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[00:00]
A
Oh, time to be real. Too late. I already was. Shit.
[00:08]
B
Shit.
[00:08]
A
It meant for the app. I got too real with you guys. You guys got anything real you want to say?
[00:14]
C
Yeah, I got something real to say. I. I know we went through a time and certainly that's still the case, that good Rust makes very good handheld gaming content. Things like that. But I found a new source.
[00:25]
A
Fact that you're calling him goodrus now.
[00:27]
B
Makes me very happy.
[00:27]
C
A new source for content. And it's a guy on YouTube who just tells me how my bidet seat works. And man, this guy knows his stuff.
[00:38]
A
Yeah.
[00:38]
C
We will drop a link in the newsletter post, but if you're looking for chief pro bidet content, because this is in the cult.
[00:47]
A
Like, we're not. This isn't in the show. So I don't know who you're talking to.
[00:51]
B
Like, is this not the cold open?
[00:53]
A
This is a cold open, but it's actually.
[00:54]
C
Let me just say, this is just.
[00:56]
A
Stuff we recorded randomly before the show started.
[00:59]
C
Yeah, I understand.
[00:59]
A
You know what I'm saying?
[01:00]
C
I do want to say it's actually not a cold open. It's a very warm and misting open. Yeah.
[01:05]
B
Sometimes my little son makes us unplug the bidet seat on our toilet downstairs because it makes a noise that freaks him out a little bit sometimes. And then I'll forget to plug it back in. And I'll come in, you know, for a middle of the night sesh, and I'll sit down and the seat is icy cold instead of wonderful warm. Cause I forgot to plug it in. Gives me a jump scare every time.
[01:25]
C
And it's like you're a caveman at that point.
[01:27]
B
It is like. Yeah.
[01:28]
C
On a cold seat, it's like you're traveling back. That's really the reason never to travel back in time. I know people are worried about changing history, but really gotta have a warm seat. You do not have a warm seat.
[01:39]
B
I want it to feel like a big guy was just. Just on there. That's how I like it. Thank you.
[01:45]
C
Yeah, you would have to sit on top of a fireplace in the past to have that experience. Not a good pooping spot.
[01:53]
B
Justin, it's too blue in your room.
[01:55]
A
That's not for them.
[01:58]
C
It's for us. Justin made it very blue.
[02:01]
A
I stole that magical gum.
[02:03]
C
It's his blue period. And now he's turning to a blueberry.
[02:06]
A
I'm turning violet. Violet. Is that better? So right now we can do a show. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best Game of the Week.
[02:35]
B
My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.
[02:38]
C
My name is Russ Trosik. I know the best game of the week.
[02:42]
A
This week we're talking about MIO or Memories in Orbit if you prefer. Russ, what's that? I was about to ask Chris what.
[02:50]
B
You throw in here.
[02:51]
C
Chris Russell Russ, what's no, I don't know if I can deal with this. Memories in Orbit is a search action game from a French developer that is very, I would say, minimalist and vibey and pretty to look at and also challenging.
[03:08]
A
We'll hear about a lot more of that right after this.
[03:12]
B
We all want to eat the good food. But a lot of us in this year 2026 don't have the time to prepare that good food because we are always on our grind set and we don't make enough room in our grind set for our nutrition and our eatin, do we? Well, good news. You can kill two birds with one stone and eat the bird and the bird is delicious. With factor. You will have to kill no birds with factor. I should make that abundantly clear. What they do is you go ahead and you pick meals that you want out of a rotating menu with over 100 meals to choose from every week. That's always sort of refreshing and changing and the food is ready to go in two minutes. No prep, no cleanup, no mental load. And they've got all kinds of great stuff this week. They got a grilled filet mignon and creamy parmesan shrimp. They got pot roast, shredded beef and mash. They got charred corn and shredded chicken cavatappi. I don't know if I said that right, but they've got so many different things. Regardless of what your dietary sort of restrictions or choices are, they've got something for you. So head over to Factor meals.com besties50off and use code besties50OFF to get 50% off your first Factor box plus free breakfast for one year offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor MIO Memories in Orbit from Duz Diziam.
[04:40]
C
He practiced so much before we started recording.
[04:43]
B
I did. I wanted to do a good job. Not one that was on my radar. I don't think it was on either of your guys. Well, maybe Russ, because you're sort of a rejection pervert.
[04:52]
C
I heard about it like 3 weeks ago just from, you know, through the grapevine, but that was it.
[04:58]
B
Yeah, just as sort of like a jumping off Point the feeling it gave me. The comparison I think is sort of most apt is Ori. Yes, the first Ori. The first Ori. Blind Forest.
[05:12]
C
Blind Forest was the first Ori.
[05:13]
B
The second was Will o' the Wisp. It is extraordinarily lovely. The game is, you are. You're a little guy Mio, who is a tiny autonomous unit in a big space ark that has started to fall apart. And you go all around this sort of like space ark that was transporting humans to a new habitable planet, but really you're just kind of seeing the computer robot parts of the ship and meeting AI who have really gone mad in the time that the ship has been falling apart. You're going around and you're seeing this kind of ship where everything has lost its purpose and the robots are all dying and pretty sad. And it hits that hard with the visuals and the music.
[06:03]
C
But I think you can.
[06:04]
A
Why are robots. Why are broken down robots so sad?
[06:07]
C
They're so sad. What purpose do they have?
[06:10]
B
That's it.
[06:11]
A
I like robots. Really. Like, I think they're kind of like. You know what I mean? Like in principle, fuck robots. But on the other spectrum of that, the broken ones are so sad.
[06:19]
B
I wish they.
[06:20]
C
Oh, they were made to pick apples and now they can't pick apples.
[06:24]
A
But who eats apples?
[06:26]
B
Nobody.
[06:27]
C
No one's sadder than that.
[06:28]
B
Not in this game. It really doesn't give you a lot. It gives you nothing when you see.
[06:33]
C
Yeah, I'm actually impressed that you were able to glean that much from what you played because I was like, there's robots here.
[06:39]
B
I've played a lot. I think I'm getting close to finishing Memories in orbit. It has really sort of captured my attention and pretty much all the kind of like gaming free time I have, I've been pouring into this one because it's really gotten its hooks in me. The reason I think the Ori comparison is apt is one just vibe like it really, really is. In the same way that Ori would just kind of like periodically just knock your socks off. Like you would come across some new thing, some new set piece, some cutscene that would just be like. That would just punctuate these challenging platforming sequences with a nice beautiful moment of repose. This game does that constantly and very, very, very effectively. But also it handles traversal in a way that is pretty unorthodox. I'd say just as like a. This is always kind of like a good binary. I feel like when talking about search action games is in memories, in Orbit. You start with the double jump. That's great. I love that shit. I don't have to go hunting for the double jump. I know that I've had it in every game. Instead the abilities you get are like you can climb wall, you form these tendrils that come out of your back and now you can climb on any surface and you can go on ceilings and walls, but only for a limited amount of time. Or you get a hover ability that lets you sort of get across long gaps. But the feel of it is just really physical and tangible. And it's not like now you have the high jump power. Instead you're thinking about like how to get around the ship by like using the architecture itself and trying to find like lines that you can get through with the power that you have.
[08:24]
C
It's physics based in the way that even like Silksong is not.
[08:27]
B
Yes, absolutely.
[08:27]
C
So Ori is very apt because you're flinging yourself using momentum to like get across gaps in ways that like most search action games do not do.
[08:37]
B
One of the first areas you come to in Memories of Orbit is frozen. And when you walk on the ice you pick up speed and momentum and it really drives it home pretty much right away. Like you feel like you're sequence breaking all the time. Like I felt like constantly I'm getting to a place I should not be able to get to because I ran across this ice. Got so fast, jumped across the whole room, did like an attack animation in the air that suspended me just enough so I can make it on this platform that I bet I'm not supposed to be at yet. It lets you do that kind of stuff a lot because it is not so, I don't know, analog with the movement.
[09:09]
A
It seems to really. It takes the search part of search action and I think it gamifies it like more than a lot of games do. Right. So it's not merely a mechanical sort of like following the map. You kind of have to. I don't know if this was your guys experience, but I felt like I had to keep challenging the geometry or like fighting against the design. And when I would do that, fight against that flow, then I would find things like it really was more of like a search having to like think outside the box a little bit and.
[09:38]
C
Try hidden caves and things like that.
[09:39]
A
Yeah, hidden caves or things that aren't very clearly part of the architecture that you can like make your way through that. I thought that was kind of cool. Like it really forced you to I think, slow down and really look at the environments.
[09:50]
B
It also does a great job of not locking you into, like, one area. And now you're going through there until you get the power and you beat the boss and now you're done. Once you get fast travel, this becomes a whole bunch easier. There's like a central nexus where you go and you can spend your currencies to buy some new stuff for your character, but you will go down an area and you'll find some crazy traversal power and then say, oh, wait, I needed that for the other area. Obviously that's not necessarily reinventing the wheel for search action games, but I feel like I didn't have the moment. That does happen in the genre a lot where I would see the door that I can't get to because I don't have the right power yet. I would see that door and I would think, like, how am I supposed to get up there? But if I spend enough time kind of thinking about it, almost always, there's some way to do it. There's some way to chain an attack in the air, to pause yourself just enough. There's so much tech to this game that is really, really rewarding. And probably, I think probably its most exciting feature is that I don't feel stuck ever. I just feel like it's all discovery pretty much all the time.
[10:57]
C
It definitely has the, like, thing that Silksong did, which was an introduction that I think is pretty punishing. Like, not super welcoming as an introduction. The first boss, you face pretty fucking hard. You basically have no upgrades. Yeah. And they do give you some, like, shortcuts that make the run back a little bit better. But it's still, I think, pretty harsh.
[11:24]
B
Yeah.
[11:24]
C
And they also don't give you, like, if you're not looking things up for this game, which you can do. The game wasn't out yet, so it's not like we even had the opportunity. But like the map, for example.
[11:35]
B
So, yeah, you don't start with a map. And that's cool. Love that. And then eventually, I mean, I think this is like a good. This is a thing that will help you enjoy the game.
[11:44]
C
Yeah.
[11:46]
B
This game does not have a souls like recovery mechanic for the currencies that you possess when you die. When you die, the nacre, which is the currency in the game that you have on you at the time, just immediately disappears. It goes into a pond, a magic spring right at the center of the world. And when you have done that enough times, you'll start to unlock some of the story of the game. And the map. And that is not really communicated to you at all.
[12:18]
C
Are there other unlocks that happen from just.
[12:21]
B
I've lost quite a bit of nacre to the magic spring, and I have not gotten any other. Just the map boost from them.
[12:26]
A
I'll also say that happened to me not through dying, but through making my way back there and just handing my naker.
[12:33]
C
Yeah.
[12:33]
A
Yeah.
[12:33]
B
You do have that option eventually. There's some signposts that lead to it, but, like, I don't know. Playing the game without a map sucks.
[12:39]
A
It's not good. By the way, that what you just said took forever. Probably the biggest reason I didn't make more progress in this game is because I was playing really carefully and not dying much.
[12:49]
B
Yeah.
[12:49]
A
And I wasn't going back to give my. It doesn't make it clear. You're supposed to take your naker back to that thing and. I don't know, man.
[12:58]
B
It's a weird. It's such a weird sort of stylistic choice and it. It feels a bit half baked.
[13:04]
A
There is a lot of ways people can spend their time.
[13:06]
B
Like.
[13:07]
A
And I feel like if you are. There's ways you can build difficulty that make it intentionally frustrating. And then there's ways you can build difficulty where the player is engaged in the process.
[13:19]
B
Yes.
[13:20]
A
And I feel like trying to punish people early on before they have understood the basic building blocks of the world. Because so many of these games, like, these search action games, are like the different mechanics on them, much like the souls are like variations on a theme. Right. So like in this one, the currency you can use to refill your armor. So that's like one option. You can use the naker for that, or you can go back to the guy and just give it to him, or you can die enough and it gets lost. None of this is clearly communicated in a way that you, like, understand. And I think that it's very convenient if you're designing a game to hide behind sort of like a false obfuscation as a way of building difficulty when you could signpost mechanics well and then build your difficulty in more humane ways. Because for me, these things are happening. I don't know the ramifications of them.
[14:13]
B
I don't.
[14:14]
A
It's not made clear. And I understand that can be like part of the mystery, but there's a lot of fun mysteries. But I don't think that, like, deciding what bullshit you call estus flasks is like a fun way of spending my time.
[14:24]
B
Yeah. I think that is. I think the reason they made the choice, right, is like, the ship is offline, everything's going wrong. You don't know what the fuck's going on. It's up to you to start kind of like patching this thing together. And so part of that is we're not going to tell you what is happening to this currency when you die, or how you're supposed to be using it, or how you're supposed to be getting your map or any of that. But when you die and you lose your nacre after you've revived the spring and you've gotten your map, that mechanic, I don't think has any impact at all. You just lose it. It's not like. It is like I was thinking, like, oh, they've done a new thing here where imagine in Dark Souls, when you died, instead of your souls disappearing, they went into a big meter. And when it hit certain breakpoints, you would get, oh, here's a benefit. So it's like, yeah, you died and you lost some stuff, but here's a.
[15:10]
C
Something for your effort.
[15:11]
B
But that mechanic doesn't really come back. It's just weird. And it is a really rough start to the game.
[15:17]
C
They do have, for what it's worth, if that sounds too punishing to you, there are mechanics similar to Silksong actually, where you can bank your naker so that you can basically, you crystallize it and there's no cost to that. So if you're able to go to this npc, they'll turn it into a rock. And then when you die, you just lose none of it. You will always have it.
[15:39]
A
See, that's. To me, once I found that guy, it's like, okay, so should I just hang around this guy?
[15:45]
B
I live here now.
[15:45]
A
Yeah, I'll live here and just keep collecting it. When do I have enough? I don't know. I don't know what I spend it on except refilling my arm.
[15:52]
B
I'm also at a point where I have more of that stuff than I know what to do with. And there's other currencies that I'm a bit more deficient in. But I think in general, the currency loop, the itemization of the game struggles a bit for me. That's its biggest flaw is there's a system where you are equipping these upgrades and you have a certain capacity.
[16:14]
C
Very near Automata esque. I know plan is not here, but.
[16:17]
B
I mean, there's a lot about this game that is very near Automata esque in a great way. The soundtrack fucking bangs constantly. It's crazy.
[16:25]
A
Animations on all the enemies are amazing. They look like robots that are teaching themselves how to walk with like whatever garbage parts.
[16:32]
B
They're really, really spectacular. But like I didn't feel the carrot very often. For me the carrots were like, oh shit. This, this new traversal ability is going to like really open things up for me. Yeah, it was less so for like here's an upgrade that whenever you use your zipline attack, your next attack is going to do a little bit of bonus damage and that's going to cost you 20 upgrade points. And it's like I don't feel like that's like, oh boy. That's really going to get me to the. That's really going to get me where I need to go.
[16:58]
C
