Game Scoop! 848: A Marathon and a Sprint

Summary

Game Scoop! 848: A Marathon and a Sprint

Podcast: Game Scoop! (IGN/Geek Media)
Episode Date: March 13, 2026
Host: Damon Hatfield
Guests: Nick Limone, Sam Claiborne, Mark Medina

---

Episode Overview

This episode of Game Scoop! brings together Damon Hatfield and the IGN crew—Nick Limone, Sam Claiborne, and Mark Medina—for an early-morning, high-energy discussion packed with the week's most significant gaming news, reflections from GDC (Game Developers Conference), and a journey through current hits, retro nostalgia, and challenging trivia. Main topics include hands-on impressions of Bungie’s new extraction shooter Marathon, the explosive popularity of Slay the Spire 2, Pokemon’s latest creative shift, a behind-the-scenes look at Donkey Kong Bonanza’s development, and in-depth analysis of Xbox’s next console, Project Helix.

---

Main Discussion Points and Insights

1. Marathon: Bungie’s Extraction Shooter Revival

Timestamps: 02:58–11:03

• Initial Impressions (02:58):
  Nick Limone shares his surprise enjoyment of Bungie’s new Marathon, despite initial skepticism over the multiplayer-only extraction format.
  • “I got in [due to] FOMO... my buddies worked on the trailer... and I really love the way Bungie did its world-building and narrative... in Halo’s era.” (03:10–04:08, Nick Limone)
• Gameplay Feel:
  The subtle, environmental storytelling and tight “gun-hand-grenade” Bungie gameplay loop are intact. Nick likens the tense, high-stakes action to Apex Legends’ skill-based FPS mechanics.
• Art Direction & Immersion:
  Art direction “firing on all cylinders;” Nick appreciates the learning curve and innovation in loadout and item design.
• Comparison with Other Extraction Shooters:
  Mark Medina longs for a purely PvE extraction shooter:
  • “The first company to make an extraction shooter… that’s just PvE is going to make a million, billion, jillion dollars.” (07:14, Mark Medina)
• In-Game Social Dynamics:
  The game's design encourages aggressive, every-player-for-themselves tactics; rare moments of cooperation "are precious".
• Narrative Context:
  The theme of oppressive, cyberpunk corporate overlords shapes gameplay (“shoot first and ask questions later”).

2. Slay the Spire 2: A Roguelike Card Game Dominates Steam

Timestamps: 11:03–18:39

• Launch Success & Gameplay Evolution:
  Damon and Nick praise the sequel, “excellent” even in early access.
  • “I was going to abstain... but I really like the [placeholder MS Paint] art. It’s so charming.” (12:26, Nick Limone)
• New Classes & Features:
  Nick explains new class mechanics, adding strategic complexity (Necrobinder class, Regent’s dual-currency system).
• Visual Improvements:
  Notable boost in aesthetic appeal and animation over the original.
  • “It just looks more visually appealing... more cartoonish, in a good way… more animation, more polish.” (14:19, Damon Hatfield)
• Multiplayer & Community:
  New co-op/multiplayer elements inspired by the recent board game adaptation.
• Steam Stats & Market Impact:
  Marathon’s peak: ~88,000 concurrent players; Slay the Spire 2: ~575,000—making it the fourth most-played game on Steam, a phenomenon attributed to its genre accessibility and platform exclusivity (Steam for now).

Memorable Quotes

• “It’s not often that the greatest game ever made gets a sequel and it’s just as good.” (16:41, Nick Limone)
• “It’s Silksong numbers.” (16:23, Sam Claiborne)

3. Retro & Indie Corner: Pokémon Pickopia and New Perspectives

Timestamps: 22:26–27:57

• Pickopia Praise:
  Sam lauds Pickopia’s minimalist, exploration-focused approach as a revitalization for the Pokémon franchise.
  • “It introduces you to the fun part of Pokémon, just like… ‘what the hell is this little monster I unlocked and what can it do for me?’” (23:06, Sam Claiborne)
• Design and Performance:
  Noted for its huge, seamless world, clever mechanics (habitat building, clues), and system-selling success (2M sold at launch).
• Broader Appeal:
  Both Mark and Sam express that, while they like Pokémon in theory, the new format is what brings them back, streamlined and less dialogue-heavy.

4. Resident Evil Requiem: A Modern Classic’s Secrets

Timestamps: 29:17–38:53

• Gameplay Quality:
  Open, challenging areas likened to “Day of the Dead”; players now “on the revenge tour.”
  • “You get to go through and kill everything... it’s the Resident Evil Requiem revenge tour.” (29:58, Mark Medina)
• Call-backs and References:
  The episode dives into Easter eggs and meta-puzzles tying back to classic RE moments (RPD, orphanage, gas station).
• Replayability:
  The team discusses the value of speedruns, unlocking infinite ammo, and a “roguelike” meta-progression system.
• Series Identity:
  The hosts debate changing player expectations of what “counts" as Resident Evil.
  • “Everything is so dramatically different—it is Resident Evil. It’s Resident Evil 4.” (33:19, Mark Medina)

5. Project Helix: The Next Xbox and the Future of Consoles

Timestamps: 41:03–57:51

• Technical Specs & AI Integration:
  The crew summarizes Helix’s next-gen AMD chip, AI-powered upscaling, and PC game compatibility.
• Industry Strategy:
  Reflection on possible shifting strategies at Xbox and PlayStation, including platform exclusivity, Steam ecosystem fears, and the cultural/creative implications of increased AI usage in game dev.
  • “This is a tool from outside that makes it so you can make more game code… That is an outcome that is not evil.” (45:35, Sam Claiborne)
• Competition and Market Dynamics:
  Debate over whether Valve’s Steam hardware poses a threat to traditional consoles, and how Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo view their own IPs and partnerships.
• Console Ecosystem Evolution:
  The panel argues that the problem of hardware revenue versus digital storefront exclusivity and the rise of Steam Deck-style devices are reshaping the market.

---

GDC Debrief: Donkey Kong Bonanza’s Voxel Tech Panel

Timestamps: 58:25–65:34

• Nintendo’s Behind-the-Scenes Approach:
  Sam shares details from a rare Nintendo GDC panel about the creation of Donkey Kong Bonanza, focusing on “constructive destruction” with voxel technology.
• Development Tools:
  Insights into how destructibility was prototyped using in-engine object materials/properties, and how Nintendo tested destructive interactions before integrating them.
  • “Nintendo showing their dev tools, right, that they had to make for this game.” (61:29, Sam Claiborne)
• Hardware Leaps:
  The game required Switch 2 hardware to achieve its physics and graphical scale.
• Unique Touch:
  The panel celebrated Nintendo’s open sharing—revealing team photos and design prototypes rarely seen outside the company.

---

Rapid-Fire Segment Highlights

• Slay the Spire 2’s Placeholder Art:
  Placeholder MS Paint-style art is a fan favorite and a direct, intentional contrast to the AI-generated placeholders used elsewhere (Baldur’s Gate 3 discussed as a comparison).
  • “For the culture to feel out, what do we accept as art versus… a tool?” (46:50, Sam Claiborne)
• Steam Machine Threat Disputed:
  Panel debates whether Sony’s PC pullback is more about lackluster sales or genuine competition from Valve’s hardware.

---

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Nick on Marathon:
  “I just really love the vibe of ‘everything is on the line every single run.’” (04:36)
• Sam on Pickopia:
  “All the Pokémon are just walking around where you left them, playing with your garbage. It’s amazing.” (25:22)
• Mark on Project Helix:
  “I already have a next generation Xbox. It’s called my badass PC.” (48:18)
• Sam on Donkey Kong Panel:
  “This is why [GDC] is fun to go to… you get to see and Dame and I have been to these about, like, old games like Doom or NBA Jam.” (64:44)
• Game 20 Questions (Verde Option):
  Challenging round leads to the reveal of RPG Maker (PlayStation), prompting collective laughter and groans at the Verde-level trickiness.

---

Podcast Timeline

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 02:58 | Marathon hands-on impressions | | 11:03 | Slay the Spire 2 showcase | | 22:26 | Pickopia & Pokémon design chat | | 29:17 | Resident Evil Requiem deep dive | | 41:03 | Project Helix/Xbox discussion | | 58:25 | Donkey Kong Bonanza GDC panel | | 66:16 | Game 20 Questions (RPG Maker reveal at ~83:01) |

---

Closing Notes

• Next Episode Tease: Expect a “Scorecast” following Damon completing Resident Evil Requiem, focusing on the ending and sequels.
• Trivia:
  Video Game 20 Questions featured the “Verde” difficulty, stumping the panel with RPG Maker as the answer.
• Call to Action:
  Listeners are encouraged to submit their own 20 Questions picks.

---

Final Thoughts

Game Scoop! delivers on its promise for gaming insight, industry analysis, and friendly rivalry, mixing technical depth, personal anecdotes, and outright fun—a showcase of vibrant gaming community conversation.

Transcript

[Damon Hatfield]

A well built wardrobe is about pieces that work together and hold up over time. That's what Quince does best. Premium materials, thoughtful design and everyday staples that feel easy to wear and easy to rely on even as the weather shifts. Quince has the everyday essentials I love with quality that lasts. Organic cotton sweaters, Polos for every occasion, lighter jackets that keep you warm in the changing seasons. The list goes on. Quince works directly with top factories and cuts out the middlemen so you're not paying for brand markup, just quality clothing. Everything is built to hold up to daily wear and still look good season after season. The result is classic styles you'll love that hold up year after year. I got my wife a Mongolian cashmere sweater from Quint for Christmas. She loves it, wears it all the time and it was reasonably priced. Right now go to quint.com gamescoop for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it and you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to q u I-N-E.com gamescoop for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com gamescoop this episode is brought to

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there and hoping it all works out well? With the name your price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try it [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. Refreshing Wild cherry cola meets smooth cream. The treat you deserve. Pepsi Wild Cherry and cream. Treat yourself.

[Damon Hatfield]

What's up everybody? Welcome to IG and gamescoop. I'm your host, Damon Hatfield. Joining me here in studio this week is Nick Limone.

[Nick Limone]

I'm back, baby.

[Damon Hatfield]

We're also joined remotely by Sam Claiborne.

[Sam Claiborne]

Hey, it's great to be here on a sunny GDC day.

[Damon Hatfield]

And Mark Medina.

[Mark Medina]

I'm here, Damon. It's early. What? I'm tired.

[Damon Hatfield]

We're recording early.

[Sam Claiborne]

Are the effects of the coffee still in action?

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, they haven't kicked in yet.

[Damon Hatfield]

We usually record in the afternoons. We're recording in the morning this week just because of some GDC scheduling stuff. So anyway, we've got a great show for this week. Lots of Interesting stories coming out of gdc. First, details on the next Xbox project. Helix and Sam actually attended a Nintendo panel where they sort of gave a look behind the curtain of development on Donkey Kong Bonanza, which is you can destroy the curtain. You can destroy every. The curtain is destructible. But first, before we get to all that GDC stuff, we can talk about a couple games that are out now. A tale of two video games, one made by a prestige developer, one of the biggest developers in the world. The developers of Destiny and Halo.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

And their new game is out and apparently it's good. It's being well received, at least by Nick Limone right here.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, terrible player count, but technically terrible.

