We Played Monster Hunter Wilds in Japan - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: We Played Monster Hunter Wilds in Japan – Episode Summary

Release Date: December 3, 2024

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Introduction

In the December 3, 2024 episode of Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast, hosts Blessing Adio Junior, Snowbike Mike, and Andy Cortez delve into their experiences playing Monster Hunter Wilds in Japan. The episode intertwines in-depth game analysis with entertaining anecdotes from Andy's recent trip to Osaka, offering both seasoned fans and newcomers a comprehensive look into the latest installment of the Monster Hunter series.

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Act One: Exploring Monster Hunter Wilds

Anticipation and Initial Impressions

Andy Cortez shares his initial excitement and expectations for Monster Hunter Wilds, highlighting his engagement with both the PS5 and PC demos. He remarks, “I was very jazzed up about Monster Under Wilds” (06:37) and expresses enthusiasm for the game’s depth and complexity.

Gameplay Mechanics and Modes

The discussion delves into the game's performance modes. Andy notes his preference for the PC version due to superior visuals, stating, “It played phenomenally and it looked incredible. So I will be playing on PC still” (10:32). Snowbike Mike adds his appreciation for the game’s world creation and monster interactions, likening the monster behavior to “National Geographic” (11:25).

Weapons and Combat Styles

Andy explores various weapon options, sharing his experiences with the Insect Glaive, Long Sword, and Dual Blades. He describes the Insect Glaive’s unique mechanics: “If you want to unlock the full potential of it... you have to send your insect at three different parts of its body” (17:00). Snowbike Mike expresses his favorite weapon, the Insect Glaive, highlighting its complexity and fun factor (16:05).

Monsters and World Design

The hosts discuss favorite monsters encountered during the demo. Andy mentions the Doshugumo and the creatively designed Rompopolo, praising their unique appearances and behaviors: “This dude was above the water, but it looked like you belong under” (33:12). Snowbike Mike appreciates the expansive and varied biomes, emphasizing the game’s verticality and environmental diversity (25:45).

Story and Exploration

Andy provides insights into the game’s narrative, focusing on the protagonist’s journey in an uninhabited land under threat from the White Wraith: “This is going to be a story about helping this civilization and helping defend them against whatever the hell they're up against” (24:54). Blessing Adio Junior reflects on her personal connection to the game’s unique style, hoping it becomes more accessible to new players (11:25).

Multiplayer Experience

The conversation touches on multiplayer aspects, with Andy expressing reservations about potential complexities: “It always feels so obtuse and cumbersome to even get into a lobby” (22:52). Snowbike Mike voices similar concerns, questioning the necessity of shared online spaces within the game (22:52).

Character Creation and Customization

Andy praises the game’s robust character creation system, noting the inclusion of diverse facial hair options inspired by community feedback: “Thank you for giving me two facial hair options where I could do just the beard and then just the mustache” (30:10). Snowbike Mike highlights the randomized character builds feature, appreciating the opportunity to discover unique styles (28:36).

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Act Two: Andy’s Adventure in Japan

Flight and Arrival in Osaka

Andy recounts his flight to Japan, humorously detailing interactions with fellow passengers, including spotting Jake Decker playing Mario Golf on the plane: “I was like, who else is here? He plays Mario Golf for some reason” (41:08). He shares his experience navigating the Kansai Airport, critiquing its layout and limited amenities: “This airport sucks. It was like starved to death” (66:41).

Capcom Studio Tour

The highlight of Andy’s trip was visiting the Capcom studio in Osaka. He provides an insider’s look into the Motion Capture (Mocap) and Foley studios, showcasing the intricate processes behind game development:

• Mocap Studio: Andy describes watching actors perform monster movements in real-time, illustrating how these performances are translated into the game: “They show you how the animation works in real time” (53:13).
• Foley Studio: He elaborates on the creation of unique sound effects, emphasizing the creativity and passion of the audio team: “They just make weird stuff” (57:37).

Andy expresses admiration for the dedication of the Capcom team in crafting immersive audio-visual experiences, stating, “It was a dream come true to just kind of watch this stuff right in front of you” (55:28).

Exploring Osaka

Andy shares his adventures exploring Osaka, from savoring local cuisine at Coco Ichibanya and Ramen War to navigating crowded malls like Super Potato:

• Culinary Experiences: He describes his love for Volcano Curry and the challenges of accommodating spicy preferences: “I went to number four. Whoa. Number four. No, no. Went to number three” (50:49).
• Shopping for Gifts: Andy humorously narrates his struggle to purchase souvenirs amidst long lines, resulting in the accidental loss of a Shadow the Hedgehog pin in a hotel bathroom: “I bought you a shadow pin dropped in the toilet at the airport” (69:50).

Cultural Impressions

The hosts discuss their cultural encounters, from experiencing Japanese bidets to witnessing the prevalence of Gacha machines, underscoring the unique aspects of Japanese consumer culture:

• Bidets: Blessing Adio Junior expresses fascination with Japanese bidets, comparing them to their American counterparts (71:25).
• Gacha Machines: Andy remarks on the overwhelming presence of Gacha machines, revealing a new facet of Japanese gaming culture: “I just want pins. I wish pin culture was a thing” (74:47).

Final Day and Reflections

On his final day, Andy visits the iconic Osaka Castle, capturing serene moments and reflecting on the blend of historical landmarks with modern attractions: “It was one of those sort of soaked. You sat there. That's cool” (72:00). He concludes his trip by highlighting the seamless integration of traditional and contemporary elements in Osaka, enhancing his overall experience.

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with the hosts reflecting on Andy's immersive journey through Monster Hunter Wilds and his enriching trip to Japan. Blessing Adio Junior appreciates the blend of game analysis with personal storytelling, while Snowbike Mike looks forward to future adventures and potential trips. The camaraderie and humor among the hosts provide a relatable and engaging narrative, concluding the episode on a high note.

Notable Quotes:

• Blessing Adio Junior (00:07): “Yo, what's up? Welcome to the Kinda Funny Gamescast...”
• Snowbike Mike (00:21): “Good. Episode's not about me today, it's about my best friend.”
• Andy Cortez (06:37): “I was very jazzed up about Monster Under Wilds.”
• Andy Cortez (17:00): “If you want to unlock the full potential of it... you have to send your insect at three different parts of its body.”
• Andy Cortez (33:12): “I saw one above water. Get me off this planet. I don't want to be here anymore.”
• Andy Cortez (53:13): “They show you how the animation works in real time.”
• Andy Cortez (57:37): “They just make weird stuff.”
• Andy Cortez (69:50): “I bought you a shadow pin dropped in the toilet at the airport.”

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Timestamps:

• [00:07] - Introduction by Blessing Adio Junior
• [00:21] - Snowbike Mike's Opening Remarks
• [06:37] - Andy's Anticipation for Monster Hunter Wilds
• [17:00] - Discussion on Insect Glaive Mechanics
• [33:12] - Andy’s Reaction to New Monsters
• [53:13] - Mocap Studio Insights
• [57:37] - Foley Studio Creativity
• [69:50] - Lost Souvenir Anecdote

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For those who haven't tuned into this episode, this detailed summary provides a comprehensive overview of Andy's gaming experience and his cultural exploration in Japan, enriched with engaging discussions and memorable moments from the hosts.

Transcript

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yo, what's up? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Tuesday, December 3, 2024. I'm one of your hosts, Blessing Adio Junior. Joining me is the master of hype, Snowbike, Mike. Good to see you too, Mike. How's it going?

[Snowbike Mike]

Good. Episode's not about me today, it's about my best friend.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

About your best friend. Mike, how long will it take you to grow back this mustache?

[Snowbike Mike]

Then we're going to find out. Today. Yeah, I mean today. Starting today, you know, I mean, we're going to put the counter up. You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

How many days I can see coming back.

[Snowbike Mike]

My worry is it doesn't grow back.

[Andy Cortez]

Red, silver, what other color would it grow back?

[Snowbike Mike]

I don't know what, brown or black? You know what I mean? I just become just generic beard. It's like, oh, I lost it.

[Andy Cortez]

It's a very weird worry to have lost the juice.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

What if my hair comes back in different colors?

[Andy Cortez]

Lost the juice, what happens? That sounds like something a 4 year old would worry about.

[Snowbike Mike]

I just let you know, daddy, if.

[Andy Cortez]

You shave your beard, what if it comes back that green?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

It really is like a toddler. So like I went to Thanksgiving at Greg's house and Greg, like the next day, like the next morning, they're planning to go grab like a Christmas tree with Ben and Lucy. And the whole night, whenever Ben would do something wrong, Greg and Jen would be like, hey, if you keep misbehaving, the Christmas tree is going to be very small.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh yeah, that's true.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, that's exactly the track record I got on. My beard comes back, it's a different color, you know what I mean?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

But like it ended up with. I don't know if I should be sharing this. Well, I'll share like, like Ben couldn't sleep. Like we're drinking, playing cards. We're playing fucking cards in the, in the kitchen. And like they're watching the baby monitor. And like, he's like, he's like too sad to go to sleep. And then Greg goes, yeah, how do.

[Andy Cortez]

You expect me to sleep like this?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Greg goes and hangs out with them. And Greg comes back 30 minutes later and he was like, yeah, he was really, really sad about the small trees. Are the trees really gonna be small?

[Andy Cortez]

Important? Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

So that's you, Mike, right now with the beer, you know, a different color.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's a worry of mine.

[Andy Cortez]

It's a worry.

[Snowbike Mike]

I think about it.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

We're also joined by, he's back from Japan, the nitro rifle. Andy Cortez.

[Andy Cortez]

Globetrotten headshot, you know, I mean, Vegas, Japan, South Texas, Rio Grande Valley.

[Snowbike Mike]

Thank God you're back.

[Andy Cortez]

Right on the border.

[Snowbike Mike]

Just missed you so much, Mike.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Missed Mike. Missed you so much. They started bonding with me. Yeah, that's.

[Snowbike Mike]

We've bonded. Me and Bloods, too.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That's where I was like, something's wrong here. Mike keeps hanging out with me. She's like, greeting me every day.

[Snowbike Mike]

I got no Roger, I got no Andy. It's Mike and blah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Every day. I'm like, oh, man. All right, here comes Mike. We're gonna hang out now.

[Andy Cortez]

I felt extra bad after playing some war zone and we were trying to get Chris Anka to play with us. And Mike just being like, chris, please fucking come play with us. I can't do it with Nick anymore. I'm just. I can't. I'm losing.

[Snowbike Mike]

I needed some people here. You know, I text Roger every day.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, I know.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

I text him all the time.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Fucking Roger.

[Andy Cortez]

What do you say?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Do you say nice things to Roger?

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, I say usually nice things.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Did you say congratulations on his engagement?