Right. It didn't have the synergy that again like a silk song where you can clearly see how the items are interacting with one another. Where here it's just like a little bit of a stat boost. I agree with you. I think the why I was digging this and why my immediate thought was like adjustin or a plant would not be into this is because it does the like little person, big world, we're not going to give you any guidance, have quote unquote fun. And that's my like my jam. Like that clicks in a big way for me. But I know for people that aren't necessarily going to want to throw themselves at it, which I think is most people or at least a lot of people. Yeah, it can be frustrating but I feel like just the, you know, you talked about what's rewarding about exploring the world. Like not only getting those upgrade mobility things but just like walking into a new area. They did such a good job of differentiating the different biomes to really feel like this is vastly different from anything you've seen before. And suddenly like a new track kicks up of like lo fi beats to study to and I'm like, I'm fucking in. Like this is my fucking jam.
[18:06]
B
Yeah.
[18:07]
C
Despite some of the quirks which I agree aren't exclusively like this doesn't feel the best.
[18:12]
B
It's a shame because like I think the game is fantastic. I think it's really, really great and I think you are, you are engaging in an exercise of trust with a game like this when you start playing it, especially when it doesn't tell you fuck all about it of like it's gonna be worth it for me to figure out what's going on here and I think it is. But I think also if they had tightened up the gameplay on level seven, I think that it would have been. I think it would be a fucking masterpiece. I think it can hang. Cause it delivers constantly, sort of aesthetically and emotionally. And you know those moments of surprise and discovery where, like, you see a wall on the, like, far end of the ship and you think, I wonder if I can actually climb a rock around that and go outside the boundaries of it. And you do. And there's a thing out there just for super people in the super duper smart club like you. Like, that moment happens a lot. There's a lot. It's doing like, so, so, so, so well.
[19:06]
C
I also. It does something in combat that I've never seen before, which is it uses grapple points as like, instead of a dodge. Instead of like a. You do get a dodge later, but instead of like a typical dodge as a way to enhance your mobility, you'll like, constantly be like, latching on to dodge attacks of giant bosses, which I thought was like a neat thing that I hadn't seen a lot.
[19:29]
B
Great assist options too. Really, really great ways to tempt you.
[19:32]
C
Fuck with those. Did you, Justin, any of the exit options?
[19:35]
B
I have fucked with those. There's three options you can choose from to sort of like, make the game easier to play. One is decaying bosses. So it's just like kind of the opposite of Hades 2, where every time you die on a boss, the boss will be a little bit weaker by the time you fight it. One is pacifist mode, which makes it so that enemies won't attack you unless you attack them. I haven't messed around with that one, but the other one I think is really great, is called ground healing. You have a certain amount of pips of health, and when you lose those, you die and go back to the last respawn point. But what that one does is if you stand on the ground, if you're on the ground without jumping, you can be running around, walking around. As long as you're on the ground, you will regenerate one extra sort of health point. And then if you get hit and it goes away, as long as you stay on the ground for a little while, you can get that back. So, like, it's not overpowered. It's. If you're in a boss fight, odds are you're not going to be able to sort of stay put in that way. It's just a way to kind of like, make the more punishing exploration sequences a lot more, you know, bearable. So I've. I've. I found Those to be like, really smart ways of kind of like making the game a bit. A bit less punishing without really, like, throwing the difficulty curve, like, completely out the window.
[20:44]
C
It does seem like the kind of game that people who aren't necessarily like Hardcore Massacre people would enjoy. So it's really terrific that they put that stuff in there.
[20:55]
B
Much, much easier than Silksong.
[20:57]
A
Yeah. I think that I actually started. If I could give one piece of advice to people that do want to play it, like, I started enjoying it a lot more, I think, when I started meeting it on its own level, rather than trying to extrapolate mechanics and assumptions that I would make from other search action games like this. Trying to sort of take it one screen at a time, really, and like, thinking about it. Cause it is like, a lot of it is different, structured differently from a lot of games like this, especially the momentum stuff. I feel like it does feel like a secret that you will forget constantly. And then it's like, oh, that's right. Yes. Okay, thank you. Right, Momentum. Yes. Let me try.
[21:34]
B
Yeah, you really can. That's my advice is. I mean, first of all, just die a bunch. Get the map. Like, don't fuck around. Get the map. Then you can really play the game and enjoy it. But also, like, just doing things like jumping and attacking, doing a combo in the air on nothing, but, like, getting that extra inch and a half of, like, height is enough to get you in a lot of places that just.
[21:53]
C
If they were like, hey, if you donate, die and give me 200 nacre. Something cool happened. That's really all it needed at the beginning. Like, just give us a long without a map.
[22:05]
B
Should we take a quick break?
[22:07]
C
Yeah, let's. This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Lisa. Okay, here's what happened. Lisa reached out and they're like, hey, do you want to try one of our beds? So you could talk about it as part of the ads that you're going to be reading. And I was like, okay, sure. We'll see how it goes. So my son ended up needing a bed because he was aging out of the crib that he was in. So we got him a twin Lisa mattress that came in a nice box, unboxed it, put it on a bed frame, and poof. Suddenly he had a bed. And I ran into a problem. I was instantly incredibly jealous of his bed. It is this super relaxing, amazing bed that he is through the roof, excited about. But every time I lie in it to, like, read him stories or whatever, I'm like, I I gotta be real. I kind of want this bed. So well done, Leesa. Leesa has a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep. Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. And Leesa has been tested and awarded best hybrid mattresses by New York Times Wirecutter and is exclusively featured by West Elm as their Go to mattress partner. If all that sounds good to you, you should go to Lisa.com for 20% off plus get an extra $50 off with promo code Besties exclusive to our listeners. That's L EE E S a.com promo code besties for 20% off plus an extra $50 off. Show your support for the show and let them know we sent you after checkout Lisa.com promo code besties.
[23:43]
B
We were going to discuss Pathologic 3. That is what we decided at the end of the last episode. But Chris was sort of our man in the field on that title and was not able to make it to the recording today.
[23:54]
C
Yeah, I tried playing a little bit, but I got motion sick from the first person sequences. I think it might just be the FOV or something, but it was weird.
[24:03]
B
I'd like to circle back to it because it does look cool. But I think we're going to talk about the new Animal Crossing stuff instead, right?
[24:09]
C
Yeah.
[24:10]
A
You guys, the newest Horizons.
[24:11]
C
I haven't tried it yet, but Animal Crossing was updated for Switch two. But a lot of the features I know came to the original Switch as Well.
[24:19]
B
Yes. Yeah. 3.0 update came out at the same time as The Nintendo Switch 2 edition of Animal Crossing, which you can upgrade to if you have the original for $5. Which seems so weird. Like some kind of consistency on this thing would be great because sometimes it's a $10 thing, sometimes if you have a Nintendo Switch online account, it just gives you the upgrade for free.
[24:44]
C
Yeah.
[24:44]
B
And then this one is just a five. It's just going to slide a fiverr. But the Switch 2 Edition stuff is like mouse controls, I think 12 player multiplayer, obviously some performance enhancements, game chat, like being able to see your chat mouse controls.
[25:00]
A
I didn't know that was part of it.
[25:01]
B
No, because I was mostly playing the Switch 1 edition for the streams because I couldn't do the Switch 2 without destroying my son's island.
[25:08]
C
But it makes you know you're just using it, I think mostly for designing pixel art and shit like that, which makes sense. That's cool.
[25:16]
B
Yeah. But I would say the exciting stuff, the cool stuff is all in the 3.0 update, which is free.
[25:22]
C
There's a hotel.
[25:23]
B
Yeah. It adds a hotel to the island. It seems sort of redundant with the Happy Home Designer stuff.
[25:28]
C
That was my immediate thought as well. Was it Happy Home, the island thing right where you were designing?
[25:33]
B
Happy Home Designer was a standalone 3DS game that took away the life sim parts of Animal Crossing and instead was just like, you're just designing houses for people.
[25:41]
C
But that was also the DLC for Animal Crossing.
[25:43]
B
It was also the DLC for Animal Crossing New Horizons, which I realized I had not played. I installed it and got a letter like, hey, are you ready to become a Happy Home Designer? And I was like, oh, nope. But this is like that. But you're decorating hotel rooms to match certain themes. And then new visitors will come and stay on your island. You'll see villagers who are not at the campsite, not one of your permanent residents, just like roll up and you can pick their outfits for them, which is a cool thing to do at a resort. And it's neat, it's cute. The biggest thing that Juice and I did together with Travis on a stream just the other day is the slumber island. That is, I think, the most sort of exciting part of the update. Are you familiar with that at all, Russell?
[26:30]
C
Is that the. Create your own, do whatever the fuck you want. There's no real impact or anything.
[26:36]
A
Yeah, it's a creative mode. Right. So it's like if Minecraft, you know, like where you can pull out whatever and lay down whatever and there's not an economy to worry about.
[26:46]
C
Does it only pull from the recipes or items that you have?
[26:52]
B
Yes, it only pulls from things that are in your catalog, so things that you have picked up before or crafted before. But it also lets you like. The creative mode comparison is super apt because, like, you can also just put down a tree. You can just like a tree and.
[27:07]
A
You can pick it back up in the same. Like, you don't have to get an axe or a shovel or whatever. Like you just pick it up like an iron.
[27:12]
B
Yeah, everything's. Everything's pretty. Pretty easy in that regard.
[27:15]
A
I do wish moving around still sucks. Moving around, turning stuff, turning the items and replacing the items. It's like, it's not a fun way of doing it. And there's got to be a better way because it's like, it is not enjoyable to do like this. There is a better way.
[27:29]
B
And it's. Whenever you are decorating your house, you can get an upgrade with your. With your nook miles from like the terminal at City hall, you can get an upgrade that gives you access to like a decorator mode. And what that does is like, gives you a grade, lets you drag and drop stuff around, turn it around with ui, not with like your guy. And it's amazing. It's great. It's a really, really great.
[27:52]
A
It's not the default in this mode.
[27:53]
B
Well, they, for whatever reason, when you're outside.
[27:56]
C
Yeah, I think it was probably designed for indoors and the engine, whatever the fuck.
[28:01]
B
I think it would have been great if they could make that work. Because what is so cool about Slumber Islands is that it removes all the restrictions of things you're not allowed to do when you have someone over on your island. When you're playing Animal Crossing New Horizons, you have someone over on your island, you cannot put a new piece of furniture down. You cannot move a piece of furniture. You can't add water features or land parcels or you really can't touch your island at all. And I think the idea there is, well, it'd be too easy to grief someone or trap them in a thing or whatever. Having access to all of those tools, being able to like, put down furniture, move stuff around instantly, build bridges and inclines, pick up trees, put down trees, all of that stuff simultaneously with other players is fucking fun. It is madcap as hell.
[28:54]
C
What did you guys focus on doing?
[28:56]
B
We split the island.
[28:57]
A
Well, you can watch our stream folks if you want, but I'll say that what we did is we had a little island that we split into four quadrants and there was like a shared area in the southeast. And then we each took one of the other three quadrants and just kind of did whatever we felt like. For example, I made a toilet museum. So I took out everything I had that could be a toilet and made a little toilet museum. And then the boys came and visited it. And then we took another 10 minutes. You can set a timer in the game like you set a timer in game. Then they came and, like worked on the toilet museum for a while and we. I mean that, that, that. I mean like that.
[29:32]
B
And it was really great.
[29:34]
A
Same shit you do in Minecraft, you know, like, I'm gonna build a house and burn it down. I mean, that kind of makes sense.
[29:40]
B
The thing. There's other stuff that like the update adds, like some quality of life stuff that is like, frankly, bonkers that it they needed to add. Yeah, you can craft multiple items at the same time and you can automatically craft with materials in your home storage without having to pull it out every time you Ridiculous. That's so ridiculous. Right, but they fixed that. That's better now. But the biggest thing is I feel like this is showing a version of this game that I adore. That is where it should be. When you leave your slumber island, it's like you can save it and you have three save slots that you can pull down. But then next time we want to play it, I have to go and get in bed and go to my slumber island and start the room and then open up the gates and then they can join me in the gates and then I can save. And it's like its own self contained thing. Right. It's not like the island we share. It's not like whereas, you know, get me a dedicated server for Enshrouded or Minecraft or like any of these other open world survival craft games which obviously Animal Crossing is not that genre but there are definitely cozy games like that that are doing exactly this. Yeah. Where it's like you have the keys to the kingdom, you can do what you want in this game and it won't be so like so tightly controlled so as to squeeze some of the the fun out of.
[31:07]
C
Really makes me very, very curious about what this Nintendo MMO is going to be like. That they've been basically testing for the last. I mean I'm sure they've been making for years, but last two or so years we've been hearing rumblings of beta tests and things like that that are under NDA about like Nintendo first party MMO with like no franchise attached to it and like what that means. I mean I'm sure it's their answer to Roblox, but what that means with the context of knowing Nintendo is like so rigid with what they allow people to do versus not.
[31:40]
B
Yeah.
[31:41]
A
I also at this point I tend to wonder if Nintendo is like holding stuff back because their schedule has become so iterative. Like it almost makes you wonder like well, we got to hold something back for the next Animal Crossing on the next platform and the next time we re release it like where a lot of these games that are released by indies I think want to be platforms, you know, where the game itself is like you're just building onto it forever. I think Nintendo is still in that iterative mindset where like well, when Animal Crossing 10 comes out we gotta be able to have.
[32:12]
C
Well yeah, they were doing that. I mean they had the online. I mean I guess they still do. I haven't touched it in forever. But they have the online Animal Crossing which obviously doesn't Die per se. But you're right, I think with the console.
[32:22]
B
What are you talking about?
[32:23]
C
The, there's an online. The. Sorry, the mobile Animal Crossing.
[32:27]
B
Oh, Pocket. No, they did shut that down. That only exists. Yeah, that. That only exists as a offline. No, they. They released an offline version of the game that you can buy and it's like full price game but got it won't go away, I guess.
[32:41]
C
Yeah, yeah. So like that's their version of it. I do agree with you, Justin. Like there's an element of that. There's also an element of like I think that for the next few years they're gonna fill the gaps in their release schedule with just like here's Luigi's Mansion 3 switch to Edition and maybe it adds one little mode and 60 frames a second, whatever it is. So you're gonna see that level of iteration as well.
[33:04]
A
Dude, what Griffin said, I think, and I'm thinking about it more as we say. I think that what Griffin said about all that stuff being confusing and being kind of a moving target about like this cost $5 to. I think is largely because Nintendo thinks that this is the way forward for the future and they're trying to see how they make the most money off of it. Like I think that every one of these is a test balloon. Like the reason why it keeps changing is because I think they're trying to figure out the most profitable way of doing it. Because this kind of iteration makes sense for Nintendo where like it may not for a lot of other companies but like you know you're gonna buy the next Amble Crossing, you know you're gonna buy the next Switch thing. You know you're gonna buy the console. You know, like they feel like they have you pretty much.
[33:48]
B
You know, I think I would. The thing I would push back though is that like almost all the stuff that is worth doing, worth coming back and playing Animal Crossing for is in the free 3.0 update. Which they said after the 2.0 update, like that's it. And then they I guess changed their, their mind. Maybe they needed something to like accompany this switch to Edition to kind of like push, push some more sales of that. But like it's a ton of content for free for the game.
[34:14]
A
