Character Splash | The Big Deal

[00:00:00] Alright Steve, we're going to talk about the Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door remake game in a second, but I have to ask you something first.

[00:00:09] It's a question we've asked many times in the past on this show and on our previous show, and now that you've played through the game, I'm hoping the question can finally be answered.

[00:00:21] Is Mario circumcised?

[00:00:25] He didn't even take off his pants.

[00:00:28] I mean, what kind of game rated E for everyone is this? Let's start the show.

[00:00:56] Hello party people. It's your boy Dre. I'm here with my boy Steve.

[00:01:08] What is up? I thought I had something with paper. It is gone.

[00:01:13] Oh my god. And we're also here with my boy Kevin.

[00:01:18] I said we're also here with Kevin.

[00:01:28] Fine, I guess he's not here. I wish I had a crow sound effect. I'd love to pop that on.

[00:01:34] I'll ask Aaron from Super Podsog if he has a crow on his soundboard. I bet he does.

[00:01:39] I could still hear his voice on the wind. Hey guys, I just played Paper Mario on my N64. Four. Four.

[00:01:48] That asshole would fucking do that to us, wouldn't he? Jesus Christ.

[00:01:52] Even though it's on Nintendo Switch Online expansion pack.

[00:01:56] But you, Steve, a modern man of miracles of modern miracles of modernity.

[00:02:02] You have played the brand new Paper Mario Thousand Year Door remake in my bacon video game for Nintendo Switch.

[00:02:11] Yeah, you know, the past few times haven't been so hot for me.

[00:02:15] I played a so-so game in Sandland and a very god awful game in Balan Wonderworld.

[00:02:22] And I'm like, I had to put my foot down and I said, Andre, I don't care if Kevin's not here or not.

[00:02:27] I need to play something that I am pretty sure will be OK at the very least.

[00:02:33] You know, can I make a confession right now on the air in front of everybody?

[00:02:37] I'm a little hurt that you just said you played Sandland.

[00:02:41] You did not acknowledge that I played Sandland with you.

[00:02:43] I felt like that was a journey between two people.

[00:02:47] And I'm kind of hurt being left out. I mean, I don't mind saying it.

[00:02:51] You know what? You're right.

[00:02:53] Sandland was a team effort, even though the game really was just a bunch of old people yell at him.

[00:03:01] OK, but does anybody old yell at Paper Mario? Is this name Paper Mario or is it just Mario?

[00:03:08] No, he's he's he's just Mario.

[00:03:11] But everyone that lives around him is made of papercraft.

[00:03:14] But like buildings and things are still buildings. The buildings are not paper.

[00:03:19] And Mario is paper.

[00:03:20] Mario is paper. Goombas and things are paper. Bowser is paper.

[00:03:24] This is also the one where they actually leaned into the whole paper motif first.

[00:03:28] And the N64 game, we just called it Paper Mario Heroes, Mario Story there.

[00:03:34] But I think someone got the memo over there that we really like the paper thing here.

[00:03:38] So they really leaned into it for for this game and they didn't stop leaning into it ever since.

[00:03:44] That is interesting. I did know that it's called Mario Story.

[00:03:47] Maybe they just thought of it like, of course, storybook characters are made of paper.

[00:03:52] They live in the book or whatever, like Yoshi's Story, but they're made of paper.

[00:03:57] Yes. And and in the original, it was just more of a style here.

[00:04:02] Everything's paper. Everyone's seen the paper airplanes, but he's also a boat and he folds into a tube sometimes.

[00:04:08] We are Paper Mario.

[00:04:10] We're paper and we're doing all the paper.

[00:04:13] Is there any awful humor about paper cuts or getting folded into a accordion or whatever?

[00:04:19] That didn't happen until Sticker Star.

[00:04:22] They still play it fairly, I wouldn't say straight, but you know, they like graze the whole paper thing here still while still leaning into it at the same time.

[00:04:32] It's interesting. I guess that's what you do in 2004.

[00:04:35] I mean, I was in high school at the time.

[00:04:38] I prefer not to think about those times.

[00:04:40] You remember high school?

[00:04:43] Yes, I mean, I want to ask follow up questions now, but that's probably not appropriate for fine time.

[00:04:50] Basically what I'm getting at is I got this in 2005 and I didn't play this until 2006 while I was waiting for Wii to come out.

[00:04:57] And in the end, this really did become my second favorite Mario RPG after the original Super Nintendo Mario RPG.

[00:05:05] We already did a show about that remake.

[00:05:07] Listen to it today after this episode.

[00:05:11] Is that your slick pro?

[00:05:14] I don't see you making one.

[00:05:17] Wow.

[00:05:19] But hey, people like this game.

[00:05:22] So this was also a great idea to do, right?

[00:05:25] Make a new version for a new audience.

[00:05:28] I would say yes, it was, but not as much as the original Super Mario RPG overall.

[00:05:34] So back when this was revealed, we mostly Andre, but me too, made some ado about whether a stylized game like this one really needed this kind of release.

[00:05:46] Yeah, I was looking at it.

[00:05:47] I was like, this looks like the same thing at a suspicious look in 30 frames a second that I hope is just the stream that we're watching.

[00:05:55] But no, that's the final game.

[00:05:57] It's 30 frames a second.

[00:05:59] And it just looks like the GameCube game that we knew and loved.

[00:06:02] Well, someone knew in love, not me, but lots of other people, including Steve.

[00:06:06] So I'm like, I'm not sure what the point of this is.

[00:06:08] You look at Super Mario RPG and you're like, yeah, I get it.

[00:06:11] But this was not very apparent.

[00:06:14] I was like, OK, I will happily answer all your questions about frames as best as I can because I still have a hard time, you know, actually noticing frames on such a minute level.

[00:06:24] But what they actually might the minute level folks of 30 frames a second and 60 frames a second, the minute level everybody.

[00:06:34] I'm blind.

[00:06:36] OK, what do you want?

[00:06:37] No, no, no.

[00:06:39] There's no way you get done with like 17 matches of Splatoon 3 and then go in the lobby and then your your fucking eyes fall off because it's so choppy.

[00:06:49] There's no way that doesn't happen to you.

[00:06:51] How do you know that doesn't happen?

[00:06:53] I got I got a cream for that.

[00:06:55] There's no fucking way, man.

[00:06:57] More than Metroid Prime when we had this conversation.

[00:07:01] It's very hard to see what they do at first.

[00:07:03] But then I actually looked at footage from the old game and there is a whole lot of difference.

[00:07:10] There's a splash of more color here, more lighting effects here.

[00:07:13] There's other character graphics like back sprites and expressive faces that didn't exist before things you could have sworn were in the original Paper Mario.

[00:07:22] The thousand year door game on GameCube.

[00:07:24] But when you're objectively looking at it side to side, definitely we're not there because I was sort of there with you last year.

[00:07:32] I'm looking at this and like this doesn't look all that different because I made a game in my head and it looks exactly like this this much time later.

[00:07:42] And that's what kind of what intelligence systems did.

[00:07:45] They made the game that the old fans keep piping up to the children.

[00:07:51] Yeah, I have to admit I was kind of wrong to the digital foundry was pretty illuminating to me.

[00:07:57] The digital foundry video because showing them same scene side by side and like, yeah, this is this is a substantial upgrade.

[00:08:05] You know, so I'll walk back on that a little bit.

[00:08:09] Do I think it's a substantial enough upgrade where any developer shouldn't have had any problem getting this to run at 60 frames a second?

[00:08:17] No, I don't.

[00:08:19] And I think it's a crying shame that they have did still.

[00:08:23] But yeah, it is a substantial upgrade just on the surface level.

[00:08:27] I have to agree.

[00:08:29] I got to say the upgrades continue into the music.

[00:08:33] Yeah, guys.

[00:08:34] Steve Steve is going to talk about music today because.

[00:08:37] Oh, finally.

[00:08:38] I've been trying to get him to do this for years.

[00:08:40] Andre didn't play this game.

[00:08:42] So Steve is going to talk about music in a video game because intelligence systems team that work on this.

[00:08:47] They brought the tunes, the jams and maybe even a bop or two.

[00:08:51] The slappers.

[00:08:53] But Steve, I hear you say through time and space, even though this is a pre recording you listen to later, I've played this game before.

[00:09:00] There's nothing you could say about the game's music that I haven't heard before.

[00:09:04] It's awesome.

[00:09:05] We already know.

[00:09:06] Yeah.

[00:09:07] And if you want to be that much of a narrow minded jerk, you can go buy the nostalgic tunes badge from the shop almost as soon as the game begins for a coin.

[00:09:15] Stick it on and you can have the GameCube music.

[00:09:18] And OK, fine.