[Snowbike Mike]

No, No, I haven't commented on that yet.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Blessed. You know that he's mad about it. Oh, yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

A little salty.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, yeah, No, I know all about that.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. What's wrong?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Somehow I've been hearing it all the time.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, it makes a. How could he do that to you?

[Snowbike Mike]

You know, is. Now he's got a. He's going to have a soon to be wife.

[Andy Cortez]

It's unbelievable.

[Snowbike Mike]

A life partner. Who's my life partner sitting right there?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Can't be Roger now. He's the focus of the podcast.

[Snowbike Mike]

Let's talk about Andy.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I will say, speaking of me and you bonding, we did do a very excellent stream that people should check out yesterday.

[Snowbike Mike]

Really good.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

It was like, what? Over three hours of us reacting to IGN's top 100 PlayStation games of all time.

[Andy Cortez]

I heard a lot of great reactions.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, yeah. There's a lot of things to react to in that list.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

So you guys should go.

[Snowbike Mike]

A lot of disrespect thrown around.

[Andy Cortez]

Damn.

[Snowbike Mike]

Which was crazy.

[Andy Cortez]

It's like that.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah, we got it. Like, if they ever do this again with, like, other platforms. We got to reunite. Yeah, we got to reunite. Of course, this isn't about that. Today's episode is about Andy Cortez. So remember, this is kind of funny. Games cast. Each and every weekday, we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews, and topics in video games. Live on YouTube, Twitch, and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the kind of funny membership on patreon or on YouTube to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be a part of the show. Some of your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. Housekeeping for you. Remember we're an 11 person business all about live talk shows. So of course KFGD was before this and that was all about from software and what's next for Elden Ring or if there is anything next for Elden Ring. Right now of course is Games Cast and then after Games Cast is a stream. It's us hanging out with the voice actor Alex Lee. We're going to be talking, playing some games. Alex Lee voices a bunch of different stuff including Luke from Street Fighter. So I will be playing some Street Fighter with Alex Lee. But of course it's going to be more than me and him. It's going to be. Greg is going to be merit. You're going to want to check that out. Of course. You're kind of funny member you can get today's Greg way and also we're sending a holiday card to our premium collectors item tier supporters. It's festive, it's exclusive and it smells like holiday cheer. Thank you to our Patreon producers Delaney Twining and Carl Jacobs. Today we're brought to you by Shady Rays and Aura Frames but we'll tell you about that later. For now let's start with topic of the show. Indie got to play Monster Hunter Wilds in Japan and so this is going to be a. This is going to be. It's going to be structured like a musical.

[Andy Cortez]

All right, we're going to have our.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Act one and our act two.

[Snowbike Mike]

Well, I like that.

[Andy Cortez]

What about the third one?

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. Not an ending.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I was in musical like acts. It's like stage plays, two acts but like plays have it too. It's like a musical. The part that makes it a musical is the music, the singing. I know. So are you guys going to sing any of this?

[Andy Cortez]

Andy, please.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

You don't know, you know like I might. Andy might bust into song.

[Andy Cortez]

You have the one.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Andy, turn this, turn this into a music.

[Andy Cortez]

Take it away. Take it away.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

It's going to be structured like a theater performance. All right, act one and act two.

[Andy Cortez]

The intermission will be the ad break.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Exactly.

[Andy Cortez]

Gotcha.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Act one is going to be about Monster Hunter Wilds. Act two is going to be about Andy's time in Japan. Because there's somebody who recently went to Japan. I got to hear all about what you did because he went somewhere else. He went to Osaka.

[Andy Cortez]

Went to Osaka.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Went to Osaka. Very excited to hear about that. But we're going to save that for act two for now. Andy, act one. You played Monster Hunter Wilds. Let's start with what before going into this. What was your anticipation level from Monster Hunter Wilds?

[Andy Cortez]

I was very jazzed up about Monster Under Wilds. I was very excited. I played both of the demos they released the demo on PS5, played that, looked at performance mode, looked at visual mode. I was like, this looks real bad image quality wise. Right. It's just like RE engine struggling with a big open world game. We had, we know people had issues with Dragon's Dogma. And then I, about a week later they released the PC demo on Steam. Had a great time with that. Freaking loved it. The B roll we're seeing right now is from Jan Ochoa. Shout out to Jan who recorded some footage and I was like, hey Jan, can I borrow your footage? Because I left my hard drive on my desk. And he said, absolutely. So, Jan show from Giant Bomb. Shout out to Giant Bomb. I had a great time hanging out with Jan and Jake. We'll talk about that later on Jake Decker. Jake Decker, Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I love Jake Decker.

[Andy Cortez]

Lovely human beings.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. I had a freaking great time with this video game. So I played both of the demos, was very excited for it, and then just had that one moment where I walked into this studio and Tim and Greg said, come to the office.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

We got.

[Andy Cortez]

We got to talk to you. Like I said, all right, daddy. O so I walked in there and I said, do you want to go to Japan? I was like, what? For what? Usually when there's a work trip involving a game, I have to really care about the game to get on a 12 hour flight. We've had a lot of opportunities to travel to numerous awesome places. And I'm like, I can't justify that. I don't care that much about the game. That's a lot on my back of my butt.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

There was one a few weeks ago where Greg was like, me and Greg both got an email of a preview event happening in Europe and it was for a game that I just did not care about that level. Like, just not my type of game.

[Andy Cortez]

He asked me to go to that. He was like, would you like to go to this? I know that it's.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

It's like a random country in Europe.

[Andy Cortez]

I know that it's weird asking you this while you're on a flight to Japan. And I was like I I'm good. I can't really swing that. So yeah, I said yes. I was like, I obviously Japan sounds awesome. I'm also very, very excited about Monster Hunter. Uh, loved both of the demos gameplay wise. Once I started to get the feel of it right when we played the game when I did the PS5 demo because I'm so souls pilled I'm so in my B is Dodge Circle is Dodge Duffy. You know what I mean? Monster Hunter does not care about what you think. Controls wise. I don't really know how far remapping will go as far as trying to make the controls feel a little bit less weird. It's a very very like this is the way Monster Hunter plays and you're gonna like it sort of vibe the game. As soon as I walked in there I'm so happy that it all clicked for me immediately. And I think that would just come from me playing with the playing on the PC demo. PC demo looked amazing. Unfortunately when we walked in here, only PS5 is there Mike. And I'm like oof. Okay, okay, this is going to be. And they said we want you to play on resolution mode, not frame rate mode. I didn't try out frame rate mode. I'm assuming it probably had equal to lower quality visuals in terms of like things looking really blurry to try to keep up with those 60 frames resolution mode though I will say kind of felt a lot to me like playing resolution mode in Final Fantasy 7 Remake where or Rebirth where I choose to play resolution mode there Mike. Because we know as soon as you try 60 frames mode it's gonna look really blurry and gross. Played resolution mode for Monster Hunter at the demo. Played five hours worth of it. Had a great time. Okay like had a freaking phenomenal time with this game. I can't wait to dive into all the different aspects of it. But yeah, I've been pretty juiced for Monster Hunter especially as somebody who played a decent amount of worlds and then streaming this game and having the help of the lovely chatters in Twitch kind of like teach me certain things about certain weapons. Like oh, I didn't know shit about Monster Hunter. I thought I knew.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I really do it that like it's a different. It's like a different kind of game there is very unique.

[Andy Cortez]

There is such a depth to it. Bless. And I I'm so excited to dive deeper into it. I had a freaking blast with it. I'm excited to talk all about it.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

What's your hype level for Monster Hunter Wilds?

[Snowbike Mike]

Pretty high. Yeah, I really enjoyed Monster Hunter Worlds. That was a game that I dove into with my buddy Sean. Taught me a lot about it as a big Monster Hunter sicko. Even played the version on the switch that came out recently. Rise with the boys. Rise. For me, Monster Hunter is always a one and done where I want to just keep going and seeing the new monsters. I don't like doing the repetitive go after the same monster over and over again to get the small body part to then make the armor. I never liked that. But for me, I do love the awesome world that they've created. I love when the monsters bang into each other and you get to watch it like National Geographic. I like the different weapons. I really enjoy. The Insect Glaive is one of my favorites. So yeah, I'm pumped up about this one.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah, I'm somebody, I'm on the fence. Like for me, it's one of those things where I know deep inside me I probably have the Monster Hunter gene, but it's late, it's not been activated yet. But when I hear about Monster Hunter, when I hear about the way people talk about Monster Hunter, I'm like, this should be my kind of game. But every time I try it out, like I don't know what it is, I think because it is kind of a one of a kind style of game, there is just a barrier that I know I need to get over to get into Monster Hunter. And recently I went with Greg to preview Monster Underwilds in San Francisco. They didn't fly us out to Japan for it, but like played probably about an hour or so and it wasn't the thing of immediately me being like, oh yeah, like this is going to be the one for me necessarily. But it is one of those ones where I like, it feels like it's going to be a one. A Monster Hunter game for people who love Monster Hunter games, but then also one for if you aren't already a monster person, you might, if you take your time with it, like it might be one that you grow into. And I'm hoping that ends up being the case for me because the weird thing is, oh, what was the game that came out? Wild Hearts. Wild Hearts came out last year and I played quite a bit of Wild Hearts and I fucking loved it. And it's so weird for me that I can get into Wild Hearts easier. But then Monster Hunter has just been like this weird thing for me. So, Andy, for you, like, do you Think in your time playing Monster Hunter Wilds that this is the one that's going to break out even more so than Monster Hunter Worlds. Because In A World was like probably just the biggest. I don't want to say big because I don't know for sure. But like, that felt like a breakout moment for Monster Hunter.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I think I would agree with that. That really felt like the single that kind of hit all the radio waves and like kind of reached everybody as opposed to just that smaller underground niche community. Not to say that the old Monster Hunters were super small, but you know, there's such a lineage there with people on the PSP and the DS and like just all these people that were super. I'm not exactly even sure what console, what handhelds they were on. But yeah, there are the hardcores on there that were only the handheld gamers that were like playing in these smaller communities. And I think Worlds was its big sort of moment of reaching a much larger audience.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah. Nathan, the viewer in chat says Monster Worlds is espresso, which is funny because I was thinking about the Sabrina Carter Carpenter comparison because Carpenter been around for a minute, right?

[Snowbike Mike]

Had some good jams before Special had some good jams.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

She was on Girl Meets World. Like she's been. She's been here was known. But it was something about this latest album that really brought her to the forefront. And I feel like Monster Hunter Wilds is almost like a sophomore album.