But you're talking about all this ridiculous quality of life stuff that is included in there. That should have been for the. They're.
[34:19]
B
It's Nintendo.
[34:20]
A
They know what would make it better.
[34:22]
B
Better.
[34:23]
A
They know it would make it easier to play.
[34:25]
B
It's, it's. I mean this is The. This is the, I think, agony of being sort of like a fan of Nintendo stuff. And I think Pokemon fans probably feel it most acutely of just like, we know what the fuck is up. Like, we know what would be good. And we know you want to skip.
[34:40]
C
All the cutscenes and click through dialogue really fast.
[34:44]
B
Well, I mean, and also, like, a million other sort of granular things or quality of life things that are just, like, not being prioritized because traditionally people have had the patience to stick it out. And I don't know, I think that that is less true for Animal Crossing, but it is still, like, I don't know if you told me tomorrow. Yeah, and they're making the sequel, and it's gonna come out next year. I think anybody who is a fan of the first game would be like, okay, I could sit down and write 100 things that they should do better or differently to get on par with, you know, where the rest of the industry's at.
[35:22]
C
But at least it's free.
[35:24]
B
It is free, and it is nice to go back to. I actually went back to playing Animal Crossing about a month ago. Started playing with Henry, and it's been. It was very, very fun to go back and play a thing that. To have nostalgia for something that is 6 years old at this point and also a relic of a very challenging time for our planet is really a. It's a sensory experience.
[35:53]
C
Yeah, we went back and started playing it. Don't want to play with my son anymore because it's by far the most exhausting game I play with him because he wants me to, like, verbally tell him every single piece of text that shows up on screen. And there's so much fucking dialogue and menus and nothing. I want to teach my son everything. But I also have had a long day and can't read for an hour and a half.
[36:15]
B
Christ, you just want to take pictures of Pokemon. No words required.
[36:19]
C
Yeah, no kidding. Mission accomplished. Okay, we have some reader mail. This letter comes from Sir Lester. Sir Lester writes, I'm old and British, so when licensed movie games are mentioned, I immediately think of Ocean Software. Not a name I imagine means much to the rest of the world, but it was huge in British gaming in the 80s. If a movie came out back then, it was almost certain that Ocean would have released the game license off of it. They're usually very enjoyable. I have fondest memories firing up the ZX Spectrum and playing the Robocop games. The movie, the Untouchables, Red Heat Platoon, countless others. The fact that it was a Platoon game.
[36:57]
B
It was all right, we had that one. I've never seen the movie, but I definitely played Platoon on nes developed by Ocean Software.
[37:03]
C
I'm sure it was very authentic to the movie.
[37:05]
B
Ocean Software is one where like as soon as you said the name, my brain produced an ancient file of the logo of Ocean Software because it is like peak 90s, like Microsoft Word ass preset stuff. Yeah, they had a lot of fucking games, man. Yeah, Weapon, Miami Vice, they had.
[37:29]
C
Apparently Navy Seals and Nightbreed got pretty good games.
[37:32]
B
Oh damn. They made cool world. That game is truly awful.
[37:36]
A
Yeah, they had a lot of misses that actually is gonna. Can I do an honorable mention that ties into this and I'll come and we can do the rest later. But I've been messing around this week with Amiga games because I never got into the Amiga. A lot of those computer things, other than if it wasn't on DOS, I didn't really mess with it. So C64, Amiga, the British stuff obviously all missed me. So I got into Amiga and there's this really cool project called AmigaVision. It's at Amiga Vision and it is an emulator that has been configured to have a really cool, well configured front end for browsing the Amiga library. So this is a standalone Amiga emulator that also has its own front end that organizes these games with recommendations and by year and by genre and by all like with history and all. This kind of developer, it has pre configured settings for like how to scale the pixels and stuff so it looks good on modern displays. You still have to find your own. Yeah, I was gonna ask, but if you go to archive.org and look for them, I bet it's a huge repository. You'll find them. You can figure it out. All right. Also, the conversation of emulation I think has gotta get a little bit past legal and illegal. When most of these things are abandonware. Like you can't get them, you can't buy them, whatever. I think that these, like if you. This is like a purely kind of a conservation play, but it's a huge massive library. Stuff I've never checked out before. It's a really cool way of experiencing it. I actually installed it on my Mr. Because my wife got me a lovely little Sony Trinitron CRT for Christmas. So I hooked it up with that and I've been messing around with that. It's a real fun way of digging through an old catalog.
[39:38]
B
I do want to check that out.
[39:40]
C
I'll jump back to the reader mail real quick. We have one more licensed game that someone mentioned. James writes, my favorite licensed game as a kid was Dick Tracy on the nes. Not in its out of the box form, but with a couple of game Genie codes. It actually makes it playable. It was actually quite enjoyable when you weren't dying every 30 seconds. Good music and surprisingly large city to enjoy. I'd just drive around sometimes finding new locations that I'd visit later.
[40:03]
A
I don't think people understand, like, I don't think kids who didn't grow up or even like adults who didn't grow up playing a lot of games in the 80s, everybody was cheating all the time. Like you had to cheat. The games were hard and bad. Like they were broken. And you had to like Contra had a code that gave you 30 men. Everyone did that. Do you know why? Because you needed 30 guys to play Contra. It's hard as fuck. Yeah, we all cheated. The game Genie was a. Did people know what the game Genie. It was a half of an NES cartridge and you jam your NES cartridge in it and then you jam the game Genie in the NES and then you put in secret codes that would have your genie.
[40:43]
B
Yeah.
[40:44]
C
I don't know the science behind the Game Genie and I can't wrap my head around it because I bet you.
[40:50]
B
If you learned the science behind the game genie, you would be shocked at how kind of like brutal and simple it is. Where it's like we make the metal pins touch other metal pins to make Mario jump higher like it's pretty.
[41:04]
A
It's basically giving shock therapy to Mario. We're just like touching different parts of Mario's brain to see what makes him.
[41:09]
B
Yeah. It's not serious.
[41:11]
A
Forget that you can die. Okay, good. Perfect.
[41:13]
B
It's not counter programming knuckles in real time. It's like it shunts a hot wire into the cartridge that makes it so that you have 99 malicious code. Yes.
[41:25]
C
If someone in the comments wants to explain to me how to Game Genie works, that'd be great. I'm looking forward to reading that. I think that's it for reader mail. I had. I had an old honorable mention that I want to call out what the game is. Illusion of Gaia.
[41:39]
B
Yeah, baby.
[41:40]
C
Which I have never played before because I thought it was. I thought it was a turn based game. I got it right here. Oh, you got a physical. Griffin has a physical Snes God.
[41:50]
B
Yeah. When I play Illusion of Gaia, it's legit.
[41:54]
C
I do too. And that's why I'm playing Illusion of Gaia.
[41:56]
B
Fucking sure, dude.
[41:59]
C
Yeah, it's neat and weird and interesting and it does remind me you made the comparison to Actraiser. I was talking about Actraiser last week in the way that there's really two games and they sort of bounce between each other. One game feels kind of close to a Final Fantasy ish exploration, talk to people game. And then the other game is a Zelda style action game.
[42:21]
B
Right.
[42:21]
C
And the two of them kind of bounce between and suddenly I'm transforming into like a large man and I don't know why, but really cool pixel art and great music and just like the game feels and the way that it.
[42:34]
B
My favorite thing about Quintet games is how they use almost all the same sound effects. So like you'll play Soul Blazer and you'll hear like a sound effect from Illusion of Gaia that was also an Actraiser.
[42:44]
C
Yeah. The UI elements are also pretty consistent. You'll see a lot of that stuff as well. Yeah, it's a really weird game.
[42:51]
B
It's so fucking weird. It's like what if there was a little boy who had telepathy and it was a fantasy world, but it was also real Earth and you were having to go collect crystals from the seven Wonders of the World.
[43:02]
C
I don't think I realized that's what was going on. I mean, I'm only probably six hours in, so I don't.
[43:07]
B
Yeah, I mean it's. It is. I mean, but that makes sense.
[43:10]
C
They're talking about Inca rules.
[43:11]
B
Yeah. Like you go to, you know, Angkor Wat and you go to the. The Great pyramids and those are now Zelda dungeons. Basically. It's just a fucking rad idea for.
[43:21]
C
A game so ambitious, especially for back then running on the snes. It was really wild.
[43:26]
B
Yeah.
[43:29]
C
You have anything Griffin you want to call out for?
[43:31]
B
I've been playing a lot of a game that we can't talk about yet that is embargoed.
[43:37]
C
Oh yeah.
[43:38]
B
Honestly, I've spent almost all my time playing mio, so that has been the main thing I've been doing in my very, very brief windows of leisure time. I did get on Apple Arcade a game that is called, I believe it's called Power Wash Simulator. And I did get it mostly because Justin went beast mode so hard, but also because I wanted to draw my own conclusions. And I will say I don't think I would play it on my computer. I don't think I would play it on my Rog ally X. But as a thing that I can turn on my phone when I'm sitting on A bench outside of Henry's school, waiting for him to come outside with his teacher for five minutes. And I can power wash, you know, a bungalow. That's all right. That feels pretty good to just kind of vibe out with that.
[44:26]
A
I have great memories of Henry's dad. Yeah, he. He would show up early to pick his son up, and he would actually power wash the school. I mean, it was only five minutes at a time, but, like, the gesture was really meaningful and he got a lot out of it and the building was cleaner as a result.
[44:41]
B
I'm currently power washing a playground. And you're not.
[44:44]
A
You're podcasting. Don't.
[44:46]
B
Well, in the game, the level I'm on the playground, and there's a moment where I was climbing under a slimy, grimy slide and I was power blasting, you know, the underside of it, and the nasty gloopy drip drops were falling right on me. And I thought, like, I'm glad I'm not doing this for real. I'm glad I'm doing it. And again, no, I get why people like it. It is not the progression hooks, or if you want to call it that, like, there's a level of. It feels like almost irony to it, but it is very chill to start with. A house that is covered in dirt, and then as you wipe your finger across it, the dirt magically disappears.
[45:20]
C
Grif, do you think, here's my approach on power wash and why, usually, after about five hours or so, I usually bounce off of them. In addition, I know acknowledging everything that Justin said last year about his disdain for powerwash simulator, I think that the game, in my opinion, gets less fun the more complexities they add to it.
[45:41]
B
Absolutely.
[45:42]
C
And they have no way to increase the difficulty over time, apart from, like, you have to move this fucking girder around so you can walk on top of the roof.
[45:50]
B
Yeah.
[45:50]
C
And that shit does not appeal to me at all. So I kind of just want to stand and do easy mailboxes and stuff like that. Like, that's my jam.
[45:57]
B
Also want to shout out. The boyfriend is back on Netflix Season 2. This is the extremely, I would say, Terrace House, vibey Japanese dating show where I think seven gay men between the ages of, like, 20 and 40 live in a house together and have to run a coffee shop. The first season was at. I forget what city it was in. It was like a beachy sort of destination. And now they're out in the snowy mountains having to run a coffee shop and.
[46:28]
C
And they're picking people to.
[46:31]
B
Picking people to go work With. There has not been any kissing so far that I have seen. But it is. In so many ways, this show is the heir apparent to the Terrace House kingdom. Also because it has one of the commentators from the original Terrace House panel. But it is. It's just a chill watch. It's a pleasant wintertime watch so far. I do feel like I have to. I'm like three episodes in. I should have put this, you know, warning before. Any time I talked about Terrace House in the past, but maybe this season goes to some weird, bad places. I don't know, man. But where I'm at now, it's nice to. Nice to be back.
[47:08]
C
There is something interesting that it didn't occur to me until just now the, like divide between commentator and not in reality tv. Like, obviously Survivor doesn't really have a.
[47:17]
A
Commentator, but a lot of Japanese construction.
[47:20]
B
Yeah, it's Japanese. Yeah. A lot of Korean and Japanese reality shows we watch have. Have had that.
[47:26]
C
What's the other? Big Brother? Doesn't that have commentators or.
[47:28]
B
No, I've never watched Big Brother.
[47:31]
A
No, there is a host. I think that, like in. I think we have seen more active narration in, especially in like the Netflix reality shows, but that idea of like checking back in with friends who are watching the same show as you, it does not. That feels like a very, like, non.
[47:49]
B
I think it would be tonally pretty confusing to audiences who have not. Because it is like when we started watching Terrace House when we were in the hospital after Henry was born was when we started watching that show and, you know, they would cut to a panel. It was so. It was strange because we were not. We had not watched a show that had that before. Right. This idea of we've got the after show, we've got the companion podcast where we talk about. Right. Like Bob the Drag Queen and Boston Robb have a traitors podcast that they do like instead of that, if they just like between every, you know, commercial break, where a commercial break would go and cut to a studio audience where people would talk about what just happened. People who are funny and charming.
[48:32]
A
That's also. I mean, but that's kind of a British construction too, right? That divide of like a panel and like an in the field kind of thing. Like, that's a very. That's not a construction. We have a lot over here.
[48:41]
B
It requires a certain. There is genuinely a certain type of celebrity, a certain type of performer entertain like this, you know, talent in the Japanese sort of entertainment industry where like, you could. It doesn't matter what discipline you're in you could be a comedian, you could be, like a fashion blogger, you could be a musician or an actor or whatever, and also have this other talent where, like, you're just good on camera and quick on your feet and you can think of funny stuff to say when talking about a show. And I. Almost all the shows that we have watched, and we've watched, like a ton of Japanese and Korean reality programming at this point. Like, they're all great. And so it's like, does that exist here? Like, how do you ensure that you are, like, hiring a team of people who are, I don't know, collaborative in that way and genuinely invested in the thing that they are talking about? You have to seem like you are a huge fan of the show that you're commenting.
[49:37]
C
Whenever they've attempted it, it's always felt very rigid or strict.
[49:41]
B
Yeah, right. This is not like, I hope this is not reading, like, snooty. Well, I only watch. I watch subs, not dubs. Like, it's truly not that. It's an interesting sort of, like, I don't know, pop cultural divide of sort of what. What Western reality TV audiences are used to, you know, versus what?
[50:03]
C
Or even, like, watching the, like, Western take on Taskmaster, which obviously friend of the show Ron Funches was in that.
[50:10]
B
Yeah.
[50:10]
C
You could see that they're struggling to, like, jam. What is really. It doesn't always Translate into a 22 minute thing. Yeah, yeah. So my hope is maybe Western audiences or Western producers will learn some lessons from that stuff because obviously so many.
[50:25]
B
Shows, there's a blue million things that they, I think would. Would. Could try doing differently that may or may not be better, but, you know, would be worth a shot for sure. Juice, you got anything?
[50:38]
A
Well, I mentioned Amiga Vision.
[50:39]
B
Oh, I see.
[50:40]
C
Yeah, he jumps.
[50:40]
B
Jumps ahead.
[50:41]
A
Yeah.
[50:42]
C
What's your favorite Amiga game?
[50:44]
A
Give me a. I haven't liked any.
[50:46]
B
Of them yet, but it's cool to. Yeah, sure.
[50:50]
C
All right. Well, it's something.
[50:51]
B
They're so. They're so old, Russ. They don't have, like, cool graphics.
[50:54]
C
I was gonna say, like, when you talked about Amiga, I was like, I'm not playing that shit. Okay. I wanted to thank some patrons over@patreon.com thebesties we have Maggie, we have Sean H, we have Justin C. And we have Snacks Hyena. Thank you for being patrons. Y' all can be patrons over there. We appreciate everyone that's already a patron. We have a new restyz coming at you in the coming week, new bracket battles coming first week of February. All sorts of fun stuff on there. So please join us for that party.
[51:27]
A
Nice. Well, that's gonna do it for us for this week. Oh, except what do we do next week?
[51:32]
C
Well, Justin, we're playing a game called Cairn, which is a game about climbing.
[51:35]
A
Sounds good. Well, we'll join us again next week for that.
[51:39]
B
For the besties.
[51:40]
A
Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick.
[51:42]
B
The world's best games? Besties?