[00:09:19] You can go ahead and be that person for an entire video game.

[00:09:23] Wait, wait a second.

[00:09:24] Wait a second.

[00:09:25] That's not a joke.

[00:09:26] You can literally do that.

[00:09:27] Yeah.

[00:09:28] Wow.

[00:09:29] I'm surprised he included such an option.

[00:09:33] I think they included that fairly late because it's not a thing in the menu.

[00:09:37] I think they saw Mario RPG could do that from the menu and figured they had to do it too.

[00:09:42] Interesting.

[00:09:43] OK, wait.

[00:09:44] So Super Mario RPG has this as well?

[00:09:46] Yes.

[00:09:47] OK.

[00:09:48] Mario versus Donkey Kong doesn't have this.

[00:09:51] I'm just trying to think of like Nintendo recent remake stuff.

[00:09:55] Yeah.

[00:09:56] Anyway, I mean, this case, if I didn't know better, I'd say there's some Weasley guy right in point between the two.

[00:10:02] Point between Intelligent Systems and our Piazza, you know, whispering smack talk like, you know, I heard Yoko's redoing all of the tracks.

[00:10:09] Oh, yeah, we'll show them.

[00:10:12] But Piazza made this our Piazza made a Mario RPG.

[00:10:17] Oh, OK, OK.

[00:10:19] Who made this then?

[00:10:21] Intelligent Systems.

[00:10:22] So some team in there.

[00:10:24] All right.

[00:10:25] And the result is all the tracks we know already with atmosphere out the ass because this was a GameCube game.

[00:10:30] It's it's early modern video games.

[00:10:33] It doesn't sound bad already.

[00:10:34] It's already a GameCube all timer.

[00:10:36] So all you could do is really, you know, embellish everything to have atmosphere out the wazoo.

[00:10:42] Road Port, the hubs feels even seedier than it does on GameCube.

[00:10:46] There's a whole rock opera ass gauntlet going in the Glitz pit, which is to really say nothing about the battle theme.

[00:10:55] Yeah, everyone that played the game remembers the battle theme.

[00:10:58] What was the battle theme?

[00:10:59] It does the job for the theatrical flavor battle system.

[00:11:02] But now it changes for wherever the hell you are.

[00:11:06] I know a lot of games do this now.

[00:11:08] We played through Octopath Traveler 2 and the first one did this to where the further along you go, they changed the battle theme to keep it fresh.

[00:11:15] But, you know, they already had this classic song here and they just have different versions of the tune play when you're in Road Port.

[00:11:22] It plays the really jazzed up version of the one, you know, but then you go to the castle and it's all dank or you go to a spooky town and it's almost the Castlevania version of the battle theme.

[00:11:33] It's one of those things they didn't have to do for this.

[00:11:36] But I guess they see the trends and they're like, yeah, we might as well, you know, go do that.

[00:11:44] I hate to compare everything in the world to the best thing I just played, which is Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

[00:11:49] But that game has like 1400 battle themes.

[00:11:52] You know, we have the classic one we know and love and, you know, some other ones depending on where you are in some other situations and some boss ones.

[00:12:00] And I feel like it's a smart use of music in a game if you can keep that sort of thing fresh.

[00:12:07] And of course, nowadays we have the space to do stuff like that.

[00:12:10] I don't see any reason why you shouldn't with any game with a, you know, a fairly decent budget.

[00:12:16] I think it's a good call for RPGs going forward.

[00:12:19] Because, you know, there is the battle system that's trying to engage an audience.

[00:12:33] So your star meter fills.

[00:12:35] It's still fun.

[00:12:36] And if I didn't know better, I'd think more of the random variables are happening more often, like the lighting will drop and scare folks away or you knock down the pyrotechnics and it blows fire in their face.

[00:12:49] Though I think the latter might just be down to me favoring hammer attacks more.

[00:12:54] You could pick on me, pick on this for frames all you like.

[00:12:57] But I need to confess to this all over again.

[00:13:00] I already did on the Super Mario RPG remake show, but I'll confess this on our main week show too.

[00:13:08] I suck at super jumps and multi bounces.

[00:13:12] My old age.

[00:13:14] Like, wait a second.

[00:13:15] Are you saying you used to be good at them and now you were no longer good at them?

[00:13:20] I was average at best.

[00:13:22] Like, I could maybe do 15 to 20 a shot on a good day.

[00:13:27] Now I might get up to 10.

[00:13:29] It's not a great time.

[00:13:31] So favoring the hammer, which is your other option, and equipping stuff to boost that worked just fine until the post game.

[00:13:40] There is a bit of a post game in two optional bosses that I was going to just skip by until I magically did them last night.

[00:13:48] And it did feel like magic doing them because I didn't feel like I earned those.

[00:13:53] I gushed about Super Mario RPG's final finale post thing in that game where they really made you remember everything in that game.

[00:14:03] And it came together expertly if you really were that person that committed the game to memory.

[00:14:09] But here they just make you do one thing that they don't actually tell you about in Super Guards.

[00:14:16] It's a special kind of guarding where you have to hit the B button and not the A button at the last second.

[00:14:24] And that's why I sucked at those today, the same reason I sucked at those in the Aughts.

[00:14:29] Because, you know, they don't tell you they're there.

[00:14:32] They don't tell you it's the B button and you never ever need to actually do one to finish the game.

[00:14:37] What is the benefit of a Super Guard?

[00:14:40] Why would you want to do that?

[00:14:42] You have to do it a bit closer to when you're actually getting hit.

[00:14:46] The timing for that is much smaller than just basic bitch guarding.

[00:14:51] So a smaller frame window.

[00:14:53] And if you do it, then you get no damage and it can be a counter too depending on the attack.

[00:15:00] Is this to imply that if you do a basic bitch guard, you do take some damage still?

[00:15:05] You can depending on how much the attack would hit you for.

[00:15:09] I mean, I guess I could blame Frames on that.

[00:15:12] But then I don't know. I guess I had a hot streak last night because suddenly I was Super Guarding like a fiend.

[00:15:17] Like, I couldn't do this the whole time. Now I can.

[00:15:20] You're in the zone. You're in the groove.

[00:15:23] Yeah, but now the game's over unless they do 4K version with free update on Switch 2.

[00:15:33] If Switch 2 has any form of like, if you play this on Switch 2, it can be upgraded.

[00:15:39] Like if you play stuff on PS5, like a PS4 game, not like a PS5 skew, but like an actual PS4 skew that has upgrades on Switch 2.

[00:15:48] Man, I tell you what.

[00:15:51] Man, I really hope they do some of that because there are a handful of other changes they did spend time making.

[00:15:58] There's a CD underbelly and it's run by mobster parentas from Mario Sunshine, but there's like a weird contingency of them and they wear sunglasses.

[00:16:08] I played 8 to 10 hours of it when it came out. So I mean, it's so out of my brain.

[00:16:14] I know, but they're like the funniest group of whatever is in the game.

[00:16:19] Anyway, they had slot machines in their gambling parlor.

[00:16:22] Now they have Mario 3 slide puzzles that you play for tokens.

[00:16:26] Thanks, Europe.

[00:16:27] Yeah.

[00:16:29] Thank you, Europe.

[00:16:30] Well, I bet. Oh, I don't know.

[00:16:31] Dragon Quest 12 is going to be for adults.

[00:16:33] They may retain the slot machines.

[00:16:36] Oh, they better.

[00:16:38] I will write if I can't gamble in Dragon Quest 12.

[00:16:41] I mean come the fuck on.

[00:16:43] We have to.

[00:16:44] You just got done with 11, right?

[00:16:46] It's so good in 11.

[00:16:47] It is so good in 11.

[00:16:49] There was more than one casino and I'm like, yes.

[00:16:52] It's just fantastic.

[00:16:54] Anyway, we can't go down that rabbit hole right now.

[00:16:56] So there's no more slot machines in the Paper Mario Thousand Year Door remake.

[00:17:01] You should be like one of the...

[00:17:03] I can't even think of their names.

[00:17:05] I was going to make fun of those people online who call like Stellar Blade Woke or something like that or whatever.

[00:17:11] I don't know.

[00:17:12] I don't even know what to call them.

[00:17:13] But you know, one of those petitioners.

[00:17:15] I want to say Ncells, but that's too easy.

[00:17:17] Well, yeah, we know.

[00:17:19] I mean, that's implied.

[00:17:20] That's already part of the deal.

[00:17:25] Speaking of things I don't have a really easy name for, in lieu of the dialogue text box noises that were in the original game, you get...

[00:17:33] I guess you'd call it character text voices.

[00:17:36] This started in Character Splash where...

[00:17:39] Character Splash.

[00:17:40] Color Splash.

[00:17:42] Where...

