Fire Escape Cast #129

Summary

Fire Escape Cast #129 – Summary

Date: March 30, 2026
Hosts: Dan Ryckert, Mary Kish, Mike Minotti (filling in for Mike Mahardy)

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Episode Overview

The Fire Escape trio (with guest host Mike Minotti) reunite for another cross-country catch-up on all things video games and pop culture. This episode is packed with irreverent banter, surprisingly deep dives into childhood crushes on cartoon characters, heated opinions on Disney’s endless remakes, co-op gaming nostalgia, a major inside prank reveal, hands-on impressions of hot new games, and a healthy mailbag session. The hosts’ signature blend of sarcasm, warmth, left-field humor, and real insight keeps things rolling as they detail both their gaming lives and shared histories.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Intro & Banter: Meet the Hosts (01:15 – 04:00)

• Guest Host: Mike Minotti sits in for Mahardy and jokes about intro duties, setting a playful tone.

• Wine Legs and Toilet Lids: The group rib each other about wine snobbery and strange purchases — notably Dan's “glitter shitter” (a Macho Man-themed glitter toilet seat turned wall art).

  “I brought a toilet lid back in my luggage and I went to install it today. And I've got oblong toilets, it turns out […] So I hung it above the toilet like fine art.” – Dan (04:44)

2. Pop Culture Crush Confessions (05:01 – 09:45)

• The hosts reminisce about early cartoon crushes and whether fictional/animated characters are “attractive.”

• Notable Quotes:

  “My first crush was April O’Neill in that first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle show with the yellow jumpsuit.” – Mike (08:11) “You can't associate Jessica Rabbit with any form of attractiveness.” – Dan (07:43)

• Mary advocates for the value of “cartoon awakenings” and how media shapes our formative experiences.

3. Childhood Movie Nostalgia & The Disney Remake Problem (10:00 – 14:00)

• Love for “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze” as a childhood touchstone.
• Widespread skepticism and fatigue at Disney’s live-action remakes (Moana, Lion King, Land Before Time, etc.).

  “Within a year, nobody wants to see that shit anymore. Everyone goes, pays to see it in the theater. But then we all default back to the cartoon version.” – Mike (12:34)

• Discussion of parental obligations for kids’ movies in theaters, rules about leaving children alone, and moviegoing as a family.

4. New Animated Movies & Franchise Fatigue (16:02 – 18:44)

• Musings on the upcoming Mario Galaxy movie and Toy Story 5.
• How repeated “final chapters” (like in Toy Story or Ric Flair wrestling retirements) lose meaning.

  “Even the Disney people are like, wow, we're making a fifth Toy Story. All these people are dead or very old now, and they sound very old.” – Mike (17:29)

5. Portal Pals Announcement (20:12 – 25:26)

• Mary & Mike announce their co-op Portal 2 playthrough, “Portal Pals,” launching as premium content on Giant Bomb.
• Warm reflections on the magic of Portal 2’s design, the camaraderie of co-op problem-solving, and how expert game tutorials shape play.

  “Portal 2 is just a masterclass in game design... When you play through it, how, how often Mike and I are like, oh, this is how you design a game really well.” – Mary (21:21)

• Practical touches: camera view features, in-game communication, recording and co-op rapport.

6. Giant Bomb Premium & Salesman Mike Bit (25:26 – 29:02)

• Quick pitch for Giant Bomb’s premium content (This is the Run, Millionaire Dan, Grub Snacks, etc.) and plug for Portal Pals.
• Mike slips into a vintage “snake oil salesman” character to sell fake snake oil, channeling Red Dead Redemption vibes.

7. Crimson Desert Roast + Reddit Prank Reveal (31:20 – 38:31)

• Mike’s fiery critique of Crimson Desert after several hours of play—citing clunky controls, incoherent story, and over-complication.

  “I thought I was gonna do some investigating, Mary, right?... I just tackle her to the ground. And my only options are let her go ... or b, punch her in the face a lot.” – Mike (38:33)

• Dan admits to creating a fake Reddit account (“Walter Crunk”) to mess with Mike by posting fake complaints about him, including paleontology subreddits for extra realism.

  “I…made a post when you announced the mugs during the bombathon…Now it’s just snuffed out. Not a huge deal I guess, but I wish they would have let us have a couple more months of fun with it.” – Dan as “Walter Crunk" (33:57) “I am scared. I thought I knew what he’s capable of. This is incredible.” – Mike (33:49)

• Laughter and disbelief ensue; Dan’s elaborate psychological prank is lovingly roasted.

8. Crimson Desert Dissection Continued (38:31 – 45:38)

• Mary and Dan back up Mike’s frustrations, highlighting the game’s overwhelming mechanics, unclear systems, and lack of inviting design.

  “You walk up, you see a dog or a cat, and you say hi to it…plus five trust points. Does that mean anything? It’s just systems on top of systems.” – Dan (41:29)

• Comparative musings on why other massive games (Witcher 3, Red Dead 2, Zelda) succeed where Crimson Desert falters.

9. Racoon: The Balatro-ified Coin Pusher (46:10 – 57:19)

• The crew delves into Racoon, a coin-pusher roguelite spiritual cousin to Balatro.
• Discussion covers its addictive mechanics, luck-driven design, coin physics, and the thrill of “balatro-fying” arcade classics.

  “If a kid plays this, they’re going to want to fucking hit the slots…this is emblematic of gambling. But it’s really fun.” – Mary (48:24)

• Panel shares strategies and “eureka” moments, with Mary detailing advanced coin synergies and the dopamine of massive coin avalanches (“it is so addictive!” – 50:51).

10. Pecopia & Game Twins (57:45 – 67:34)

• Hands-on with Pecopia (“Pokémon meets Animal Crossing”), praised for endless gameplay possibilities and player creativity.

  “It’s not always pretty, but it gets the job done and the Pokémon get happier. That’s all that matters to me.” – Mike (61:21)

• Comparisons to Tomodachi Life, Animal Crossing, and the timing quirks of back-to-back village simulators.
• The group discusses pokémon house customization and player preference for either deep building or efficient progression.

11. Plane Napping, Busy Schedules, and Compression Boots (64:04 – 67:34)

• Tips for travel and productivity, including Mike’s nap expertise, Dan’s marathon training with wild leg compression boots, and the exhaustion of balancing streaming, content creation, and “day jobs.”

12. Co-op Horror & Narrative Games (71:03 – 88:19)

• Mary reviews:

  • Fishbowl (71:03): A mini-game narrative about grief and daily life, praised for its beauty, sensitivity, and “mini-games as storytelling” (work similar to Guitar Hero, chores as puzzles).

    “It’s absolutely beautiful... You’re trying to keep your shit together while you go through really serious feelings.” – Mary (72:14)

  • Reanimal (82:53): Co-op horror from the creators of Little Nightmares; atmospheric, unsettling, and deeply cooperative.

    “They put the right amount of light in this space to make you scared. I adore what they've constructed here. It is scary as hell…The atmosphere is terrifying.” – Mary (83:27)

  • Both solo and co-op play are discussed, with praise for smart AI companions and co-op puzzle design.

13. Mario Wonder Switch 2 Upgrade (76:18 – 82:50)

• Dan tests the Super Mario Bros. Wonder Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Plus Meetup and Bella Bell Park Upgrade Pack (yes, that’s the name).
  • Performance and minor additions are noted, but underwhelming new content, an overpriced $20 upgrade ($80 for full package).
  • Co-op content is basic and matchmaking options are lacking.

  “The content is not that great and the cost is insane.” – Dan (81:15)

  • Wishlist for real Mario challenge modes; comparison to better-value expansion packs.

14. Mailbag Mania (88:29 – End)

The crew tackles a variety of reader emails:

• Naming Characters: Inspirations range from bands, random syllables, to surreal mashups (e.g., “Dibby Flanagan”). They touch on the small penis rule for libel evasion in writing, with hilarious asides.
• Metroidvania Bundle: Consensus picks include Hollow Knight, Ori, Guacamelee, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and debate over including Castlevania/Metroid classics.
• Emotional Maturity: The hosts reflect (semi-sincerely, mostly playfully) on their emotional growth, boundaries, and audience interactions, including how social media and fan feedback shape their responses.

  “Every single person who’s ever come through these doors has been accused of ruining Giant Bomb.” – Dan (115:29) “Our community is pretty nice at the moment, except for people who pose as jerks to get me mad.” – Mike (107:34)

• Final plugs for Giant Bomb premium and a warm sendoff to listeners.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dan’s Reddit Prank Bombshell:

  "This is the actual post he just referred to...I’m so smug and clearly delighting in Dan getting frustrated with the game, whereas Dan is way more playful with his ribbing. Just makes Mike come across as mean, imo." – Dan as “Walter Crunk” (35:33)

• On Cartoon Crushes:

  "There's, like, so many fun awakenings that can occur in a cartoon format. I really liked Raphael Turtle. I think there was something there." – Mary (09:05)

• On Disney Remakes:

  "It’s going to make a zillion dollars and have no cultural impact. They all do." – Mike (12:34)

• On Emotional Maturity:

  “That is my rule...[If] an email upsets me, I will give it 24 hours. Because I don’t want to write angry digital stuff to people.” – Mary (111:09)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Glitter Shitter Story – 03:29
• Cartoon Crushes & Nostalgia – 05:41
• Disney Remake Discussion – 12:19
• Portal Pals Announcement – 20:12
• Crimson Desert Roast & Reddit Prank – 31:20 – 36:48
• Racoon Game Impressions – 46:10
• Fishbowl Meta-Narrative Game – 71:03
• Mario Wonder Switch 2 Expansion – 76:18
• Metroidvania Bundle Email – 99:46
• Emotional Maturity Debate – 106:31

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

Classic Fire Escape Cast energy—razor-sharp, affectionate, nerdy, and self-deprecating. The show balances deep game design analysis with absurdist humor and hard-earned camaraderie. Mike Minotti fits in seamlessly, Portal Pals is teased as a must-see, and listeners are encouraged to check out both free and premium content at Giant Bomb.

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Endnote

For fans and newcomers alike, episode #129 is a vibrant microcosm of why this podcast works: honest opinions, infectious fun, and plenty of room for in-jokes and shouting “Goo Goo Gaga!” at the end.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[B]

Hi, this is Alex Kanchowitz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

Hey, what's good, Robin Hood? It's the fire escape class.

[B]

No, that doesn't. We said a celebrity. Oh, you sound different. But let's hit us with your usual quality here. Come on.

[A]

Yes, yes, of course. Let's bring it home, Sylvester Stallone. Hi, everybody.

[B]

Wait, it's me, Stallone.

[A]

Mike. Naughty rhyming police. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you don't allow slant rhymes here.

[B]

Wait, who's this host?

[A]

It's me, the different Mike M. Mike Minardi. That's right. Everybody, filling in for Mike Mahardi, who's drinking wine or something, I assume, almost

[B]

certainly at this very moment. He's staring. He's Instagramming a picture of wine right now.

[C]

I guarantee it's a good prediction.

[B]

Yes, I hope.

[A]

I hope it has wonderful legs and other wine parts involved there.

[B]

Are you.

[C]

Are you sexualizing his wine?

[A]

No. Wine has legs. That's the one thing I know about wine is.

[B]

What does that mean? What does that mean, though?

[A]

It just means the way that it drips off the side of the glass, like I guess you want. Because you want your wine to have some viscosity. That's Dan Reichert, everybody. He's on this show. That's me.

[B]

I'm usually here. Yes, hi.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And so is Mary Kish. Hi, Mary.

[C]

Hi, Minati. Thanks for joining us and doing the intro.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I came on like, Mike should do the intro. I said I don't want to. You're like, great. Mike's doing the intro. All right, let's go. I keep forgetting.

[B]

Have you met Mike Maharti?

[A]

Yes. Yeah, I met him at Summer Game Fest, I believe. Right, I know. I met him at that JW Marriott. I believe that's. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Indiscernible human beings, you and him. He also is looking into buying the subscription based Disneyland sign that tells you how long all the lines are.

[A]

Oh, yeah, I was joking about that on a podcast and everybody was disgusted by in chat. Meanwhile I was like, that's pretty cool.

[B]

Have you heard about this thing?

[C]

I'll tell you right now that I think you have no right to give him shit for his purchases after what you bought in New Orleans.

[B]

You talking about the glitter shitter?

[C]

Yeah, I'm talking about the glitter shitter.

[A]

Dan, why don't you take a picture of that?

[B]

Okay.

[C]

The toilet seat.

[B]

So I went to install the glitter shitter today, which for those that don't know, we were at a bar on Frenchman Street. We were there for Mary's birthday with a bunch of friends.

[C]

Yay.

[B]

Now Mike Maharti, he was in Winetown. Happy birthday. All Mary's real friends were there and we were at a bar and bonk. And I stepped out for a second because they had a little thing like an art gallery thing on Frenchman street there and they had a stall that was for glitter shitters. And it was just a bunch of flashy toilet lids of different pop culture things and such. And one of them was a great picture of the late, great macho man doing his pose there with a big thumbs up and glitter, just glitter everywhere on top of a toilet. So I bought it and I brought a toilet lid back in my luggage and I went to install it today. And I've got oblong toilets, it turns out I got oval toilets. This was a much rounder.

[C]

No, LA toilets are rounder.

[B]

They've got.

[A]

They got big dumpers there. They got big round dumpers in New Orleans.

[B]

But you know what I do? I improvise and I put.

[C]

Okay, that's pretty good for our audio listeners. Dan put the toilets seat, hung it above his toilet on the wall like a piece of fine art.

[A]

It's actually more tasteful than if it was actually the toilet seat. I have to admit it's true.

[B]

And I got an idea here because every once In a while Wario64 will post, Walgreens will give out a code for free, 8 by 10 glossy. And so what I'm going to do next time is I'm going to get a picture like Mary, you probably don't know the macho man, Randy Savage that much, but sometimes he could look like the.

[C]

I think he had a catchphrase that was like a.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, close, close. Similar energies.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one. So sometimes he's in fun like party mode like on the glitter shitter. He's giving a big thumbs up and a big toothy smile. But sometimes he's the craziest guy you've ever scary just sweat and the craziest eyes when he takes the sunglasses off. So I'm gonna get an 8x10 glossy of him looking super duper fucking crazy and I'm gonna make it so when you lift up the shitter lid it goes from party mode to super serious mode. Right, that's my plan.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I guess Mary has a good point. This does not sound worse than the sign that tells you the wait times. Now the problem with the sign that tells you the wait times at Disneyland is that you do need a subscription to make sure it constantly has the proper wait times.