[Andy Cortez]

Make that the thumbnail. Sabrina Carpenter is. Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Is Monster Hunter Wild?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I. I think this is definitely going to break out even bigger for sure. And I think a lot of it comes down to the scale of it, the visuals, how much. I think there's still that barrier to entry for somebody like you. Bless. Because I feel like you and I are very similar when it comes to an action game. When I hopped into the demo confused, I was frustrated. I was like, damn. First off, I can't remap my controllers or my controls on a controller pad, right. You can do so on keyboard mouse, but not on a controller pad. And like I was mentioning earlier, Monster Hunter is very much. This is the way Monster Hunter gets played. They have a very odd control scheme and I couldn't even imagine what remapping would look like because it would likely have to switch everything around on because their control scheme can get so cumbersome and odd when you're trying to switch items, Mike, you're holding like L1 and then you're scrolling through your items with square and circle while still fighting for your life. Yeah. While running away. Yeah. So it's like they. They do a lot of things to. Because they know that you may be under duress, and if you want to switch an item, it may be kind of odd. You're not going to be able to just pause time and switch to a certain item because it's multiplayer. It's sort of this always on experience in a sort of way where you can call and help from hunters online or whatever. And. Yeah. So it's. It. It controls very, very oddly. You just have to kind of let your brain adapt to that. Because once I. When I hopped in there for the demo at this preview event, luckily I was kind of already there. It wasn't too confusing for me. Even when san. Even sans a back paddle. Sans back paddle. I was ready to rock.

[Snowbike Mike]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

No back paddles there, Mike.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That's wild.

[Andy Cortez]

No back panels, no back paddles. They didn't let me use my Bluetooth headphones over the years.

[Snowbike Mike]

That's the future. That's the future.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, we got to get. We got to go with the back pedals.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, the back paddles.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

So you didn't bring, like, a dualsense edge or something?

[Andy Cortez]

I didn't really have much room, honestly. Yeah. Like, in my back.

[Snowbike Mike]

We'll talk about the packing later.

[Andy Cortez]

We'll talk about the package. Yeah, yeah. No, but I. Yeah, I had a great time with it. A lot of different monsters, a lot of different weapons.

[Snowbike Mike]

Cool.

[Andy Cortez]

A lot of different things that I was trying out. Jan and Jake from gamespot and Giant Bomb both told me that they just used the hammer. I was like, oh, man. I was switching it up. So I used a couple different ones. So once, I think the first one I used during the demo was the switch ax, and everybody was like, andy, that's the heart or the charge blade, or I think that's what it's called. Everybody's like, andy, that's the hardest weapon to use. That's not something for a beginner. Right. So I tried out a different myriad of weapons. I tried out the long blade, which is just the long sword. Really, really neat combos. Once you kind of get the hang of controlling that long blade was a lot of fun. I tried out the Insect Glaive during the demo, Mike, and that was a freaking blast. Very odd concept with the Insect Glaive.

[Snowbike Mike]

Very weird.

[Andy Cortez]

If you want to unlock the full potential of it. Bless. You have to have a little flying bug with you. It's like a drone. You send it at three different parts of its body. Right. And this is like, I'm explaining this and every Monster Hunters fans, like, duh, we've had this for decades. Right. But, like, your insect needs the red one, the blue two, and the green three. Let's just say that's an example. And the head is the red one, the body's the blue two, and the legs are the green three. You have to send your insect at all those body parts to like, suck its. Suck a little piece of its body off. It comes back, it's fully powered now you have all the full moves unlocked on it.

[Greg Miller]

Insect.

[Andy Cortez]

That was a weird one, man.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I kind of. That sounds kind of fun.

[Andy Cortez]

It's a weird concept. It's a really, really weird concept. But when it works out, it works out. I didn't play any of the insect glaive at this event though, because I'd already played it during the demo. So I wanted to kind of try out a bunch of different weapons. And I also tried out, I played a lot more of the dual wield blades. The dual blades, a lot of fun. I feel like Bless would really looking.

[Snowbike Mike]

Like God of War out there.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, I feel like Bless would really with that, especially with how fast the weapons can go and how amazing the moves can look and feel.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I do like a weapon, dude.

[Andy Cortez]

Like, at one point, you know, because this game sort of introduces these weak points where you can left trigger to kind of ads almost. And then you'll see a weak. You'll see the different weak spots that you've been sort of hitting quite a bit, and maybe you've been hitting at the chest quite a bit. So there's a weak spot there. You can left trigger that R1 and they'll do this crazy powerful move and your dude will like kind of grapple around the enemy and then just dual blade, like a little top and spin down its spine. It's super sick. It's really satisfying. And all the feedback and visuals and sound feedback incredible. Like, it feels so good to kind of be getting those moves. And I did long sword. Oh, no. I wrote down here, I played long sword and insect glave during the beta. Now I'm going to try sword and the dual wield blades. And also they let us know that the lance and the switch ax are going to have a lot of changes leading up to the release. So I was like, all right, I won't play those then, because whatever is going to be released maybe a decent amount different. And with the monster hunter rhythm, you're having this sort of story quest happening. And as you start to fight these enemies, you start to break off pieces of them. And if you want to concentrate on that one enemy's tail, because you know that tail has a really cool, you know, piece that you could use for your armor, you start targeting the tail and you start whacking at the tail and, like, kind of really, really focusing on it. A lot of the stuff that I loved from Dragon's Dogma was also available with just like, mount. Jumping on an enemy. Jumping on an enemy isn't automatic. There's like a. There's an invisible sort of. You know, some enemies will have, like, their stagger meter that's sometimes invisible. And the amount of times you break them down, eventually they'll be staggered. These enemies, a lot of these larger enemies have a. An invisible, like, mount meter where the amount of times you try to mount them, you're sort of like getting them weaker and weaker and eventually that'll go away. Then you can land on top of them, climb to whatever part of the body you want to. Stab, stab. Stabs have really, really fast stabs, really strong stab. Or you could do a more punishing, like, finisher once you're. Because this thing's going to be a little bunky bronco trying to, like, kick you off of it or whatever, or it'll try to, like, knock you into the wall or whatever. And I just love the way all that interplays. Mike Talking about the National Geographic stuff is some of my favorite stuff. Watching two enemies start to fight each other, it's so exhilarating because it feels like those emergent gameplay moments that don't really feel scripted, even though some of them, you can tell, kind of are, they still work on me regardless. I get very, very jazzed up whenever that's about to happen. But if you are going at the weak point of one of these enemies, you do that super. That massive critical attack does a lot of damage. And then the enemy might start to go whimper off somewhere else. And like a lot of these fights, like you experience during Wild Hearts, bless, these enemies will, after one phase, start to get more and more injured, or some of them get more and more aggro and start to bust out newer, deadlier moves, but they'll run away to a new spot where you will then go fight them over there. And you have to kind of use all of your wits and use all of your abilities. It's a great time.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Did you have a favorite monster to fight?

[Andy Cortez]

Man, there's a. I mean, I really enjoyed the doshugumo, which is the one that we saw in that one right there. Just like a big bear looking dude. Mainly just because the size of it feels awesome. There was also a big gorilla named the Congalala and he kind of does like Congo like a bongo.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Kind of conga moves. Or maybe I'm thinking of the wrong word.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Donkey Kong.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Possibly that he does some cool moves like that. What we were watching earlier was some footage that Jan had where there's a big red spider that does kind of poison damage, which is a freaking blast. And if you do enough damage to that spider, you're going to get those poison parts to then put. Make the poison version of the sword or make the fire version of the sword or whatever. And all that stuff feels really satisfying once you know this weapon is going to do some work. Whenever I go to this next enemy who's probably weak to fire or whatever, you know. So all that stuff, the rhythm is there. It's. I. I could tell I'm going to no life the shit out of this when it comes out. I can't wait to kind of have our group streams and have our like, you know, crazy moments where somebody's flying off of an enemy. It's going to be a lot of fun.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Did you play multiplayer or was it mainly single player?

[Andy Cortez]

No multiplayer.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, dang.

[Andy Cortez]

No multiplayer.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Okay.

[Snowbike Mike]

Did they explain to you how it works? Of course. You know, when I'm going to start asking you questions, multiplayer will be high on the list of. It always feels so obtuse and cumbersome to even get into a lobby. Did they explain it all? What was going on with that?

[Andy Cortez]

No. And I assume it's because there was no offering for that. Anyway. I got to assume they would have explained exactly what was going on multiplayer wise. But yeah, like you and I experienced during the demo, it's going to be a bit, you know, obtuse trying to hop in there because not only do you have. When you're at your campsite, you kind of see everybody running around the campsite, all these other players running around, which I don't think I love. I don't want it to feel like.

[Snowbike Mike]

An MMO that shared world.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, yeah. You know, like you and I and Kevin. You and I and Washington. Kevin were able to do was to. We were able to make our own little instance. Right. And that's where we were able to run around and kind of go hunt monsters together. I still, I still predict it's going to be as cumbersome CEOs piece as you could turn that off. Like the sort of everybody being online or whatever, everybody kind of walking around the campsite, which I hope works out because I didn't really love that vibe. I don't want to see other players in my world. I'm the monster hunter. Bless. I'm the chosen.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I am the monster.

[Snowbike Mike]

How about story? Where did they start you off? Could you give us. Did they talk anything about the story in the demo? You kind of see a little piece of it. Where did you get in your world?

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, the demo kind of does a pretty good job of telling you what is going to happen in this story. I don't know if that's going to be the only premise of it, but essentially you are in a place that has. You've long since thought is uninhabited, and you start finding other humans there, and their village gets attacked. And they call it the White Wraith is what attacked this place. And it's like this legendary. Nobody knows what the hell this is. I got to assume the story maybe isn't only about that, and it probably expands after that. But, yeah, after fighting that or after having those intro moments in the demo, it seems like this is going to be a story about sort of helping this civilization and helping defend them against whatever the hell they're up against.

[Snowbike Mike]

Okay, we saw the desert biome in the beta. What did you get to see? Were you still in that desert area or did you go somewhere else?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, we got to explore a decent amount. There are a lot of different. I think we explored up to three. There are. There's a jungle setting, and in the jungle, you. Very, very. Lots of greenery all over the place. And then we explored sort of like a. It looked like a poisonous swamp kind of vibe. That's where we ended up fighting one of the big red spiders named. I think it's the Lala Barrina. And it's supposed to be like ballerina. Like, that's the sort of vibe is trying to give off. Yeah, very sort of the conga lala.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

And the Lala Barina.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Felt really living the world's different levels to it, like we saw in the demo, like that. Just giant, expansive areas.

[Andy Cortez]

Absolutely. A lot of verticality, too, man. And I. I love the. The times where maybe we're heading out to a place and all you do bless is you hit up on your D pad and your little sacred. Which is a. It's like a. A raptor kind of bird mount that you ride on. Which again, Kevin, can we talk about, like, raptors having feathers. We know that's not true. All right, wait, do we, we know that?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I thought like the dinosaurs are like really closely related to birds. You have to act like you watch their content.

[Andy Cortez]

Don't give in. Blessing. Don't give in.

[Snowbike Mike]

You gotta watch. You gotta watch.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

This is in review.

[Andy Cortez]

Don't give in. Bless. Don't give in to big dino. Okay, don't do it, big dino.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

But like, which part don't we. Do we not believe that dinosaurs existed or just that they don't have feathers?