Summary7 min read

The Besties – "The First Great Game of 2026"

Podcast Date: January 23, 2026
Hosts: Chris Plante, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Russ Frushtick

Episode Overview

This episode kicks off The Besties' 2026 discussions by diving into “Memories in Orbit” (MIO), a new search-action platformer from French developer Duz Diziam. The hosts extensively break down the game’s influences, mechanics, aesthetics, and quirks. They also discuss the Animal Crossing 3.0 update and reader mail about classic licensed games, with side adventures into retro emulation and Japanese reality TV. True to the show’s tone, the episode is filled with playful banter, gaming insight, and a heavy dose of nostalgia.

Main Discussion: Memories in Orbit (MIO)

[02:42] – [22:05]

What is Memories in Orbit?

Russ describes it as a minimalist, pretty, and challenging “search action” game, comparable in vibe and structure to Ori and the Blind Forest.

"Memories in Orbit is a search action game from a French developer that is minimalist and vibey and pretty to look at and also challenging." (03:00, Russ)
You play as Mio, a small autonomous robot exploring a derelict space ark, encountering broken-down AIs and robots.

Atmosphere, Aesthetics & Emotional Tone

Griffin and Russ praise the melancholic world, the way visuals and soundtrack evoke a sense of loss and sadness for broken robots.

"You're going around and you're seeing this kind of ship where everything has lost its purpose and the robots are all dying… It's really sad." (05:12, Griffin)
Justin jokes about the emotional pull of broken robots, despite his general wariness of AI.

Core Mechanics & Traversal

The game stands out by giving players powerful movement options from the start (like double jump), and unveiling less typical Metroidvania upgrades:
- Tendrils for climbing on any surface (temporarily)
- Hovering across gaps
The traversal is highly momentum and physics-based:

"You start with the double jump. ... Instead the abilities you get are… tendrils… you can climb on any surface and go on ceilings and walls, but only for a limited amount of time… [plus] a hover ability." (07:08, Griffin) "It's physics-based in the way that even like Silksong is not. Ori is very apt..." (08:23, Russ)

Level Design & Search

Exploration is rewarding but unorthodox. The group highlights how geometry and the game's “search” element make you experiment constantly.

"I felt like I had to keep challenging the geometry or like fighting against the design... I thought that was kind of cool." (09:09, Justin)
Areas are open-ended, rarely locking the player to a single region:

"I didn't have the moment … where I would see the door that I can't get to… Almost always, there's some way to do it." (10:09, Griffin)
“Sequence breaking” (reaching unintended zones via momentum tricks) is often possible, making experimentation feel rewarding.

Difficulty & Onboarding

The intro is punishing:

“The first boss, you face, pretty fucking hard. You basically have no upgrades.” (10:57, Russ)
Currency/Progression confusion:
The “nacre” system (in-game currency) is opaque, with unclear mechanics for banking, spending, and map unlocking. This frustrates the hosts:

“Playing the game without a map sucks. It's not good. ... Probably the biggest reason I didn't make more progress...” (12:38, Justin) “It's such a weird stylistic choice and it feels half-baked.” (12:57, Griffin)

Accessibility/Assist Options

The game adds three assist modes:
- Decaying bosses: Bosses get weaker the more you die.
- Pacifist mode: Enemies don’t attack unless attacked.
- Ground Healing: Heal by standing on the ground.
"I've found those to be really smart ways of making the game… less punishing without really throwing the difficulty curve completely out the window." (20:43, Griffin)

Core Critiques & Praise

While platforming, momentum, and discovery are praised, the progression system (currencies and upgrades) is underwhelming compared to the traversal:

“The carrot [of item rewards]… wasn’t really there for me.” (16:32, Griffin) “The synergy … just isn't in place here.” (16:57, Russ)
Russ enjoys the “little person, big world, no handholding” aesthetic:

“That's my jam... but I know for people that aren't necessarily going to want to throw themselves at it… it can be frustrating.” (17:01, Russ)

Memorable Quotes

On dying to get the map:

"Just die a bunch, get the map. Then you can really play the game and enjoy it." (21:34, Griffin)
On learning its pace:

“I started enjoying it a lot more when I started meeting it on its own level, rather than trying to extrapolate mechanics ... from other search action games.” (20:56, Justin)

Quick Pivot: Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 3.0 Update & Switch 2 Edition

[23:42] – [35:52]

Update and Upgrade Details

The 3.0 update is free and introduces a hotel to the island, a creative “Slumber Island” mode (similar to Minecraft’s creative mode), and significant quality-of-life features (like batch crafting, storage crafting).
The Switch 2 Edition ($5 upgrade, with confusing pricing strategy) adds 12-player multiplayer, mouse controls, and more.