[Mark Medina]

Dude, we should play together. I didn't know you were playing.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, I've been in on it. I haven't asked the IGN folks yet if there's anyone around, but yeah, my squad is taking a little bit of a break because they got obligations, so looking for a team at any point. But yes, I'm having a blast. I, you know, I was not interested in the game at all. Not like, I like the Marathon series as a whole. You know, Marathon Durandal was a game that I played on Xbox360 back then just because I didn't have an Apple computer way back when that game originally came out. So that was how I experienced it. And I really love the way that Bungie did its world building and kind of tied its overall like narrative and story and theming to stuff that was happening during Bungie's era of Halo. And once I found out this game was an extraction multiplayer only game, I was like, I think I'm good. Of course I got in fomo. Some of my buddies worked on the trailer for it. So I was like, all right, I'll check it out.

[Sam Claiborne]

Nice.

[Nick Limone]

And yeah, I'm having a blast. I think that same Bungee style storytelling that's very subtle and there for people who want to experience it, you really have to dig for it. I really enjoy that type of storytelling. And again, the. The Bungee perfected gameplay loop of grenade, you know, handgun melee. That perfect little gameplay loop is still there. The guns still all feel so good. And the one thing that really reminds me of, even though it's maybe not as fast paced as Apex Legends, it reminds me a lot of the moment to moment of Apex Legends. And I just really appreciate something that rewards talent and skill in its like first person shooter stuff. I'm playing on PC, so there's no aim assist or anything like that. And I just really love the vibe of everything is on the line, every single run. And I love that everyone is kind of out for themselves. Art Direction is firing on all cylinders. I'm having a blast. I can't stop thinking about it.

[Damon Hatfield]

So you played the original Marathon when it was brought to Xbox360?

[Nick Limone]

That's correct.

[Damon Hatfield]

Marathon is a doom, like, right?

[Nick Limone]

Yes.

[Damon Hatfield]

It plays very much like Dune. So what of that game's DNA is in here?

[Nick Limone]

I think it's. Overall, it's. It's Art Direction and its style and writing. I think that's basically it. There's some lore and stuff that's transplanted over, but I would argue you could probably just come into this fresh and be like, what? There's a previous game. But again, that's only for, like, the hardcore nerds who want to know, you know, what's going on Tao Seti 4 ever since the events of the original Marathon. Where's the working canter? Maybe it's in the cryo. The Cryo Chamber that hasn't unlocked yet, but I just love bungee games. Always feel like they do such a good job of making events. And there's a fourth area that is being teased. Players are currently unlocking it via an ARPG website that is working in conjunction with terminals that are in each map that you have to activate in a certain order. And once that's done a certain number of times, players will unlock the final map where it's going to be like a true test of everyone's loadout and skill ceiling. But right now, it's just. It's so cool, man.

[Sam Claiborne]

It would have been really cool to release this with a single player campaign.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

You can see it could be like a really speedy Mirror's Edge one, or it could be kind of a sandboxy.

[Damon Hatfield]

Could have been a Titan situation.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yep, exactly. Yeah.

[Nick Limone]

I do wish there was a single player because I do love existing in this world. And it's the first time I played a game in a minute where I opened up my loadout on my first mission or first, like, you know, infill, and I was like, I have no idea what any of these items in my inventory are. Guns barely look like guns. And it forces you to rethink what you think of as a loadout. I was like, is it this. Is this a grenade or is this a. An extended ammo clip for my gun? Like, I can't really tell. And it's been a minute since a game made me feel that way. And I really appreciate that learning curve.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, Mark, we talked a little, a little bit about this when you played the beta and you were kind of a, you were kind of soft liking it as you growing.

[Mark Medina]

I would say I'm still, I would say I'm still soft liking it. I, I'm, I'm telling you that the, the first company to make an extraction shooter like this that's just PvE is going to make a million billion jillion dollars. Because like, that, no one's done that, man. It's.

[Nick Limone]

That's just a co op game.

[Mark Medina]

This game. Yeah, please do make that. This game is, is not like arc raiders when it comes to, like working together with people. They will kill you the moment they see you. Yesterday, last night, I was playing and Nick, you're not going to believe this. So I open up the extraction point and I go and I hide and then, you know. So basically what happens is it takes a minute for it to like, kind of cook and then there's like a little circle in the last 10 seconds and you got to get in there. That's when you actually have to stand in it. So I go and I stand in it and I'm like, all right, we're out of here, baby. And someone runs up, shoots me. There's two seconds left on the clock. And he goes, because if he shoots me, I'm just down. I can still extract and keep all my stuff. He runs over and does the finishing move on me. No chance of him getting any of my. There's no chance.

[Nick Limone]

He just did it to be a jerk.

[Mark Medina]

There's a second left on the clock. He's just doing it for the love of the game. And I was so mad because I'm like, dude, you didn't get anything for that other than the satisfaction of just killing me for no reason.

[Sam Claiborne]

So if designed for trolls.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, if you played arc raiders and you think, oh yeah, me and my, you know, me and the community, we're all just gonna kind of work together. Not in this game. Well, this game, they want you dead.

[Nick Limone]

I, I really appreciate that about this game though. Like, it. Narratively, the games is very upfront by saying you need to shoot first and ask questions later. Like the overall oppressive, like corporate overlords. It's very cyberpunk in its tone and how it's like you are basically in debt for the rest of your life and you were given the privilege of paying it off to all these private corporations, but everyone else, they're out for themselves, so you should be too. And the game is basically saying you should Kill everyone first. And I really appreciate that. In Arc Raiders, it is very much a. Maybe we can work together in this game. I have had encounters where, you know, I activate the X fill and as Mark says, you have to wait for it to open up. And that obviously attracts a lot of attention. And off in the distance, I hear someone go, hey, bro, let me extract with you. I promise I'm not going to shoot you. And I'm like, waiting. I'm like, all right, man. And I immediately go invisible. I throw my smoke out, sprint in, and then me and him, just mutual respect. We do it. But hey, that's.

[Mark Medina]

That's rare in this game. I've had it happen like once or twice.

[Nick Limone]

If I had an objective to kill other players when that happened, I would have done it in a heartbeat and I wouldn't have felt.

[Mark Medina]

This game does give you. This game does give you missions where it's like kill other runners or do damage to them. The best way to look at this game is so like Arc Raiders is this like post apocalyptic, everybody's down in Speranza and you're going up and you're scavenging for the, for the, for the good of the nation type deal. Right? Where this is, is. Is exactly what Nick said, which is like you're paying off a debt. So the whole point is, everything in this game is trying to kill you. The uesc, which are the bots, the ui. Every item in this game is a threat.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, the ui.

[Mark Medina]

Everything in this game is a threat.

[Nick Limone]

You open it up, it's like, how do I get a gun? Wait a second.

[Mark Medina]

Everything's Legos. What is happening? Yeah, yeah, but it's. It is cool. I do like it. Well, I hate when people Sheepshot kill me.

[Damon Hatfield]

So it seems like Marathon turned out well, but it is nowhere near as popular as the latest roguelite card game from an indie developer, Megacrit. Yeah, talking about Slay the Spire two.

[Mark Medina]

No, no game is.

[Damon Hatfield]

Dude. So I've been playing a lot of slay the Spire 2. It's in early access, which I don't normally go for early access games. I'll just wait. But I love Slay the Spire so much, I want to get in. Nick, I know you also played it.

[Nick Limone]

Yep.

[Damon Hatfield]

This is not a Sam game, but. Mark, have you jumped into Slayer Spire?

[Mark Medina]

No, I'm having. I'm having that work guilt right now. I. I think it's no secret that everyone in the world has Crimson Desert. And so I'm having that work guilt right now where all of my free time is having to go towards that game.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Well, anyway, so this part two is excellent.

[Sam Claiborne]

What?

[Damon Hatfield]

There's. There's five classes in it right now, as of right now, and. But three of them are from the first game. I was a little bit you. When you start the game, you. Only one class is unlocked and you have to play to unlock the other classes. But the first two classes are from the first game and you start out with like, I think just most of the same.

[Sam Claiborne]

I hear there's a lot of overlap there. So it's almost like you're playing the first game for a little while.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. So I guess that was like. I kind of wish they would have maybe started out with a new class. What did you think? I know you said you also, you. You beat it on your first run.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah. So I was. I was going to abstain from this game because the early access. But honestly, the thing that drew me in, apart from Damon talking about it and, you know, everyone in the world talking about it, is I really like the placeholder art that currently exists in the game. So, like, there's like card art or like story art where it just very clearly is placeholder art of Ms. Paint. Someone just like, drew what they want to make good art of.

[Damon Hatfield]

You don't run into it that often, but.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, but I think it's so charming. And part of me is a little bit sad that it'll be gone when the game hits 1.0, but apart from that, yeah, I was like, okay, maybe I'll. I'll poke my head in for just a run just to see what it feels like. And then I immediately made it to the end boss and I beat it. On my first run as an Ironclad, I was like, well, now I got to play some more. And now I've been waking up early every day, like, like three hours before work and just like getting as many runs in as I can. And I'm having a blast. To the point, though, about having a different class. I kind of felt that way originally, like, oh, I wish we started with someone a little bit different. But I think starting with the Ironclad is going to be always like it. It's like Magic the Gathering when you start someone with a red deck, you know, very straightforward. It's all about trying to just increase your strength and make number go up. I think that's a thing that a lot of people can understand. But I think the game is very good about showing you how you can break it with the Ironclad and I think as you unlock more complicated classes, you know, silent after that and then you get the other fun ones, you start to realize you can break the game in some interesting ways. You just need to rethink how you go about breaking it with each particular class. So I think starting off with the Ironclad in the silent pipeline is probably the smartest move from just a game development and game like design intention perspective.

[Damon Hatfield]

Here's what I like about it. Visually it's much improved over first game. Yeah, I love Slay the Spire but I've said on the show I'm not a big fan of its art style. And in that game the enemies. There's not much animation at all. The enemies just kind of go. They just kind of like bump into each other. Now they've sort of. It's the same art style but it. I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. It just looks more visually appealing to me now everything is a little bit more rounded I think and looks a little bit more cartoonish in a good way. And now there's lots of lot more animation. Idle animations with enemies and they have attack and death animations. They all just disappear when you kill them.

[Nick Limone]

There's a lot more character with each character to it. A lot more polish looks.

[Damon Hatfield]

It just looks a lot better to play then these. There's two new classes in there right now. They're both really fun. The third class you open up is the Necro something.

[Nick Limone]

The Necro Binder.

[Damon Hatfield]

Necro Binders that they're called. She is a really, really fun class. She has this like spirit hand creature. And the way that works is your creature will take damage before you do.

[Nick Limone]

That's cool.

[Damon Hatfield]

And dies. If they die it'll. It'll be resummoned next turn with one hit point. So you're. As you're trying to deal damage to the enemy. You also have to buff your sort of spirit ammo because they're going to take the damage for you first. So that's really fun. Then the Regent is another new class where he has a separate. There's the energy that you spend to play cards. He has a separate currency that you also have to build up to play certain cards.

[Nick Limone]

That's cool.

[Damon Hatfield]

So there's just other things you have

[Nick Limone]

to think about from another.

[Damon Hatfield]

He's an alien like a royal alien from another planet who's carried.

[Sam Claiborne]

A royal alien.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Who's carried around on a throne by little creatures.