[Andy Cortez]

Dinosaurs never had feathers. Okay, I don't care what the evidence. I don't care what evidence.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, this is a Jurassic park thing. I see.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, we know what dinosaurs.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I don't know if I can get behind this, man.

[Andy Cortez]

Anyway, I don't like it. So anyway, we're riding like a big dinosaur with feathers named Sacred. And he's like your raptor mount. Right. And you hit up on the D pad. Yeah. You essentially will open up your map. You'll see wherever the monster is roaming, you click on it. That's your waypoint and you hit up on the D pad and you'll head out there. And while you're heading out there, while you're auto running.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh yeah, because you don't even have to like, you know, press a direction.

[Andy Cortez]

While you're auto running. You can kind of set your menu, set your loadout, make sure you have the right, you know, health, you know, capsules that you're gonna eat or items. Whether it comes to traps or bombs or things like that. I ended up having a couple moments where I was fighting the congalala gorilla dude and I had like some big explosive fire barrel traps and it would have it run at me and hit the barrel and explode. It's just a good time. It's, it's a really cool way to kind of experiment and see how creative you can get with, with the combat. I didn't try out the hammer. Combat wise, I, I think I knew that Jan was going to try that out. So I figured maybe I'll just try out a couple of other ones. So again, I did try out the dual wield. I tried out the long blade and there are, there were a couple other ones that I'm sure if I keep scrolling down I'll end up finding out. But. Oh, I did a sword and shield. I did just like the normal sword and board type style where you can, some weapons will allow you to block or deflect. Some weapons you don't have that ability because maybe you're just swinging more of an offensive weapon, but it's really, really good.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

What's up with that? Character creator?

[Andy Cortez]

Character creator. Fantastic.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, hell yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

And the cat too.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

And the cat, yeah. You can make a cat, right?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, yeah. No, you can. You can fully customize your cat and it's. It's a great freaking time. The.

[Snowbike Mike]

They got a randomized button for that too. For people with like me who don't have the skill and character creator that just like to randomize my build and have.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, I didn't, you know, I didn't look.

[Snowbike Mike]

I love the ran. Yeah, presets are great, but I like when they have the randomized and they put different things together. I love that.

[Andy Cortez]

Is that why your Destiny Hunter always just look like a five year old together?

[Snowbike Mike]

Because, like, it gives me the opportunity to see cool and unique things that I couldn't build and then I can build off of them if I like.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Or I just accept for a random. Yeah, I guess that depends on the game because I feel like some games have like such wide ranging things you can do with a character that you hit a randomizer. You're just going to create an abomination.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Mike's Destiny character had like a green helmet with yellow pants and red arms. It just looks like when I first.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Started dressing myself in middle school, it.

[Andy Cortez]

Was like when I was an advanced LEGO builder and I would see other builds and I'm like, what the hell are you doing over there? Like, I got a spaceship over. I don't know what you got building. I did talk to the Monster Wilds director, Yuya Tokuda, and I had an interpreter helping me out. And I essentially wanted to thank him for helping out with diversity and with helping out, helping people like me be seen more. And that's the community with mustaches and beards disconnected. And I, and I thanked him and I said, thank you for giving me two facial hair options where I could do just the beard and then just the mustache. And. And he was very receptive. He was like, if there's anything else you need to know. I mean, the reason why there's so many options in the game is what he was telling me is that there was another creator. I'm sure chat will let me know. He, he told the director, I have a big bushy beard. When can I get one of those in the game? So they made one. And he was like, what else? I mean, if there's anything else y'all like are looking for, let us know.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah, when it comes to facial hair, we're listening.

[Andy Cortez]

It Was a Rex is the name of the creator. So I was like, thank you so much. Because, you know, whether I'm playing, you know, Dragon Age has the mustache and the beard disconnected, but it's like the little curly Shakespeare mustache. I'm not trying to do that. You know, I'm just trying to get a normal mustache with a beard. So. Good for you. Very, very thankful for that. Plus but character creator, fantastic. It reminds me a lot of the rise of the Ronin Crater and the Wo Long. Yeah. The Koi Tecmo stuff, I like that. Very reminiscent of that.

[Snowbike Mike]

Hair colors, those.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Because not only does it have the cool hair colors, Mike, but you have the options of growing, making the hair longer. You know, let's say there, let's say.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, you can choose the length.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Like there, there's similar to the other character creators that we were just mentioning where if you have a hairstyle that's down to your neck, you may be able to shorten it that's like up to your ears or lengthen it down like a couple inches past where it normally was. And then you can select the. You could put highlights in your hair or whatever and then you could choose how much of those of that secondary color is being shown. You know what I mean? So they just have. I mean, it's great. It's a really, really awesome character creator. Everybody you make is like super hot looking. It's awesome.

[Snowbike Mike]

That's great.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Palico.

[Andy Cortez]

The Palico. A lot of cool customization there. A lot of great creations out there already from different creators during the demo period where people were making Pikachu and all sorts of cool looking stuff.

[Snowbike Mike]

Do they have a system similar to Dragon's Dogma where I can download your cool creations? They got that at all.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't believe.

[Snowbike Mike]

Where it's like Andy made like a really cool Kevin Coelho and I can download Kevin.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't believe so. Okay.

[Snowbike Mike]

That'd be cool.

[Andy Cortez]

I wish. Yeah, that would be really neat.

[Snowbike Mike]

I got a couple questions before we go to the ad break and then we get talk to Japan trip, of course. Monster Hunter. All about the monsters.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Right.

[Snowbike Mike]

And we talk about adding new monsters. Everybody's excited to see the new stuff. Some people love seeing some of the old legends. Right. You talked about a couple that you saw. What were some of the highlights of the monsters that you got to see and were there any teases of older monsters that fan favorites will, you know, enjoy and love?

[Andy Cortez]

I didn't see any teases. Mostly because I. Whenever there's an Easter Egg type moment like that. I wouldn't have recognized that with only really having history with about 30 hours of Monster Hunter World and about 2 hours of monster Hunter Rise, the one that was on PC and Switch. So I unfortunately can't speak to that. Sorry Monster Hunter fans, I don't got that pass like you all do.

[Snowbike Mike]

Where's the rathalos?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, the rathalos. Right. But I would say one of the cooler ones that I saw was a sort of this like in a swampy area. It looked like a manta ray and it, it just had a really, really neat design. It was like an out of water underwater being, if that makes sense because this dude was above the water. Yeah, you weren't fighting underwater, but it looked like you belong under.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That sounds like my worst nightmare because like, I don't know if you all seen like underwater creatures that are like deep down there, they all look fucked up.

[Andy Cortez]

We don't know what's down there, but.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

We really don't know what's the problem. And like the deeper you get, the more fucked up they are. So if I saw one of those above water. Get me off this planet. I don't want to be here anymore.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I wrote down. It's called the Ooth Duna, the big. I put big water salamander, Wet dragon is what I wrote down.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I thought, I thought it was going to be called the Mantala.

[Andy Cortez]

The Ouda. Yeah. And so that was a really, really neat enemy. I had a great time with that. I also. Oh, there was another really cool one called the Rom. The Rompop Polo Rompopolo.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

And this dude was like a bird kind of looking weird bird and. Oh shoot. Is this it? No, this is the Uth. Duna. This is that like underwater looking thing I was talking about. Yeah, the.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I just. If I saw that in real life, I'm like, get me off this planet. I don't want to be here anymore. Andy, I also need more of your description before I can figure out.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, of course, of course. Well there's. Well some of them. Some of these things I'm talking about don't have footage because of the embargo, but you could just talk about them. So like the rampolo, this weird looking bird thing that like inflates part. It looks like a, like a buoy when it inflates in the water, like parts of its body would just like inflate and it would get like really, really weird. It was just an odd looking creature. I was like, this is so weird and so creative. This isn't just a normal, hey, we're mixing a rhino with a bear or whatever sort of thing. This is like something totally deranged that I really, really enjoyed looking at. I thought the design of it was really, really awesome. But yeah, with every one of these enemies you are trying to hack at their body parts, trying to get the body parts on them to then make either armor that is resistant to those types or just weapons that are going to be really strong with it. So a couple of the long blades that I had, I ended up upgrading to the fire version of one of the long blades. And the fire, the fire long blade was after fighting an enemy called the.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Carlos Mencia the demon.

[Andy Cortez]

The chemistry and I got to assume it's because of que mod, like Spanish for burn. So it was like a fire enemy. And so I made a little weapon out of fire and now I had some sort of fire damage that I went to go take on the Conga Lala guys gotta be. He's made a fur like Bloodborne Logic made a fur. Probably a week to fire my fire. Had a great time with it. Yeah, I'm just, I'm super stoked to get back to it. I'm excited for this game to come out. But the. Yeah, it had just had a great sort of vibe of meeting all these NPCs, going back to your camp, talking to the NPCs. Everybody's a baddie. You're leveling up your stuff, you are doing little side quests for random people in different towns, having a great time.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I love that you say everybody's a baddie because like I, as you're talking, I went back and try to find my notes from when I played like an hour or so of Monster Hunter Wilds. And like I took like three notes and one of them is Gemma is the girl from the trailers.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

Final question for me is of course, you know, with the new entry, what were some of the new highlights that they were promoting? You know, maybe during your sit down with everybody, what were. Hey, this is the new game. Here's the big highlighted things that everybody needs to know about. Did they have any.

[Andy Cortez]

I would say what I was mentioning earlier with the left click focus mode, that is one of the brand new features of holding that thing and then seeing those red weak spots light up and knowing we got to target that, keep going for that spot because that's the one we've hit the most. Or I love the idea of just creating a weak spot in general instead of just mindlessly Wailing away at somebody. Let me focus on whatever body part I'm trying to get from this monster. Regardless of how rare the drop may be because it may have a 60 drop of or a 60 chance of dropping the hide piece. But the skull horn is going to be a much smaller drop. But it's going to be really beneficial for your armor and your weapons in the future. And I just, I freaking had a great time with it and I, I always felt like a real good sense of like success almost to the point Bless. Where whenever I would take down a boss, I would look around and see if everybody was watching me. I was like, that's like that shit was sick. You know, Like I felt really, really good and accomplished about the enemies I was taking down. But again I was, I was very impressed with how good the game played at 30 frames per second. It wasn't an. It wasn't an inconsistent 30 frames per second. And image quality wise it did look more improved from the demo. And they had mentioned, hey, we know yalls thoughts about on the demo. This was not. They didn't mention this at the event. They mentioned this just like to the public on social media of like we are obviously still working on a lot of stuff and things will look better and more improved. And yeah, those. This current build that we were playing certainly looked a lot sharper and less. We were playing on a 4K monitor and it looked a lot cleaner of an image. Do I want to play at 30 frames a second? Absolutely not. Because on PC it played phenomenally and it looked incredible. So I will be playing on PC still.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

All right, well, there you have it. The curtain close on act one. Oh yeah, curtain's closed on act one.