Slumber Island

Creative mode allows for unrestricted item placement, creativity, and collaborative play.

"Having access to all of those tools, being able to like put down furniture, move stuff around instantly ... with other players is fucking fun." (28:00, Griffin)
The only limitation: players can only use items already in their catalog.

Persistent Frustrations

Movement and object placement remain frustratingly clunky outside, compared to the streamlined indoor “decorator mode”.

“Moving around ... is not a fun way of doing it. There is a better way.” (27:15, Justin)
Persistent suspicion that Nintendo withholds features for future monetization or iteration.

“Nintendo thinks that this is the way forward for the future and they're trying to see how they make the most money off of it... every one of these is a test balloon.” (33:04, Justin)
Despite the quirks, nostalgia for Animal Crossing remains strong.

Quick Hits and Honorable Mentions

Licensed Game Nostalgia

[36:15] – [41:38]

Listener Mail: Reminiscences on Ocean Software’s 80s movie licenses (Robocop, Platoon on ZX Spectrum).
Classic cheating discussed—NES Game Genie was essential and “everybody was cheating all the time.”

“You had to cheat. The games were hard and bad… everyone did that.” (40:03, Justin)
Notable games: Dick Tracy, Illusion of Gaia, Actraiser, and the “honorable mention” experience of discovering Amiga emulation with AmigaVision.

Modern & Retro Gaming Sidebars

AmigaVision — Justin shares his journey importing and exploring the Amiga library using a curated front-end and a CRT monitor.

"The conversation of emulation… is a conservation play, but it's a huge, massive library. Stuff I've never checked out before." (38:03, Justin)
Apple Arcade Power Wash Simulator — Griffin discusses how chill it is as a bite-sized mobile experience, but how complexity reduces the core vibe:

“The game gets less fun the more complexities they add to it.” (45:41, Russ)

Reality TV & Commentary Panels

[47:08] – [50:54]

Griffin highlights “The Boyfriend” (Japanese reality/dating show on Netflix), noting the difference Japanese shows have with live commentary panels compared to American fare.
The group discusses how this "panel" format is common in East Asian reality TV but rare in the West, and speculate on why this meta-conversation structure hasn’t caught on.

Notable Quotes & Moments

"It's not a cold open. It's a very warm and misting open."
(00:59, Justin, after a bidet-themed intro)
"I want it to feel like a big guy was just, just on there. That's how I like it. Thank you."
(01:38, Griffin, joking about heated toilet seats)
"If you donate, die and give me 200 nacre, something cool happened. That's all it needed at the beginning—just give us along without a map."
(21:53, Russ, on MIO's messaging shortcomings)
"That's my jam. Like that clicks in a big way for me."
(17:01, Russ, on difficult, hands-off world design)

Episode Timestamps

| Segment | Topic Description | |-------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:42 – 22:05 | Memories in Orbit (MIO) – in-depth discussion | | 23:42 – 35:52 | Animal Crossing 3.0 update, Switch 2 Edition, player experiences | | 36:15 – 41:38 | Licensed games nostalgia, Game Genie, AmigaVision emulation | | 41:38 – 46:28 | Illusion of Gaia retrospective, game sound effects, retro RPG design | | 47:08 – 50:54 | Japanese reality TV, commentary panel structures, media culture differences | | 51:26 – 51:41 | Patreon thank-yous, upcoming game ("Cairn"), closing remarks |

Closing Notes & Upcoming Topics

The Besties thank several patrons and tease the next week’s game, Cairn, a game about climbing.
The show ends, as always, with the affirmation:

"Shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?"

TL;DR – Essential Listening

Memories in Orbit is a must-try for fans of experimental Metroidvanias, but expect a hands-off, sometimes punishing experience that rewards creative traversal and exploration more than traditional loot or stat progression.
Animal Crossing's latest update has meaningful creative and social potential, but Nintendo’s business decisions and persistent interface hassles continue to frustrate—though nostalgia smooths over many bumps.
The power of classic cheats like Game Genie and the delight of discovering old platforms, like the Amiga, still resonate with the hosts.
“The Boyfriend” and Japanese-style reality commentary panels provoke conversation around what works (and doesn’t) in international TV formats.

For anyone who missed this episode: expect candid critiques, a love of discovery (past and present), and a typical dose of the Besties’ warmth and wit.