[00:17:44] You gotta keep it.

[00:17:46] No, I'm keeping it.

[00:17:47] That's staying in.

[00:17:48] You got them.

[00:17:49] And where, you know, instead of the generic chatter noise, everyone has like voices in there kind of like Banjo-Kazooie, but you know, in an RPG where...

[00:18:01] Animal Crossing?

[00:18:03] Yeah, kind of like Animal Crossing.

[00:18:05] Like you go up and talk to Luigi and he's like...

[00:18:09] And or Toad's like...

[00:18:12] It's a neat touch.

[00:18:14] There's no option to switch back to the other thing.

[00:18:17] They've been, like I said, they've been doing that since Color Splash, though.

[00:18:19] It's good that they've been keeping up on that.

[00:18:22] Curiously, the dialogue in this game is mostly unchanged.

[00:18:26] There's a character very early on that is very much still...

[00:18:29] I've been playing Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance recently.

[00:18:33] He's got real Kevin energy in 2024 here.

[00:18:37] Like back in the day, this was like a timely reference.

[00:18:40] Okay.

[00:18:41] So they kept that exactly the same?

[00:18:44] I've been playing Fire Emblem recently.

[00:18:47] Not... I've been playing Fire Emblem Engage or Fire Emblem Three Houses or something to keep it more timely.

[00:18:52] But does it still say Game Boy Advance?

[00:18:54] My Game Boy Advance, yes.

[00:18:57] Wow. I'm surprised. Okay.

[00:18:59] I guess it's like one of those things like you spoonie bard or something that they don't want to get rid of.

[00:19:04] Because I'm sure Andre doesn't go to weird parts of the Internet like I do.

[00:19:08] And by weird parts of the Internet, I mean where we talk about Thousand Year Door.

[00:19:13] It is Pride Month and I need to be a little serious and say 20 years of progress means that Paper Mario,

[00:19:19] the Thousand Year Door remake game really says trans rights with Vivian this time.

[00:19:24] Meaning we finally, finally get to end a debate that's got on way too damn long because people are pretending to read Japanese.

[00:19:32] Oh, those are always the worst people, right?

[00:19:36] Remember the Unicorn Overlord person recently?

[00:19:39] Yes.

[00:19:40] Oh my God.

[00:19:42] Like point being, it's great that they finally did this because it seemed like the kind of thing Nintendo of America very often shied away from for a long time.

[00:19:54] Remember they were scared to have Birdo show up for fucking years.

[00:19:58] They were like, well, what do we do with this?

[00:20:02] I don't know.

[00:20:03] You kind of already established it years ago.

[00:20:06] Whatever Birdo's gender is, it doesn't really particularly matter so much as you just presented as you did without being weird.

[00:20:15] It could just be fine.

[00:20:17] And this can also just be fine as well.

[00:20:20] They really just addressed this with one line this time and that's all they really needed to do because in 2004,

[00:20:26] that's what caused all this confusion in the first place.

[00:20:29] Now they have the one line where she opens up about it and they just move on because it doesn't need to be about that.

[00:20:37] Well, I mean like Nintendo has been, I don't know.

[00:20:42] You remember the thing in Mario Odyssey where if Mario can wear the peach wedding dress and you talk to Luigi

[00:20:50] because like if you talk to Luigi wearing various outfits, he'll comment on your outfit.

[00:20:54] If you're wearing the dress, he'll be like, oh, you're getting married and you didn't invite me.

[00:20:59] He doesn't care if you're wearing a dress.

[00:21:02] He just wants to go to the wedding.

[00:21:04] Yeah, he's your brother.

[00:21:06] Anything else about the Paper Mario thousand year door video game for Nintendo Switch systems and Switch Lite systems?

[00:21:14] Yeah, as much as they did here, there were a handful of missed opportunities.

[00:21:20] There's Luigi's parallel adventure, which to reiterate for the Andre types in between chapters,

[00:21:27] you can run into Luigi in Rogueport who is going on a little adventure of his own that he'll tell you about.

[00:21:34] Like on the site, you just have to take his word for everything that everything he's doing with his own set of minions with hats is going okay.

[00:21:44] What? So he just has like his Goomba or whatever, just has a weird mustache and a top hat or something.

[00:21:50] There's a blooper that's burnt to a crisp and a buzzy beetle and a spiked buzzy beetle with a wrench instead of a spike.

[00:21:58] Ooh.

[00:22:00] And a daisy for some reason, you know, from Yoshi's Island.

[00:22:06] Daisy.

[00:22:07] Yeah.

[00:22:08] Right. Okay.

[00:22:09] I only know it's called that because you run into him in Paper Mario.

[00:22:13] I think the instruction book of Yoshi's Island says, but yeah, okay.

[00:22:17] So like what did you want to actually play as these Luigi segments or something?

[00:22:21] Is that what you're saying?

[00:22:22] I thought it would have been neat if you could actually do these adventures and then like hand off items to Mario or something.

[00:22:28] Like I feel like that's one of those things like fans would have actually wanted to do.

[00:22:32] Maybe it's funnier if we just hear the embellishments from Luigi.

[00:22:36] Given the different things Mario RPG added, I feel like this would have been a slam dunk to add maybe for the Switch 2 skew.

[00:22:44] We'll see.

[00:22:45] Oh, they're not adding shit.

[00:22:47] But you know what?

[00:22:48] On the whole, Thousand Year Door is still great if you're itching to play this again.

[00:22:53] Or if you heard the us types and by us types I mean me and not Andre talking about this forever.

[00:23:00] You know, on the internet, definitely play it.

[00:23:03] Don't worry about the frames.

[00:23:04] It's fun.

[00:23:05] Mm hmm.

[00:23:06] Says the guy who says he can't tell the difference.

[00:23:09] I'm going to I wish I had a magic button the next time you pop in Mario Odyssey to cut that motherfucker down to like 20 or something like that and see, see.

[00:23:19] I just had a great time playing video games guys, but you're going to come in here and say Andre after battle in Wonderworld, I think I don't know what I think anymore.

[00:23:31] But you play you play battle wonder world graphics on PlayStation five, the highest spec of Ballad Wonderworld one can possibly play on a console.

[00:23:40] Yeah, it still didn't work.

[00:23:43] We'll be back.

[00:23:49] All right, we're back.

[00:24:15] We did not take a shower because Kevin is not here and it just didn't I mean look maybe we can take one after state of play.

[00:24:21] Who knows?

[00:24:22] What do you say?

[00:24:24] You know, it's getting a little warm down here.

[00:24:27] So maybe a cool one.

[00:24:29] What do you mean by down here?

[00:24:32] Where I'm recording.

[00:24:34] Oh, I thought you meant something else.

[00:24:37] Anyway, we're going to talk about state of play in a second.

[00:24:41] But before we do, there was a rumor recently or I don't know if it was a rumor.

[00:24:46] Maybe you can help me with this.

[00:24:47] We're kind of doing this on off the cuff here going behind the scenes.

[00:24:51] We didn't really plan this, but we want to talk about it where you G Hori was talking about I guess he had an interview right after the recent Square Enix stuff and layoffs and all that bullshit.

[00:25:03] He was trying to reassure people that Dragon Quest 12 is still coming and they're going to use as much Akira Toriyama and Koichi Sugiyama stuff as they possibly can.

[00:25:14] Are they going to make their ultimate tribute to them?

[00:25:16] Blah, blah, blah.

[00:25:17] Right.

[00:25:18] But then he said Dragon Quest 3 is also progressing along smoothly.

[00:25:22] Blah, blah, blah.

[00:25:23] Don't worry about it.

[00:25:24] But there's been speculation that the reason why Dragon Quest 3 HD 2D, if you will, is taken so long is because they're actually doing the first Dragon Quest trilogy.

[00:25:36] It's supposed to be the first three games now that the project has expanded in scope.

[00:25:41] So regardless of source, would you buy that?

[00:25:45] Because I feel like it's the only thing that makes sense.

[00:25:48] Not like literally would you buy it with your dollars?

[00:25:50] Obviously, the answer is yes.

[00:25:51] But do you buy?

[00:25:52] That's what's happening.

[00:25:53] I could honestly just see them stand there saying, look, we're already making Dragon Quest 3 HD 2D.

[00:26:01] And anyway, you look at yes, Dragon Quest 1, it was a revolutionary game, but it's not an especially complex game.

[00:26:09] One and two have been bundled together forever.

[00:26:12] If they wanted to sit down and HD 2D those two up to, I buy that.

[00:26:19] Yeah.

[00:26:21] And I would like that because Dragon Quest 2 needs the most help out of all three of them.

[00:26:26] I mean, the game is rough.

[00:26:30] Oh, my God.

[00:26:32] Yeah, I guess I buy it too, because it's the only thing that makes sense.

[00:26:38] Why would this have taken so long?

[00:26:40] Yeah, yeah. Games takes longer to make than ever.

[00:26:42] Sure. But like not something like that.

[00:26:45] I don't think maybe I'm wrong.

[00:26:47] The game already exists.

[00:26:49] I mean, I don't live alive.

[00:26:51] I think I remember reading it was more straightforward than everyone felt it was going to be.

[00:26:57] Yeah.

[00:26:58] From what I understand, they didn't really take any liberties with the SNES game.

[00:27:01] It's just kind of exactly that.

[00:27:03] So I wouldn't be surprised for Nintendo Direct June, which we know is coming soon where they're like Dragon Quest origins HD 2D coming soon.

[00:27:15] You're telling me they wouldn't put that out of Summer Games Fest?

[00:27:18] They could. Oh, they could.

[00:27:19] But Square Enix does like, oh, you know what?

[00:27:22] Now I remember how this all started.

[00:27:24] Remember how the Dragon Quest Twitter tweeted that little video of like the emblem being drawn and said, yeah,

[00:27:32] Eldrick's journey is beginning or whatever the fuck they said.

[00:27:35] They didn't necessarily say three.

[00:27:37] Well, three is the first in that chronologically as I recall.

[00:27:42] But you know, that's fucking K.

[00:27:44] But I mean, like, I don't think people loaded thing to say.

[00:27:48] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:50] So that's how we got speculating.

[00:27:52] And then it was just like, huh?

[00:27:54] Well, I would love that to be true.

[00:27:56] I really would.

[00:27:57] Like, you know, the same way they did four or five and six on DS use the same engine, use the same graphics set everything.

[00:28:05] It's fine. I to me, I can't imagine a world in which those versions of the games would not be definitive until a new one comes along.

[00:28:13] So I feel like the same thing can happen here.

[00:28:16] I just don't think they're going to sell them together because they're Square Enix.

[00:28:19] I think they're just going to literally release like three games.

[00:28:23] That would suck because, you know how they are though.

[00:28:28] Like I said before, they've been selling one and two together until they weren't.

[00:28:33] So Dragon Quest 8 is like twenty four ninety nine on iOS.

[00:28:39] Who sells a fucking phone game that much for that much rather literally them and no one else?

[00:28:46] I mean, geez.

[00:28:48] All right.

[00:28:55] We had a state of play what?

[00:28:58] A few days ago now, I don't remember as of this recording.

[00:29:02] It was May 30th, a day where nothing else actually happened that day.

[00:29:06] Nothing at all.

[00:29:07] Nothing at all.

[00:29:08] I can't think of it.

[00:29:09] I don't even know what you're talking about.

[00:29:11] No, no, nothing.

[00:29:12] That's going to come up ever again.

[00:29:15] Now in the course of the history of anything.

[00:29:19] That's why the state of play had thirty four games.

[00:29:22] No, it didn't.

[00:29:24] But maybe we should have.

[00:29:27] Could we?

[00:29:28] I usually like to do quick overviews before we start these.

[00:29:31] What did you think?

[00:29:32] I thought this was a pretty good state of play.

[00:29:34] I know like people mind.

[00:29:35] I mean, I'm always going to be bitching.

[00:29:37] I thought this was pretty good.

[00:29:39] Not great, but you know, good.

[00:29:41] Yeah, good.

[00:29:42] Not great is a good way to put it.

[00:29:44] Not everything needs to be earth shattering.

[00:29:46] I know certain things like a direct sets the unrealistic expectations for everything,

[00:29:52] but I'll take a good state of play over a great humble direct.

[00:29:57] Who the hell wouldn't?

[00:30:00] So they let off with something called Concord.

[00:30:05] Yeah, Concord.

[00:30:07] Or do we say it like Americans?

[00:30:08] Do we say Concord?

[00:30:10] Oh, God, that's what they're going to do.

[00:30:12] Aren't that's what we're going to do.

[00:30:13] Aren't we?

[00:30:14] We're just going to call it Concord.

[00:30:15] Yeah, like we're conquering.

[00:30:17] You know what I mean?

[00:30:18] Like I feel like that's what they're doing.

[00:30:20] But or do we say it like Concord grape jelly?

[00:30:24] I think that's what we're supposed to do about everyone's is going to call it Concord.

[00:30:28] Yeah, we're Americans, bitch.

[00:30:30] We're going to say Concord.

[00:30:32] I wanted to group together Concord and Marvel rivals though, because those were the two big live service shoot them up games online.

[00:30:42] And I kind of want to talk about them together.

[00:30:44] Yeah, this is me not caring anymore.

[00:30:48] Not necessarily just I played this platoon three game today and they just came at me with all kinds of shit for the new season.

[00:30:54] I'm like, how can anybody do this for more than one game at a time?

[00:30:58] And that's what I'm saying.

[00:30:59] Ten minutes of Concord aside, how many of these can the market stand?

[00:31:06] And then Marvel rivals and both of them.

[00:31:10] And I think Concord in particular has a real price tag attached.

[00:31:14] Yeah, it seems like a retail product because they want you to preorder it on PSN.

[00:31:19] Yeah, I just don't think a cut scene every week is going to be what moves the needle that makes everyone say, oh man, this is the one I'm going to play and not overwatch to.

[00:31:29] That's what they said in the presentation.

[00:31:31] They said there's going to be a new cut scene every week bonding you to the characters and blah, blah, blah.

[00:31:36] And you know why they're doing that though, right?

[00:31:39] Because it's the overwatch playbook.

[00:31:43] Is that what they do in Overwatch town?

[00:31:46] That's what no, well, not a cut scene every week, but that's how they got people into the characters with their CG animated shorts that were like 10 to 15 minutes long.

[00:31:58] And they'd release one once every, I don't know, couple months and they had a bunch before the game came out, I think.

[00:32:06] And when a new character came out, they usually release one for them.

[00:32:10] And then they stop that at some time in like, I don't know, 2018 or 19 when they got lazy.

[00:32:15] And that's how people, a lot of people got into the characters, not me.

[00:32:20] I just got into them from playing the game and all their funny quips and lines with each other and all the interaction.

[00:32:26] That's how I kind of come to like the characters.

[00:32:29] But a lot of people love those animated shorts and they saw that and it's like, we're bringing that shit back, bitch.

[00:32:34] And we're going to have a triple A budget and we're going to make a new cut scene every goddamn week with Sony's money.

[00:32:42] OK. Are you going to buy it though?

[00:32:50] I'm interested.

[00:32:52] But you're an Overwatch boy.

[00:32:55] I got news for you.

[00:32:57] Sorry to break this to you.

[00:32:58] Me and Overwatch have kind of been on the outs.

[00:33:01] Oh, no. What happened?

[00:33:03] A little bit here.

[00:33:04] I didn't really play last season.

[00:33:06] This current season right now, I haven't also touched and I probably won't touch it.

[00:33:11] The game, I don't want to get into it.

[00:33:13] OK, because that's an entire podcast unto itself.

[00:33:16] But I'll put it real simply.

[00:33:18] They're not doing the things I like and the changes they've made to gameplay and to character specific changes as well.

[00:33:24] Have all been, in my opinion, pretty bad.

[00:33:28] And it's at a state right now where there's a lot of characters I used to like to play that are just not fun to play anymore.

[00:33:36] And there's entire roles because of some other changes.

[00:33:40] Again, I don't want to get into it.

[00:33:42] That's a whole other podcast where it is just not fun to play as that either.

[00:33:46] So right now I'm on the outs.

[00:33:49] I'm not saying I'll never play again, but suffice it to say I'm playing the field right now.

[00:33:55] I'm definitely separated from my spouse and I'm looking.

[00:33:59] I was going to say you're open to a new relationship.

[00:34:02] Yeah, I'm open to a new relationship and that relationship could be Concord.

[00:34:07] Now, did I care for the fake-ass Guardians of the Galaxy like cutscenes?

[00:34:11] No, whatever. It's fine.

[00:34:12] I mean, I didn't really have any feeling about that one way or another.

[00:34:16] As much as you and Kevin make fun of me for loving the Marvel movies, I've never been much of a Guardians of the Galaxy person.

[00:34:23] So that's just not a type of humor or art style, if you will, that's going to like make me that interested.

[00:34:31] However, the gameplay did look interesting.

[00:34:34] It did for that kind of game.

[00:34:36] It was five e five like Overwatch 2, which is not my favorite.

[00:34:39] I wish it were six v six like Marvel rivals is.

[00:34:44] That's a six v six game.

[00:34:45] And I know you've seen commercials and well, you saw this state of play that is Overwatch.