[Andy Cortez]

Restroom break.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Round of applause. So far, not a great musical. Not much singing so far.

[Snowbike Mike]

Okay.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

But hey, you'll have to tune into Act 2 to see are we gonna sing. But before we get to act 2, I need to tell you about patreon.com kinda funny and YouTube.com kinda funny games where you can get the Kinda Funny membership which allows you to get shows ad free. Speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.

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[Blessing Adio Junior]

And the curtains open and we start with a musical number. No? Andy, you went to Japan to check out Monster Hunter Wilds. You told us all about Monster Hunter Wilds. But now I want to hear just about your trip to Japan. What was Osaka like? Who'd you hang out with? What'd you do? Did you do karaoke? Can you read?

[Snowbike Mike]

Like, did you miss me?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Can you display?

[Snowbike Mike]

Was it okay going without me? Would you have preferred a flight with me? You know, these are all things that I want to know.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Imagine like a 10 hour flight and.

[Andy Cortez]

You'Re sitting right next to Michael just snoring like crazy.

[Snowbike Mike]

That would be bonkers.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Like you're not even asleep. He's just sitting there.

[Andy Cortez]

You snore like crazy on a three hour flight like you woke up. Everybody just rocks me to sleep, man.

[Snowbike Mike]

I don't know what to say, bro.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, it's like you put the baby in the back seat, you go for a drive and falls asleep. A 10 hour flight would have been a nightmare. I, I went out there essentially alone. I didn't know who was with me until I went to the restroom. I was like, I think that's Jake. I kind of walked by him on the plane. On the plane.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

On the plane. Oh, that's awesome.

[Andy Cortez]

And Jake was, I, here's what tipped it off. I saw a Nintendo Switch and I was like, oh, a little switch on the plane. I saw Mario Golf. A weird choice. And then we got off the flight and eventually as the flight was unloading.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I was like, that's killing me.

[Andy Cortez]

It's very odd. No, Jake did.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Jake did. I know, but like even Jake playing Mario Golf very plane is really like. Because that means you're not playing online, you're just playing single player Mario Golf.

[Andy Cortez]

And I'm glad he called it out because I noticed it, thought it was weird. And as we were unloading the plane, I was like, what up, Jake? How's it going, dude? Hey, what's going on? I was like, who else is here? He's like, oh, Jan's somewhere else on the plane. So as soon as we walked off, Jan was like, what'd you do on the plane? He goes, I played Mario Golf for some reason. Good. I'm glad he thought it was weird too, because I definitely thought it was weird. Yeah. So we, we arrived in Osaka, Japan and then we took. Well, we landed at the airport which is the, it's called the Kicks airport K I X and it stands for the Kansai. It's like the Kansai Airport. We'll talk about the airport later. Yeah, let's talk about the airport. What was the first?

[Snowbike Mike]

The airport?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Because I want to walk through this because I want to compare notes of like your Japan journey versus my Japan journey is like, what was the step by step process of getting there? Like what, what do you do for phone plan?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, check this out.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

International plan.

[Snowbike Mike]

So who knows?

[Andy Cortez]

I got enough. I have a lot of things. I got a lot of things. This may be a long game. I hope not. Here's the thing. I was like, I'm going on this flight, I'm going to want to sleep. I'm only on four and a half hours of sleep right Now, I know I'm going to crash out pretty good, but I want to put this gummy in my pocket.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

We like a weed gummy.

[Andy Cortez]

Put a little weed gummy.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

He's on the gummy on an international plane.

[Andy Cortez]

And I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to eat it before I go through security.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Okay. Okay. That you can do.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm pretty sure I didn't remember to eat it.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, my God.

[Snowbike Mike]

Keep the gum in your pocket at all times.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Japan.

[Andy Cortez]

But, you know, TSA pre, they didn't put me through the X ray blast. They just sent me to the metal detector. Weed gum not made of metal.

[Snowbike Mike]

They X ray you.

[Andy Cortez]

Well, if you don't, like. If you have TSA pre, you don't.

[Snowbike Mike]

Is that what this thing does?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, that's a little.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, they're X ray in me.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They see. They see your wieners and everything.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

That's crazy.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I got stopped against 70% of it.

[Snowbike Mike]

I never.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I don't know why we always. My junk there. I. I mean, maybe. Yeah, because there's always a square on my junk. And they're like, hey, we gotta. You know, I'm like. I'm reciting the thing with them of like. Yeah, I know. You got to pat the front. Pat the. Do I want to step aside or do I want to go to a private place? Just do it here.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't. Yeah, do it here.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

They always do the back of their hands. 70 of the time I get stopped.

[Andy Cortez]

So I went through the. Went through the metal detector, totally fine again. Yeah, no, no problem. Right. Finally sit down on the plane. They upgraded me, by the way.

[Snowbike Mike]

Upgrade.

[Andy Cortez]

Not to first class, but like the one in front of first class in the middle, between first class and business.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, that upgrade happen, you raise your hands, they call you.

[Andy Cortez]

No, because I have, like, silver or whatever. Silver status.

[Snowbike Mike]

You press a button.

[Andy Cortez]

No, they just did.

[Snowbike Mike]

It just happened.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

How do you get silver? Because I feel like I've been flying a lot, and I don't know. I'm just.

[Andy Cortez]

You need segments. It's not miles, it's segments. That's like, they call a segment. Like, oh, you flew here. That's a segment. You flew here. That's a segment. I think that's what they do. I don't know. I got it. And so I do group two and all that stuff.

[Snowbike Mike]

Segments.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I don't know what that means.

[Snowbike Mike]

Segments up.

[Andy Cortez]

So the flight. The flight's about to take off. I Reach into my pocket. I'm like, oh my God, I have the weed gummies here.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I would panic.

[Snowbike Mike]

So perfect time to eat.

[Andy Cortez]

That could have been a disaster. Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Because you get the customs, you know, they happen to like be like, oh, what's that in your pocket? You take it out. American drugs. Oh, you're done. You're just fucking. You're in prison break now.

[Andy Cortez]

Munched on both of those.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

You just say candy.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, exactly. That's a gummy bear, right? That's all he would say.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

But they know what it, what it is.

[Andy Cortez]

They know I chewed on both of those suckers. Crash out the whole flight.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Hell yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm talking. This is a 12 hour flight. I slept for like 11 hours and 20 minutes or something. It was awesome. Had a great time. First order of business, luckily for me, I'm a child. I'm a little baby. I don't know what to do in these international situations. Obviously I brought a weed gun me to an airport. Don't do that. But in international waters, bless. Luckily they're like, we got a Capcom group. As soon as you get off, get off the plane. We're gonna have our whole group there.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, that's super nice.

[Andy Cortez]

All the cap. So they flew a lot of people to SFO and then flew us out of sfo. A lot of people from around the country flew to SFO first and then went to. To Osaka.

[Snowbike Mike]

Too bad you all didn't get to sit together.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Well, I mean.

[Snowbike Mike]

Well, that's what I. If I was organizing. Everybody sits together, I wouldn't want then Andy feels comfortable because he knows he has people that he knows. Familiar faces.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I'm a weirdo though. I'd rather sit next to strangers on a plane than somebody I know. That way I can just because I don't want to talk. I'm on a flight for 10 hours. I don't want to have to talk to somebody for 10 hours.

[Andy Cortez]

I got that little harness. Bless. Where you. The little harness that you put in that headrest.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And then you Velco strap an eye mask. Oh, I'm just leaning forward.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Send me the link.

[Andy Cortez]

Incredible.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That sounds awesome.

[Andy Cortez]

I got tick tock.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Hugh sent us the link to that. So I'd love pull that up.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, of course I got it.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'd love to pull that up.

[Andy Cortez]

Pull it up.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I've been having it and like if anybody in chat or Andy or Kevin or Mike maybe like I. I've been having trouble sleeping on the plane. Like finding a comfortable position. I've been trying to use like the little window. Like the little pillow. Like the, like, neck pillow. And I. I just. Not just push your head forward.

[Andy Cortez]

That you just lean forward. It hurts.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah, I don't like it. Do you do the thing where you put it backwards? I've tried every pos. I've tried putting it sideways. Like, I've done everything with the neck pillow. And I just can't find a comfortable position.

[Andy Cortez]

A lot of times if I. I always get window seat blessings. So I get the neck pillow and I use the hole in the neck pillow for my ear and my headphone. And then I put it against there.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

See, I've tried that too. It depends on, like, where the window is. Japan.

[Andy Cortez]

Sometimes you have a little, like a concave. We've landed.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Barely landed yet.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I know what you mean. Because I had that recently.

[Snowbike Mike]

How do I sleep?

[Andy Cortez]

Huh?

[Snowbike Mike]

What do I look like when I sleep?

[Andy Cortez]

Just like a disaster.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Like, all right. Japan, Osaka.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, it's. It's. I don't know when you're asleep because it always sounds like you're asleep. I'll look at you like, no, I'm awake. So first order business. I was like, let me take some cash out.

[Snowbike Mike]

Smart.

[Andy Cortez]

You know, money. Use 60 bucks American cash. And got however many yen. It was a lot of yen.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah. I got like 9 million.

[Andy Cortez]

The yen is weak right now. So everything's hella cheap. Oh, you know, like something $5 over here would be like 350 or something like that over there. It's crazy. It's awesome. We go to the hotel about an hour and a half drive back. Really, really long drive to the hotel.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

But I kept having dissociative moments. Bless. Where I'm like. I don't even feel like I'm in Japan right now. It's weird, right? I don't know. Like, this doesn't I keep forgetting I'm in Japan.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

It's very odd. First thing we did, we're like, take.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

A left into the left side of the road.

[Andy Cortez]

You're like, oh, we're getting off on the hotel. And first thing we do, Jake points out. Oh, my God. Right across. Have Coco ichibanya, which is a curry place. I think I said that correctly. Japanese curry, one of my favorites. Obviously you all hear how much I talk about volcano curry. We're having that tomorrow.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Cool.

[Andy Cortez]

Good to know. Or are we having it right now? We're having it right now.

[Snowbike Mike]

Right now.

[Andy Cortez]

Let's go. So we went to this place. This is. Yeah, this is very similar. Oh, my.

[Snowbike Mike]

This Looks really cool.

[Andy Cortez]

Well, I mean, it's not that I don't have the ch. The chin piece.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

What is that? Chin piece? There were ones that didn't have the chin piece, but I thought I wanted to bring up the chin piece one just because I feel like that's next level.

[Snowbike Mike]

This looks like something out of Death Stranding.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

It really does.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. It's great. Like, this thing will. Will definitely do a great job for you when you're, you know, you even put.

[Snowbike Mike]

Babies can use it.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Why did that excite you? You don't have a baby.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's great.