Loading summary

Transcript255 lines

[00:00]
A
Oh, time to be real. Too late. I already was. Shit.
[00:08]
B
Shit.
[00:08]
A
It meant for the app. I got too real with you guys. You guys got anything real you want to say?
[00:14]
C
Yeah, I got something real to say. I. I know we went through a time and certainly that's still the case, that good Rust makes very good handheld gaming content. Things like that. But I found a new source.
[00:25]
A
Fact that you're calling him goodrus now.
[00:27]
B
Makes me very happy.
[00:27]
C
A new source for content. And it's a guy on YouTube who just tells me how my bidet seat works. And man, this guy knows his stuff.
[00:38]
A
Yeah.
[00:38]
C
We will drop a link in the newsletter post, but if you're looking for chief pro bidet content, because this is in the cult.
[00:47]
A
Like, we're not. This isn't in the show. So I don't know who you're talking to.
[00:51]
B
Like, is this not the cold open?
[00:53]
A
This is a cold open, but it's actually.
[00:54]
C
Let me just say, this is just.
[00:56]
A
Stuff we recorded randomly before the show started.
[00:59]
C
Yeah, I understand.
[00:59]
A
You know what I'm saying?
[01:00]
C
I do want to say it's actually not a cold open. It's a very warm and misting open. Yeah.
[01:05]
B
Sometimes my little son makes us unplug the bidet seat on our toilet downstairs because it makes a noise that freaks him out a little bit sometimes. And then I'll forget to plug it back in. And I'll come in, you know, for a middle of the night sesh, and I'll sit down and the seat is icy cold instead of wonderful warm. Cause I forgot to plug it in. Gives me a jump scare every time.
[01:25]
C
And it's like you're a caveman at that point.
[01:27]
B
It is like. Yeah.
[01:28]
C
On a cold seat, it's like you're traveling back. That's really the reason never to travel back in time. I know people are worried about changing history, but really gotta have a warm seat. You do not have a warm seat.
[01:39]
B
I want it to feel like a big guy was just. Just on there. That's how I like it. Thank you.
[01:45]
C
Yeah, you would have to sit on top of a fireplace in the past to have that experience. Not a good pooping spot.
[01:53]
B
Justin, it's too blue in your room.
[01:55]
A
That's not for them.
[01:58]
C
It's for us. Justin made it very blue.
[02:01]
A
I stole that magical gum.
[02:03]
C
It's his blue period. And now he's turning to a blueberry.
[02:06]
A
I'm turning violet. Violet. Is that better? So right now we can do a show. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best Game of the Week.
[02:35]
B
My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.
[02:38]
C
My name is Russ Trosik. I know the best game of the week.
[02:42]
A
This week we're talking about MIO or Memories in Orbit if you prefer. Russ, what's that? I was about to ask Chris what.
[02:50]
B
You throw in here.
[02:51]
C
Chris Russell Russ, what's no, I don't know if I can deal with this. Memories in Orbit is a search action game from a French developer that is very, I would say, minimalist and vibey and pretty to look at and also challenging.
[03:08]
A
We'll hear about a lot more of that right after this.
[03:12]
B
We all want to eat the good food. But a lot of us in this year 2026 don't have the time to prepare that good food because we are always on our grind set and we don't make enough room in our grind set for our nutrition and our eatin, do we? Well, good news. You can kill two birds with one stone and eat the bird and the bird is delicious. With factor. You will have to kill no birds with factor. I should make that abundantly clear. What they do is you go ahead and you pick meals that you want out of a rotating menu with over 100 meals to choose from every week. That's always sort of refreshing and changing and the food is ready to go in two minutes. No prep, no cleanup, no mental load. And they've got all kinds of great stuff this week. They got a grilled filet mignon and creamy parmesan shrimp. They got pot roast, shredded beef and mash. They got charred corn and shredded chicken cavatappi. I don't know if I said that right, but they've got so many different things. Regardless of what your dietary sort of restrictions or choices are, they've got something for you. So head over to Factor meals.com besties50off and use code besties50OFF to get 50% off your first Factor box plus free breakfast for one year offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor MIO Memories in Orbit from Duz Diziam.
[04:40]
C
He practiced so much before we started recording.
[04:43]
B
I did. I wanted to do a good job. Not one that was on my radar. I don't think it was on either of your guys. Well, maybe Russ, because you're sort of a rejection pervert.
[04:52]
C
I heard about it like 3 weeks ago just from, you know, through the grapevine, but that was it.
[04:58]
B
Yeah, just as sort of like a jumping off Point the feeling it gave me. The comparison I think is sort of most apt is Ori. Yes, the first Ori. The first Ori. Blind Forest.
[05:12]
C
Blind Forest was the first Ori.
[05:13]
B
The second was Will o' the Wisp. It is extraordinarily lovely. The game is, you are. You're a little guy Mio, who is a tiny autonomous unit in a big space ark that has started to fall apart. And you go all around this sort of like space ark that was transporting humans to a new habitable planet, but really you're just kind of seeing the computer robot parts of the ship and meeting AI who have really gone mad in the time that the ship has been falling apart. You're going around and you're seeing this kind of ship where everything has lost its purpose and the robots are all dying and pretty sad. And it hits that hard with the visuals and the music.
[06:03]
C
But I think you can.
[06:04]
A
Why are robots. Why are broken down robots so sad?
[06:07]
C
They're so sad. What purpose do they have?
[06:10]
B
That's it.
[06:11]
A
I like robots. Really. Like, I think they're kind of like. You know what I mean? Like in principle, fuck robots. But on the other spectrum of that, the broken ones are so sad.
[06:19]
B
I wish they.
[06:20]
C
Oh, they were made to pick apples and now they can't pick apples.
[06:24]
A
But who eats apples?
[06:26]
B
Nobody.
[06:27]
C
No one's sadder than that.
[06:28]
B
Not in this game. It really doesn't give you a lot. It gives you nothing when you see.
[06:33]
C
Yeah, I'm actually impressed that you were able to glean that much from what you played because I was like, there's robots here.
[06:39]
B
I've played a lot. I think I'm getting close to finishing Memories in orbit. It has really sort of captured my attention and pretty much all the kind of like gaming free time I have, I've been pouring into this one because it's really gotten its hooks in me. The reason I think the Ori comparison is apt is one just vibe like it really, really is. In the same way that Ori would just kind of like periodically just knock your socks off. Like you would come across some new thing, some new set piece, some cutscene that would just be like. That would just punctuate these challenging platforming sequences with a nice beautiful moment of repose. This game does that constantly and very, very, very effectively. But also it handles traversal in a way that is pretty unorthodox. I'd say just as like a. This is always kind of like a good binary. I feel like when talking about search action games is in memories, in Orbit. You start with the double jump. That's great. I love that shit. I don't have to go hunting for the double jump. I know that I've had it in every game. Instead the abilities you get are like you can climb wall, you form these tendrils that come out of your back and now you can climb on any surface and you can go on ceilings and walls, but only for a limited amount of time. Or you get a hover ability that lets you sort of get across long gaps. But the feel of it is just really physical and tangible. And it's not like now you have the high jump power. Instead you're thinking about like how to get around the ship by like using the architecture itself and trying to find like lines that you can get through with the power that you have.
[08:24]
C
It's physics based in the way that even like Silksong is not.
[08:27]
B
Yes, absolutely.
[08:27]
C
So Ori is very apt because you're flinging yourself using momentum to like get across gaps in ways that like most search action games do not do.
[08:37]
B
One of the first areas you come to in Memories of Orbit is frozen. And when you walk on the ice you pick up speed and momentum and it really drives it home pretty much right away. Like you feel like you're sequence breaking all the time. Like I felt like constantly I'm getting to a place I should not be able to get to because I ran across this ice. Got so fast, jumped across the whole room, did like an attack animation in the air that suspended me just enough so I can make it on this platform that I bet I'm not supposed to be at yet. It lets you do that kind of stuff a lot because it is not so, I don't know, analog with the movement.
[09:09]
A
It seems to really. It takes the search part of search action and I think it gamifies it like more than a lot of games do. Right. So it's not merely a mechanical sort of like following the map. You kind of have to. I don't know if this was your guys experience, but I felt like I had to keep challenging the geometry or like fighting against the design. And when I would do that, fight against that flow, then I would find things like it really was more of like a search having to like think outside the box a little bit and.
[09:38]
C
Try hidden caves and things like that.
[09:39]
A
Yeah, hidden caves or things that aren't very clearly part of the architecture that you can like make your way through that. I thought that was kind of cool. Like it really forced you to I think, slow down and really look at the environments.
[09:50]
B
It also does a great job of not locking you into, like, one area. And now you're going through there until you get the power and you beat the boss and now you're done. Once you get fast travel, this becomes a whole bunch easier. There's like a central nexus where you go and you can spend your currencies to buy some new stuff for your character, but you will go down an area and you'll find some crazy traversal power and then say, oh, wait, I needed that for the other area. Obviously that's not necessarily reinventing the wheel for search action games, but I feel like I didn't have the moment. That does happen in the genre a lot where I would see the door that I can't get to because I don't have the right power yet. I would see that door and I would think, like, how am I supposed to get up there? But if I spend enough time kind of thinking about it, almost always, there's some way to do it. There's some way to chain an attack in the air, to pause yourself just enough. There's so much tech to this game that is really, really rewarding. And probably, I think probably its most exciting feature is that I don't feel stuck ever. I just feel like it's all discovery pretty much all the time.
[10:57]
C
It definitely has the, like, thing that Silksong did, which was an introduction that I think is pretty punishing. Like, not super welcoming as an introduction. The first boss, you face pretty fucking hard. You basically have no upgrades. Yeah. And they do give you some, like, shortcuts that make the run back a little bit better. But it's still, I think, pretty harsh.
[11:24]
B
Yeah.
[11:24]
C
And they also don't give you, like, if you're not looking things up for this game, which you can do. The game wasn't out yet, so it's not like we even had the opportunity. But like the map, for example.
[11:35]
B
So, yeah, you don't start with a map. And that's cool. Love that. And then eventually, I mean, I think this is like a good. This is a thing that will help you enjoy the game.
[11:44]
C
Yeah.
[11:46]
B
This game does not have a souls like recovery mechanic for the currencies that you possess when you die. When you die, the nacre, which is the currency in the game that you have on you at the time, just immediately disappears. It goes into a pond, a magic spring right at the center of the world. And when you have done that enough times, you'll start to unlock some of the story of the game. And the map. And that is not really communicated to you at all.
[12:18]
C
Are there other unlocks that happen from just.
[12:21]
B
I've lost quite a bit of nacre to the magic spring, and I have not gotten any other. Just the map boost from them.
[12:26]
A
I'll also say that happened to me not through dying, but through making my way back there and just handing my naker.
[12:33]
C
Yeah.
[12:33]
A
Yeah.
[12:33]
B
You do have that option eventually. There's some signposts that lead to it, but, like, I don't know. Playing the game without a map sucks.
[12:39]
A
It's not good. By the way, that what you just said took forever. Probably the biggest reason I didn't make more progress in this game is because I was playing really carefully and not dying much.
[12:49]
B
Yeah.
[12:49]
A
And I wasn't going back to give my. It doesn't make it clear. You're supposed to take your naker back to that thing and. I don't know, man.
[12:58]
B
It's a weird. It's such a weird sort of stylistic choice and it. It feels a bit half baked.
[13:04]
A
There is a lot of ways people can spend their time.
[13:06]
B
Like.
[13:07]
A
And I feel like if you are. There's ways you can build difficulty that make it intentionally frustrating. And then there's ways you can build difficulty where the player is engaged in the process.
[13:19]
B
Yes.
[13:20]
A
And I feel like trying to punish people early on before they have understood the basic building blocks of the world. Because so many of these games, like, these search action games, are like the different mechanics on them, much like the souls are like variations on a theme. Right. So like in this one, the currency you can use to refill your armor. So that's like one option. You can use the naker for that, or you can go back to the guy and just give it to him, or you can die enough and it gets lost. None of this is clearly communicated in a way that you, like, understand. And I think that it's very convenient if you're designing a game to hide behind sort of like a false obfuscation as a way of building difficulty when you could signpost mechanics well and then build your difficulty in more humane ways. Because for me, these things are happening. I don't know the ramifications of them.
[14:13]
B
I don't.
[14:14]
A
It's not made clear. And I understand that can be like part of the mystery, but there's a lot of fun mysteries. But I don't think that, like, deciding what bullshit you call estus flasks is like a fun way of spending my time.
[14:24]
B
Yeah. I think that is. I think the reason they made the choice, right, is like, the ship is offline, everything's going wrong. You don't know what the fuck's going on. It's up to you to start kind of like patching this thing together. And so part of that is we're not going to tell you what is happening to this currency when you die, or how you're supposed to be using it, or how you're supposed to be getting your map or any of that. But when you die and you lose your nacre after you've revived the spring and you've gotten your map, that mechanic, I don't think has any impact at all. You just lose it. It's not like. It is like I was thinking, like, oh, they've done a new thing here where imagine in Dark Souls, when you died, instead of your souls disappearing, they went into a big meter. And when it hit certain breakpoints, you would get, oh, here's a benefit. So it's like, yeah, you died and you lost some stuff, but here's a.
[15:10]
C
Something for your effort.
[15:11]
B
But that mechanic doesn't really come back. It's just weird. And it is a really rough start to the game.
[15:17]
C
They do have, for what it's worth, if that sounds too punishing to you, there are mechanics similar to Silksong actually, where you can bank your naker so that you can basically, you crystallize it and there's no cost to that. So if you're able to go to this npc, they'll turn it into a rock. And then when you die, you just lose none of it. You will always have it.
[15:39]
A
See, that's. To me, once I found that guy, it's like, okay, so should I just hang around this guy?
[15:45]
B
I live here now.
[15:45]
A
Yeah, I'll live here and just keep collecting it. When do I have enough? I don't know. I don't know what I spend it on except refilling my arm.
[15:52]
B
I'm also at a point where I have more of that stuff than I know what to do with. And there's other currencies that I'm a bit more deficient in. But I think in general, the currency loop, the itemization of the game struggles a bit for me. That's its biggest flaw is there's a system where you are equipping these upgrades and you have a certain capacity.
[16:14]
C
Very near Automata esque. I know plan is not here, but.
[16:17]
B
I mean, there's a lot about this game that is very near Automata esque in a great way. The soundtrack fucking bangs constantly. It's crazy.
[16:25]
A
Animations on all the enemies are amazing. They look like robots that are teaching themselves how to walk with like whatever garbage parts.
[16:32]
B
They're really, really spectacular. But like I didn't feel the carrot very often. For me the carrots were like, oh shit. This, this new traversal ability is going to like really open things up for me. Yeah, it was less so for like here's an upgrade that whenever you use your zipline attack, your next attack is going to do a little bit of bonus damage and that's going to cost you 20 upgrade points. And it's like I don't feel like that's like, oh boy. That's really going to get me to the. That's really going to get me where I need to go.
[16:58]
C