[00:34:50] Look at that art style that is Overwatch with Marvel characters in it.

[00:34:55] It is shamelessly Overwatch.

[00:34:58] They should have just called it Marvel wash if they could get away.

[00:35:02] Honestly, they probably could have and nobody would have said anything.

[00:35:07] I'm also interested in Marvel rivals like a couple of weeks before the state of play.

[00:35:12] I actually was watching some beta footage, some of those streaming live on Twitch.

[00:35:17] I guess I'm sort of like official Marvel rivals channel.

[00:35:21] Marvel rivals is six v six like the original Overwatch Overwatch to change it to five e five.

[00:35:29] And that's what Concord is doing too.

[00:35:31] But here's the thing for me that I don't like.

[00:35:34] Marvel rivals is third person.

[00:35:37] I don't know if I want to play a game like this.

[00:35:41] It's one thing.

[00:35:43] I'm not saying it.

[00:35:44] No third person shooters that are PVP would be fine.

[00:35:47] I mean, obviously, like Splatoon is or whatever.

[00:35:49] Right. Like that's that's fine.

[00:35:51] But like, I don't know for something like this, Steve, I don't think I want to play third person.

[00:35:56] I don't know what kind of person.

[00:35:59] Well, shoot a mascot shooter is right for you.

[00:36:02] I guess you really do just need to play the field and figure it out.

[00:36:06] Yeah, right.

[00:36:07] And I can because both of these games, Concord and Marvel rivals will have betas in July.

[00:36:13] I think Concord is a closed beta.

[00:36:15] No, I am not pre-ordering the sight unseen to get into that beta, which is what they're trying to get you to do.

[00:36:21] I ain't doing it.

[00:36:23] I don't even know how much the game is.

[00:36:25] You want to guess?

[00:36:27] Do you think it's a 70 dollar product?

[00:36:29] I haven't looked yet.

[00:36:30] I'll look. I'll look on the app as we're talking here.

[00:36:34] I'm going to say 50 bucks.

[00:36:36] Yeah, I want to say 52.

[00:36:38] OK, let's look.

[00:36:42] OK, folks, sorry.

[00:36:43] We had a journey.

[00:36:44] It was the price was not shown on the U.S.

[00:36:47] PlayStation store.

[00:36:49] However, there was a listing on an Australian store and the price there would be the equivalent of 40 U.S.

[00:36:58] dollars. So doing 40 bucks just like Hell Divers 2.

[00:37:01] OK, so I mean, like honestly, again, I'm not going to just spend 40 bucks just to get into a beta.

[00:37:07] However, I am interested.

[00:37:10] And if I do get to play it early, I will.

[00:37:12] So yeah, I don't know.

[00:37:14] I'm here for the hero shooters, everybody.

[00:37:16] I'm sorry.

[00:37:17] It doesn't seem like everyone else was though, Steve.

[00:37:20] It seems like a lot of people were bitching about this aspect of the presentation as they are want to do right whenever anything like this happens, because live services become such a bad word for some fucking reason to a lot of people.

[00:37:34] So like, you know, everything that has that is bad or whatnot.

[00:37:38] So did you notice this?

[00:37:40] Did you think these complaints were valid?

[00:37:42] Because I felt like it was just kind of these two games.

[00:37:45] I think it's just what I said before.

[00:37:47] How many can we really put up with?

[00:37:50] And they did spend the better part of 10 minutes on Concord in particular.

[00:37:54] I know we make Kovanov Kevin for, you know, fast forwarding that one time pressed for 10 seconds, press for 10 seconds.

[00:38:01] But they really made us watch that.

[00:38:04] Uh, faux guardians of the galaxy pub scene for a hero shooter.

[00:38:10] And you know, I could see why some people would be turned off from that.

[00:38:16] Yeah, but that's the again, I think they went so hard on that because that is the Overwatch playbook.

[00:38:23] Exactly.

[00:38:24] So I just feel like if they don't lean into that, then they don't really have much.

[00:38:30] I don't think that's true, but I think that's how they feel.

[00:38:33] Anyway, let's talk about what's going to be the best video game of all time, Steve.

[00:38:39] No, Andre, this is this is your time.

[00:38:43] You need to tell us what this is.

[00:38:45] Okay, I don't know how much longer in the presentation this was.

[00:38:50] I'm sure there was stuff in between like Marvel rival or Concord in this.

[00:38:54] But as soon as I saw the Omega Force logo, I got very, very, very excited.

[00:39:02] And then those hordes of soldiers appeared in slow mo on the screen.

[00:39:08] And I was like, holy shit, this is totally Dynasty Warriors and it looks fucking amazing.

[00:39:16] Did you see how many people were on the screen?

[00:39:20] Steve, did you see the number?

[00:39:23] I didn't count them, but it was a great very many of them.

[00:39:27] Holy shit.

[00:39:29] Finally, finally we are using real next gen power to fucking make one of these.

[00:39:36] You know, there's like been a lot of debate about graphics recently because of like what's it called for Xbox came out three weeks ago now.

[00:39:44] Hellblade 2 and shit like that, right?

[00:39:47] Right. Where it's like, you know, you can see every pore on her face and it's 4K and whatever.

[00:39:52] And it's like, how about we use technology to just do cool shit, not like make the most realistic eyeball with like six layers of like Iris reflection or whatever.

[00:40:03] Like, how about Dynasty Warriors origins?

[00:40:06] That's the type of shit that gets me excited about technology.

[00:40:09] Call me a fucking simpleton, but put a bunch of things on the screen and that works.

[00:40:13] There's a reason why Nintendo over getting to be about 25 years ago showed off like Pikmin and that 100 Mario's demo and shit like that because they wanted to be like, look at the amount of things you can do.

[00:40:27] That's still impressive.

[00:40:30] And Dynasty Warriors origins really impressed me because again, it's real next gen power this time.

[00:40:38] Dynasty Warriors didn't break away from the PS2 until like seven Dynasty seven.

[00:40:44] That was like 2010 or 11 Steve Dynasty Warriors six was still on like PS2.

[00:40:51] You know, so they held themselves back from like that generation a lot.

[00:40:55] It's Johnny's roots has always been like cross gin city and then the PS4 generation.

[00:41:00] They just didn't their engines didn't keep up and they just didn't like have the hoods sometimes like a lot of those games suffered from like the PS4.

[00:41:07] And those games suffered from really bad frame rates.

[00:41:10] That's why I love to play those PS4 Dynasty games Warriors games in general on PS5 because it cleans that shit right up.

[00:41:17] Yeah, you obviously have way more skin in this series than I do, but I saw this and you know, I'm probably going to have to get this to eventually not the same day you do either.

[00:41:28] This is Andre will tear this apart in a week.

[00:41:34] You know, the trailer was a bit vague on you know everything that's going to happen.

[00:41:38] It's not coming out until next year, but holy shit this game look great.

[00:41:42] It looks so good. It looks so good.

[00:41:44] How could anyone not be impressed by this be charmed by this?

[00:41:47] Come on, look at this shit man.

[00:41:50] They also have a lot to prove because Dynasty Warriors nine was terrible.

[00:41:55] Actively bad the worst Warriors game ever.

[00:42:00] So I'm glad they didn't try to just re up on that and just try to fix it or whatever.

[00:42:06] They did do a Dynasty Warriors nine empires, but it didn't really fix anything.

[00:42:10] This is called Dynasty Warriors origins.

[00:42:12] I think because they're kind of acknowledging that okay, we need to stop we need to do something here and do something they're doing because oh God.

[00:42:24] Yeah, I can't wait for next year.

[00:42:27] Alright Steve, they also showed something called Infinity Nikki, which like dude what the hell was this as soon as it showed up.

[00:42:44] I want I'm going to tell you my thoughts and I'm sure you'll be right along with me.

[00:42:48] She's in this frilly dress as ladies running around she has her cat companion that just looks like a any old small woodland creature wearing a cat outfit.

[00:42:57] There's like fake ass New Donk City music playing and she's just having a grand old time.

[00:43:04] They're doing photo shoots dude.

[00:43:07] What was this?

[00:43:08] This is like this is like Princess Pete Showtime, but graphics on PlayStation five or something.

[00:43:14] Oh good.

[00:43:15] You saw the same trailer I did because I've never heard of this.

[00:43:18] But apparently this is a series that's been running for the better part of a decade and it's coming here or it's been here.

[00:43:26] But we're only calling it Infinity Nikki now.

[00:43:29] Maybe it's because the stink won't leave my brain, but the dress up shenanigans almost remind me of someone trying to make a ballad Wonder World game.

[00:43:37] That's good because it looks like different clothes are going to do different things in the end.

[00:43:45] This is definitely going to be for somebody, but probably not for me.