[Nick Limone]

That's very.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. That's a good. That's a good flug tog bike.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, that's true. That would be. Anyway, yeah. So Slayest 52 is out and just comp. I just think it's interesting. It's such a success story. Marathon has tapped out so far since release, it's topped out at 88,000 concurrence on steam hasn't even made it into six figures. Slay the Spire 2 over the past week has topped out at 575,000. 575,000 concurrence on steam.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's Silksong numbers.

[Mark Medina]

Right.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's the only thing.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's been the fourth most played game on Steam behind, you know, PUBG and Counter Strike 2 and Dota 2.

[Nick Limone]

Right.

[Damon Hatfield]

Just. Those are the venerable. They're always there in the top three. It's at number four and it's in the top 20 most played games of all time on Steam.

[Nick Limone]

I mean and it's not. It's not often that the greatest game ever made gets a sequel and it's just as good.

[Mark Medina]

Boom.

[Nick Limone]

There I said it. Quote me on that.

[Mark Medina]

Are you. Are you sure? Because we. We did just get Silk Song, so it's like it just. I thought quite often I thought the

[Sam Claiborne]

Bionic Commando sequel was pretty underwhelming.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah,

[Damon Hatfield]

it's true. Yeah, I know. I love to see it, especially in early access.

[Nick Limone]

I'm just lamenting I can't play it on my phone when I'm like walking to work. It's a. I'm hurting. But it's better this way.

[Mark Medina]

It. On your Steam deck while you're walking to work.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean that doesn't. That is worth mentioning. Not to pour cold water on it, but like if it's locked to Steam, that's why the Steam numbers are insane. Right?

[Nick Limone]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean we're not seeing the Marathon numbers for consoles.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, they're not going to be. They're not going to be higher than 88,000.

[Mark Medina]

No, they did quote and they said that most people are playing Marathon on PC so you would have to assume that the split is probably. Probably like maybe 40 or 50 on PlayStation and like maybe you know, 20 or 30.

[Sam Claiborne]

And imagine Silksong though, because that was a console game.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Mark Medina]

Well, the thing, yeah, the thing that's

[Nick Limone]

going to be exciting for Megacrit specifically is once this game does hit 1.0 and Nintendo Switch like, bro, we're going to see these numbers again on every platform, I would assume. Yeah, I think this is going to be the big thing. And one thing that I Haven't got a chance to play myself, but I've seen a lot of people play it. Just, you know, streaming the game or whatever is the multiplayer aspect. It's cooperative and, you know, earlier this past year I played through the Slay the Spire board game with a group of three friends. And it is basically just an adaptation of the board game back into the video game. So it's an example of video game adaption to board game adapting back to video game. And I think it's really clever and it's a very fun way of playing the game. It just maybe will take a little bit longer than a standard run. Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

So, Sam, what is this?

[Sam Claiborne]

What is this?

[Damon Hatfield]

What do you say when you see a card game like this be so phenomenally popular? You usually aren't a fan of card games, although you did end up enjoying Balacho.

[Sam Claiborne]

I liked Balacho. Yeah, this looks really boring to me and I don't, I don't understand it. But I also know it's very easy because I can see the amount of people that are not using strategy guides or videos that we're making and the amount of people playing this game. So I think there's some appeal to the kind of toyness of it. Right. Like it's like it's fun and natural and easy to get into. I think Balattro is like that too. Although I liked looking up stuff once I got into Blotro to be like, what, what are some like crazy things that people do in this? And I don't know if this game has that.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, it 100% does.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, it's, it's not, it's not easy, but it's not better.

[Sam Claiborne]

Figure out what those video headlines are

[Mark Medina]

then these four bills. I'm just going to start, I'm just going to start putting. Trust me, it's not easy. At the end, every headline, you'll never

[Nick Limone]

believe the four ways you can break Slay the Spire.

[Sam Claiborne]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Damon Hatfield]

So you want to learn a new language, but you're struggling to get beyond the basics stuck on free apps aimed at cheap dopamine highs. Well then it's time to try Babbel, the language app that makes grammar fun and is really worth your time. Learning a language with Babbel is all about small steps, big wins and progress. You can actually track and feel. Their bite sized lessons fit easily into your daily routine and are also easy to remember. Just 10 minutes a day is enough to start seeing real results. Their courses are designed by over 200 language experts, real human beings to teach you relevant words and phrases you'll actually use so you can start speaking with confidence in as little as three weeks. Babbel lets you practice real life conversation step by step without the stress. You'll build the confidence to speak up when it matters, from ordering a coffee to chatting with new friends abroad. And Babbel is more than just lessons. They even offer a large collection of podcasts where Babbel experts reveal language secrets and offer an inside look at local cultures. I've used Babbel to brush up on my Spanish before traveling to Mexico and to learn a little Dutch on a visit to Amsterdam last year. Here's a special limited time deal for our listeners right now. Get up to 60% off your Babel subscription at babel.com gamescoop get up to 60% off at babbel.com gamescoop spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com forward/Gamescoop rules and restrictions apply. I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping our money. After years of overpaying for wireless IGN Seth Macy finally got fed up with crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks that actually cost more in the long run and switched to Mint Mobile. Isn't that right Seth? That is right, Damon.

[Sam Claiborne]

The longest part of the process I'm

[Damon Hatfield]

thinking is going to be staying on hold with my current provider trying to break up with them. I mostly use it to just scroll all on social media and click things that I like anyway. So why am I paying like several hundred dollars a month to do that? Stop paying way too much for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint exists purely to fix that. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Bring your own phone and number, activate with ESIM in minutes and start saving immediately. No long term contracts, no hassle. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. If I were in the market for a new wireless plan, I'd be looking at Mint Mobile. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop [e-mail] Gamescoop that's mintmobile.com Gamescoop upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5GB plan required equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for first 3 months only. Then full price plan, options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

[Sam Claiborne]

This is. And talking about these games back to back is Pokemon Erasure. Because Pickopia is an amazing game, and it's all I've been playing.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, listen, I want to play. I want to play Pokemon. This is what happened to me last Saturday. I told Kingo, all right, it's Saturday. You know, if you're good all day long and you're nice to your sister and you eat a good dinner and you try harder, your baseball game will get the new Pokemon game tonight. I was looking forward to playing it, but he didn't do any of those things. He wasn't listening.

[Mark Medina]

He was pastor.

[Damon Hatfield]

He took two hours to eat dinner. So I was like, okay, we're not getting it. So I didn't get to play Pokemon.

[Sam Claiborne]

You got.

[Damon Hatfield]

We'll try again this Saturday by the kid rules.

[Mark Medina]

You said, eat your carrots. I want to build something.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's such a good game to play with him and for you because it will introduce you to the fun part of Pokemon, which is just like, what the hell is this little monster I unlocked? And what can it do for me? That's what this whole game is for Pokemon. And the Pokemon games, I think, have strayed from that a little bit just because there's so many and it's so diluted. And playing through them is just this endless sequence of talking to NPCs about the same topic about Pokemon and why they're good for you.

[Damon Hatfield]

I sure love Pokemon.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. This game is not that. It is, like, immediately, like, solve problems, like, explore. And the exploration is fantastic. Build whatever you want, drop your crap anywhere you want, infinite inventory anywhere. And it just, like, gives you free reign. And the more you play the missions, which are really fun, the more skills you get to mess with the world. And it's just fantastic. And, like, my world is just a big mess. Just a big. Just a big sloppy mess of just like, this Pokemon's like, my home would be a lot better if I got this. And then you have to kind of figure out how to solve that. And when you do that, you just drop it. Like, you could build them a house and, like, make it all badass and have them move in, but you're like, listen, there's 300 Pokemon to get to. Eventually you're just gonna. You're gonna have a stool on the ground and a bird perch, and then I'm moving on. And then you just have this, like, trash scape, and it's so fun and stupid and great. And I just, like, I. I just finished the second area, which is huge. And like, there's whole parts of it that I don't even understand once. Like, what I'm supposed to do with them. Like, this whole lava area that I get any Pokemon out of, but I don't know how to do anything with. There's all these mysteries. There's, like, things that the. The central mystery is that humans have disappeared. And it's funny and crazy how the Pokemon think about that and handle it. They're just like. They're like, some Pokemon don't like humans. Some of them really want to find them. And like, that's your ultimate mission. But then there's like, little, like, apocalyptic messages left. Like, it's smart and interesting and cool and like, it's just such a good implementation of Pokemon. And I think it's perfect for you and Kingo, so make sure that he has an easier set of ground rules this time. This game is also food today.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. This game is also a big hit. Two million copies sold at launch. This is like another system seller. Probably the first real system seller.

[Sam Claiborne]

Exactly.

[Damon Hatfield]

Mario Kart World.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. And it has to be because it's locked to Switch two. Just if you didn't know you can play this on Switch 1 by streaming it to your Switch 1 from a Switch 2, which I don't even what that means or how that matters. Like a co op thing, who cares? But you need a Switch 2 to buy a copy and play this game. And this would have been a huge Christmas seller of the system, but they didn't need that. This is like a momentum game for Nintendo. Right. Like, as soon as people stop talking about the Switch sales, then a thing like this happens. So I think it's really interesting. Oh, and by the way, the game looks really good. Like, it's polished as hell. And like, it's just. It's drawing these frames from, like, as I said, I leave all this garbage everywhere. Like, you walk on top of a cliff, you're looking down. Like all the Pokemon are just walking around where you left them, playing with your garbage. It's amazing. Like, it's, It's. It is a Switch to, you know, showcase.

[Mark Medina]

They got my game. I like this game because I don't. I like Pokemon, but I don't like the Pokemon games.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yes.

[Mark Medina]

So then it's nice to be able to play again.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's what Pokemon Go was, right?

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, exactly. 100%. And so I like to be able to play a game Where I see all the Pokemon that I like. But I'm not bogged down by the. Because I have tried. I tried every year. Pokemon Za, Pokemon Scarlet. And I'm just like, they never shut up.

[Sam Claiborne]

I can never shut up.

[Mark Medina]

These games, they never shut up.

[Sam Claiborne]

And it's Turn based until recently. And Turn based is a little bit of a slog.

[Mark Medina]

I did. I did like the combat in Za, but I would just wish they would let you do it.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Mark Medina]

Instead of talking to you constantly.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Mark Medina]

So this game is fun, and it's

[Sam Claiborne]

really cute, like, how the loop works. It's like you get a clue that. It's like if you have a. You have items that you can make grass with with or water things or move things around or manipulate things or break them. That's the tool set you get. It's very Breath of the Wild in that sense. And then you use those to make a little habitat. So just like a four or eight square environment that might attract a Pokemon in a clue. So it's like you need a tree that's high up in the shade with grass under it or flowers or something like that. You build a couple of them, and a Pokemon appears. And all the Pokemon are like, hey, they'll point out to you. They're like, the grass is shaking up there, and something pops out. You don't ever evolve those Pokemon or get more of the same one or anything. It's always a new one that you've brought out. And they all personality. They're all funny. They talk to you in different ways. There's like a DJ Boombox Pokemon that's, like, really funny that comes out. And, like, there's a whole quest line for it. It's great. I just have no notes for this game. It is such a good Builders game.