Right. It didn't have the synergy that again like a silk song where you can clearly see how the items are interacting with one another. Where here it's just like a little bit of a stat boost. I agree with you. I think the why I was digging this and why my immediate thought was like adjustin or a plant would not be into this is because it does the like little person, big world, we're not going to give you any guidance, have quote unquote fun. And that's my like my jam. Like that clicks in a big way for me. But I know for people that aren't necessarily going to want to throw themselves at it, which I think is most people or at least a lot of people. Yeah, it can be frustrating but I feel like just the, you know, you talked about what's rewarding about exploring the world. Like not only getting those upgrade mobility things but just like walking into a new area. They did such a good job of differentiating the different biomes to really feel like this is vastly different from anything you've seen before. And suddenly like a new track kicks up of like lo fi beats to study to and I'm like, I'm fucking in. Like this is my fucking jam.
[18:06]
B
Yeah.
[18:07]
C
Despite some of the quirks which I agree aren't exclusively like this doesn't feel the best.
[18:12]
B
It's a shame because like I think the game is fantastic. I think it's really, really great and I think you are, you are engaging in an exercise of trust with a game like this when you start playing it, especially when it doesn't tell you fuck all about it of like it's gonna be worth it for me to figure out what's going on here and I think it is. But I think also if they had tightened up the gameplay on level seven, I think that it would have been. I think it would be a fucking masterpiece. I think it can hang. Cause it delivers constantly, sort of aesthetically and emotionally. And you know those moments of surprise and discovery where, like, you see a wall on the, like, far end of the ship and you think, I wonder if I can actually climb a rock around that and go outside the boundaries of it. And you do. And there's a thing out there just for super people in the super duper smart club like you. Like, that moment happens a lot. There's a lot. It's doing like, so, so, so, so well.
[19:06]
C
I also. It does something in combat that I've never seen before, which is it uses grapple points as like, instead of a dodge. Instead of like a. You do get a dodge later, but instead of like a typical dodge as a way to enhance your mobility, you'll like, constantly be like, latching on to dodge attacks of giant bosses, which I thought was like a neat thing that I hadn't seen a lot.
[19:29]
B
Great assist options too. Really, really great ways to tempt you.
[19:32]
C
Fuck with those. Did you, Justin, any of the exit options?
[19:35]
B
I have fucked with those. There's three options you can choose from to sort of like, make the game easier to play. One is decaying bosses. So it's just like kind of the opposite of Hades 2, where every time you die on a boss, the boss will be a little bit weaker by the time you fight it. One is pacifist mode, which makes it so that enemies won't attack you unless you attack them. I haven't messed around with that one, but the other one I think is really great, is called ground healing. You have a certain amount of pips of health, and when you lose those, you die and go back to the last respawn point. But what that one does is if you stand on the ground, if you're on the ground without jumping, you can be running around, walking around. As long as you're on the ground, you will regenerate one extra sort of health point. And then if you get hit and it goes away, as long as you stay on the ground for a little while, you can get that back. So, like, it's not overpowered. It's. If you're in a boss fight, odds are you're not going to be able to sort of stay put in that way. It's just a way to kind of like, make the more punishing exploration sequences a lot more, you know, bearable. So I've. I've. I found Those to be like, really smart ways of kind of like making the game a bit. A bit less punishing without really, like, throwing the difficulty curve, like, completely out the window.
[20:44]
C
It does seem like the kind of game that people who aren't necessarily like Hardcore Massacre people would enjoy. So it's really terrific that they put that stuff in there.
[20:55]
B
Much, much easier than Silksong.
[20:57]
A
Yeah. I think that I actually started. If I could give one piece of advice to people that do want to play it, like, I started enjoying it a lot more, I think, when I started meeting it on its own level, rather than trying to extrapolate mechanics and assumptions that I would make from other search action games like this. Trying to sort of take it one screen at a time, really, and like, thinking about it. Cause it is like, a lot of it is different, structured differently from a lot of games like this, especially the momentum stuff. I feel like it does feel like a secret that you will forget constantly. And then it's like, oh, that's right. Yes. Okay, thank you. Right, Momentum. Yes. Let me try.
[21:34]
B
Yeah, you really can. That's my advice is. I mean, first of all, just die a bunch. Get the map. Like, don't fuck around. Get the map. Then you can really play the game and enjoy it. But also, like, just doing things like jumping and attacking, doing a combo in the air on nothing, but, like, getting that extra inch and a half of, like, height is enough to get you in a lot of places that just.
[21:53]
C
If they were like, hey, if you donate, die and give me 200 nacre. Something cool happened. That's really all it needed at the beginning. Like, just give us a long without a map.
[22:05]
B
Should we take a quick break?
[22:07]
C
Yeah, let's. This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Lisa. Okay, here's what happened. Lisa reached out and they're like, hey, do you want to try one of our beds? So you could talk about it as part of the ads that you're going to be reading. And I was like, okay, sure. We'll see how it goes. So my son ended up needing a bed because he was aging out of the crib that he was in. So we got him a twin Lisa mattress that came in a nice box, unboxed it, put it on a bed frame, and poof. Suddenly he had a bed. And I ran into a problem. I was instantly incredibly jealous of his bed. It is this super relaxing, amazing bed that he is through the roof, excited about. But every time I lie in it to, like, read him stories or whatever, I'm like, I I gotta be real. I kind of want this bed. So well done, Leesa. Leesa has a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep. Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. And Leesa has been tested and awarded best hybrid mattresses by New York Times Wirecutter and is exclusively featured by West Elm as their Go to mattress partner. If all that sounds good to you, you should go to Lisa.com for 20% off plus get an extra $50 off with promo code Besties exclusive to our listeners. That's L EE E S a.com promo code besties for 20% off plus an extra $50 off. Show your support for the show and let them know we sent you after checkout Lisa.com promo code besties.
[23:43]
B
We were going to discuss Pathologic 3. That is what we decided at the end of the last episode. But Chris was sort of our man in the field on that title and was not able to make it to the recording today.
[23:54]
C
Yeah, I tried playing a little bit, but I got motion sick from the first person sequences. I think it might just be the FOV or something, but it was weird.
[24:03]
B
I'd like to circle back to it because it does look cool. But I think we're going to talk about the new Animal Crossing stuff instead, right?
[24:09]
C
Yeah.
[24:10]
A
You guys, the newest Horizons.
[24:11]
C
I haven't tried it yet, but Animal Crossing was updated for Switch two. But a lot of the features I know came to the original Switch as Well.
[24:19]
B
Yes. Yeah. 3.0 update came out at the same time as The Nintendo Switch 2 edition of Animal Crossing, which you can upgrade to if you have the original for $5. Which seems so weird. Like some kind of consistency on this thing would be great because sometimes it's a $10 thing, sometimes if you have a Nintendo Switch online account, it just gives you the upgrade for free.
[24:44]
C
Yeah.
[24:44]
B
And then this one is just a five. It's just going to slide a fiverr. But the Switch 2 Edition stuff is like mouse controls, I think 12 player multiplayer, obviously some performance enhancements, game chat, like being able to see your chat mouse controls.
[25:00]
A
I didn't know that was part of it.
[25:01]
B
No, because I was mostly playing the Switch 1 edition for the streams because I couldn't do the Switch 2 without destroying my son's island.
[25:08]
C
But it makes you know you're just using it, I think mostly for designing pixel art and shit like that, which makes sense. That's cool.
[25:16]
B
Yeah. But I would say the exciting stuff, the cool stuff is all in the 3.0 update, which is free.
[25:22]
C
There's a hotel.
[25:23]
B
Yeah. It adds a hotel to the island. It seems sort of redundant with the Happy Home Designer stuff.
[25:28]
C
That was my immediate thought as well. Was it Happy Home, the island thing right where you were designing?
[25:33]
B
Happy Home Designer was a standalone 3DS game that took away the life sim parts of Animal Crossing and instead was just like, you're just designing houses for people.
[25:41]
C
But that was also the DLC for Animal Crossing.
[25:43]
B
It was also the DLC for Animal Crossing New Horizons, which I realized I had not played. I installed it and got a letter like, hey, are you ready to become a Happy Home Designer? And I was like, oh, nope. But this is like that. But you're decorating hotel rooms to match certain themes. And then new visitors will come and stay on your island. You'll see villagers who are not at the campsite, not one of your permanent residents, just like roll up and you can pick their outfits for them, which is a cool thing to do at a resort. And it's neat, it's cute. The biggest thing that Juice and I did together with Travis on a stream just the other day is the slumber island. That is, I think, the most sort of exciting part of the update. Are you familiar with that at all, Russell?
[26:30]
C
Is that the. Create your own, do whatever the fuck you want. There's no real impact or anything.
[26:36]
A
Yeah, it's a creative mode. Right. So it's like if Minecraft, you know, like where you can pull out whatever and lay down whatever and there's not an economy to worry about.
[26:46]
C
Does it only pull from the recipes or items that you have?
[26:52]
B
Yes, it only pulls from things that are in your catalog, so things that you have picked up before or crafted before. But it also lets you like. The creative mode comparison is super apt because, like, you can also just put down a tree. You can just like a tree and.
[27:07]
A
You can pick it back up in the same. Like, you don't have to get an axe or a shovel or whatever. Like you just pick it up like an iron.
[27:12]
B
Yeah, everything's. Everything's pretty. Pretty easy in that regard.
[27:15]
A
I do wish moving around still sucks. Moving around, turning stuff, turning the items and replacing the items. It's like, it's not a fun way of doing it. And there's got to be a better way because it's like, it is not enjoyable to do like this. There is a better way.
[27:29]
B
And it's. Whenever you are decorating your house, you can get an upgrade with your. With your nook miles from like the terminal at City hall, you can get an upgrade that gives you access to like a decorator mode. And what that does is like, gives you a grade, lets you drag and drop stuff around, turn it around with ui, not with like your guy. And it's amazing. It's great. It's a really, really great.
[27:52]
A
It's not the default in this mode.
[27:53]
B
Well, they, for whatever reason, when you're outside.
[27:56]
C
Yeah, I think it was probably designed for indoors and the engine, whatever the fuck.
[28:01]
B
I think it would have been great if they could make that work. Because what is so cool about Slumber Islands is that it removes all the restrictions of things you're not allowed to do when you have someone over on your island. When you're playing Animal Crossing New Horizons, you have someone over on your island, you cannot put a new piece of furniture down. You cannot move a piece of furniture. You can't add water features or land parcels or you really can't touch your island at all. And I think the idea there is, well, it'd be too easy to grief someone or trap them in a thing or whatever. Having access to all of those tools, being able to like, put down furniture, move stuff around instantly, build bridges and inclines, pick up trees, put down trees, all of that stuff simultaneously with other players is fucking fun. It is madcap as hell.
[28:54]
C
What did you guys focus on doing?
[28:56]
B
We split the island.
[28:57]
A
Well, you can watch our stream folks if you want, but I'll say that what we did is we had a little island that we split into four quadrants and there was like a shared area in the southeast. And then we each took one of the other three quadrants and just kind of did whatever we felt like. For example, I made a toilet museum. So I took out everything I had that could be a toilet and made a little toilet museum. And then the boys came and visited it. And then we took another 10 minutes. You can set a timer in the game like you set a timer in game. Then they came and, like worked on the toilet museum for a while and we. I mean that, that, that. I mean like that.
[29:32]
B
And it was really great.
[29:34]
A
Same shit you do in Minecraft, you know, like, I'm gonna build a house and burn it down. I mean, that kind of makes sense.
[29:40]
B
The thing. There's other stuff that like the update adds, like some quality of life stuff that is like, frankly, bonkers that it they needed to add. Yeah, you can craft multiple items at the same time and you can automatically craft with materials in your home storage without having to pull it out every time you Ridiculous. That's so ridiculous. Right, but they fixed that. That's better now. But the biggest thing is I feel like this is showing a version of this game that I adore. That is where it should be. When you leave your slumber island, it's like you can save it and you have three save slots that you can pull down. But then next time we want to play it, I have to go and get in bed and go to my slumber island and start the room and then open up the gates and then they can join me in the gates and then I can save. And it's like its own self contained thing. Right. It's not like the island we share. It's not like whereas, you know, get me a dedicated server for Enshrouded or Minecraft or like any of these other open world survival craft games which obviously Animal Crossing is not that genre but there are definitely cozy games like that that are doing exactly this. Yeah. Where it's like you have the keys to the kingdom, you can do what you want in this game and it won't be so like so tightly controlled so as to squeeze some of the the fun out of.
[31:07]
C
Really makes me very, very curious about what this Nintendo MMO is going to be like. That they've been basically testing for the last. I mean I'm sure they've been making for years, but last two or so years we've been hearing rumblings of beta tests and things like that that are under NDA about like Nintendo first party MMO with like no franchise attached to it and like what that means. I mean I'm sure it's their answer to Roblox, but what that means with the context of knowing Nintendo is like so rigid with what they allow people to do versus not.
[31:40]
B
Yeah.
[31:41]
A
I also at this point I tend to wonder if Nintendo is like holding stuff back because their schedule has become so iterative. Like it almost makes you wonder like well, we got to hold something back for the next Animal Crossing on the next platform and the next time we re release it like where a lot of these games that are released by indies I think want to be platforms, you know, where the game itself is like you're just building onto it forever. I think Nintendo is still in that iterative mindset where like well, when Animal Crossing 10 comes out we gotta be able to have.
[32:12]
C
Well yeah, they were doing that. I mean they had the online. I mean I guess they still do. I haven't touched it in forever. But they have the online Animal Crossing which obviously doesn't Die per se. But you're right, I think with the console.
[32:22]
B
What are you talking about?
[32:23]
C
The, there's an online. The. Sorry, the mobile Animal Crossing.
[32:27]
B
Oh, Pocket. No, they did shut that down. That only exists. Yeah, that. That only exists as a offline. No, they. They released an offline version of the game that you can buy and it's like full price game but got it won't go away, I guess.
[32:41]
C
Yeah, yeah. So like that's their version of it. I do agree with you, Justin. Like there's an element of that. There's also an element of like I think that for the next few years they're gonna fill the gaps in their release schedule with just like here's Luigi's Mansion 3 switch to Edition and maybe it adds one little mode and 60 frames a second, whatever it is. So you're gonna see that level of iteration as well.
[33:04]
A
Dude, what Griffin said, I think, and I'm thinking about it more as we say. I think that what Griffin said about all that stuff being confusing and being kind of a moving target about like this cost $5 to. I think is largely because Nintendo thinks that this is the way forward for the future and they're trying to see how they make the most money off of it. Like I think that every one of these is a test balloon. Like the reason why it keeps changing is because I think they're trying to figure out the most profitable way of doing it. Because this kind of iteration makes sense for Nintendo where like it may not for a lot of other companies but like you know you're gonna buy the next Amble Crossing, you know you're gonna buy the next Switch thing. You know you're gonna buy the console. You know, like they feel like they have you pretty much.
[33:48]
B
You know, I think I would. The thing I would push back though is that like almost all the stuff that is worth doing, worth coming back and playing Animal Crossing for is in the free 3.0 update. Which they said after the 2.0 update, like that's it. And then they I guess changed their, their mind. Maybe they needed something to like accompany this switch to Edition to kind of like push, push some more sales of that. But like it's a ton of content for free for the game.
[34:14]
A
