Game Scoop! 853: Daemon Reflects On 20 Years at IGN

Summary

Game Scoop! 853: Daemon Reflects on 20 Years at IGN

Date: April 17, 2026
Host: Damon Hatfield
Guests: Sam Claiborne, Justin Davis, Greg Miller

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Episode Overview

This extra-special episode of IGN's long-running Game Scoop! celebrates Damon Hatfield's 20th anniversary at IGN. Damon shares a deep-dive retrospective of his career, how games journalism—and the games industry—have changed, and reflects with fellow IGN veterans Sam Claiborne, Justin Davis, and special guest Greg Miller (returning after 12 years) on favorite memories, office culture, and the evolution of IGN. The crew also reviews hot new releases, discusses old video game office antics, touches on retro games and inside jokes, and plays their classic 20 Questions trivia segment.

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20 Years at IGN: Damon’s Journey

[03:01] Damon Hatfield: Announces his IGN 20th anniversary—April 17th, 2006 was his first day.

Early Days

• Damon’s origins as a lifelong “capital G Gamer” in Chicago, background in theater and music; formed bands and sketch groups post-college.
• Quote: “First kid in my school to have an NES when it was widely released in 1986.” – Damon [03:19]
• Office job by day; creative outlets by night until friends began to move away, spurring career reflection.
• The IGN Job: Spotted a job listing for IGN news writer. Felt confident given writing background—dad was a newspaper editor and was strict about writing.
• First hired as News and Features Editor; mostly rewrote press releases and contributed to Top 10 lists.
• Early remote work from Chicago while prepping to move to San Francisco.
• Discussed “weird” but “great” first apartment in SF’s Tenderloin: “Once you were inside the apartment, it was very nice.” – Damon [14:00]

IGN in the Mid-2000s

• Nostalgia for the office bus shuttle (“every person was a journalist … everyone playing Peggle on a DS” – Sam [14:53]).
• Damon highlights a welcoming IGN team and instant sense of belonging: “Everyone was super nice and welcoming. I never had imposter syndrome. I just felt like I found my people.” – Damon [11:56]
• Recalls early E3 experiences—the $600 PS3 announcement, playing Twilight Princess and Mario Galaxy.

The Early IGN Office Culture

• All the channel teams together; observed each other’s gaming and formed office bands.
• Notable inside story: The "IGN band" drama, Tal Blevins’ musical ambitions, and attempts to recruit Damon for his drumming skill.
• Moved through various editor roles, including Nintendo and downloadable games editor at the rise of Xbox Live Arcade and PSN: “A really exciting time … all these new indie games on consoles; big publishers taking risks.” – Damon [21:10]
• On the shift to video: “As video became more and more important for IGN, they needed more people to be on camera and that just made sense for me ... my background in theater.” – Damon [22:04]

Reminiscence with Greg Miller

Joined IGN in March 2007

• Greg recalls his own rocky start and infamous “I need shelter” flyer for roommate search [18:27].
• Absurd rooming story: “Micah Seff ... his roommate had a mental breakdown and dragged all of his pornography into the street and set it on fire ... that’s the room I got for nine months.” – Greg [18:41]
• Rapid fire mentions of coworkers (many now legends), structure of channel teams, and memories of “waggling” on the Wii or reviewing oddities like new Bubble Bobble PSP.

Video Content Pioneers

• Recounts the early, wild days of IGN’s video experimentation.
• Quote: “Me and Damon, we just wanted to do it ... we want to be on camera. They were like, ‘we don’t really do that, but okay.’ ... I think a little bit ahead of the industry.” – Greg [28:37]
• Inside jokes, recurring podcast bits, and culture-building: “My inspiration and hosting style is lifted directly from the Colbert Report ... recurring segments and inside jokes that make the audience feel like they’re in on a secret. That’s all by design.” – Damon [31:33]

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Highlights & Memorable Quotes

IGN Office & Industry Nuggets

• On the old IGN/Gamespy/Future office shuffle: “That’s the thing, on the other side of that wall ... was guides ... might as well have been the moon for as high as these walls were.” – Greg [26:30]
• On the work-hard-play-hard culture: “You couldn’t pry us out of the office ... especially Brisbane, with the demo room, Guitar Hero and Rock Band parties going on all night long.” – Greg [24:03]
• The "money hat" skits and “tremendous waste of money” press junkets: “It’s impossible to understate … just how insane the video game industry was for a while … fly to Moscow and go to a rave in a nuclear bomb shelter because the game had one level there.” – Justin [46:22]

Podcasting & Company Philosophy

• On the grind of keeping a show running: “It’s very unusual for anyone to stay at a job that long. But there’s something special about IGN … I’ve never dreaded a Monday morning.” – Damon [42:28]
• “Self activating, as we said earlier.” – Justin on IGN’s culture of initiative [36:11]
• “Here we are, talking about video games on camera ... No one did this before us ... there’s no precedent for how long you do it.” – Damon [44:38]

Staying Power & IGN’s Place

• “I always tell people it’s been 20 years, I’ve never dreaded a Monday morning ... I never get the Sunday scaries.” – Damon [42:28]
• “I have no plan B, no fallback ... writing about video games and making this content, it’s all I’ve ever done since I was a teenager. And there is nothing else.” – Justin [43:55]

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New Releases & Game Reviews

Capcom’s Continued Success

• [52:32] Damon: “Capcom seems to be the only AAA developer that still knows how to make games.”
• Team gushes over Resident Evil Requiem (“Game so nice, I played it twice.” – Greg [52:41]) and the smooth, surprising turnaround for Pragmata (8/10 from IGN; “feels like a 360 game in the best way” – Sam [54:09]).

Pragmata [53:04]

• “It has that chill vibe—music in a safe room; you go out, do recon, come back and level up ... and then you’re able to add all these little nodes in to make it more complex, but you’re all over it by then, you just feel powerful and great.” – Sam
• “That feeling of playing a 360 game in 2008 where you’re like, Wow, I just had so much fun for 12 hours ... I recommend this game.” – Sam [54:22]
• “People taking chances ... not just sequel or some other IP ... here’s a weird thing, you want to try it?” – Greg [54:40]

Mouse PI for Hire [55:41]

• “Black and white rubber hose animation, 1930s detective noir with cheese puns—wrapped into a ‘boomer shooter’ ... Troy Baker stars as the gumshoe mouse.” – Greg
• “It’s Doom, it’s Quake, you run through putting endless bullets into endless enemies ... if the aesthetic appeals to you, try it. But it probably overstays its welcome.” – Greg [55:41]
• “Visually trying and exhausting for me ... I get fatigued from the black and white, from the frame rate ... but it’s a masterpiece of vision.” – Sam [59:03]
• “I hope they get to try a sequel ... if you tightened it up, you could have a really special game.” – Greg [59:46]

Replaced [60:00]

• “Visually stunning, breathtaking ... but maybe not as much gameplay as people expect.” – Damon [60:25]
• “Style points matter ... just being able to let this wash over you, one of the most beautiful video games ever made, just gorgeous to look at.” – Justin [62:03]
• “Every frame, an art.” – Greg [62:55]
• “Hard to recommend outside the retro crowd ... a long intro, a lot of it’s just holding right and jumping ... but the art and world are incredible.” – Sam [61:49]

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Tokyo Adventure: Damon’s Wild Ride

[66:39] Extracurricular Activities

• Damon shares Tokyo stories—visiting a 19th century amusement park, getting on a ride with “no idea what’s going to happen,” resulting in a wild spinning-room illusion [68:08].
• Hot new Tokyo restaurant “Flour and Water” copies SF’s logo but “no affiliation”—“but we get that all the time,” staff told Damon [70:12].

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Movie Chat: Super Mario Galaxy Movie

[70:49]

• Damon, Sam, and Greg saw the film (“held hands”)—generally positive for kids, but adults found it disjointed and lacking character arcs.
• Damon: “Who has an arc in the Mario Galaxy movie? Like, nothing changes ... or they almost changed Bowser in an interesting way, but then they walk that back.” [72:05]
• Discussion of the lackluster Daisy post-credit tease: “Daisy is not a character ... she only exists to flesh out the roster in Mario Tennis ... she doesn’t have a personality.” – Justin [74:00]
• Sam’s “funny anecdote” about overhyping the Daisy reveal (“I bet we’re all seeing different Smash Bros. characters ... Nope. Turns out it was Daisy.” – Sam [75:04])

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20 Questions Segment

[79:45] Nick from Newcastle, Australia’s Suggestion

• Extensive, cleverly-played round focusing on a pre-2000 PlayStation exclusive by a Western developer.
• Final answer: Medievil
  • “Do you play as an undead skeleton?” “Yes.” [88:59]
  • “Is it Medievil?” “Yes.” [89:02]
• Debates over whether Sir Daniel counts as “human,” and takes on the characteristics of “Ghosts & Goblins meets Nightmare Before Christmas” (Damon [90:07]).
• Praise for Greg’s reviews and memories of his often zombie-focused game coverage.

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Closing Reflections

• Damon and Greg recall “review everything” office days, covering oddities from Hannah Montana to Africa and Naughty Bear.
• Nostalgia for review scoring debates, inside jokes, and early video/podcast experiments.

Final quote:
“I always tell people it’s been 20 years. I’ve never dreaded a Monday morning ... I’m going to talk about video games on camera tomorrow. It’s gonna be pretty cool.” — Damon Hatfield [42:28]

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Key Timestamps

• 03:01 Damon’s 20th IGN anniversary retrospective begins
• 11:56 Damon on welcoming IGN office culture
• 18:27 Greg Miller’s “I need shelter” roommate hunt story
• 21:10 Damon on rise of downloadable/indie games
• 28:37 Early video content, podcasting, and forging the IGN persona
• 42:28 Damon on never dreading Monday in his two decades
• 52:32 Capcom & new releases: Pragmata, Mouse, Replaced
• 66:39 Tokyo stories: wild kid-friendly amusement park
• 70:49 Super Mario Galaxy movie breakdown
• 79:45 20 Questions: Medievil
• 91:29 - end Nostalgic review trip with Greg

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Tone and Style

Consistently light, fast-paced, and filled with banter, in-jokes, and warmth. The episode is part heartfelt oral history, part industry commentary, and part classic Game Scoop! gaming news and debate—balancing nostalgia and the present.

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For New Listeners

This episode is an ideal entry point for understanding the camaraderie, history, and passion that has made Game Scoop! a staple for gaming fans over two decades. Whether you’re here for the nostalgia, game reviews, or just classic IGN personalities, you’ll come away with both an appreciation for the industry’s past and present, and a real sense of what it means to be “IGN for life.”

Transcript

[Damon Hatfield]

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[Sam Claiborne]

Available now on Xbox Series consoles PlayStation

[Damon Hatfield]

5 and PC, Invincible Versus is a brutal 3v3 tag fighting game from studio Quarter Up, Skybound Entertainment's first in house game development studio where you can play as your favorite characters from the Invincible universe. This game is designed to let you become a superhero in the bloodiest fight in the universe. Made by a dev team of fighting game veterans and with the direct input from creator Robert Kirkman, Invincible Versus is full of the visceral bloody combat and authentic depictions of destruction and chaos that Invincible fans know and love. Plus a story by the creators behind the hit TV series. At launch, the roster includes 18 playable fighters including Invincible himself, Mark Grayson, plus Omni Man, Rexplode and more. What's up everybody? Welcome to a very special IGN gamescoop. I'm your host Damon Hadfield and joining me this week are Sam Claiborne.

[Sam Claiborne]

You know he says it's special every week, but this one really is special.

[Damon Hatfield]

This one really, it's extra special. Justin Davis is here. Scoop and very special guest returning to Game Scoop after I think 12 years is the one and only Greg Miller.

[Greg Miller]

Scoop.

[Damon Hatfield]

What's up Greg? Damon, Greg, how the hell are you?

[Greg Miller]

I am excellent. It's so nice to be back on GamesCube with all y'. All.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, there's a very good reason for

[Sam Claiborne]

Greg did the math. 12 years.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I think. I think so.

[Greg Miller]

It would have been December 2015. No, 2014. Yeah, December 2014 would have been my final episode.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Okay. There's a very good reason for Greg to be here. We'll get to in just a moment. We've got a great show for you this week. Lots of new games to talk about. Pragmata Replaced and Mouse PI for hire. But first, ladies and gentlemen, Scoop Nation. Today, April 17th is my 20th anniversary here at IGN.

[Justin Davis]

Wow.

[Greg Miller]

Congratulations, David Gilbert.

[Sam Claiborne]

The confetti's not working.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. April 17th, 2006 was my first day here in and here I remain. Here I remain.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did you fly out for an interview?

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, that's funny that you asked, Sam, because if you'll indulge me, I wanted to take a little look back. I want to take a look back at my time here at IGN and how games have changed, the industry has changed and how IGN has changed. And I wanted to invite Greg on to do some reminiscing. A walk down memory lane, if you will. So if you'll come with me. Cast your mind. Cast your minds back to early 2006. I know some of our listeners are probably still very young. Early 2006. 28 year old Damon Hatfield is living in Chicago. Actually, let's go back even farther. Let's go back farther to a young Damon Hatfield. Capital G. Capital G. Gamer for all my life. First kid in my school to have an NES when it was widely released in 1986. And then my extracurricular activities were theater. I was in all the plays and musicals in high school. And I was in a band called Cool Guy Club Number nine. And we're pretty good.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, hold on, what was your high school musical or what were the two of them?