[Damon Hatfield]

The game's existence is strange because it's made by Game Freak and Omega Force. Omega Force being a division of Koei Tecmo. Game Freak has all its other regularly scheduled Pokemon stuff it's working on and has Beast of Reincarnation coming out later this year. And then Omega Force mostly does Dynasty Warriors. Not this.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

So just. It's just weird that this.

[Mark Medina]

Well, they. They do Dragon Quest Builders and I.

[Damon Hatfield]

But also strange. Not Dynasty Warriors.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yep. Yep.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah. I think. I think it was one of those things where it was like that Dragon Quest Builders game looks really cool, but nobody cares about any of those characters

[Sam Claiborne]

because it's, you know, this.

[Mark Medina]

You have to be a Dragon Quest fan. So I think it's like Pokemon Go. Right. Because they made their original. They made that original game. I forget what it was called. Niantic. They. They had another game and then they just Ingress. Remade it with a. Ingress. Yeah. And then they just remade it with a Pokemon. Think so. It's like, it's funny that that has now worked twice where it's like, hey, take this game and make it into. So Hopefully Red Dead 2 will eventually see like Red Dead Pokemon.

[Nick Limone]

No, Red Dead.

[Mark Medina]

Ultra realistic or ping pong.

[Nick Limone]

Not pinball.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's totally. Oh, that'd be so good. That's such a dumb, stupid, great idea.

[Nick Limone]

A Marty supreme era ping pong game.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay. I also continue to play Resident Evil Requiem and I've made it through. I've made it through that open area with Leon.

[Mark Medina]

Oh, what did you think?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, so I'll comment on that. I. I don't consider this a spoiler. We're going to talk about some mid game gameplay stuff. No story stuff. So I don't think it's a spoiler. But just a heads up, I thought that part was fun. I don't think it's quite as good as the hospital section, but people in the Facebook group were talking about how this. It's boring. It's terrible. But no, I don't think so. It's got a cool.

[Mark Medina]

I never thought it was terrible.

[Sam Claiborne]

I like how you can snipe zombies in the distance to get more cp and the more you kill, you stop running from things and you start just expending as much ammo as possible and killing them so you can unlock stuff. Like, it's really smart. I think it's great.

[Mark Medina]

That is the Resident Evil Requiem revenge tour. You get to just go through and kill everything and you haven't got.

[Sam Claiborne]

I don't know what the sequence of things are. And people keep on thinking I'm talking about the end game, which is like another area that you get to. But there is a sequence of events in Raccoon City where people are like, oh, the second half of the game is the part that Resident Evil fans don't like. That is such nonsense. Yes. This part's in that there is fan service for like three hours before this. And around this where all it's doing is saying, remember this from Resident Evil. Here it is. And look how awesome it is that Leon knows about that and reacts to it. What are you talking about?

[Damon Hatfield]

That.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's the bad part of the game. That is the best part. And it's in the second half. Yep. So sorry.

[Mark Medina]

Reacting to the B roll. The Part where he just shoots those like T Virus tranq darts at people just casually is the coolest thing in a Resident Evil game ever. It's so good.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

But I do like the stacks of buildings where you're like, okay, the zombies crawl up from the bottom, they fall down from the top. They carry explosives. They're just doing like really high damage things. But you are a high damage character. Suddenly it's really cool.

[Damon Hatfield]

The militarized zombie area.

[Mark Medina]

Yes.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's reminiscent of Day of the Dead.

[Nick Limone]

Yes.

[Damon Hatfield]

The third Romero's zombie films. And there's really cool set pieces like these buildings have like fallen over. So you're walking over windows so you can the glass.

[Mark Medina]

So good.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. Did you do the part of the gas station that's optional?

[Damon Hatfield]

I don't. I don't know what's. I don't know.

[Sam Claiborne]

There's just a gas station. You have to go in and get like a generator going in. You would. I did do that. It's a gas station.

[Damon Hatfield]

I did do that.

[Mark Medina]

I didn't know it's optional. That's where you get. That's where you get the gas can.

[Sam Claiborne]

But it's between the objectives. So you have to do that to get the gas can. But then the gas can stuff is optional. You can do a bunch of gas can stuff to open up some areas to return to, like that locked box. But in that. There's all these Leon quips in this part. And the best is one. The best chainsaw part is in this part too. Because the guy comes to the chainsaw, he's like, you must be the town lumberjack. It's such a callback. Right. That's funny. And then that happens. And then there's a long sequence where you can, pun intended. Chain. The chainsaw kills together. But you have to. I died a lot just to get that right. Because you have to plan out. Because he'll plant the chainsaw in a zombie that'll come back to try to hug you and do a one. One hit kill. And if you wait that out or handle it, then you can pick up the chainsaw again. You can pick it up again and again while just sweeping around on the ground. You know, you have to time it right. It's so fun.

[Nick Limone]

Dueling chainsaw is one of my favorite sequences.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, yeah.

[Nick Limone]

It's so good. And a little fun. Like Easter egg is technically, that gas station is the gas station from the Original Resident Evil 100. But not in the remakes. You never go there in the remake version of RE3. So it's just like a very fun, like, what if scenario. It's where Jill blows up the gas station.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is that. And I feel like that if you're. If people are like, this is not traditional. Resident Evil are really upset with these areas and what they're doing. It's like. Like, can you appreciate that? That it's like a constant deep cut. It's really smart. Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

There's so much.

[Mark Medina]

I also question that, like, this isn't Resident Evil. What is Resident Evil? Everything is so dramatically different.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, I know that.

[Mark Medina]

I know they think that it's like, you know, it's. Yeah, it's very, like, conserve your ammo and stuff like that. But also, there are several mainline Resident Evil games, the most popular being Resident Evil 4, where that is not a thing. So, like, it is Resident Evil. It's Resident Evil 4.

[Sam Claiborne]

So anyway, I'm looping this game right now, and the way that you want to do that is this. And Mark made a very popular video about this, by the way, which is my idea.

[Mark Medina]

But it was Sam's idea. Well, Nick is actually the one that made a lot of it.

[Sam Claiborne]

And Nick wrote. I was going to call this out. Yeah. And Nick kind of wrote the bones of it, which I was like, once you beat the game, there's just like every other game. I'm not spoiling this. There's just a bunch of challenges you can do. Right. And you replay it like an arcade game. And I'm replaying it that way. But the funny thing about this one is that the second replay is best to do on easy. And then you do a run where you don't use healing items or a few other things that I won't talk about. But if you do it that way, then you unlock the hardest thing to unlock because you have enough CP to unlock it, which is Infinite Ammo. And then you can play in Insane mode for the first time with Infinite Ammo. So those are two really fun arcadey loops for the game.

[Mark Medina]

It becomes this weird roguelike, where every time you're, like, you're playing the game and every time you're unlocking, like, yes. Bigger and cooler stuff.

[Sam Claiborne]

So smart.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, I was telling Nick, like, you've been in less than three hours.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah. Oh, I did it in three hours

[Sam Claiborne]

and five speed run in the thing I'm doing, which I might get by accident.

[Damon Hatfield]

I've just. I've been playing it for weeks. I know. Three hours. It's insane.

[Sam Claiborne]

I did it that way, too, but it's because of the easy mode. Is that. That makes that possible, I think.

[Mark Medina]

Also skipping cutscenes and running past zombies.

[Nick Limone]

Well, skipping cutscenes actually doesn't that they pause the timer during cutscenes.

[Sam Claiborne]

But if you play it back to back after having just played it for your weeks long playthrough, everything in the Grace Mansion is like really fast and fun. And you can decide like whether you, you, you do some of the extra stuff or not. It's fun. And you cannot kill anything because it's easy mode. You can just run through it. You know, you regenerate your life.

[Damon Hatfield]

I think there are a few things it's doing as like. First, first of all, I. I don't. I can't think of another Resident Evil game that has this many callbacks and references to earlier games in the franchise. Then also, after you leave the open area with. With Leon, there's a really Dumb on Rails sequence. I think it's dumb. Nick liked it, but I thought it was.

[Nick Limone]

It's cool the first time. After that I'm like, all right, let's speed this up.

[Mark Medina]

It's really stupid. He's got a really good one liner at the end of that one.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, he's short enough.

[Damon Hatfield]

He always has a good one liner. He went to the John Wick Keanu Reeves school of acting, I think. Then you go. You go through the segment at the Raccoon City Police Department. Not a spoiler. It's in the trailers. That segment's really cool. So many callbacks. And then you go through the orphanage, go underground. Finally you're in like the umbrella spoilers. You end up in an umbrella laboratory.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nick Limone]

Sterile lab.

[Damon Hatfield]

And then you have to battle human opponents. I can't remember fighting human opponents in a Resident Evil.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, yeah.

[Nick Limone]

Also the boss of that. I let out a cheer when that boss fight happened. I thought that was one of the coolest things I'd seen in a Resident Evil game ever.

[Sam Claiborne]

The mini boss.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, the. The mini boss. Yeah, that was.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. So I didn't get that that was a reference until I watched some of our videos. And then I was like, hell yeah. Because I remember that so much and I couldn't relate to it so much. I didn't realize that at the time. It was great.

[Mark Medina]

Well, so you got RPD is so cool because it's like the safes are all still open. And it also canonizes Leon as the. As the character you play us because he's like, I guess you're talking about it. That puzzle was weird. It was in the trailers. I don't care.

[Sam Claiborne]

I love that puzzle. Is weird part that is.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I let out a puzzle from, like 20 years ago.

[Damon Hatfield]

30.

[Nick Limone]

There's one moment where you go to investigate the desks that are there where Leon had his welcome Sign in re 2. And there's a nice call back to Martin and I was like, like, oh, God, yeah. Got a little te.

[Mark Medina]

We made a comparison and like, all of that stuff, we made it with remake and all of that stuff is there. It's great. I. I like it a lot.

[Damon Hatfield]

There is a locker, though, that says it needs a key. And I didn't find that.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, man. Don't get me started. It's part of Barry scavenger hunt.

[Mark Medina]

Any Berry Scavenger hunt.

[Sam Claiborne]

All right. You should try to solve that before. Well, I guess.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, now I'm past. I'm past that part. So.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Another run me.

[Sam Claiborne]

It. It's known there's a couple things I'm like, do I need to beat the game before I can unlock these? And that it wasn't the case. And unfortunately, that's what I. I did figure. But that there was one I didn't. The briefcase in that area, I didn't figure out. But I figured out that one, which I just had to walk around so much to get it to work. But it's basically, you have to find a picture that shows you where a location is. Yeah, we have it covered.

[Damon Hatfield]

Anyway, I'll. I'll leave this topic by letting you know where I am. The first room where the guards come in, the human guards clear that out, and then you go around the corner, and then you're in a room where there's, like a gap and the soldiers are on the far side of the room.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. Having a little trouble. I stopped there. I know you.

[Damon Hatfield]

I was like, okay, that's enough for today.

[Sam Claiborne]

You can cheese that by going up on the balcony.

[Damon Hatfield]

But they can shoot from under you.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. You go back to where you started.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, and then you go back after that.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, that's what I did. Just because I wanted to use my rifle ammo. And I was like, you know, this will be fun.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay.

[Nick Limone]

There is also a destructible piece of the environment that you can unleash something on there.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, that's good to know.

[Sam Claiborne]

I forgot about that.

[Mark Medina]

I didn't know that.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, I didn't know that until after I played that section because you don't see it. But yeah, you have to go to the other side of that bridge to do that.

[Nick Limone]

That you should be able to shoot it from the when you first ended,

[Sam Claiborne]

then do that because that's really fun.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

All right.

[Sam Claiborne]

Chaos.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah. What a game.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

And we should have an episode where we talk about the ending because there is a really cool sequence of hints at future Resident Evils and stuff.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, we'll do when, when I'm. When I'm finally done with it, we'll do a scorecast.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Yes, online shopping is quite literally at our fingertips, but that doesn't mean it's always simple to buy. Whether it's trying to remember one of a million different logins so you can actually place your order, or getting almost all the way through checkout before realizing your card is nowhere near you. There are many hiccups that can get between you and placing that order, which is why it's such a relief when you see that purple pay button that has all of your information saved, making checkout as simple as a tap of your screen. That iconic purple shop pay button is why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. Meaning less carts going abandoned and more sales going to you. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Thrive Cosmetics, Gymshark and Allbirds to brands just getting started. And they're not just great at converting sales. If people haven't heard about your brand yet, Shopify can help you find your customers with easy to run email and social media campaigns. And they have world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. Tackle all of those important tasks from one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother. See less carts go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their Shop Pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com realm. Go to shopify.com realm that's shopify.com realm

[Mark Medina]

now at the Home Depot receive 12

[Damon Hatfield]

months special financing and free basic installation on carpet projects with Lifeproof Lifeproof with pet proof technology, home decorators collection and traffic Master carpets bring a new look to your floors or give them a durable surface that stands up to life's tough messes. Get 12 months special financing on installed carpet projects right now at the Home Depot. Offer valid March 12th through March 29th, 2026. Exclusions and additional charges may apply for licenses. See homedepot.com licensenumbers okay Project Helix the next Xbox first details coming out of GDC re reiterating once again that it will play PC games and then a bunch of specs that don't mean a lot to me. I'm not as big of a tech

[Mark Medina]

guy but it's next gen stuff.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, they're going to be leaning, they've got a custom AMD chip and they're leaning into AI for their own like upscaling fsr Right. Or FSR next they're calling it. Yeah. I don't know, is anybody getting excited for the next Xbox? Is it meeting anything, is it doing anything to turn the tide?

[Sam Claiborne]

I think the thing today was a really exciting thing too where they.

[Damon Hatfield]

I don't know if this is an Xbox.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, I don't know if this is an indication of where they're going, but they removed that this is an Xbox campaign from visibility and in some locations. So IGN reported on that. That in conjunction with you know, announcing a new console and being like hey, we're making a box that can do console games is like that's all getting away from that. Was it. Who is it Seamus Blackley that does gonna be like wound down or whatever.

[Damon Hatfield]

They also said, yeah, they also said, you know, they're celebrating 25 years of Xbox this year. I said this is. We're setting us up for the next 25 years. So to your point. Yeah, I think they're trying to say

[Sam Claiborne]

all good news I think. And then also coupled with the PlayStation news of kind of getting out of the PC ecosystem where they're publishing their games, like there could be an era of exclusivity that feels different than before where it's like you can play a bunch of PC games and you're supposed to blah blah, blah blah. They're going to have all that. But they might be more reluctant to put stuff on Switch 2, which is not as much as common, but they might not put stuff on the PlayStation and what's that going to look like for Call of Duty and Elder Scrolls and stuff like all that stuff I know is annoying for consumers to think about and it all sounds expensive but like as a journalist I'm like that's so exciting to cover all that. As a consumer I have a lot of worries. Like everything just sounds like the future sounds expensive. But they might solve that in some way. And I don't know what that is. They have to, right? Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Unless they, unless like AI can, can bring the, keep the cost down. And I'm not talking about AI like content generation, I'm talking about using it like upscaling upscale, like faking their way to higher fidelity graphics using AI, that sort of thing.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean and honestly and this is in the middle of the controversial statements to say about AI. But the New York Times had a piece today about how Silicon Valley is using AI and there's still a bunch of coders coding things, but they're just doing it with prompts and they know what they're doing, they know how to check it and how to make sure that that worked. But they're saving eight hours by making a half an hour of prompts to have things write code that's going to come to games. So just the programming side of things, you still need someone that knows how to the game works and to test it and do all that stuff. But like some of the conservation of actually programming, I'm not talking about artists being replaced and stuff like that. That's all. Unfortunately, that's happening too. Like, I'm not. I'm just pointing out this other thing is happening where like the conservation of resources and just sheer coding is going to come is the next thing. And maybe that's going to make games cheaper. Is it going to make jobs go away? Like, that's the unclear thing, Stone. Right. You could actually make a lot more games. Games. That's probably good, right? Like what if you could make, you know, the Capcom amount of games at Bethesda, that'd be nice.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, yeah. I was watching a, a game dev video where the guy said like a very popular method that game devs use. I think it was probably more earlier games, but probably still used now, which is the bear claw method. Right. Which is where they, they figure out, okay, there's some sort of like bug in our code. And so we have to keep like shrinking until we find out where that bug is. And so, you know, they'll change things or whatever. And they're like, nope, okay, so this is good. So now we can like, kind of. He's like, now we just type in, you know, they, a lot of them use Claude and they just look at, look at my code. Do you see any irregularities? And it'll be like, yep, this is going to cause an issue. Exactly right. And so they're able to just go straight there now instead of having to manually find it, which is. Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

And again, there's two discussions about AI here. One is that it's going to ruin everything and come for jobs and squash creativity. This is a different thing. This is a productivity use of it where we all agree that games are too expensive and we'd like to make more, we'd like to play more video games. So like, this is like when Photoshop came to Lucasfilm. It changed Lucasfilm's ability to make special effects. It didn't replace a bunch of people at Lucasfilm. There wasn't a bunch of people editing photos. It was a tool from outside that made it so they could make more special effects. This is a tool from outside that makes it so you can make more game code or make games with fewer bugs. That is a possibility here. That is an outcome that is not evil. We are already seeing companies pre lay off people to be evil. So I don't know where this is going, but it's worth thinking about.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, yeah. The whole mega crit thing that Nick was talking about earlier with Slay the Spire that I, I can't remember if they've commented on it or if people are just saying it, but their whole Emma's paint thing feels like a direct like comparison to Baldur's Gate 3 where they were like, yeah, we used a bunch of gen AI art to like do placeholders. And they're like, we didn't do that. We literally made placeholders in Ms. Paint. So you get to just see those now. Right.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's for the culture to feel out, what do we accept as art versus what do we accept as a tool? And that's what we're figuring out now. And by the way, GDC is about that this year. Like the events that are sold out are about these, you know, not sold out, but the ones that are filling up are capacity tools.

[Mark Medina]

Big.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. There was that panel about the Google's like AI game generator. Like you couldn't.

[Nick Limone]

It was completely fo the Nintendo IP destroyer.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Mark Medina]

As far as the next Xbox goes, I agree with all the tech jargon. It's, it's breaking. The next generation console will have next gen features. We, we. That. That's not exciting. What, what I want to know is like for one, how much is this thing going to cost compared to the, you know, competition. What they even consider competition anymore? Because there's the, the Sony thing where they're, you know, they're pulling their games off PC because of the Steam deck, not the Project Helix.

[Damon Hatfield]

Allegedly.

[Mark Medina]

But also like, yeah, allegedly, but also just like I, I know there's a lot of chat about exclusives and stuff like that and, and if they'll, they'll end up walking that back. But at the end of the day, this thing has to sell and their games have to continue to sell, which is why they're in the position they're in now. So I don't get super hyped from, you know, an Xbox CEO telling me that the next console is going to be great. I need a little bit more than that before I think. Oh, yep, they've turned this around. This is going to be great.

[Nick Limone]

I already have a next generation Xbox. It's called my badass PC.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, I use it every day. Oh, but there was the Xbox Mode for Windows 11. That does look kind of cool for Xbox.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think that's applicable for handhelds too, right? You could make a handheld.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, it's their Xbox full screen. They're just calling it now Xbox mode, where you turn on your PC and you're in the Xbox ui.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Mark Medina]

Which is cool for Xbox people.

[Damon Hatfield]

But if you're on your PC, what can you do? Then you just play the Xbox games that you've bought on PC.

[Nick Limone]

It's very much an interface like big picture, if you're familiar with that at all. It's just an elegant user. Some would argue it's not elegant, but I think in theory it's something that you can navigate a digital storefront and interface on a PC using just a controller. And that's kind of how it's optimized.

[Mark Medina]

The big drawback for PC gaming is I have it hooked up to my TV just like a console, my gaming thing. But for one, it needs a pin because it's an IGN owned machine and I can't turn that off. So I still have to. I have a wireless keyboard. So I type in the pin and then the thing just opens in Steam big picture mode. That way the moment the PIN is typed in, I set the keyboard down, I pick up the controller and I never have to touch the keyboard again. And so that's what people want. People want to be able to go and use this thing like a console. They want to be able to pick up a controller and play it. And that's what the Xbox mode is trying to do for people.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, okay, so speaking of Steam machine, you mentioned Sony walking away, walking back its exclusives that it's putting on PC. We had talked a little bit last week that maybe the idea of this next Xbox playing PC games and then also being able to play PlayStation games, that came to PC, that was the reason why. But here we have another theory today. This is Peter Dalton, who was the head of technology at Bluepoint, which was recently, recently just shut down by Sony. He wrote on Twitter. I read an interesting take on why Sony may be pulling back from pushing PC releases and instead focusing more on heavily on exclusives. Some people frame this as a response to Xbox. But I'm not convinced that's the real driver. A more interesting possibility is the rise of a Steam based console ecosystem. Consoles largely exist because they provide a cheaper, simpler alternative to gaming PCs. For most households, a dedicated gaming console is easier to justify than building or maintaining a high end PC. However, if Valve releases a new Steam console that provides a console like experience while still giving players access to, to the entire PC game library, that could become a very compelling option in that scenario. If Sony were releasing all of its games day and date on PC, the Steam console could effectively offer the best of both worlds simplicity. With the full breadth of PC gaming. It would be quite ironic after decades of traditional console competition, Valve ultimately ended up winning the console war. So that's his take.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, I don't think PlayStation saw Valve. They, I saw, I think they saw them as another revenue stream, but that's why they put their games on Steam. But they didn't see them as competition because PC gaming will always have a few drawbacks compared to console games. Yes, console games have drawbacks too. I don't want to hear it anyways. But yeah, with the, with the existence of this device, it does make them a direct competitor now and PlayStation is not playing nice with the other competitors as we know. So this definitely seems like it, I

[Nick Limone]

think a very fair perspective as well. And I think it's not only competition for PlayStation, but I would argue also Microsoft and their project Helix. I think its biggest competitor is going to be the Steam Machine. And I, I would be very surprised if Helix was priced like all that much differently from a Steam Machine. I think it's, I think it's going to be a very similar parallel to what we see with the Rog Xbox Ally X versus the Rog Ally X. Just the Xbox coat of paint that's on it. So I think that Microsoft cannot afford to be more expensive than a Steam Machine, whatever price it ends up being. And I don't know if it can physically be cheaper than the Steam machine. So very curious to see how this all shakes out.