[Andy Cortez]

One day he might.

[Snowbike Mike]

Everybody can use it.

[Andy Cortez]

One day he might have a baby. Kevin, I'm sending a photo into Assets.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I'm ready for you.

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you. Big Dog Curry. Let me just talk about the curry real quick, because here's the thing I love. I love Volcano Curry. One of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco. I eat it at least once a week sometimes, you know, at least once a week. I would say several times a month. And I'm very particular with it because when I taste curry that isn't Volcano curry, I'm like, that shit doesn't taste like Volcano Curry. You know, this place, every chicken cutlet look just like the highest grade chicken you've. What I. What I told. I did a little twitch stream. I was like, it's almost as if, like, these people are like, we gotta really impress Gordon Ramsay right now. Give him the best we have.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Every piece of chicken looks so high quality. It. You know, at Volcano Curry, I have at least three of these pieces that always look like that's just like the end of the chicken. Nobody wanted, like, it. You can. You always see those little pieces. This is, like, so delicious. I got spice number two. I was like, how high does it go? And Jake was like, 10. What? Holy. So I got two. Pretty spicy. Loved it. Had a great time with it.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

How many times did you go there? Just once.

[Andy Cortez]

Twice. Oh, yeah. Went on the final day. Did you.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

When you went the second time, did you upgrade the spice?

[Andy Cortez]

Went to number four. Whoa. Number four. No, no. Went to number three because Jake said number four was a little too much. Okay. So we had three. I want to know what.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Seven.

[Andy Cortez]

Went back to the hotel, watch a lot of Japanese tv, had a great time. There's subtitles. No, but it was just like. It was a little song show where people were singing.

[Snowbike Mike]

It was a musical.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

It was a musical.

[Andy Cortez]

They were singing a song in a van. It was a great time.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I think one song can make this Episode of Musical. If we just get one song off right now.

[Andy Cortez]

I'll think about it. Yeah, I'll try to think about it. And the next day was like, all right, you're playing Monster under the next day. Get ready. Right. So we went to. We went to the studio. We took a good walk down there. And this is where a lot of the B roll can be used. Kevin. There it is. Perfect. That looks weird. That looks like somebody.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah. Strangling you from the back. Chris Masters.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

You got him down in the rabbit hole.

[Andy Cortez]

He's excited. So at the. We knew that we're going to get a little tour of Capcom when we go in there. So we'll play the game. And then after you play the game, you'll be able to have check out the Mocap studio. We're going to check out the audio studio. We're going to check out all sorts of little fun stuff at our place to kind of show you our process. And it was a blast. Because it's so hard to think about these games, or it's so easy rather to think about these games when they're made in America. Because we have a lot of friends who work at these American studios and know there are humans working behind these games. It's easy to forget that when a game is made somewhere else. For me, like, because I don't have that face to name sort of thing. I don't know a lot of these developers. There's nobody in mind that I go, oh, that artist from this other game is working here now. It's a lot easier to sort of forget that. Aside from us talking about, like Miyamoto and Miyazaki or whatever, you know, Kojima. But it was so awesome to actually visit the studio. Can you go to the studio footage, Kevin? This is just like after the fact stuff. Let's go to Mocap because we got to tour the Mocap studio. And this is cool. And they showed us a real time demo. This was. The main speaker was Naohiro Taniguchi and he's the animator, manager of all this. The motion actors are Daichi Miura and Masatoshi Fukidome. And they were great. They put on an awesome little demo for us. As you could see here on the video, the guy on the right is controlling the hunter and the guy on the left is the Doshugama monster. Big bear guy.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That's wild that they have humans capturing as the monsters.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. And they show you how the animation works in real time. And then they show you that you could just See it directly in the RE engine and it's rendered out as it should look. And it was really, really cool. They showed off. They showed off a couple of different moves. Right here we see the actor for the hunter kind of getting into the pose and then showing off what one of the attacks is going to be.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, my gosh.

[Andy Cortez]

And they get into it, man, it's awesome. And it was a freaking blast being able to be in this room. And they were explaining to us, yeah, this place is all set for wires. So if there's any wire work we need to do, we do all of that stuff as well. Later on, we'll see the other Mocap actor. He gets really into character for the doshugama and is really, really into it. And then they use these as a baseline for the animations. So they kind of do these first, and then the animators will then make sure all the arm isn't clipping into the chest or whatever. Yeah. Get everything looking real good right here. They. They're about to show off the. One of the clashes that you see in the trailer where the Doshugama and the hunter sort of have a moment where they butt heads. But you see the actors, that Doshugama, gorilla, bear or whatever, what his marker is and who the hunter is fighting against. And it's just really cool to see that reference in real time and how they use that for reference and get all the weight of the. Of the weapons looking good.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I might be in the wrong line of work. This seems fun.

[Andy Cortez]

It was so freaking cool to see these people who give so much, so many shits about their line of work and their craft, and it was just awesome to sort of experience all this. And they just talked about the different creatures that they get to portray. And if you fast forward a little bit near the end, Kevin, you might see the other actor as the Palico. So he's kind of controlling. He's moving as the Palico.

[Snowbike Mike]

This guy's got range.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, he's got.

[Snowbike Mike]

He does it all so in character.

[Andy Cortez]

They were just so gracious with, like, making sure that we had a fun time watching this experience. It was a blast, man. Like, I. I thought it was so awesome. As somebody who was in Game Day for a couple years, just seeing, like, oh, this is, like, a deeper level of that stuff that I didn't even get to witness, like, Mo Cap Studios. All that stuff is super awesome.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, my God. Now I'm like, I want to look up videos of Mocap for, like, all the different games because I'm like, yo, what does Devil May Cry look like?

[Andy Cortez]

It's really, really cool.

[Snowbike Mike]

Like, what does 2K look like? NBA 2K?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

What are you talking about? Watch the NBA.

[Andy Cortez]

Kevin, can you bring up the foley studio? So the foley studio stuff was cool. If you could pause it real quick. They are, they're trying to get the audio down for this big dragon that was in the demo. And this big dragon is like a lightning sort of dragon. And the, the way that they approached this process, they'd explained to us that they tried to. They eventually said here in Japan, a cat says Nia. Like it's like their version of Meow, right? And we were thinking, how could we get that for our creatures? How could we create an onomatopoeia for our creatures? And they essentially just have a bunch of weird ass instruments in this foley studio. I loved how this foley studio so like, just grungy. It was like the least professional looking place and I could tell that that's what they want. This place just looks like a storage room of all these sounds and materials and metals where they're recording footsteps and all this sort of stuff. But they're recording the sounds for this animal. So if you could play this, Kevin. And they're like, obviously that's not quite right for how this dragon should be. So if you fast forward a little bit more, Kevin, you'll see them recording different base layers and then using different instruments to then add to that first layer. And then they have an editor there, live editing stuff. And it was like, let's add some of like animal sounds of like an elephant's, you know, the way its throat sounds and you sort of hear what the final product could be. Let's check it out.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh my gosh.

[Andy Cortez]

And they just did a little quick demo and they have this other weird little instrument. Check this out. They just make weird stuff.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

All just for the sound.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's like when they were putting the, the frozen ice on the piano strings for Halo and they had the pug as well and they were doing all the crazy stuff. We're just making insane creative. Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I would love to like, like April 1, like come in as a prank. Just find the most like crazy you can do to be like, okay, guys, today we're fucking, you know, taking a cabinet, we're breaking it apart and we're going to put in a balloon and we're going to send it to the sky in order to make the sound. We want to make a pickle at your face.

[Andy Cortez]

We're going to record that.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

We're going to record that.

[Andy Cortez]

It was just really cool to see their process and how creative they get with all of, you know, their process and how much. How passionate they are about getting really cool unique sounds and stuff that feels like it sort of fits in the world. If you go to audio Studio, Audio Studio is really neat. They. We were there. Oh, by the way, that was the. That was Hideki Hosoi who was sort of the mainspring speaker there in the Foley studio. Wakana Koro Koroiwai, Takeshi Kitamura and Daichi Sugimura. I want to shout them all out because they were just really, really cool and gracious with their time. And this is the music director, Akiyuki Morimoto. And he makes the main sort of soundtrack with a bunch of other composers that are last names Ogura, Hiranuma, Moriguchi and Chinone. And these they have. It's like a group of five different composers. And this lead guy talks about how they use. They have a very sort of fantastical string sounding orchestra main theme. But then there are some hints of synthesizer in there. And he talks about the themes of the synthesizer and how anytime a hard synth hits, he wants you to feel kind of danger. And so he plays a bit of that for us and it's really, really neat. And if you fast forward a little bit, Kevin, he'll show you. When you hear this sound, it's a peaceful time. This is when the. If you remember, Mike, when that big lightning monster comes down and the fog clears up and it goes away, you start to hear the sounds of the. They call it the sound of plenty, like the time of plenty, where everything's peaceful. They play a very, very nice synth and then he shows us, he gives us a live demo of. Let me play these synths over gameplay to show you kind of exactly how things should feel and what emotions they should be evoking. So as the storm starts to kind of roll in, the synth sort of starts to come in as well and things start to feel a little bit more ominous, a little more dangerous. And he wants. Wants you to feel uneasy in these moments. And it's just really, really cool seeing their process of what they want you to feel and how they're trying to get these emotions out of you. And it was just awesome as hell to sort of watch this process. As somebody who loves video game documentaries, it was a dream come true to just kind of watch this stuff right in front of you.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Was this like your footage recording or was this.

[Andy Cortez]

That was my Footage. Yeah. And then the next day we went on a really, really neat tour where we just kind of got to walk around to all the sort of major, like sort of touristy areas. We went to one of the malls.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Is it the Capcom crew or is it you and Jake?

[Andy Cortez]

It's all of us. And then me and Jake and Jan mainly stuck together. So it was like all of us. And then we were able to. They said, all right, meet back here by 5:30. And so we all like went our ways and we met back here at noon or whatever, man. Back here, whatever time. They had a bunch of cool little stores. They had a little studio jubilee store. It was, it was so cool. Just, just walking around all the stuff that I wanted to buy, but I didn't have enough room to buy stuff, you know, here in a one piece store for Mike. I took some photos from Mike.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Wait, are we gonna find out why you didn't have any room?

[Andy Cortez]

Well, I just, I didn't have a whole lot of space because I also had to pack for Thanksgiving. Kevin.

[Snowbike Mike]

A lot of gummies too.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Because you went from here to Japan, back, back home and then back here.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I had a whole lot of gummies with you too, Mike. You're right. I had about three bags. Keep it up. Little pop up shop for like some bunch of. From software merch. Which is really cool.

[Snowbike Mike]

Should have bought a bunch of that, huh?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I bought some tal.

[Snowbike Mike]

I saw that.