But you're talking about all this ridiculous quality of life stuff that is included in there. That should have been for the. They're.
[34:19]
B
It's Nintendo.
[34:20]
A
They know what would make it better.
[34:22]
B
Better.
[34:23]
A
They know it would make it easier to play.
[34:25]
B
It's, it's. I mean this is The. This is the, I think, agony of being sort of like a fan of Nintendo stuff. And I think Pokemon fans probably feel it most acutely of just like, we know what the fuck is up. Like, we know what would be good. And we know you want to skip.
[34:40]
C
All the cutscenes and click through dialogue really fast.
[34:44]
B
Well, I mean, and also, like, a million other sort of granular things or quality of life things that are just, like, not being prioritized because traditionally people have had the patience to stick it out. And I don't know, I think that that is less true for Animal Crossing, but it is still, like, I don't know if you told me tomorrow. Yeah, and they're making the sequel, and it's gonna come out next year. I think anybody who is a fan of the first game would be like, okay, I could sit down and write 100 things that they should do better or differently to get on par with, you know, where the rest of the industry's at.
[35:22]
C
But at least it's free.
[35:24]
B
It is free, and it is nice to go back to. I actually went back to playing Animal Crossing about a month ago. Started playing with Henry, and it's been. It was very, very fun to go back and play a thing that. To have nostalgia for something that is 6 years old at this point and also a relic of a very challenging time for our planet is really a. It's a sensory experience.
[35:53]
C
Yeah, we went back and started playing it. Don't want to play with my son anymore because it's by far the most exhausting game I play with him because he wants me to, like, verbally tell him every single piece of text that shows up on screen. And there's so much fucking dialogue and menus and nothing. I want to teach my son everything. But I also have had a long day and can't read for an hour and a half.
[36:15]
B
Christ, you just want to take pictures of Pokemon. No words required.
[36:19]
C
Yeah, no kidding. Mission accomplished. Okay, we have some reader mail. This letter comes from Sir Lester. Sir Lester writes, I'm old and British, so when licensed movie games are mentioned, I immediately think of Ocean Software. Not a name I imagine means much to the rest of the world, but it was huge in British gaming in the 80s. If a movie came out back then, it was almost certain that Ocean would have released the game license off of it. They're usually very enjoyable. I have fondest memories firing up the ZX Spectrum and playing the Robocop games. The movie, the Untouchables, Red Heat Platoon, countless others. The fact that it was a Platoon game.
[36:57]
B
It was all right, we had that one. I've never seen the movie, but I definitely played Platoon on nes developed by Ocean Software.
[37:03]
C
I'm sure it was very authentic to the movie.
[37:05]
B
Ocean Software is one where like as soon as you said the name, my brain produced an ancient file of the logo of Ocean Software because it is like peak 90s, like Microsoft Word ass preset stuff. Yeah, they had a lot of fucking games, man. Yeah, Weapon, Miami Vice, they had.
[37:29]
C
Apparently Navy Seals and Nightbreed got pretty good games.
[37:32]
B
Oh damn. They made cool world. That game is truly awful.
[37:36]
A
Yeah, they had a lot of misses that actually is gonna. Can I do an honorable mention that ties into this and I'll come and we can do the rest later. But I've been messing around this week with Amiga games because I never got into the Amiga. A lot of those computer things, other than if it wasn't on DOS, I didn't really mess with it. So C64, Amiga, the British stuff obviously all missed me. So I got into Amiga and there's this really cool project called AmigaVision. It's at Amiga Vision and it is an emulator that has been configured to have a really cool, well configured front end for browsing the Amiga library. So this is a standalone Amiga emulator that also has its own front end that organizes these games with recommendations and by year and by genre and by all like with history and all. This kind of developer, it has pre configured settings for like how to scale the pixels and stuff so it looks good on modern displays. You still have to find your own. Yeah, I was gonna ask, but if you go to archive.org and look for them, I bet it's a huge repository. You'll find them. You can figure it out. All right. Also, the conversation of emulation I think has gotta get a little bit past legal and illegal. When most of these things are abandonware. Like you can't get them, you can't buy them, whatever. I think that these, like if you. This is like a purely kind of a conservation play, but it's a huge massive library. Stuff I've never checked out before. It's a really cool way of experiencing it. I actually installed it on my Mr. Because my wife got me a lovely little Sony Trinitron CRT for Christmas. So I hooked it up with that and I've been messing around with that. It's a real fun way of digging through an old catalog.
[39:38]
B
I do want to check that out.
[39:40]
C
I'll jump back to the reader mail real quick. We have one more licensed game that someone mentioned. James writes, my favorite licensed game as a kid was Dick Tracy on the nes. Not in its out of the box form, but with a couple of game Genie codes. It actually makes it playable. It was actually quite enjoyable when you weren't dying every 30 seconds. Good music and surprisingly large city to enjoy. I'd just drive around sometimes finding new locations that I'd visit later.
[40:03]
A
I don't think people understand, like, I don't think kids who didn't grow up or even like adults who didn't grow up playing a lot of games in the 80s, everybody was cheating all the time. Like you had to cheat. The games were hard and bad. Like they were broken. And you had to like Contra had a code that gave you 30 men. Everyone did that. Do you know why? Because you needed 30 guys to play Contra. It's hard as fuck. Yeah, we all cheated. The game Genie was a. Did people know what the game Genie. It was a half of an NES cartridge and you jam your NES cartridge in it and then you jam the game Genie in the NES and then you put in secret codes that would have your genie.
[40:43]
B
Yeah.
[40:44]
C
I don't know the science behind the Game Genie and I can't wrap my head around it because I bet you.
[40:50]
B
If you learned the science behind the game genie, you would be shocked at how kind of like brutal and simple it is. Where it's like we make the metal pins touch other metal pins to make Mario jump higher like it's pretty.
[41:04]
A
It's basically giving shock therapy to Mario. We're just like touching different parts of Mario's brain to see what makes him.
[41:09]
B
Yeah. It's not serious.
[41:11]
A
Forget that you can die. Okay, good. Perfect.
[41:13]
B
It's not counter programming knuckles in real time. It's like it shunts a hot wire into the cartridge that makes it so that you have 99 malicious code. Yes.
[41:25]
C
If someone in the comments wants to explain to me how to Game Genie works, that'd be great. I'm looking forward to reading that. I think that's it for reader mail. I had. I had an old honorable mention that I want to call out what the game is. Illusion of Gaia.
[41:39]
B
Yeah, baby.
[41:40]
C
Which I have never played before because I thought it was. I thought it was a turn based game. I got it right here. Oh, you got a physical. Griffin has a physical Snes God.
[41:50]
B
Yeah. When I play Illusion of Gaia, it's legit.
[41:54]
C
I do too. And that's why I'm playing Illusion of Gaia.
[41:56]
B
Fucking sure, dude.
[41:59]
C
Yeah, it's neat and weird and interesting and it does remind me you made the comparison to Actraiser. I was talking about Actraiser last week in the way that there's really two games and they sort of bounce between each other. One game feels kind of close to a Final Fantasy ish exploration, talk to people game. And then the other game is a Zelda style action game.
[42:21]
B
Right.
[42:21]
C
And the two of them kind of bounce between and suddenly I'm transforming into like a large man and I don't know why, but really cool pixel art and great music and just like the game feels and the way that it.
[42:34]
B
My favorite thing about Quintet games is how they use almost all the same sound effects. So like you'll play Soul Blazer and you'll hear like a sound effect from Illusion of Gaia that was also an Actraiser.
[42:44]
C
Yeah. The UI elements are also pretty consistent. You'll see a lot of that stuff as well. Yeah, it's a really weird game.
[42:51]
B
It's so fucking weird. It's like what if there was a little boy who had telepathy and it was a fantasy world, but it was also real Earth and you were having to go collect crystals from the seven Wonders of the World.
[43:02]
C
I don't think I realized that's what was going on. I mean, I'm only probably six hours in, so I don't.
[43:07]
B
Yeah, I mean it's. It is. I mean, but that makes sense.
[43:10]
C
They're talking about Inca rules.
[43:11]
B
Yeah. Like you go to, you know, Angkor Wat and you go to the. The Great pyramids and those are now Zelda dungeons. Basically. It's just a fucking rad idea for.
[43:21]
C
A game so ambitious, especially for back then running on the snes. It was really wild.
[43:26]
B
Yeah.
[43:29]
C
You have anything Griffin you want to call out for?
[43:31]
B
I've been playing a lot of a game that we can't talk about yet that is embargoed.
[43:37]
C
Oh yeah.
[43:38]
B
Honestly, I've spent almost all my time playing mio, so that has been the main thing I've been doing in my very, very brief windows of leisure time. I did get on Apple Arcade a game that is called, I believe it's called Power Wash Simulator. And I did get it mostly because Justin went beast mode so hard, but also because I wanted to draw my own conclusions. And I will say I don't think I would play it on my computer. I don't think I would play it on my Rog ally X. But as a thing that I can turn on my phone when I'm sitting on A bench outside of Henry's school, waiting for him to come outside with his teacher for five minutes. And I can power wash, you know, a bungalow. That's all right. That feels pretty good to just kind of vibe out with that.
[44:26]
A
I have great memories of Henry's dad. Yeah, he. He would show up early to pick his son up, and he would actually power wash the school. I mean, it was only five minutes at a time, but, like, the gesture was really meaningful and he got a lot out of it and the building was cleaner as a result.
[44:41]
B
I'm currently power washing a playground. And you're not.
[44:44]
A
You're podcasting. Don't.
[44:46]
B
Well, in the game, the level I'm on the playground, and there's a moment where I was climbing under a slimy, grimy slide and I was power blasting, you know, the underside of it, and the nasty gloopy drip drops were falling right on me. And I thought, like, I'm glad I'm not doing this for real. I'm glad I'm doing it. And again, no, I get why people like it. It is not the progression hooks, or if you want to call it that, like, there's a level of. It feels like almost irony to it, but it is very chill to start with. A house that is covered in dirt, and then as you wipe your finger across it, the dirt magically disappears.
[45:20]
C
Grif, do you think, here's my approach on power wash and why, usually, after about five hours or so, I usually bounce off of them. In addition, I know acknowledging everything that Justin said last year about his disdain for powerwash simulator, I think that the game, in my opinion, gets less fun the more complexities they add to it.
[45:41]
B
Absolutely.
[45:42]
C
And they have no way to increase the difficulty over time, apart from, like, you have to move this fucking girder around so you can walk on top of the roof.
[45:50]
B
Yeah.
[45:50]
C
And that shit does not appeal to me at all. So I kind of just want to stand and do easy mailboxes and stuff like that. Like, that's my jam.
[45:57]
B
Also want to shout out. The boyfriend is back on Netflix Season 2. This is the extremely, I would say, Terrace House, vibey Japanese dating show where I think seven gay men between the ages of, like, 20 and 40 live in a house together and have to run a coffee shop. The first season was at. I forget what city it was in. It was like a beachy sort of destination. And now they're out in the snowy mountains having to run a coffee shop and.
[46:28]
C
And they're picking people to.
[46:31]
B
Picking people to go work With. There has not been any kissing so far that I have seen. But it is. In so many ways, this show is the heir apparent to the Terrace House kingdom. Also because it has one of the commentators from the original Terrace House panel. But it is. It's just a chill watch. It's a pleasant wintertime watch so far. I do feel like I have to. I'm like three episodes in. I should have put this, you know, warning before. Any time I talked about Terrace House in the past, but maybe this season goes to some weird, bad places. I don't know, man. But where I'm at now, it's nice to. Nice to be back.
[47:08]
C
There is something interesting that it didn't occur to me until just now the, like divide between commentator and not in reality tv. Like, obviously Survivor doesn't really have a.
[47:17]
A
Commentator, but a lot of Japanese construction.
[47:20]
B
Yeah, it's Japanese. Yeah. A lot of Korean and Japanese reality shows we watch have. Have had that.
[47:26]
C
What's the other? Big Brother? Doesn't that have commentators or.
[47:28]
B
No, I've never watched Big Brother.
[47:31]
A
No, there is a host. I think that, like in. I think we have seen more active narration in, especially in like the Netflix reality shows, but that idea of like checking back in with friends who are watching the same show as you, it does not. That feels like a very, like, non.
[47:49]
B
I think it would be tonally pretty confusing to audiences who have not. Because it is like when we started watching Terrace House when we were in the hospital after Henry was born was when we started watching that show and, you know, they would cut to a panel. It was so. It was strange because we were not. We had not watched a show that had that before. Right. This idea of we've got the after show, we've got the companion podcast where we talk about. Right. Like Bob the Drag Queen and Boston Robb have a traitors podcast that they do like instead of that, if they just like between every, you know, commercial break, where a commercial break would go and cut to a studio audience where people would talk about what just happened. People who are funny and charming.
[48:32]
A
That's also. I mean, but that's kind of a British construction too, right? That divide of like a panel and like an in the field kind of thing. Like, that's a very. That's not a construction. We have a lot over here.
[48:41]
B
It requires a certain. There is genuinely a certain type of celebrity, a certain type of performer entertain like this, you know, talent in the Japanese sort of entertainment industry where like, you could. It doesn't matter what discipline you're in you could be a comedian, you could be, like a fashion blogger, you could be a musician or an actor or whatever, and also have this other talent where, like, you're just good on camera and quick on your feet and you can think of funny stuff to say when talking about a show. And I. Almost all the shows that we have watched, and we've watched, like a ton of Japanese and Korean reality programming at this point. Like, they're all great. And so it's like, does that exist here? Like, how do you ensure that you are, like, hiring a team of people who are, I don't know, collaborative in that way and genuinely invested in the thing that they are talking about? You have to seem like you are a huge fan of the show that you're commenting.
[49:37]
C
Whenever they've attempted it, it's always felt very rigid or strict.
[49:41]
B
Yeah, right. This is not like, I hope this is not reading, like, snooty. Well, I only watch. I watch subs, not dubs. Like, it's truly not that. It's an interesting sort of, like, I don't know, pop cultural divide of sort of what. What Western reality TV audiences are used to, you know, versus what?
[50:03]
C
Or even, like, watching the, like, Western take on Taskmaster, which obviously friend of the show Ron Funches was in that.
[50:10]
B
Yeah.
[50:10]
C
You could see that they're struggling to, like, jam. What is really. It doesn't always Translate into a 22 minute thing. Yeah, yeah. So my hope is maybe Western audiences or Western producers will learn some lessons from that stuff because obviously so many.
[50:25]
B
Shows, there's a blue million things that they, I think would. Would. Could try doing differently that may or may not be better, but, you know, would be worth a shot for sure. Juice, you got anything?
[50:38]
A
Well, I mentioned Amiga Vision.
[50:39]
B
Oh, I see.
[50:40]
C
Yeah, he jumps.
[50:40]
B
Jumps ahead.
[50:41]
A
Yeah.
[50:42]
C
What's your favorite Amiga game?
[50:44]
A
Give me a. I haven't liked any.
[50:46]
B
Of them yet, but it's cool to. Yeah, sure.
[50:50]
C
All right. Well, it's something.
[50:51]
B
They're so. They're so old, Russ. They don't have, like, cool graphics.
[50:54]
C
I was gonna say, like, when you talked about Amiga, I was like, I'm not playing that shit. Okay. I wanted to thank some patrons over@patreon.com thebesties we have Maggie, we have Sean H, we have Justin C. And we have Snacks Hyena. Thank you for being patrons. Y' all can be patrons over there. We appreciate everyone that's already a patron. We have a new restyz coming at you in the coming week, new bracket battles coming first week of February. All sorts of fun stuff on there. So please join us for that party.
[51:27]
A
Nice. Well, that's gonna do it for us for this week. Oh, except what do we do next week?
[51:32]
C
Well, Justin, we're playing a game called Cairn, which is a game about climbing.
[51:35]
A
Sounds good. Well, we'll join us again next week for that.
[51:39]
B
For the besties.
[51:40]
A
Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick.
[51:42]
B
The world's best games? Besties?