[Mark Medina]

I think it'll be more expensive. The Steam Machine has already kind of said that it's, it's like you know, kind of a mid tier, it's kind

[Damon Hatfield]

of, it should be about ready to go. Go. They're just waiting on like yeah, yeah, world economic situations to settle somewhere, you know.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Medina]

The biggest question I have with all of this, the, the reason I feel like Xbox is still, you know, there are much smarter people trying to figure this stuff out but like when you buy a PlayStation 5, right. PlayStation gets a cut of every game sold. Doesn't matter if it's first party or third party, you buy it on their console, they get a cut. Steam, same way, right? Steam. You know, you, you buy this, you're only, unless you're jailbreaking it, you are only getting access to Steam. So then Steam is getting a cut of everything. But if you buy a Project Helix, right? And then you say, I'm never gonna buy an Xbox game. I'm only gonna buy from the Epic Game Store or Steam. They're selling you a device that they're not getting any future revenue streams from, which is like, it's so weird to me.

[Sam Claiborne]

We don't know if a Steam app might live on it under a consideration that, you know, they get a cut of things.

[Mark Medina]

I don't see why Steam would do that when they have their own console. Why would they tell Xbox. Yeah. And any game sold on your device. I don't see why they would do that.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, that is a big question mark.

[Sam Claiborne]

Xbox makes a couple hundred bucks on each console too though. So there's that calculation. I have a thing. The problem I have with this theory, just real quick is that I don't think PlayStation even thinks about Valve.

[Damon Hatfield]

I don't think about you at all.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, I don't think about you at all. Situation. I don't think Japanese, top down, like old school electronics companies really care about even Microsoft at some points. Like they care about Nintendo and they want to go after Nintendo and they want to think about that. But I think the way they think about software is very, very different and the way they think about hardware is very old school and they'll continue to innovate and do their thing. But I don't know, I think they might look at why they pulled off of the Steam ecosystem already is because the sales are bad. What can Steam do for us is how I think Sony of Japan looks at Steam. What can they do for us? Can they make. They're not gonna get us enough money. I don't care.

[Mark Medina]

You're taking it as purely. It didn't make us. It's not worth devaluing our brand, putting exclusive on other consoles. We would prefer Yote and Soros and Wolverine to just stay because we're not making enough money there anyways. And that it's not about competition.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Mark Medina]

The thing about valuing their own brand,

[Sam Claiborne]

the thing that's hurting Sony in the long run is that they don't have as much and I hate this term IP as Nintendo. Still, you would think when they became the most popular Sony's ever become, right before last of us kind of came out and there was like PlayStation All Stars, you know, like that by now we'd be like, look at all these PlayStation franchises everybody cares about. They were doing Locoroco and Patapon. Like, all this stuff was just coming out all the time. It really narrowed to. And they had yote. That's new. Right? But like, it's really narrowed to. Well, it's not narrowed, but it's just. It hasn't blown up, I think, as much as I would have expected them to. And I don't think of them as, you know, besides Astrobot and stuff being cute, like having as many competitive things they own. They can't like easily make a theme park or a racer or a. Or All Stars like Nintendo can.

[Mark Medina]

The big difference between the two is that, like, Nintendo doesn't Forget about its IPs, right. It's still always going to make Zelda.

[Sam Claiborne]

I'm sorry, and I forgot the second half of my point. Microsoft solved that by buying everybody. Everybody.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

And Sony, you know, spent a little bit of time doing that with Bud G, unfortunately, Bluepoint. And so, yeah, I just think that puts them in a little bit of a weird spot if they're going for, like, we're going to be a console maker that makes AAA games you can only play on PlayStations. Like, I hope that they have some kind of, you know, ability to become a. You know, we saw the last Sony conference, it was all Capcom and it was all Konami. Like, that's their key for it, those partnerships.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, they. They just abandoned their. Like, where. Why isn't somebody working on Uncharted or Infamous? Like, it's so weird that they just. Uncharted's over and they moved on to Last of Us and that's it. Somebody other than Naughty Dog can make an Uncharted game. Like, it's very, very silly that they just kind of bring him back.

[Nick Limone]

You got to believe.

[Mark Medina]

Where's my boy?

[Damon Hatfield]

I think another good point when you're considering PlayStation being worried about the Steam Machine is that the Steam Machine is not going to be sold at retail or on Amazon. So you have to really know about the Steam Machine and really go seek it out yourself. There's many more hurdles, much more friction involved in getting a Steam Machine than getting a PlayStation.

[Nick Limone]

Well, you can't buy a Steam deck from GameStop, or at least you could when they were shortages. So I'm curious to see because I believe they were a license retailer, but that came after launch, though.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I think as of right now, the Steam machine will only be sold from Valve. For right now,

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home with agents who close twice as many deals. When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get [e-mail], own the dream.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, Sam, tell us about the panel you went to that was on Donkey Kong Bonanza.

[Sam Claiborne]

Sure thing. Let's bring it up in Still Storage. So I went to a panel at GDC and I wanted to talk just briefly about what these are like and why they're fun to go to and what you see at them. And Nintendo does one every year. And this one was on. It was called Constructive Destruction. Fusing Voxel tech and 3D action platforming in Donkey Kong Bonanza with Kenta Motokura, the producer of Donkey Kong and director of Odyssey, I believe. And then Tatsuya Kurihara, who programmed it. And the programming matters here, because what this was about is a presentation to game developers about how they came about with this game. So what they started with was there was one rock in Mario Odyssey which was deformable. And then they. And I guess we can just move through the slides. I'll just say next slide. So let's see. I don't either. Yeah, so next slide is this one. So they had a cheese that they made in a level where you can destroy this cheese. So this is a Hammer brother for people listening, destroying cheese. And when you think about it, that's what voxels are. And voxels are basically 3D pixels that can be destroyed in certain ways.

[Nick Limone]

By Hammer brothers.

[Mark Medina]

Yes, in this case, specifically by Hammer brothers.

[Sam Claiborne]

So they get this idea in Odyssey. Next slide. And they think, maybe we can build a game around this. And then they talk about Donkey Kong and they talk about, where are we going to go from here? So then they make this prototype still in the Odyssey engine, which has a Goomba with two hands that destroys in Voxel environment. And that's the next step. Next slide again. Nintendo would never show these prototypes. This is another slide of Goomba beating stuff up. The assets are from the game. It's Goomba from the game. And then the hands are from this Olmec enemy in the game. Next slide. So there's. That's what I was just talking about. There's the. There's the hands and where everything comes from. So again, this is Nintendo showing us how they built a little playground and then decided on what they were doing next.

[Damon Hatfield]

Was this talk being given in Japanese.

[Sam Claiborne]

Great intro in English. Giving a great. They can clearly speak English very well. And then they switched over to Japanese. So then. And I have a picture of what the panel looked like in a second. Next slide. So then there's stuff like this that they show where this is clearly a tool in game that's being shown to say, okay, Donkey Kong's standing on mud. How much of this mud is wet? How does that affect its destruction? How much of this mud is dense? How does it affect its destruction? Not really readable, but you can see they had to make these tools. So then Donkey Kong walks around, smashes it. Next slide. Another thing here. This is the material properties I was just talking about. It's kind of showing. See, there's the obsidian panel. And what is that? That's probably harder than the other panels. And there's also a thing on here which is not destructible. A lot of the game is not destructible.

[Damon Hatfield]

The metal stuff.

[Sam Claiborne]

Next panel or next slide.

[Damon Hatfield]

Wetness value.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, so as mentioned, there's the wetness value. That's the mud, and it gets a little drippy and weird. Next slide. This is cool. So this is showing they also had a tool that overlays, like, at any point what is actually destructible. And again, the boxes aren't destructible or they're destructible in a very specific, just two polygon way. And they might go in and destruct other stuff. But this is again just showing Nintendo showing their tools, showing their dev tools, right, that they had to make for this game. Next slide. And I promise some of this at the end. This is showing how many voxels are in this level.

[Mark Medina]

So they backed out their.347 million.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah,347 million 3D pixels are destructible and adjustable in this level.

[Mark Medina]

Running on a game that's running on a phone.

[Sam Claiborne]

And the point here was that it's on Switch two, right. They tried to do this on Switch one and they just really couldn't work it out. And when they pull out, they're very proud that things scale this way. So there's still a texture when you pull out this far that looks like zebra or draft pattern on the level. Even though what we're looking at is a level that's backed out so far away that it's just a tiny speck in the distance. All right, let's see what we got next. And this is going great jobber. I really appreciate this. This is showing what's destructible and what's not. And just kind of, again, another dev tool next up. Okay, so this is showing, basically, you can make a testable level before you make your game. And this testable levels, they put a bunch of their materials together, made a little obstacle course. And you can see this stuff would not have made it into the game itself, but they just kind of build these almost like Mario 64 levels, right? These little playgrounds. I just like seeing Nintendo build this up. This is the special stuff for me. It's like seeing this game that never existed that came out. So if you're now watching this on YouTube, maybe skip to this section and you can check it out. There's just a couple more next up. Again, like, those rocks are not. There's rocks that aren't destructible and rocks that are, but you can't tell the difference while you're playing. That's what they're saying in this slide, which is really cool. Next up. And they called that the trappings. This is what the panel looked like at the front. There's also, I don't know, a thousand people behind this area. Like, I was up front here, and it was really fun to watch them go through this stuff. And they had jokes, and they had the audience all give thumbs up, like Donkey Kong at one point, stuff like that. And I think the final slide is next, which is another. Well, let's skip through these. Well, this. This one's. This is just showing that in Donkey Kong, when they designed anything, it had to be filled with stuff. In Mario Odyssey, you could just build a polygon and walk across it. But at Donkey Kong, you had to fill it with something all the time that could be destructible. I thought that was cute. Next up, let's skip past this. We're almost there. These are just cool slides. And this is the final one. You never get to see what it looks like when the team gets together and takes a group photo at Nintendo, Right? And you can just see a couple things about the youngness of this crew and how into it they are. And again, like, this window behind the scenes at Nintendo is totally unique and what makes GDC special. So I just wanted to share that. Like, you know, sometimes you hear about this conference, and it's not as exciting as CES or E3 or whatever, but this is why it's fun to go to it. You get to see. And Dame and I have been to these about, like, old games like Doom

[Damon Hatfield]

or NBA Jam or whatever, which I think they.

[Mark Medina]

It's cool because, like, there. There are so many games. Like, you know, you play a Bethesda game, or you, you know, and you kind of see behind the curtain all the time. Right. Like, you. You glitch through the floor. You can just turn the camera and see through a wall and stuff like that. You don't get that in Nintendo games just because of how polished they are. So it's weird to be like, somebody made this game. Like, they did use dev tools and stuff like that.

[Sam Claiborne]

They talked about that exact example. They were like, oh, yeah, we're okay with some clipping in this game because we think it's fun. They're talking and they showed what they meant, which was like, an enemy was kind of destructive and going around stuff, but if, like, the edge of its shoulder went through a wall, like, it doesn't matter. It's like spinning and doing crazy stuff.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Like, acceptable levels of. Of, you know, bugginess is fine in this game. It was cool.

[Mark Medina]

Cool.

[Damon Hatfield]

Kind of makes me want to play Dunk Kong Bonanza again.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Also, I'm starting to get really excited for the Mario Galaxy movie.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, it's going to be a good time.

[Mark Medina]

It'll be fun.

[Nick Limone]

I think I'll watch it in Japan.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, there you go.

[Mark Medina]

After the first movie, Like, I have no fears about this movie. Like, we were all, like, kind of worried. We're like, are they gonna be able to pull it off? Is it gonna suck? Blah, blah, blah. And it's like, now that I've seen it, like, okay, yeah, I'll just take more of this. This is fine.

[Sam Claiborne]

I can't wait for the Dark Empire Strikes Back ending. They pull out of the Galaxy Mario has to Father Mario's mystery dude. If they.

[Mark Medina]

They make it where Bowser is Mario's father, I'd be so into that.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's impossible.

[Damon Hatfield]

Charles Martinet is Mario's. Okay, that brings us to video game 20 questions. Our suggestion this week comes from Zach from Washington State, who says, I sit here digesting a meal from Taco Bell, listening to the latest episode of the only video game podcast, questioning my life choices and staring at a pile of sauces. This got me thinking about the varying levels of hotness and the progressively more difficult games that could match. So he's here's what I've come up with. He's got five possibilities. You three will choose. Choose your. You will choose your level of hotness that you want for Video Game 20 questions this week. There's a mild option.

[Nick Limone]

Diablo. We gotta go Diablo.

[Damon Hatfield]

There's a mild option, a hot option, a fire option, a Diablo option, and a Verde option.

[Mark Medina]

No.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's interesting.

[Mark Medina]

Maybe it's not hot.

[Sam Claiborne]

You have to pay extra for Verde.

[Damon Hatfield]

Verde is something a little different.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

So if you choose Verde, you're getting

[Mark Medina]

an option that's just a little zag. That's cool.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean, if this is Taco Bell, I'd be all in on Diablo. But let's try the Verde, because Nick's here and he's going to help.

[Damon Hatfield]

Zach says, love the show. I've listened to every episode since around 2015. Recently, my daughter was in the car with me and asked if I had met you all. I told her no, and her response was, well, you should. You listen to them so much, I'd

[Sam Claiborne]

be happy to meet you. Where does he live?

[Damon Hatfield]

Early June, Washington State.

[Nick Limone]

But we're going to.

[Sam Claiborne]

We can do it. We could do a Game Scoop tour up there.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, we can do that.

[Nick Limone]

Pax West.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay. So you guys want the Verity option?

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, let's do vetting.

[Sam Claiborne]

Sure.

[Nick Limone]

Okay.

[Damon Hatfield]

Jobert. The Verity option is what has been chosen. Let me just help myself out and make sure I've got some info here.

[Nick Limone]

Wait, does Jobirt have an asset or something?

[Damon Hatfield]

He always has an asset to play when you. When the game is revealed.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, yeah, that's right. I always go Diablo, man. I don't know. It's just. I like the taste of the Diablo sauce.

[Sam Claiborne]

Of Taco.

[Mark Medina]

No, because we're coming off two losses. I think just as a sauce.

[Sam Claiborne]

Diablo is very good. It has a good weakness and tank to it.

[Nick Limone]

Wait, I might have lost it. Is the sauce. Is the. The heat of the sauce relevant to how difficult the game is or how difficult our challenge is?

[Damon Hatfield]

How difficult he. He thinks the challenge would be?

[Nick Limone]

Got it. Got it. Okay.

[Mark Medina]

So.

[Nick Limone]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's why we're not going. Because, like, you know, we're not gonna get, you know, some. I don't know. I can't think.

[Mark Medina]

I think we're on a bit of a. I think my opinion is that

[Damon Hatfield]

the fire sauces would be the hardest one to get to, but you could get to.

[Sam Claiborne]

Maybe we should have gone Diablo.

[Mark Medina]

We got a.

[Nick Limone]

No, we got. We can get vetted there. Yeah, let's do it.

[Damon Hatfield]

There's not A higher reward. So it's just.

[Nick Limone]

No, there's money on the line.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean, it made me think about talking about.

[Nick Limone]

We're on Poly Market. We gotta get. I got a lot of calls on this.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, God.

[Nick Limone]

Can you imagine?

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, so with. With the verde option chosen, let the questioning begin.

[Mark Medina]

Okay, is this.

[Nick Limone]

I mean, is this game from the 70s, 80s or 90s?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes. Well. Yes. Okay, well. Oh, yes, it is. It is.

[Nick Limone]

That means it's like 99 or 2000 or something. 99 is this word.

[Mark Medina]

It's like, just still existing in some form that, like.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this game from the 1995 and later period?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes. Okay.

[Mark Medina]

Oh, wow. Okay. Was this game developed in Japan?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Nick Limone]

Was this game featured on the Nintendo 64?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Mark Medina]

Is this a PS1 exclusive?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes, it is. Okay, that's five exclusive.

[Nick Limone]

Japan PlayStation exclusive.

[Mark Medina]

Dang, we're in my zone.

[Nick Limone]

Okay, so now it's something a little bit different. So I'm thinking.

[Mark Medina]

But it's gonna be. Yeah, it's not gonna be Final Fantasy vii. Yeah, it's gonna be something.

[Nick Limone]

You're jumping flashes.

[Sam Claiborne]

You're your cross.

[Nick Limone]

Legend of the Gabo.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this in any of the PlayStation? Well, is this on the PlayStation mini collection?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Nick Limone]

Maybe like a vibribbon.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, I mean, I kind of want to. I guess nothing from Square Enix would be, like, out of the box. I don't think.

[Sam Claiborne]

Do you think this game might have not gotten a port to the United States? Like, it could be a. I wouldn't

[Damon Hatfield]

pick a game that. That was not.

[Mark Medina]

Okay. Nice guy.

[Sam Claiborne]

Would you call this game having an artsy or quirky art style?

[Damon Hatfield]

No, I don't. No, I don't think so.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, that's great. That helps us to limit it a bunch.

[Mark Medina]

Is this an rpg?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, no, maybe it is a. I know that.

[Mark Medina]

I know that's. I know that's not really going to, like, narrow it down a ton because that's like.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is that like. What's it called? The Monster. What's it called?

[Nick Limone]

The Monster Rancher.

[Sam Claiborne]

Monster Rancher. Is that a thing? Is that Dreamcast?

[Nick Limone]

No, that was on PlayStation where you put a music CD and you get a monster based on the CD you put in.

[Sam Claiborne]

I don't know.

[Mark Medina]

And then there's like. And then Xenogears.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, I would say that's, I think, tradition.

[Mark Medina]

Gradia.

[Nick Limone]

To your point, Mark, I think the PlayStation era RPGs were, I would argue, just regular RPGs. It wasn't like a PlayStation Last of Us, where this kind of has RPG elements in it. So let's see. So RPG?

[Mark Medina]

No. When I think of PS1, I think of Legend of Dragon. Final Fantasy. Very traditional.

[Sam Claiborne]

He laughed, though. So maybe it's like based on a license.

[Damon Hatfield]

The Verde option.

[Nick Limone]

The Verde A little bit different.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, that's. That's why I'm. That's why I know it's not like Final Fantasy 7.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this based on a license?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Nick Limone]

Is this game from Square Squaresoft?

[Damon Hatfield]

Nope. Okay, that's 10.

[Mark Medina]

Just got to eliminate that out of the way. Yeah. It's not Brave Fencer Musashi, like an

[Sam Claiborne]

Atlas game or something? Is this developer still around?

[Damon Hatfield]

I don't know.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay.

[Damon Hatfield]

Freebie. I don't know.

[Sam Claiborne]

We're not gonna get this one, so.

[Nick Limone]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

Was the. Is this the first of its name in a series?

[Mark Medina]

Yes.

[Nick Limone]

So it is a series and it's first of its name. Maybe it's like a Mega Man Legends or something. Because that's kind of weird. It's not a Mega man traditional game.

[Sam Claiborne]

That was before, though, as a port

[Nick Limone]

and it says exclusive to PlayStation. Okay. Do you play as a human?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes. Yes.

[Nick Limone]

Okay. Rpg where you play as a human. There's a little bit of a pause there, though. He had to think about that.

[Mark Medina]

I'm also trying to. I'm also thinking about the.

[Damon Hatfield]

You guys gotta. You gotta meditate. Why. Why did I pause?

[Nick Limone]

Because Mega man is. He is part human.

[Mark Medina]

No, he's humanoid.

[Nick Limone]

He's a boy. Mega Man's a boy.

[Sam Claiborne]

He's a robot.

[Mark Medina]

He's a man.

[Nick Limone]

He's a.

[Sam Claiborne]

He's literally a robot. Cyborg. Human.

[Nick Limone]

He's a cyborg.

[Sam Claiborne]

I don't think so. That would imply that he grown skin and stuff. He's all metal, isn't he?

[Nick Limone]

All right, so someone get Dr. Light on.

[Mark Medina]

I've never got. I've never gotten that close to him.

[Sam Claiborne]

What type of humans are not humans?

[Nick Limone]

See, there's like mischief. No, that's not a. That's not exclusive. Okay. You play as a human. It's an RPG. PlayStation 95 and later. A little bit weird. Not a usual game that makes me think it could be a spin off or just an unusual game, period.

[Mark Medina]

Let's see what Nick, you got us.

[Nick Limone]

Is this.

[Mark Medina]

If it were.

[Nick Limone]

Well, how did I do this? You guys wanted to go back there.

[Mark Medina]

I wanted to go Diablo. No, you said verdict. If this were Final Fantasy 8, I'd have it by now. I think.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think I forced the video.

[Nick Limone]

Is this an RPG set in like a traditional fantasy setting? You know, swords and magic?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Nick Limone]

Okay. Okay, see, I'm helping Legend of Dragoon could be of. I don't think that's. Was that square.

[Sam Claiborne]

Could it be a super deformed, like crazy like super cute RPG thing? Does anything like that ex exist?

[Nick Limone]

Super cute. I don't. I don't.

[Mark Medina]

Chrono Cross is square.

[Nick Limone]

That's kind of weird. Yeah, that. That is square. Was Legend of Dragoon Square? I didn't really like that game so I always forget.

[Mark Medina]

I can't remember.

[Nick Limone]

I don't think that's. I think it might be square.

[Sam Claiborne]

He said the developer is not around anymore.

[Damon Hatfield]

No, I said I don't know.

[Mark Medina]

He said he didn't know.

[Nick Limone]

So that's gotta be.

[Sam Claiborne]

Y' all would know if it was Enix or Square.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, well, I know we don't know if Legend of. We don't know if Legend of Dragoon is a Square Enix game is the issue.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, I always forget because I just don't care about that game. What else? Fantasy setting. Yeah. Maybe it is something like an Arc the lad or like is this a turn based game?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Nick Limone]

Turn based. How many questions are we at?

[Damon Hatfield]

14.

[Nick Limone]

That's 14. All right.

[Mark Medina]

Could be Suikoden.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, that's a Konami. We do know it's a Japanese developer.

[Sam Claiborne]

Y' all would know. He would know.

[Mark Medina]

We would know. We would know. Is still around. I think they are.

[Sam Claiborne]

This is just something super weird. I'm surprised it's not based on a license. I was hoping for like some weird license game.

[Mark Medina]

I'm trying to think of like it's like an RPG and a medieval or you know, like an RPG fantasy setting. But. But it's weird.

[Nick Limone]

Is it?

[Mark Medina]

Oh, maybe it's Dot Hack.

[Nick Limone]

No, that was PS2.

[Mark Medina]

I think that's PS2. Is the game that's like an MMO, but it's not.

[Nick Limone]

Is the series still around today?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Nick Limone]

Okay. It's still relevant.

[Damon Hatfield]

That's 15. And I will say you guys are not thinking verde enough.

[Nick Limone]

We gotta get weird.

[Mark Medina]

The series is still around today, huh?

[Nick Limone]

Japanese developer started on PlayStation first of its name. We don't know if the devs around.

[Mark Medina]

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Mark Medina]

Protector of the PlayStation.

[Sam Claiborne]

Actually nine kingdoms. What?

[Nick Limone]

Human. You play as a human?

[Mark Medina]

Kind of. Yes. With hesitation.

[Sam Claiborne]

Does this game have cartoony or anime graphics?

[Damon Hatfield]

I mean, that's a little bit hard to. I don't. I don't want to answer it.

[Nick Limone]

Is this game.

[Damon Hatfield]

I refuse.

[Nick Limone]

Is this game primarily like polygons? Polygonal?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Nick Limone]

Okay, so maybe sprite.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, what? What?

[Nick Limone]

So maybe it's like a sprite based turn based rpg.

[Sam Claiborne]

What if it's just a collection? Maybe it's the Final Fantasy collection.

[Nick Limone]

No, it's not square.

[Sam Claiborne]

But what if it's like a collection of older games? Because that would be like ported.

[Nick Limone]

I mean, that is weird.

[Damon Hatfield]

Ask me if it's a collection.

[Nick Limone]

Is it a collection?

[Mark Medina]

Is it a collection?

[Damon Hatfield]

It could be.

[Mark Medina]

What

[Damon Hatfield]

if you were to use it in a certain way? It could be.

[Sam Claiborne]

What is happening, Nick?

[Mark Medina]

This is so Verde turn based rpg.

[Nick Limone]

That could be a part of a collection.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, it sounds like It's a card RPG or something. There's something like that that uses the PlayStation I or something like Skylanders.

[Mark Medina]

This is PS1.

[Nick Limone]

There's no PlayStation I on the PS1.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, this is before all the weird

[Nick Limone]

stuff, like a you. Well, it's not an IP though, so it's not like a Yu Gi. Oh. Forbidden memories.

[Sam Claiborne]

Like Beyblade. Remember that?

[Nick Limone]

Yeah. Oh, I love Beyblade. But what are we at?

[Damon Hatfield]

You got two questions and a guess.

[Nick Limone]

Do we want to figure out like pixel art sprites? Pixels like sprites.

[Mark Medina]

That collection thing is so weird. I don't. I can't. I can't even begin to understand what that means.

[Sam Claiborne]

Maybe it's like a. A show on a disc or something. Or some collection like that.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, it's a demo disc.

[Sam Claiborne]

Demo disc. There you go.

[Nick Limone]

There you go. Yeah.

[Mark Medina]

Wait, what?

[Nick Limone]

No, that's too insane. That's too bad.

[Sam Claiborne]

It could be that.

[Mark Medina]

Is this the PlayStation demo disc? Volume 2, 1998 edition. Can I play? Tony, does this game feature.

[Nick Limone]

Is that on this? Okay, am I allowed to ask a medical. Like, are demo discs on the.

[Mark Medina]

I think you have to. I think you have to.

[Damon Hatfield]

I only pick games that were released in North America.

[Nick Limone]

Okay,

[Sam Claiborne]

so it can't be an entertainment thing.

[Nick Limone]

I mean, is a demo disc a game that's released?

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean, why would that be a collection? Only if you wanted to. It is a collection.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, that. That part. Just that.

[Nick Limone]

That's because maybe the game is featured in a demo disc.

[Mark Medina]

I've never been more excited to find out what I'm excited to. I don't even care.

[Damon Hatfield]

I'm excited too.

[Mark Medina]

I don't even care.

[Damon Hatfield]

Ask me two more questions.

[Nick Limone]

One question and a.

[Damon Hatfield]

Two questions and a guess.

[Nick Limone]

Questions and a guess. Okay. There's like a Land Griser. There's Arc the Lad. There's Alundra. It's not relevant though, to this day, so that eliminates those. Never mind.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did this game exist as a. Just a playable PlayStation disc sold in stores.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, but I don't think you want to burn a question on that. I only pick those kinds of it.

[Nick Limone]

It's still relevant to this day.

[Mark Medina]

Well, but there's no downloadable stuff on PlayStation, so anything you would buy, you would have to.

[Sam Claiborne]

What should we ask about the accessory thing? Could it be accessory based or was that.

[Mark Medina]

I can't think of a single PS1 accessory.

[Nick Limone]

I mean there's just weird controllers, but that's about it.

[Sam Claiborne]

Like it's a collection.

[Mark Medina]

If you also. What's. What's tripping me up is that it's a series that's still going today.

[Nick Limone]

Turn based Fantasy rpg.

[Sam Claiborne]

What. What if it had retro games inside of it?

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, I mean that's certainly possible. I'm trying to think of like a PlayStation 1 game that has that.

[Mark Medina]

Maybe PlayStation Animal Cross.

[Sam Claiborne]

What if it's like a early. Is there like any land games are connected to the Internet? Things where you could download stuff. Like it'd be called like the PlayStation channel or whatever.

[Nick Limone]

Not PS1.

[Sam Claiborne]

He would pick.

[Mark Medina]

Not that I can think.

[Nick Limone]

PS2 was the only. The network adapter for that. I mean like Iron Hand.

[Sam Claiborne]

I don't. I can't think verde enough for this. I just can't. I can't pull this off.

[Mark Medina]

My brain doesn't go Verdi enough for this.

[Damon Hatfield]

All right, let's get two questions and a guess.

[Sam Claiborne]

We can just give up.

[Damon Hatfield]

Dude, you just give up too.

[Nick Limone]

Does this game ascribe to the live moss motto of Taco Bell?

[Mark Medina]

What did the most recent entry in this game come out in the last three years?

[Damon Hatfield]

Well. Hold please.

[Nick Limone]

So there is a possibility. It's pretty relevant.

[Mark Medina]

Let's see.

[Nick Limone]

Turn based Fantasy rpg, Turn Base. I mean, I could be like a Shin Megami Tensei. A Persona.

[Damon Hatfield]

Here we go. This is. This is how long I have to scroll on this series.

[Nick Limone]

There's a lot of them.

[Mark Medina]

What?

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, last. The question was. This is the most recent from the last three years.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yes.

[Nick Limone]

Is there a. Was there a Y's game on the

[Mark Medina]

PlayStation but like super, super long running if you have to scroll that much, maybe it's like atelier. Were those on PS1? I don't even know.

[Nick Limone]

I think I was PS2 1.

[Mark Medina]

Also, what is the. What is the first one even called? I don't even know.

[Sam Claiborne]

What'd you got? Statement.

[Damon Hatfield]

One question and a guess.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah, I. I think I'm out. I don't. I. Bomberman.

[Nick Limone]

This is bumming me.

[Mark Medina]

Oh, I know.

[Nick Limone]

Have we said the name of the game?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Mark Medina]

No. Gosh is

[Nick Limone]

what's a last. Is it a Disgaea game?

[Damon Hatfield]

This guy first appeared on PlayStation 2. Your Verity option. Something a little different. Is RPG maker.

[Sam Claiborne]

No.

[Damon Hatfield]

If you use it to make more than one game, it's a collection.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, you're right.

[Sam Claiborne]

This is the worst bridge troll riddle I've ever had in my entire life.

[Mark Medina]

That. That was. That was the Verde option, though. I. I'll accept that.

[Nick Limone]

I would argue this is a part. This ascribes to the live Moss motto of Top Taco Bell.

[Mark Medina]

Okay, well, yeah, yeah. It's not a game. We should have thought about that.

[Sam Claiborne]

Not Moss.

[Nick Limone]

It is a game because you. You do. You do make the game and then you understand.

[Mark Medina]

But I mean, like now, now the comment you're not thinking Verde enough makes sense because it's like this isn't a game. It is a game, but it's not.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's a game that. Where you make games. You play as a human. I. I consider it's you. It's yourself making the game. That's fair there also. But the characters are just humans. The developer is Kusuo Kagaku. Like a guy, a dude. I have no idea.

[Nick Limone]

I wanted still around when I was a kid.

[Mark Medina]

So they're still making RPG.

[Damon Hatfield]

The most recent one was 2024.

[Nick Limone]

I'm pretty sure they've been featured on Humble Bundle. Like you can buy like 40 of them.

[Damon Hatfield]

I think this is just. This is always a new RPG maker coming out.

[Sam Claiborne]

I'm glad, really.

[Damon Hatfield]

And Sam, your question. Does it have. Have cute anime graphics? Well, it's just pixel art. But then what's confusing is that I'm. I'm reading from the Wikipedia entry. In order to allow players to create their own graphics and animations for RPG maker, a second program on the same disc called Anime Maker is included, which creators could use to design graphics and import them into their role playing games.

[Nick Limone]

That's impressive.

[Damon Hatfield]

That's why I didn't want to. I didn't know how to answer that question.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, cool.

[Mark Medina]

That was a fun one. Fun. That was good. I think even though we lost it, I still had fun.

[Nick Limone]

Yeah, that was a tough one. That was. That was certainly better there.

[Mark Medina]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Here were your other options. Your mild option was Little Nemo, the Dream Master.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, wow.

[Damon Hatfield]

Hot was Baktai. The sun is in your hands.

[Nick Limone]

Oh, love it.

[Mark Medina]

I would have never got any of these.

[Damon Hatfield]

Fire. The one I think is the hardest is Godzilla 2 on NES.

[Nick Limone]

Okay. That would have been.

[Sam Claiborne]

I would have got that. Wow.

[Damon Hatfield]

And then Diablo, which I think we could have gotten because of Sam is Panic Bomber on Virtual Boy.

[Sam Claiborne]

I wouldn't have got that. But that's great.

[Mark Medina]

That's cool.

[Nick Limone]

I would have got box.

[Mark Medina]

Kind of hard though. Why is it mild like Mario 64?

[Damon Hatfield]

This footage is driving me crazy. We've got to get this down.

[Mark Medina]

He's making a game.

[Sam Claiborne]

I gotta invert my eyes.

[Damon Hatfield]

You're playing RPG maker man.

[Mark Medina]

He's got the fire.

[Sam Claiborne]

Just set the sound already

[Mark Medina]

cycling.

[Nick Limone]

Can I just see an overworld real quick to scrub through? Let me find. Let me see some exploration.

[Damon Hatfield]

This is world of Long plays Playing rpg.

[Nick Limone]

There we go.

[Mark Medina]

It's a video game.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Collect the sound.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, nicely attempt. Thank you for the suggestion, Zach from Washington State. Viewers, listeners, if you have your own suggestions for video game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address. Game Scoop dot com. All right, that's all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Gilbert. Working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon. This is IGN gamescoop. And we're out.

[Mark Medina]

Evil super powerful robot. Evil super powerful robot. Evil super powerful robot. Evil super powerful evil. A super powerful robot. Evil, evil super powerful robot. Evil super powerful robot. Evil super powerful. Evil robot. Roll.

[Nick Limone]

Sam.