[Andy Cortez]

Very cool. And it was a great time walking around, just the whole city, seeing all the sites blessed. But the. One of the cooler parts was, you know, I was after kind of realizing, you know what I'm getting a lot of. I'm getting a lot of flack for not buying anybody souvenirs.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And so I was like, I got to get some souvenirs for my friends and my co workers, you know. And the idea was. Oh, Spider man was here.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I was gonna say, what's Spider man doing?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, this is Dotonbury. This is like one of the main sort of hubs in Osaka.

[Snowbike Mike]

This is cool looking.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, this is beautiful.

[Snowbike Mike]

You stay here day and night to see all the different looks.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Oh yeah, it was a great time.

[Snowbike Mike]

How awesome.

[Andy Cortez]

A lot of cool shopping, a lot of restaurants, a lot of people. Whole lot of people. Yeah. Especially on Saturday because that's when everybody was walking around on the. Because we went back, I went back on Saturdays because I was like, I gotta get some gifts for my friends. And in order to get some gifts from my friends, I had to leave a fallen Soldier behind. And that was one of my nitro rifle hoodies. I'm going to make space in my luggage.

[Snowbike Mike]

Wow. My friends, that was the judgment call. Damn.

[Andy Cortez]

Let me leave this hoodie behind. I'm going to sacrifice it to the gods. I'm going to leave it in the hotel room. Yeah, I want to make some room.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's the right call.

[Andy Cortez]

So I could buy some. Some stuff for my friends. Right. First place I go in that mall that we were seeing footage of earlier, I got. I got to. In the Sega store. I was like, oh, Roger loves Shadow. Let me get a little Shadow the hedgehog pin. I'm gonna get him a little pin. And I was like, I'll wait to get blessing a little charm, because it'll be small enough that he won't be embarrassed of it. So I'll get blessing a charm from the Pokemon store. I'm gonna get everybody a Pokemon that I feel kind of represents them.

[Snowbike Mike]

Smart.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, nice.

[Andy Cortez]

You know.

[Snowbike Mike]

Did you meet Pikachu?

[Andy Cortez]

No, but Pikachu was in the Pikachu Cafe. They had a little birthday there, and they had a. They had a Pikachu, like, dancing in the. It was adorable.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Awesome.

[Andy Cortez]

It was so cute. The Pokemon store was really, really awesome. So I was like, I'm gonna get this shot of the hedgehog pin and for Raj, and I'll go to the Pokemon store and just get something Pokemon related for everybody at work.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That's smart.

[Andy Cortez]

Smart. And then I got there, and the line was real long. It was a real popular time.

[Snowbike Mike]

Holidays are upon us.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

The Pokemon store, the long line.

[Andy Cortez]

And I had a flight, you know, tight. Really, really running up against it. I was like, nobody. Nobody's going to get gifts on this trip.

[Snowbike Mike]

You bought us gifts at the airport.

[Andy Cortez]

Nobody's going to get his gifts. And. And, like, so, because I had to get Mike a gift, I had to lose my hoodie, and then the line was too long. So it's really Mike's fault that I had to lose my hoodie.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Exactly is the story that you left your hoodie behind in the hotel, then you thought about getting his gifts, and then you didn't get his gifts.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, well, I'm pissed off then. There's no way.

[Snowbike Mike]

Okay, I've been there. I've been there. I understand.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

What. There's no credit for not getting this thought that counts.

[Andy Cortez]

It's not the thought that counts.

[Snowbike Mike]

He thought gift. I'm planning to buy them all gifts. I have to sacrifice incredible Nitro rifle that you can buy @nitro rifle.com. and then it's like he goes out. There's too many lines. Too many people, Mike.

[Andy Cortez]

It was like, I thought people were in line for a. Because here's the thing.

[Snowbike Mike]

I get it. I totally.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That's such a mic thing to talk about. Plus, I was so excited to go. I'll be like, oh, my God, did I not see a keychain? Yeah, no, I was thinking about it too.

[Andy Cortez]

This is so exciting.

[Snowbike Mike]

He thought about.

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you.

[Snowbike Mike]

And that's what I was looking for.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I was so excited. I was so excited for this.

[Snowbike Mike]

I love that.

[Andy Cortez]

So, like, he had a sneak in.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

There that he left of the. The sweatshirt. He's like, I made a sacrifice for this.

[Andy Cortez]

You know, I made a sacrifice for you.

[Snowbike Mike]

Sacrifice.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

But he didn't come back with the gifts.

[Andy Cortez]

Bless. You're not even thankful that I sacrificed a jacket, which is crazy.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I am thankful. Okay, poor Mike. We gotta stop. We gotta stop with the thought. Is the thought that counts. I don't have anything to show for the thought.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, but here's the thing.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

My hands are empty.

[Andy Cortez]

But here's the thing. So I. I thought people were lying to the Pokemon store because it was the Japanese people. The Japanese love Christmas. Crazy.

[Snowbike Mike]

Really.

[Andy Cortez]

And our. Our homie Charles was like, oh, well, they. Charlie rather was like, there's no Thanksgiving here for them. They got Christmas stuff at the start of Thanksgiving. I was like, oh, no one. Like, Christmas is all over the place. So this big line, Mike, I thought, oh, there's. There's got to be a Santa Claus, Pikachu somewhere. For a photo op for families would have been crazy. No, it was just a line to walk into the Pokemon store. So the Pokemon store that I just freely roamed in on the third on the Friday. No, extremely jam packed. On this Saturday, like crazy jam packed.

[Snowbike Mike]

Kids are free. Yeah, they're out.

[Andy Cortez]

And it's weird because it's not. It's not like it's a line outside of a store. It's just a line in a mall to walk into a section of them all. So that really bummed me out. So I didn't get any gifts and I lost my jacket because of you guys. So thanks for that.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Wait, so did you end up getting the shadow thing for Roger?

[Andy Cortez]

Okay, well, here's. Here's the thing about that.

[Snowbike Mike]

Here's the thing.

[Andy Cortez]

So. Well, first off, in order to talk about that, I gotta talk about how shitty the. The Kansai airport is.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

He got rid of it. He got rid of it at the airport, y'all.

[Andy Cortez]

This airport sucks.

[Snowbike Mike]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

This is one of the. I love a new airport that I've never visited.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Okay. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I love a new adventure. I love seeing restaurants. I've never seen stores, but it's on the water.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

This doesn't sound like you. Just so you. Oh, that is cool. It's on the water.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's like. It's. It's like a floating barge.

[Andy Cortez]

This airport is one of the lamest fucking airports I've ever seen in my life. You walk in there, bless. I'm looking around like, where are the places to eat? Where is anyone? Give me a fucking. Are you watching Starbucks?

[Snowbike Mike]

The McDonald's give me a something Japanese airport.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

And you're like, where's the Starbucks?

[Andy Cortez]

Anything. Anything like that. Here's the thing though. It was like a couple of corner stores also. They don't Japan. We got to work on pin culture. I'm trying to buy pins for a lot of friends. No pins anywhere to be seen.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Is the pins is like. Is this like the main airport in Osaka or is that kind of question? Is this like we're. What's the one in LA? That's like in NoHo or above.

[Snowbike Mike]

No, like Burbank.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That's Andy. That's really.

[Andy Cortez]

That's a bar like this airport, dude. I mean it may look cool from the outside because when you are driving on that bridge, it is cool just to see water all over the place.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, why you drive on the bridge? Yeah, like a train or anything.

[Andy Cortez]

No, you drive on the bridge? Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I mean it must have, right?

[Andy Cortez]

Dude, you walk in this place, I'm telling you, you will never be more disappointed by an airport. It. There was nothing happening. I looked in the directory. I was like, there's one McDonald's and it's about two miles away from here. There's.

[Snowbike Mike]

He's got to get an egg McMuffin before the flight.

[Andy Cortez]

They didn't have restaurants. They didn't have restaurants in any of like the long ass terminal that I was.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, that's nuts.

[Andy Cortez]

It was like starved to death. It was like you could buy like a little.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I'm very curious on where this building to. Did you eat the pin?

[Andy Cortez]

Like you could buy a bag of sandwich or you could buy candies that like. Here's the thing. A lot of the candies and snacks I'm looking for just normal Cheez Its or Goldfish. Obviously not to be around, but there's just a lot of. I bought a lot of hi Chews.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Like it looks like on Google Photos there might be a restaurant section and you like the high Chews, though.

[Andy Cortez]

I just, like, put them in the. Put them in the terminals with it without where the people are, you know?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Don't make.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I agree with you.

[Andy Cortez]

Don't make me walk 20 minutes towards your restaurant. You know, like, there's tons of places in other airports I've been that are just kind of have everything anyway. So awful. Airport. Not a. Again, that's the one that was like two miles away. Kevin.

[Snowbike Mike]

Andy Airport scale, one to five airports. Where would you put it?

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, on the kind of funny scale.

[Snowbike Mike]

No, on the Andy Airport review scale right now.

[Andy Cortez]

Man, this has got to be 2.2. 3 4. Wow. Because I walked around so much looking for stuff.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I ended up, like, walking in circles at a point. I got so sweaty. Oh. I was like, I need to change my shirt. I'm sweating in this shirt right now.

[Snowbike Mike]

And he would add a different sweatshirt if he didn't sacrifice him for us.

[Andy Cortez]

Exactly. Bless. You know what?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Fair. That's.

[Andy Cortez]

So I went to the restaurant. They're tricking you.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I know. We got nothing out of it.

[Andy Cortez]

Went to the restroom to change my shirt. A shadow pin fell in the toilet. I didn't get it back. Wait, no, it fell in the toilet.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

There's no way. You were like, well, that's it.

[Andy Cortez]

That's it.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Well, no, that's the right thing. You should not dig your hand in. No, you gotta go in there in the airport toilet. No, you gotta roll the dust in the airport toilet.

[Snowbike Mike]

Just think of the story. Roger would have been so happy. And he stuck his hand in an airport public toilet for me.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

It.

[Andy Cortez]

No, I didn't have time. I was switching into my other shirt. I didn't. I didn't. I dropped it. I was like, God damn.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

You dropped it into the toilet.

[Andy Cortez]

Into the toilet. It's in there. Yeah. So then I crazy. I ended up. I ended up messing Roger. Roger's like, yo, you know, stoked your back. Whatever. I hope we had a great trip. And I said, I'm going to be real with you. I bought you a shadow pin dropped in the toilet at the airport. Couldn't bring myself to fish it out. And then he said, it's a thought that counts out here. Roger gets it.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

At least you bought the actual.

[Andy Cortez]

Rook asks, why was it not in your bag?

[Snowbike Mike]

Great questions.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

This bag was so small.