[C]

And you can't in it.

[A]

You can't. Well I mean you can in anything if you try hard enough. I suppose. I, I did think when you were gonna say like, oh Dan, you're not one to talk. You're going to bring up the life size xenomorph in his room.

[C]

I mean what not. What can I not talk about? There's also the gremlins to lady.

[A]

There's no, no, I don't have the lady. I got the flasher.

[B]

I got the flasher. Gremlin.

[A]

Yeah, more of a sexual deviant.

[B]

The weird. I don't like that they tried to make a gremlin sexy. I think that's weird. So close minded. I don't. I get the same feeling I do. When Bacalar brought me that pervy anime statue. It's like you shouldn't. This shouldn't be a thing. That is sex sexy.

[A]

Yes. Those two very similar pervy anime girl and the sexy gremlin.

[B]

I think. Yeah. When you make things that shouldn't be sexy if you try to sex them up, I think it's weird. Cartoons and gremlins don't put bras and lipsticks and stuff on them.

[A]

You're telling me that those two things have this the same level of interest from you? Like you could be trapped on an island with only one of them. You're. It doesn't matter. You flip a coins I mean, I don't know what. Maybe you'll be good friends. But still, I mean, who you want to be trapped on the island with?

[B]

I mean, neither. You don't have sex with cartoons and gremlins.

[A]

They're terrifying. Yes, the gremlin will kill you.

[C]

Clarify your position, Mike, because I don't understand what you mean by being on an island with them. And Dan keeps conflating it with having sex with them.

[A]

I guess. I guess we don't have to make it. We don't have to make it about sex, but one is clearly more attractive. Come on.

[B]

That's where I'm up. This is what I talk about when I talk about how, like, movies don't make me sad and stuff, because I know they're made on the soundstage and they're not real. Cartoons aren't real, and so they. Like, my brain doesn't even. Can't even associate it with sexy.

[C]

You can't associate Jessica Rabbit with any form of attractiveness.

[B]

Like, if you made. If you put Jessica Rabbit and some. The fly machine that turned her into a human lady, she. She'd probably be an attractive lady. But as a cartoon, I literally cannot look at Jessica Rabbit and be like, ooh, you know, I can.

[A]

I can.

[C]

Yeah. I feel like you've really lost a. You know.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

A part of yourself. I think that's a shame.

[A]

I think my first crush was April o' Neill in that first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle show with the yellow jumpsuit.

[C]

She's so cute in that show.

[B]

Perfect example. Here's where you and I are the same and you and I differ. One of my first crushes was also April o', Neill, but not on the show. The side of the arcade cabinet where it's a picture of an actual attraction.

[A]

Specific, even. I thought you just can say from the live action movie I was going to be like one or two. Because they recast.

[B]

No, specifically, when I went to Skateland south and walked past the thing, I was like, that's a real pretty lady right there. But the show, cartoon style. Absolutely not.

[A]

I mean, look, it's like. Like the things you are saying are true, but there's like. There's a spirituality to it, Dan. I suppose. I don't know. There's a. There's something beautiful here that you're missing.

[B]

I don't think I'm better for it, for the record.

[A]

No. Well, I mean, you're not worse for it to be clear either.

[C]

It's a neutral stance, but I would say you're missing out because there's, like, so many fun awakenings that can occur in. In a cartoon format. I really liked Raphael Turtle. I think there was something there.

[A]

He was snarky, was funny.

[B]

He's a kind of snark and a turtle. Those are two things that aren't specially sexy.

[C]

I mean, the heart wants what it wants.

[A]

Yeah. What's wrong with the turtle, Dan? I mean, you got some issues.

[B]

Are you saying you want to have sex with a turtle? Mike Minati.

[A]

Okay, no, but look, since Mary started this, I think a lot of guys my age, they saw Gadget from the Rescue Rangers and they thought there was something there. Gadget was a popular one.

[C]

Gadget was an icon.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

I think we're just gonna have to agree to disagree on this one.

[A]

That's fair. I'm just. Look, I'm relieved because normally you guys talk about new movies at the start here, and I don't want.

[C]

We are talking about movies. Some of the Ninja Turtles, we're talking about. These are all classics.

[B]

I mean, we watched two movies in New Orleans that I think Mike would approve of, despite not being a movie guy. We watched Nirvana, the band, the movie, the show you would like. And then we watched Pop Star, which I've watched with you, Mike.

[A]

Yeah, Pop Star is great.

[C]

I've never seen it.

[B]

Yeah, it's fun.

[A]

It was really funny. I liked it a lot. It is funny because the last movie I did see in theaters was Teenage mutant Ninja Turtles 2 the Secret of the Ooze, which came back to theaters for a week for the 35th anniversary. And at first, I was all bummed out, like, oh, I. No one. I don't have anyone to go see it with. And Dan's like, just go see it by yourself. I was like, oh, I can't do that. So I did. It was great. I got my sweetest fish. My. My little Sodi Pop some. I got some Pretzel bites with cheese.

[B]

You're living.

[A]

I have the cheese. It was. I was living large.

[C]

I was living course meal.

[A]

Just a good time. Two other people had to come in, so it wasn't a private viewing, but. Yeah, but that was my favorite movie as a kid. Like, that was number one. And that is every.

[B]

Yeah, go ahead.

[A]

Just saying, like, every line from that movie is memorable. I could quote it so forth.

[B]

It's interesting because, like, I. I'm the same way. Where it was like, an absolute childhood. We mentioned on Giant Bomb how it's like, for a certain age, that was just the most important movie in the world. Yeah, I. I felt the same way, but I haven't seen it as an adult, so.

[A]

Oh, interesting.

[B]

I don't have the same like, I'll hear you and Bachelor and Grubs have quote the movie and I don't like. I remember Super Shredder. I thought that was the cool. The idea of like, oh, the big bad guy got injected with something and now he's the biggest, baddest, like, like the Joker. Arkham Asylum. It was kind of dumber there, but you know what I mean? Yeah. And Kevin, but like, you probably.

[A]

You remember Ninja Rap, I'm sure.

[B]

Of course. Of course.

[A]

Yeah. But no, it is funny, you know, you watch adult and I still love it and it's really silly, but I. I can watch it now and be like, I bet my parents weren't getting the same thing out of this that I was getting. Right?

[C]

It is very stupid childhood movie, though. It's not for them. It's kind of like what we say now when they reboot any Disney's. Which is like, it's not for you. It's for the kids to enjoy. You're not supposed to. I mean, you can, but it's just not built for you anymore as it was.

[A]

Dan, Dan, Dan. Speaking of rebooting the Disney, did you see anything about the liveaction Moana with the rock giant wig. This giant. His wig looks like the wigs we wear on Blight Club. It is not convincing.

[B]

Is there a trailer? Is it just that one picture?

[A]

There's a trailer. There's a whole trailer for this movie.

[B]

Is he a big character in it?

[A]

Yeah, he's. Yeah, he's like the second lead character. He's. He's just like in the cartoon. He's just playing the character he voiced.

[C]

Dan.

[A]

No.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Feels good. Moana is good. There's no reason to remake it as an ant, as a live action movie. And yet it's still going to make a zillion dollars. It's gonna make zillion dollars and have no cultural impact. They all do. It's not like, oh, the live action Lion King came out. So like, we don't have to talk about the cartoon one or like, you know, make merch of that anymore. Within a year, nobody wants to see that shit anymore. Everyone goes pays to see it in the theater. But then we all default back to the cartoon version. We snap out of our senses or something. It's bizarre. And other studios are doing it too. There's gonna be a live action Land before time. I love the land before Time. Who the hell is asking for that?

[B]

I mean, Mike, I brought this up before, but you. I think you think it's nuts that me and Bonk really liked the live action Lion King.

[A]

I mean, it's not nuts. I'm surprised.

[B]

Twice in theaters, right?

[A]

Twice. Because you don't like musicals.

[B]

And she has less interest in Disney or musicals than I do. She like, actively hates them more than do I think.

[A]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, that one. It is interesting. I guess I would like to ask Punk about that a little bit more.

[B]

CG was. I mean, we were high and maybe that's.

[A]

Maybe you could stop there. Maybe that's it.

[C]

She was on a bender, is the answer.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

What we call her. Yeah.

[A]

I bet the CG edibles look a lot more convincing when you're blitzed out of your mind.

[B]

Yeah, we thought it was pretty good. It is weird that you were talking about, like, parents seeing turtles too and not getting as much enjoyment. It is fucked up that if you have kids, you're expected to also watch the movies with them.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah. You. You can't just send them in by themselves, Dan.

[C]

You see, in two hours. Jimmy, is that.

[B]

Is that. I worked at a theater for years. There was not a rule against that.

[A]

I mean, I think there's a law actually about abandoning your children in a public space.

[C]

You cannot leave a minor. Well, actually, you can leave a minor. You cannot leave a. A young child in a movie theater. I couldn't take like 13 and up.

[B]

Okay, what if you can you send your seven year old into Mulan and then you go see seven or something.

[C]

I think that's fucked up, Dan. Really?

[A]

Yeah. That's pretty bad. Yeah. So something could happen that could be taken by somebody or lured away. Also, kids. Kids have this penchant for misbehaving without adult supervision. They would probably talk loudly and cause a ruckus and make a displeasurable viewing experience.

[C]

They'd be bullying Minati the whole time.

[A]

They would be. They'd be making fun of me for crying during the low stitch.

[B]

Okay, what. What about this? Okay, you go in and you just play switch outside. Like on a bench outside the theater.

[A]

That's just as bad. You're still unsupervised and now you're outside in the public. People could come get you. You're still within private property. You can't actually. Yeah. You can't abandon children on their own in public spaces.

[B]

I don't think it's abandoning if you're sitting outside there and you Just don't want to see the kid movie.

[C]

It is, and you're bad and you can't do this. You cannot do this.

[B]

I'm going to do that and do it just to prove you wrong.

[A]

Oh, that'd be great. You should do it. That'd be great.

[C]

Such a glowing example of a parent. Let her know I'm going to have chocolate ready tonight.

[A]

Honey dial.

[C]

Mary pissed me off. And we're going for twins and I'm going to abandon them at 4 years old in a fucking Applebee's because I can't.

[B]

And then once I prove my point, I'll drop them off at the fire station and then.

[C]

Yeah, and then I'll pick you up in jail and I'll go, ha. And. And then we'll have to deal with years of therapy for your children.

[A]

You know, the next. The next big kids movie anyways, very soon is Mario Galaxy, which I don't know if excited is the word. I feel for that, but like, it's coming and I'm gonna see it.

[B]

I mean, I think I saw that with you, Mike and I. I think it was like the best possible circumstances where it's like we were together on like a work thing. We went inside the Universal CityWalk.

[A]

I wasn't with you guys then. That was. Yeah, I wasn't there.

[B]

That grub and. Oh, and Janet. We went to like all the Mike places. We went to a Bubba Gumps and stuff. And you weren't there.

[A]

Yeah, I was.

[C]

Probably why you thought he was there,

[A]

but you're thinking of me this way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

[B]

Yeah. So we went and saw it together and it's like we'd just gone to like Nintendo Land that day.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Universal Studios. So it was like, okay, this is just all lines of perfectly good to see with some friends I don't normally get to see in person. Just did a big Nintendo theme park thing. And I also had no expectations whatsoever. Like, I don't. I don't think I like any video game movies. And I. Mario is like my favorite shit. And I was like, okay, I have no expectations. Went in there, did enough stuff for like an old video game guy. Like, oh, I recognize those punch out characters. All right. Yeah, this, this is fun. So I. Yeah, I'll see the new one. And I. It's got the Mario 2 stuff in there. It seems like it's just got Mario too.

[A]

It's got a lot. It's got a lot. It's got Galaxy, Odyssey too. I. Yeah, I bet I will be entertained while watching that movie. I bet I'll like it more than I'm gonna like Toy Story 5, which I'm also going to see out of a sense of obligation more than anything.

[B]

Toy Story falling out of favor?

[A]

Well, no, Dan, it's just, you know, it's pretty old. Even the Disney people are like, wow, we're making a fifth Toy Story. All these people are dead or very old now, and they sound very old in the movie. And also the last one acted like it was a big ending. And then Toy Story 3 also acted like it was a big inning. Still got it. It's kind of like Ric Flair doing another retirement match after the other three. It's just sad at this point.

[B]

I under. Is it kind of a Simpsons thing where it's like, oh, Julie Kavner sounds like she is on her deathbed doing the Marge voice.

[A]

It's not quite that bad with the voices.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But it's like it's there. I mean, how old do you think Tom Hanks is now or Tim Allen compared to when they started?

[B]

Tom Hanks is like, you know, in recent years, hosted SNL and had plenty of energy.

[A]

And so if I. Yeah, Tom is better than others. Like, you know who it is? It was Jesse, the girl cowboy. She's the one who. When I hear her in that trailer, I'm like, ooh, that there. That is sounding kind of old. Tom Hanks is 69. Nice.

[C]

Oh, my God. I had no idea he was so old. That's crazy. I. I think to me, it's less about the characters. It's more about the fact that Toy Story has run its course. We have seen those characters. They've been through a lot. I just don't see why we need a fifth movie.

[A]

Because it's going to make a million dollars. Because it's a Toy Story. It's going to.

[C]

Yeah. But I mean, I understand financially why they're doing it. I don't understand why you would, you know, shake that cash cow when it was like such a beautiful thing that they had constructed. I don't even think this is probably controversial. I think some people liked four. I think it should have ended at three. It should be done.

[A]

I do not like four very much. I get. I get into fights with Jeff Grubb about it because he thinks four is pretty good. And I'm like, that was such a freaking mid nothing movie. Jeff. Come on. The fourth.

[C]

Jeff.

[A]

Let's beat up Jeff this weekend.

[B]

I don't think the three of us working in tandem could beat up Jeff Grub.

[A]

Well, Mary has. Mary would be doing the most damage, to be clear.

[C]

Yeah. You have to hold his legs and arms. And then I would go for some kind of kill shot.

[B]

It'd be every bloodborne boss fight I did where I just did a bunch of summons and I hide in the corner. That's how that would go down.

[A]

I'm. I'm your spirit ash or something.

[C]

Solo Grub.

[B]

Yeah. Player that comes in and does the work. Mike's a jellyfish that flies in, floats

[A]

around for 15 seconds. Okay, I'm in. I'm in. I like that a lot. Actually. I would. I. I would enjoy that. That be good. Speaking of packs. Right. Cuz that. That's happened already by the time people are listening to this.

[C]

That's true. We just. We're gonna. We're all leav. Recording. We're all leaving to go to pax. But everybody who's hearing this, PAX has concluded. Which means you may be aware that we've. We've made an announcement.

[B]

That's right. Unless something went terribly wrong at the panel.

[C]

Unless one of us died trying to

[A]

jump through our portal hoop.

[C]

Unless. Unless us murdering Jeff Grub goes horribly wrong and he kills me and then he has to.

[B]

Well, I'll. I'll let you announce. What are you two doing? And what are we calling you to.

[A]

That's right. Mary has joined me to become a portal pal. And together we are portal pals. That's right. Mary and I have played through the Portal 2 co op campaign together and it was a ton of fun. We got little costumes that we wore during it. We got badges that came in too late, but I'm going to wear it at PAX anyways.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it was. Gosh, we had a really good time and there was a lot of. There's good moments. We showed a little trailer for it at pax. Hopefully that worked too. And if not, you know, that'll probably be on like the giant bomb Blue sky. You guys can maybe repost that. But just the little 30 second trailer. Just watching that again had me cracking up. And boy, Portal 2, good video game.

[C]

It's one of the best. We. I mean, I've spent so long of this podcast talking about co op games and how important they are and how a lot of the modern ones just don't cut it for me. And I like kind of get spicy about it because I love co op games, but there's just not a. They just don't make them like they used to. And this Portal 2 is just a masterclass in game design and it's just amazing when you play through it, how, how often Mike and I are like, oh, this is how you design a game really well. And we con, we just constantly like blown away by how the game is

[B]

teaching you and perfect for co. Like I remember before we landed on Portal like the three of us had a meeting and we like we knew it was going to be you two, we're going to be the stars of the show and it said we were knowing like co op was going to be the angle and we talked about a bunch of different games but like so many co op games are just like, okay, these two people are kind of doing the same thing and they're just attacking the same enemies. Maybe have a different skill tree or something like that, but they're kind of doing the same thing. Whereas like I thought this would be such a fun way. I have not seen it yet. I'm very excited to see it. I want to see like you guys have known each other for a couple years, you know, you've been in the same physical space for. But I want to see the rapport as far as like the problem solving, you know that sounds, yeah for sure

[A]

like we've gotten like to meet each other but like this was definitely the most one on one time we've had each other. The first time we did content and yeah, I think we just very easily fell into our camaraderie, you know, comfortable enough to give each other some. Sometimes I love, Sometimes I'd be like over in a corner trying to like you know, the formula, swearing around my head. Then I look over and Mary's already like solved the puzzle and moving on to the next thing. Like oops, like an idiot, I'm running behind her. You know, the game is just so naturally funny anyways and that makes for all those opportunities of these funny moments. There's like the stupid things you can do like play rock paper scissors with the other Portal guy. God, just all those half life games feel so good. I just like walking in those games just the way a video game should feel to me. God, just like it had me like thinking, man, Portal 2 just one of the all time great video games ever actually because I had not played this co op mode ever before. It's this huge substantial thing and it's, it's just as good as that single player which is also this amazing thing

[B]

but very different too. It's like, I mean they're both incredible but like just the sheer nature of Having another person with a set of portals, like, totally changes. Like, I haven't played it since it came out.

[C]

Yeah, it adds a totally different mechanic. There's a lot of timing of being like, you have to press this button at the same time. And the game again, because they're such excellent designers, they came up with a system so that you could count down so that you could press a button at the same time.

[B]

Yeah, because they had the ping too, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It's one of the first things we discarded each other. So everything you're doing, you would do through in game communication. Pointing, the counting, telling each other what to do. It's fascinating how they solve those problems. And yeah, we still used them just like we did back then. It's very good and I'm in awe of that game. I'm so grateful to play it again. And I think we both bounced off each other quite well because sometimes Minati's right. Like, sometimes he'd be noodling and I'd be solving it. But sometimes it was the opposite where I was like dying a lot and. And Manatti was like, you want to put your portal over there? And it's just like, it's really cool when your friend can help you solve something. The power of both of us combined makes for one really smart person.

[A]

Yeah. And it. It's a small thing, but it's so important how stupid and fun they made these two idiot robots look. Just like watching the other person running around even. You can even like push hold the tab button to constantly see the point of view of the other character in the bottom right of your screen. I'm like, that's genius.

[B]

Oh, so if she's like describing like, okay, so there's this thing over there. You can just do that and see exactly what she's.

[A]

Push that button and see exactly what she's talking about. So, yeah, it's great. What's really neat is we like, we recorded this whole show already. It's already in the can. We got. Did the whole thing ready to go. Hopefully it's going to start going up pretty soon by the time you're hearing this. Hopefully that week. But, you know, it still has to be edited, put together sooner rather than later.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

Yeah. And I think our plan is one episode every two weeks.

[C]

2026, you know, you should have put that on the trailer. Releasing in 2026.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But not, not like video game 2026, where that means December 10th. Like, hopefully, like, yeah, within days of you hearing this, it should hopefully have a First episode available. So, yeah, we've been doing, like, more premium content on Giant Bongs. We, you know, we are independent now. We're trying to get more people to join the premium stuff there. So, yeah, we. And gosh, honestly, like, so much of that. So much of that stuff has been going really well. Like, we did. This is the run Millionaire Dan. And I think that was one of the best things we've done in a while. This is. So. This is the run has been great. There's that Nine Lives of Mr. Mistoffeley show that Chuck's been doing where he's modded Skyrim to put the cats from the musical Cats in it. He's only. He's playing on hardcore mode, but he's also only allowing himself nine tries until the series is just over forever. Jeff is doing Grub Snacks. And then, yeah, we have Abby doing Marry Me Tomodachi with us, which is this dating show where she put herself and us in it and our enemies and crushes as well. And we get points based on who we start dating in the game. So we're having. We're having a lot of fun over there. And you should join the fun, too by going to giant bomb.com/join.

[B]

Let him plug his website.

[C]

Guys are in cahoots.

[A]

You can watch Portal Pals with me and Mary. You can watch Mary Me Tomato. You can watch Grub Snacks. This is the run the nine lives of Mr. Mistoffeles. And we have other stuff planned as well.

[C]

Of course.

[A]

There's tons of great free Giant Bomb content, like Blight Club. Heard about Blight Club? Boy, that's funny. Dan is dressed up like a spaceman right now playing an awful super Nintendo game. That's a fantastic time. But the premium, you know, I'm just saying the premium stuff, as it has been good lately. It really has been.

[B]

I've been proud of it, Mary. You know, we put Mike in charge of, like, the merch. He's merch Master Mitch.

[C]

I've seen that. He doesn't like mugs.

[B]

He doesn't like mugs. But we. We did. He did acquiesce and gave two mugs out at the Bombathon. But he also. In doing this, we have. We've tapped into the side of Mike that we didn't know existed, where it's just this salesman Mike, like, as you just saw him, just. You just get him rolling down the hill with a. With a little sales pitch thing. He goes. He goes. It's great.

[A]

Yeah. You want me to sell something for you, Mary?

[C]

A little motivation goes a long way.

[B]

Mary. What should he sell?

[C]

Let me see. What do you got in your background?

[A]

Oh, you want me to sell something I got over here. Let's see.

[B]

Do you have any snake oil?

[A]

Snake oil? Let me tell you something, folks. I know that you've got many maladies that ail you. You might have gout in the leg. You might have a little fuzz in the brain. You might have a little rot in the tooth. What if I told you one simple elixir can fix all of these problems? Snake oil. And I'm not talking about your simple, stupid garden snake variety king cobra here, folks. We are getting them into a pulverizer, sticking out the nicest oil, putting it in this bottle and you just, you're gonna feel much better. Snake oil. Giantbob.com premium. I mean, wait, I mean, snake oil dot com.

[C]

Maybe you get, you get snake oil free with your subscription.

[A]

A bottle of snake oil for your maladies. Maladies is a fun word to say. Yeah, that's.

[B]

That sounds like an 1800s thing. It's just you, you really tap into that, like, Red Dead 2 character that you just find in a town yelling at you.

[A]

Yeah, that actually, that was a Red Dead one. That was like one of the first characters from the trailer is the guy selling snake oil. I remember him. I like Red Dead Redemption.

[B]

That's a good one.

[A]

Cowboys are neat.

[B]

Yeah, two's all right too. I, I still got to go back. I started two.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, you were really hard on it. He came like, around to being, like, okay with it, which I, you know, I respect that. I, I, Yeah.

[B]

And I still need to keep going with it. I feel like it's been a while since I've done the full on Knives Out. Hey. I hate this game. This game sucks.

[A]

Which is funny because I have one of those now and it's like, driving me a little bit crazy.

[B]

Well, should we hit the break and then we come back? We can talk about video games.

[C]

Oh, yeah, you. Did you play it recently? Minati?

[A]

It's a very new game. Okay, stay tuned, folks.

[B]

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[C]

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[B]

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[C]

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[B]

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[C]

That's Hallmarky's podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[B]

Hi, this is Alex Kanchowitz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Mike, you tease the folks with a game that you despise that maybe. I've heard you say harsh words off mic about.

[A]

I said harsh words to you about it. And I'm like, I don't. I don't want to say this publicly. And now all you do is try to get me to say it publicly.

[B]

Because I want you to say it publicly so. Because it's very funny.

[A]

Yeah, it's funny. But also, no, people will be mad. People. You know, there's a red thread right now, a giant bob of a guy. He got downvoted, but there's a guy's like, mike's actually too mean to Dan now on the Blake Club thing. It's not even funny anymore.

[B]

Really? That's funny.

[A]

Was it you? Was it your alt that posted this

[B]

mike at the Bombathon? It was when people were yelling about the mugs and I told the guys, I think we were in a different car than you. I said, I'm gonna make a fake Reddit account and I'm gonna see how many posts it takes to. Until Mike brings one up on content.

[A]

Is this. It was you.

[C]

It was you.

[A]

He left for the audio listener.

[B]

He has left the chair. He cackled and has walked off.

[C]

It was you. You got him to leave.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Oh, I'm so relieved. I was right with the world. Oh, that's funny.

[B]

That's right. That is the Reddit user Walter Crunk, who was the name of the Big Show's character in Knucklehead.

[A]

Okay, it's making sense because I looked at. I looked at the guy's history and like I went to Arby's or something. This guy was like I went to Arby's like oh I need a break from blight club. Hahaha. Treating myself Arby's. The guy's like I played this game. It's not that bad. Mike's just like playing it up for laughs. And I read that months ago when he said that Dan and I was fucking pissed so bad.

[B]

I'm proud of my work here. I'm looking five months ago just to make sure it wasn't an obvious fake. He was commenting on different R gaming threads about how he wants Twilight Princess HD on Switch, how the moon still scares him in a majora. And also on the science memes subreddit and the paleontology subreddit. He's got some posts before coming back to complain about Mike and Mike alone.

[A]

Yeah. Like you hit your tracks. Wow. Because you have these other posts. The mood still scares me. We didn't know how good we had it. Like oh my God. This is maniacal. I am scared. I don't I thought I knew. I thought I was like I don't do it pretty well. I know what he's capable of. This is incredible. I'm impressed. Terrified. Like wow.

[B]

When you I I made this post when you announced the mugs during the bombathon. I said I'm gonna miss the mug arc. I understand why everyone's happy about the mug announcement, but I can't help but

[A]

be a little bummed.

[B]

Just look at the last couple weeks on the sub. It's been such a fun meme and running gag for it felt like we were just getting started with that. Now it's just snuffed out. Not a huge deal I guess, but I wish they would have let us have a couple more months of fun with it. Just seems like a misstep in comedic timing.

[A]

That post that upvotes. You have this fucking paleontology post where somebody's like I accidentally cracked this spinosaurus tooth I bought. Is it fake? And you say I can see why you might suspect it's fake, but it's surprisingly common for the be found in that condition. 71 upvotes. You're lying. You don't know anything about stuff Spikasaurus teeth or whatever the hell it was.

[C]

A trusted saurus and teeth.

[B]

I might have researched it to make sure it was accurate before I put that.

[A]

Also that I wouldn't suspect this account. Oh my God. Damn.

[B]

He's so high pitched right now that it's coming out.

[A]

His mic is coming out. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's too much. My microphone doesn't recognize me anymore. The

[C]

Dan, this is pretty dirty, even for you. How far back did you go? Did you plot this?

[B]

I mean, I forgot I had this because, like, almost all of these comments were from five months ago during the Bombathon. Because I was like, I'd be in the car and I'd make a post and I'd turn around and show it to like Grub and Chuck and stuff. And I was like, well, I bet Mike's gonna say one of these on the air at some point. And then I remembered today that I had that and so I complained about him on like, Clevin. Here we go.

[A]

Oh my God. Just evil, evil man.

[B]

For those who this is the actual post that he just referred to. For as much as Mike likes to act like the victim and that the world is against him during this Blight club seasons, it's really unbecoming to see how he's been acting this time around. He's so smug and clearly delighting in Dan getting frustrated with the game, whereas Dan is way more playful with his ribbing. Just makes Mike come across as mean, imo.

[C]

Oh my God, you're a psycho, Dan. You've been. That's psychological warfare. You have been with this poor man for months. He's probably lost sleep over some of these.

[A]

Oh my gosh, I had hair before he did this.

[B]

I didn't. I didn't make a point. Like, when I made it, I was like, okay, I gotta make sure. These are the most petty, stupid, not actually complaints ever. So actually it would just sound like the most Reddit comment guy ever.

[A]

They were like, I thought they were real. Like, they're not unreasonable for Reddit. Not at all.

[C]

It's.

[A]

It's you infiltrating the paleontology group and fitting in. That's really getting to me. I gotta be honest. That's what's gotten me. Because anybody I think would be like, well, it's not just dad. He's posting on our paleontology. It seems to know what he's talking about.

[B]

Oh, this could not be a better payoff for that bit. I'm so happy. And you walked right into it too. You're like, it's not you, is it? Haha.

[A]

I know. I did not think. I did not fuck Crimson Desert. That game is bad. Why do people like this game? I don't get it. I'm like, a lot of people don't but some people are like, no, man, this is great. This is fun. I love it. And, I mean, I played it for three hours, which, to me, should be more than enough time to understand the game, to know if I'm going to like a game. And I'm willing to accept that games get more complicated. They could get better after that time. But I have to see something in those three hours. And I was just seeing frustrations. Like, the controls are sloppy, and maybe they're fixing that. The character is heavy, moving, feels bad. But, you know, if it was just one of those things or two of those things. But then the story is nothing. It starts off as really grounded, like, oh, political upheaval. This group is killing your group. Then you get summoned to a sky sanctuary, and a wizard and a lady bird tell you that your parallel multiverse world is in trouble and you're really special and you're going to fix it. They just give you the ultra hand ability from Tears of the Kingdom that you do one thing with, and then it doesn't work anymore. Go back down to the planet, and the game just tells you, go talk to this kid. I'm like, why? Because the game told you to. Can I go wander around? You can, but you can't really do anything yet, so keep doing what the game tells you to do. Then at one point, I had. I had a bounty. I thought it was a fun side quest, and then it just turned to me punching a poor woman in the face repeatedly while I pinned her to the ground. I didn't feel good about that. So. Yeah. What? Yeah.

[C]

Why did you assault that woman?

[A]

The gay told me so, like, I got this bounty. I was like, oh, this lady's murdering people and she pretends to be a victim and she hangs around the church. So go find her and, like, bring her in alive. I was like, okay, that's fine. So I was like, I thought I was gonna do some investigating. Mary, right? Like, ooh. And she's gonna lure me over and pretend to be in trouble, and I'm gonna, like, pretend to play along, blah, blah, blah. I just go into this room in the church, and the only lady in the room just immediately starts running as soon as she sees me. So I run after her, and then as soon as I get close, I just tackle her to the ground. And my only options are let her go, which I don't want to do, because clearly in video game logic, she is the murderer. Or b, punch her in the face a lot while she's like, oh, it's not me. I'm innocent. And my character's like, I know you're lying. I don't know she's lying. I think she might have a decent case. I've got nothing on her personally, but I want to complete the video game mission. So I guess I'm punching this video game lady in the face. So, yeah, it's just, I don't know, all these weird things. I got into a boss fight and like, it's in the street and all these people are like circled around watching me fight a person. And I go. I don't even go out of the circle of people, right? I go to the edge of it. And the game's immediately like, oh, you better get into the combat arena. 10, 9, 8. Fuck off with that shit. Oh, gosh. I don't know. Dan, am I crazy? Is this game as abrasive as I'm making it sound?

[B]

No.

[A]

No.

[B]

And it's also weird because it's like whenever a game comes out that it has this like insane level of hype to it and the people that are into it are just so about it. You. It's like, what that makes you examine this stuff more and be like, wait, what are people seeing in this? Because I had. I played like a little over an hour maybe, and it just kept introducing new stuff. Like, here's the cooking system, here's your investment profile at the bank. You can set up here.

[A]

Chop trees.

[B]

Yeah, the tree chopping thing. Here's the combo minigame for cleaning chimneys. You know, it's just. It's introducing so much shit and like less than an hour in, I'm like, okay, either this thing is super duper ambitious and pulling off some crazy shit here, and it's like a bigger open world game than it's ever been seen before, or it is just biting off way more than it can chew and it's going to be way more quantity and the quality. So I actually reached out to some people that I knew were also playing it for review and I was like, hey, you're a lot farther than me. Is this. Does this stuff pay off? And I heard from some people that are like, whoa, no, this sucks. And then people that I trust, like you, Mike about this game have basically been saying the same complaints I had early on. It just like you walk up Mary. I think it does this with like pet, like animals and stuff. Like you see a dog or a cat or something and you say hi to it. You like hold LB and press the button to greet it and it'll Be like plus five trust points, you know, and the same thing will pop up if you just talk to a guard and say that. And it's like, all right, does that mean anything? Like, it's just constantly just numbers and HUD stuff and everything. That's like. Like, I don't know if this is of value or means anything or if it's just systems on top of systems. And I think it's the latter.

[C]

It's a shame because I think that there's a lot of content here and that could be something that we would have really enjoyed. But it has to have an actual meaning where you feel like you're doing something. And I also, like, I've heard as well, just like interacting with different things is quite complicated because there's so much that can be done in this game. So to interact with an object, you like have to hit R2 and then you have to hit like a. To like jump on that object.

[A]

You got a Z, target them to interact with them.

[C]

That sounds really exhausting to me that that was the system that they came up with for you to jump on an object. The Z targeting is not.

[A]

It's strange.

[C]

It doesn't seem adaptable to like a younger audience either. I don't know.

[A]

I mean, that's the weird disconnect though, is that like, this game is finding an audience. This game has like sold 3 million copies on Steam. The reviews are very positive right now. Like, you know, every time, you know, I think we or people kind of in this game's media landscape talk about they don't like this game. A lot of people kind of like, oh, no, like, I love this. It's great. So, yeah, like I'm. I guess that's what it is. And I get it. Like, people like different things, of course. But there's this. There's a disconnect here with this one where I just. I just can't even see it, except for the fact that it is a big open world game with a lot of things in it. And I get that, like, for a lot of people that is the ideal video game. And I like games like that too.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Like when they are good. I've liked Witcher 3, I've liked Red Dead Redemption 2 or, you know, Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild. But I don't like that stuff so much that I'm just gonna kind of be into any game that even attempts such a thing.

[B]

Yeah, it is one of those where it's like you go to the map screen. I feel like Every open world game, you do that where you go to the map screen, you zoom out all the way and you kind of pan around and it's like, wow, this, this is one of those where it's like, like holy, that map's big. How big is this game?

[C]

But yeah, how big is it?

[B]

But the thing is some of those do that Breath of the Wild did that Elden Ring did that Elden Ring was even smarter with it because it would like obscure how big the actual.

[A]

Right. Like you didn't know how big it really was.

[B]

I thought and that's my favorite one of those ever. But like everything that was giving you early in like an Elden Ring of Breath of the Wild was like tantalizing. And it was like, oh, okay, I can't wait to spend more time in this world. And everything I was seeing in that early, early parts of Crimson Desert is like, oh, I don't like any part of this. And you also have the people being like, oh, once you get 20 hours in it's good. But it's still gonna be doing tutorials. Somebody told me there's in the chat said 55 hours in, they were still getting tutorials. Sure.

[A]

I'm like fucking nuts. It's the same. There's a problem. It's like, okay, there's. I guess it's good that there's new stuff to see still at that point. But I want that new stuff to kind of build upon some fundamentals, not just here's a brand new mechanic. Right. Like again like a Breath of the Wild. You almost have those kind of three or four base mechanics with the, you know, the abilities that you do have, like stasis, the magnet stuff or just the way the chemistry works. And then you build a hundred hour game that works off of all of that. I think that's what is really interesting to me. More so than just let's put everything in here, you know, like some of the aspects I think, you know, do work pretty well. I thought the combat did feel good. I was into that well enough. I think the game does look pretty. Maybe not the characters as much, but the world absolutely is, is pretty. And playing it on a high end PC, it is a nice looking game. There are good vistas and things like that. But then like, you know, they're teaching me systems like the way I can make, like I could blind people with the light off my sword. And also it like shows waypoints, things like that. It's stuff you almost forget about because then you don't really have A reason to use any of that for a long time. So suddenly you're stuck and you're frustrated because you don't know what to do. It turns out, oh, if I bring my sword out, I can see the electrical currents that would help me solve this puzzle that I'm doing right now. It's just, it's all bizarre.

[B]

And then it's like, you'll. You'll briefly remember, like, oh, wait, I could do a thing with the lantern or with this. And it's like you go to the help menu to figure out how, and it's a thousand pages. The fucking help menu. Yeah. Okay, never mind. Like, yeah, right, yeah. It seems like there's an audience for this game. It doesn't seem to be anyone I know. I mean, I feel like everyone I've talked about this game has the same feelings about it for the most part.

[A]

Right. Maybe it's like, you know, like, oh, like, so there's cooking in the game. So, you know, how do you learn a recipe? You don't just use it from your inventory. Your character has to actually, like, hold it out in front of him. Then you hold down the look at the paper button until a progress bar fills up and then he's learned the recipe and the recipe paper is even still in your inventory. I'm like, this could be so much more elegant. I think some people think like, that's realistic or that's, I don't know, that's more immersive to me somehow. And I guess that's just again a disconnect because I don't get anything from that.

[B]

Well, going from one game with a million systems and complications and everything to a game based on an arcade game that is about as simple as it gets. A coin pusher. We have all been playing raccoon, which, if you notice the episode went up a little late today. It's because that embargo just lifted. Yeah. I guess the easiest way to say this is like, okay, you know how Balatro Balatrofied poker and other games have tried to balatro fi everything from across to a million other things. Slot machines with clover pit and everything. This one is doing it with coin pushing games, which are the things that you would see at the bowling alley or Chuck E. Cheese that. Yeah, I thought they were always the worst machine at the arcade.

[A]

They never paid off, right? No, I never had that moment. I always liked the idea of it, but yeah, I was never the one to get the quarter in to then push it and get it all going.

[B]

I think maybe that's where I. I am having fun with this. I'm a couple hours in and, like, I think part of the satisfaction is maybe I have so many times put a quarter into one of these things and nothing happens that, like, now I'm just shooting like, like thousands and thousands of coins into this thing and some of them explode and some of them turn into rabbits that fucking turn into other rabbit coins. And then. So you're just constantly getting all these coins and everything. It feels like I'm getting revenge on those things from years ago, but I, so far am kind of. I don't know if confused the word, but, like, I haven't fully grasped some of this stuff. Like, have you guys unlocked any, like, extra characters?

[C]

Have you been able to win, like, the 15 rounder?

[B]

I have not. Have you?

[A]

I've won one. I've won the first 15 rounder, and I've struggled to do it again with the second guy, who is more of like the animal herding guy, the biologist.

[C]

I've unlocked four characters now.

[B]

Oh, really?

[C]

Yeah. It took me a couple hours for it to click. And at first I was like. My first instinct actually was, listen, when Balatro was getting all that shit for everyone being like, it's a gambling game, so we don't know if it should be on here. And they were like, it's not a gambling game. And we all stood by Balatro and we said, this is not a gambling game. You leave Balatro alone. And then I played Raccoon and I went. This kind of feels like a gambling game,

[B]

though.

[C]

There's no real money. But what I'm saying is, is that if a kid plays this, they're going to want to fucking hit the slots. You know what I mean? Like, this game is really fun because it's emblematic of, like, gambling. And their character that I'm playing right now is, like, even more so. I have a coin that I think it's called a shit. I forget all the terminology. There's like, something called, like, prizes or whatever. And you put them on the bottom.

[A]

Yeah, on the bottom. Yeah. Those are the consumables.

[C]

Yeah, I have a. Yeah, I have a prize chip that's a 50. 50. Either you hit the win or you get a bad coin.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You hit the win, like. Oh, you, like, hit the target for the level. For that round.

[C]

The level.

[A]

Target. Okay, I'll take that bet every time.

[C]

I've been doing the bet all the time. It's the one that I won, you guys. And I was like, this is Gambling. I was having a great time. Like, figuring out, like, the nuances of the different coins is. Is where this game gets good. If you're just spitting coins out and hoping that you get enough to spill over, that shit's boring. And I think you'd probably be like, I don't get it. Where the game started to click for me was I started seeing these, like, nuclear coins, and I got an upgrade that could duplicate any coins that you have. If you get a nuclear, which is worth, like a thousand, it's crazy. And then you get one of these dupes, you could be duplicating. I was making $50,000 in, like, a poll from combining these very specific, nuanced keys together. They don't explain everything to you. There's this one that looks like a sci fi ring, and I was like, how do I turn it on? It's so important. It's so valuable. If you can actually get it to work. You have to sell three coins, right? Three items. Yeah, I was. I was buying bullshit. Like, shit I didn't give a shit about. I was. I was buying all those bunnies Daniel, you're talking about, and then I was selling them, and then this thing would go off, and that's how I was making, like, 20 GS. When you figure it out, I. I was landing, I think, towards the end, just like Balatro, you need to get, like, $250,000, I think, to win. I think. I think to win, win, I think you need 500,000. I was cooking. I. I could not believe how much money I was spitting out of this machine. When you get to the tens of thousands of coins falling in front of you, that is so addictive. It's really fun. It's the beginning. That's, like, a little rough for me.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. And, like, when it. When it all comes together, it feels really good. I think unlike a Balatro, where, like, the whole time you're playing balatro, even when it's, like, really kind of cheating, you feel like you do feel like you're playing some kind of poker. You feel like you're maybe really playing a coin pusher for this. Those first few rounds, like you said, the actual, like, oh, left click or right click, shoot a coin out. That becomes almost meaningless after those coins aren't doing anything. You have to really quickly figure out some kind of, like, weird with, like. Yeah, like that sci fi thing or the UFOs, or. There are so. And there's so many of those special coins. It's almost a little Intimidating to figure out up what the synergies. Synergies are. Sometimes you find a coin that's like, well, this coin is going to water the plant coin.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I'm like, right, Well, I have 10 of these water coins. I don't have a damn plant coin yet. So I just have these water coins going around.

[C]

So sell them.

[A]

Yeah, I guess I need to sell them. I definitely do feel like I'm missing something again. Not that far into it. I've beaten one run and it's felt good. My. My instinct is that this is good. It's still like so many of these. Not Balatro level, which is such a high bar.

[C]

It's almost mean to compare it to Bellagio because it's such a high caliber. But I will say is like to mimic you, Minati, I would say my biggest issue with it is that even once I know those things, this is very luck driven.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

And there are times when I feel like there's nothing that I can do to save a run and you throw the run away. And actually that does happen with Balatro. So like whatever that can happen to the best of us. I just feel like with other games there was a lot of strategy that you could do to create like a good hand for yourself. In this game, it's more like, listen, I got dealt these coins and these upgrades. I'm gonna make them work to the best of my ability and hope this works out. The more you play with it and find those synergies. I don't know why is this. The more you make these synergies, the better the game ends up being. And I. I really did end up finding some really fun connections with different coins, like duplicating each other. There's this one that explodes all of the baubles on the ball at once. There's like really? There's. Oh, one of my favorites is the giraffe.

[B]

You guys seen the giraffe Wraps the neck around.

[A]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean that's when it's the most fun, is when the coins get pushed around or blown up. Like the coin physics are great. I love the way that makes me feel very exciting. Yeah. Yeah. It's just. It's just kind of pleasant and like. I don't know if cartoony is the word, but it's like. It's just. It's like a retro that never existed. In some weird way. I. If I almost do feel like I'm in a Chuck E. Cheese. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's what you want for a coin pusher.

[B]

Yeah, There have been times where it's like, you'll get ones where it's like you can form a coin tower and it is just like this, like, giant. The Tower of Hera. Is that what it is? The big, like, kind of rotating thing

[C]

that comes out so exciting when you get, like, a tower of like, 640 coins. Just like. Just like those machines that you see when you're a kid and you're like, I gotta knocks that tower over.

[A]

And then.

[C]

So good.

[B]

If you get that when it's like, you could also get, like, exploding coins. And like, there is an element of actually, like, aiming stuff. So the special ones, you have to, like, wait until the aiming and then you can kind of trigger it. So you can either shoot, like, an exploding coin at the tower, which is awesome, or like Mary said, there was that one prize that, like, makes all the prize balls explode. So what if you've got a run or you built a tower and you happen to have four prize balls sitting out there, you detonate it and you're watching a billion coins fly everywhere. Like, that shit's awesome.

[A]

Or you get the prize. The prize that's like the black hole and it just sucks all the coins within a vicinity in and you score them. So you put that on the tower.

[C]

So many fun ones.

[A]

Yeah, there's a lot of moments like that, that. That feel. That feel pretty good again. But again, though, it's like sometimes I feel like these. It's about these really big swings and not as much like, all right, I'm picking this coin in the shop, and then this coin and these two synergies are going to be really impactful. A lot of times those aren't as impactful as I'm hoping.

[C]

Yeah, not until 7 or 8 Do you get enough money where you can refresh your coins. Stop choosing everything. You want to spend your tickets on a successful run around seven or eight, you have a thousand tickets. You should be using them. The other thing that I think a lot of people don't realize about this game is that it's your combo. The combo is king. People aren't recognizing that it's not about hitting the goal. They're constantly trying to just be like, I need as many coins as possible. But the combo is what raises your spin o meter. And once you get a spin, that's where you get all your good stuff. So the best things you can actually get are, like, this thing that pauses your combo so that you can hurry up and get more coins to fall and keep your combo Going once you get a combo to hit spin. Spin two, I think, is the one, because that's the one where it gets into the good parts of the spin where you can get, like, a 640 tower or you can get, like, all these, like, little prize balls that comes down. That's where it's at. But I think. I think your instinct and this game, again, this game tutorial, really does not tell you this stuff, but it's. It's really about keeping your combo.

[A]

Yeah. And I'm maybe being too meticulous where I'm, like, really, like, planning. I was shooting my coins and aiming, and I'm dropping the combo because I'm being too slow.

[B]

Yeah, it's. I'm still in the. I'm still early enough to where it's like. It's one of those games where it's like, there's so many different systems and things that, like, it's kind of overwhelming at first. And one that I'm still is kind of grasping is the auto fill. Because, like, it seems like every once in a while, like, if you just have a gap in the. On the coin thing, this, like, I don't even know what it is. Some fucking thing comes in and drops, like, a bucket of coins to fill it up, and it'll say, like, one out of ten. It's like, okay, I get that. I guess I've got 10 auto fills. I don't know if that's different based on what character I have. I don't know if I can refill those. I don't see any HUD element that tells me what that is. So it's just like, a lot of those things of, like, this wheel is spinning, this auto fill is happening. This coin thing happened here. Okay, I can extend my coin clip. There's just. There's a lot early on for you to learn, for sure. But it does click into place. And I think ultimately, you do have more control over something. Like, you know, if Balatro's on the high, high, high end of, like, okay, this is a perfect one of these. And then there's like, a clover pit, which I love the idea of. I like the aesthetics of it, and it's clearly taking stuff from that Balatro mold. But ultimately, you're playing a slot machine, and you kind of have no control over where the reels end. This one, you do have a certain level of control over things. So I. I would definitely put this above, like, a clover pit in terms of, like, this realm of Balatro likes. So definitely gonna play More of it runs great on Steam Deck. The physics and everything are great playing game.

[C]

Great for short runs. Great for people who like luck based kind of like that. You want that quick dopamine gambling rush. I think this is gonna really tick boxes for it has an old school aesthetic. I will say that. So I don't know if like the visual style will be for everyone but I like that old school machine.

[A]

I like how it looks. I'm into that.

[B]

Mary, Mike. I guess all of us are still working on Pickopia. I will say very briefly I have backed off Pecopia a little bit just because I've been playing Tomodachi Life. I'm on the preview embargo time of Tomodachi Life so I could talk about out that I'm playing it. I'll save my longer thoughts for once. The the review embargo is up. But I will say I am enjoying it quite a bit. But that is in that similar vein of like you know, Animal Cross town Builder, you know, typing Pecopia. Sure.

[A]

It's almost a little funny that they had these games back to back, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like an Ants and a

[C]

Bug's Life came out at the same time.

[A]

That wasn't a coincidence because Jeffrey Kassenberger left Disney and he went to DreamWorks. He's like, I know what Pixar is working on. We should make our own. And there's Sylvester Stallone again. See, it all came back. Let's bring it on home. Sylvester Stallone.

[C]

You think there's a son of a that left Pocopia and was like, I'm gonna make my own cocoa?

[A]

No, I don't think that's what happened here. I just wanted to set the record straight about ants and a bug.

[B]

Of course.

[C]

Thank God you were here.

[A]

If I wasn't on this one, I was just listening. I'd be freaking out right about Final Fantasy and I'm not here. And I get real mad. Yeah, yeah. Be a big problem.

[B]

Hi, this is Alex Canceroitz. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence. Influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices in Meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties. Listen to big technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. So Copia, how is that? I. I kind of stopped. Like, I got into the second biome. Mike, you're a bit further.

[A]

Mary, I'm done. I wrote credits, which. Which obviously there's a ton more you can do in this game. You can develop those four main biomes and then there's a whole open area where you can really do anything you want to from scratch. And like almost my pleasure from the game now is just going online and seeing the ridiculous things that people are building.

[C]

Yeah, people made an Olive Garden. Did you see that?

[A]

No, I didn't see the Olive Garden.

[C]

That's so find it. They're making like. They're making insane stuff. People in Pocopia are nuts.

[A]

That's incredible. I mean, I've seen people making like they're recreating specific towns from Pokemon. Somebody made the Golden Gate Bridge I saw recently. They're making like monorail systems and underground water tunnels, all sorts of amazing things.

[C]

And like, so cool.

[A]

And it kind of like with Tears of the Kingdom, I like seeing that stuff. But I also like that I don't personally have to do it.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

To beat the game. Like, there's these objectives, like throw a parties and cook these five food items and learn how electricity works and connect the power grid. And I do that. And it's not always pretty, but it gets the job done in the Pokemon get happier. And that's all that matters to me. And I get happier. It's a just a very good loop. There's always new stuff to see. You're always feeling rewarded. You're always moving on to the next thing. It's not even like, you know, animal crossing out a bit. That problem was like, well, I'm done with the stuff I can do today. Yeah, I could keep. I could keep playing. Even though there's some things that took a day to do, like building a Pokemon center, other build things, there was always something else I could be working towards. I kind of blazed through this, getting to the credits. Just had a good time the whole way through.

[B]

Mary, how far are you in it?

[C]

I'm still in the second Biome because I'm really enjoy. I put a lot more time into it. I. I have to be because I. It's the only game I took to south by Southwest and to New Orleans. And so I probably put like another 15 hours into it. So I'm like, shockingly still in the second biome after like 25 hours.

[A]

Which second biome? Because I think you can either go to the mountainous one or the watery one.

[C]

I went to the beach, it went to watery.

[B]

It's through that. That like, metal door.

[C]

Right?

[A]

Man, almost everyone else did that. I went to the. I went to this one where you do a lot of like, mining and stuff in a mountain area before I went to the water one.

[B]

Oh, is it you. Do you go. Is it like a different story quest that you do?

[A]

So yeah, like, I think after you do the first biome, you can do the next two in any order. And then the fourth one's always the fourth one.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. I'm still having a lot of fun with it. And that point is true of like the fact that you can just keep playing it. I found it's great on the treadmill and it's great on planes because it's like you can just kind of keep going. It is. It is kind of one of those time warp games. And you don't run out of stuff to do because you can just keep doing shit. Except for sometimes you'll make. You make a house or something. They'll be like, come back at 11:23 and the house will be done.

[C]

Yeah, I've been making a lot of houses for my Pokemon. I think that that's probably where I've been spending all of my time is building everybody shelters. I just don't think a bed of hay is sufficient for children. I feel a little rotten, like leaving them there. And so I've been building basically every. I have like 60 Pokemon and they all have houses. And so, like, that's a good way

[A]

to get your habitat level up. Because they love being in houses. So you're not wrong. They're much happier that way. It does seem a little mean. Like, hey, guy whose tail is on fire all times. Sleep in this dry bed of hay.

[C]

No, sleep in this wet bed of hay. Because we had to make it humid in here. Everybody was like, put more moisture in the air and then it was raining and this poor guy is just sitting there. I actually moved him to a different biome where it wasn't raining because I was like, I feel bad for this guy. Like, this feels wrong.

[A]

He doesn't. Like, he's. He's. He's tired of this yawning asshole making it rain.

[B]

I like slowpoke. I'm. I'm in team slowpoke now. Mike, your. Your brow furrowed about a minute ago, and it looked like you were going to say something. You remember why your brow was furrowed?

[A]

Oh, my brow does a lot of things. I have very expressive brows. Dan, you know this about me. Look at him go. Oh, wow.

[B]

They're going nuts. Audio listener, get on the video Patreon. I think it's when I said it

[A]

was a treadmill or game.

[B]

And you, you look perturbed about that.

[A]

No, I wouldn't have any issues with that. Well, I don't play games on the plane just because I sleep. That's what I do on planes, even long flights. I am sleepy. I take performance enhancing drugs, Mary. I take that Dramamine, you see.

[C]

Oh, I see sleeping drugs.

[A]

Yeah, I do that. And then I just put one of my boring audiobooks on that I listen to about science or something. And then I usually fall asleep pretty quickly. And it's great because I teleport to some new part of the world.

[B]

It's something I've learned now. Sharing numerous airbnbs with Mike Minati is like, I'll get up in the middle of the night to go pee or something, and It'll be like 4am and I'm not trying to eavesdrop, but I'll walk by his room and I'll just hear, like, the letter Q came about and 1490.

[A]

And it's like, yeah, that's. I was listening to my History of the Alphabet audiobook. That was one of the great courses.

[B]

Half asleep. He talking about letters. Like, okay.

[A]

Writing about letters. You know, I. I slept through that episode of Sesame Streets. I had to catch up on that one.

[C]

It's crazy to be able to sleep on a plane. I'm not a good napper. And I find that I, I don't. I don't sleep well unless I'm, like, in a bed with, like, very specific conditions.

[B]

I. I am nap tech. Oh, yeah. Mike's the master napper. He's.

[A]

He's got a problem. It's a problem. I can nap. Like, I. I can nap easier than I can just fall asleep for bed. I don't know what that's about.

[B]

Weird.

[A]

Yeah, but like, yeah, like, 10pm to 4am falling asleep's a struggle. If it's like 6pm, I am out.

[B]

6pm I. I kind of get a wave. Like, after, like, all the recordings and meetings and are done, I kind of get. It's always at that time where it's like, it's kind of too late to nap right now. But my new nap tech is, now that I'm doing the marathon training again and I can, like, start getting outside is. I bought these fucking giant boots that like, go from the bottom of your foot to up, like, into your crotch, basically, and they inflate and they just like. They're compression boots and they just like, squeeze your legs really hard and then go through different zones and then, like, it's like a. Like a blood pressure thing on your arm, you know? But imagine that's on your entire leg, and it just kind of gets the blood moving and stuff through the legs and stuff. Supposed to help with recovery speed and stuff like, that sounds good. Lay down and inflate my legs for, like, 45 minutes. And that puts me right to sleep.

[A]

I mean, I've been good about it, like, the last month, but mostly it's because instead of sleeping, I just been working. Right. I'm like, that. That's a good way to not take naps, is just be really busy. So you can't. Yes, that'll take care of that. But, yeah, being outside and exercising, I think that'd be a. A much better way to work on that, I guess.

[B]

All three of us have the thing where we've got the day job, and then we also do a bunch of nighttime streams and podcasts.

[A]

Bunch of nighttime. Yeah, exactly.

[C]

And, yeah, there's been hard to make time for it all, truly, but worth it. I was telling Dan before we started, I was like, this is considered, like, fun busy, where I'm like, oh, I'm so busy. But I'm also like, but I get to talk about Pocopia, which I love, but I'm tired and I have a. I have. Have 7am Flight. But I get to talk about Raccoon and all the fun coins.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, we recorded Portal Pals on Wednesday evenings. Right. Like, that's when we got to fit that in. Right. Because you. Your day job, you can't just come in giant bum at 2pm but, yeah, it was really fun to do. We got to knock out multiple episodes in a row, things like that, so it all works.

[C]

It's also my podcast recording night, which you're probably recognizing. And so what we were doing is we were doing it in the off week weeks. And then one of the nights, it just so happened we could only record on a Thursday. And so I was like, let's do the recording on a Wednesday, because I had a free Wednesday. And so I was like, like, I stream on Mondays, bowling Tuesdays, podcast Wednesdays. We're doing Portal Pals any day. I could squeeze that in. Like, I'm booked.

[B]

Yeah, this is good stuff. Like, imagine, like, if you had to go to, like, A kid's soccer game or something.

[C]

Constantly trying to leave them alone in a like, place. You don't want to be with them ever. And then you're like a kid to soccer. Soccer would be cool.

[B]

No, I, I don't like kids. I don't like sports and I specifically don't like soccer. So like the idea of held me is like having to sit in a kid's soccer crowd for like an hour.

[C]

That just sounds like playing pocopia while you pretend.

[B]

Oh, so you can't leave a theater for an hour and play a game, but you can play pocopia in the crowd?

[A]

I think you know why you can't play po. Yeah. Cuz you're there, Dan. You can see them the whole time

[B]

paying attention to car.

[A]

It's different.

[C]

Sometimes I'm officer, I can't play pocopia while I drive my son to his soccer practice.

[B]

No, have the kid drive. What use are they?

[A]

I go to a lot of kids sports games. It's kind of fun because you just, you just talk to the other people that. And they always have a concession stance. You can get some junk. Yeah. But it's fine.

[B]

Just walk around. The beauty of what we do for a living is that like everybody I know loves video games. And so like I just talk about video games with everyone I know. If I'm in bleachers with a bunch of soccer parents, what the fuck do people talk about if they don't play video games?

[A]

The nice thing is that it's usually my brother's kids and they like video games and they like Disney a lot. So guess what? We're usually talking about Epcot or, you know, Nintendo.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

One of those things.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. It's all working out.

[B]

Yeah, we got a hack for that.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Like the kids get into things. You like, my one nephew is reading Calvin and Hobbes right now and I'm like swelling with pride. Nice.

[C]

Good series. What a wonderful. What a wonderful journey to go on to read Calvin and Hobbes for the first time.

[A]

Best. Gosh, so freaking good. I think because like that, that guy, the guy who wrote it, Bill Waterson, he lives around here. Ish. It's like an hour drive and he's a recluse. Right. But like we still took like a pilgrimage to that town and kind of just hung around there the one time. It's really, it's a really pretty area. I think my brother did that again recently and he just bought some of the books and brought them back to his son.

[B]

That's Fun. And we used to get drunk and we'd go try to pee on Bob Dole's lawn. So kind of the same thing.

[A]

Yeah. Good old man. I'll say this for Bob Dole. When they made a parody version of him in the Simpsons, it was really funny.

[B]

Yeah. And Norman. Him. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

That's Norm. Oh, my gosh.

[B]

For the record, it was my friend Eric that always did the peeing on Bob Do's lawn. We just, you know, sometimes we're in the car.

[A]

Pee on his lawn. Yeah.

[B]

I don't really know much about him. I mean, he's super dead, but. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, you seemed really proud of it. Why are you throwing your friend under the bus? I'm sure you.

[B]

No, I think it's. I think it's funny. The idea of it is very funny. I just hope it's not like he's like, a beloved old man or whatever.

[A]

I. I assume he ran against Bill Clinton, and I don't think ever had much of a chance.

[B]

I think Kansas is the only state that. That voted for him. I don't know.

[A]

Right. He was a 90s Republican. I don't think there's too much love lost for Bob Dole. Sure.

[B]

Speaking of Bob Dole, this is not a good pivot. Bob Dole. More like Fish Bowl Mary. What's that?

[C]

Wow, that is a rough one.

[B]

This is why I don't host.

[A]

I thought I was hosting. Why are you doing the segues?

[B]

Better one. Go from Bob Dole to Fishbowl.

[A]

Yeah. Bob Dole. That man has a name that rhymes with fishbowl.

[B]

Okay. He killed me. That was much better.

[C]

Fishbowl is a narrative game about. I'm just trying to describe this. It is a narrative game about grief, I think, but it's actually quite entertaining. It has some emotion to it. So I'll preface it with that. I think. I think it's pretty obvious from the very beginning. You've lost, like, a per. Like a person in your family, but you're going through your daily motions. You, like, you have to shower. You have to, like, go to work. You have to, like, make yourself coffee every day. The game is kind of puzzly based. I love those games where it's like, now brush your teeth. And so you have to hit, like, up, down, up, down, left, right? Yeah, it's that. I wouldn't call them, like, mini games. Some of them are mini games. Like, you'll get a box, and you have to. You have to move everything out of the box to get the item at the bottom, kind of like a puzzle, like a turn, like a moving left and right puzzle to get the item at the bottom of the box. And when you go to work, I think you're a video editor and that plays like Guitar Hero.

[A]

Oh, it's like a note highway, but it's like the different, like, yeah, parts editor. Okay.

[C]

Cutting. Yeah, removing something. So lots of mini games, which I like all these things, but, but it's. I think generally you're doing all this stuff whilst you go through a lot of dialogue with your mom, with your friends, with your co worker that seems a little, a little weird. And it's about your mood. Everything impacts your, your mood. Your mood can go up or down based on how you feel on a given day. One time I went to go write something and my character said, I don't, I don't want to write today. And then my, my mood went down and I got sad because I wasn't inspired to write. But doing things like doing the dishes is good for you. Doing laundry, keeping up with your life. And so it's just a narrative based game where you're trying to keep your shit together. But you also have to recognize that you're feeling really serious feelings. And that is hard. It's hard. You can't repress it. You can't hide it forever. People keep saying, like, are you okay? And you're like, I'm fine. It's like, like this character isn't fine. They're going through something. Ultimately, I think it's called Fishbowl because you get a fishbowl and you don't know why and the fish starts talking to you. So it's kind of dreamlike and whimsical. You're not really sure if you're in a dream state or if you're. If things are really happening to you. I think it's absolutely beautiful. I think it's well done. I think it's very delicate of a story. And I love mini games. I would just preface Office. You know, it's got some grief elements to it. A lot of talkies. You have to, you have to read a lot. All the dialogue.

[B]

I mean, yeah, for a game like this. Expect that this seems like a new thing recently where it's like. Or I've recently played, you know, consume Me and. And Roger.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Which were similar. And Roger specifically was about, you know, grief and other things, but like told kind of through mini games. You know, Consume Me is talking about disordered eating through mini games and Roger dealing with you know, dementia and things like that. So I don't know that can be actually a really effective way to do that type of narrative. So I would be curious about this. You said this is Steam?

[C]

Yeah, I played it on Steam. And I think the embargo also launches this morning, which is very nice. So everybody can see this, right? As we're allowed to talk about it. I think it's not gonna be for everybody just because of the heavy dialogue. I think that if you can give it a shot and give it a true go, meaning not being too distracted with six pieces of media and like focus on it and like really listen to what the characters are saying, I think you can learn a lot about how grief shapes us and like how we process it in different ways. What I was reading about the game after like I played it was there's lots of different ways that the story can go, but there's no bad ending. It's more of the sense of like how you handle how she processes her grief is yours. And so there'll be lots of different ways people can play it. Lots of different endings, quote, unquote. But nothing's technically wrong or right. It's just the way you choose to feel. I got irritated with my mom in one dialogue scene and that's just how I chose to play it. Because sometimes it do be like that and I don't want my mom to constantly fucking ask me how I feel. And so I like snapped at her.

[A]

Oh my gosh. The game is pretty too, right? Like it has a little bit. It kind of looks like Stardew Valley. That the picture style on the top down in a nice way. Right. But yeah, there is like a bit more of a ethereal element to it as well. And yeah, what is up with this fish? He's got big eyes in the Dreamcast logo on his forehead. What's going on there?

[B]

Oh, okay.

[C]

So there's maybe some spoilers. I can't explain too much about the fish, but it is a Dreamcast, isn't is the dream you are thinking? I think it's a sweet experience about life and processing emotions and feelings. So I liked it again. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of what you were saying, Dan, about some of those other games. It's just not going to be for everyone, but worth it for me. And I really did like it. Yeah.

[B]

Looks like it's on Steam now with a demo available if anybody wants to check it out. Cool. I played Mario technically. The title is Super Mario Brothers Wonder Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Plus Meetup and Bella Bell Park Upgrade Pack.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

What?

[A]

Let's go.

[B]

This is Nintendo. Yes.

[C]

It's going to be in our worst game names. 2026.

[B]

Every Nintendo Switch.

[A]

I'm going to make an alt Reddit account so I can be one of people complaining about you guys just picking games with Japanese names on that. That'd be so funny.

[B]

We don't.

[A]

Mike. That's gonna be my thing. Doesn't matter.

[B]

We're invulnerable to this.

[A]

Ah,

[B]

so this is Mario Wonder. It runs better. It's on the Switch 2 and all that stuff, which I like it as an excuse to play through Mario Wonder again because that game's really good. I pretty much played through it in a day when it came out. So good to be able to play that on my Switch too. Running better. It doesn't add much. And the stuff it does add is really weird, the angle they took with it, because there is a little bit of single player stuff. There's some Koopaling boss courses, which are just like a handful of courses where you go in and you fight a Koopaling. They all get some sort of like, gimmick upgrade to them. Like, if you remember Yoshi's island, how like Hammock would sprinkle him with some kamek dust and they'd warp or whatever. It's got. It's kind of got that going on. None of them. I wouldn't call them especially thrilling or anything, but the bigger. Well, okay, as far as single player is goes, it's also added. You can play as Rosalina and it's got this new flower pot upgrade thing where you're like. Like a Flower Mario or whoever you are, and you can do kind of a Yoshi flutter jump and you can shoot these flowers that. Mike.

[A]

What?

[B]

Which Mega man upgrade is it where you shoot the thing and it just goes straight up? Am I just thinking of Bubble man underwater Bubble man's.

[A]

No, Bubble Man's bubble lead, which famously skirts on the ground. Specifically things that go just straight.

[B]

Airman.

[A]

Airman's. They swoop upwards.

[B]

The tornadoes.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

You get the idea. You're on the ground, you shoot a thing and it goes straight up and it can like, act as a weapon, things like that. It's. It's not the best Mario power up. So, like, as far as the single player stuff, there's like a bunch of training courses where it's like, oh, you know, beat this course this fast or kill all these enemies or whatever. But, like, none of these are super great or anything. And then the entire Bella Bell park, like land or whatever is all based on co op and local multiplayer stuff. So like online co op, no matchmaking. So unless you have a lot of other friends who bought Super Mario Brothers Wonder, Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Plus Meetup and Bella Bell park upgrade Pack, you're not fucking playing.

[C]

Say that three times fast.

[B]

It's, it's. I. I have not played it online yet. So, like, we want to do a stream. I brought it up like, with Grub wanting to do it. So like, I can't speak to the entirety of it because, like, it seems like it is a lot of like multiplayer focused stuff. But the previews and reviews I've read now, because it should be out at this point, are not very glowing. On this sounds like very, very basic multiplayer things. It makes me think like again, Yoshi's island, you could like type in a code and do these little mini games or you're going to spit watermelon seeds at each other.

[A]

Sure, yeah.

[B]

Do that twice, then you're done, you know?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm curious to try it. I bet we'll have fun like, like doing it on Giant Bomb for a little bit. What I really would have wanted from an upgrade pack to Mario Wonder is like challenge levels. And that's just, you know, very specifically my thing where my one issue with that game. Yeah. So, but like, is, is that like substantial? Is that like really feeling challenging? Because that was my big, I don't know about big complaint. The one thing I thought Wonder was lacking was challenge, I suppose, even compared to other 2D Mario games. I get it's a Mario game, but it was a very easy one of those.

[B]

I mean, it's. I can't say any of them have like, really stumped me or it's been, you know, super hard or anything. But like, it is like, oh, I need to sprint through this and figure out how to use this ability to get through in under 45 seconds or whatever. Like, that's kind of fun. It's fine. I mean, the game, it's a really good game.

[A]

Always felt good, right? Yeah.

[B]

And you can unlock stuff that can go into the whole single player game where it's like, oh, these badges, you used to be able to equip one where it's like, it gives you the triple jump or whatever. It'll get these like duo badges where it's like, okay, with this one you get the dolphin swim plus the parachute hat or whatever. So it's like you basically have two abilities that you can equip rather than just like one. So that's, you know, it mixes up the single player campaign a little bit. Bit. But for this, like, I think the full package is like if you just want to buy it, it's. I think it's 80 bucks probably.

[A]

80 bucks? That's what they usually go these. Because. Yeah, because it's the base game still, which.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Then the $10 for the bonus thing

[B]

or the upgrade pack alone is 20.

[A]

Right. Because it's always $10 for just like a big Switch to update. But if it's also an expansion. Because I think the Kirby thing was also $80. Yeah, it was an expansion. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, this is $80.

[C]

So sometimes I just feel like that is a little cruel. That is so much money to ask of Nintendo enthusiasts to drop on this

[B]

which, which I consider myself one. I'm definitely. I've always been a bit of a Nintendo mark and certainly a Mario mark. But like, I can't look at this and be like, oh yeah, this makes sense, you know, like, no, this is not. The content is not that great and the cost is insane.

[A]

Like, but, but you mean even like in terms of a $20 upgrade for somebody who has bad wonder, like, does that.

[B]

I don't.

[A]

$20?

[B]

I don't think so. No, there's just not much going on here.

[A]

You can get. You can buy Hollow Knight Silksong for $20, I think. Right, yeah.

[B]

In terms of like where your money can, can go in gaming these days.

[A]

I know it doesn't always work like that. Right. But like there is something about. I mean, it's called Meet up in Bella Bell park, for God's sakes. Like just the name is as unexciting as it could possibly be. It's like I. Right, right. It's like I gotta go meet my mom or something.

[B]

Well, it's like. And also they, they did a similar thing with Mario 3D world where but with that it was like, okay, we're bringing it from Wii U to Switch. And also here's a glimpse at the future of Mario in right. Full fucking fledged. It's an awesome thing, five hour campaign that's completely different than 3D world. Like you, you. They really brought us in with that like upgrade pack to Switch with like the best possible one you could imagine.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it's been kind of some middling farty stuff past that.

[A]

Right? Well, yeah, back when they were like trying desperately to do something with Wii U games nobody bought. Right?

[B]

Yeah, well, they did a lot.

[A]

As much as was awesome. And yeah, yeah, I mean, as much as I like Mario Brothers Wonder, I'm not feeling some hankering to go back to it immediately or to get a little bit of new stuff in it or see it in 4k or anything like that. I'm okay.

[B]

And finally, Mary, you've been playing Reanimal.

[C]

I couldn't, I couldn't avoid it. I've been really excited about this. The trailer looks hauntingly gorgeous and the reviews have been really high and I was like, oh, I kind of want to like play this. Be so cool to like play this online. But I couldn't wait anymore and I played it and it is, it's really good, you guys.

[A]

It's.

[C]

It's fantastic as a co op, but it's horror. So I want to preface, it's very Little Nightmares and I believe it is the creators of Little Nightmares.

[A]

So you can imagine one and two not correct.

[C]

Okay, Little Nightmares is good. But I think they were still kind of learning a lot of the mechanics that they could do. Sometimes it felt a little simple or a little obvious. Reanimal is to me a real imagining of what do we do. We have two characters that can play in a space and make them take on puzzle challenges with the fear of death right around the corner. It's, it's just unbelievably gorgeous the way that they've constructed these like old ass barns and these dark, decrepit areas. When you're in a boat, you don't know what's under the water and you can barely see. They don't put enough light in this space. They put, put the right amount of light in this space to make you scared. I, I adore what they've constructed here. It is scary as hell. And the puzzles are good. They are smart with how they're putting you together. I remember like vividly the first time I see this really scary bird. And it looks like obviously if you get near it's going to kill you. And you stumble across this building and it has what looks like a giant gun with shells. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna shoot this bird. And there's no bullets. There's no. They're all just casings left on the ground. And so I'm like, well, I guess I have to find another way. You will circle back to this area like 40, 50 minutes later with a bullet and you'll just be like, I did it. Like, it's like really long stretches of the imagination to get you through these different spaces. I think this game is quite special with how they put you in these like really stressful environments and have you figure it out how to get through to the next area. You die a lot like you would in any of these types of games. Sometimes you just have to die to find out what you're supposed to do.

[B]

Is it. I mean, I'm just looking at images here. Obviously a little nightmarish, but would you put in that same like kind of limbo inside type of like puzzly moody, side scrolling platform?

[A]

More.

[C]

It's got that limbo vibe. I think it's the scariest of all of these. I've played the little Nightmares and I like them, but they're a little cartoonish sometimes. Like, yes, the enemies you're fighting are like sometimes scary, but generally like they just don't get the atmosphere right. Re animal. The atmosphere is terrifying. You're in like a pig area with like all these pigs that. That'll scare the out of you. You. They've made these nasty little creatures that come after you. They look like, you know, the silent hill. Little guys that are on the ground and they kind of crawl way too fast.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

The crawling man things, they kind of have that. It's like I'm not really sure what they're meant to be, but I. What I'm gonna say is they look like a person who's been steamed so that they're flat.

[A]

Oh.

[C]

And they just kind of lay on the ground. But they'll slime right at you and it freaks you out. Probably too scary for some kids and stuff like that. But for like entertainment, as far as I was concerned, I was, I was squealing a couple times, coming after us. It's very good when, when the creatures are coming at you. And I just think for a co op puzzle experience, it's freaky deaky. But it's, it's beautiful the way that they've constructed it. Constantly trying to figure out how you get, you know, the key to a gate or how do you get past this area because you can't jump over that ravine. And it's like, okay, well you need to saw this tree down or you need to stop the fan. A lot of it is teamwork based. You should probably be talking to someone in Discord. I think to have a good communication with them, I think that's probably the best way to handle it.

[A]

But you can point in the game.

[C]

I know you can point in the game and say, hey, so you can like guide people. But I, I was just Talking to someone the whole time. I. I loved it. I. I think it's a great, great freaking game.

[B]

Is it co op only?

[C]

I don't know. That's such a good question.

[B]

I'm guessing I'd be co op. If nothing.

[C]

I bet you you could play this with. With. Yeah. Single player. You can play this by yourself and they use an npc. In fact, I thought the NPC was pretty good because even if you play with another person in the game story arc, you get a third person that joins your party and they're an NPC and they're fine and they operate functionally and figure things out. So I suspect you would be fine playing this single player. But I enjoyed playing this co op.

[B]

Nice. And is reanimal. How would you two like to talk about some emails?

[C]

Okay, let's discuss them.

[A]

Let's do it.

[B]

Emails. We got emails. We got a handful here. Sacks and sacks of emails. All right, first one here from Polly in middle Georgia is. Hey, folks, I watched Annette last week due to Dan's champion championing of it. So I feel like I can now say with confidence, don't worry about it, Mary. You don't need to. Don't you listen to your friend Dan.

[C]

I'm gonna listen to Paulie. Thank you for writing in. Although you're probably Dan with me from another world. You probably made up all these emails and you write in for the long

[B]

call time for that.

[A]

What if everybody else but us as Dan.

[C]

Yeah, Paulie, thank you for saving me two boobless hours. I don't want to watch this.

[A]

I'm sorry, Mary. I think you have to watch this film.

[C]

I'm not watching it.

[A]

I think it has to be seen. It is just insane.

[B]

She started it and she's like, is this a musical?

[A]

She stopped watching it, Mary. Oh, my goodness gracious. Do it for dad likes the musical aspect.

[C]

I don't like this type of musical. It's bad.

[A]

I look, it hurts. As somebody who likes musicals, this being a bad musical hurts me much more.

[B]

You got to go into salesman mode here. Seller on it.

[A]

There's nothing else like it. I can. There's very few movies I can say that about.

[C]

This guy can sell snake oil better than he can sell me.

[A]

Shitty One of a kind bear. You will never forget about it. You are going to laugh. It is funny. Bad, right?

[B]

She didn't even get to the baby.

[A]

You had to get to Annette. If that's the name of the movie.

[C]

Yeah, that's the secret. You don't you know, you can just turn them off. You can just not watch them if you don't like.

[A]

Sounds to me like she wasn't ready to start. See, I. I haven't seen me forever. I still think about that. The movie goes in such incredible directions. You have to see it.

[B]

There's a scene late in the movie where it's like, what are we doing here? It's unbelie. Mary.

[C]

Who bankrolled this?

[A]

The same people who bankroll the War of the World. So thank God for that. Thank you, Amazon. Doing great work out there.

[B]

Wow. Why does Mary make that face?

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's right. That's the context. There was another layer here I was missing. Amazon big rolls. A few things are out here, don't they?

[B]

All bad. That's a really dramatic face for just saying Amazon made it.

[C]

Well, thank you.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Next up.

[B]

Hello, Escapers and Mike version 2. How do you name the characters you make in video games? I just started choosing bands I like and slapping that on them. I listen to a lot of metal, so it usually works out great. Do you have any naming conventions you stick to? P.S. if there's not a Guapo banana hammock in the store, at some point, you're leaving money on the table. That's Alex and Bendigo, Australia. That sounds like. That must have been something Maharti said last time, I think. Right?

[C]

Yeah, Guapo.

[A]

Oh, right.

[B]

That was his new thing.

[C]

Yeah, that's his new thing, I think. Guapo. That's very smart. I also love, you know, I love seeing those banana yellow shirts. Every packs, I usually see someone in a banana yellow fire escape shirt. Can't wait to see you guys out there rocking our merch. So don't forget to get them.

[A]

Oh, I can't wait. So I can wear my summer tie dye shirt again.

[C]

Yes, that's gonna be the season. Now, naming characters, when I get to name myself like I am the person. Sure, I usually do a version of my name like Murray Mori or Muzzle. I don't know why, but I think it's because I don't want to. I don't want to be Mary. I'm Mary every day. So if I'm playing myself, I just alter my name slightly so I feel like I can be a different version.

[A]

Like when on it depends. If it's a game where I'm just kind of playing as a person in like a normal ish place, I'll just go with Mike. As soon as it's somewhat fantasy or sci fi though, then I'm going back To Tokoto, my alias. Because to me that's like, that's the one that can kind of fit into weirder times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although for MMOs, if I make alternate characters like Todo's already taken, then I just do plays on to Coto that aren't even very good. So like, like, if I have to make a rogue, I'm like to rogue toe, that kind of thing. Yeah, it's not good.

[C]

What happens though, if you're playing like a turn based and you have a whole team of people that's fun.

[B]

Like xcom, for instance, Tomadachi life is one of these where it's like, the whole point is you're filling out your town with like. Like, I always do a mix of like, I think it's funny to do like my family and then celebrities and fictional characters and stuff like that. So for instance, it's weird because, like, I'm like the God character in this. So it's like I'm the one who's like, hands are coming down and picking up tomadachis and moving them. And the tomadachis call me chief so that you can pick like what the toma dachis call you. So I'm chief and then like, but I'm there too. And so Dan is down there and Dan will be like, well, we have the same birthday chief. So it's like, it's weird because I'm like this omnipotent God character and also aamadachi. But then it's like, my sister Kayla just started dating stone cold Steve Austin. I think, hey, Hachi and Morpheus might be dating now. So. Yeah, it's, it's. It's fun to just put in a bunch of fictional people, celebrities, things like that, and just kind of see what happens. Especially with like a Tomadachi life.

[C]

I like to take names that couldn't possibly be real and then pretend that that is just a person that I. I've met in this weird space. Like Dibby Flanagan or Debbie.

[A]

Like Iris.

[C]

Yeah. John Cron. Mumster.

[B]

Oh, nice. My wrestler in 2K was a super smooth Scoob Dunbar.

[A]

That's good.

[B]

Yeah, that's funny.

[A]

My brother, he, like, thought he was a genius. Like, I just mashed the keyboard. Then, like, if I had to put in some valves, I'll make it work. But isn't it great? And it would always be something like sios. I'd be like, aj, that sounds terrible. It's awful. Your method sucks.

[C]

Yeah, you want. You want something that feels good off the tongue. When I get to name my animals in Stardew, like, you know, I'm naming them, you know, Grand Slam and Dingus mcgee. Like, I want them to have something that feels good, but I also don't want it to ever be real. I was. I was like, just listening to. I think it's good. Hang with Amy Poehler. Anyway, she had like a writer on from one of their shows, and he said that when you write like, for a legit show, you know, like, it doesn't matter, you know, the office or

[B]

Parks and Recon rec.

[C]

You can't have a person whose name is too real because then a person could sue you. And they could be like, this character is based off of my likeness and they're bad.

[B]

The Kramer thing.

[C]

Yes. And so it's very important for writers to write just off enough where no one could ever say, hey, I'm Blorf Smith. You need to name them. Just fucked up enough that there's no person that could come after you.

[B]

Yeah, I could have the Overwatch rule.

[A]

What's the small penis rule?

[B]

You guys don't know the small penis rule as it comes to like, naming characters or like literature and stuff?

[A]

Oh, okay. I think I've heard it. Yeah, I know this kind of thing. Now you go ahead, explain that.

[B]

So this is fun. I believe it was Michael Crichton. I'm looking at the Wikipedia right now for small penis rule. And it's basically a way to evade libel lawsuits. So like, basically my understanding, and read the wiki or whatever, if you want to see the real thing is that let's say I were to write a character in a book and his name was Mike Minati. And in this book I'm just calling him the worst shit in the world. This character is doing every fucking terrible thing you can imagine. He's a murderer, abuser. He's just everything terrible. And he's got a super tiny penis.

[A]

Right? And then I call you up and I'm like, how did you know

[C]

that I murdered all those people?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you would have to go, if you want to argue, liable to go to court and say, like, obviously, your honor, this character is based on me and they're just trying to do libel here. But then if the character is written as having a super tiny penis, then you'd have to also be like, it will implied that I have a very.

[A]

Part of me is like, it's cute. But I wonder if the logic holds up. Like, can you not tell the judge everything except for the small penis thing? Obviously, but which is obviously huge, right?

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

I'll take it out right now.

[C]

Hypothetically, your honor, look at this. Dick.

[B]

No, I, I, I put together a book to make fun of a certain former baseball player. Who some of you might know. I'm not gonna say, but the, the baseball player could be anyone. And in every chapter he travels through time and something terrible happens because of how tiny his penis is. So.

[A]

Well, you made it integral to the character.

[B]

Right. So that way he would have to, if he wanted to sue me, he would have to go to court and be like, listen, the character, former baseball player is obviously me. When in every chapter he's traveling through. I think like his tiny dick causes 911 in the book or something.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Yeah, it's like he like meets Muhammad Atta in an airport bathroom or something.

[A]

And it's the guy who his pants in that song you play on your

[B]

stream is that I have feuds with several former baseball players.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But it could be anyone who knows the guy with a really tiny penis if he wants to sue me. So I assume it just works.

[A]

Great. Fucking you. I have that stuck in my head sometimes, you know, because.

[B]

Yeah, it's a small dick rule if you want to get out of some legal trouble.

[A]

Small what? Dick roll. What do you do if it's a lady?

[B]

But this wiki article, I guess Craig never had that problem.

[C]

Dan's never had libel against a woman.

[A]

No, he would never. He's such an ally. Yes. I would never say anything about the size of it. She.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Makes men bad characters.

[B]

Yeah, the Crichton one. It was a journalist that gave a bad review of a Crichton book. And in the next book, Crichton included the character named after him. The character is a child rapist described as being a Washington D.C. based journalist and Yale graduate with a small penis.

[A]

So everything else, this guy might have a case against Crichton.

[B]

Personally. I don't know who's laughing now?

[A]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

[C]

I mean, I think that if someone wrote a book about my small penis causing 911, I would sue them. And I would just say, your honor.

[B]

Yeah, I, I don't think this man

[C]

has come after me and my.

[A]

More like 911 inches.

[C]

What. Balls. The twin towers.

[A]

I'll choke the chicken in there. It

[B]

all right. Hi, escapees. What would you put in the fire escape? Metroidvania Bundle. That's a Hillary in Virginia.

[A]

Oh yeah. I think we should put Hollow Knight in. Yeah.

[B]

If it's the fire escape one. Hollow Knight's definitely got to go in.

[C]

Hollow Knight makes it and Dan can't vote.

[A]

What?

[C]

And so this is just for me and Minati.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And also, I'm fine with Hollow Knight.

[A]

Yeah, he's fine. Yeah. But it was really annoying for a long time there, though. Dan.

[B]

That was probably Mike.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Dan. I like this podcast and sometimes you make me want to buy a gun.

[B]

I was just in New Orleans with you for several days. You could have easily killed me.

[C]

I.

[A]

We were on a roof together.

[B]

You could have easily made it look like an accident.

[C]

That's. That's. Sometimes these are things that we think about

[B]

sitting next to the edge.

[A]

I would still put Oreo. I put the first story on there. Right. Probably better to put the first game. I love. Yeah. I still love the Ori games. That guy's a douchebag. But I love Ori.

[B]

I like Metroid Dread a lot.

[A]

Dread's great. I put Prince of Persia Lost Crown on there. That was super good. Giant bomb. Game of the which.

[C]

Which. Sorry, would we put Metroid Dread of all Metroids on there?

[A]

Well, here's the weird thing is I'm probably being too realistic now because in my mind, you say a bundle. It's going to be like on Steam or something. And we're just. We're not going to get a Nintendo game on there. Right. It's not practical. Okay.

[B]

I mean.

[C]

I mean, I feel like you can bend time and space.

[A]

I guess we're bending rules. Yeah. I will say, I will keep it 2D. I'm not going to put any 3D retrovania esque things.

[C]

I really liked Axiom Verge, the first one. People sleep on it a lot.

[A]

I'm a little not into it. I don't know what it is. I played through the whole thing and I felt a little unmoved by Axiom Verge. I don't know what my deal was. I don't know why I didn't get into it. I just started Ender Lilies last night. I've enjoyed that so far. Did Mary.

[C]

Did you ever play Nine Lilies?

[A]

Did you play Nine Souls at all?

[C]

I did play Nine Souls. I liked it. I. I feel really guilty about this because I love Metroidvania so much, but it was. It came out during a lull and I think I played something else.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And I. I only played like seven or eight hours of it. I didn't give it the fair shake it deserves.

[A]

It's.

[C]

Everyone loves this game.

[A]

It's really good. It's a bigger game. It gets really difficult but in a way that I really enjoy. I don't think I want to put it in the bundle though. I don't think it should be anybody's like first, second or third. Metroidvania. You got to be a Metroidvania sicko to be up for nine souls, honestly. Maybe Guacamlee. That's a classic.

[B]

Fun.

[C]

That's a really good one. I'm glad you brought that up. Do any of the Castlevanias count or am I nuts?

[A]

Count for oh Symphony. The night like was simply the night could just go in there when it should.

[B]

The Dominance collection, you know that the.

[A]

Could just do the collections. Yeah, yeah. They're all good.

[B]

Yeah. They really are all like seven. Yeah. The advanced ones, the DS ones and Symphony are my biggest.

[A]

But even my least favorite of them, which is I guess is Harmony of Dissonance is still really good.

[B]

Probably Portrait of Ruin. Yeah. And it's. It's still really great. Shadow Complex, I'm a big defender of.

[C]

Okay man.

[A]

I wondered how I feel about Shadow Complex because I played it when it was new back then we went. We weren't getting very many. Metroidvanias was and that was super cool. I wonder how it would feel and present itself in 2020.

[C]

It is important that yeah you like consider the timing of its release because sometimes we're like thank God this game came out. And then you're like well it's now that I think back like Animal well was talked about a lot. I probably would not put it on this list but at the time I was starved for Metroidvania and I ate that shit I up in retrospect. Not that I don't like it. I do. I do like it. But I probably wouldn't put it on. Yeah I put it wouldn't be at this caliber. It's. It's so fascinating to hear you talk about Guacamelee. I actually loved that game and I think it's so unique and I. I think it might be deserving of a spot. I mean that's a really good one.

[A]

And then like if you like it then you go get the second one which is one of the few co op Metroidvania games.

[B]

Really neat.

[A]

Yeah. Of. I think I played Guacamelee on my psp. That was a psy joint for me. Just like. Just like Cave story was a 3Ds joint for me and Yep.

[B]

Same.

[A]

I. I don't feel that strongly about Cave Story though.

[B]

I don't know, it's fine. I didn't love it either.

[A]

I mean, that was another one at the time because that was an indie game where again, we were not getting many games that were similar to Metroid was really how it presented itself. So it was cool. We got one on these days, you. You probably have better options.

[B]

Would you count Rogue Legacy?

[A]

To me, that would go in the roguelike.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it doesn't definitely have those elements, but yeah, I think. I would say.

[C]

But I think it's. It's muddy, right? Like, and then I think if you allow Rogue Legacy, you start allowing all

[A]

of those rogue dead cells can maybe get in.

[C]

Dead Cell starts getting in there a little bit. I think a different thing. You're. You're muddying the waters. I think. I think it should be something where, like, clearly just the Metroidvania aspects of it are integral to the experience.

[B]

Yeah. All right.

[C]

To me, I'm going to say Ori. Hollow Knight. Silk Song.

[A]

Both of them. Just throw both.

[B]

Weird.

[C]

It's my bundle. Prince of Persia. So good. Guacamelee.

[A]

That's good. I could. Yeah, yeah. Again, like, if I'm being real, part of me is like, let's not do Castlevania or Metroid. Honestly, for this.

[C]

Too obvious. We don't.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Plus, like, also, like, you forgot to

[C]

put a Metroid in your Metroidvania bundle.

[A]

Also, Symphony of Night's not even, like, easily available on anything but PlayStation right now, which is very annoying because I was Symphony of Night. Yeah. Like, give me fucking Symphony of the Night. Please don't change the voice acting this time. We like the bad voice acting.

[C]

We like the voices.

[B]

Final email here. Hello, Firescape gang. In episode 127, we got to hear if you thought Mike was the most emotionally mature.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Let's get real, though. Do you think you are more emotionally mature than your average audience member? Smooches. That is Alex from PEI Canada. Yeah.

[C]

No, you don't. No, I don't think I'm super emotionally mature. I think that I have really childlike reflexes and reactions. I can get defensive. I am reactive. I'm emotional. I don't think I handle everything very well. And I would like to think that our readers are. And listeners are so smart and so put together that they're probably succeed me in that way. So. No, I don't think so.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

Better than all of them.

[B]

Yeah, well, we. Oh, of course. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Giant Bomb. Specifically.

[A]

Specifically. Well, I'm. No, no, your listener. Specifically.

[B]

I'm sure there's no. There's no Venn diagram crossover.

[A]

Zero.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

They're like, who is this guy? Our community is pretty nice at the moment, except for people who pose as jerks to get me mad.

[C]

I was crazy that we're having this conversation and he's been masquerading as someone digitally for months. To. With you. You are the lowest of the low. You have the lowest disrespect for anyone. You don't. You are not better than any listener.

[B]

I didn't say I'm better. I'm just. This is my. I've been watching a lot of Daniel Day Lewis lately, and I want to be the Daniel Day of the Internet. I was going. I was method acting. I drink your milkshake commenter.

[C]

I drink your milkshake.

[B]

Exactly. This is my milkshake moment. Yes. No, I do think they're good. Honestly. The Giant mom audience and the Fire Escape audience. Unfortunately, like, we've only done, like, one actual meetup with Fire Escape. And so, like, I've only had one opportunity to, like, here's a group of Fire Escape fans. But I've done it for years and years and years with Giant Bomb fans and, like, joke side and stuff. They are. Especially when it comes to, like, video game audiences. I've seen the Game Informer. I've seen, like, IGN's audience and GameSpot's audience. And like, yeah, the larger, more mainstream types of things are like, you get way more of just the shithead console war fanboys of people screaming about Crimson Desert and stuff like that. We're like, as much as.

[A]

I. I would never do that. Yeah, right.

[B]

I think the people that are more annoying are the one that are, like, super defending it.

[A]

I'm with you minutes earlier. Yeah,

[B]

No, you be.

[A]

But even. Even, like, some of the other, like, media groups that are more like ours than, like, I look at their red sometimes, like, kind of rough in there.

[B]

We don't tend to get the.

[A]

Not a lot of grace. Yeah.

[B]

We don't get the shitty, like, you, like, like I said, console fanboy stuff or, you know, people yelling back and forth about stupid videos.

[A]

Particularly whiny people generally get it. Right. Like, I don't even know what this group was, but there was like, some group that were just. They were playing a lot of Mario Party games and the community got really mad because the one person just kept winning too much and it turned into a controversy. It was like this whole thing about Mario Party. It's like, jesus, thank God it's not me.

[B]

Can't imagine Turning Mario Party into a whole thing.

[A]

Can you imagine weaponizing Mario Party like that?

[B]

Absolutely not. I really haven't done that to you much, Mike. Or you, Mary.

[A]

I'm a little immune to. Because every time we do the Mario Party party, everyone's like, and I'm like a fun video game with my friends.

[B]

Yeah. Maybe that's why I haven't done it too as much.

[A]

Just like, because I like Mario Party

[B]

gimmick is when three people hate it and one person loves it. Yeah.

[A]

Right. Yeah, I'm just, yeah. Like, we play like for four hours with. I'm like, yeah, I played a video game. That's fine.

[B]

I, I think in terms of emotional maturity, though, like, I just don't really get mad. Does that equal emotional maturity? Like, I feel like I'm even keen, healed.

[C]

I don't think that not having emotion is emotional maturity. Well, regulation is. But if you are suppressing how you feel, that's not very mature at all. And a lot of people do that.

[B]

I don't, I honestly don't think I've ever done that. Like, if I'm upset with something, I make it pretty known. But it doesn't happen often.

[A]

You know, it's like, I'm not, I don't think you're, you're not a repressor.

[B]

No, no, no.

[C]

I think I'm more likely to fly off the handle than you are. And which is why I, I, like, self admit it that I, I, I can have, like, intense reactions to things and then reflect back later and say, I shouldn't have done that. But I have rules. I don't respond to people on any social media or any email if I feel upset from it. So if I get an emotional reaction, I will not respond. I don't. If, like, an email upsets me, I will give it 24 hours. That is my rule. Because I don't want to write angry digital stuff to people. I give it, I give it 24 hours.

[B]

That's why I left Reddit is because, like, when I first joined Giant Bomb and it's like something, I had this bigger audience and it's like they feel very passionate about everything. You know, I, I didn't quite know then that, like, okay, sometimes they're just gonna get stuff wrong and it's not your job to go in and like, actually, no, this is, you've got this wrong. You remember, because, like, it's gonna just keep happening. I just saw it happen time and time where it's like, not people trying to, like, actively be Shitty or misremember. But, like, people just. When you're on a billion hours of things a week, people are going to misremember conversations or who said what and stuff like that.

[A]

Right. Or they're going to pick, you know, again. It's. Yeah. Like, you know, we. I say things into a microphone maybe 12 hours a week. And like. Like the worst. The worst thing I did or the thing I got the most wrong. Right. I'm going to stress about that all week. I just can't. I got to move on at certain point.

[B]

And it's not your job to, like, go correct people because, like, that. That never ends. It's stamping out cockroaches, you know, that's why I left Reddit until I had my recent glorious return as Walter Crunk.

[A]

Yeah, it's kind of fun, I might say on there.

[B]

Yeah. Walter Crunk lives.

[A]

I am.

[C]

I am still Walter Crunk.

[B]

Why that. I just needed the stupid fake name. And that's the name the big show played. Yeah.

[C]

We literally had an email about fake names.

[B]

Walter Crunk one. And that'll be my. That'll be my Internet alias.

[A]

Your first comment on a post about the own mugs. We didn't know how good. We had it five months ago, dad.

[C]

Five months.

[B]

Knew the payoff was going to be good. Sometimes you just get patience, you know? You're an emotionally mature person who's got patience for payoffs. Sure.

[A]

Is it still. What? Twilight Princess HD on switch.

[C]

He's going through all of your post history now.

[B]

Not that many. There's like 12.

[A]

Maybe this. This one on paleontology. I. I don't even want to see what it's about. Just this comment. I hate when they display them in unrealistic poses. They should have more respect for these majestic creatures. Jesus Christ. D.

[B]

For a bit. Or Walter did that.

[A]

They have grub delis on the east coast and I think of him every time. What a cute personable story. Wow.

[B]

Is that even a true fan? It is. I saw a grub deli in New York City.

[A]

Yeah, Everything's true. There's somebody just sharing their dinosaur skull. Jack o Lantern. You're like, that's fantastic. I'd geek out if I saw that while trick or treating as a kid. Six uploads.

[C]

Just weirdo. You're just masquerading as a normal person. No, I'm not wearing the skin.

[A]

No.

[B]

No one's ever accused me.

[C]

Regular user.

[B]

I'm so happy. This is why I do this.

[A]

I'm glad I brought you so much joy.

[B]

This is how I get my joy.

[C]

You're gonna, like, Minati's gonna be sleeping.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Wake up in the middle of the night, watch her crunk.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I've got, I've got no comments about my emotional maturity. I'll leave that up to you, dear audience.

[B]

You know, Mike, I actually think you were preferred as much as, you know, the, The Disney stuff and the child was like, the interest and everything. It's easy to be like, that's very childish.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But like, Mike, I've. And we've worked together now for several years. I. I don't think I've ever left a conversation with you being like, oh, Mike's being like, this is out of line. This is like, this is irrational how he's acting or anything. Like, I found you very easy to work. Work with.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I. Thank you. But, yeah, I don't, I don't think I get, I don't know, a bitty. I think I've got my adult emotions mostly in check. It's fine. Like, yes, I will get excited about seeing a Mickey Mouse in a. A theme park. Yes. And I understand people conflate that with immaturity. Sure. But, you know, I feel fine. I feel fine. That's why, like, you know, except we get comments. That's the thing I'll get is like, this man child is ruining giant palm. And it's like, all right, right. You're. It's a website about video games.

[B]

Buddy of passage. Every single person that's ever come through these doors has been accused of ruining giant bombs.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Oh, I can't wait to see. Is going to ruin giant Bomb. Next.

[B]

Well, let's say next on a limited premium series is Mary Kish. As we talked about earlier with Portal

[A]

Power, she's going to ruin Giant Bomb.

[C]

I can't wait to ruin Giant Bomb. Hooray. I'm going to ruin. Ruin this place.

[A]

Finally.

[B]

That is coming sooner rather than later. Keep an eye on giantbomb.com go to/join if you want to become premium member. I cannot wait to watch it. I think people are really going to like it. You two together is going to be a fun time. Mike, thank you so much for joining us on the fire escape cast this week.

[A]

Yeah, thank you for having me. It was great. I'm excited to see both of you this coming weekend at the time of this recording in Boston. Really excited for people to check out Portal Pals, though. So, yes, please, please give that a look. See, we had a great time.

[B]

Mike's. Just doing a ton of great stuff at Giant Bomb. You've got your launch looks. You've got your.

[A]

Your what now, Dan? The what. What you call them?

[B]

I named it Launch Look. I thought it'd be cool because it's like quick look. But when the game launches. So I think that's interesting.

[A]

Kind of. Kind of bad mouth fuel, though. I don't know. But post about it on Reddit about

[B]

it during the weekly.

[A]

Yeah, okay.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I like it. I like it.

[B]

Turn into all the usual bombcast stuff that I plug and everything. Mike's on all of that, too, and more. So.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right, Mary, what does Mike usually do? What does Mahardi usually do at the end here? We plug merch.

[C]

Yeah. He says like, well, thanks for watching you beautiful babies.

[B]

I don't want to say that.

[A]

I remember him saying that every time.

[C]

Yeah, he says it every time.

[A]

Goo Goo Gaga.

[B]

There we go.

[A]

That's a good side out call. Eat that, Walter Crockey. Yeah, and that's the way it goes, you piece of. Whatever you say. I don't care. You're dead.

[C]

Turn off the stream. All right. Turn off the channel.

[A]

Check out the merch.

[B]

Do the Patreon for Fire Escape for video episodes. I think that's all. Go to sleep, folks. Children, Whatever Mike says.

[C]

Bye, children.

[A]

Sam.