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, we did South Pacific. We did Guys and Dolls.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay.

[Damon Hatfield]

And we would have done one. One more. I can't remember what it is.

[Sam Claiborne]

The third one.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I can't remember what I thought

[Justin Davis]

you were going to say the Music man and I was going to be excited.

[Sam Claiborne]

Was it Cabaret?

[Damon Hatfield]

I don't know. It wasn't Cabaret.

[Greg Miller]

Anyway, way to just derail. I want to know more about who. Are you in Guys and Dolls?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I was an extra in Guys and Dolls.

[Sam Claiborne]

Are you a guy or a doll? See, I was.

[Greg Miller]

Harry, come on. Now I got a speaking role.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I don't think I had a named role in Guys and Dolls. That was my first musical in high school. Anyway, Anyway, after high school, my friends and I all went to the University of Kansas. Great school. Greg's favorite school. He wanted to go there, but couldn't get in, so he went to Mizzou instead.

[Sam Claiborne]

You know what's funny is that my dad teaches at Mizzou and my mom taught at KU until she retired in December.

[Justin Davis]

Wow.

[Damon Hatfield]

There you go.

[Sam Claiborne]

So rival schools.

[Damon Hatfield]

Rival.

[Greg Miller]

They buried the hatchet to have you. It's amazing.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, so they made video game about it.

[Damon Hatfield]

They did make a video game. My favorite fighting game.

[Sam Claiborne]

Arch Rivals.

[Damon Hatfield]

My favorite fighting game to this day. Anyway, I graduate with two degrees from the University of Kansas. Music and theater. Not musical theater. Music and theater. All my friends and I move up to Chicago after college and we start a theater company, we start a sketch comedy group, and I start a band. And that was. That's one of the. One of the best times in my life. A top three time in my life. First time living away from home, really on my. Living on my own in Chicago. Greg, he can confirm Chicago.

[Sam Claiborne]

You lived in Chicago for Dad.

[Greg Miller]

I was born and raised in the burbs out there. So Chicago is always us looking in from the burbs as young kids trying to get on the train to get down there.

[Damon Hatfield]

Great city. I've got all these creative outlets, and I'm just working an office job during the day, whatever. But after a few years, people start moving away, and it starts to seem like our time in Chicago might be winding down. And I start to think about what might be next for young Damon Hatfield. And one day I'm reading my favorite website, ign.com and they posted an article that they were hiring a news. A news editor looking for a news writer at ign. And I sat there and I kind of stared into space for a little bit, just thinking, like, I think I can do that. Like, I definitely. I think I can. I have the knowledge. I am a capital G gamer. I've always been a strong writer. My dad made sure of that. He was the editor of a newspaper in Missouri, and he would give me extra writing assignments on top of my homework when I was a kid. So I was like, I think I can do this. So I applied. And then a couple weeks later, I got an email from Tal Blevins, who was EIC at the time, editor in chief of ign, saying he wanted to do an interview. And my first interview was with David Adams, who was the new. The sole news writer at the time. He.

[Sam Claiborne]

I don't think I ever worked with Dave.

[Damon Hatfield]

I think, no, I think he would have Left. Because he left within a year of me signing on.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I was gonna say, yeah. You figure I Show up in March 2007. Dave was already go. I hung out with the bot, but he was already gone.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. So David Adams did my first interview, and we were fast friends. We hit it off right away. We have very similar senses of humor. So that interview went really well. So they set up a second interview over the phone, not in person. And the second one was with Tal and David. That also went well. And Tal offered me the job right there. I don't know this for sure, but I've always kind of felt that what pushed me over the edge was the fact that I was a musician and Tal always wanted to have an IGN band. I think that's what pushed me over.

[Sam Claiborne]

Specifically a drummer, because I think IGN had had enough guitarists and bass players by that point. Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

And I can bang out a beat on a drum kit.

[Sam Claiborne]

Pair played keyboard. Remember?

[Damon Hatfield]

Pair is a keyboardist. Yeah. And then there's just 100 guitar players at IGN. Tao would eventually get an IGM. Oh, good, good. Yeah. Okay. This is old, old stuff.

[Greg Miller]

That's the old stuff.

[Sam Claiborne]

Wait, but that's even in our second office.

[Damon Hatfield]

This is our second 2010. Plus, this isn't even all the way back. Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Crazy.

[Damon Hatfield]

Tao would eventually get an IGN band, although I would not be part of it. I think it would be a one. Colin Moriarty on drums in the eventual ign.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, that's right.

[Greg Miller]

Trogdor. Was that right? I think it was Trogdor.

[Sam Claiborne]

That was a very Tal name.

[Damon Hatfield]

It was something. Yeah, it was something like that. Anyway, so there it is. It's. It's April 2006, and I'm hired at IGN and I start. I'm going to.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did they say you have to move out within.

[Damon Hatfield]

They didn't give me a time period, but I was. I wanted to.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay.

[Damon Hatfield]

I wanted to. I always wanted to live in San Francisco for two reasons. Metallica and Faith no More. I mean, two Bay Area bands.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did you. Did you just find roommates or did you know somebody out here?

[Damon Hatfield]

I never had a roommate in California, which I always felt pretty good about, but it's because I lived in the Tenderloin at first, anyway. Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, nice. That's awesome.

[Greg Miller]

That's one way of putting it.

[Damon Hatfield]

We'll get to that.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did you know what you were getting yourself into, where you're like, this is

[Justin Davis]

the cheapest place I can. It's so cheap.

[Damon Hatfield]

I know. Hold up. We'll get there. We'll get there. It's April and I'm gonna move out. But I'm working from home in Chicago. First, I'm a news and features editor for igm. I'm working directly with David Adams. And then they also hired a second person, Kathleen Sanders. At the time, she came from one up and she was only there for about six months. She went to Xbox. I'm not sure if she's still at Xbox or not, so. And being a news writer at that time mostly meant rewriting press releases. That's what mostly we were doing. We would get a press release like Half Life 2 is gone gold from Valve and then we would rewrite it to give it some personality and context and that sort of thing. That's mostly what we were doing. And then we were on the hook to do a top 10 feature. I think every Tuesday. We did a top 10 Tuesday. But there wasn't a lot of oversight. It was basically whatever we wanted to do. Top 10.

[Sam Claiborne]

You know, while you were doing that job I was doing, I was the freelancer that took the press releases. And this is while you were doing this because I remember you being the person writing the news. I was taking the press releases and just putting them up that we didn't write. So we would just publish those press releases and we'd have to format them and take all the caps out when they're like, oh my God, this is the best new video game controller ever. And then I would put that up as a published article.

[Greg Miller]

It was everything that was coming to like wired or wired ign.com.

[Justin Davis]

right.

[Greg Miller]

That was our.

[Sam Claiborne]

Exactly that. It was wired ign.com and I got paid $500 a week for that.

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Sam Claiborne]

Wow.

[Damon Hatfield]

Not bad.

[Sam Claiborne]

That was out of, out of college freelance gig that could, could last.

[Justin Davis]

That's legit.

[Damon Hatfield]

So I was like, I was learning the ropes, learning about our, our, our cms, which was Network in a box back at the time. Remember Network in a box? Nib Nibs. Yeah. So I was surprised.

[Sam Claiborne]

We talked a lot about publish every page individually.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, we talked a lot about getting it up and putting it in the back end. I was surprised. So then in May, I fly out to do E3. My first E3 with IGN. And it's not my first E3 ever. I had a, you know, not snuck into E3, but since my dad was the editor of a newspaper, I could just make myself my own press credentials to go to E3. So I'd been in like 90. It was either 97 and 98 or 98 and 99. But now I find myself working E3 officially for IGN. And when I show up in LA, that was the first time that I met the wider group. So that was the first time I met Pear, Matt Gaff, Semicina, Mark Bozan, Craig Harris, Jeremy Dunham, Chris Roper, Hillary Goldstein, even, like, the video team, like, Ty Root, Craig Baradon, Eric Hart. Like, I'd met everyone. And I want to stress that from the very first moment that I met everyone, everyone was super nice and welcoming. There was no one ever gave me a hard time or. There was no, like, hazing period or anything like that. Everyone was just super nice and welcoming. I never had imposter syndrome. I just felt like I found my people and I was where I was meant to be. It was great.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. I had a very similar experience when I was new. I'm like, oh, boy, all these guys are going to be really mean and intimidating. And then everyone was very nice.

[Sam Claiborne]

I thought people were busy and intimidating and not mean, but I'd never. I didn't feel like it was a warm welcome. Everybody felt really stressed out when I started. That included Greg and Damon.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Hey, you know, by the time you got there, Sam, it was a real business we were cranking away. Yeah, I had a very similar one, too.

[Damon Hatfield]

So it's E3, 2006. The 360 is out, but the Wii and the PS3 were not out yet. But this is when. This is the big PS3, you know, press conference where there's $600 Ridge Racer.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. Yep. US$599. And the whole. The air in the room just went. Everyone collectively got punched in the gut. Yeah, I was. I was in the room for that. As I think I've shared before, they had very, very good food trucks.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

They joked about gamers getting a second job to buy a PS3. Yep. But I was able to play like I played Twilight Princess and Mario Galaxy at that. At that E3. So it was a very exciting time. We worked it, and then we all went out on Saturday night afterwards. And then Sunday morning, I flew home with a top two hangover, I believe.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, wow. Wow.

[Damon Hatfield]

Nothing's worse than flying with a hangover.

[Sam Claiborne]

First of all, having a top two hangover when you're that young is crazy.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Because my hangovers just get worse by the weekend.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, yeah, you learn. You learn how your limits as you get older.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, 100%.

[Greg Miller]

Especially when you're showing up to that group. That group at that time. And the way we all drank back then when we were starting. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I Remember a lot of cigars being involved in the end of the E3 experience, too. And a cigar hangover on a plane is about as bad as it feels.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, so now it's time to move to San Francisco. I flew out one weekend and just looked at places and, yes, I ended up getting a place in the Tenderloin, which is not the nice area of the city, but my apartment was great. It was a studio apartment. Once you were inside the apartment, it was very nice.

[Sam Claiborne]

Way above the street.

[Justin Davis]

Once you were inside the apartment.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. No, but outside the apartment, you go

[Justin Davis]

out the door and you take your life into your hands.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's. Yeah, it's. It's not the nice area.

[Sam Claiborne]

It was also famous then for really good and really reasonable food, even though the streets were grimy. Like, you know, there was like, a lot of, like, Vietnamese sandwiches and stuff there.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, yeah, they have that. But I was mostly. I would mostly go and hang out in the Mission. That's where. That's where David Adams lives, and we'd hang out there. But, like, the Tenderloin is, like, it's. It's centrally located and it's easy to hop on the BART or Muni and get to other places. So I didn't. You know, I didn't mind. I was happy. I was living. I was working my dream job, living in my dream city every morning, getting on the BART to Balboa Park Station to get on the shuttle to go down to the IGN office, which was in Brisbane.

[Sam Claiborne]

That fucking shuttle, man.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Every person on it was a journalist.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Miserable. So mad to be on the shuttle that would break down and be late and everything would go wrong.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. I remember one. One week, looking around, everybody was playing Pagol on a ds and I was like, what is happening here?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Everyone worked at ign or they worked at, like, Future was there too.

[Greg Miller]

Right. Games Radar was right next door. Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Games Radar and Future was Nintendo Power at the time.

[Damon Hatfield]

Was it? Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Or at least Nintendo Power. The. Whoever was publishing the Power was on that bus because they published so many magazines. It was crazy.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. They had Official Xbox magazine and a number of others. So I'm like. I'm, like, in it. I'm working in the office with. With the group. And it's just like, back then, it was so great. Greg. You can all attest to this. We're all in the office together. Everyone's playing games at their desk. You can see what everyone's playing. I've got great memories of Greg playing Lair on PS3.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, my God.

[Damon Hatfield]

I remember that.

[Sam Claiborne]

And then when I have a piece of lair swag from the office, it was a Zippo lighter with a lair.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, wow. Very nice.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, it's a good one.

[Sam Claiborne]

That game sucked.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you, Sam. Thanks for backing me up on that one.

[Damon Hatfield]

I want to say Greg gave it a six.

[Sam Claiborne]

I don't know.

[Damon Hatfield]

I have a list of Greg.

[Greg Miller]

No, remember reviews. I gave it 4.9.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, my God.

[Greg Miller]

They were called Factor 5. So immediately the photoshops went out of Factor 4.9.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

And that kind of was the end of factor five.

[Greg Miller]

That was. And they were very mad at me.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, they should be mad at themselves.

[Damon Hatfield]

They made the game. Anyway, my.

[Sam Claiborne]

A lot of tilty controls in this game.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, it was only six axis. That was our whole thing. It was the only way to find the dragon at launch.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

This looks pretty good now.

[Damon Hatfield]

I mean, it looks very Lord of the Rings is right like this.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

At a glance, I think this is the Lord of the Rings game.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. That's funny. I don't remember that.

[Damon Hatfield]

Anyway, my role is still news and features editor, but there was opportunities to do other things because back then, IG interviewed every game. So Jeremy Dunn would be like, does anyone want to review the new Bubble Bobble on psp? And I'll be like, yes, I do. I will review Bubble Bobble on psp.

[Sam Claiborne]

This is before iPhone. So there wasn't that type of shovelware. There was only Game Boy advance shovelware. Shovelware, yes.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

PSP shovelware. Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Handheld video game shovelware, for sure. And then I. I start going to events because back then, before the Nintendo Directs and PlayStation States of Play, every publisher would have an event once or twice a year. Would that. They'd be at the mezzanine. Right? They'd be at the mezzanine in San Francisco. Ubisoft would be there, and all of media would show up and there'd be games to play and you'd write previews. So a bunch of us would show up and we'd be assigned games. We go play them. Usually there'd be an embargo, so we didn't have to like, rush home to write it up. Right. Then play the games, and then we'd write up a preview to be published later on. But I'm also like, I start going to TGS every year for Tokyo Game show. And there's other events.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, man.

[Damon Hatfield]

You know, there's events in like, Palm Springs and Vancouver and Las Vegas. So I'm like, it's just crazy.

[Sam Claiborne]

It used to be Destination preview events.

[Greg Miller]

Just tremendous waste of money. Yes.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, that's true.

[Sam Claiborne]

And. And to ostensibly try to butter people up. Did you. Was the mezzanine the place that was a kind of under the 101 entrance by the Salesforce Building?

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, it's in. I don't know. No, it's not quite there. It's in Soma. It was, you know, it's a dance club that's in Soma. Everyone would have events there.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's down. I know you're.

[Greg Miller]

It was. It's what became Ruby sky and now it's something different altogether.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, wow.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. Yeah, definitely deep Soma.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

But then, yeah, in. I guess it was. I guess I was going to say early 2007, but I guess it was March. A young, fresh young fellow named Greg Miller joined the team. I'm sorry, I still remember like before you were there, Greg, there was a flyer hanging up with your face on it saying that you were looking for a roommate.

[Justin Davis]

What?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could not find a place to live. And so in a last desperate attempt, I sent a flyer to Dunham to hang around the office. That was a photo of me screaming at the camera. And it just said, I need shelter,

[Damon Hatfield]

I think.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did you end up moving in with somebody from ign?

[Greg Miller]

I did, yes. Luckily, you know, also tragically and luckily, Micah Seff, who is also working there on the news team with Damon, his roommate had a mental breakdown and dragged all of his pornography into the street and set it on fire. And his parents had to come pick him up. And that's the room I got for nine months when I first got there.

[Damon Hatfield]

Wow. Yeah, I remember.

[Sam Claiborne]

No further questions.

[Damon Hatfield]

After David left, it was me and Micah working news. But that he. He wasn't there super long either. In the summer of 2007, and I think it was actually the Monday after E3. We made two significant hires. It was two Ryan's. Ryan Guettis and Ryan Clements and I. But I think they're. For whatever reason, their first day was scheduled to be the Monday after E3 when no one was at the office.

[Greg Miller]

So they show up and it's even crazier that. Cause Colin was there too. That was all of their first official full time days. And Clements showed up in a full suit and the people that were there were like, what are you doing?

[Sam Claiborne]

Dress for the job you want.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

They showed up and there was no one there. It's like no one there to orient them or whatever. That was funny. But then it was Ryan Geddes and I on the news team for a while until you know, remember back then we had channel teams and Greg was on the PlayStation team. We had an Xbox team, Nintendo team. But then they decided the individ the teams would write their own news. So they, they put Ryan Geddes on the Xbox team and they just put me on the Nintendo team. So I was working with Casa Messina and Boson and Craig Harris, which was fine, except at that time I was just sick to death of the Wii's waggle controls and its ugly SD graphics. Whatever. I was still into the Nintendo DS a lot. So I did that for a little bit. But then I moved into one of the roles that's still to this day, one of the most like gratifying roles that I've had here at ign. That's when I was the downloadable games editor. Because this is at a time when like Xbox Live Arcade was blowing up, PlayStation Network and even Summer of Arcade. We were so yeah, they wanted someone to like to have their beat be all these games that are coming to these downloadable services and not. That was like a really exciting time. All of a sudden there was this whole new library of games from indie developers who, you know, indie developers just hadn't been on consoles before that. And then also big publishers were able to take risks with you know, smaller, just weird different types of games. It's like that was cool. But I also like Pagel. Well, yeah, sure. Like Peggle, you know Braid, Bionic Commando, Rearmed. That's Capcom putting both.

[Sam Claiborne]

Those were Summer of Arcade summer games.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

What's the, what was the Metroidvania from Epic Shadow Complex? Yeah, yeah. That sort of stuff.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, there was a free Metroidvania that was a underwater game that you could play on the Xbox. Xbox made it free for some reason.

[Damon Hatfield]

Weird.

[Sam Claiborne]

And it was like the only free game. It was like a full fledged underwater exploration.

[Damon Hatfield]

Cool. Like I made lots of good contacts with Indidos because I was like the point of contact for at IGN to cover all these games. Remember Horde, Greg? That was a PlayStation Network.

[Greg Miller]

Of course I'm a dragon. I got to get all my gold.

[Damon Hatfield]

We love Horde so great. Anyway, that was a good time do that for a few years. And then it became. Well as video became more and more important for ign, they needed more people to be on camera and that just made sense for me to do considering my. You know, I, I was already on camera a lot for ign. Very comfortable being on camera with my background in, in theater and all that. So like that made sense for Me to just become a host.

[Sam Claiborne]

And there. There wasn't a lot of video on camera stuff being produced. There's a lot of gameplay being produced at the time. But IGN wasn't known for having a bunch of stick mics and sets and stuff like that for people to work in.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I mean, they start up the daily fix. When we moved, we moved offices from Brisbane into the city proper, into San Francisco, into soma, which, by the way, we initially shared an office with MySpace, if everyone remembers, because Fox Interactive Media,

[Sam Claiborne]

we were owned by it.

[Greg Miller]

We were.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, no, we were owned by Fox.

[Sam Claiborne]

By Fox, yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

They bought IGN and MySpace at the same time. And so we ended up sharing an office with MySpace until, you know, MySpace became no longer relevant and moved out.

[Greg Miller]

I remember when we first moved in and they had to send out an email of going, don't hoard the free snacks.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, they're desk.

[Greg Miller]

They're free, just get them. And then that lasted another week and they're like, all right, fine, we're putting them in a machine. Thanks for nothing.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we first moved in there, the

[Sam Claiborne]

MySpace didn't last forever. Like, the downfall was weird too, because MySpace had refashioned itself as a streaming service very briefly. So upstairs for many years until we moved fully in up there, there was like band posters everywhere.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, it tended to be music focused, straight. That's what you would find old ghosts. You'd be in some supply closet and find some weird pile of like, you know, MySpace mouse pads and stuff like

[Greg Miller]

that every once in a while.

[Damon Hatfield]

I remember in the. In the Brisbane office, there were some executives from Fox came down to just do like a talk or like a Q and A or something. And someone. I want to say it was actually Eric Hart asked about Facebook, which was, you know, gaining popularity at that time. And then, you know, asking if they were like worried about, you know, Facebook. And they were very. The Fox execs were very dismissive of Facebook. It was just for college kids, whatever. Anyway, it's just funny because obviously my space is. No, not relevant today.

[Sam Claiborne]

This is a great video we're looking at here for people listening. You should tune in to see some of these old videos, but this one has a bunch of people goofing around the office. And I just want to note that it's dark outside. It's just a weird vibe.

[Greg Miller]

Well, when we lived in these offices, we were all living. I mean, this is, you know, again, the downtown SF office. So this is even later in timeline. But like, I mean, you couldn't Pry us out of the office. Especially Brisbane, where it was. We had that awesome demo room in the Guitar Hero and rock band parties that would go on and on all night long.

[Damon Hatfield]

If this, if it's dark outside here, this could be like the child's play marathon. Are we, Are we here all night? We did that.

[Sam Claiborne]

I know. It was just that in San Francisco the sun goes down at like 4:45 once you get into December because it's so far north. I mean, so I. I would walk home in dark darkness until the time change. I just remember that being a thing.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. So I've been in a host position Sultana for a long time now. They started the Daily Fix, which was created as a vehicle for Jessica Chobot. But when they started, you know, we were shooting it in SF and she lived in LA and she didn't, you know, it took a while for her to move up to sf. So I hosted like the first hundred episodes of the Daily Fix and somehow I'm still posting it today, which is crazy. But I remember, I remember Sam joining in the Brisbane office. Was that 2008 Sam, do you think?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, it was 2008. And you and Greg had done some episodes of Game Scoop by then. Definitely had.

[Greg Miller]

Oh yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Because I was aware of the podcast by the time I had listened to every episode. I think I remember there's a bunch of in jokes, Thryan Geddes and stuff. At that time it was very news focused and inside joke focused.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, he's made of lava. No, I can, I can.

[Sam Claiborne]

And there was something called the Jeff Bell. Was that from that podcast?

[Damon Hatfield]

That's from Xbox.

[Greg Miller]

Jeff Bell was Xbox. Yeah, that was TRL.

[Sam Claiborne]

That was TRL. That's what it was called.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Yeah, Gamescoop was. We started Gamescoop in June, so it's not quite Gamescoop's 20th anniversary yet. We can do that at IGN Live because that's that same first weekend in June. We can.

[Justin Davis]

That's fun.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, we'll do. We'll celebrate GamesCube's 20th anniversary at IGN Live.

[Sam Claiborne]

One thing that sucked about the Brisbane office is that it was around a central kitchen kind of corridor thing and then it was cubicles and a big kind of square around that. So where you and Greg were was actually really far from where like Mark Ryan and Colin and Stephen Ng and I were. It was just like. It didn't feel like the same office in some respects. It was like the game help area was just really far away.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Felt strange. It's very different in the, the SOMA office where it's like you just peek up, you could see literally everybody you work with.

[Greg Miller]

Well, I mean you're looking at the Brisbane offices here with how high these walls used to be. You didn't know what.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's right.

[Greg Miller]

But that, because that's the thing is on the other side of that wall, where if you're watching right now, is guides. That was originally Jason Allen and then it was Nate Ahern and Mark Ryan was won over and then obviously, but it was like might as well been the moon for as high as these walls were.

[Sam Claiborne]

But since we had expanded, I remember they put in Brian Altano and Scott Bromley right next to us when they came in. So I was definitely sitting next to them.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, because. Yeah, that was when you were down over there.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, but they weren't at ign. They initially weren't with ign. They were with Gamespy.

[Greg Miller]

Team Xbox. Oh, Gamespy. You're right, you're right. It was Gamespy.

[Sam Claiborne]

That was the Bryans. But Scott was with ign, I think.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, all right. And Greg, we're freezing here. Why? Because Ghostbusters game came out or something and the Ghostbusters.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, the Ghostbusters, the video game had come out. And the bit was that I'd waited, you know, whatever it was, 18 years for a good Ghostbusters game and I didn't know another one would come. So you guys would freeze me for another one. And Damon, I want you to know, I want you to know we were this close to having an ad deal with one of the Ghostbusters VR games. And I pitched them unfreezing me. Yeah, we'll do that. It just come together. I wanted it to happen so bad.

[Sam Claiborne]

Brisbane Recycle Bin.

[Justin Davis]

You have to go find that office.

[Greg Miller]

Dude, I've thought about it. I'd love to go through there. Even the old SOMA office. When I go by and I see the fur lease sign, I'm like, what if I just faked it? I just want to walk through there again. What if I was like, we're looking for an office.

[Sam Claiborne]

Damon, I don't know if you've seen this recently, but if that, that part of Brisbane is like a downtown city now there's like, I don't know, what do you say?

[Damon Hatfield]

Great.

[Sam Claiborne]

25 new giant office buildings.

[Greg Miller]

There's so many office buildings over there, it's ridiculous.

[Sam Claiborne]

They're all like, it was like three before. It was like Walmart, Us and Hitachi. And now it's like every biotech Firm has a 20 story office building.

[Greg Miller]

I remember when they built the first one over there. You're like, that's a weird location. Oh, okay, cool. You're ahead of the game.

[Damon Hatfield]

This is like a gamecube news break. The video that we're looking at, what they became, which is we just do them whenever we felt like it. No one ever told me to do this. And Tyroot would shoot them, and we would just have an idea. We'd say, hey, let's just shoot this video today. And we would just do it. Nobody told me to do it. Nobody told me not to do it. We're just doing whatever.

[Greg Miller]

That's the biggest thing, you know, to interrupt you on your trip down memory lane, Damon, is that you're just not giving yourself enough credit for embracing the opportunities we were given. You know, when people talk about me and ign, like, well, you know, what was like, how did you, you know, break out? How did you become, you know, personality of the site? And I was like, you don't understand. It was me and Damon, and we just wanted to do it.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I remember when we got there and, like, there's another video from, like, I would say, my first three months in the office, that was Dave Clayman playing Pac Man Championship Edition, me talking about reviewing one of the Fantastic Four video games. And it was. Ty had shot it. And at the very end, Ty turns the camera and walks down the aisle and Pear walks at him and goes, oh, shooting the ed. Putting the editors on camera. You know, novel idea, because he had said that. And that was the thing where Damon and I were tip of the sword, where legitimately we were like, we want to be on camera and do stuff. And they were like, we don't really do that, but okay. And then it would be when we started finding success. I remember distinctly them saying, craig Harris, can you come be on this? And he goes, no, I got hired to write. I don't want to be on camera. Like, it was. The old guard was so like, we write. We don't want to do this. And me and Damon were like, we will do everything, anything. And that was why where, you know, you self starting and making GameScoop what it was and inviting me into that and having that fan base that we would then go. I remember starting and there was a pax where Andre Segers went, and he came back and he was like, dude, they hate us there. They hate ig. And I had to turn my badge around. It was like, oh, that's so weird. And I remember the first panel we went and did there just Standing room only. Audience. People were so excited. It was like Damon and I were like, whoa, like, we have something here. But that's only because Damon and since he was first doing it and then me fought to be on camera and not even fought as much as just said, hey, can we do this? And nobody would stop you. They just go, yeah, sure, whatever. We don't see why that would work, but go for it.

[Sam Claiborne]

I replaced Andre Segers. That was the person who I backfilled.

[Damon Hatfield]

Which. Did he do GameXplain?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yes. He went and founded GameXplain, which is still around.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yep. Like, these videos are making. Like we're doing skits. Like we're doing little bits. Right. Which is totally my background. Like, it just. It just everything worked out. Like, I grew up doing theater and music and I thought, well, I'd like to be an actor or maybe I'll write music for games. But whatever, I took those. I just. I just went on a different path. And I'm here using. I perform every day. I get to be on camera and perform and just create things. And it just worked out perfectly for me.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, you were just at the. You weren't even at the right place, right time. You're at the right trend of the industry and I think a little bit ahead of it. Right. Because it was us doing this and One up at the time, doing the One up show where it was like, here's like video game. Video content featuring personalities talking about video games.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is that the parking garage? Where is that?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, that's Parking Garage. I was threatening to throw myself off.

[Sam Claiborne]

Remember, there's all those stray cats living in there. You know, that Ghostbusters game was pretty good.

[Greg Miller]

It was. It was 8.0 ign.com yeah, good game.

[Sam Claiborne]

I liked it a lot.

[Damon Hatfield]

Sam, you mentioned all the inside jokes in Game Scoop. That was by design from the beginning. My, like, inspiration and, like, hosting style is lifted directly from the Colbert rapport. Like I. Yeah, it's. It's recurring segments and inside jokes that makes the audience feel like they're like, you know, the part of something they're in on some kind of secret. That's all by design. And Justin, I remember when you arrived at ign, you replaced Levi Buchanan.

[Justin Davis]

I did.

[Damon Hatfield]

Who? Levi never worked in our office. He always lived in Portland. But Levi came from Nintendo Power, which. So how cool is that? At one time or another, he was a retro games editor and then he was also a mobile gaming editor.

[Sam Claiborne]

And I. Yeah, I didn't remember the mobile part of that. I only remembered the Retro game.

[Damon Hatfield]

Except that's what Justin was brought in to do to replace him. So he must have been mobile editor when he left.

[Justin Davis]

The retro was gone by the time he left. He was only doing the mobile game stuff. And then I was the mobile games editor. So I reviewed Angry Bird Space and Infinity Blade two and three and that was the, that was the era. Like a really good era for the App Store, actually. Yeah. Where's my water? Cut the rope.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Who can Forget Infinity Blade 1 was the one that we gave a 10 to.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, no, I gave a, I gave a 10 to Infinity Blade 2 and 3. I think.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think Hillary gave.

[Damon Hatfield]

Hillary gave the first one a ten.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Davis]

So, you know, kind of boxed it on score there a little bit. And then I did many hundreds of episodes of Tech Fetish with Scott Lowe and then subsequent tech editors. Mark Ryan was on that podcast night. I don't know, I mean, historian knows. I don't know what my first appearance on Game Scoop was, but it was somewhere in the 1000s. And the thing that's crazy, like, well, I mean it might have been 200, but like, you know, we have photos. Like I have a firm memory of celebrating 250 and I'd already been on the show quite a bit by then, so like that's probably how the math works out. And like I remember, you know, what are we at now? 800 and something.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I think this is 853.

[Justin Davis]

853. And like I remember when I joined, I'm like, Game Scoop has been going on forever. It has so many episodes and it was, it was like you guys were at like 140 by the time I started. Yeah, but that was, that was how it felt.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

And I feel that way. Like I met in a couple months. I'm at 15 years at IGN and like so that's half of IGN because IGN celebrated 30 this year. But it felt like, you know, such a big, established, storied brand already by the time I came in.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

And I was never in, I was never in that Brisbane office. I was always on Second street. And it was, it was. Well, by the time I started, One up was already in the building. But I know that it was like, you know, there was a row of like one up gamespot, ign all like a couple blocks apart.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, second. Second was like that for a long time.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, you mentioned. Oh, go ahead, Justin.

[Justin Davis]

Just after mobile games, I ran features for a long time. It was like the main, main, main gig.

[Sam Claiborne]

And then what was the Xbox channel? We had called.

[Justin Davis]

There's Team Xbox.

[Sam Claiborne]

Team Xbox.

[Damon Hatfield]

Team Xbox. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned 15 years for you, Justin. 18 years for Sam. Like I've been here 20 years. It's. It's very unusual for anyone to stay at a job that long. But like there's something special about ign, like you know, pair our co founders

[Sam Claiborne]

and freelance before that. But. But even with that, it felt like you and Greg had been. Been in the industry forever. Exactly. That's the feeling. And I also heard by then what, you know, at least 52 episodes of Game Scoop, which is like you, you start getting, you know, parasocial relationship developing. Like you think, you know, these people are right, and then it's like that was like a very strange, like I. Again, I think it was not unfriendly, but just intimidating and overwhelming to start at ign. By that point it was just like, there's a lot. You guys had already started a lot. And it was like I had a really like heads down job. You know, it just felt really different.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

I found the environment very welcoming and very friendly and everyone, you know, like, I'd never, I had never done a podcast. I had never done anything on camera. And it was Scott Lowe. He's like, hey, what are you doing right now? And I'm like, oh, I don't know, nothing. And he's like, come podcast with me. And I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if I could do that. Like, just come do it, it'll be fine. And like, that was how, like that was it, man. Like, that was the, that was the vibe was just, you know, just do things. Which I actually still, you know, I mentor and coach a large staff now, as do you, Sam. And like, I coach a lot of people on like, you know, the culture at this company is like, open the door and walk through it yourself. Don't wait for someone to open it for you. Those are the types of people that seem to succeed and thrive best.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Self activating, as we said earlier.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, here we are.

[Sam Claiborne]

I still think of myself as an NBC cast member. This is just a guest gig. I was the first. Craig had me on NBC all the time and then I hosted it for a long time. Yeah. So, you know, this was just the side gig.

[Damon Hatfield]

Greg, to this day there's still more Podcast beyond episodes because back in the day, you and Colin were just religious about never skipping an episode. Good. Ever. So this.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, that was. Dunham beat that into me on Gen 1 of podcast Beyond. And so then when we added in Clements and we added in Colin and it kept. I guess Clements was a founder. We added in Colin, we added in every else. I kept that mantra running. Yeah, it's. It's. It was very much. And I think that's the other thing about it. You know, what I mean is I'm just here to put over Damon of what in. I. I don't. I don't know the modern ign how it is, but like, at least back then, what an unforgiving role it was in. What an unsung hero you were, David, because I remember you and me once not getting into a fight, but having loud words in a conference room once where it was that you were just like, we were going back and forth and I flaked on a game scoop, as I did, and so many of the other editors do, or did, I should say, because it wasn't our job role. So a review would come along or something else, or news or whatever, pull you away from going to do this podcast that also at the time, management didn't really stress as this is important, we should be doing this. There was a lot of man hours conversations about podcasts. And I remember you pulling me was the vp.

[Sam Claiborne]

It was like VPH views per hour.

[Greg Miller]

But this is even before then, when it literally was just, there's no views, it's a podcast. Nobody's tracking them. We're not putting ads in them. We don't know what's happening. But we had a conversation in heated terms at one point where I flaked and you were mad at me because I'd let you down, understandably. And you just said, I just feel like, you know, if you had to choose between beyond and game scoop, you'd choose beyond. And I was like, well, yeah, I would, because I'm the only person here with PlayStation in their title, like, I'm now the only PlayStation editor. And you were like, oh. And it sunk in for you what that meant. But it also sunk in to me what it meant for you to run Scoop and how hard it was to herd chickens and cats that had a million other things going on. And when we weren't told to take it seriously, nobody else took it seriously. It was a fun lark. I remember you and me walking out of conference rooms after podcasting with Solius, the AC unit for an hour and look at each other go. That was great. Can you imagine if this is all we had to do? What if this was the job?

[Sam Claiborne]

I remember that being a dream.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I still daydream about that.

[Greg Miller]

Just 24 hours you kept the torch lit and kept it moving. And the fact that you're this far along and have this many episodes is incredible. And yeah, it was just the opposite, I think, of that conversation galvanized what I already believed from Dunham, stressing to me that there needed to be beyond every week so that when I was running it, I sure it happened. But again, at that point I probably had a PlayStation team or voices underneath it that made sense.

[Sam Claiborne]

Beyond was not Beyond. But the PlayStation coverage in general was in a really tough spot right then because there was so like the PS3 was. Was kind of, you know, not great. Yeah, it was just like. It had a. It was like Nintendo. It had just slow trickle of games and the360 was just, you know, ascendant. It was just this weird time. And it was like. It got to the point where like the 360 team, like, you know, became this kind of granted, everything's going to go easy for them team. And then you had to make kind of a personality behind PlayStation and it being the underdog, which then came into Game Scoop. And I remember that being this, like this great way of developing, you know, fan space and camaraderie in connection with the audience when the only thing to cover was like a weird downloadable game about hurting people as a superhero that

[Justin Davis]

week, the last guy had to be personality forward. Right. There was no other choice.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, it was commiserating, I think.

[Sam Claiborne]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

And again it was that you had this audience that had bought this very expensive thing and now they're looking for the silver lining on it. Which again, I think is what then made it hard for Damon to keep Game Scoop going at a normal clip when it's just him. And it is that I'm pulled in Tal or whoever might bosses Dunham at the time, Hillary at the time, Casey at the time, what they wanted for

[Sam Claiborne]

it versus well, and there was an. I should have contextualized this. There was an attempt at the time to make sure There was a PlayStation and Xbox and Nintendo voice on this show. That was like a theme at the time. And it's. It's never really. It's not. It's not been that a really long time.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, I remember distinctly when we were in the meeting and they were like, all right, cool, we're going to do channel podcasts. GamesCube's been doing so well and IGN AFK is still happening, so we're going to do channel podcasts now. And I remember, I think I was one of them where I was like, why? No, no. Why are we doing that? We have Game Scoop. And they were like, no, no, it'll make sense. And then it was up and down throughout the years of, maybe we should cancel all these except gamescoop. We don't know how we're making money off of this.

[Damon Hatfield]

That conversation is cyclical. It comes around every so often. It's still, to this day, is in no one's job description to podcast at ign, but we do it. We're very passionate.

[Greg Miller]

Can I ask you a question, Damon?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yep, yep, yep.

[Greg Miller]

Talk to me about when you were like, you know what? I'm gonna be here for 20 years. Cause there's a distinct moment, I think, for me personally, that I remember the first time Levi Buchanan ever came to visit when I worked there. He took you, me, and Geddes out to eat, and we were at the table. And Levi, of course, always cool, was just like, so, gentlemen, I know IGN isn't the end of the line for all of you. What's next? And I remember there was a beat of silence, and you looked at me and said, well, it's the end of it for one of us. I was so vocal that I was never gonna leave ign. I got my dream job. I die here.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's great.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

No, I don't. There wasn't ever a moment. I just, you know, like, I was just talking about this. It's just been such a perfect fit for me. Like, I don't know, in order for me to, like, go on to something else, like, lightning would have to strike twice, and I have to find something else that's just absolutely perfect for me. So, I don't know. I always tell people it's been 20 years. I've never dreaded a Monday morning. You know, Like, I don't. I'm never. I never get the Sunday scaries. And like, oh, I got work tomorrow. I was like, nope, I'm going to talk about video games on camera tomorrow. It's gonna be pretty cool.

[Greg Miller]

Pretty cool.

[Justin Davis]

I think I. I would agree with that. I mean, I don't think it's a decision to, like, stay 15 years, at least in my case. But it's just a series. It's always a decision of, like, you know, the work is still interesting. I'm never bored. You know, I'm fulfilled.

[Greg Miller]

I'm.

[Justin Davis]

I'm, you know, I'm challenged. And, you know, we have a good culture of sort of allowing people to sort of stretch into new stuff and try new stuff. And it's like, you know that's important to me in my work. And I'm like, okay, like, as long as that stays the vibe, I'm happy to stay another 15 years.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. I'll just add that, like, it's nice to be at a place where I think that we're always in a position where we're kind of at the top of things. And, like, it's like, kind of great to just be at a place where, like, you know, we have the biggest, best thing. And where am I going to go?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah,

[Sam Claiborne]

it makes sense to start your own business like Greg did. But I'm not going to ascend to a smaller site. It doesn't make any sense to me.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, it's interesting that IGN still here back in the day. I'll be honest with everyone. We used to talk about Gamespot a lot back in the day. Yeah, we don't talk. It's. What is his name for Mad Men? I don't think about ufr. Sorry, we don't talk about games anymore.

[Sam Claiborne]

But I do know people like Levi who wanted to make movies. That's just a completely different route. Right. It's like, what I want to do is this. And where am I going to find the best reach and the most stability? Right.

[Justin Davis]

You know, I do feel like my wife is a school teacher and like, it's like, hey, you're not allowed to be a school teacher. You have to do something else. What do you do? Without missing a beat, she's like, architect. That's what I would do. Like, that's what I like. Whereas, like, I don't have, if you ask me that question, I'm like, this is it. I have no. I feel tailor built, felt for doing the exact thing that I'm doing. And I have no plan B and no fallback of just like, you know, writing about video games and making this content. It's all I've ever done since I was a teenager. And there is. There is nothing else.

[Sam Claiborne]

I guess development is another place that a lot of people we know end up going into because they just, like, they're so interested in the craft that they want to go do it, right?

[Justin Davis]

Oh, yeah, for sure. If they have that artistic design background or that programming background, more power to them. But, like, that's not, you know, it's not everybody, Right?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, for sure. I do wonder sometimes, like, how long can I keep doing this? My job is to be on camera, talk about video games, and two things always come back to me. No one did this before us. No one came before us. If the job is to talk about video games on camera, we're the first to do it. So there's no precedent for you do it till this age, and then you transition to this other thing, so who knows how long. But I do think a good analog would be sports commentators. And I always see dudes are old as heck talking about football and basketball on tv, so I don't know, maybe I can be old as heck talking about video games.

[Sam Claiborne]

It just matters. If everybody's going to be living in, like, a matrix that provides sexual pleasure and they don't use video games anymore because they don't live in meatspace, then. Then we'd be out of a job.

[Damon Hatfield]

But then we just got to bring back knocking boots.

[Sam Claiborne]

Do those episodes, like, live in an archive on ign?

[Damon Hatfield]

Not. Well, I guess some might.

[Greg Miller]

They live in the dark Web, Sam. They're on the dark web, Silver.

[Damon Hatfield]

The ones that we did on IGN are probably archived somehow. But, you know, it moved on. It had a life of its own outside of ign, too. And those are archived as well. Anyway, guys, that's enough about me. Come on. That's enough about me.

[Greg Miller]

It should be the whole show. You got 20 years, Damon. That's crazy. What was your favorite GameScoop TV. What was your favorite goofy bit? We did, or whatever the show, too, obviously.

[Damon Hatfield]

We did one in Park City. Cause we were there for, like, a Shaun White snowboarding event.

[Greg Miller]

What?

[Damon Hatfield]

We were there with Nate Ahern, and we were making fun of the money hats. I don't know. Where did the money hat even come from? People accusing us of having money hats, people calling us taking bribes for giving.

[Greg Miller]

I said money hat around here the other day, and nobody knew what I meant. I was like, oh, you're all young.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, it really has gone out of the parlance, huh?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Well, and it's also, like, the Park City thing. It's impossible to understate. I caught, like, the tail end of this. It was already winding down. But just how insane the video game industry was for a while of, like, you'd fly to, like, Moscow and go to some rave in, like, you know, a nuclear bomb shelter because the game had one level that was set in Moscow or something. And it's like, it was all like. Because the PR people also. It's like they're like. They just also wanted to go party in Moscow. It's like, let's just spend the company's money, like, while we still can.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

And, like, it. It's in, like, you know, it was under, like, you said. They're just, you know, trying to buy people off, or they think that it'll influence the scores. But the truth is that, like. Like, you know, come to Hawaii and play the game, and then we're gonna go out on jet Skis, and it's like, can I just play the game?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Like, I'm tired. Do I have to go to Hawaii? Please, just let me. Let me play the game in my office. Like, I don't need to go do this for a week. I have so many other things I need to get done. Yeah, it was. It was a very wild time. I always. The one that I remember the most was the Sony E3 party for the God of War 2, I think was coming out, and it was in Dodger Stadium, and Incubus played, and they were roasting. They were roasting whole goats on, like, a spit, and they had men and women dancing in cages. And I'm just like, this is insane.

[Greg Miller]

What are we doing?

[Justin Davis]

Might have been 2006. I can't remember now. Maybe 2005.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

What about the Park City one stood out, though.

[Damon Hatfield]

That's you, Damon. We were. Nate and I were. We were making fun of the fact. These accusations that IGN is paid for reviews. And we were showing us, like, we were getting wined and dined and pampered by Ubisoft. And then our review score kept going up for Shaun White snowboarding. I. I. Listen, I can. I can. You know, I've been here for a long time, 20 years now. I can. I can tell you it's literally never happened. Happened. I didn't. It has literally never been paid for review. It's just literally never happened. The people that make this claim, it's

[Sam Claiborne]

never even been a question. It's never even been somewhat.

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Sam Claiborne]

Suspicious or compromised in any way.

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah. There was one time ever that there is a video game journalism review controversy, and then it was a massive controversy, and someone lost his job. It made the news, and it was all over. You know, that was like, Jeff Grossman, right?

[Sam Claiborne]

Like, you know, like, we still get Jeff Brisman and ign. It's like, no, that was not ign.

[Greg Miller]

Not even us.

[Damon Hatfield]

But, Greg, my absolute favorite one is the rock band PSP1 or Vita. It was the Vita one.

[Greg Miller]

No, it was PSP. It was PSP. That's how old we are. Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

We did a commercial for rock band on PSP. It's great.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. But then they made the DS1.

[Greg Miller]

No, this was for the game that they. This was them doing Rock Band Unplugged on The psp. We were making fun of it and I guess. What about multiplayer? There's no multiplayer of any kind of. That's kind of dumb, dude. There it is right there.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's like, are you sick of trying to carry your Rock Band instruments everywhere?

[Sam Claiborne]

Wow.

[Damon Hatfield]

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[Greg Miller]

These glasses. God, get big glasses. Greg, what are you doing?

[Justin Davis]

It was the style.

[Damon Hatfield]

It was the style which was the style. Time. Yeah, okay, Okay, let's talk about some of these games. What is out? What's out? Pragmata. Greg, One of the. One of the things we are recurring topic on gamescoop recently is that Capcom seems to be the only AAA developer that still knows how to make games.

[Sam Claiborne]

Sure.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. They're having quite a run, aren't they?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, quantity and quality, quantity and quality.

[Damon Hatfield]

They're the only ones that can do it. Like Ubisoft doesn't know how to make games anymore. Did you play Resident Evil Requiem, by the way? Greg?

[Greg Miller]

I sure did. What a game. God damn.

[Damon Hatfield]

I played through it twice. The game so nice. I played it twice. Anyway, Pragmatic got an 8 out of 10 from IGN. I barely started it last night just to get a taste of it, but apparently this turned out well after spending many years in hell. I think this was revealed in like 2020 and then put on hold indefinitely and then re announced and somehow they landed it and it turned out okay. Sam, you've been playing a lot of this.

[Sam Claiborne]

I love it. Yes, it's like when Dino Crisis came out alongside Res Evil. It's the RE engine. It has a lot of similarities. It's got this chill vibe, music in a safe room. You go out, you do a bunch of recon and then come back and level up and you know, it's really, really. It has a little bit of it has enough res. Evil Capcom DNA. But then it has this like just fantastic little gimmick here where you just have to stop and basically cast a hacking spell by entering a little button code maze. And it warms you up to it really slowly. But then you're like, I want to do more of this by, like adding a bunch. And then all of a sudden you're able to add all these little nodes in to make it more complex, but you're already. You're all over it by that point and you just feel powerful and great.

[Greg Miller]

Great.

[Sam Claiborne]

And it's got this, like, layer of like, it's set on the moon in this crazy landscape and enemies look nuts and this little girl is like on your back just like shouting, kudos the whole time. I just love it. It's just. It just. It feels like, you know, the. This. That feeling of playing a 360 game.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

You know, in 2008 where you're like, wow, I just had so much fun for 12 hours. I recommend this game. Everybody should play this. And then there's, you know, the year has 40 more of those. We just don't have.

[Damon Hatfield]

I know.

[Justin Davis]

That's how everyone describes this game in the best possible way. Like, they say with love. Like, it's like that 360 era of like, it's just very video gamey.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. In one year you get like, you know, the Darkness and Enslaved and Overlord. Just like dead space. Yeah. All these great games all coming out at once.

[Greg Miller]

People taking chances. Right. It's what we keep saying. Everything's got to be a sequel or some other ip. The fact that they were like, here's this weird thing. You want to try it?

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Are you playing this, Greg?

[Greg Miller]

No. So this week I was on Mouse and Tomodachi, so I have not. I'd done the demos for Pragmat Meta and I'm very excited to play it because I definitely looked at him like, ah, this doesn't look like a great game. And then when I did that first demo and did that first hack, I was like, oh, no, I'm going to be into this.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. It's got great exploration, great revisiting, and like, the environment's cool. So I. Nothing that was shown about this game game even caught my eye. I was like, I don't care about this. I don't know what it is. It's hard for them to get it across. And then I just sat down with it and it's just a totally great adventure action game that feels like Capcom made It after making Res Evil. Like it couldn't be better to follow Requiem with this game. It just has so much in the DNA.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, cool. Great. Well, tell us about mouse then, Greg. So I think that's. I think that one got a six from ignorance.

[Sam Claiborne]

We're on the low end of that.

[Damon Hatfield]

We're on the low end. Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, but it's your right in the wheelhouse. I mean, I gave it a 7 on the kind of funny scale, which is completely different than the IGN scale and not at all. Can't translate whatsoever. I called it good. Yeah. You know, Mouse PI for hire is a black and white rubber hose animation, 1930s, you know, noir. Detective noir film starring Troy Baker as a mouse talking to other mouses. So it's got this Steamboat Mickey shoved together with this PI drama, shoved together with a lot of cheese puns and wrapped into the genre of a boomer shooter. It is Doom. It is Quake. It is you running through just putting endless bullets into endless enemies. I think it's. I think it's good. I enjoyed it. What I said on the show for over at kind of funny was if you look at any of the trailers or even hear the description and go, oh man, that sounds interesting. Go play it. Try it out. Because it is a game that I think for me, even as a fan, overstays its welcome. But it gets better the more you play it, if that makes sense. Where it's like, I think you started off, you're like, oh, it's going to be very basic, it's going to be this and it stays in that maybe an hour or two too long before it starts opening up with new abilities and new weapons and little twists and turns that make you go, okay, this is a lot of fun. So I enjoyed it. It's a fun one. Again, you're looking at like 13 hours. So we're talking about something you can get in and actually enjoy, not feel a giant commitment to. But guns feel good. It's funny, it's cool. It's a really good visual style, but it.

[Damon Hatfield]

That's not what a private. Private investigator does. Right.

[Justin Davis]

That was. That was. That was. That was. The IGN reviewers issue was like, you know, like it's sort of story heavy and noirish, but then you're just murdering just everyone in the level. Like, it's a shooter at heart, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. It's a shooter at heart. And I think, you know, one of the big failings of it is like they just try to do too much in the story. Without ever making you care about the stakes. So, like. Like this, the. The, you know, the dissonance here of being a detective but not doing a lot of detecting really didn't matter to me because it is shooting. And Troy will make a funny joke about killing all the people he was supposed to be investigating, and the reporter gets all mad at him and stuff. That wasn't one of my issues with it, but I totally get it.

[Sam Claiborne]

He has a crazy accent in it. He's doing, like, a funny gumshoe accent.

[Greg Miller]

He's doing it. Yeah. James Cagney, that. He's doing that.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

What are you doing about this? Hey, I'm j.

[Sam Claiborne]

And it's constant because it's narrated.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

What looks.

[Sam Claiborne]

I played a bunch of this.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Well, the reason why I think I might check it out. I think, like, all the guns seem, like, clever and fun. Like, there's a bunch of, like, unique weapons.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Sam Claiborne]

This hacking's great.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, the hacking's really fun. With your tail here.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, cool.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's it for me. The only. So I really like. So just like with Cuphead, I like seeing how they do the, you know, the animations for a typewriter or, you know, a bottle or a can or anything. That's, like. That's my favorite part about this stuff. And the style. And I think they actually successfully worked that into a shooter, which is like, you know, like, it seems weird. They make these environments. Yeah, it seems hard to do. But then, like, the death sequences, like you just saw, the skeletons, the decapitations, everything, they're great. It all looks really cool. I hate saying this about a game because this is so rare for me, but this one is visually trying and exhausting for me, really. And I get. I get fatigued. And from the black and white, from the frame rate, which is good, Good frame rate, and from the, you know, the kind of. The contrast between the animations. I don't know, man. Like, it's.

[Greg Miller]

You're not wrong. I think, one, I love the style of it, and I think it's beautiful, especially on a giant tv. But, like, there's a lot. I feel like, because of them limiting themselves to black and white again, these characters you're meeting, these NPCs, kind of run together. That was tough for me. I feel like. It's really hard for me at. In the game, playing it. I was like, where am I getting damaged from? Who is shooting me? Or what did I step in? Or what's going on? Like, it becomes.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's.

[Greg Miller]

I think A gorgeous art style, but the longer you're in it, the harder it kind of becomes to differentiate certain things inside of it.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. And I. That said, though, I want to show everybody I know this game and be like, dude, look how crazy this is. When you're playing this game. Like it is. It is kind of a masterpiece of, like, vision. It's just. It kind of hurts my vision.

[Greg Miller]

It's the usual. I mean, not the usual. I mean, I guess the good thing when we're blessed with something new, right? Of like, looking at it going like. Like, man, I really want to see what they do with the sequel. I hope they get to try it again, because I think if you tightened it up and did a few more things, you could have a really special game.

[Damon Hatfield]

And then there's Replaced, which Greg, I think this was revealed at E3 2021, which was the final E3 and wasn't even a real E3 that you and I hosted. It was just a digital online event. I think Replace was unveiled then, of course, the developers in the Ukraine, and there's a very good reason why it's taken so long, but I think it's turned out out pretty well. I've been playing it. I think maybe it's not inside. We should specify that right up front. It's not inside.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's not backwards.

[Damon Hatfield]

Sometimes it's not as well. I'm just gonna say Inside is much more of a puzzle game. This seems to be. They've spent so much time working on the presentation, which is amazing. It's visually. It's really, really stunning and breathtaking. And there's not as much to the gameplay, I don't think. Sam, is that what you found? You're like. You're deeper into it than I am.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, you.

[Damon Hatfield]

You get.

[Sam Claiborne]

You get to places where you backtrack and have little side quests and do that, but not in any extreme way. And then a lot of the combat is. It feels almost like Batman, Arkham, because you're constantly. Luckily, it fills in a lot of the. Between animations to get between enemies. You're just kind of punching backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards. And that's kind of cool. But, yeah, the game is just style. Mouse has style plus gameplay that you're familiar with. This is kind of style plus not really gameplay for a lot of it. A lot of it's just kind of holding right and jumping. That does change. I'm not saying it stays that way, but since it has such a long intro and then the next part, you get to is not just running right. It's slowly exploring a city and then the next part you get to is really combat focused. It is. It doesn't. It's hard for me to recommend it outside of people that I know. Like, game scoop for the retro stuff. Yeah, it has a really cool cyberpunk retro look. That's it.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I'm. It's. I'm happy to just sort of like hang out and live in the world of the game and, and. And take in the visuals just because it's. That's. That's enough for me. But I totally get. I think some people are a little bit bummed with how light on gameplay it is. I don't know, Justin, have you tried.

[Justin Davis]

Glad to hear you say that though, because that's. That's exactly my feeling as well. Like, it's. It's a valid complaint. If you're reviewing the game, you obviously have to talk about the gameplay and the combat system and how, you know, maybe it's a little more shallow than you wanted it to be, but on an individual level, on a personal level, like, you know, style points, like, that does matter, right? And like, just being able to just let this wash over you and like, it does matter that this is maybe one of the most beautiful video games ever made. Right? And just, you know, you're rewarded. You get through one vignette in one scene and you're rewarded with another thing that's just. Just, you know, so gorgeous to look at.

[Sam Claiborne]

Like, nothing's repeated. I mean, the enemies are repeated, but the backgrounds aren't. And you just keep going and you're like, how did they do all of this in this style?

[Justin Davis]

It's so amazing, like, that feeling of like, I would have every single one of these, any one of these on my wall as like a piece of

[Greg Miller]

art, Every frame in art.

[Justin Davis]

It makes it hard to kind of evaluate and put like a score too, because it's like, okay, like, once you're sort of. Once you're in review mode, then you have to say, here's what it does good. Here's what it doesn't do good as. Like, it. It reduces sort of just the artistic merits of just the, The. The. These scenes and backgrounds that they created. It's. It's beautiful. Yeah, but. But, you know, the, the people that had a little bit more mixed sort of review perspective is like, that's also, you know, a very, you know, kind of valid, valid overall opinion.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think the insane thing is that I played all three of these games a bunch this week that we've talked about so far and I don't know what I'm going to keep playing except for I know I'm going to beat Greg Beta for sure out of these other ones. I'm going to try. I'm going to try to do as much as I can because I want to see more.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I've done a bit of replace through the previews and the demos and coming off reviews. It sounds to me like exactly what I want. So it's like I'm still on Saros right now and a redacted review and so it's like I'm so excited to get through those. Not that they're good or bad to get to this because just staying, you know, it's from what it sounds like, it's a narrative platformer dripping with story and intrigue for what happened and why you're the AI and this. And I'm on such a sci fi kick right now. I can't wait.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, yeah, I'm enjoying it and I'm gonna stick with it. 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, 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

[Greg Miller]

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[Greg Miller]

Oh my God.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, I want to do a quick extracurricular activities. I know Justin has a heart out. We may have to dismiss him for 20 questions. We'll see. But I was in Tokyo last week. Sam, thank you for hosting. Seemed like everything went well.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, my pleasure.

[Damon Hatfield]

I have two stories I want to share from Tokyo. First of all, in Asakusa, there's Sensoji Temple, which is one of the major temples. If you're looking at temples in in Tokyo, you'll probably go to Sensoji in Asakusa, but it's super crowded, lots of gaijin there. And there's this like great big lantern. And then the temple is in the back and in between are just these rows and rows of stalls selling junk. So what people don't know usually is that behind the temple is an amusement park that's been open since 1853.

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, so very, very old amusement park in Tokyo. The rides there that are operating today, obviously they're not from 1853, but they're all old. But it's great for kids because everything's kind of old timey and kid friendly. So it's perfect. But we, I had. I went on one of the craziest rides I've ever been on there. So we were trying to get on this ride that's like a caterpillar that goes in a circle kind of fast. That was, that was the line that we. The line that we thought we were in the ride we thought we were in line for. After waiting for a little bit, the line goes into a small house. And then before we can realize what's happening. We're. We're sat in this like. Like a wagon bed where you sit facing each other. And then the door closes behind us. So we're in this small room and it just doesn't. It doesn't happen very often where you're on a ride that's about to start and you have literally no idea what's going to happen. We look around the walls and it's Dumbo themed. Like there's pictures from Dumbo, not from the Disney cartoon. Like it's off brand Dumbo.

[Justin Davis]

Yep. A different big elephant with figures.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. So the ride starts, a lock disengages and the wagon, it starts swinging. It's like free now to swing. And then what happens next is the entire room starts spinning around you. Like an old timey movie trick to make it look like Fred Astaire is dancing on the ceiling. The room is spinning while you. While we're swinging. And it feels so crazy. Kingo's eyes were wide. His tongue started coming out of his mouth. I thought he was gonna throw up. It's crazy. But that's it. That's the ride. It just gives you the sensation that the room is spinning. Spinning. And the ride itself is from like 1960. It's called like the Strange room or the weird rooms. That's. This is the ride. It's crazy.

[Sam Claiborne]

So the room spins. It spins vertically.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I was picturing horizontal.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, it's spinning around, moving too much

[Sam Claiborne]

because you're just rocking. Since it's going around. It's just totally insane.

[Damon Hatfield]

It gives you a crazy dizzy feeling. Yeah, it was. So that's good. I recommend that. And then the other one is you

[Sam Claiborne]

have that panic moment. You're like, like, is this going to be like dropping me from like a 200ft T or something?

[Justin Davis]

Am I going to drop at the end of this?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind that. But Kingo would probably pass out.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. I mean, you have your kid next to you.

[Justin Davis]

It's stressful.

[Damon Hatfield]

But that little. You have to pedal to push. That little helicopter ride. It's really.

[Sam Claiborne]

Wow. Really? It's self propelled.

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Sam Claiborne]

Save them so much money.

[Damon Hatfield]

I recommend the amusement park. It's like 10 bucks for a look.

[Sam Claiborne]

Great.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's like 10 bucks for A whole day pass. It's great.

[Sam Claiborne]

What? Do you know what the park is called?

[Damon Hatfield]

It's like Hana Kanashiyama, something like that. It's in. If you just look up Asakasa Amusement park, you'll find it very easily. It's good. I love that. It's so old and kitschy. The other thing is that there's this hot new pizza pasta place in Tokyo. You have to wait like 90 minutes to get in. It's called Flour and Water. And I know the three of you will appreciate this because there is a very well known San Francisco restaurant, Flour and Water. This one in Tokyo has the same logo as Flour and Water in sf. So we were there with our. We were there with our friend who lives in Japan and who was, was fluent, and we had them ask, is it related to the one in San Francisco? And they said, no, but we get that all the time.

[Greg Miller]

They're like, no, please don't tell them. Please don't tell them.

[Justin Davis]

David, you're blowing them up here on this show.

[Damon Hatfield]

You're doing the same thing as this restaurant in sf. You have the same logo, but you're not affiliated. Okay, okay. All right.

[Justin Davis]

You can't just do that.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's great.

[Justin Davis]

It's like, I'm gonna start. I'm in Japan. I'm gonna start this website called ign.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I mean, it's because they've got Blue Bottle, which is an SF coffee shop in Tokyo. They've got that.

[Sam Claiborne]

But that's great.

[Damon Hatfield]

They just, they just made their own flower and water. Okay. I saw the Super Mario Galaxy movie. I know we talked about that when Sam had seen it. Greg, what did you think of the Super Mario Galaxy movie?

[Sam Claiborne]

I saw it with Greg, by the way.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

We said we held hands. Yeah, it was fine. You know, I mean, it's very colorful. It's a lot of cool. It's vignettes put together. It's, you know, what everybody said about it. Like when I left the theater and was talking McCaffrey about it, he was like, man, I don't know. And I was like, listen, all blessing and Tim, who are the biggest Mario fans I know, loved it and I know my son's gonna love it. So Nintendo hit the target on who they were going for. And sure enough, I took Ben to see it and he had a ball. So it was enjoyable. It was inoffensive. I haven't thought about it since I saw it either time.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, Kingo loved it. I think Bowser Jr. Is his favorite, like, Nintendo character right now. So he just, he, he, he got

[Sam Claiborne]

really lucky because there's so much Bowser Jr. In this.

[Damon Hatfield]

He, he talks about Bowser Jr. All the time. He played days like he's Bowser Jr. Before I saw it, Sam, you were saying, it's just kind of, like, it's. It's a beautiful movie where just things just seem to happen and there's not much of a story, and you're exactly right. That's. That's what it is. It's just. It's just random stuff happening. Like, the first movie I really like. I'm not gonna try to say that the story is some kind of masterpiece, but it is a story. And Mario and Luigi have an arc, and they're different at the end of the movie than they were in the beginning. Who has an arc in the Mario Galaxy movie? Like, nothing. Nothing changes. Or they almost changed Bowser in an interesting way, but then they immediately walk that back.

[Sam Claiborne]

So Mario Lightly has a crush on

[Damon Hatfield]

Peach through the whole movie. Yeah, but nothing happens with that.

[Greg Miller]

No payoff to that. Yeah, no payoff to that.

[Sam Claiborne]

Rosalina is, you know, more important than you think or something.

[Damon Hatfield]

I mean, I'm fine with Peach and her being sisters. Like, that's fine. Whatever. But it doesn't really change anything. Justin, did you see it?

[Justin Davis]

We took the family to see Project. Hail Marion.

[Sam Claiborne]

Great movie.

[Damon Hatfield]

That is a great movie. That's great movie.

[Justin Davis]

Incredible movie. So, no, I have not. I will. I will happily watch this when it comes home.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, it's. I mean, whatever. I had fun watching it. King has been asking to see it again. I'll probably take him to see it again this weekend. But there is one major problem with the movie. Do you know what this is? So it's got all these characters from Super Mario Brothers 2, right? As we're seeing right here. Yeah, Super Mario Brothers 2 was Mario's dream. Those characters don't exist.

[Justin Davis]

They're not real.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, they're not real.

[Justin Davis]

Although the Mario lore, it's like, shy guys have worked their way into other Mario games and stuff like that. So I don't know.

[Sam Claiborne]

Maybe Mario is dreaming about something he experienced.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, maybe we also.

[Justin Davis]

I'll tell you the one that my daughters. My daughters are both gonna lose their mind for the Zelda movie. They're not. I mean, look, they like Mario. We play Mario Party. We play Mario Kart. But, like, you know, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are the most played games by far.

[Sam Claiborne]

I'm so worried.

[Justin Davis]

I asked my daughter, I said, do you think Link and Zelda are, like, a couple? And she's like, what? No, he's just, like. He's just like her protector. Like, why would you even think that? I'm like, well, you know, they lived in the house together, and they're. There's only one bed in that house. She's like, oh, dad. So anyway, she's got it figured out, apparently.

[Damon Hatfield]

Justin, do you mind if we spoil the final post credit scene? No. Okay, so they introduced. So it's Daisy. Daisy just shows up. So Daisy will be in like the next movie or whatever. But isn't her introduction a little odd? Like they could have done anything to introduce Daisy. Okay, but Justin, what they have her do is punch amongst monkey. That's how they introduce her.

[Justin Davis]

That doesn't like, like. And she also. It's not. And I again, I really, really like Nintendo and Nintendo games. But Daisy is not a character. It's not like a post credit sting of like. Like, she only exists to like flesh out the roster in Mario Tennis so that girls have another girl that they can play as. Like, that's it. Like, she doesn't have a personality.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Tell me one defining characteristic about Daisy as a person.

[Damon Hatfield]

Monkeys. Early.

[Sam Claiborne]

Now that we're talking about the spoiler, I have a funny anecdote about agenda. So we had somebody see this really early and they came back saying we're like, what are the post credit scenes? And it was like, I don't want to spoil it, but the last one has a lot of implications for the Mario universe. And I was like, wow. And I was thinking about this the night before. I was like, what is this going to be? And so I see it and I'm like, can't be fucking talking about Daisy. There's no fucking way. I bet we're all seeing different Smash Brothers characters. Oh, and that there's like. Yeah, that there's like a different ending to each person's viewing and then it comes together.

[Greg Miller]

Nope.

[Sam Claiborne]

Turns out I had a really good idea. But they did not. And it was all Daisy. And I still don't know what unnamed person was talking about.

[Greg Miller]

Well, I mean, you know, in the movie, of course, Luigi's like, ask if she has a friend for me. So this is what? That's the implication.

[Sam Claiborne]

Gross. I did, I think a gross question and a gross answer. So. But there are other Smash Brothers characters, like, littered, right? Like they do they play to Smash Brothers in it from Star Fox onward. And if we're just spoiling it and they have game and watch and it's like, you know, that's all funny. And like people were shouting right behind you, Greg, in the theater when the game and watch thing was.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah, that was a cool thing.

[Sam Claiborne]

But not during Daisy.

[Greg Miller]

I should have kept him for the end.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That would have had implications for the wider universe.

[Damon Hatfield]

I like that they did the, the, the bridge fight with Bowser from Super Mario Bros. 1. Like that was cool. Yeah, cool scene.

[Justin Davis]

That was fun.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, they, I mean there's again, there's a lot of cool stuff in the film.

[Damon Hatfield]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

Like I loved the Overworld when they were going there, the Hammer brothers.

[Damon Hatfield]

There's a whole like Super Mario World montage in there. And it's like. Well, I kind of think you should have done that before you did Galaxy.

[Greg Miller]

Could that been a movie? Could we have just done that?

[Sam Claiborne]

Bowser becoming a pile of bones and then that not getting reversed. It was insane.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. No, never reversing it.

[Sam Claiborne]

Very crazy. A crazy thing that happens in that movie.

[Damon Hatfield]

The puppet show is very cute. I like that moment.

[Sam Claiborne]

That's really good. The end is amazing.

[Damon Hatfield]

That's good. And then when they introduce Yoshi and Yoshi explains how he got there. That was the biggest laugh out loud moment for me. Thought that was pretty funny. Anyway, we have to say goodbye to Justin, I believe.

[Justin Davis]

So give us. I gotta go, but give us 20 questions.

[Damon Hatfield]

Give us a good, give us a good screensaver shot for yourself.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah, I'll do my best. We're on such a 20 questions losing streak that we need Greg's help to kind of break us out of the rut. Okay, see Greg. Great to see you. See you guys later.

[Sam Claiborne]

Do you know anything about 20 questions last week, Damon?

[Damon Hatfield]

No, I didn't. I don't.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. So it was really fun because we had. It's always this face. Yeah, we had the Meta a little bit. So I reached out to people and had them submit stuff. But we actually got a submission by one of our stats keepers, Greg and he said, you know Justin's always talking about plaque. Let's finally have. You've never had it before the PlayStation 2 shooter game. And then we'll put one over on Justin here and they didn't get it.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay,

[Greg Miller]

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[Greg Miller]

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[Damon Hatfield]

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[Damon Hatfield]

Well, we'll see. Our suggestion this week comes from Nick from Newcastle, Australia, who says every week I eagerly hope someone recommends this game for 20 questions. But as far as I know, it's never come up. Considering how important this game is to me, it holds a special place in my heart and I figured why not ask myself and be part of gamescoop history. So with that, let the questioning begin.

[Sam Claiborne]

Game scoop History.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. All right. Is this from before the year 2000?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

Whoa.

[Sam Claiborne]

All right. Going old timey.

[Greg Miller]

Is it on a Nintendo console?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Sam Claiborne]

Wow. Never. Wow.

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did this originally appear as an arcade game?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, this is.

[Greg Miller]

This is. I don't like this. I don't want to burn questions.

[Sam Claiborne]

No, you can burn questions.

[Greg Miller]

I know, I know.

[Sam Claiborne]

Was this a. Well, so it's just not Nintendo. I guess it could be Sega or.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I should have been a question.

[Sam Claiborne]

No, no, no. That's the accurate. That's a great question to do. It's usually. Well, how about this? Was this a console exclusive when it launched?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Justin Davis]

Are we. We.

[Greg Miller]

Do we ask about. This isn't for you, Damon. This is for Sam. Sam, do we ask about Sega or do we just play for. What do we.

[Sam Claiborne]

I suspect it's going to be a Sega or PlayStation exclusive, so let's just eliminate one or the other okay.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, Damon, we'd like to know, is it a. Is it on a SEGA console?

[Damon Hatfield]

No, that's five.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is it on a PlayStation console?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

Oh.

[Sam Claiborne]

So if it's before 2000, it has to be PlayStation 1.

[Greg Miller]

Correct. Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

Does this have a score of 8 or above on IGN?

[Damon Hatfield]

I think so. I could double check, but I would guess so.

[Sam Claiborne]

There's no way to know.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, there's no way to know.

[Greg Miller]

Is the developer Japanese?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Sam Claiborne]

Interesting. Does this have SQLs that are running to this day?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Sam Claiborne]

I'm thinking maybe. Maybe sports or racing or something like that. Like a really western hold.

[Greg Miller]

Is it worth that? Damon, don't listen. This is for Sam. Is it worth drilling into? Does it have sequels, period? Yeah, Damon, we'd like to know if it has sequels, period.

[Damon Hatfield]

It does. That's 10. And I'm sorry, this game did not score an eight or above. I was very, very wrong about the. That.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, so it's on the bubble, Sam. It's a game Damon would have liked. It's a PlayStation game Damon would like from a western developer.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, that's a good clue. It's a good clue. How about a 3D graphics question? Would that make sense? Were there enough PlayStation games that had 2D graphics or is it pretty 3D heavy?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I think it's worth it.

[Justin Davis]

Worth it.

[Sam Claiborne]

I'm trying to think of one that isn't Symphony of the Night. It's not coming easy. So maybe we shouldn't ask that.

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Sam Claiborne]

What about talking a lot or the characters you play as or things like that?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. At what point do you start worrying about genres?

[Sam Claiborne]

Usually this is the time I would say, do you pilot a vehicle? We can also do a thing where we do, is this a sports puzzle or racing game?

[Justin Davis]

And then.

[Sam Claiborne]

Then if the answer is yes, you. You go from there. If it's no.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, that's good. That's good. That's good. For some reason, I'm feeling fighting. Do you feel fighting?

[Sam Claiborne]

I feel fighting. Oh, that's pretty good. And there's a bunch of like crappy western fighters which. Like the. Well, that. That came to other systems, I think. But there's like the Street Fighter. The movie, the fighting game. Sure. Which should be relevant because of the Street Fighter trailer too.

[Greg Miller]

Of course. Never forget Cody Rhodes.

[Sam Claiborne]

Speaking of a movie that's just about scenes and doesn't have a through plot line. We could be getting another one of those with that movie. Okay, so how about this? Is this.

[Greg Miller]

Do the genre thing?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. Is this a fighting, racing or sports game?

[Damon Hatfield]

No,

[Sam Claiborne]

And shooters weren't really a thing at this point. Right. So we could do shooter platformer puzzle. Sure. Is this a shooter platformer or puzzle game?

[Damon Hatfield]

No, go.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Some kind of.

[Sam Claiborne]

Listen, we had RPG maker on this, and it was impossible.

[Damon Hatfield]

So it was verde.

[Greg Miller]

Some kind of simulation, something like a SIM city, something.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, yeah, or strategy.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, strategy. Yeah, Tactical.

[Sam Claiborne]

So, man. Yeah, this is a little bit. Oh, well, maybe it's a licensed game, like a. Like a movie or Marvel game or something like that. Like Marvel ultimate alliance type stuff. Hack and slash. I mean, I don't think that came out for PlayStation 1.

[Greg Miller]

No, it didn't, but I understand. You said, like. I'm with you. I'm with you.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, how about just the license question alone?

[Greg Miller]

Okay, shoot for it.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this based on a license?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, that always helps so much once we get to movies, TVs and comics mix. There's a lot of that on PlayStation also.

[Greg Miller]

How many questions in.

[Sam Claiborne]

Are we fun game?

[Damon Hatfield]

13 questions in, 7 left.

[Sam Claiborne]

So genre is getting really tough here, but you brought up one. So strategy, simulation, sim, sim and music. Were there music games?

[Justin Davis]

Not.

[Greg Miller]

Did you do sports? Did you say sports?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, we eliminated sports, which is crazy because I was hoping it'd be like an extreme sports game or something. Are we missing any bigger genre than strategy and sim?

[Greg Miller]

Did we do rpg?

[Sam Claiborne]

Rpg. There you go.

[Greg Miller]

What would.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, that's. That's probably worth asking. Is this a strategy, sim or rpg?

[Damon Hatfield]

No.

[Greg Miller]

Jesus Christ.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean, I guess there's just action and adventure games, right? What's like Legacy of Kane? What would you call that?

[Greg Miller]

Action adventure?

[Sam Claiborne]

Could that be. Could this be that? Who made that game?

[Greg Miller]

Who made that game?

[Sam Claiborne]

It's like Pre Uncharted, right?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, I think about the company.

[Sam Claiborne]

It is. Is. Is it Naughty Dog?

[Greg Miller]

No, no, no. I mean, Amy Hedig worked on one of them, if not all of them.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. But it's not.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, it wasn't Naughty Dog.

[Justin Davis]

No.

[Greg Miller]

I want to say, was it a. No, it wasn't Ubisoft. Do you play as a republished them?

[Sam Claiborne]

Do you play as a human in this game?

[Damon Hatfield]

No. That's 15.

[Sam Claiborne]

It could be a vampire, Animal, vampire, robot. Is our. Is our question now.

[Damon Hatfield]

Ooh,

[Sam Claiborne]

Do you look like a human? Are you a humanoid type character?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think it might be Legacy of Kane.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, shoot for it, because it.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, I mean, we don't need to guess it now. We just need to keep narrowing, but I don't know a lot.

[Greg Miller]

Is it Legacy of Cain?

[Sam Claiborne]

I Don't know. A lot of PlayStation 1 games. That's just like. That's one that I know. So.

[Justin Davis]

So, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean, does this game deal with the realm of the undead and vampires? Well, the undead, yes.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay. Yes. Does this deal with the realm of the undead? Yes.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, so maybe it's not. What's a Zombie game

[Greg Miller]

from PS1?

[Sam Claiborne]

Wasn't there one where you, like, play as a. Not stubs the zombie, but one where you, like.

[Justin Davis]

Like.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's in the collection. It's in the PlayStation 50 collection. Not medieval, maybe? Medieval, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I'm thinking of medieval. Yeah, when you say it like that.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is this in the PlayStation 50 collection or whatever that's called? The mini PlayStation.

[Damon Hatfield]

I don't know. That one doesn't count.

[Justin Davis]

All right.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, thank you.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is that what that game is, though, Greg? Do you just play it? I don't know that.

[Greg Miller]

You're a skeleton. You're Sir Daniel Fortescue Rescue.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay. And that's like an action.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, on a DNA level, that's a human. So that would be a miss from Damon. He would have led us astray on that one. If that's the.

[Sam Claiborne]

If that's the case, maybe it's an undead. Doesn't count as human, though.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. All right.

[Sam Claiborne]

Do you play as an undead skeleton creature?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. Is it medieval?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yes, it is. Who made that.

[Greg Miller]

Incognito? I don't know that one. Don't burn a question on that.

[Sam Claiborne]

If we don't know enough about it. Is there any other. Any other thing that's just in that game that you would think of? Because it probably is that, but we have questions to burn.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, you have one question to burn.

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, we don't have questions to burn.

[Greg Miller]

Do you want to go for it? Was it. I'm pretty sure, yeah. Sir Daniel Fortescue was in PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale. So we could ask, is the main character in PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale?

[Sam Claiborne]

Damon's too lazy to look it up.

[Greg Miller]

If it is, Damon knows that game like the back of his hand.

[Sam Claiborne]

Was this character in PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, fuck, yeah. We nailed it then.

[Sam Claiborne]

All right, go for it, Greg.

[Greg Miller]

We believe it's medieval.

[Damon Hatfield]

It is medieval.

[Greg Miller]

Yes. Yay.

[Damon Hatfield]

Which I wouldn't say you're playing as a human. You're a skeleton. But he was a human on a DNA level.

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Sam Claiborne]

This game looks jankier every time I see it. But it also looks fun.

[Greg Miller]

Good job.

[Sam Claiborne]

Is it as well? Yeah, good job, Greg. Is this a Zelda? Like, kind of.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's More. The pitch was Ghosts and Goblins with Nightmare Before Christmas art.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, okay.

[Justin Davis]

Okay.

[Damon Hatfield]

So it's like a hack and slash game.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, hack and slash.

[Damon Hatfield]

Developed at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

[Greg Miller]

Ah.

[Sam Claiborne]

I wonder if they still exist.

[Damon Hatfield]

I don't think so.

[Greg Miller]

Absolutely not. No, no.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yep.

[Sam Claiborne]

I mean, does Sony Computer Entertainment Japan still exist?

[Greg Miller]

They have an office. I don't think there's an office there.

[Damon Hatfield]

This is out in 1998. It got a sequel and they got two remakes. One on the PSP and one on PS4.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay, and then what did IGN give it?

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, yeah, Chris Roper gave it a 5.6.

[Greg Miller]

No way.

[Damon Hatfield]

5.9. I thought this. I thought people liked this game.

[Sam Claiborne]

But Chris would have been reviewing this way later, right?

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, yeah, you're right because he wouldn't have been here in 98.

[Greg Miller]

It's probably the PSP version.

[Damon Hatfield]

Maybe it was the PSP version, except it's just on the object picture page for the PS1 version. So I don't know. Confusing.

[Greg Miller]

Easy. IGN, you know, typical.

[Sam Claiborne]

When was the last time you heard object page, Greg?

[Greg Miller]

It's been a while.

[Damon Hatfield]

Well, nicely job, you guys.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, I'm glad we got it.

[Damon Hatfield]

That's great you made it there. Thank you for the suggestion. Who was this from? Nick from Newcastle, Australia. Viewers and listeners, if you have your own Suggestions for Video Game 20 questions, email them to me at the email address gamescoopgn.com Greg, I've got your reviews page up here.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, God.

[Damon Hatfield]

First of all, you were born to eat chicken wings and play video games games. I think this is every game you've reviewed. It's very. It's a very, very long list. One of.

[Greg Miller]

Appreciate that. Thank you.

[Damon Hatfield]

One of the very, very last games you reviewed was NCA NCAA Football 14.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Whenever I click back through my profile on IGN for something and that pops up like, God, what a. What a way to go out. One before they were like, you know what you just do up at noon now and beyond. Don't review.

[Damon Hatfield]

You did Dead Island Riptide. Was that a standalone game or is that like a.

[Greg Miller]

When they did another. Yeah, it was like modified expansion or

[Damon Hatfield]

what of four Golden? You did Zombie U. Why were you reviewing Zombie U Zombies?

[Greg Miller]

And you know how it was. They're like, ah, here you go. Here's a Wii U game launch game. We got too many of them, I think. I also had to update my Batman review because they did Batman on Wii U.

[Sam Claiborne]

Walking Dead was like the biggest thing in the world at the time, right?

[Greg Miller]

It was, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Zombie U Is kind of man.

[Greg Miller]

I watched a bonafide hit. There was no way it would miss the.

[Sam Claiborne]

What's it called? The 28 years later or second one, the bone. I watched that last night. It is so brutally disgusting.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, really?

[Sam Claiborne]

Well, it's just kind of hard. Like, it's not fun. And I like the first one of the 28 years. Like, I thought that was pretty cool, but it's just pretty awful.

[Damon Hatfield]

You reviewed Rock Band Blitz. Which one is that one?

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Damon Hatfield]

Which one is that?

[Greg Miller]

That was the one that came to consoles and was basically, you know, a lesser amplitude that you were going through and playing. Or Rock Band Unplugged is what I would have called it on. It would have been the version of that. They tried to do DLC for it as well, the same way they were doing Rock Band. It wasn't supported.

[Sam Claiborne]

This is after rock band 4.

[Greg Miller]

4. This is. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was, man.

[Sam Claiborne]

Rock Band four had the piano.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. The keytar.

[Justin Davis]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Never forget.

[Sam Claiborne]

Never forget it had a keytar. I don't remember that.

[Damon Hatfield]

You reviewed Gravity Rush.

[Greg Miller]

I did.

[Damon Hatfield]

I love Gravity Rush too.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. So good.

[Damon Hatfield]

You did the Vita version of Plants versus Zombies.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. You were a Plants versus Zombie nut. I remember.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Justin Davis]

Damon one.

[Sam Claiborne]

Harley. That was your mobile or your downloadable editor.

[Greg Miller]

Yep, yep, exactly. These cute little games that you could download. Remember when we walk around, be like, man, this is so great for a downloadable game.

[Damon Hatfield]

You did Dead Island. Remember Dead Island? Remember how big a deal that first trailer was?

[Greg Miller]

That trailer had everyone by the throat.

[Sam Claiborne]

I think we all watched that in a room at E3. Like on one of the conferences on a screen. I think that's. That's how we all saw that the first time.

[Justin Davis]

Oh, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Maybe this room.

[Damon Hatfield]

You did Fruit Ninja Connect and then you reviewed Bastion. Greg.

[Greg Miller]

I did review Bastion. Isn't that crazy?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, all of the. The Back to the Future episodes from Telltale.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, yeah, that was that. That was before Telltale delivered big on Walking Dead and everything came up Telltale.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, that was always the big surprise. I remember that was where being the Telltale guy post strong bad. Because remember, I remember going to Telltale booth at San Diego Comic Con. It was literally a card table and I had to do a strong bad. And I was like, I don't know this so material, nor do I think I like this. And then, yeah, they picked up Jurassic Park, Back to the Future. I played both those. Like, these are so disappointing. And then they're like. And we got Walking Dead. And I was like, do not hurt Walking Dead. I love that. I love that comic book. All it was is a comic book.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

And then they nailed it.

[Sam Claiborne]

Did you play Dispatch?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Love that game.

[Damon Hatfield]

So good. Greg, you did Dead Space 2.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, that was. That was when I discovered what Reddit was. Do you remember that? No. I reviewed Dead Space 2 and it went up. I was happy with it. About two days later, Bromley leaned over the wall and he goes, do you know that you're still on the front page of Reddit? I was like, oh, what's Reddit? And he sent me the link and it was. Does Anybody else think IGN's review of Dead Space 2 is written by a middle schooler? And it was like, just tearing me apart from the way I wrote it, what it was. And the funniest thing about it was literally I had sent my. My draft to Hillary, like, Friday evening before I went live, and he wrote back and was like, dude, this is exactly the kind of review I want us doing. This is exactly what Paris is talking about, putting our personality into it, doing this thing. And the audience just ate me alive for it. Just destroyed me. He's changing verb tenses three paragraphs in. What is he doing?

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. There was a cloud hanging over EA at the time. They had been voted the worst company in the world.

[Greg Miller]

World, like, three years running around.

[Sam Claiborne]

And then Mass Effect 3 came out.

[Damon Hatfield]

You did. You did Dead Rising 2, Greg. Yeah. You did all the zombie games back then.

[Greg Miller]

You know, I love zombies, man. I'm all about it. Still am.

[Damon Hatfield]

You did Naughty Bear, remember Naughty Bear?

[Greg Miller]

I do remember. Naughty. Naughty Bear. Naughty.

[Damon Hatfield]

You're just. You were. You were a stuffed teddy bear, but you're. You were naughty.

[Sam Claiborne]

It's like Ted.

[Damon Hatfield]

It's like Ted.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, you were like. It was like, basically imagine like that gumdrop Teddy bear island thing, except you were. The teddy bear has been pushed too. Had a machete and you were on Aaron killing a little bit.

[Sam Claiborne]

Conqueror is bad for a day type thing.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. But it was like, you're clipping through the floor and all this stuff, and it didn't run well and yada, yada, yada. And it was one of the. At least at the time, the hot button. Like, do you have to beat a game to review it? Because my intro was like, I've only played four hours of this game and I don't need to waste any more time.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, wow.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

That was always a debate.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah. Now we're in. We're in the days when all these reviews don't even have thumbs up. Thumbnails. You did Band Hero.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

You did.

[Greg Miller]

Lips. Band Hero, I think Band Hero, I think is. Yeah. Lips. Yeah. The Sing along Band Hero will always stand out to me for one reason. Where there had been that, you know, that rock band or Guitar hero. Guitar Hero 2. Rock Band. This thing where. No. At the office, none of us could get enough of it. We loved it so much. And you Smash cut to Band Hero, where no one cared anymore. I was reviewing it and I'll never forget. Forget it. I was at my desk, middle of the day. My shoes were off, they were up. My sock feet were on my desk. I was laying back in the chair, playing with a Kleenex box as a pillow, and Damon walked by and burst out laughter. Came back and took a photo of me. He's like, this is rock bottom. Like, this is rock bottom for these games.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yep.

[Damon Hatfield]

You did Africa right in the middle of rock bottom.

[Greg Miller]

Nobody but me. Because I brought that up recently. We were talking about a preview for some game coming up and they were describing it like. I'm like, oh, it's like Africa. And Blessing looked at me. He's like, I have no idea what the fuck you'.

[Sam Claiborne]

That was like a visual experience. Super.

[Greg Miller]

It was a photography sim. You were in Africa and you had the camera, but it was one of those classic vaporwares where when they announced that PlayStation console, they showed it. And then five years later, we were all like, where's Africa? Yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Greg, what review of yours featured the strap line? Behold, the greatest comic book game of all time.

[Greg Miller]

That is Arkham Asylum.

[Damon Hatfield]

That's correct.

[Greg Miller]

I was mocked endlessly by Clayman and Brudvig for it seared into my mind.

[Sam Claiborne]

Because they didn't agree with it.

[Greg Miller]

No, no. They just thought it was a stupid strap line. They agreed it was a great game. It was like, what a weird strap line.

[Sam Claiborne]

I thought it was all downhill from that game. I thought that was the best one.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I agree with. That was the best one. Greg, what game, what review featured the strap line? More cushion for the push in

[Greg Miller]

Fat Princess. Fat Princess.

[Sam Claiborne]

Fat Princess was really fun. I remember there was a really good

[Greg Miller]

one, like a preview event, taking our Princess

[Damon Hatfield]

Damnation. Abomination would have been a more descriptive title.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I was going to say. I can't even tell you what damnation was. I don't remember that one.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, man.

[Greg Miller]

It was more funny. I reviewed Blood Drive, which is a game none of you should remember. Just some stupid, running people over with a car, zombie, whatever.

[Sam Claiborne]

Name don't lie.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly. And I gave it some terrible score, and years later, I was out drinking with Lucy o' Brien from ignorance she had, and she's like, yeah, you know, I actually wrote for a game once, and I was, oh, yeah, what was it? She goes, blood drive. I was like, oh, no, I hated that game.

[Damon Hatfield]

Oh, man, we're in the early days. It's. It's Jeopardy. It's TNA Impact, It's Buzzmaster Quiz all.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah. You were a wrestling guy for a while.

[Greg Miller]

I was, yeah. It was one of the things I cut my teeth on. But remember, Buzz was awesome because when they were trying to make Buzz a thing, they would throw, like, they would send over pizzas and we would just go into the demo room and play Buzz all day long.

[Sam Claiborne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

Hannah Montana, Spotlight World Tour. Okay, that's enough.

[Greg Miller]

Back to. Back to Dono. We're reviewing everything.

[Sam Claiborne]

Why?

[Greg Miller]

Well, there's only so many games that come out, and I pay all of you to be here full time. So you're reviewing something today. Okay, yeah.

[Damon Hatfield]

We took the weekly trip down to GameStop. Buy new games to review. Sam Wu was a lot of time. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Go to BJ's Brew House and you'd be there three and a half hours. Different. Different workday.

[Damon Hatfield]

Okay, well, good times. Good times. Greg, thank you so much for joining us. How about we have you back for my 40th anniversary?

[Greg Miller]

That sounds awesome. I'd love that, David.

[Damon Hatfield]

Let's do it. Let's do it. That is all the scoops that we have for you this week. You know, thank you for hanging out with me all. All these years. Let's. Let's. Let's keep it going. Let's keep it going. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Sam. Thank you to the ghost of Justin. Thank you to Jobert working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon. This is IGN GamesCube. And we're out. It wasn't the lights and sights of the city. It wasn't the storms across the world. It wasn't any place I have been to. It wasn't any sound I have heard in fact, it was you on my mind. In fact, it was you all the time. In fact, it was you on my mind. In fact, it was you all the time.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my God.

[Damon Hatfield]

Damon Hatfield is a cat.

[Sam Claiborne]

Damon Hatfield is a cat.

[Greg Miller]

Nothing special, just a fact.

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Making biscuits all night long when you

[Sam Claiborne]

did this where record the music at home.

[Greg Miller]

The podcast? Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, just at home.

[Damon Hatfield]

I just recorded it at home. But I would have. Oh, but I'd have Greg and Craig record the vocals on in the podcast room. Yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Oh, okay. Okay, okay. So you recorded some, like, GarageBand tracks? I think GarageBand was around then, right?

[Damon Hatfield]

Yeah, I use reason, but yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

I love. Thank you. Recently? Not recently, but I don't know, last year or two. Remember? I don't know if you noticed when Infograms came back and they're like, we're back or whatever. And I busted out the Infograms song and made everybody here watch it. And it's just so classic, you and Me, where you're so musically there and I just don't have a beat and I start early and I'm like.

[Damon Hatfield]

But then Javi, even he animated that part in. It's so good.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sam Claiborne]

Do not use this in the post show, but do you remember when.