[Andy Cortez]

It. It was. No, here's the thing. It's one of these cool restrooms. I'll say that. Kansai Airport cool restrooms. Oh, enough room to not, you know, you Ever been in, like, a normal stall in any airport? You're just like, God, I can't fit anything in here. But they had the little. The little sort of like flat area above the toilet that was almost like a shelf. So I put my backpack on there to fish my T shirt out, and as I'm fishing T shirt out, pin falls off of. Out of one of the, like, the smaller pockets.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And that's how that makes sense.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, that's a bummer.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Kanta Airport sucked. Cool restrooms. Oh, yeah. Fine enough. Oh, I mean, the bidets all over the place. Great.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, Dan.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

The bidet in the airport I went to in Tokyo. Oh, man, I wish I could take it home with me.

[Snowbike Mike]

I've still never experienced a bidet one day.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

It's just the way you said it, the way you looked at me and said that. Yeah, I didn't even know that much about your.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, Yeah. I don't even know how unclean your is. So anyway, yeah, that's my. That's my trip. Oh, I also. If you bring up the footage near the end. Kevin. Yeah, you brought it up a little bit, but, yeah, we got to visit the. On the final day. Woke up extra early. Got to go visit the Osaka Castle on this. Very cool. It was beautiful. It was so awesome to see just this.

[Snowbike Mike]

Was it powerful? Was it stunning?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, it was one of those. You're, like, drinking in. It was one of those. Sort of soaked. You sat there. That's cool. Soaked it. Oh, also, I had, like, really cool B roll. We can maybe end the games cast with it if you just leave it on there and it'll be the moment of Zen. Kevin. It's like the last 30 seconds of the final video that I sent. Yeah, the last 30 seconds.

[Snowbike Mike]

Water activities here in the water. They had a lot of water activities there.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, boats, ski news. No, I. Are you talking about near the airport? Because we could just talk.

[Snowbike Mike]

I mean, it's got a big bay here.

[Andy Cortez]

I couldn't see anything out there. There wasn't really, like, anything out there. Oh, also, the. The final day or during that tour or whatever, walked to a lot of just normal video game plays, of course. Super potato.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, yeah, Super Potato. Yeah, they got one in Osaka. Walk.

[Andy Cortez]

Super Potato. Yeah, walk to a bunch of different game stores. I bought a. Oh, you did have room. Well, the. The hoodie was gone, so I bought. I bought. Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I'm so mad.

[Andy Cortez]

Zelda Oracle of Seasons on Game Boy.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's not like I didn't want Halo 2 from Japan.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Keychain would you have gotten for Bless?

[Andy Cortez]

Well, I still. I still have a decent amount of them that I will. I would like to ask you all, like, what do you want? Because I bought. Because here's the thing. They're not really.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

He bought some, but he just couldn't get some for us. He got some just not for us.

[Andy Cortez]

Well, the first day. The first day, I bought a lot of just randos, right? So. But they're like really tiny. They're called charms. So imagine like a gun, charm, mic. You know how small those are.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, cool, cool, cool.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, it's not like a big keychain. It's just like a little thing. It's like a little legitimately, like this small. It's like a little bowl.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Well, you gotta get rid of a sweatshirt.

[Andy Cortez]

Look at. Look at how good this is.

[Snowbike Mike]

Soak this in.

[Andy Cortez]

Moment of dancing.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

This is beautiful. You had. You had to get rid of a whole sweatshirt to get some more of these little charms.

[Snowbike Mike]

Look at this video. Sacrifice this sweatshirt for all of us.

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you.

[Snowbike Mike]

And his thought about thinking about us halfway across the globe.

[Andy Cortez]

No, like, here's the thing, Buzz. I would have bought more of those, but the line was long. So, like, am I going to miss my flight to get back?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

No, you're. You're right.

[Andy Cortez]

You know what I mean? That's the whole problem. And now was things aren't adding up. Was I really close? Here's the thing. I was like doing. But here I was doing a lot of vlogging around the mall. Kevin also, and I got kicked out of a couple places because they were like, hey, no recording here or whatever. But I was so close to pulling him. I could be like, look, I got 20k yen. Like, you know, that's actually 200 bucks. I didn't have that much.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Okay, but, you know, 20k yen to get some charms.

[Andy Cortez]

I had like, some. I had like 20 bucks on me here and there. And I was like, so close to asking somebody, can you. I'm gonna bribe you to let me know.

[Snowbike Mike]

The little Gotcha machines.

[Andy Cortez]

Here's the thing with the Gacha machines. There's like, there's just. I just want pins. I wish pin culture was a thing. I was so shocked by how huge Gotcha culture is. Yeah, like, I'm talking full stores worth gigantic. Bigger than CVS style stores of just rows of Gotcha machines. I didn't know it was like that.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

When we talk about Japan.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, the ramen is great too. Oh, my God.

[Snowbike Mike]

Did you eat an Egg sandwich, like, Blessing.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, yeah. Did you go to 7 11?

[Andy Cortez]

I don't like eggs. So that was. I. I mean, we Talked plenty about 7 11, and I went into several 7 11s.

[Snowbike Mike]

What was it like?

[Andy Cortez]

It was lovely. Yeah, it was lovely. Yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I do. I love southern Japan because here's the thing.

[Andy Cortez]

I was like. Kept on talking about the egg salad.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Mike, if you're ever going to Japan, Blessing, I could not envision you in Japan.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, my God, That's a dude.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I.

[Andy Cortez]

Trust me. The first thing I mentioned while I was doing my first, like, stream from there on the way to the Capcom airport, I was like, I can. I cannot imagine a human being less than Mike being here. Like, Mike being. He would be so fucking loud. He wouldn't know. He would be speaking English to everybody. He would do something, realizing, yeah, Slappy, get over here.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'll be making best friends.

[Andy Cortez]

Get over here, Slappy. You never know.

[Snowbike Mike]

Might stay forever.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, it would be. It would be a disaster. So, yeah, I had a great time. I'm setting. Went through one more picture. Kevin. I went to a place called Ramen War, and Ramen War had phenomenal ramen and really, really odd because a lot of. I think Ramen War is a lot more friendly towards the American tourist. And you were, Roger, spot on. A lot of people who know enough English, that kind of help you out. Of course, you still got to drop the Arigato. Go Samas. You got to drop that. You got to drop a little, like, excuse me, Mike, you know, went to this place, they were just rocking top 40s country. It was crazy. They had top 40s country.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah. Luke Bryan, dude.

[Andy Cortez]

Like that legitimately, that type of stuff. It was hilarious. I'm not talking a Japanese version of country music. It was just American top 40 country play.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And it was very, very odd. But this ramen was so phenomenal. This was the night that everybody went to go do karaoke. Bless that. I was really spent by this point. I was like, I keep. We all keep talking about ramen. There are no moves visible of Ramen being. Of Ramen being a thing. And I even talked to Jake about it. I talked to Jake and Jamba the next day, and Jake was like, yeah, like, everybody knew we wanted ramen. We didn't get ramen. So I was like, hey, guys, you know, we want ramen. But I decided to go to this ramen place by myself and had a great time.

[Snowbike Mike]

Break away from the group, Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, just walking around Dotonbury. Went back to that mall a little Bit probably should have walked in at that point to the Pokemon store. Oh, you know what? It was closing. The malls closed at 8.

[Snowbike Mike]

Any cool parts? Any other things we got inside the mall that we just saw?

[Andy Cortez]

Well, all of Dotonbury street is like a.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

He's asking questions.

[Andy Cortez]

The mall is so excited. The mall is in a strip. The mall is in a strip mic of a lot of other shopping places. But Dotonbury is like the main sort of shopping area. And all that outside stuff that you saw earlier is kind of on the surrounding fringes of it.

[Snowbike Mike]

Final question.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

They got one of those Ferris wheels.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

They do.

[Snowbike Mike]

Every city's got the Ferris wheel down.

[Andy Cortez]

They do, but it's not a circle. It's an oval.

[Snowbike Mike]

It's an oval.

[Andy Cortez]

It's an oval. Yeah.

[Snowbike Mike]

So it goes up taller, though.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That can't be right.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. I mean, Kevin, you have the footage of it. You saw the footage. Kevin, when we go underneath that bridge.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

You have one more question out of all the questions you can ask. Yo, they got one of them Ferris wheels over here.

[Snowbike Mike]

You gotta ask that question, everybody.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, Kevin, the footage, daytime footage of us going underneath the bridge. That big yellow thing on the left side. That's a bit. Look at that oval Ferris wheel. Where?

[Snowbike Mike]

Right there.

[Andy Cortez]

The big yellow over.

[Snowbike Mike]

I can't see it.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, right, the big yellow thing.

[Snowbike Mike]

I thought that was a building.

[Andy Cortez]

No.

[Snowbike Mike]

Oh, you're seeing. Yeah, That's a big deal. That's a big deal.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

That's awesome.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, that big yellow thing. That's an oval sort of like track.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I was like, where's the Ferris wheel?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, yeah. We were gonna ride it, but I forgot. I forgot.

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, you gotta ride that. You gotta ride that country. You gotta have one.

[Andy Cortez]

Had a good time in Japan, man.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Act two, Curtains close. We kind of got music there when you're showing off, like the audio stuff with the studio.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, yeah.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

So we'll count that as the music part of the musical. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen and mbs, that brings us to the end of this episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast for today. Andy, thank you so much for talking about your time in Japan playing Monster in a while.

[Andy Cortez]

Thanks for having me, Mike.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Thank you for sitting on this episode asking questions.

[Snowbike Mike]

Thank you so much. I'm so happy that Annie traveled the globe and got to tell us all about Monster Hunter Wild.

[Andy Cortez]

I think you're next.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

I think we will send you to Japan next one day. I hope so.

[Snowbike Mike]

I'm going to eat an egg sandwich.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Oh, dude, you need to get one of these egg sandwiches and I'm going.

[Snowbike Mike]

To ride the Ferris wheel.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Well, you don't like eggs, don't you?

[Snowbike Mike]

Yeah, but I'm willing to try.

[Andy Cortez]

Means you're welcome because. Blessed. Thank you. Arigato. Go Samas.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

Arigato Samas. Of course. This has been kind of Funny. Games cast. Each and every weekday we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games. Live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do.

[Snowbike Mike]

I mean, look at this.

[Andy Cortez]

Wild. This is.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

This is insane.

[Snowbike Mike]

That's the oval.

[Andy Cortez]

That's the oval.

[Snowbike Mike]

It doesn't seem quite safe because you go up, you're going sideways and then you go up. Would you be sideways or does the balls move?

[Andy Cortez]

No, you stay straight. You stay straight. Yeah, it's just rotating so the ball rotates.

[Blessing Adio Junior]

This is not a fair. This is like. I can't even call this a wheel. This is a Ferris oval. That's awesome.

[Andy Cortez]

Really cool though, right?

[Blessing Adio Junior]

It is kind of scary, though. I like, I would look at this and be like, I don't know about this, guys. This seems kind of dangerous. If you love what you do, Support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. Enjoy the stream. Next, catch Today's KFG on YouTube and on podcast services. And know that until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve.