably not supposed to do, but I did that. And so I'm reading at night in the shower. I do 30 minutes. I'm reading Kurt Vonnegut in the sauna.

Speaker D Oh, that's pretty good.

Speaker C Yeah, Kurt Vonnegut and your. Your Kindle are probably sweat proof. I don't know. You're probably all right.

Speaker A Yeah, it's waterproof. It's probably fine. So, yeah, it's been nice. I'm reading. Good thing to do before bed instead of, like, mega bonk for six hours right before I try to sleep.

Speaker C That sounds.

Speaker B Dan, are you, like, playing music in there while you're reading and sauna out or.

Speaker A Because it's got the Bluetooth gimmick and so I just put on, like, a Spotify, just like, you know, ooh, spa playlist type thing where it's just like, you know, what you think it would be.

Speaker B I asked this Dan, because at the end of Mike's Hades two through the night stream, we were all on the call together and you were gonna go leave to have nighttime sauna time. But you could have connected us to the. To the sauna because of the Bluetooth. But you didn't want to be naked talking to us.

Speaker A No, I thought that'd be weird. Yeah, because I am naked in the sauna and it's like. I mean, you wouldn't be able to see it, obviously, but your voices would be coming through. I just don't want to talk to you guys while I'm just sitting there sweating with my dong out, you know? No.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker C I get this when I am listening to a podcast. When I sit down to do a number two, when the poop starts coming out, I have to pause it because I just can't hear people I know or even are acquainted with while the poop is coming out of.

Speaker D Boy, I'm going to miss Bacalar today.

Speaker B Mike, you were on this podcast where Bacalar was too busy to do it, so you're going to have to deal with.

Speaker A Was weird because we were doing the Hades stream. We were all just on discord and Grub was describing stuff in Baby Steps. And so I went in and I just turned on my sauna to kind of preheat it before I went in. And apparently that activated my Bluetooth, which was connected to my phone. And so out of my sauna chamber, I hear Grub's voice saying, yeah. And then the guys with the donkey dicks want cigarettes. Jesus Christ.

Speaker B Okay.

Speaker C Accurate.

Speaker D That should play with Jeff goes into a discord channel.

Speaker C It's all just true. That's what that game's about.

Speaker A That's on the spot sauna playlist for some reason.

Speaker B Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah. The AI DJ does that. I think your sauna Dan should have a function to like clip, you know, like. Oh, that was a fun clip.

Speaker C Clip button.

Speaker B More things should have clips. Yeah.

Speaker A Hey.

Speaker B Yeah, I want. I came in. I think I've been upset this whole weekend. Not for the normal reasons why I'm upset, but different reasons. Fun cameras are so boring now. Y' all like video cameras?

Speaker D Sure.

Speaker B Because, I mean, most of my most used camera, other than the one here in front of me is not like any of the fancy ones that I've bought over time. It's just my phone, right? And I was just staring at old. I say old, but like 2000s camcorders and digital cameras from like the early aughts. And I. I wound up. I almost bought a lot of questionably used flip cams from Goodwill over the weekend just because I was like, man, cameras used to look so fucking sick.

Speaker A Like, they used to look cool. Flip cam era because like when I was doing a bunch of like high school video production stuff, it was just kind of the handheld Canons and Sony's on the screen that would flip out. And then the big one, the rich kids had the three CCD cameras. I remember. I don't know if those are still a thing, but they would have to do with the handle and the big thing. And it was like a 3ccd. I forget what that means, but I never had one of those.

Speaker D Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B Marino. I almost points out I almost bought. Or I was really looking at a Sony Mavica because it still uses floppy disks instead of memory cards. Just cause it was like right at the cutoff for I guess SD cards or memory sticks being a big thing. Interesting. Also, man, I hate. And maybe this is because of. I now finally understand y' all with the collecting, right? Because now I just want to collect nothing but old video cameras. I saw this old Sony hand cam.

Speaker C That's fun.

Speaker B I think it was like the Sony S C5 and it just looks so fucking sick. But then you look on ebay, you look at all these different online resellers, and it's like up the wazoo, 500 plus. So now I have it in me that I need to drive through, through different parts of America, going through thrift stores looking for old digital cameras or hitting up people that have died or I guess family of people.

Speaker A Estate sales. Well, the thing with estate sales is because I keep an eye on that whole thing, and it's like they're all kind of the same. They're all a bunch of just like old plates with a bunch of designs on them. It's a bunch of musty chairs with, like, velvet backs. It's a bunch of like, framed stuff of like a bunch of guys on horses or something. It's just like, suit or like weird old dolls. Some of them are racist. Like, it's just kind of the same thing. So it's like every once in a while you'll get lucky and it's like, you know, a younger person died and then they'll have, like DVDs and stuff. You know.

Speaker B They weren't so lucky. It's the problem.

Speaker A Yeah, I mean, like, the old people don't have GameCube games. And so you're just, you know, every once in a while you get lucky.

Speaker C Exactly.

Speaker D Gonna rule when we die. These be so fun.

Speaker C Oh, man. Hey.

Speaker B Okay, you know what?

Speaker C I was gonna.

Speaker B Never mind.

Speaker C Never mind.

Speaker B Anyway, old video cameras, the designs used to be really cool. Now they're all just boring. How is everyone else's weekend?

Speaker C That was the fun part of. Of like my wedding was like, just put. Getting one of those flip cans and putting it at every table. And that was basically our videography was just letting people at each table, film stuff.

Speaker A And we just got all the footage.

Speaker C Later and kind of clipped it together.

Speaker B It was that.

Speaker C That was a good time. And you got. I mean, I guess you could just do that still. I'm sure there's the equivalent. But I don't know there at that point, that was like a really fun and exciting thing because those things were still relatively new at that moment.

Speaker D All cameras called things like the P29 and the F1, like, they didn't have fun names. Like, none of them was called, like.

Speaker B The cannons had like, cyber shot for a while.

Speaker C Yeah, right. They would. They would still also have like the, you know, the letter denomination as well. Right.

Speaker A It'd be like the cyber shot line, you know?

Speaker C Yes. Like flip cams. It was like there was like the Zi8 or something. Like that. Although maybe that was a different model. I don't know. It was hard to keep straight.

Speaker B And I say this because I thought about getting back into film photography, because I'm just moving a bunch of my cameras around and I remembered or I looked up the price of film, like, rolls of film again, and, oh, man, it's too costly to even pick up actual.

Speaker A That's when I decided I'm not going to class. When I went to my first film production class. And they're like, all right, so here's the form to fill out to order. How many feet of actual film you want? And I saw the cost. I'm never showing up in this class ever.

Speaker D Boy, you had to be. I wonder how many more years of that class until they stop doing that. Because they can't do that now, right? Nobody's going to order.

Speaker C There's probably. There probably is a class where it's like, hey, you want to work with film? But it's probably separate from that, like, mainline track, I would imagine, at this point.

Speaker B Yeah. Because I took an audio recording class at my local community maybe in, like, 2010, and I had to edit reel to reel still for that. I don't know if that was just for, like, for poops and giggles or if that was just like, we're a community college. This is all we have.

Speaker A I started on a Casablanca editing machine in probably, like, 96, 97. And that was like, real to real. Like. Like VHS. It was insane. That's a good name.

Speaker B Hell, yeah.

Speaker A So you had, like, two big knobs and stuff, and you're picking your end points and your out points, like these big knobs and stuff. You put 1vhs on the left, you put a blank one on the right, and you're kind of like, so much fun.

Speaker D Could you do dissolves or anything? It was just pure hard cuts.

Speaker B I think.

Speaker A You could do dissolves. Yeah. Because, like, the first few, like, short films that I made were on that and that definitely.

Speaker C I wonder how they did that.

Speaker B Yo, that's really. I bet you whoever came up with the first star wipe, like, they should have a Nobel Peace Prize, like, oh, yeah. Thank you for your contribution to society.

Speaker C Like, coming up with the ability to do the. The. The chroma key stuff, you know, it's like this chemical will dissolve this color of green and blue specifically. And so if we do that to this film stock, we can then get rid of that and key in this other stuff in the bat. Like, that's just crazy. Like, it's so. It makes so Much more sense to me that it works in a computer than it ever worked with film. And then like remembering that film is just basically like everything else. It's either some weird metal or like with film's case, it's pig bones again. It's gelatin, it's collagen. Oh, that's how they actually make film. It's like, okay, yeah, of course. Everything's pig bones. It all goes back to that. It's very.

Speaker D Thank you, pig bones.

Speaker A Yeah, we thank you.

Speaker C Shout out to pig bones.

Speaker A Hey, speaking of film, I got some flack over the weekend for rebuttering my popcorn.

Speaker D Yeah, okay.

Speaker A This isn't that crazy of a thing, is it? You guys have seen movies in the theaters.

Speaker B It's not too crazy, Dan. But I think the part that was not upsetting me but worrying me is the sheer amount of butter.

Speaker D Yeah.

Speaker C Like you. I think the reason you might have got flack is you said you went in for the initial buttering 45 seconds.

Speaker B And I put.

Speaker A There's probably like two cups of that AMC butter I put in for the first time. But when you're right, that should be when you get a large mic. When you get a large. Once you get down about halfway, it's like it didn't creep all the way down there.

Speaker C So shimmy it. There's got to be butter there in the bottom of that thing.

Speaker A It was heaping. You can't shake that much. I tried to do some shaking and you'd get the odd like, oh, this one had some good butter on it. But then it's like I got half this tub in front of me and it's all dry ass popcorn and I gotta pee four times a movie. Anyway, so I went and I rebuttered. I put another cups in there.

Speaker C You butter yourself at amc. I can't remember, like some places you fasten the butter.

Speaker A Thank God. Yeah.

Speaker C So they give it to you. So you can't have it halfway through. You can't have it halfway through. And then butter it and then fill it up, the rest and butter on top.

Speaker D Because you have this whole thing our places do here. So it's fine. Like they just do you.

Speaker C You can't do that. If you get the whole full thing right, what are you going to do with half of the popcorn?

Speaker D Set it off to the side. And then.

Speaker A Yeah, we had the ability to. When I worked at AMC in like the late 90s, it was like we had the stuff behind the concession stand. So people would ask sometimes, can you do the halfway fill? And we Knew what that meant, you know, but then once they put it out there, it's kind of on you, and you do have. It's on you and rebutter.

Speaker C Yeah, I. I think it's weird, Dan. I think it's a little strange, just the rebuttering after 45 seconds of butter. If it's like you just kind of can't live with a few pieces being not perfectly buttered. I don't know.

Speaker A I want them all to be soggy now.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker B Okay.

Speaker D Okay. I mean, I, you know, I'm not saying you have to be super self conscious, but clearly this. This one has to scare you a little. It's just. It's weird to me that you were afraid of your keyboard electrocuting you because you took a keycap off, but not of clogging your arteries with literal, like, cups of fake butter.

Speaker A Electrocuted. And I know what that feels like, and that scares me because that hurts. I've never clogged an artery, so I.

Speaker D Don'T even know that a heart attack is bad.

Speaker A Yeah. I just don't know if it hurts so it's less scary.

Speaker B I'm pretty sure it's both of those, if not more.

Speaker A Probably hurts. It probably hurts. Yeah.

Speaker C Then you also said, like, you were getting flack from. From us. I think kind of Mike went in on this because you were like, hey, you guys will check your phone during a movie and you're on home, but I will leave the theater to go pee. And then a few extra minutes to go rebutter the popcorn. And.

Speaker A And then you said, that's not part of.

Speaker C You said, that's part of the moviegoing experience. And it's like, so watching the movie is less important than.

Speaker A Being at home and opting to look at something else other than the thing you're trying to pay attention to is very different than like, I have to pee or I need to kind of get some food or something. Like, you don't have the option to pause or whatever. Sure, sure.

Speaker D Need.

Speaker B I think maybe the other thing people took issue with, Dan, is maybe getting up to leave during a PTA movie just because, like, PTA is one of those people that film bros take very seriously.

Speaker A And I. Some of my favorite movies are from him. And I got back and Ben Hansen whisper. I won't say it, but Ben Hansen whispered, blank happened. It was very cool. And so apparently I picked the worst possible time to. And it sounded very cool. And I've not been able to find a clip of what happened because the movie's not Pirated anywhere that I can see.

Speaker D I do. Look, I sympathize with the bathroom thing. That's why actually, I like all these old movies just going back to theaters because I can just see something I've seen 10 times that I know I like. And if I had to go and pee, that's okay. I've seen this movie before. It's fine. It's not some stressful thing. I'm not sitting there desperately holding it and being uncomfortable. Like, I saw who friend Roger Rabbit this weekend. That was a good time. In fact, I was the opposite of you. I got maybe part of my problem, Dan, empathizing, is that I like the movie theater popcorn, but I get over it pretty quickly. I'll get a small, and then halfway through it, I'm kind of like a shorty baby.

Speaker A Well, now let me, let me paint the picture a little more so you understand my plight. So it was a 6:15 movie. Okay. That's a weird time because you're leaving before that. Normally I'm having dinner closer to 6:37, so I hadn't had dinner. Okay. It's a three hour long movie. So we get like halfway into the movie, I'm, I'm a rumbling there. I would go for my second pee break and I walk in the bathroom. I don't know if somebody brought the popcorn in the bathroom, but I got a big whiff of that popcorn and my brain activated was like, I need that now. I normally don't get popcorn to the theater maybe one ten times, but I was like very hungry. And then I smelled that and it's like, well, I'm going to get popcorn.

Speaker D Yeah. I never had that popcorn satiate my hunger. I got to become a, a theater nacho guy exclusively. I think that's kind of something about. Well, yeah, they're, you're right. They're not as easy to eat.

Speaker B Now.

Speaker D Popcorn is the perfect movie snack we associate with movies. It's just kind of fun to go in there. I get it. That's why I always see myself going there. Don't be a pickle guy. As long as you're not getting that bag of pickle. Jan, what do you get?

Speaker B No, no, no, no. I'm cool at the theater. I have not seen that, but I believe it.

Speaker A What the hell are you talking about?

Speaker D It's literally, it's like a pickle in like a plastic sleeve filled with the pickle brine. And people like, take him to the theater, stink up the whole place, and are just eating this giant phallic pickle. It's disgusting. All the shit. I made a friend sit away from me. The one time, like, you're not sitting next to me at that thing. Get out of here.

Speaker B I love popcorn. Popcorn is maybe one of my top five foods, but I think the perfect food to consume during a movie is a hot dog. That's good.

Speaker C Yeah, I, you know, I, I, we used to go to Alamo Drafthouse, and the perfect food was whatever meal the chef decided to serve with any of those, like, specialty screenings. I went with, oh, sure. One time it was just like, beef brisket and whiskey while we were watching True Grit. And that was, that's the best show you can have during a movie, in my opinion.

Speaker B Okay, I want to build on this. This is more of a mic check question. We should get to the actual pod soon. What is, what is the chef's meal for the bomb cast?

Speaker A Ooh, the chef's meal.

Speaker C To pair with the podcast.

Speaker A Oh, oh.

Speaker D It is a. His hot dogs at some point, right?

Speaker C And Pap's blue ribbons.

Speaker A Heineken hot dogs and buzz balls.

Speaker D That blue ribbon. I was sent a file.

Speaker A I'm, I'm on a run, though, because that was Sunday night. I had the large popcorn for dinner. And, well, here's the thing. I told myself I was gonna get a small popcorn because it's like I'm trying to eat healthier. And I went up there and I'm looking at the prices, and I' the only economical option here is to spend $25 on the large coke, large popcorn, and candy.

Speaker D So I got a bag of hot. Didn't you say you weren't a mark or whatever the phrase was there with the chimney and everything?

Speaker C Literally, that is you being the most buffaloed.

Speaker D That is.

Speaker C I mean, they, they make the most economical. I know pricing, Dan. They literally. It's called the medium popcorn thing where it's like they literally set the pricing. So you have the thought the only economical thing is to spend the maximum amount of money. Like you.

Speaker A You got buffalo.

Speaker C I'm sorry, I don't want to on this deal.

Speaker A Okay. Okay. Well, here I think, I think last night. So the run I was on was popcorn and hi Chew dinner on Sunday. And last night I had friends over for an NES competition and a double header of dirty Work, the dirtier version. And Naked Gun. And we got jets pizza. Like, I got an eight corner turbo crust. We got a four corner turbo crust.

Speaker D We got a triple.

Speaker A Two turbo sticks.

Speaker D Yeah, that's another thing Dan, that I wanted to, to talk about is it's just a casual observer. I feel like eight times in the last month you told Jeff, ah, getting jets pizza again.

Speaker C I need him to love Turbo Crush. This makes me feel good.

Speaker D He does. I've just.

Speaker A I gave credit. My friends were over. I was like, this is Jeff Grubb introduced me to this. You got to try. Grew up in the Midwest and they had never heard of it. Now we got more jets people here.

Speaker C That's right. Taking over the world.

Speaker A Oh, I had two giant pieces for breakfast just now. I got more dinner and lunch.

Speaker C It's good in the morning. It is. Oh, man, that's good. We didn't get. We usually get pizza on Friday. If we didn't do it last week, I'll have to do it this week. Man, that's good stuff. I've not tried the triple cheese turbo bread. Is that what you said?

Speaker A Turbo sticks with an X Turbo stick. It is maybe the best be the.

Speaker D Name of food and Idiocracy.

Speaker B This could also be cool cameras though.

Speaker A Would it surprise you to hear that? Mike would have surprised you to hear that. When I saw Idiocracy, there are so many things in the movie I was like, I'd be into this.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker A My balls and stuff.

Speaker D That's just Costco to get a sauna. Yeah, you'd be fine.

Speaker A Sitting in that Costco sauna filled with Turbo sticks last night and beer.

Speaker D Yeah. You know what?

Speaker A I do.

Speaker D I do see you rebuttering popcorn.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker B Well, let's talk about a very tonally similar game as to Dan's popcorn debacle. Oh, real quick, Dan, did you like One Battle after another?

Speaker A Yeah, it's very good. Very, very good. I'll have to see it again because.

Speaker C Yeah, I need to check.

Speaker A I need to check it out.

Speaker B My movie going experience this weekend. I went and saw Demon Slayer and Infinity Castle. Very good. Obscenely long. Don't need to make. Yes.

Speaker A That's a Mario Party Anime. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker D Would this one depress me too? Like the Mario Party game?

Speaker A Actually, yes. Yeah, yeah, probably.

Speaker C I. I saw a movie this weekend as well. There's no way you guys would guess what it is. It is a kids movie.

Speaker B Land Before Time three.

Speaker C No, Dan got it. The Thin Red Line. That's right. It was. It was Gabby's Dollhouse, the movie.

Speaker D My nieces saw that.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker D Yeah. How'd that go?

Speaker B That's got a voice cast, though. That's got a cast on it.

Speaker C Yeah, it was. It was. It was well made. You know, we came out, Amy goes and she's. I Don't know where she gets this from. I give it a 9 out of 10. It's not as good as K Pop Demon Hunters. I'm like, okay, there we go.

Speaker A Really? You wonder?

Speaker D Nine out of ten.

Speaker A You talk about kids movies the way I talk about musical theater. It was well made. They were talented.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker C I am immune to this stuff. I've seen so much garbage YouTube at this point, none of these movies could hurt me.

Speaker A Well, Grub, I was thinking about you and the kids today because of your. The patience factor, because I was watching you stream Baby Steps. Sorry, Jan, I. I hope I didn't.

Speaker B Please, please, please.

Speaker A I was watching. I could not look away. I mean, that's what the nature of that game is. Like, any step could be the one that sends you plummeting. And I thought, like, I was thinking about how I. I respect this game so deeply of Baby Steps. I think it's so cool what it is, but the first time I fell and lost a bit of progress, I thought it was a ton when I did it. But then watching you and others play, it's like, oh, that was nothing. And I immediately put the controller. I was like, this is not for me to play. I can't do this. And then seeing you just think about every step, I. I cannot play that game.

Speaker B But.

Speaker A Holy do I respect it.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker B Toying around. Grub, please tell us more about your Baby Steps adventures. You've been streaming it on the website for folks that may have missed it. And also for folks that may have missed it. We continued the streak, baby. We took down kind of funny again.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker C Oh, yeah.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker D Why did I play into it?

Speaker C All these delusions?

Speaker B Shouts out to the kind of funny crew for. For putting that together with us. That was. That was really tense and a good time.

Speaker C I got. I got a little frustrated, though, because as soon as we were done with the stream, I discovered there's a day one multiplayer mod. So we all could have just been in there together, playing, playing the game.

Speaker A An official multiplayer thing.

Speaker C Not. It's not official. Maybe it's official, but, like, it's a mod. But yeah, it's multiplayer and you can get in there and everyone can just play together. At least two people together. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A You can do that, can you? With each other?

Speaker C Yeah. I think absolutely. You can. Yes. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker B Oh, okay. Wow.

Speaker C Like a foot race and stuff. Yeah, that would be a good time.

Speaker A I want to do that.

Speaker C I am on the man breaker in Baby Steps, which is. It got its name on account of how many men it has Broken is what the character tells you. And it's, it's very funny because this is, it's basically the end of the game. And you know, I've done a lot, I got lost a bunch of times. I already really love this game. And then you get to this point where you've taken this character, Nate, who is clearly depressed and, and, and, and, and kind of aimless and you know, all the things you could just tell kind of looking at him like what's going. But they also play home, those facts. Like there's a, a phone call halfway through the game with your father who, who explains, hey buddy, family's getting together to celebrate your sister's promotion. We really just kind of want you to be there. Can you not wear sweatpants? And you're like, okay, yeah, this character just like can't really get it together even enough to like show up to something like that. And yet if you put one step in front of the other, look how far you can get in this game, in life. It's clearly a metaphor. They really nailed that aspect of it. And then they, they, they bring you up to this, this stairs, this staircase.

Speaker D At the end of the game.

Speaker C And it is a spiral staircase. It might as well be that metal gear solid 3 ladder, but for stairs. And it just goes up and up and up and up. And as you approach it, the, the guy, Bennett Foddy's character comes up to you and say, hey buddy, you know, you should just, you should just take these stairs. I built these stairs. And you know, then Nate looks to the right, needs the character, and there is some rocks, a mountain. And he's like, no, I'm gonna go this way. I'm gonna go up that. He's like, that, that's the Man Breaker. It's, you know, God's name on, on account of how many minutes broken you should take the stairs. And clearly they're setting up like if you have any sort of pride in what you've done so far, you should go up to the Man Breaker. But it's really hard. It's so hard. It is, it is. Every single step is challenging. But there are. The really challenging thing is you do get into a flow, you start to figure it out, and then the game will like throw a change up pitch where it's like, you have gotten into this flow. Now let's do a different kind of step. So you have been carefully placing the foot a few inches away and you're doing these stutter steps and you have a, you're that's really secure. If you do that, like, you're. You're probably going to be pretty stable and be able to get across just about any terrain. And you start to rely on that. Like, hey, okay, if I just keep doing this, I'm going to be fine. Oh, no. Now here is a huge gap that I'm gonna have to, like, do a big step for, and I'm a little out of practice. And that's like a very harrowing, tense thing now to pull off. And it's like you get in your head and you. You kind of can't. In this game, you have to sort of just act without thinking. It is a feel sort of game. Like, you have to just feel your way through these steps. And so every time you get to one of these moments, it is terrifying. And that happens like, they're probably about 10 times on your way up the man breaker. These moments of, of. Okay, now we have to try another different big kind of step and figure things out. Eventually you do come up with strategies for these things. Then there's like, ones where it's like, okay, now we're. This is a big step and a big step down, and there's a clear rock slide here where if you miss, you could. You could just see how it's going to go wrong. Now, I've done that one twice, and I have not fallen down either time. Well, I did fall down, but I fell down on the, like, one rock that if you fall on that, you'll be able to stop yourself from completely calamitously losing this run. And I'm just. I'm thinking about that spot so much right now because I did fall after getting pretty much all the way to the end, I have to do the whole thing again. And it's like that thing is sticking in my head of like, I. I don't know. If I get up there and I start, like, if I mess up that spot, I might never, never be able to do it again. It's so scary to get to that moment and try to overcome it. And yet, like, I do feel like, what choice do I have? There's no way I'm taking those stairs. No way I'm doing that. I have to get up the man breaker. It's. It is. It's the. The exact right kind of game for me where I can get into that, that I'm gonna try again. I will shut my brain off. I will just do the next thing, and then I do go on tilt and it gets really bad and I'm falling on, like, the first 10 steps and things like that. But there's something about, like, overcoming that or putting the controller down and coming back later and, and having your best run yet on your first, like, return try after, like, setting it down for a day. It has been fun to stream. People are. Are. Are into it. I'm. And I'm going to stick with it until I can figure it out.

Speaker D I have two questions for Dan. One, yeah, did you understand the metaphor in this game, Dan? And two, would you just take those stairs?

Speaker A I don't know if I would play to. To that point, so I don't think I would get there. I think if I took the time to actually get there, I would probably feel compelled to. To take the man breaker just because, like, if I spent that much time, I'd want to beat it. Right. You know, I didn't pick up on a metaphor.

Speaker C Yeah, that's. That's okay. Yeah.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker C I don't. I don't ever mind that you don't pick up on a metaphor. What I don't want is. Did you just say, did they intend that? Did they mean that? Is that what something they, like, meant for you to get? Because I don't care about any of that. Like, this is how I feel about the game, and I do think they probably did intend a mini of these metaphors, but things that I'm getting out of it are just so potent and it's so nice, emotional. Like, I really do feel like, oh, my God. Like it really, you know, because that's how I feel. I got to this point in life putting one step in front of the other. Like, if you asked me, like, how did you plan to get here? I didn't. I have no idea how I. I got to this job, how I got this family, how I got any of these things in my life. I just kind of did one step after the other because what other choice do you have? And the game just really hones in on that feeling in such a powerful way that, yeah, it's. It is up there for my. On my Game of the Year list. Like, I'm, like, already, like, placing up there in the top three top. Top five, for sure.

Speaker B I'm kind of surprised that. Go ahead.

Speaker D Sorry.

Speaker B No, no, please, please, no.

Speaker D I. I want a mod for the game where there's a monkey on your back. Just on along for the ride so that it can be like, how I got my life.

Speaker A Jeff.

Speaker D Yeah. Just tagging along.

Speaker C Just actually literally on my coattails.

Speaker B I was gonna say that I'M kind of surprised at how much this game has been picking up steam amongst our circles. I thought it was. Part of me was just gonna be dismissive of it and think it's like, oh, there's another funny haha stream.

Speaker C I thought most people would dismiss it too.

Speaker A Yes.

Speaker B But seeing that there are. There's a lot more oomph and juice inside of the baby steps, I. I think I need to explore.

Speaker A Can you. You don't die in it. Right?

Speaker D Right.

Speaker A Like you can fall off the mountain and live. Right.

Speaker C It's very much a. An Alice in Wonderland sort of thing where it's like, I. I don't know if any of this is really happening. Like what? Yeah, yeah, it's. It's an isekai, maybe. Or he's just, he's exploring the depths of his own depression or whatever. Like when you fall from the highest heights, land directly on your head and your head gets lodged in the ground through the geometry, he stands right up and he's fine.

Speaker A So, so what happens, like when you load up the game next time you play, are you going to be right where you fell or what's the checkpointing situation?

Speaker C I will be there. There is no checkpointing. I'm. I know that Russ Freshstick was telling a story on the besties about how he was doing something risky to get a hat. He could actually get the construction hat that I got. And he was, you know, you just have to basically walk out on this girder, pick up the hat. And I think he got on the girder and he did something I've done before where when you bend over to pick up the hat, if you're too close, he'll fall over. And I think he fell over and he's like, I, I said, he's like said to himself, if I fall down, I'm not going to do this again, so I'm going to try to save scum. And he turned the game off really fast. He loaded it back up and it loaded him falling in the air. So he. Did he fall back down now? He did. He's immediately like, you game, let's go again. He started doing it again. But yeah, they, it is as punishing as it, as it possibly can be in those situations.

Speaker A So you can't really save scum.

Speaker C There are no checkpoints. There is no real safegu. I bet there is ways, but I've not looked into it. I've not figured it out if there is. And it's like, you know, that's, that's part of the game is like recognizing, hey, when you, like, fall down and you have to find a new way back up to where you were or maybe find a whole other direction that you didn't see before. You're going to find, like, hidden items you didn't see before. Like, that's how I found the. The first person hat. The hat that gives you a first person view is I, like, fell down, went a different direction, found a small little puzzle area where it's like I was climbing up these. These steps and then the scaffolding to get that. You also see, like, entirely new cutscenes you hadn't seen before the game. Like, once you realize you, you shouldn't necessarily be playing it to, like, get to the end. You should be playing it to do one step after the other. And wherever that takes you, it's probably going to take you to the end eventually. But wherever it takes you next is part of the journey. It is part of, like, recognizing that Nate is still dealing with his problems by just being willing to get back up and keep going. And, you know, the Man Breaker can't break me until I decide to put down the controller. Right. And I'm just going to keep going and take those deep breaths and keep trying. And it's. Yeah, it's been really, really fun.

Speaker B Awesome. Speaking about a game with a little bit of symbolism in it, uh, I didn't get the chance to talk about this last week because my power got raptured. Maybe because I told someone on Twitter to eat my ass, but Silent Hill F, Holy smokes, gang. I know Bacalar talked, had an extended talk about it. There's a quick look now up on the website, but this is one of the games that I wound up taking notes while I was playing because so many parts of it were just appealing to me. And I just wanted to, like, make sure that I hit these topics when gets the bomb cast. But my experience with Silent Hill has been well documented on this website. I've only ever played one and two, and then the two remake from. Gosh, was that last year, y'? All?

Speaker A It was last year.

Speaker B Last year. Okay. Yeah. So I. I'm well acquainted, or as acquainted as I can be with the Fog. And I think I speak for a lot of Silent Hill people where there's been hesitancy anytime a new entry into the series is teased or gets announced. But Silent Hill F completely radically different from most entries, or at least the ones I'm familiar with in the series because you were no longer in the PNW or Somewhere in, like, Maine or wherever Silent Hill is supposed to be. You're just straight up in rural Japan in the 1960s. And this is one of those beautiful moments for me where I think it's great and grub. You said something on a stream recently that has kind of been like, ringing in my head and resonating with me, where video games is just such a specific medium where only certain stories can be told just because you are thrust into a character's perspective. And four of us, or this whole team right now, including Chuck and Sean, we're all a bunch of dudes, right? We're all a bunch of dudes. And if we get thrown into any bit of danger, maybe someone accosts us outside of a 711 because they think we stole their bag. Most of us will, or at least together we will be able to get out of that situation because we're dudes, right? But this game specifically, you play as a Hinako, a Japanese high school girl. And one of the things I love about it is that her frailty and her position in life is a major component in the story rather than just, you know, perhaps her being sexualized. Thankfully, she's not. But the ways that they use the Silent Hill ethos to tell a story is incredibly effective in this game. But also, I don't think you need to have played any of the other Silent Hill games to really get the gist of this. It's. I know Bacalar was saying last week he wasn't super scared of it. Maybe my tolerance for playing scary games is much lower, but I was spooked the whole time, or at least tense. And I think something that Silent Hill F does really well in comparison to the older games is that it does have a pretty simple but good combat system where when you get thrown into these combat arenas. Not arenas, but situations, you do have a little bit of tools to get out of there and succeed. And just like other survival horror games, you don't have to fight all the time. You can just run away. But at least you were given the tools now of like, all right, yo, Hinako, she got that pipe on her. These demons, they're gonna fucking go down. I'm gonna swing away. But the story in this, it's. It's great. The. Your overall run will probably be maybe 8 to 10 hours, but in classic Silent Hill fashion, this will only get you one of the endings I wound up looking up because I just don't. I don't have the time, y', all to go play through A game again I went and looked up the different endings and God, this game goes hog wild ape. But what I wanted to get back to is like the medium of video games as like storytelling devices and like yo, you're thrust into this position as like this girl that already experiences so much difficulty in her home life with her parents try and their expectations of her to like well why don't you get married? How come you're not like your sister and all this, all that. And then as well as like how and again I am a straight dude talking about this so I'm probably and I will get some of this wrong but it handles topics of substance abuse and objectification and how women especially, I mean still to this day unfortunately get treated as property and like the struggles within women and society to fight and buck up against that is especially hard and then but this game gives Hinako the tools and the agency to buck up against that and fight that. And there's bits in this story that are really heart wrenching and like the twists that it takes to also kind of talk about substance abuse and how substance abuse and medication can sometimes yes it is needed but sometimes it is not a fix all band aid for someone's problems. And the deeper relationships that we have with one another, with our family, friends, our our town is, is very important and essential to that. Also there's cool crazy fox demons in this and that's sick.

Speaker C When before the like the mechanics of of her bucking up back against that. Do you think that is like where they are saying this is what Silent Hill is like? You know, because I think that's one of the criticisms I've been hearing or maybe not even criticisms but people just kind of like maybe warning others like you know, it's not really Silent Hill. But do you think like they are are trying to say, well no, Silent Hill can also be this and maybe should also be something like this so we can explore different ideas under this umbrella. Do you think they like pulled that off?

Speaker B I think they did. I, I, I think because I one of the major aspects of a Silent Hill game in my experience is that the town and the setting overall is and like the tension behind the town as well and the overall mystery is a major component of Silent Hill and I think Silent Hill F really nails that and maybe I haven't played any of the later titles in the series. It probably nails it better than some of the revisits to the franchise. Also they went and got I forget his name but the original composer for the Silent Hill games and that.

Speaker A That.

Speaker B Music score or like the score behind this game and the audio design is so fantastic because it really adds to that unnerving tension and like the psychological horror that builds up. Bacalar and I didn't quite get to it in the quick look, but you do kind of go between two different worlds in this game and Hinako's sanity, well, sanity is also a thing to manage in the game. But right. You kind of go shifting between the town that you start the game in and then like a kind of psychological different space where you start to question what is real, what is actually pushing Hinako or the different factors in her life forward.

Speaker C I also like have heard that other people like oh, the combat's not great but it sounds like for you like it did what it needed to do or like I guess what I'm asking is, is it thematically good where like oh, this fits with what the game's trying to do or is it just like a fun video game ass combat system?

Speaker B I think something that I walked away with Silent Hill 2 remake last year is just kind of like the, the rage that gets put into every swing and that it makes sense with James in Sound Hill 2. And I think when you get introduced to the weapon very early on in, in Silent Hill F, you can tell that there is a lot of pent up rage and anger in Hinako the player character that I think it makes sense. And also we're playing a video game gang where like this weird, these weird red flowers take over the town and then these like doll like monsters pop up. So I'm not quite thrown off with oh, she's suddenly good at swinging a pipe and like using these weapons.

Speaker A Eat.

Speaker B I. I don't think it does too much where it takes you away from the game.

Speaker C 8 to 10 hours sounds real good to me. But am I gonna finish the first run and feel like I'm missing something if I don't replay it? Like you, you didn't do that. You went to go watch the other endings. Were you satisfied with that?

Speaker B I think I was satisfied enough because like in Silent Hill fashion there's a bunch of different notes to pick up that flesh out the story and start to make you wonder of like oh wait a minute, what's. What's going on over here? And if you were like more aware of like the different plot elements and plot devices specifically with floral and flora and fauna from the Silent Hill universe, you may start to pick up on other things in Silent Hill F. But yeah, I would easily recommend it if you're. If you want something spooky to play. I also think that the voice acting is specifically with the Japanese cast. I haven't checked out the English cast so I can't speak to that. But the Japanese cast, fucking killer performances from Hidoko like 10 out of 10. And I said this on Blue sky, but I think it'd be a crime if she. If that voice actress did not get nominated for anything come end of the year time. Sticking in Japan though, Dan Reichert, I think you have, you've been dealing with your own paranormal because you have been dealing with ghosts. Specifically ghosts of Yotei.

Speaker A Yeah, I'm the ghost in that. Everyone thinks you're a ghost walking around killing people. It's very good. I liked Tsushima a good amount. I kind of fell off near the end. I don't remember why I got through that first like whole kind of like island area and as it moved on to the next one I was kind of like, I feel like the, the combat and just kind of the moment to moment like going to these places in the stealth and everything wasn't really like moving forward in a substantial enough way to kind of keep me going. So that's to say like the first one, I am liking this one a lot more. It's just, it's a lot more just focused story wise. It just, it plays like a cool like samurai movie. It's just a revenge tale and I like that. That's easy to follow. It's, you know, you've seen the setup probably it's like you know, six people do some bad stuff to you and you got to go kill them all. And the combat super good. It's maybe one of the most beautiful games I've ever seen. I do think it is probably the first time I've been like, okay, this is a significant boost up on PS5 Pro. Like you know, because I've seen it on this TV, which is my standard PlayStation 5. And you can do the performance mode and it runs at a pretty good like 60 or so. But like boy, the ray tracing pro mode looks really, really good in this. But yeah, it's really fun. It uses gimmicks well. It uses the like dualsense stuff really well. You know the first one had the stuff where you could look at the. You swipe up and you see the wind and everything and it does that. But it also like you sit down to camp and like to light the campfire, you're like swiping up to like put the tender on, on the stuff and then you blow into the microphone to kind of blow the fire and then you're cooking by like you've got like a fish on a stick and you're turning the controller.

Speaker D I kind of like that dual sense.

Speaker A Hey, I like these things, honestly. It's fun games.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker A It's not something you have to do all the. And it's funny because, like, I don't know, like in Red Dead, you know, you could cook and everything. And it drove me nuts just watching the animations. But oh, when I'm blowing into my controller and flipping it upside down, it's like, oh, that's fun for me. So whatever. Combat's good. It's. It does a lot of that good. Diegetic, not ui, but the way it just kind of like leads you to places. The way there's like, you know, the bird or the fox and stuff that can kind of lead you as you're exploring the open world. It also like in the accessibility options, it lets you turn on like there's really good options here. Like you can turn off the bird and stuff like that if you want to just find something yourself. I wish you could do that. There's all those different modes and stuff. You can do kind of the black and white film mode. There's one that's like an anime mode where I think it was some anime director guide. Does some like music that it's more kind of like modern sounding music over it. Tried it for a little bit. It was a little cool, but I kind of prefer the classic. Yeah, it's like in terms of the open world, you know. The last one was almost a little more like old GTA style where it would be kind of gated like, oh, the bridges are under construction, you know, where like you move on to the next islands. This one is kind of more Breath of the Wild where you know there's six people that you need to hunt down and you're getting clues about where they are. And as you get clues and stuff, your map kind of gets filled out and you can kind of like nothing was telling me go to this guy. First I just was like exploring in one direction and suddenly I started like getting wind from people and getting clues and stuff like, oh, that guy might be fucking up here. So let's, let's, let's try to find him. So it's cool. Like there's that like investigating element of it. Like, you know, just riding around on your horse talking to people. You see them talking about rumors and stuff like that. The, the stealth is great, you know, sneaking around on rooftops, you got your grapple hook and everything. Throwing spears down on people. Like it's, it's, it's working for me better than, than the previous one did. So. But the thing is I've done two settings with this game, so I'm not super far into this. You know, I'm on my way towards the first of the six guys. It's just been one of those things where it's like everything it's doing is very, very good. But I can't deny the, the pull of like the last month or so, you know, I've Hades and Silksong and I found myself going to even like Megabonk. I put like 25 hours into Megabonk in the last week and I've had Yote sitting there. So it's like, I don't know if that necessarily says anything other than just like, you know, this is a game that if I'm gonna play this, I want to sit down and make a night of it. I want to have like a few hours to kind of get lost in this world and explore and stuff. And more often than not, it's like, you know, I got like maybe 45 minutes before I should be going to bed or before, you know, the workday starts or something. I'm gonna pick up a Mega Bonker Hades and do a run or two. So that's not really a knock on the game. It's just a different style of game. But like, you want to have some more time when you're playing this one.

Speaker B Yeah, I, I think I've experienced the same thing, Dan, where like it's looming in the background and we've known that Yotei is coming out. But then all these other smaller bite sized games or bite sized experiences have popped out where like, no, I could sink in a quick like hour into this and then the one hour becomes like 25 hours into MegaBunk like you said and just.

Speaker C Oh, finished. Sorry.

Speaker B Oh, sorry. Just like losing time traveling with games like Hades 2 where it's like. I thought it was 9pm oh no, it's too.

Speaker C Dan, did you play any Assassin's Creed Shadows?

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker D This year. Oh my God.

Speaker A Jesus. Really? Yeah, I did and I did like it more than I like. I typically actively dislike Assassin's Creed. This one I was like, ah, this is actually doing some fun stuff. But it's, it still felt. There's something that just feels kind of weighted down about that. You know, just running around in that game and the combat and everything, which maybe some people prefer, but there's definitely, like, I feel like Sucker Punch between Infamous and the Ghost series. Like, they have a real. Just kind of like floaty, quick in a good way. Like, you feel like you're just exploring. There's not a lot of obstacles anywhere. This is. This is the opposite of like a Red Dead 2, where everything feels very grounded and, you know, I'm blanking on the word. What's the fucking word? Laborious.

Speaker B Lugubrious.

Speaker A Sure, we'll go with that. Diagnic. Everything just feels really sharp in this, like, you know, rolling to get out of the way of an attack that. All the different ways you can, like, you know, it does the blue glint, the yellow glint, the red glint on the combat, and it's, you know, red as you roll out of the way. Triangle is a cool one because if you, like, hold if you see or. Sorry. Yellow is a cool one because if you hold triangle and you let go before the strike hits you, you'll disarm the person coming after you so their sword will fly out. And then. So it's like, imagine the guys come to attack you. You perfectly do the thing to knock the sword out of the way. You see where it lands? You roll over to it and you can pick up his sword and throw it into him while he doesn't even. That type of shit. And you've got like, Fuji dust and stuff. Like Mr. Fuji like. Like throwing stuff in their face. Yeah, it's like that shit all feels really good. And it does it without, like, you can turn on a target lock system that's in the accessibility, but by default it's off. And it works really well. The game very much is turning you to feel like you'll be surrounded. And it does a very good job of just moving the camera and moving you want to go towards.

Speaker B Is it illegal if we started selling pocket sand on the store?

Speaker C No, we're not responsible for how people use pocket sand in your pocket for building sandcastles. What are you talking. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B Okay, okay, okay.

Speaker A Cool.

Speaker B Mike, write that down, please.

Speaker D So cocaine as pocket sand. Gotcha.

Speaker C Cool.

Speaker B No, we're not.

Speaker A Anyway, I'm gonna play a lot more of this. It is very, very good. But. Yeah, it's just weird how much just those other games have just completely occupied, like, my brain space.

Speaker D There's a lot. Everybody's gonna have to prioritize certain games right now, right?

Speaker C Yeah, definitely.

Speaker D This is like I saw in chat said, this. This is kind of one of those holiday break games. It almost sounds like even though it's out now, where it's like, I have a few days off and not much.

Speaker A To do, you know, I could totally see that. Yeah. I think the odds are very good I'm going to beat this game and it'll probably be on my top 10 because I am really loving it, but I just need to find that. I need a little bit of a break. But I did just see, like, a collage of box art of all the games coming out in October, and it's like, fucking Jesus. Yeah. I'm not even close to done with, like, Hades and Megabunk as much as I played them. So, yeah. Wild.

Speaker B Well, let's add another cute little adventure game to explore around and lose some time. Last night on Mega Man, Mike Minati, you checked out. Ooh.

Speaker D Ooh. I think it's ooh. Because at one point I solved the puzzle in the game and I went, no, it gets this because I went, oh. Then I'm like, I think maybe that's why it's called that.

Speaker C All right.

Speaker D Maybe it's also called that because you're kind of a caterpillar guy, and you start off as just ahead, and then you get a segment and then it's, you know. But you eventually get two. In fact, the game was originally called O with four O's, but they cut one the O's, which I think is the right idea. I think that's maybe a layer of complication. This is a really neat kind of metroidvania 2D puzzle platformer thing where the main mechanic is, like I said, so, you know, you're kind of a caterpillar. You're. You're ahead and two balls behind you. And the balls are bombs, kind of Bomberman style. And the bombs are the only way you can sort of impact your own movement. They will shoot you up or to the right, or you can shoot the other segment with that. And basically, just from those two mechanics. And there's only two buttons. Place bomb, set, bomb off. You have kind of everything. And it's just about learning what you can do and then doing it. It's a little animal. Well, like, in that situation, and even though it's. It's Metroidvania, it's not so much like, yeah, there's. It's one map, but it's not like all these different branching paths. Generally, you'll enter an area and to your left will be what looks like a dead end, and then to your right is this Kind of long sequence that is actually just teaching you a mechanic. And once you go through it, it's not. You get some item at the end of it or you, you know, unlock progression. You just get to the end of it and you're like, oh, now that I know that this is something I can do, I can go back to that dead end. And it's not a dead end, actually. Oh, I love that it is very well designed in that way. So it's just super satisfying, just constantly learning all these things, figuring it out and then. Yeah. Seeing how you can do things that once felt impossible.

Speaker C Like what kind of mechanics, Mike? It's like trying to think, what was that, like, Zelda, like, game few years back that had the. The, you know, the manual pieces that you found in the world. World you played as a little fox.

Speaker D Tunic.

Speaker B Oh, tunic.

Speaker C So tunic had some, like, hidden mechanics where it's like, hey, if you, like, hold down this button in certain spots, you'll. You'll do a thing. And that you've been able to do this the whole time, but now you found the manual piece and just straight up tells you how to do it. Is it something. I guess, you know, obviously it's not giving you manual pieces, but is it like, you didn't know you had a double jump? Like, what is it?

Speaker D It's not quite like that, but I think a good example is at one point, the kind of section of a wall you need to blow up is above you and your bomb doesn't reach. But you realize that if you drop a bomb on this platform and it falls, and if you kind of get under it, well, then it falls on your head, then you can kind of carry it over to that place. And now it reaches it and everything is kind of like that. It's not. It's not like, oh, you didn't know that pushing A and B at the same time. Did a dodge or something like that. It's just all the way these interactions work. The way that the bombs impact, you impact other bombs can impact the environment. And sometimes it's even sort of just context clues, like, okay, in this room that has a certain layout, obvious. You kind of learn that you can bomb a wall over here, and then later in the game you just see that same room layout again, and you're like, well, I bet I could bomb that part of the room again and unlock something. And you do. So it's just tons of that. It's also, you know, it's like virtual.

Speaker A Highlight not telling you about pressing B and C to do your special attack, right?

Speaker D No, it's better than that. See, that was. That was bad. There's no way for me to better that. Yes. And this game's on Steam. It's like eight bucks right now. It's on. It's actually on sale Normally it's 10 bucks. That's, you know, it's. It's not super long. I went through it actually throughout the Mega man block. It was super satisfying. I basically beat it right at the two hour mark. Oh, that's great. Yeah. And you know, maybe it'll be a bit longer depending on how long it takes you to figure out the puzzles. But yeah, it's just a really nice kind of bite sized one of the A Metroid Brainia if you want to. The music is very good, very chill kind of fun tracks playing throughout it. Yeah, it's. It's overwhelmingly positive on Steam. It doesn't have a ton of reviews, but it seems like everyone who does. Check this one out.

Speaker C Yeah, I've heard. Really enjoys it things.

Speaker D Yeah, like I said, I think, you know, I gotta know there's a lot to play right now. But yeah, I think it's a great. You have an evening game, right. You have two or three hours. Check this thing out. Play through it. Super fun, just super satisfying. And you know, even though it's a puzzle game, I never felt overly stuck. I. There's moments where I was like, I'm not sure what's going on. And then I kind of figure out. The important thing to remember is that wherever you are, the game is teaching you a mechanic in that area usually. And remember what the game is actively teaching you.

Speaker C Right.

Speaker D You'll probably figure out what you need to do.

Speaker C I'm gonna play this. Two hours is like the exact right length of like, oh, I can fit that and on onto the Steam deck and play that at any moment. There's another one like that that I've been meaning Caput mortem, which is like a spooky game. And I'm like, I'll say that for October. Apparently that's like two hours.

Speaker A So.

Speaker C Yeah, maybe I'll fit those into like one of these morning streams at some point.

Speaker D I think you'll like it, Jeff.

Speaker C Okay.

Speaker B Something else I think you'd like, Jeff. Grubb is a game that I've been playing. Final Fantasy Tactics. The Ivalice Chronicles. Pile Pervs. Stand with me. Lock into place with me, gang. The game is here. It's finally here. The rumors were real. It's here. And Grub we talked about this very briefly on an episode of Game S Mornings last week. But if I reviewed games on this website, or I guess I could, I think this is an easy 4 out of 5. 5 out of 5. If you've ever been curious about the Final Fantasy Tactics games and didn't want to spin up an emulator or get the weird iPhone version that came out a couple years ago, this is definitely the way to play this game. The quality of life changes that they've added are great. The voice acting performance is fantastic. I think friend of the site Ben Starr is in this. He probably is, or could be Ben Starr from Expedition 33 or Death Training 2. I mean, but yeah, if you are like me in a tile sicko, this is the tile game. The story turns out kind of hits very hard when you yourself are kind of living through a very questionable person in charge at the helm through history. Yeah, tired of living through unprecedented times, gang. But this has all of the trappings from the original game where, yep, throw your dude over here and then after you've done your move, pick the position he lays in. And then if you hit someone from behind, does more damage. Good. And then you got your little cute dudes and like your Eeyore looking guys. It's great. It's fantastic. We're going to try and spin up a quick look for folks to see the game in action because it is pretty much just Final Fantasy Tactics, the original game. So I don't want to spoil the story because the story is very important to the game, but the overall gameplay, it is, I wouldn't say snappier because we have very snappy Tactics games now, like Tactical Breach Wizards and Into the Breach. So this isn't quite that. This is like, this is just streamlined, original Final Fantasy Tactics. And this does give me hope, gang, that maybe one day we will go back to that schoolyard and start with a snowball fight that takes us to a magical journey about crystals and friendship and our brother, maybe.

Speaker D I used to think that wasn't going to happen. I used to. I used to think people didn't really like Tactics Advanced that much until I. I met you and I realized, yeah.

Speaker C Yeah, that game rule, that's. That's the game that I did actually like, play, like at a red light and did not like look up and then realize, oh my God, it turned green. I'm like, I can't do this. I can't take this to work anymore.

Speaker A So, yeah, yeah, that game is the only reason I went to class for the first Semester of college. That's the only thing that got me through that semester. I went to school.

Speaker D I'm glad that this is hitting. I. I love Final Fantasy. It's one of my favorite game franchises. And somehow I just have not really played that much final fantasy tactics A2.

Speaker C I don't think was as good, but.

Speaker A No, no, that first one's incredible. I was excited for. Didn't really do it for me.

Speaker B Yeah, it didn't quite hit.

Speaker D Yeah.

Speaker B But I'll stand by this. I think Tactics advance and then Evely Chronicles with this one are probably for me top five Final Fantasy games. And yeah, go back to Evely smore. I mean 12 was cool with your 12 vest man and the Bunny Ladies. Yeah. You know what? Throw in more tiles.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B Phantom Menace and Bunny Ladies in Final Fantasy and I think we'll have hits.

Speaker D Did I ever tell you about the Final Fantasy 14 raid series where you just went to Evely and someone chat said that?

Speaker C And I was. I don't think I've ever heard you talked about this. So yeah. What is this all about?

Speaker D So you know, like when they do the raids In Final Fantasy 14, there's different kinds. Like the raid with the most people. I forget eight times the 24 people together raids, they're usually very thematic. They have their own story lines. So you like watch like you talk to people and then you go and do a rush of kind of four bosses. And it's thematic. But yeah, you're like going to Evelyn these ones and all these characters from Tactics and mostly Tactics, but there is also some 12 stuff in there. It was a very, very cool raid series. Again, it was just all that. The least flavor. You're part of a theater troupe even. That was good stuff.

Speaker B Yeah. This. When. When I saw that the evilly stuff made its way into 14, I thought, okay, this will be. This will finally be the thing that gets me to sink in a bunch of time. But then video games keep coming out and I don't have time to play the one video game forever you would.

Speaker D Have to have played. You probably need to play like 300 hours of 14 before you could do the Evely stuff.

Speaker B I don't wanna.

Speaker D Maybe that's pushing it. Maybe let's say 50 or 100.

Speaker B There are a lot of kings and knights in Final Fantasy Tactics. But Mike Minato, you've been going on your own King's Quest with King's Quest 1.

Speaker D Yeah.

Speaker A Why?

Speaker D Stupid idiots. Playing all these new games. You fools. There actually was like a little. It was like Sunday night I'm like, what am I gonna play? And I knew I should start, like, Solid Hill F or maybe Ghostly or all these other things.

Speaker C And I'm like, but your chat demanded an old game.

Speaker D No, they did it. Yeah, I bet they didn't. I. I was like, you know, I really need to satisfy my own stupid cravings right now. You know, I like graphical adventure games a lot. I talk about how much I like Monkey island, things like that. Obviously been playing through mist and sounds. Guest so. And I've always respected King's Quest and I've always been curious about it. I played King's Quest 6, which was very, very early CD game, and I finally played through all that recently. But King's Quest 1 is kind of the first one of these. It's when the series went from, you know, or the. The genre went from text based games or maybe a game where you look at a picture while you do the text based stuff too. You are actually moving a character around an environment to solve the puzzles. It came out in 1984. There aren't very many games that I played that came out before I was born. So that aspect that I find interesting. But yeah, it's. It is one of these. You basically are walking around a 6x8 grid that loops, so it's almost like a globe. And there's just kind of puzzles to solve and puzzles like.

Speaker A Like spelling Rumple Stiltskin backwards for an hour.

Speaker D Oh, that's.

Speaker C Yeah, yeah.

Speaker D So some of the. Wait, some of the puzzles.

Speaker A This is when I tuned in. It was like an hour of, like, trying to spell Rumpelstiltskin backwards.

Speaker D Yeah. So here's, Here's. I made a map of the world and this is my Rumpelstiltskin cipher. Yeah. So at one point.

Speaker C Wait, did you know you were supposed to be spelling Rumpelstiltskin backwards?

Speaker D Let me explain.

Speaker A Also, you just said the phrase Rumpelstiltskin cipher, and I just want to point that out.

Speaker B Nope, that's. That's gonna be the title of the episode now.

Speaker D So you. At one point, you come across a. He comes of a gnome. He's like, oh, if you can guess my name, I'll give you a prezi. You get three tries. And like, you. At first you're like, that's probably Rumpelstiltskit. He's like, oh, that's close, but it's not it. I'm like, he gives. Even when you fail, he gives you a key so you can progress through the game. But whatever you, like, want to get his name Right. Well, you go to a witch's house later and you find a note. It's like, think backwards. So I was like, okay, I set the right ripple. Stillskin backwards, right? And then he's like, you're closer. I'm like, okay, what? That's. I was trying to figure this out forever. Finally someone told me, because I asked, you're supposed to write out the Alphabet and figure out what the inverse letter is in H letter of Ruppl still skid. It's like Y is Z, Z is A, and so on and so forth. Now, not only that, even after I did all of that, it turns out that I was spelling the Rumple part wrong because Google says it was El, not le. Detroit just scored. Excuse me. So that was driving me crazy. Yeah, there's up two spots. The thing is, this game, even in 1984, was doing like a. Hey. Each puzzle kind of has multiple solutions, so you don't need to know Rumple Stillskin's stupid backwards cipher name. The key that you get from him is good enough to go into a cave, so you can go up some stairs and go to the floating island where the giant is who has the magic chest that always refills with gold, which is one of the three items you need in order to complete your king's quest. So even like there's something about the idea of a 1984 game having multiple solutions to puzzles that is actually blowing my mind a little bit and is super satisfying. And you know, there's a score system and all that really is, is, hey, you can 100% this game, which again, even in 1984, like, oh, you're thinking about people 100% ing the game. So you could get the max score run if you want to, or you can kind of just do what you want to do. You can kill the dragon with a dagger instead of just kind of putting him out with a bucket of water and get less points. But hey, you're progressing, you're going to beat the game. It's fine. See, it's definitely archaic. I think a lot of people are going to find it very ugly. I find it infinitely interesting and neat. And if somebody loves this genre, it's. It was really cool to like go back and play the kind of forefather of it. Unless I went and played Colossal Cave Adventure, a text based game. Right.

Speaker C It's.

Speaker D It's hard to find too many other predecessors.

Speaker C Yeah, I mean that's like literally what you just described there. That's the one that the genre is Named after.

Speaker D Right. The adventure. I think.

Speaker C Yeah, yes, yes. I think it is. Like when you're playing it, do like, does it feel like eventually or like there was some logic to it or is it just. No, Roberta Williams was on cocaine the entire time.

Speaker D There's like, there's some logic to it. So the other thing too, these games are parsers, right. And that means that you have to type out, type it out your commands. So a good example is at one point I was in the bottom of a well and I wanted to see if there's like I was in a body of water and you could die constantly in these games. So I'm like, okay, swimming this one for a bit. Eventually you get tired and die. I'm like, go underwater. Submerge. Right. The only word it could it will accept and is looking for is dive. So sometimes it's just like, what exactly do you want me to type here right now? Video game.

Speaker C Like I. I still feel like you said it all exactly right. I think there are going to be younger people who still just don't really know what you mean. Like there are no buttons on the screen that say, like, here are the options. Here's the context sensitive buttons that will give you an idea of what the game's looking for. He literally has to type out what he wants the character to do and hope that that's what the game is after.

Speaker D Yeah, like later games kind of get better about synonyms and things like that. This one, it's pretty specific. Like at one point I had a key. I want to open a door that was locked. And I was like, open door, use key on door. It just wasn't liking any of that until I said unlock door. It was looking for the word unlock and then it was happy. So sometimes you can go a little crazy because like, okay, am I on the wrong track here or am I just not typing in the right exact word? So that, that was Maniac Mansion, which was lucasart's first big point and click adventure game. That was the big innovation there was that they just put verbs as part of the UI and you clicked on the verb and then you clicked on the environment. So you would just click on the word open. Then you click on the door. Well now you open the door.

Speaker C So that became standardized eventually. I remember the first time I encountered that was Robin Hood on the nes and being like, is this. I just could not understand it as like a little boy.

Speaker D Some of the King's Quest games had NES ports. Kings Quest 5, which is pretty late in the series had an NES port and I'm like, how the heck would that have worked out? So yeah, I, I, I, I think few people would appreciate this game like I did. But somebody who loves this, John Ryan, who's been very fascinated by early computer games. Recently I've been watching a lot of videos about Ultima and things like that. I found it very interesting. Still, GOG is where I found this, you know, easily played. You just download it and runs off scum VM or whatever. So worry about how you make work on modern computers or anything.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker C Builds is a package for you so you could just go and start playing it.

Speaker B Yep. Wonderful. I'm thank you for that history lesson, Mike, about a game that I will probably never play. But I'm happy that you're happy playing it.

Speaker D Yeah, the people. If you were watching the seventh guest stream, you're like, this game looks old. Don't look at King's Quest. He won't like that.

Speaker C What do you guys think Dan would have an easier time doing the Man Breaker or King's Quest?

Speaker D Man Breaker.

Speaker C Man Breaker.

Speaker D I think, I think I'd get very.

Speaker A Frustrated, but I could do it. Yeah.

Speaker B Dan would lock in after a while. Like he'd, he'd settle into a rhythm with it.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah. Obviously different than like speedrunning but like, you know, with speedrunning I get used to having to do the same thing over and over and over again and just get better at. Would drive me nuts. But I could beat it. King's Quest. I would just change. I would leave the industry, change careers. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B Wow.

Speaker D Back to the movie theater buttering popcorn protection program.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B Folks, we're going to take another quick. We're going to take a bricky break and then we'll be back with more games talk and video game news as reported by one Jeff Grubb right after this. Grub. It's okay. Just look at it. Ok. It's fine.

Speaker C Wait, Dan, what are you doing here?

Speaker A Oh, wait, like, like existentially or. What do you mean?

Speaker B No, Dan like hear a giant bomb covering games.

Speaker A Oh, oh. What I do for a living. Okay. Well, I'm here because of Game Informer. That's right. Way back in 1993, I saw game Informer magazine and subscribed for the first time. And it has been a huge part of my life ever since. From, you know, working the register at Funkoland and selling subscriptions to starting working there full time in 2009. Game Informer has been there for me the whole time. They mean a ton to me. So it hurt me. Just like I know it hurt a lot of you when the unexpected news came down not too long ago that Game Informer was shutting down. But, nay, fear not, I say. That's right. Game Informer is back. And with 100% of the staff that was there when it shut down.

Speaker B Now, Danny boy, I see that you're holding a magazine right there. Tell me about how that page feels.

Speaker A I'm telling you, I have held hundreds upon hundreds of Game informer magazines from 1993 to today. And this is without a doubt the best. I'm feeling this right now. This is. This is a smooth cover. This is a thick, nice paper here. The print is just good. This is. This is a wonderful quality print magazine. It makes my heart feel good.

Speaker C And I know that Game Informer is a team that I can rely on to say something substantial about games and the people who make them. Because GI has a stellar crew of editors. This. These are people I love to have on the couch at Giant Bomb at night, over over at Summer Game Fest. It's people I can always rely to have something interesting to say. That's why I know when they have those excellent cover stories just like they always did and always will continue to do. So it's going to be some of the best coverage in video games.

Speaker B And another fun bonus. Game informer donates 5% of every subscription purchase directly to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Speaker A You know, earlier this year, the future seemed very uncertain for both Game Informer and Giant Bomb. That's putting it mildly. And as someone whose life and gaming hobby has been greatly impacted by both of those outlets, I am thrilled that we are both back and doing our thing online. In your podcast, apps and in print in your hand. That is right. Gaming news reviews, everything in between sent straight to your mailbox every month. To subscribe, go to game informer.com subscribe now.

Speaker B Magazines now begins the roguelite like block of the game portion of the bombcast. We got three big hitters here, gang. Before we move on to news, there's so much we gotta move. We had to take a break in preparation. We gotta take a take a quick deep breath. And now we're back in games. Dan, you said this earlier, but you've been playing megabonk.

Speaker A Yeah, and I just remembered I was looking at my notes and I was like, wait, I feel like I talked about this. I talked about it last week a little bit.

Speaker D Yes, you did talk about it a bit less.

Speaker C Yeah. So last week you Went in the Discord. You're like, guys, play Mega Bonk. And I went and played it. So you and I talked about it on. Done a little bit on last week's. Yes. On this show last week and didn't. Since then, apparently you've played a lot more.

Speaker A Yes. Yeah. Because I feel like I probably was just starting it before last week, but yeah.

Speaker C Describing what it was.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah, 3D vampire survivors, all that. So it's like I am much, much deeper in it now and it's depth becomes more apparent, like Vampire Survivors as you play more. And then the actual runs themselves are, are changing in a way that like, you know, when you're trying to get very specific quests done where it's like, okay, now I'm trying to get this one where it's. I have to activate all these shrines on a map to unlock this quest or whatever. So then it's like, okay, well I guess I'll use calcium. This skateboarding skeleton because he's got the best move speed. So I'm just kind of like flying around the map and I'm prioritizing double jumps and air, you know, you know, height of jumps and stuff like that. And I'm just. It's less about sheer power and beating a boss and more about mobility and stuff. Then you're going to go after one quest that's more about like getting more, you know, shield, like more defense and stuff like that. So I'm going to go after the Aegis Shield and I'm going to basically try to beef myself up as much as possible, get as much armor and shielding as possible so I can get that quest done. So I've just got a huge checklist of stuff basically right now. And on top of that, I haven't like beaten the game.

Speaker B You.

Speaker A There's different tiers of each area. So there's the forest tier 1, 2, 3, desert 1, 2, 3. And you have to do different things to kind of move past that. And like, you know, the first time you get to a boss and like a tier 2 and it's got like 160,000 hp and you think you're hitting him with everything and it's barely even moving that bar down. It's like, all right, well, I guess I got to rethink everything about like the first 10 minutes of this run before I get to him. So the, the depth there is great. I'm constantly unlocking new items, new weapons, new characters, new quests. So it is. It's that vampire survivors thing where it's like, you start it up and you're like, this is fun, but how much, you know, could this have legs? And then it's through these quests and the way it unlocks things over time, that that's where the legs become apparent. And that's very much happening with me with megabonk. And, yeah, it's. It's gonna be. It's gonna do well in my top 10, I think. It is. It is. And also I started playing on the Steam deck. It is. Oh, perfect.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker C Yeah, that's where. That's the only place I've played it. It rules on the Steam deck.

Speaker A It's. Yeah. I had no idea it was. Yeah.

Speaker C With the sticks on there, like, it just feels like a good place. Like, the controls are good for that game.

Speaker A Yeah. I thought, like. Because I was like, there's so many characters and so much action on screen. Is this gonna be a clusterfuck? And then I was telling Alex Boniello that he should download this and play it. And first of all, he immediately text me back. He's like, oh, this is a perfect video game. And he realized that, like, it's 400 megabytes. It is. This is not a big game.

Speaker B Oh, shit.

Speaker A Yeah. So, like, I just. I continue to love this. It is my go to. It's, you know, if I'm up in the morning before, you know, we start recording something, I'm playing it. If I got an hour before bed, I'm playing it. If I got something on the background, it's a perfect podcast.

Speaker C Oh, yeah.

Speaker A Putting a TV show or something on the background game, it's. It's fantastic.

Speaker C We should play Risk of Rain two, which is, I think.

Speaker A Okay, I would love to.

Speaker C A first person multiplayer version of this.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B I was going to say, like, every time we've talked about megabunk on the website, someone will bring up Risk of Rain two. And that's at least four players, right?

Speaker C I think so, yes.

Speaker A Am I just thinking of the first one that was.

Speaker C No, the first one isn't the first one 2D. Like, this one is three.

Speaker B Yes.

Speaker C Yeah. Oh, and then the second one, I think they went first person 3D, which.

Speaker A I thought it was third person 3D. Yeah, it's third person.

Speaker C It's third person. Okay. Okay. So I'm just thinking of it when 3D. Okay. So, yeah, the first one's 2D. The second one's 3D. I love when that happens. When they go from an indie game and then they do a sequel and they follow it up with 3D version of that. Helldivers things. Yep.

Speaker B Exact friends.

Speaker A Yep. Of course, I. I would love to try that because, yeah, I'm. I'm all in on this, this type of gameplay here. And again, it's just that 10 minute run. Like, you know, vampire survivors had the 30 minutes and you could do things like the hyper mode or the double speed mode and things like that, but like 10 minutes on these, it's just like, you get in that loop and it is so easy to just be like, I have to. One more. I just unlocked this weapon. I gotta try out the sniper rifle. I gotta try, like.

Speaker B Yeah, it's only dead.

Speaker A Minutes. It's potent. It is potent.

Speaker D All right.

Speaker B Well, speaking about potency, you know, it is very potent and I guess a lot of people associate with my personal brand on the Internet. Gambling. And you know what's good about gambling? Slot machines, baby. I saw people saying that they would lose me if I started playing Clover Pit. Joke's on you, gang. I've been playing Clover Pit for months.

Speaker A One of those games we got code for like a month and a half ago because it was supposed to come out around Silksong and it got pushed back. So like. Yeah, most of my time playing it was in like mid August, I think. Yeah.

Speaker D Yep.

Speaker B Dan, you and I have been playing Clover Pit. This is a slot machine roguelite, where I guess let's just compare it to Balatro, because it's the easy comparison from run to run you're building, you have to hit a target of currency. From there, you can unlock items to affect your different spins. It costs a certain amount of money to do a set of spins. And like, with actual slot machines, you can. Depending on the tier of how much money you're throwing in, you either get like a single line, the full board, or is it. I. I forget, Dan, is it just a single line and then the full board or.

Speaker A I always just done the full payment unless I literally don't have enough gold to cover it. Like, I. Okay, that seems crazy to not play full. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B I. I've also only done that and unfortunately this does scratch the casino itch. But Dan, how have you been finding your time with it?

Speaker A I mean, it is very good and it. Blotro is the right comparison just because of the. The formats of it. I mean, it's. It's very different in that, like, there is more of a narrative set up. Like you are in this like, torture room basically, and the floor drops out if you can't afford the debt and stuff like that. So there's like a creepy almost like. Like inscription type vibe to it. It's first person. It's. So it's definitely different than Balatro in that way, but in terms of like. Like in Balatro, you're leveling up, oh, four of a kind, three of a kind, two pair. Here you're leveling up individual, like, okay, so sevens or treasure chests or clovers, but then also patterns, because it's, you know, it's three. It's three rows of five slots, you know, so 15 total symbols. So you can level up the one that's like, okay, straight across or the one that's like a diamond down or like the all 15. So there's all these different things you can level up. And that is kind of how it works when you start a run is like, okay, you'll get a charm. And you have like seven charm slots you can equip at any time. And it's like, okay, this charm makes it so sevens show up more often. And, okay, so I finished this set here, and a phone rings in the room. You pick it up and you can pick one of three. Three different boons, basically. And this one will be like, oh, okay, this one doubles the value of all sevens and treasure chests. It's like, well, I'm going to take that because I'm focusing on sevens. And then there's a chart next to the slot machine at all times that shows the value, the current value of anything. And so, yeah, you can, like, basically, through the charms and the boons and stuff like that, you can start tweaking the frequency that certain symbols will show up and also their value. So even if, like, you know, a clover or something is the least valuable one, you can make it after, you know, a few sets of polls or whatever that, like, oh, it's the most valuable and it shows up the most. And you can get charms and stuff that make the other ones show up less. So you can kind of really fashion things to what you're shooting for in any given run. But at the same time, it is like, look, poker and Balatro, obviously, element of luck to it. Any gambling, there's an element of luck, obviously. Slot machines are the most bullshit, luck, nonsense thing in a casino. You can't be good at slots, so.

Speaker C They'Re specifically rigged against you in real life. I. I was gonna ask, and I know what you're getting at me, but as you, as you guys, as you answer this, like, thread this through, do you feel like they try to, like, maybe lean it in your Favor instead. I don't know. How do you feel about it?

Speaker A I don't think. I didn't get a sense that they were gimmicking it at all. It didn't feel like it was. I mean, you can do things where it's like some of the charms will give you like, oh, every seven seconds spin, you get a bonus to your luck stat. And the luck stat will in general, like make, you know, good, good spins show up more often.

Speaker C Okay.

Speaker A But I don't. It's not random. I think like, if your luck stat is up, it will be giving you more favorable stuff.

Speaker C Okay.

Speaker A But if you're not getting luck up, I don't think it's like gimmicking it. So that's the thing is like, it, it is a little frustrating that like you can be making all the smart decisions you could possibly make. And at the end of the day it does kind of like you can go up and you've got seven spins to hit this debt amount and you just. Nothing's coming up.

Speaker B And it's just like, I think that's like a major detriment to the game because in some roguelikes, even like maybe your first or second game in Balatro or first or second run Hades, Hades 2, you can get obscenely far just because, like luck is in your favor and you can use the mechanics of the game. Here you are really just limited to the fate of the slot machine. And if you just get a bunch of bad spins despite having a good build, it does kind of like take the momentum out for me.

Speaker C Yeah, I think people will point out that like, well, poker's random. Right. So what's the difference with Balatro? But I think, well, poker is not as random as slot machines.

Speaker D Right?

Speaker C Like we.

Speaker A It's not as random mathematically, it's not as random. And also if you are playing actual poker against actual people, I mean the real game is in the psychology and how you play, you know, bluffing and things like that. So that's, that's a different deal for sure. Slot machine is. There is just randomness there.

Speaker B As the resident slot machine, I'm not going to say expert enthusiast here in comparison to another slot machine game, Luck be a Landlord, I think I would from a run to run basis, I think Luck be a Landlord is an easier time because there still is some ramp up because of like the weird setting that you're in and like the jail cell or weird place that you're locked into. At least you have a bathroom you can pee in. The game if you want.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B With Clover Pit, I feel like Clover Pit takes a little too long to get a run up and going and I kind of just need like that drip feed faster. I need that dopamine hit faster to like lock in. But there's. There's too many things going on in Clover Pit. That being said, I do like the grungy setting of it, and I don't think I'd have that bad of a time being locked inside with a slot machine.

Speaker C I think all that matters is it has an 85 on open critic. I have it in in Fantasy Critic. It has put me very far ahead of everyone and now I have the projected points just way, way out there. No one's guarantee. Guaranteed victory. Guaranteed victory for your boy.

Speaker A One more note on that. Is that like, you know, with these other games we're talking about Megabunk and Hades that like the rogue light elements, like the stuff that actually progresses and it's like, oh, I've unlocked this thing. Are pretty exciting and fun, like with Hades too, you know. We're gonna talk about that in a second. It's like you're getting all this new stuff in the hub world. You're getting all these new, you know, aspects to your weapons and stuff. Things that are making the game more fun to play. I mean, I've played a good amount of Clover Pit, I'd say over 10 hours. And like the permanent unlocks are like, there are these four drawers that you can, yeah, get a key for, basically. And so that way, okay, if a run is ending, you can take one of your charms and you can store it in a drawer and get it next time. So basically it's like, oh, okay, now I have three drawers unlocked so I can save three of my charms for the next run. But it doesn't really change anything about the next run. Whereas like Hades, Megabunk, these other ones that I think are better, they do change the game going forward.

Speaker D Forward.

Speaker B All right, gang, final game on the docket over here. And you know what? Hey, Industry, just, just. We're good for the year. We're done. Just pack it up. We're okay. We'll. We'll see you in January of 20.

Speaker C I'm still playing Silk Song. Please stop.

Speaker A We do this for a living and we're so underwater with this shit. Imagine, just imagine being someone with a normal job and just wants to play games when they come home from work and on top of responsibilities and stuff. How the is anyone going to play through all this?

Speaker C I think they, I Think they, that they don't do just pick a game and just like stick with it, like. Yeah, that sounds nice.

Speaker B Yeah, I. I think that's why, you know. Well, we will talk about Hades 2 in a second. But I think that's why your war zones call of duties, your Fortnites continue to be so popular because.

Speaker C Or if it just goes to Yote, someone's going to pick that up and be like, that's what I'm playing for the rest of the year. And that sounds lovely. That makes a really good time.

Speaker A That's probably healthy.

Speaker B Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Please, please be healthy, gang, because I don't think I am being healthy with Hades too. I had already spent 60 hours in pre release and I thought when I came back to it, when 1.0 came out, I was like, I don't remember shit of what was happening or who I was like romancing and what my progress was. Just start from the beginning. What's the worst I could do? And I have quickly gotten close back up to 60 hours with a new save in Hades too. Gang. How have you all been finding your time? I love it.

Speaker C It's. It's a really instantly fantastic game. It. I think the way that I've been like processing my feelings from the early access to now is they've obviously done some stuff that I, as someone who's not a game designer, someone that doesn't really focus fully understand all the tweaks you can make to something like the dash. Whatever they've done to it, they have made it feel right. And I bet that it's a combination of animation and cool D cooldowns and like sound design and all these things to just let me as the player know. Here is the rhythm of the game. Here's the beats per minute of the game. This is the sort of rhythm we want you to be hitting with this dash as you're attacking enemies. And once they nailed that, it's like everything else fell into place with, with playing this game. And then you have literally the friendliest roguelite I've ever played where it. The progression is so off the charts feel good. Constantly hitting the dopamine, constantly giving you something new to strive for, constantly giving you ways to track what you should be striving for. So it lets you know like even like which door to pick it. It's a game that never ever wastes your time. No in any other regard other than being a roguelite. So you start to run over, but like that is them just screaming at you as the Player, like, look, trust us, we would never waste your time in any of these other ways. So please just get on. Get on the. The loop here. And we promise you're. You're gonna actually feel like you're not wasting your time with that Roguelite stuff as well. And I think they've hit the mark because, like, we have people like Sean who did not like the original Hades necessary. I don't think he hated it or anything like that, but he didn't love the original Hades. This one he has totally fallen in love with. And I think it is still more Hades, but it's also a game that's so refined that it's going to capture even more people this time around.

Speaker D Yeah, it's definitely a sequel. That's. Sorry, Jam. It's definitely like a sequel playing. Not. It's not playing it safe, but, you know, yeah, more Hades. That was a very good formula, actually. I would just like to see that again with some different characters, some different weapons, some different ideas. Then they find a lot of fun ways to kind of plus it up and make it feel like a different experience. You know, what things are being carried over. Exactly. And what things are slightly different. You know, like instead of that Mirror of the Fates, you have that arcana system. And that's an interesting progression system right there. Even just, you know, big things like. Yeah, you know, there's the typical. You go. You're going down. You're just kind of like the four different areas and you fight the big boss, but then can also go up. And that's sort of a different thing, but also substantial. It takes you. Like I did my first go up, my first real go up playthrough recently. Right. Kind of get in there, you can mess around, but like, I'm like, man, this is just kind of like Hades 3 almost up here. It's wild that this is also part of the game.

Speaker A Yeah. You know, we don't have to go into super specifics about, like, I don't. I don't. Going up, I feel like isn't a spoiler because it's right there in the hub world. It says. Yeah, right.

Speaker C It says go up, question mark. I originally thought it might have been a spot spoiler when Nikki first brought it up forever ago.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker C And then you go in the game, you walk five feet and you see the words go up. You're like, I get what's happening here.

Speaker A I. I was thinking that, like, okay, it's gonna have a similar structure to the first one where it's gonna have like these four biomes, basically. And then you beat the big boss or whatever. And it's like, I went down there and I focused on going down. I beat Kronos the first time. And it's like, okay, yeah, I'll kind of mess around with this. Going up a little more. And it's like, oh, my. Okay, they. I'm deep, and I think I've gotten to as far as up can go. Pretty much I haven't beaten that yet, but I think I've gotten, you know, to the final sequence of that. And it's like, there is so much more going on in this game.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A Expected. And I, once again, very glad that I skipped the early access period and just waited till 1.0, because it's like, all just hitting me at once. And it's, you know, grub kind of touch on this, like, the. The roguelite elements and. And how good that is. When I finish a run, it's.

Speaker C It's.

Speaker A So the word addictive is overused, but you know what I mean? Like, it's. It's. You finish that, you die. And then you don't want to stop when you go back to the hub world, because it's like, well, I got all this shit. I got all. What concoctions can I do? Let's see, I've got. I can get a new aspect of my weapon. I can unlock this thing where I got to at least see what I can unlock now. But then you do it, and you don't want to turn off the system because then it's like, I got to try them out. I just got all this.

Speaker D Yeah, I got to try.

Speaker A I got to do a run here. And it's like, when do you stop fucking playing this game?

Speaker D Like, 30 minutes or more, Right? A lot of times that's not just like, oh, we bust a quick one out. Like, oops, it's 4:00am Yep.

Speaker B Yeah, yeah, I. Jordan Miner, I saw him saying that. This is from Hades 1 to 80s 2. This is kind of for him. Breath of the wild to tears of the kingdom. And I could see some people being thrown off by that. But for me, inject this straight into my veins. Because like y' all have said, there is progress to be made on every single run. And I don't know how much fucking dialogue is recorded in this game, because most of the time, people have something to say about something I did or even something minor I did in a run.

Speaker A The level of detail is crazy, where it's like, you know, they will sometimes talk about your Weapon or the familiar with you. But then I got this thing in the last run that I saw for the first time where it's like, I just got bigger. And it's like, I got to a character like you. I can do one of these three things for you. One of them was just like, make Millennial way bigger. And it makes your attacks, you know, have more range and stuff. And I was like, oh, I'm sure it's just like a range thing. And it's like, no, my character model got bigger.

Speaker C That rules.

Speaker B Oh, my God.

Speaker C That rule.

Speaker B I had the opposite of that one.

Speaker A Oh, I didn't know they did. Okay, that's amazing. And then, like, even on the character profile, like, dialogue screens, I'm like, I think they made her bigger on this too. That level of detail. And then I talked to someone. He's like, weird. I'm not used to, like, looking up at you, you know, like, I'm okay. Huh?

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A Everyone reacts to everything. It's unbelievable with that stuff.

Speaker B It's. It's funny because I got the opposite of that, Dan, where that character offered me, like, oh, you can get smaller and your dodge chance goes up. And then her Millinue's character portrait is significantly smaller. And they pitch her voice up. So. And. And like, where all the characters, like, were you always this height? What's going on?

Speaker A When she's bigger, her voice gets deeper too. Just the level of detail is unbelievable here. And just everything, like, I don't play early access games, but I very much support the practice because I think it leads to something being so fucking polished by this point. Like even little things like the cross save thing. Because I play on Switch, I play on Steam Deck, and I play on PC and like, it does it in game. So it's like when you quit out of the game on Switch, it just instantly in game was like, hey, we synced it, you're good. And then I go to my PC, I play it on my PC. Not. No issues at all. It's incredible. It's.

Speaker D That's super nice. I do love that, just having that work. Z. I started on PC with that big stream, but, you know, now mostly I want to play it on my Switch 2 in bed. And. Yeah, just works right there. Though I usually don't have this problem. It took me a little adjusting, like, okay, this smaller screen. Sometimes I'm getting hit by things and I'm not sure why. Especially, you know, later in runs when there's a lot happening. Part of it is almost just a focus thing. But yeah, just being able to switch between those two platforms. Super nice.

Speaker C I think we are at, at that point with Mike mentioned the other day, it's something we've talked about a bunch that just duologies of you put out a game and then probably the best thing as the developer is take a long time to refine that concept to its sharpest point you. You possibly can. And then after that you can go in a different direction, do something new, because a third one probably would be diminishing returns. So. So you don't need to go and do it a third time. So put everything into that second game. Make sure it is as. As polished as it possibly can be. Do decades worth of voice recording. Yeah. And. And I think this is a lesson learned by big studios and smaller studios and it's. It's kind of working across the board with Silk Song, Tears of the Kingdom, the God of war games. Yeah. It just. Everything is sort of just hitting the marks and I'm happy to see. I think it's the right choice for most developers.

Speaker B Like, even like the, the minor changes that they did to combat. Like I never did you all use the weird diamond cast thing in Hades 1. I never.

Speaker A Diamond cast.

Speaker B It's like, like here your cast is like the circle that I would use it. Yeah, I use that all the time. The first one, it's like, God, I don't quite remember how to. You shot like a projectile thing. Yeah, the cast was like.

Speaker D Yeah, just the cast. The projectile thing. It wasn't like an area of deal. Yeah, it would like debuff people sometimes or something like that, right? Yeah.

Speaker A Oh, I use it constantly in this one. Like that circle.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A And then you can make a fireball. You shoot and then it like forms at their feet. Like, that's fucking awesome.

Speaker D And it's funny how just like adding something that is very typical to games, but just wasn't in Hades one. Like, you have mana now, right. Like, oh, that really changes the complexion of this experience.

Speaker B Now also, everyone in this game is hot. I hate it.

Speaker A I'm opening my mind to that character's being hot. Yeah, you know what? Because I'm. My brain doesn't typically think that. And like, I knew that was the thing everyone talked about with the first one. And so like, I wanted to investigate gate this time and I'm like, I'm going to think about if these characters are hot this time. And I tell you folks, I think I saw the Cellini there and I saw Hera and I was like, if these were real People, they'd be very attractive.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker B I want to avoid Hades 2 spoilers as much as possible because the game is still super duper fresh for people. But you said something at the end, near the end of the Hades 2 Marathon stream you did, where you were saying that you started to build distrust for whatever reason of Hecate or. Yeah, that's how you say it. Right? And then ever since you said that, which Mommy with abs. Ever since you said that and I've played the game, I'm like, no, I don't trust this person.

Speaker A Wait, is that. No, I like you. But then, like, there's also Nemesis, which is kind of a similar.

Speaker C Nemesis is like clearly, like supposed to be adversarial and so you're supposed to feel that way.

Speaker B But Rhea Ripley with a sword, right?

Speaker D Since then, I am fully back on board trusting her. I do not believe.

Speaker C Yeah, I also think it might go.

Speaker D Which is the other way maybe why it's gonna happen now again. But no, right now I would be upset and shocked. I. No, I think she's on my side. I think she loves me paternally also.

Speaker B I. It seems like a small addition to this game. I don't think this is spoilers, but you have familiars in this game now.

Speaker D Yeah, I just got my first.

Speaker B Jesus Christ. I cannot not roll up to fight grandpa of time without my little frog buddy.

Speaker A Oh, frog is the. The best one. Because the other ones, look, I like the dog, like the bird, like the other ones that come later. But like, that frog gets past that mini game where it's. I don't need to be singing with ghosts every second, you know?

Speaker D Yeah.

Speaker A Why don't you come back to the Hub?

Speaker D Yeah, I was confused at first. I'm like, I didn't get to play the mini game. Oh, the frog did it for me.

Speaker A I wish frog could kill Dora because I don't need that ghost hanging out. I don't like.

Speaker D I like Dora.

Speaker A You're Dora is Aubrey Pl's character from Parks and Reckon.

Speaker D I hate that great character.

Speaker C He's funny.

Speaker A Yeah, and funny. That character sucks.

Speaker D That is literally just Audrey Plaza as a sitcom character.

Speaker A No, everything. This sucks.

Speaker D This suck. You suck. This sucks.

Speaker A You suck. Shut up. No, Dora. I hate Dora.

Speaker B I don't like what's her face that leaves trash in. In like our little camp.

Speaker A Oh, yeah. I don't like her either. Tank Girl.

Speaker D I like how she calls me back babe, though. I like her weird like she calls you babe.

Speaker B Vibe.

Speaker D Yeah, she called me babe all the time.

Speaker A I. I don't like that Eris character.

Speaker D Yeah, I like all these characters.

Speaker B I, I like who.

Speaker D I disagree.

Speaker B I, you know, we, I became very familiar with like the gods that were would present boons in Hades 1 and I was kind of disappointed that one of them didn't give you boons from your runs in Hades 2 until I ran into them. When you go up and. Oh boy, showing a lot of skin, a lot of skin.

Speaker D Talking about, do you see Aries's dick?

Speaker B You see like the, like the vines, the cum gutters, the vagina bones. The vagina bones. Yeah. With one of them come the vagina bones. The come gutters.

Speaker C Anyway, Mike's face, he loves it, but he kind of hates it. I think he's repulsed and loves it.

Speaker D Okay.

Speaker B Oh, I'm sorry. Were we done with Hades too? I. I thought gutters was, I think we had, was a natural conclusion for that.

Speaker D That's, that's.

Speaker C I think we had to be. Yeah.

Speaker B All right. Okay.

Speaker C I have news. Yeah. Hello everybody. What's going on?

Speaker D I. I don't know.

Speaker C EA is going private in a 55 billion dollar Saudi backed deal. Saudi Arabia through its public investment fund is acquiring ea in that 55 billion dollar leveraged buyout. We'll get back to that in a second. Marking the second largest deal in gaming history. It's one of the largest leveraged buyouts ever to. For a company to go private, really honest, it is the biggest one ever. The move is part of Saudi Arabia's larger Strategy to invest $38 billion in becoming a gaming powerh control of cultural IP. Analysts view the deal as a soft power play. Now that is some analysts really no one knows exactly what's going on here. We're just trying to kind of piece together based on, on the moves and context clues and then Saudi Arabia's stated goals. You know, they want to have their hand in, in cultural relevancy. And that means, hey, EA owns all, you know, Madden and FIFA, all these other things. EA Football Club, I should say Battlefield is about to pop off Apex Legends. These are big things, things you can make movies about or, or things that come out every year like Madden and just make but buttloads of money. And you say mad and everyone knows what it is. Sounds like Saudi Arabia is interested in, in staking out that position of having IP intellectual property that matters to people globally. The reason that we're, we're believing that that's what they want is because they're spending a lot more money on EA than EA is actually worth. If you look at how much Money they make, the growth potential, the 25 premium they're paying on the stock price to get to this 55 billion dollar number is kind of hard to understand. It's also like a deal you can't refuse if you're ea. That's why this is going through because it's, they kind of can't refuse this, that this is way more growth or way more value than they would ever be able to grow over the next five to 10 years unless some miracle happens. The troublesome thing here is, okay, what does this mean for the future of EA and the people who make its games and the people and you know, the future of those franchises? Are we going to get, you know, the same games from EAS that we have been getting? Well, we haven't been getting a lot. So you know that that's one side of it, but the other side is probably not. And there's a couple of reasons for that. The big one being this leveraged buyout which, you know, the story was kind of just happened yesterday. We didn't talk about this on Game this morning's. That's a key issue here. So $20 billion of the $55 billion is being funded by debt that JP Morgan is, you know, basically lending to get this deal across the finish line. And that $20 billion of debt will go on to EA's books. So basically Jared Kushner and Saudi Arabia, they're spending some money and then they're going to put the company that they're buying into debt so that they can own that company. That means EA will have to service that debt. They will have to pay the interest payments on that debt going forward to the tune of about $1 billion a year. Now that, that sounds vaguely familiar. This is exactly what happened to Toys R Us back in the mid 2000s was Toys R Us got, had a leveraged buyout and some vulture capitalists went in there and they used debt to buy the company and they put that debt on Toys R Us and then Toys R Us went bankrupt and everyone's like, people aren't buying toys anymore. It's like no, Toys R Us was doing just fine. They just couldn't service their debt because it was so astronomical. There is a difference here. EA is pretty profitable, like four to five billion dollars a year profitable thanks to stuff like Madden Ultimate Team and FIFA Ultimate Team again, EA Football Club Ultimate Team now and, and a bunch of other things. And they have, they haven't like fully like realized the possibility for their, their, their plays in the mobile Space.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker C Madden has not been as popular on mobile as it maybe should be at a certain point. Point. But they are going to have to probably cut costs to service that debt. And what is their plan for cutting costs? Well, the rumor is Electronic Arts, which has been sold for $55 billion to a group including Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia's public investment fund and affinity partners. Again, that's Jared Kushner's company, which is mostly backed by Saudi Arabian money. The new owners plan to significantly cut operating costs and boost profits through the enhanced use of AI, helping them manage a large debt load. Stockholders will receive $210 to per share. So the idea here is like, you could see how this happens right now, right, Because Battlefield's about to come out. So there's a big, like, potential win here very soon. They have not like, fixed the, the, the problem that EA Football Club had last year, but they are about to kind of get into a new run with that and maybe they can be like, oh, things are going to get better. So we have some positive notes here. And then, hey, sure, we're not, we don't have these massive growth opportunities to service for, to service this debt, but we are going to start saving a ton of money by cutting jobs. And so we're going to have fewer people we have to pay. And that's where the money's going to be made. That's where the margins are going to come from. So, y', all, I think this is pretty bad. I think this is pretty bad for the people who make video games at Electronic Arts. Not that anyone was out there thinking it would be good, but also we, we just, you know, this is, we're still parsing this. We're still figuring this out. I, I think that's the best summation I can give of what this is going to mean for now. And then also add the caveat there that we don't really know how it's all going to shake out. Things could be a different a month from now, a year from now, and it could look a lot worse. Or maybe it won't be as bad as the worst prognosis as it feels like in this moment. Quick, how do you all feel about this? Yeah, please.

Speaker B Jan. Quick tangent though. Grab. I was catching up on last week's Bombcast after I got raptured and it was news to me when you broke down that Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, Right.

Speaker C Yes.

Speaker B Uses several AI agents all the time.

Speaker C All day, every day to make all his decisions. Yes.

Speaker B There's Something wrong about that. And if a billion dollar paid CEO can't see that, I don't want a Windows anymore, gang.

Speaker C Yeah, I mean, okay, go ahead, Mike.

Speaker D Sorry, sorry. The richest people in the world love AI. I don't know why. I guess it's just some other thing that makes them feel special or not have to deal with the common people. I don't know what it is.

Speaker C I mean, it's very clear what it is. It is they can take all of the expertise that has been gained through human effort and they can lock that up behind AI and then they can control the AI that is a tool that they can own. Because really only the richest corporations have the capability to, to run a global AI system that requires just gigawatts and terawatts and beyond of energy to run. And then they can have a monopoly on expertise. Is this idea. And then if we want to access that, we have to go through them now to get it. That's the idea. Whether or not that actually is how it will play out, we'll. We'll see. But that is definitely the idea is they can get. You know, I. Yeah, go ahead, Jan.

Speaker B I understand the world of Dune now. I get it. Computers are bad. Let's just make one dude a computer for us. And he just rolls his eyes back and it's like, all right, I got the math, gang boy.

Speaker D I mean, you know, I bet things like, things like Madden and Football Club and Sims are gonna roll along here. Quality might go down if it keeps, you know, if it, if a lot of that workloads done by AI. You do wonder about things like, you know, that next mass effect. BioWare, a company that, you know, seems like it's kind of on death's door anyways. What's going to happen with that? What's going to happen with Skate, which is only in early access. They don't have to actually do any more in that game. They don't have to quote, unquote, release that game. And you know, I was really enjoying it. I would love to see Skate refined into a better full release experience. I don't know how much more they're gonna do with that. I mean, gosh, even things that they pulled away from, they kind of stopped making need for Speed recently, which seemed like a cornerstone.

Speaker C After stopping making the, the, the other racing games that they've done, Burnout, but then also all the ones that like, they acquired Codemasters and then they're like, we're gonna stop making some of those Codemasters games. Not even make A need for speed. So why would they continue making Colin McRae's dirt or whatever the it's called?

Speaker D Yeah, right, Colin.

Speaker C It's, you know, and none of that even gets into Saudi Arabian blood money and killing journalists and having actual slavery, you know, not, not like the worst kind of chattel slavery we've ever had in human history, but slavery. And, you know, it's always worth pointing out that the, you know, capitalism is kind of rough everywhere. And, you know, it's not like I feel wonderful about my own current government or anything like that, but we can clearly see the failings of the Saudi Arabian kingdom and the people that are in control there and how they are trying to use money to soften their image by, you know, through sports and through entertainment and through wrestling, and not usually, not typically through actually softening many of their positions, such as not killing journalists.

Speaker D They let me drive a few years ago, though.

Speaker A Yeah, Michael Cole told me about it. Yeah.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A There's skateboards there now, but, But Grub.

Speaker B They have a whole comedy festival now. Everything's so funny now.

Speaker D Burr went, he's, he's one of us, right? He wouldn't.

Speaker C We're gonna make comedy legal in Saudi Arabia. And they did it, everybody.

Speaker A It's. I don't know if you saw the waiver they had. The contract says you actually can't talk about.

Speaker C Yeah, you actually can't do it. Yeah.

Speaker A Boy, that ridicule. Yeah.

Speaker C Well, listen, comedy's not about disparaging or ridiculing people in power, Dan. Like, let's be clear.

Speaker D That's right.

Speaker C Yeah, that's true.

Speaker A No comedians ever done that. That, yeah, Yep.

Speaker D That'd be stupid.

Speaker C I, yeah, I, I, I'm coming out of this feeling like, oh, we're at the end of something. We are at the end. Like, this is the end point of a certain kind of game publisher, a certain kind of way of making video games. EA looked around, saw it was still operating under a world of capitalism and said, so, you know, in the old Adam Smith style of capitalism, it was, well, let's make a better widget. Let's make a better game than anyone else. Let's, let's find a need in the market and service it better than anyone else can, and we will succeed. And obviously, clearly, just blatantly, that's not what they're thinking at all. They haven't been thinking about that for years, but they are so far removed from that that their answer to making more money was, let's just go become basically an arm of the State of a blood money regime. And you know, this is one of the last standing sort of American publishers out there that was independent of a major, even bigger corporation. I guess that's weird because EA itself is a major corporation, but I think people get what we're getting at.

Speaker D Even the major corporations like US Based gaming. Major corporations. It now is just Take Two and Microsoft. And Microsoft, like, gaming's not their main thing at all really. And Take Two is just so heavily invested in a few huge games. So yeah, it just, it just isn't like it was. It's kind of wild how quickly that all changed and how little of the power base of games seems to be based in America right now.

Speaker B Yeah, they're. I mean, EA's office is based out of, or I guess their major US office is based out of Redwood City, like a couple 20, 30 minutes away from me. And all the local news is just, it seems like a moratorium of like, man, Ripa, you're gone forever now. Despite, you know, this deal just happening. It's. It's very also crazy for that part of the Bay Area as well because, you know, not quite the tech boom, but like still a boom. And now all those big players in that area of Redwood City are like slowly going away.

Speaker C Yep. It's. Yeah. At the end of something like, what happens next? You know, I, as something like we come on this podcast every week, we talk, talk about the games we've been playing. And I bet if we like did some, if we charted it out and we like normalized for sort of the games that we cover out of obligation because they're big games and they have big marketing budgets behind them and people are wondering about them. I think our percentage of the stuff that we talk about is, is, you know, shrinking when in the idea that it comes from one of these big publishers and them wanting to like sort of fight back for that market share and that mindshare, like that fight is gone. And so, yeah, that's the thing that's ending. And then in the meantime, we do have numerous and countless indie studios stepping up, filling in these spaces. So I'm not really worried about gaming overall or the kinds of things that I enjoy, but the ability for someone to enter video games as an industry to make a living, it's going to probably get more difficult than it already has been going forward. And that's, that's sad and troublesome. All right, let's keep going here. Super Mario Galaxy Plus Super Mario Galaxy 2 reviews popped off this morning. You know, doing pretty all right. 86 on open critic mostly wanted to include this because we were like wondering like how remastered is this? Like what, what's. What's happening here? Did they figure out the pointer controls? Well, those are a couple of things here. The remastering of the visuals. People repeatedly in reviews said that was really well done. This is a pretty decent step up for these games. They look really good on. On Switch and Switch too. It is on both, I believe. Yes, it is. And then the other thing was the pointer controls for stuff like Yoshi Stung. Not great but not so bad or anything like that that it's going to ruin the experience. This is out the same day as Ghost of Yote, right? I might, I might play these first. I don't know.

Speaker A Yeah, you know, you have to do like Galaxy one had more of the motion gimmicks like you know, hold the, you know, Wii Remote and then kind of tilt it. I can't remember how they did that for 3d allstars. Like cuz you don't have to detach the joycon. You can play with Pro controller.

Speaker C Yeah, I think you sort of just. I think there was a button. I think there was a button to sort of like set the center and then you go. And then it was like okay, now, now you could sort of just do regular motion controls using the gyro. The accelerometer probably.

Speaker D Yeah, sure. Yeah, it mostly works. I, I'm really looking forward to these. I like the Galaxy games a ton and it's been a while since I played two because you know, it hasn't been on Switch. I played through Galaxy 1 again when we had 3D all stars. But yeah, I'm planning to play this like on Thursday on the site when it's out. Even with all these new big games, I'm kind of the same where I'm going to probably take a break and play through Mario Galaxy 2. I just like the 3D Mario games and these ones specifically so much that I'm super excited about it.

Speaker A Is it a Switch 2 edition or is it just a Switch 1 edition that plays on 2? Like oh, that's a Switch to upgrade?

Speaker C That's a good question, Dan. I think, I think there is a Switch 2 edition. I. I think there is. Yeah.

Speaker A Because I'm search for Nintendo's website and I'm just seeing the Switch one. I hope there's a like Switch two.

Speaker C I think, I think that's the case. But it could be like everyone's a.

Speaker D Switch 1 game that runs a little better on Switch 2, it might not be a full Switch to Edition thing.

Speaker C Okay, okay. There's. There's just a free Switch 2 patch, but that. That would be. I think that's qualifying is what we're looking for, like a patch that actually makes it run a little bit better. All right. A new PS5 Pro could soon release. A new, slightly improved PS5 Pro is expected to be released in Europe soon following the recent quiet introduction of a different PS5 slim. The. The reporting here makes it sound like it could have actual improvements to how it processes games and visuals. I doubt that. I bet it's going to be more power efficient, but I'll bring this up with this next story as well. Sony is reportedly set to Release an updated PS5 DualSense controller with a removable battery. A new report suggests Sony will release a revised Dualsense in November featuring a removable rechargeable battery. This new controller will replace the current DualSense models. The report also mentions minor revisions to the PlayStation 5 Pro, which will use 3% less power. So there you go. There's kind of exactly what you're speculating there.

Speaker D Yeah, man, I hate the. I kind of hate the PlayStation 5 Pro's existence because it's too expensive for me to really justify buying one. But also knowing that when I play a PlayStation 5 game now, I'm not playing the best version. It's. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I haven't driven into yote, even though I could have. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna play some compromised version of this game now, I guess. And I know if I sit down with it and I'm playing it, I'm going to think it looks great. I'm not going to know what I'm missing. But it is a little bit in the back of my head. German would have played it on the PlayStation 5 Pro.

Speaker C Right. The frustrating thing, Mike, is that, like, the narrative around the Pro over the last month or so has been, shit's not taking advantage of this thing. And it's. It's really not worth it. And then of course, Ghost of Yote comes out and it's like, no, actually this one totally looks awesome on the Pro. It's like, God damn it. Now I was just like, really over it. And then I hear that, and that's the game. I think I'm doing the same thing, Mike, where I might be avoiding it because I'm not getting the best version or whatever. It's stupid, but. But yeah, I. And it's I think Sony is just in a spot here where they are trying to position the PS5 Pro as a long term play where Even once the PS6 is out, PS5 Pro will be like a tier below that and there might be a tier above a PS6, a PS6X or whatever. And I think they want to like make the PS5 Pro cheaper and cheaper through these revisions and improving the model and stuff like that so that they can save some money on it now while they try to keep it out there and keep it relevant. And then I think same thing with the dual sense. I bet this dual sense people are going to crack it open and see that it has a lot less components in there and it's just they made it in a cheaper way or more affordable way. I'll say. Sony's not exactly usually in the business of making their shit shittier, like noticeably shittier, but was a double play. Mike, I'm right behind you. But yeah, well we'll see what happens with this when people do get a chance to, to look at these things. And yeah, that, that sounds like it'll be in November, I guess. I don't know when they will actually officially announce this stuff or even if they will. Maybe it just suddenly appears on shelves.

Speaker D Ah, sorry. We had people in first and second, no outs, then we had two outs. Guy went to home plate and got tagged out. Oh, he's safe. Ah, challenge that. He's safe, he's safe, I tell you. Sorry Jeff, what were you saying?

Speaker C No, it's okay, I understand.

Speaker B Sorry. I don't pay attention to baseball unless I have a hot dog and a beer in my hands.

Speaker C Yeah, that's. Well, let's get him one. Mike, I'll get the beer for him, you send him a hot dog.

Speaker D All right.

Speaker C PS5 is Sony's most successful console generation ever. And it's not even close. This is like, it just puts in context all like the price increases and the struggling to sort of get the, the PS5 to be cheaper. You know, I guess you just do that because it's nice to make even more money. But they've made more than ever before. Now a huge part of that is the PS4 generation never really ended. So they've made, they are, they're stacking PS4 success on top of PS5 success or you know, vice versa. And I think that that is going to be the kind of thing where they are going to try to keep that going forward. Which I think explains why they're so interested in ensuring that the PS5 Pro is relevant long term because again, I think they want people to keep buying that thing. As the PS6 comes out, which could be two years away, they overturned it.

Speaker D He's safe.

Speaker C There you go. I'm happy for you.

Speaker D Yeah. I mean, does it feel like the most successful PlayStation generation to you?

Speaker B No.

Speaker C I mean, right, because it's, it's really not. It's like, it's because the PS4 continues to be the most successful generation for them ever. And the PS5 is. And then more so it's again, it's weird and it doesn't feel great. So I do wonder like if there's a time limit on, on people being like, well, I, you know, I stuck with this thing and am I going to do this rodeo again with the PS6? Am I going to spend another 500 or $800 on a PS6 so that I can wait for them for years to put out a game I care about? Yeah, I don't know. I. I guess we'll see. Again, what other choice do people have? Are they going to get an Xbox? Almost certainly not.

Speaker D Yeah, exactly. They're benefiting so much from kind of being the, the only game in town. Which is why I hope that the parody with the Switch 2 becomes more of a thing. We get more third party ports. I actually want Nintendo and Sony to be competing more directly with each other again. I don't want them to feel like they're on their own separate islands that they kind of have for the last seven, eight more years. Right. So yeah, it's, you know, PlayStation 5 is not a bad console any means. And obviously if you are looking for your console to play those very big games still like you're, you know, a ghost Yota, you're not going to play that anywhere else. Or even if you're just playing the Call of Duty every year, this is probably still your best option.

Speaker C Let's see the rot. Oh yeah, go ahead, jam, please.

Speaker B Oh, sorry, I just lost my train of thought. I was just thinking about baseball and then the play. Oh, I have several friends, y', all, that bought a PS5 at launch because they told me, can't wait to play the next Kingdom Hearts.

Speaker A I'm like, dog, your friends are cool.

Speaker B Not gonna be for a while. It may not even.

Speaker C You know what? On this, they got generation the right price. Yeah. They didn't have to spend the extra money on a more expensive PS5 that went up in price like two times. So actually the right choice. Despite everything the Rog, Xbox, Ally and Ally X finally Got their real pricing. We've had this story leak over and over again and it was like, you know, the, the Xbox ally will be 550 and the ally X will be 900. Well that was wrong. They're actually six hundred and a thousand dollars. You could tell that they probably did want those other prices. They were trying to keep it down but tariffs and, and the, the decreasing value of the dollar and a bunch of other mark microeconomic factors forced them to make it even more expensive. So we've, we've had this question before, but let's do it again at a thousand dollars. Are you interested in the X ally?

Speaker D Wait a second, Jeff. That sounds like a scary four, four digit number there. It's $999.99. You don't have to spend $1,000 on a video game system. Are you crazy?

Speaker C You're right. I'm bad at math. That's why I'm a video games journalist. You're right. You got me. Yeah. Hey, it's, that's too much. I don't know. But that's where we're at. It's going to keep being that level of expense for these consoles and these devices and I think they are setting us up for a next generation. Both these companies, Microsoft and Sony, but especially Microsoft because why would they do this again if they can't get the maximum dollar value out of this hardware where we might be paying a thousand dollars for the like real version of the next console? I don't know.

Speaker D Fun.

Speaker C A deep dive on the future of Halo will be held next month. Halo Studios announced a deep dive panel for next month's Halo World Championship on October 24th which will discuss the future of the series. This follows up on a previous conversation from last year's Halo World Championships and a new dawn video. Last year the developer formerly known as 343 Industries and rebranded to what they call it the Halo game studio.

Speaker D This is Halo Studios now, Halo Studios?

Speaker C Yeah, I think so. Yeah. They revealed it was that they are working on multiple Halo games using the Unreal Engine 5. And then they kind of showed a teaser of some stuff happening in Unreal. So they will pro. They will, they will probably follow up on all of that stuff. I, I've not been plugged in to like what the rumor mill's been saying about what they might be working on or what they could do with like Halo. Could they bring, you know, Halo 1 back and remake that and put it out on PlayStation and Switch 2? I think people have talked about That I don't know if there's smoke there or something. So I guess my question to you guys would be, what do you want from Halo?

Speaker D I want from Halo. I mean, I guess I kind of just want like, you know, a good next Halo. I liked a lot of things about Halo Infinite. I would like to just see them do one of those that was more popular and well liked by people. Maybe one where they can actually make more content for it easily. I guess that's why they're doing Unreal Engine 5. Although I liked the way if it look and played a lot if. Right. Maybe it's hard to vote for, but I do worry with the new engine. We've seen some heavy Unreal Engine 5 games. Like, oh, what if this doesn't feel. Feel as good as Infinite does? You know it. We know how people are. People acted like Halo Infinite was the plague. If they don't like the way the next Halo looks in place, oh, Halo Infinite's gonna be held up on a silver platter all of a sudden.

Speaker C That'll be fun.

Speaker D Yeah, that'll be great.

Speaker C Happen.

Speaker D Yeah, I bet it'll be a Halo 1 remake. Or it'll be like that Gears of War thing we just got, right? A remake, a remaster based on a remaster as an excuse to get the thing on PlayStation.

Speaker A Yeah, it's not the most exciting thing, but I still do like having the. The new way to play, you know. Yeah. I'm almost done with Reloaded and it's like, yeah, this feels like the remake I played a year ago.

Speaker B Put it on Switch two.

Speaker C Yeah, I think they'll probably. That's. That'll probably be something that happens with. I mean, if they did Halo Infinite like Switch 2 and. And PlayStation, I would take that. But they're not gonna like, go back to supporting that game. So that's probably not the pathway forward.

Speaker D Boy, there's like a. There's a decent chance Master Chief is in the next Smash Brothers. I feel like.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker C Oh, if Nintendo even wants them, though.

Speaker D That'S like, they'll want him.

Speaker A They've never heard of him.

Speaker B They want him in his come gutters.

Speaker D Is that from Geist?

Speaker C Is that the Geist man? All right, last couple of stories here. Expect the third entry in Final Fantasy 7 Remake Trilogy to change things up again. Naoki Hamaguchi was interviewed and said, hey, we, you know, we had the first remake and it was linear. We had the second one, it was open world, and we're gonna change things up again for the third one. Mike, I asked you on another show, but like, what do you think that means?

Speaker D It's kind of hard to tell because you have the linear one, then you have the open world one. And I'm like, well, what else, what else is there? When you think about what normal font fantasy7 was like, you know, there really is that moment in the game where you go in the open world, you're wandering around. It does, yeah. That's what got translated to part two. Part three is a bit more. Go here, go there, go here, go there. Go ahead, Jan.

Speaker B It's gonna be a strand game.

Speaker A Okay.

Speaker D All right. You gotta build a monorail.

Speaker B Yep. Cloud Strife is gonna be like, you know what? I'm tired of being an eco terrorist. I'm just gonna like walk across this with my friends and like carry a big backpack and deliver pizza. Or tiles or.

Speaker D Yeah, tiles. I mean look, they're gonna, it's. They're gonna keep the combat system. That's the thing that most people pretty much just absolutely love about those games. The combat feels very good. I bet it's going to be open worldy still. Maybe more open world and less kind of open zone. Even though seven Rebirth did kind of turn into that by the end it'll sort of sort of start that way. I don't know. Like, I'm not too concerned about that. My concerns are more about some of the story direction stuff. Just how multiverse drively are we going to get here? That kind of thing. But I. I liked remake. I like Rebirth both a ton. I'm still very excited about this. Christian is just crazy that of all the I to hear about Christian talking about Common Rider every single day. You bring up any. Any weird disliked game from the last five years and Christian will be like that game cooked actually and playing Final Fate 7 remix. My is like this combat's terrible. Bad opinion.

Speaker B You realize Christian is our like on. On call Argentinian hipster Sl Griefer of you, right?

Speaker A I deeply respected. Yeah.

Speaker C He's just who knows how to do it. And yeah, he'll never stop. Chris Doug Bowser to retire. Devin Pritchard to succeed as Nintendo of America president. Doug Bowser's been been doing that thing since like what when did he start? Like 2015 is when he joined Nintendo and 2019 is when he became president of Nintendo of America. So six years a pretty long time for. For that. That kind of position. I know there's some people who have had jobs like that for a long time, like Phil Spencer over at Xbox, but no, six years is A pretty long time to do that job. He is, he's stepping down. You know, it's Nintendo of America. They're a law firm, they're a marketing company. They handle localization. They don't make a lot of the decisions. But this is still a pretty important job in, in the industry. Setting the tone for Nintendo in North America is something that like Reggie really did kind of change a vibe in that moment. And then it helped that they had Metroid prime and all that stuff. But this. Yeah, this is interesting to see now a. A woman will be in this job for the first time ever.

Speaker D Yeah, it's neat. Yeah. It does feel like Bowser's tenure just happened in a snap, but yeah, it flew by.

Speaker A Yeah. For the company, right?

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker D Well, you know, and Reggie kind of left not too long after the Switch one launched. Bowser leaving a little bit even sooner at the Switch too much. But you know, people, these, these CEOs or presidents do tend to leave kind of after these big milestones and transitions happen. So it makes. Makes some sense. So yeah, I bet everything is going to be just fine over there. It's. I doubt it's gonna be like Reggie again where it was a very public personality and there's, you know, they encouraged the memes about. They did a little bit of that with Bowser just because of the name. I bet this might be even more low key president than that.

Speaker C Yeah, I think you're probably right. Like just kind of. I think they were setting up like why did we have Reggie become a celebrity? I mean it worked when they needed to kind of put on a little bit of a show to distract from stuff like the Wii U and things like that. He was really good at it. Exactly.

Speaker B Was Bowser ever in a direct Once?

Speaker C I think.

Speaker D Yeah.

Speaker B Okay.

Speaker D A little bit.

Speaker A But not.

Speaker D He was not like Reggie.

Speaker A That Switch to Reveal. I was in New York live while it was also going out to you guys and he was on.

Speaker B I was sitting next to you.

Speaker A That's right. Yes. Did any of that air. Any of that air on the Switch 2?

Speaker D I don't remember on stage, something like that. You know, Reggie was from the E3 era. So Reggie was like on stage like posting a presentation, a live presentation, which not anything Bowser ever had to do.

Speaker A Where do you think the puppets are of Miyamoto and Iwata and Reggie?

Speaker D They were at one of the Nintendo stores and museums at one point or another. I'm surprised they're not just at the Nintendo Museum that they have in Japan.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker C Yeah. I Think they're still gonna do the.

Speaker A All puppet bomb cast sometime?

Speaker C Yeah, we definitely do.

Speaker A I wonder if anyone's ever got a puppet connection. Let us know.

Speaker C We definitely have had someone reach out to be like, I make puppets and.

Speaker A They'Re easy to make a puppet of me.

Speaker C Yeah, that's absurd. Just take the Osama bin Laden one and just kind of put it back out there.

Speaker A Yeah, I'm sure Jeff Dunham's got one in the closet. He could blend me.

Speaker B Oh, you know what? We just put a. We put a black hat on the old man Jeff Dunham puppet and that's Bacalar.

Speaker D Oh, yeah.

Speaker A Perfect notes.

Speaker C That does it for the news. I'm handing the show back over to Jana Choa.

Speaker B Oh, wow. Well, we hit our Jeff Dunham mentioned category or Quota.

Speaker D Dunham.

Speaker B Thank God we didn't end the month of September without mentioning Jeff Dunham.

Speaker A You're on a desert island. The only comedy you can watch for the rest of your life is Jeff Dunham's. I don't know, discography. I don't know who we'd call it or the Blue Collar Comedy Tour guys.

Speaker D Yeah.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker C Oh, did I skip that? Yeah, there's an alert of the Rings game they're making. I just, I don't even see that anymore.

Speaker D So good lately. I'm sure this will be great.

Speaker C The blue collar comedy guys. One of those guys is like pretty flying.

Speaker A Back then. Yeah. Tater salad, right?

Speaker C Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B One of them is Mater.

Speaker C That's right. One of them's Mater.

Speaker D From Cars.

Speaker B Yes, from Cars.

Speaker D Wow.

Speaker C Abu Dhabi investment office is going to pay for Lord of the Rings game. It's, let's see, $100 million. Is that how much they're spending on this game? The deal which has been in the works since last year is expected to be finalized soon. This is all a rumor. Although I'll say I've heard this rumor as well. I've, I, I. People have reached out to me about this. I'm not be able to confirm confirm it, but this is coming from insider gaming and I'll say that I've heard it. Maybe we got the same source though. So again, no.

Speaker D Yeah, there's been just so many forget we had Gollum, which was at least so bad. It was remarkable. Then that Minds of Moria game no one talked about and apparently that Hobbit Shire Sims like thing was also bad. Actually. Just I bought Shadow of War because it's on sale on the Steam cell right now. I'm like, boy, I missed when they were at least taking some big swings with these Lord of the Ring games. So, yeah, I don't know, it sticks.

Speaker C That like, you know, in the sort of tier list of licensed games, like, of that kind of license. It's like Warhammer way above Star wars and then that's like actually above Lord of the Rings. Like it gets bad fast with those major franchises.

Speaker D I think it's, it's, it's funny. The story says they want to compete with Hogwarts Legacy. I don't think you could do that for only a hundred million dollars.

Speaker C That's actually a really good point. Yeah.

Speaker D So I don't know what they're expecting. Good luck with that.

Speaker C All right, now I'm really handing the show back over to Jan. Catch.

Speaker B I thought. Oh, God. Got it. I thought you were fibbing for a second. Well, folks, we're gonna take a quick bricky break and we will be back with emails, super chats, and who knows what else right after this. These are the emails for the shore emails. Bombcast giantbomb.com is the email address to send your emails to. You can write in about any and everything, something we've discussed on the show. Something you want us to discuss on the show? Perhaps reflecting on a interesting take, Reflecting who may be weirder or you just want to avoid an awkward social interaction and just be on your phone. Email us@bombcastiantbomb.com first email of the show comes from Mike from Loveland. Hello, Bombas Grandes. I think the taco place dropped one of my tacos in the sink. The wrapper and tortilla were soggy and difficult to separate. The other taco, same variety, was normal. Foolishly, after eating the good taco, I still went in for a bite of the wet boy. And now I'm sure I can't have tacos for a while. I should have known better. Has this ever or a similar experience happened to you with games? A few years back, I built too many decks and found myself building a deck to beat up guys in a public bathroom. Haven't touched one since. Love the show. Love you all. Mike from Loveland.

Speaker D I've never heard decks.

Speaker A What? What's the. Building a deck to beat up a guy. What does that mean?

Speaker B I don't. I don't.

Speaker C I'm lost, Dan.

Speaker A You're lost?

Speaker D Nobody's ever dropped my video games in a sink before I bought them.

Speaker A No.

Speaker C And then like card decks.

Speaker D Like.

Speaker B I thought card decks, but then I don't. I don't duel people in bathrooms.

Speaker A So building a deck to beat up guys in a public bathroom that built too many decks.

Speaker D Email or the answer to your question.

Speaker C Is no we've never. I've never. I would never.

Speaker B It's never happened to me with video games.

Speaker C But thank you for your. For sharing your experience.

Speaker D Sorry about your quesadilla or whatever.

Speaker B Taco Taco. Next email. This could be about anyone. They simply write Jeff his fathead man sorry backwards.

Speaker A We should sell fatheads the big stickers of us put on your wall.

Speaker D That guy was Cleveland. At least at one point. That was a yeah company.

Speaker C I bought this house site unseen. My. My mother in law came here and looked at it for us when we were moving from Colorado. And I walk in and the one of the rooms had a giant fat head of the Buckeye from the Ohio State Buckeyes. Just the mascot or whatever. And that.

Speaker A I thought that was gonna get rid of that.

Speaker C Yeah, it was disgusting. I hate that.

Speaker B Next email comes from the real McCoy. Hi duders. Having been just a couple years too young to Enjoy the original MGS3 now at 30 years old playing the Snake Eater Snake Eater remake as my first played MGS game, I kept on feeling genuine nostalgia for a game I never played but had such an intimate knowledge of thanks to watching the entire Metal Gear Scanlan series on Giant Bomb. My question is, has this ever happened to any of you? If it'd be game, movie, tv, magazine, book, thanks for being good people. Fuck Dan, you need to be scientifically studied. With love. The real McCoy.

Speaker D Yeah, I mean, you know King's Quest when I was playing that. Right? I mean it's a game from before I was even born. I didn't play it back then. I never actually really played through it. But you know, I just. It's so much of a trailblazer and it's so recognizable as something that's old and of an era that I can can't help but being nostalgic for it even as I'm playing through most of it for the first time.

Speaker C Yeah, I, I think any game that appeared in a magazine ad for one of the video game magazines I read, if I were to go back to any of those, and I've done this before, I would feel nostalgia for it.

Speaker D Forsaken 64.

Speaker C Forsaken 64. I honestly like Virtual Highlight definitely appeared in some magazines I was reading. So watching you play that, I still haven't played that. I still had nostalgia for it.

Speaker D It's like watching. Yeah, yeah, watch like an old black and white movie, right? Even in your software, there's something nostalgic about that. There's something just nostalgic about the way Super Nintendo games are or Sega Saturn games or PS2 games are.

Speaker A I get that if I watch a movie from like the 90s as well, where it's like, ah, man. Yeah, this is good.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A The look of the movie, the absence of phones and stuff like that. Like, totally. Although I've seen so much chatter about like nostalgia lately with like the Walmart AI video. I don't know if you saw that. I don't think they made it, but it was like, remember when Walmart in 2002, you'd go in and they had samples. It was like AI kids. Like, it's an AI generated video of like what a Walmart looked like in 2002. And I watched like, this sucks.

Speaker D And it's also something special about 2002 Walmart. They were still Walmarts. There was no.

Speaker A I think it's just because it's targeting people that were a kid in 2002.

Speaker D You know, it's not like the 90s Pizza Hut, you idiot. It's like there's nothing magical about that.

Speaker A Yeah. And like, also the video was like, like grainy and stuff in a way that like they were trying to make it look like it was shot in the 70s. Just sucked. It sucks so bad.

Speaker C I hate that.

Speaker B I guess, like, kind of similar to what Emailer is writing in about. I. A lot of my exposure to other media was through the lens of Muppet Babies.

Speaker D So that's how you learned about Star Wars.

Speaker B That's how we learned about Star wars. And that's how I learned about other movies through the other movies that they'd spoof.

Speaker C Same Indiana Jones.

Speaker B Yeah, Indiana Jones, but also with Alvin and the Chipmunks. The first time I ever saw or was told about the story of RoboCop was through the lens of Alvin and the Chipmunks doing Robo Monk.

Speaker D That was an old video because I never even saw that movie, but it was always advertised in front of my VHS copy of like the actual Chipmunks movie that they did where they were doing some around The World in 80 Days race against the Chip Bets or whatever that was Chipmunks, man. That was important.

Speaker A In the chat, Pete says RoboCop was straight up marketed to kids. So much for not being a kids movie that I'm nostalgic for that. Like all of my in first grade, like my binders and stuff being Terminator, like official Terminator merchandise marketed towards me, a first grader. It's like that we're missing that now.

Speaker D Just do the cartoon. Like there's no one battle after another cartoon series that's gonna be on Saturday morning. Right.

Speaker C But there, there is sort of. What's that Netflix show? The one I've never seen it. Korean one. Yes. Squid game and squid games. Yes. And then, so the version of that is then Mr. Beast will make his videos and that's all exclusively basically for children to watch. And so kids are crazy about squid games and that's like not really for kids. So.

Speaker B Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, we, we do have that because I mean, five Nights at Freddy's is like a horror game, but. Yeah, but that's all around.

Speaker D But it's like goosebumps, right?

Speaker C That's a little bit. Go closer to goosebumps. Yeah, probably.

Speaker B Okie dokie. Moving on. Speaking about Pete, Pete from Connecticut writes in. Hey, bomb cast. I'm a 36 year old married man with kids and my hair has started thinning on top of it. Nothing crazy, but it's something that I notice. So I've been giving this question a lot of thought lately. I was curious. Did any of the bald men on the show ever try to consider anything like Rogaine, finasteride or hair transplants, alternatively Grubbin. Jan, if you noticed you were starting to go bald tomorrow, would you consider any alternative option or just let it go? Thanks for all you do, Pete.

Speaker D In Connecticut, I definitely did the roguing thing for a little bit and that's just, I don't know, it was just kind of gross if, if it was a thing where I was like, I know this is going to work, right? Like, okay, just, you know, take my medicine and get my hair back. But I'm doing this thing that feels kind of weird and gross and also probably won't work. So I'm like, the heck with this. And then anything else, like, is just too drastic or expensive or too time consuming that I don't really care that much.

Speaker A Yeah, I was like 2017 or so when I was really starting to notice I had the bald spot going crazy there. And I think it was finasteride or something that I got. And it's like for like a week I put it on there and I'm like, do I really want to do this? Like what? I don't know if it's like twice a day or something for the rest of my life. And then like as my hair, if I lose more of it, more coverage on the head every day, it's like, ah, it's just too much of a pain in the ass. And again, like Mike said, it's like, I don't even think it's gonna work. So. And then as far as the transplant thing, it's funny because I mentioned how that Turkish place reached out to me on Instagram and offered to, like, send me there. And, like, I just had to, like, post a bunch about it, and they were like, yeah, we'll just give you hair again. That would be pretty funny to just take a trip to Turkey and come back and have hair, But I just don't really care enough, I think. I think it would be kind of funny if I suddenly just had Harrigan. So. Yeah, maybe.

Speaker C Is it still in the cards is what you're saying? Like, like, if I think I would.

Speaker A Do it as a bit or like, like a sub goal on Twitch.

Speaker D Okay.

Speaker A Yeah. Or if like, like if a local place was like, hey, we'll do this for you for free, I would think about it because I can always just go back to shaving it, you know? Like, what would be the downside again?

Speaker D I'd rather give bacalar hair back than give hair back for myself. I think actually.

Speaker C So magnanimous.

Speaker D I think I'm a good person.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B Dunk master Sasuke in the chat. Let's do it for Bacalar. Bacalar.

Speaker D Exact.

Speaker C Yeah, definitely.

Speaker D He does get. He does get real, like, listless when he talks about it. What? You two, what would you do if you're going bald?

Speaker C I would do the propecia stuff. I would try the propecia.

Speaker A I would.

Speaker C I would give it a shot. I wouldn't do the Rogaine thing. You're right.

Speaker D That.

Speaker C That sounds like a hassle and whatever. And then, you know, when that didn't actually play out, I would just, you know, I would shave it. I would go bald, whatever.

Speaker B Yeah. I would tattoo my skull and be sick. Like that.

Speaker C That'd be sick. Yeah.

Speaker B Yeah. All right, gang, a couple more emails and then we'll move on to.

Speaker A We could call you, Jan Bigalow.

Speaker B Okay. All right. All right, Scout. Get.

Speaker C Do it anyhow.

Speaker B Okay. All right, Travis. And Fargo writes in with five questions, but we're not going to read all five. I'm going to read the fifth one. Travis, I got a job. I've been a full time stay at home parent for the past few years. But now, in addition to that, I'm working part time for my favorite local coffee company. I work with a good buddy of mine and the best perk is free coffee. My question is, my questions are how do you like working with friends? And what's the best perk of your job? Travis and Fargo, I mean, that's what's.

Speaker A Really cool, is just. It's cool enough to just do the thing you love for your job and play games. And, like, I realize how rare that is. And then when it's also, it's like, oh, just by nature, you're doing it with people that share that passion. And especially in the circumstance, like what we do, we got to basically pick who we do it with. And we're all just good friends. You know, we talk like, look at the Haiti stream on Friday night. We all. Was it Friday. Whenever it was, we all just kind of hop in. We're just hanging out because we just like hanging out with each other. So, yeah, it's. It's a pretty incredible thing. I remember first feeling that when I first got hired at Game Informer and being like, oh, my God. I went from working at a call center where there was one guy there who played video games I could talk to, and that guy fucking sucked. To like, here is like 20 of the most knowledgeable people I've ever met about video games. And I like them. And we hang out and it's like, Jesus Christ. That's just a real good deal.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker C Yeah, that's exactly right. The perk is just like getting to do the job honestly, getting to come in, come with an idea. And the idea is, how can we play a video game in a fun and interesting way? Yeah. Couldn't have dreamed it up better. It's exactly what I want.

Speaker B Yeah. Also, wow. We're his family.

Speaker C That's right.

Speaker D Yes, sir.

Speaker B The bonus of being friends and considering y' all very, very close to me is that I feel more comfortable being me around y'.

Speaker C All.

Speaker B And I don't have to like, code switch or style switch. I can say some out of pocket stuff like come gutters, and then we just move on to the next. But also, you know, I fully transparent for the folks at home. I've been going through some stuff and I feel comfortable going through the day because I can rely on. On this crew of dudes here, along with Sean and Chuck, to have my back. So I feel less guilty about having to go through the stuff I'm going through because I feel supported. So thanks to this crew over here. All right, last Jan's my friend.

Speaker D I don't know about those other two or three or whoever, but Jan's fine.

Speaker B What a day for Mikeys. Dirtbag dad writes in. Hey, bomb daddies. I think they meant that. Not the way I read it. But this question is for the two Jeffs. Solid Jeff and Liquid Jeff. New parent here. Yay. I have a 7 week old baby and I'm not gonna lie, I'm starting to lose it. The lack of sleep, the logistics, etc. Are all pretty taxing and I've noticed it's taking a toll on my partner and I. I will admit the problem lies with me. I just have become so irritable in short time, tempered that almost any minor thing annoys the ever living crap out of me. I know this isn't a relationship or parenting podcast, but did either of you go through this? Any tips on how I can just be a better new dad and a better new partner for my wife? I just don't want to be another burden on her and I want to rise to the new challenge slash chapter of our lives. P.S. is the rest of my gaming life only going to exist between the hours of 10pm and 1am Dirt Baghdad?

Speaker C I mean look, the kids that young, you should be finding sometimes during the day to like just let the kid, you know, lay on your tummy while you play a game. So take advantage of that. Like one baby is, is fine to keep gaming. So that's my advice. There is, is you can still make that happen later on. Yeah, it'll only happen during certain times for sure. No, no staying up to 5:00am to play Hades 2. Uh, when you got to get up at 6:00am to start getting the kids ready for school. Yeah, look, it's, it's hard and really all you can, not all you can do, but the most important thing to do is, is recognize it. And being like, hey, I am getting irritable. I am getting. This is challenging. I do have to kind of take a step back and figure out some ideas here. I think the biggest thing is a perspective shift. You're, you're not really living for yourself anymore. You're here to be memories for your kids. So know when you're making decision, when you're faced with something, do you want to leave them with, with trauma with them worried about your emotional state? Like that's the thing. Like you know, as soon as they get to be 5, 6, 7, especially 8, they will be so tuned in to like your feelings that you feel guilty about even feeling bad about stuff. Because they will, you'll, you can tell they'll start trying to manage your, your emotions because that, it makes them uncomfortable. So you gotta have to recognize that. And it's not easy you're just gonna have to get better and keep growing. The good news is you. That's what we do. We keep growing, we get better. So I would just take this moment to not beat yourself up. Don't feel guilty. Like you. It's. Everyone goes through it, but do just kind of go the next day and being like, what can I learn? And try to be a little bit better and. And then also maybe take some stuff off your plate. You know, I. I stopped watching TV basically because of having kids. Like, I don't really sit down to watch a show. I'll watch something here or there on my phone, but I used to, like, sit down and channel flip or, or record a show on the TiVo and then put that down and watch a whole series or whatever. You know, I just put some hobbies aside, some activities aside, and, and moved on. And maybe that you have to take some stuff off the burner. Maybe that's the answer here. And then the other side is it will just, like, it's going to put holes in your brain. Like, it's just going to. It's going to hurt. Like, my memory is so bad because I've had kids for eight years now. And yeah, there's. There's just no getting around some of those things. You'll just have to roll with it. But you're doing great. Keep at it, and you're going to be just fine.

Speaker B You know, I'm not a father at all, but I think the fact that you took the time to recognize that you're going through these things is also a big step. You know, just make sure you're communicating with your partner. Dan, do you have anything to add to this about fatherhood?

Speaker A I'm just thinking, like, if Grub's saying, like, the kids are the reason, the memory and stuff, I can't imagine what kids would do to my brain because I don't have that excuse.

Speaker C Just like literal. You would be able to feel the gaps in your brain. Like, that's what. It just feels like. There's holes up there for me.

Speaker A Yeah, Anyway. But that's probably just beer, not kids.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker B Yeah. Okay. Anyway, last email of the show, and I'm going to preface this by saying I know the last emailer asked about fatherly advice, but do not take anything that we met, any medical advice that we give to you explicitly. And also, I'm going to say the same thing for us to not take any medical advice or living advice from our audience plainly. All right. Joaquim writes in hi. Last Voicemail dump truck. Dan said he bought a sauna, which to me as a Finnish person sounded more like a hotbox. It's fine to drink while using the sauna. Bacalar is just overreacting. We Finnish people have a personal connection with saunas. As you know, most people have a sauna room in their home. Therefore I would say we have the knowledge about drinking while bathing in the sauna. It's all good. Dan is right. Sure you get dehydrated, but it's not life threatening. The sauna is only 150 degrees or something like that. We usually bathe into over 200 degrees with cooling down periods in between sessions. Love him.

Speaker A Thank you. I will take that advice that I already was taking, but it's time feel validated. So yeah, like I said last night, one in the morning, I'm filled with turbocrust and, and cocktails and beers and I'm just having a great time sweating all out in there.

Speaker D What do you think the sauna is like still gonna be there in five years? There's gonna be some kind of bad ending for the sauna. I don't think it's gonna hurt you necessarily. The sauna is going to break or explode or catch on fire or something eventually. Dan.

Speaker A I mean, I read the instructions on like inside it says, oh, don't, don't put any fabrics or anything over the heat pads. That's fine. It also says don't, you know, with alcohol, don't be in here.

Speaker D But I listen to some of it.

Speaker A You know, I, I think it's fine. It's like, it's pristine. It doesn't get wet in there. It's not going to be like a steam room thing where it gets moldy. It's a dry sauna box.

Speaker D Somebody like set a reminder to ask me, ask Dan about his sauna in five years. I just want to know what's going on with it.

Speaker A 200 degrees, it gets 150.

Speaker C No, I know, but he said if the finished ones are 200 degrees, that's 12 degrees away from boiling.

Speaker A I go to the place here that is a finished style one and they have one that is like that and it's like, that's crazy.

Speaker C Yeah, I, yeah, I don't like saunas. I don't get it. I've never really, I don't like.

Speaker B I, well, okay. I also don't like saunas sweating. I don't like saunas or hot tubs because I, I don't like being too relaxed. What?

Speaker C Oh, maybe that's what it is, Jan. Yeah. I need, I need the stress. I need the stress to like, keep me together. Yeah. Scaffolding to hold up my body. Like external pressure.

Speaker A How good it feels to 30 minutes. Just read and sit in a thing, sweat it out and everything. No screens and everything for bed. And then like go right into a shower. Your pores are open as hell and you're getting soap in there. You will never feel cleaners.

Speaker C I'm not worried about it.

Speaker B I'm sure that you'll never feel cleaner.

Speaker A Than in a post sauna shower. Pores are all open, everything. You soap it all up. You go to bed feeling so fresh, and then you wake up and you still feel just perfectly clean. Ready for the day. It's awesome.

Speaker D Great. I'll try it.

Speaker A Yeah, you're going to try it. You got to beat Mario 3 in this thing. And it's got Bluetooth, so we can do all sorts of stuff with that.

Speaker C Yeah, that sounds good.

Speaker D I will, I still, I still think a sauna without water or some kind of like hydration component or steam just kind of sounds like you're being a.

Speaker A Low temperature sauna is dry. The steam room has its vapor. It's water you pump in there.

Speaker D Yeah, that's, that's, I can see the appeal of that. I just don't want to be a hot box.

Speaker B You know, maybe, you know, I, I, I, A couple emails ago, I said I'm going through some things. Maybe I'll just go have a spa day. We'll see what happens.

Speaker A That has like the, the, the hot and the, the pools and stuff. They'll have the hot pools, the, the cold pools and stuff. I don't know, buy into the like, cold plunge stuff or whatever, but, like doing the sauna and into the pool stuff is really, really good.

Speaker B We should have spa week.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker C Stream it.

Speaker B I don't quite know what that means, but we'll have spa week.

Speaker C Yeah. Oh, I get to watch it. This is great. Actually.

Speaker A I can stream from my sauna. I could do that. I won't be naked.

Speaker B Mike, are you right, you, you're, you kind of like imploded behind where he's.

Speaker C At, so I get to watch it here and see what happens.

Speaker A This is great podcasting for. Everyone's going to listen to it later this week.

Speaker D Ah, sorry about that. Just, we fumbled a ball in first place there.

Speaker B For the audio listener, Mike Minati looks like he is not quite in a state of bliss, but it could be that as well. Mike Minati, if you feel comfortable enough Hit me with some super chats.

Speaker D Yeah, I could use a break from this game. All right. I'm not gonna take any crap. You know how many podcasts I've done with Jeff where he's just watching hockey or whatever? The one time I'm keeping an eye on a game, I'm not gonna hear it. I'm not gonna hear it.

Speaker C I didn't say anything.

Speaker A Anything either.

Speaker D Oh, that's right. A poll. How's the Keeper coming along? You get that figured out? Is that all cleaned up?

Speaker A Yeah, it's great. It's totally all together. Look at that. Yeah.

Speaker D Ricky B. Says the Jerf quiet quit. Are the kids still quiet quitting?

Speaker B I don't know if the kids are quiet quitting.

Speaker C No back, or. Yeah, really, really. Just quiet quit. Real slacker, this guy. Not doing any work for us or anything like that. Yeah, all right. No, he's. He's busy. He's. He's doing stuff with his family, but also making things happen.

Speaker D Yeah. Just quit. Yes, actually, because you just quit, you don't get paid. That's. That was the benefit of quiet quitting. Huh? Right. Yeah. Ricky B. Also says, do you think Dan doesn't get symbolisms in movies because he's always peeing during crucial moments?

Speaker A Every. As I watch at home and we pause if we're peeing, you know? Yeah. I still don't get symbolism.

Speaker D Ural says. Speaking of Silent Hill, when will Jan meet Heather Vacation?

Speaker B I don't know who Heather Vacation is. Maybe I'll embark onto Silent Hill 3 eventually.

Speaker D I just need a co pilot for that Heather Vacation.

Speaker B Well, because I called Henry, the protagonist of the first one, Henry Vacation, because I never remembered his last name. I think it was Mason.

Speaker C A wienerless Steve situation.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker D Hill three girl. I see. I see. Tyrant asks Power Bumcast returns when Bi weekly. Aw is good. Yeah, sounds like aw is really good. I have no interest in WWE right now. Also just been too busy to really have a chance to watch wrestling at all.

Speaker C Wrestling is one of those ones that has come off the. The stovetop a little bit. Yeah.

Speaker A I mean, but same.

Speaker B But I will say I know that still related to wwe because Triple A and WWE are in this weird partnership right now. God, Triple A is so fucking hilarious.

Speaker D They have.

Speaker B I told the story about this, but they have a dude whose whole gimmick is just cheeseburgers.

Speaker A Good.

Speaker C That's good.

Speaker A There's Mr. Iguana. There's.

Speaker C Yeah, I did get the IPTV thing, which has 9, 000 channels, including just like anything that's on pay per View. And so I have been like, catching the occasional, like, really weird wrestling pay per view. And that's been fun. I just wanted to like. I'll show you, Dan. I don't see something. There's some Yahoo Anime rules there. It's. I've saved a lot of money here and it's a good deal, so I did have to pay for it, but it's like, not nearly as much as I was paying for cable. And yeah, it's been pretty cool just to see like 10 people in a room and some weird wrestling stuff. So I put on the background occasionally. I'll be doing some more of that.

Speaker B Everyone is saying, shut the fuck up, Jeff.

Speaker C I didn't say anything.

Speaker A Don't shut up to me.

Speaker C Yeah, yeah, don't worry.

Speaker A I do watch like, you know, if I don't have something going on the day of AEW Pay per View, I'll order it. Because those are always, you know, the matches are always great and stuff. But as far as sitting down, paying attention to stuff, getting excited about stuff. Yeah, again, if it's. If it's a night wrestling is on and I'm playing Hades on Switch, I will have it on and the background. But I couldn't. I'm aware of what's happening from social media and stuff, but like, boy, they. I really think it peaked, Jan, with us up in that press box at. In Philadelphia. And then ever since then, you know, SummerSlam was fun going with.

Speaker D I'm glad we did SummerSlam. I'm glad I got to do that.

Speaker A But it's just, I mean, in every way. Obviously there's the just kind of gross stuff that they've been up to, but also just. Just without that, I. I think just the creative and it's just not inspiring right now at all. There's just a lot of reasons to not be super into WWE at all right now.

Speaker B I was a big fan of AJ or AJ Lee, I guess, and I have kind of missed most, if not all of her return other than seeing a couple clips. But yeah, AW I hear is going well. So probably no power bomb cast from us soon, unfortunately.

Speaker A But AWS still, they're even with so many top guys injured, they're. They're doing some great stuff right now.

Speaker D Did you see, like, when Vince McMahon had his, what, 80th birthday party, whatever, and it was like super secretive, but. But the gift he gave everyone who came was a marble bust of his own head.

Speaker A Yeah. There were a hundred of them made. And yeah, marble bus through Vince's head. Which, by the way, if you see one battle after another, Sha Penn is just Vince McMahon in that movie. He looks like him.

Speaker C Him.

Speaker A He walks like him. He just is in every possible way. It's. There's parts where he's like just wearing a suit, walking down a hall, and it's just like, that's just Vince. That's just Vince. It'd be incredible in a biopic.

Speaker C I need to. I need to see this movie.

Speaker A It's very good.

Speaker D All right. Simon from Saskatchewan says question for everyone, but Mike answers last, please. What's your favorite type of mug? A Normie 11 ounce. I like the 15 to 20 ounce mugs. Heat activated. Thanks.

Speaker C Give me a look, a little espresso mug. You know me, that's what I like. But if has to be a coffee mug, I want one that's like, you know, really absurdly large. Give me one that's like way too big. That's fun. Yeah, Yeah.

Speaker B I don't know. I. I like one with a handle, I guess. I don't want a full four finger handled. Maybe like a two and then I'll just like pinky up.

Speaker A Yeah, I like. I have a variety of just great mugs from Giant Bomb's past. And I really think it's just. They look nice, they felt nice, and it's great for Giant Bomb to be represented in mug form. So. Yeah, that beast mug, those are the ones. Yeah, those are the ones I really like.

Speaker D When I. When I was a kid, my dad had a Star Trek mug that was the transporter room. And when you put something hot in it, the characters showed up like they were being beamed in. And it's been all downhill for mugs since then. Next up is from Symbiosis. Mike is a mug marketing genius. If the next round of mugs ever comes, everyone will just buy them out of spite. Yeah, that would be mean. I'll do you all a favor and we'll just avoid that whole scenario. Then you don't have to worry about buying.

Speaker C He thinks that we don't know how to use the story and he's gonna find out the hard way.

Speaker A Families.

Speaker B We should just do mug week, right? Like mug like, what the hell?

Speaker A Cuphead dlc. Like, what are the best mugs in video games? You got Mugman, of course.

Speaker D Yeah, there's that. That's it. Or just some. You can play that.

Speaker C We can find some others.

Speaker D You play that visual novel in the cafe?

Speaker B No, no, they have to have like a cup stacking game, right? That's Mug adjacent.

Speaker C Oh, sure, yeah.

Speaker A What was the, what was the game?

Speaker D It took 30 seconds to get to mug adjacent for your whole week of mug content. Going great. What else we got?

Speaker A No, the week could be five days. And each day has a new giant bomb mug reveal in the store.

Speaker B Oh my God.

Speaker D Guess I'll have to stop being on shows cuz my old job is going to be nothing but dealing with complaints. For broken mugs you collect.

Speaker C In Horizon Zero dawn, you collect ancient vessels, which are coffee mugs. She just doesn't know what to call them.

Speaker D Serious trees.

Speaker A Well, deadly premonition. That's always coffee, right?

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker D My coffee. That one I'll give you, I'll give.

Speaker C You that thermos is an Allen wake. But I mean, yeah.

Speaker D Oh, that's not close. That's a completely different thing.

Speaker C Just take a vacation, Mike. We'll handle mug week, all right?

Speaker B I mean, in Assassin's Creed you rob some people and that's mugging.

Speaker C That is true. Okay.

Speaker A That is true.

Speaker C Mugging week.

Speaker D I'm going to lose.

Speaker A Shut up.

Speaker D Detroit's win.

Speaker A You do a Red Dead bounty hunting stream and it's on mug shots.

Speaker C Yeah.

Speaker A Okay.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A Put that on a mug.

Speaker D I gotta read a super chat. Eggy says any hype for the Neutron movie? I assume some of you will be seeing it because you're either A, Tron pilled, B, Reznor pilled, or C, Mike Minati. I like Tron a lot.

Speaker C I don't feel the real world.

Speaker D I, I, I don't. What? I can handle that. I just can't believe that they got what's his face.

Speaker C You love Jared Leto.

Speaker D Yeah. Jared Leto. Why the hell Jared Leto.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C They're both on their own private islands.

Speaker A When Code came back equally Seriously.

Speaker D Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't know. I'm kind of, I'm almost bummed out because I just already assumed the movie's not going to do that well, you know, they're gonna put Tron on the back burner for another 15.

Speaker C Advertising It a lot.

Speaker D They're trying. Maybe it'll do fine. I, I like to Tron Legacy a lot. I love the original Tron. The Tron arcade game I think is my favorite of those classic arcade games. If I had that one like 80s arcade cabinet, right? It would probably be Tron. I love the look of it. I love the way it plays. It's fun.

Speaker B I never liked watching the Tron movies. I just always enjoyed the vibe.

Speaker D It's a good vibe.

Speaker A I've never seen the movies, but yeah, they I mean, I basically just know Tron from the Simpsons joke, and I always thought it was supposed to be bad because the Simpsons joke is that no one saw it. So I always just thought like, oh, it must have been some big flop. Apparently people like it.

Speaker D Yeah, trust the neat. I. I wonder what Dan would think of Tron. I don't know.

Speaker C I watched Tron, the original recently for the first time and thought it just was the sickest. It looks so cool. It's like such an extreme vibe that it overcomes anything else. And yeah, I can came away wanting to like decorate my basement with some. Some weird Tron stuff. For sure.

Speaker D I mean, it's Jeff Bridges also, you know, it's just.

Speaker A I do like this a lot. Yeah.

Speaker B Yeah, great.

Speaker D Also top tier Kingdom Hearts world Tron.

Speaker B So. Yeah, I'm with you there.

Speaker C I heard that the more recent 4K Blu Ray remaster of Tron was really well done. So maybe I'll check that out again.

Speaker D It's been a moment. It's been a moment since I've seen that. All right, that's it for the super chats. Back to you, Jan.

Speaker B Fantastic. Well, we got another packed and stacked week here at Giant Bomb hq. Game Miss mornings popping off for the rest of the week. Right, Grub?

Speaker C That's right. We will be back with some guests. Talk about the news. It's gonna be fun.

Speaker B Hell yes. Voicemail. Dump truck popping off later this week. Mike, I think you said you're gonna do like a quick little short stream block for Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Thursday, correct?

Speaker D Yeah, you know, a couple hours, maybe more. It's not gonna be like that super long Hades 2 stream or something like that, but I want to play some Mario Galaxy 2. I might have so much fun. Who knows? Maybe we'll play for a while. I'm very excited to get back into that one Friday.

Speaker B Gang, I don't mean to alarm anyone, but we are going to have ourselves a little party. A Lego party party. That's right. This game is a little bit more streamlined than some of the Mario party games. So I don't believe we'll be stuck for five hours, but we'll see what we can get down to.

Speaker C I do want Dan to see if you can figure out how to make it as painful as possible. Dan, can you, like, look at some settings and see. See if you can get like as many turns as possible out of this thing and not for this stream, but at some point in the future?

Speaker A Well, that thing, I. I will be kind of scouting it during this Stream on Friday. Just. Let's go through the menus and stuff and see what's possible.

Speaker D So I like it.

Speaker A Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B All right, well, we'll get bricked up with the boys on Friday, but before we can celebrate, before we can have a party, gang. Tomorrow afternoon, we start a brand new season of Blake Club, and it is Dan Reichert's turn. Dan, you excited?

Speaker A I have two packages right there. My understanding, one of them is a costume, one of them is the game. I have the 360 hooked up. I'm looking at it. I put in a disc of Capcom's Dark Void yesterday to make sure it works. It unfortunately works. So we are good to go for tomorrow. My prediction, I'm. I have two that I'm. Should I say out loud my predictions?

Speaker C Yeah, go for it.

Speaker D Yeah.

Speaker A At first I was thinking it might because. Okay. Because they told me that, like, well, Dan, the costume, like, you have a lot of what you would need just, like, on your body. I was like, what the fuck does that mean? So, yeah, beard, I guess. And so I was kind of thinking, like Dick Marcinko's Rogue Warrior. I've played that game. That game's hilarious and terrible. And I also think Grub said the name would be obvious. And so I'm thinking maybe Danbo instead of Rambo. And I did review that 360 Rambo game, and I looked up my review and I did say the third act of that game is absolutely infuriating. So we'll see if it's that. But, yeah, I think either it's Rambo the video game or Rogue Warrior, the.

Speaker B Art for the next season just came in during the podcast and I have no conclusion what it is.

Speaker A So now I'm wondering.

Speaker B That's all I'll say.

Speaker A You would know Rambo. You would know. Maybe you don't know Rogue Warrior.

Speaker B What's a Rambo?

Speaker C What's a Rambo with you?

Speaker B All right, gang, that about does it. For the week after this shouts out to Derek Stone, we're gonna be premiering a best of Virtual highlight. Or what do we call Mike?

Speaker C Hi, I think Mitchell Hyde. Mike. I don't know, you guys.

Speaker D You guys should know the name.

Speaker C Still shoot hot.

Speaker D You should have figured out a name.

Speaker C God, I love it. Every time we say it might get so mad.

Speaker D It's the best because it's terrible.

Speaker C It's the best.

Speaker B Hide, Mike. Yeah, I think that's what we called.

Speaker A Right?

Speaker B Virtual hide.

Speaker C Sure. Both of them were place on words. So Mike didn't like that.

Speaker A I forgot in Dirty Work. Norm's name is Mitch. So I thought of Mitch a million times last night while I was watching it.

Speaker B Well, there we go.

Speaker C Prostitutes in my life.

Speaker B That about does it for the giant bomb cast. We'll see you next week for another episode. Shout out to Derek Stone for the best of Shouts out to Turbo. Sean for editing the show. Shouts out to Chuck for General Chuckery. Shouts out to Bacalar for Bacalar. But until next week, he's been Dan, he's been Mike, he's been Jeff, I've been Jan. And you at home have been beautiful. Goodbye.

910: Pig Bones

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