[00:43:50] All right.

[00:43:51] I'm going to be real honest.

[00:43:54] I kind of liked it for real.

[00:43:57] Like I thought it looked insane like having a platforming adventure like that.

[00:44:03] And then like why are the photo shoots happening?

[00:44:06] That's the part I can't understand.

[00:44:08] Is it like you go to a part of the stage and then some automatic thing happens where you just play Pokemon Snap with her real quick?

[00:44:15] I don't know.

[00:44:19] I mean, look, it was kind of interesting.

[00:44:23] I'm not saying I'm going to get out there and spend my seventy US dollars on it, but like this isn't the kind of thing I usually go for either.

[00:44:31] Right. But honestly, it looked kind of fun.

[00:44:35] I can't lie.

[00:44:37] Definitely some royal with cheese fodder.

[00:44:40] Yeah, I'm not again.

[00:44:41] I'm not going to spend too much money on it, but it was interesting.

[00:44:45] I got my eye.

[00:44:46] Is it just me or did the Until Dawn remake look a little, little rough?

[00:44:54] Like the characters faces were weird and like, look, I'm asking you because you played the original.

[00:45:00] So like, can you attest to this or is it just me?

[00:45:03] I don't know.

[00:45:04] The faces already look kind of weird just because I think they were trying to do something but PS4.

[00:45:10] So it wasn't going to really work out.

[00:45:13] I don't know.

[00:45:14] I'm assuming it's going to perform better than the PS4 version did.

[00:45:19] It's 60.

[00:45:20] I would still maintain you should play this game because you're not going to be staring at character faces all the time.

[00:45:28] Yeah, but that's the thing.

[00:45:29] This just made me want to just load up the original, which I have had on the PlayStation Plus Rona collection since forever.

[00:45:37] I know you keep trying to weasel out of this, Andre, but you need to play some version of Until Dawn.

[00:45:42] Well, I don't know.

[00:45:45] We do foreshadowing for the audience.

[00:45:48] Halloween falls on a Thursday this year, so we will have a show.

[00:45:52] So, you know, I don't know.

[00:45:55] Maybe maybe we can work something out.

[00:45:56] Probably not.

[00:45:57] We'll probably watch another crappy horror movie and laugh about it is what we'll do.

[00:46:01] But, you know, we'll decide.

[00:46:04] Speaking of crappy horror movies, we got to see more Silent Hill 2 remake this time.

[00:46:10] Wow.

[00:46:12] Why did you do that?

[00:46:13] Who could say?

[00:46:16] Oh, wait, I do.

[00:46:20] No, wait, I do know why I say because there was a release date of October 8th and a reminder to watch the second Silent Hill transmission after the state of play.

[00:46:30] Remember last year's Silent Hill transmission where they had all these Silent Hill games and an announcement of a second Silent Hill movie and, you know, and all these other things like, oh, boy, they're doing another one.

[00:46:43] Maybe we'll even get to see some Silent Hill F.

[00:46:46] But no, here's 30 ish minutes of the Silent Hill 2 remake, one of everyone's favorite survival horror games.

[00:46:57] Do we need that?

[00:46:59] Couldn't we just have the, you know, minute and a half of what we saw at state of play and maybe a demo?

[00:47:05] Yeah, that would have been preferable for sure.

[00:47:10] But I think there's a reason why they did this.

[00:47:13] And I think it's because they wanted to reassure everybody that it was going to be good.

[00:47:19] We're really making like a real ass Silent Hill 2 remake because people got really weird about that last trailer that happened, which had like rock music and showed a lot of action and stuff as it.

[00:47:32] By the way, Silent Hill 2 already has rock music.

[00:47:35] So shut up.

[00:47:36] And so for some reason, people took that trailer to be like, well, that's the entire game.

[00:47:42] It's just going to be this action game now with rock music, which you have to have a brain of a dog to think that.

[00:47:48] I'm sorry to be that rude, but like seriously, who looks at a trailer like that and just be especially of a known entity like Silent Hill 2 and then things?

[00:47:57] Well, they're ruining it.

[00:48:00] Bro, they're just trying to make it exciting to the common folk that doesn't like look at Silent Hill 2 fan theories all the time.

[00:48:08] Like, Jesus Christ, give it a break.

[00:48:11] Anyway, I think that whole Silent Hill transmission was about no guys were really making a real survival horror game.

[00:48:18] I think that's why they did that.

[00:48:20] Fine.

[00:48:23] I got gas.

[00:48:25] OK, thanks.

[00:48:26] Appreciate it.

[00:48:28] Look, I'm doing the Kevin thing on the Silent Hill transmission.

[00:48:32] I'm pressing 10 seconds ahead and then I'm hoping for literally anything else.

[00:48:37] But just a reminder to buy the dog on a console coin bank.

[00:48:42] Oh, boy.

[00:48:44] Oh, boy.

[00:48:46] Talk about Monster Hunter.

[00:48:48] Just get to it.

[00:48:49] Yeah, I know you want to.

[00:48:51] Monster Hunter Wilds was announced Decemberish, I think.

[00:48:55] But I think they only announced it then.

[00:48:57] We're only finally seeing it in action now.

[00:49:00] I guess we're setting up anywhere and meeting up on the fly, which is good.

[00:49:05] And I'm girding my ass for the negative reactions now because as good as this PS5 version looks,

[00:49:14] I would bet most of my money on a place your bets segment that Kevin's not here to do on a switch to version coming in the launch window that I'd much rather have.

[00:49:24] I'm basing this on Monster Hunter, usually launching in springtime and this trailer like many others with a twenty twenty five date.

[00:49:31] I know it's coming, but I've been playing Monster Hunter on portables for a decade ish now.

[00:49:37] And it's a very, very hard habit to break having that convenience.

[00:49:42] Your take.

[00:49:48] Let me get this straight.

[00:49:49] Your take on the best Monster Hunter game anyone has ever laid eyes on is I wish it were a worse game so it could be on switch to that.

[00:50:01] That's your take.

[00:50:03] What are you doing?

[00:50:04] Why even play throw your PS5 in the trash?

[00:50:06] Give it to a child who will appreciate it more.

[00:50:10] Clearly, you are not this.

[00:50:12] This is the reason why we can't have anything nice this generation, because everything we keep playing to the lowest common denominator and it sucks.

[00:50:21] Let's let's just not push anything forward at all with new technology.

[00:50:25] Let's just let's just keep aiming lower and lower so everything can run on a fucking phone.

[00:50:30] Let's let's all play Monster Hunter Wilds on our iPad and be done with it like we all thought we were going to do a decade ago when all the companies got scared.

[00:50:38] It's like, oh, we need all this mobile stuff and second screen and whatever.

[00:50:42] Like, let's just let's just go back to that.

[00:50:45] Okay, if I actually listen to you and got rid of my PS5, what would I play Dynasty Warriors origins on?

[00:50:51] I mean, you got me there.

[00:50:57] I have to admit, I wasn't prepared for a follow up here.

[00:51:02] I thought you were just going to do the thing where you you move on to the next topic and forget I said anything.

[00:51:08] Man, it's almost like I have different systems to do different things.

[00:51:12] Oh, but can we do the good thing on the on the good system in a new way that we haven't done it before?

[00:51:18] But you just rather have the old.

[00:51:20] Okay, here. Why not just a Monster Hunter Rise 2?

[00:51:23] Okay, fine.

[00:51:25] Whatever. I mean, like, why?

[00:51:27] Why do anything then?

[00:51:28] Because my time on this earth is limited and I might be dying soon.

[00:51:32] Selfish.

[00:51:34] You know, it's not so selfish.

[00:51:36] I mean, that's a fucking astro.

[00:51:38] Fucking astro.

[00:51:39] But that cable does that you wish that was on Switch to time.

[00:51:45] Wow.

[00:51:47] You would you'd shell out 70 dollars for that on Switch to wow.

[00:51:51] Andre, no.

[00:51:54] Oh, this is different.

[00:51:56] Firstly, I wouldn't shell out 70 dollars for this.

[00:51:59] Why not?

[00:52:01] Just because I I'm always worried about how much, you know, things are going to cut into a budget and what have you.

[00:52:09] This doesn't look like a 70 dollar game to you.

[00:52:11] I mean, I doubt it's going to be one.

[00:52:13] I mean, it might be.

[00:52:14] And if it is, I'm buying it.

[00:52:16] I certainly wouldn't pay 70 on Switch to for it.

[00:52:19] Andre, I think we're now now all of a sudden it matters.

[00:52:22] Okay, gotcha.

[00:52:23] Anyway, am I going to do fun dual sense stuff with with Astro?

[00:52:29] No, let's not push anything forward.

[00:52:31] I thought we weren't.

[00:52:32] I thought we were done with that.

[00:52:33] Let's just go.

[00:52:34] Let's just keep having everything on Switch.

[00:52:35] Let's keep having everything on PS4 for the rest of our lives.

[00:52:39] I don't think we're having the same conversation anymore.

[00:52:44] This astrobot looked fantastic.

[00:52:48] This is kind of exactly what I want right now.

[00:52:50] And it's coming out at the end of summer.

[00:52:53] So we don't have long to go.

[00:52:54] You notice that Sony's doing the thing now where like they're not announcing stuff too fast.

[00:52:58] They're kind of pulling a Nintendo and being like, we'll announce it when it's kind of close for the most part.

[00:53:05] They're not doing a whole lot out like if if they had to take back like the Wolverine announcement, I bet they would.

[00:53:12] I bet they would have put it in a show like this where they can just say even if it's 2026, that's a lot closer than to where they announced it from.

[00:53:21] I'm pulling this out of my ass, but maybe they're looking at what Microsoft's been doing the past few years.

[00:53:27] And they're like, we got this game and it's coming out eventually.

[00:53:36] Shruggy shoulders.

[00:53:37] Yeah.

[00:53:38] Remember last year they had Fable and like it's going to come out.

[00:53:43] We swear.

[00:53:44] What was the Swampland game that looked like stop motion?

[00:53:47] We always forget the name of it.

[00:53:49] Oh, that looks cool too.

[00:53:50] But who knows when that's coming out?

[00:53:52] Yeah.

[00:53:53] Right.

[00:53:54] Oh God, whenever Fable comes out, holy shit.

[00:53:57] I bet that's so far off for some reason.

[00:53:59] I don't know.

[00:54:00] We'll see.

[00:54:01] 2030 is going to be a heck of a year for the Fable fans.

[00:54:04] I thought you were going to say 2030 might be a heck of a year for Xbox.

[00:54:14] Anyway, the Astrobot looked amazing.

[00:54:16] By the way, that name is just Astrobot.

[00:54:18] That's the name of the game.

[00:54:20] I had to do a double take on that too, because there's no way we're just calling this Astrobot.

[00:54:25] We're not calling this Astrobot's adventure or something.

[00:54:28] No, it's just Astrobot.

[00:54:31] Yeah, it's weird.

[00:54:34] I do like that they're still doing the PlayStation references and stuff.

[00:54:38] I thought that was like a cute thing for a freebie for your new PS5.

[00:54:42] It's like here is PlayStation past, present, and future or whatever.

[00:54:45] But to do that over the course of an entire game?

[00:54:48] Okay.

[00:54:49] Flying around on a giant PS5 propelled by like four jetpacks and it has eyes.

[00:54:54] The PS5 had eyes.

[00:54:56] Has it had eyes this whole time?

[00:54:58] I don't know.

[00:55:00] Hey, PS5, you got eyeballs.

[00:55:02] Oh, it's not going to show it to you.

[00:55:04] You just heard how you talked about it.

[00:55:06] So it doesn't hear shit, do you?

[00:55:08] Don't you, PS5?

[00:55:09] So it has eyes and not ears.

[00:55:11] Yeah, that this was obviously the highlight of the show for me and a lot of people.

[00:55:17] So Microsoft, I don't know.

[00:55:20] I was just thinking this is kind of a half-baked thought.

[00:55:23] But like, you know, considering Microsoft had the same pop about a year ago with Hi-Fi Rush,

[00:55:27] you know, are companies going to finally take the hint that like this is the kind of stuff we really want?

[00:55:36] I'm going to sit right here and say I sincerely hope so.

[00:55:40] I like my video gamey video games.

[00:55:44] I really do.

[00:55:45] I mean, that's why.

[00:55:47] Well, I mean, Dying Sea Warriors Origins, baby, you couldn't literally legit my most anticipated game now.

[00:55:55] Now that all the Final Fantasies of a came and gone, it's Dying Sea Warriors Origins for me.

[00:56:01] Oh, God, that is all the ones we know about right now, isn't it?

[00:56:05] Because it was 16 and then they showed rebirth at TGS.

[00:56:08] And I was like, this is my this is my new what is it?

[00:56:12] Friendship ended with Final Fantasy 16.

[00:56:15] Yeah. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is my new best friend.

[00:56:21] And now I'm moving on to Dying Sea Warriors Origins.

[00:56:24] So, yeah, pretty good state of play if I don't say so myself.

[00:56:54] Andre, we need to be real with the people.

[00:57:00] OK, something else did happen on May 30th.

[00:57:04] We'll never recover from.

[00:57:06] OK, and that was the Marvelous Showcase of 2024.

[00:57:12] Well, I don't know.

[00:57:14] I kind of feel like I've recovered a little bit.

[00:57:16] One thing I did not recover from is that this show opened with.

[00:57:22] I'm going to be real careful here.

[00:57:24] Farmecia, the presentation was in Japanese and, you know, I had English subtitles on.

[00:57:32] So I think that's what it is.

[00:57:35] Steve, the anime trailer they showed for this farmagia was insane.

[00:57:41] It might be the most anime ass anime thing I've ever seen.

[00:57:44] There was like Yu-Gi-Oh!

[00:57:46] Summoning circles and then like fake ass Pokemon.

[00:57:49] But then there was like cards, but they didn't appear to be playing a card game.

[00:57:54] I saw the logo for farmagia like, oh, they got another farming sim on their belt.

[00:57:59] You know, farmagia, but right.

[00:58:02] But then there was all the stuff you just said.

[00:58:05] And what are we doing here?

[00:58:08] I mean, look, we're we're covering this Marvel Showcase Marvel.

[00:58:14] We're covering this Marvelous Showcase, obviously, because Kevin isn't here

[00:58:18] and he would just peace out on the segment anyway.

[00:58:21] And we covered it last year, so we wanted to talk about it again, even though there wasn't much.

[00:58:25] There's only a few things here.

[00:58:27] But Steve, that even for us seasoned weebs, that was too much for me.

[00:58:33] That was like, what the hell is this?

[00:58:36] Usually I can, you know, discern what we're supposed to be doing in the weeb times.

[00:58:43] I don't know what we're doing here.

[00:58:45] No clue.

[00:58:47] It was weird.

[00:58:49] It was weird.

[00:58:50] Anyway, I'm not interested or disinterested.

[00:58:53] It's just I just thought that intro was weird.

[00:58:55] They showed the next story of seasons, a.k.a.

[00:58:59] Harvest Moon, but not really.

[00:59:01] But they didn't give it a name.

[00:59:02] It was just the next story of seasons.

[00:59:05] Right.

[00:59:06] I don't know. I guess they indirectly acknowledge that they have competition in the farm game space.

[00:59:11] So they were showing some improved assets like livestock and plants and things,

[00:59:17] which I feel like was important to do.

[00:59:19] Well, not important, but a good thing to do considering the last Harvest Moon game.

[00:59:24] I think I shared the cover with you because I definitely share it with the Poke Pals was just look at all these waifus we have on the cover.

[00:59:31] Eh? Eh?

[00:59:34] Look at us at Natsume having no shame whatsoever.

[00:59:39] Oh, was that the thing where they showed like two rows of waifus and there was like two dudes in the back?

[00:59:46] And some husbandos.

[00:59:47] Yeah.

[00:59:48] Yes, that's the one.

[00:59:50] OK.

[00:59:51] But they didn't even show that this time.

[00:59:54] They just showed like here are the cows and that same art style you like.

[00:59:57] And then here are some flowers.

[01:00:00] I think that was the idea to show us that, hey, unlike those jokers that took away the Harvest Moon name,

[01:00:06] we're making the farming game and we're going to make it look nicer because people like you were complaining about how

[01:00:14] Oh, God, what was the GameCube remake?

[01:00:16] A Wonderful Life wasn't exactly up to snuff.

[01:00:20] Was it? OK, I didn't play it.

[01:00:22] So well, I know you were looking at the roads in particular.

[01:00:28] I thought was the thing I thought was really strange about this marvelous showcase was that they showed like

[01:00:36] the ticket here in the US, we call them ticket redemption games.

[01:00:40] But like in Japan, I'm sure it's the same idea.

[01:00:43] But what are they?

[01:00:45] They were like some weird crane games or one of them had Pokemon.

[01:00:52] Andre, I'm sitting there mouth agape when Marvelous came there and said,

[01:01:00] we have a Pokemon arcade game, Pokemon friend.

[01:01:05] And then they go into it for however long.

[01:01:10] I mean, it's kind of meh.

[01:01:12] They're skewing younger and relying on chachkis to keep track of the Pokemon you catch.

[01:01:17] Not unlike Derby Owners Club.

[01:01:19] You remember that from Sega where you sit there and you pretend to race horses.

[01:01:23] You got the little cards to keep track.

[01:01:25] I missed that game and fuck you for getting rid of that every all the Dave and Buster's is.

[01:01:30] I did all the cards for Sega's.

[01:01:33] They published the Wongan Midnight Maximum Tune games.

[01:01:36] Yeah, yeah. So to save your progress, you also had cards.

[01:01:39] So I'm sure it's the same thing at Derby Stallion.

[01:01:42] Derby Owners. Derby Stallion is a kawaii thing.

[01:01:46] OK, you're but you're just casually here in your presentation.

[01:01:50] And then the presentation say this is coming out this summer in arcades in Japan.

[01:01:56] And then right after that, they like also we have a crane game coming.

[01:02:00] Try catch. It's got this rotating crane and they're shown it picking up a story of seasons cow.

[01:02:08] Look at how fun this is.

[01:02:10] I'm like, yeah, I'm looking at how fun this is.

[01:02:12] Why can't I play this? Yeah.

[01:02:15] I mean, it's more of an experience than a game of skill because they're already advertising a whole line of

[01:02:20] story of seasons cows that are going to go in this machine.

[01:02:24] But I mean, look, what else would people want from that thing?

[01:02:27] Of course, that's what they would.

[01:02:29] It's just crazy.

[01:02:31] It's it's well, look, man, that stuff is still big business in Japan.

[01:02:35] So they got a you know, that's a that's kind of a big deal to land a Pokemon one though.

[01:02:40] You know, that's I bet they were proud to show that off.

[01:02:43] Well, you could tell from the presentation that they were so look, if I had a Pokemon game to show off,

[01:02:49] I you know, I'd be dragging the Poke Pals in here and they'd be like, Steve, anyone could license toothpaste.

[01:02:55] Why are we here?

[01:02:59] Then they showed a bunch of indie games that are mostly not Japanese.

[01:03:05] I think if none of them are but just a bunch of stuff that Marvelous is publishing in Japan.

[01:03:11] Yeah, well, I think they might be doing it here too.

[01:03:15] They weren't clear on that.

[01:03:17] They really cut the trailers on things you'd need to see in an indie space as an indie label.

[01:03:26] You know, there's the stylized word we beep bleep from Kickstarter and Bo path of the teal lotus.

[01:03:34] The funky side scroller and bits on a game jam winner and death the guitar and even a farm Sam and Moonlight Peaks.

[01:03:42] Yes, they're making it.

[01:03:44] They're publishing an indie farm.

[01:03:46] Sam, I think someone needs to tell them that, you know, maybe they don't need to publish the farm.

[01:03:53] Sam, but you know, even though this one has Dracula.

[01:03:58] What?

[01:04:01] What the hell did you just say into the microphone?

[01:04:04] The Moonlight Peaks sim farm sim game has Dracula, right?

[01:04:08] Because I think he's the grandpa that died or is going away and you need to impress for however long the game is.

[01:04:15] I am suddenly much more interested in playing a farm set.

[01:04:20] I think that I think that's what was going on.

[01:04:23] It was just, you know, it was just a fun thing to watch overall.

[01:04:29] The Indies, the whole show, you know, at least until we made it to, you know, the day when I smock in a Titanic Sion trailer again.

[01:04:37] I mean, I think it was something different from last year.

[01:04:40] However, they showed just as much of nothing and it's like what was the point of this?

[01:04:45] You just you showed you have a trailer like that to tease the fact that like this game exists.

[01:04:52] You can't just do that again a year later and not show any gameplay.

[01:04:55] Like if you're not ready to show the game, fine, but then just don't have it in the show.

[01:04:59] I don't know what the point of that was.

[01:05:01] They had it on the board at the beginning like, OK, this is the stuff we're going to talk about today.

[01:05:06] And at the end was Damon Smock and in English like, OK, we're going to see the gameplay this year.

[01:05:12] We saw the one robot standing on top of a bunch of other dead robots.

[01:05:16] Great.

[01:05:17] And then showed us the name of the game again.

[01:05:20] It was useless.

[01:05:21] Why did they do that?

[01:05:22] Guys, looks like I have more time to play the first one still.

[01:05:26] The first one is on Steam now, which is definitely the way I'm going to go now because now it'll run at a frame rate that is not painful.

[01:05:33] So I think my laptop would cry if I asked it to run the steam version of the next market.

[01:05:39] Yeah.

[01:05:40] So that's definitely a steam deck game for me anyway.

[01:05:43] Yeah.

[01:05:44] Fun, fun little show Marvelous Showcase twenty twenty four.

[01:05:47] I'd almost say it was marvelous.

[01:05:49] Go to go to bed.

[01:05:52] Go to bed.

[01:05:54] Wait, don't go to bed.

[01:06:01] We still have one more thing to talk about or two more things really.

[01:06:05] OK.

[01:06:06] The very morning after we recorded our last show.

[01:06:10] So they absolutely did this on purpose.

[01:06:14] Atari's current incarnation announces that they have acquired the Intellivision brand and game IPs, but not Amiko.

[01:06:26] This is a very important distinction to make because that company Amiko has not been able to use the Intellivision name for a while now.

[01:06:36] I do not know how much they bought this for.

[01:06:40] I tried looking as early as recently as today to find out how much this was acquired for.

[01:06:46] That is still fairly hush hush.

[01:06:49] That leads me to believe that they got this for something embarrassingly low.

[01:06:56] Yeah, this couldn't have been this couldn't have fetched a high price.

[01:07:01] Right.

[01:07:02] There's just no way because what money do they have to be out here spending like?

[01:07:07] Oh, yeah, we're just going to buy up that brand.

[01:07:09] They don't have that kind of money.

[01:07:10] They don't have brand money.

[01:07:11] They have Intellivision money.

[01:07:13] Even though none of these companies are owned by the same people they were owned by in the 70s and 80s, they still branded it as this grand the end of an era stating this is a very rare opportunity to unite former competitors and bring together fans of Atari and Intellivision and the golden age of gaming like.

[01:07:35] Yeah, OK.

[01:07:36] Like where we're still feuding about that.

[01:07:38] I feel like people looking for pre Nintendo stuff are just going to play whatever kids only for remember Super Nintendo versus Sega Genesis.

[01:07:47] They definitely aren't going to remember that.

[01:07:49] But hey, don't think about it too hard because Phil Adam, he's still sitting somewhere hiding in the corner at a Miko saying Atari has been a valuable partner and we have every confidence they will be responsible still to us.

[01:08:04] We are responsible steward of the story to television brand.

[01:08:07] Continuing, we look forward to our expanded collaboration and bringing a broad array of new Atari and Intellivision titles to the Amiko and Amiko home family gaming platforms.

[01:08:19] Andre, I understand that trying to get a few more IP under your umbrella because you can fling digital eclipse at it.

[01:08:29] But why are we still pretending that Amiko is coming because they definitely didn't buy Amiko the company.

[01:08:36] This is incredible.

[01:08:39] They just bought the parts.

[01:08:41] I don't I I don't know what the word is.

[01:08:44] I want right now hubris cocaine.

[01:08:48] I don't know.

[01:08:51] I almost feel like making this sort of statement is was part of the settlement.

[01:08:55] Like, OK, we'll give this to you.

[01:08:58] But but but you know, just just make us sort of look cool.

[01:09:02] Let me say this without without pointing and laughing.

[01:09:05] OK, the the only thing I can really say at this point is that I am shocked, genuinely shocked, Steve, that they are still pretending that Amiko was actually coming out.

[01:09:20] I really can't believe it.

[01:09:23] They've been hanging on to this scam for dear life.

[01:09:27] Any other company would have retreated backwards into the bushes like Homer years ago and not even announced that it's canceled.

[01:09:36] Even they don't even have to do that.

[01:09:38] Just forget the entire thing existed.

[01:09:41] Don't talk about it like a canceled game, right?

[01:09:44] Like very, very few times a company actually comes out and says, yeah, we it's canceled.

[01:09:48] Right.

[01:09:49] They don't usually do that.

[01:09:50] They just don't talk about it anymore.

[01:09:52] That's kind of what I figured would happen with this.

[01:09:55] And then around this time, we would be going, hey, remember Amiko?

[01:09:59] But no, it just it just keeps it won't stop.

[01:10:03] They keep pretending it's happening and it's never happening.

[01:10:07] I know this show is incredibly weird for everybody because you got me talking about music and you're over here making Simpsons references.

[01:10:17] This is this is not the way fine time operates.

[01:10:20] I know, I know.

[01:10:21] All right.

[01:10:22] Well, let's take a short break and then we can talk about Furiosa at Mad Max Saga.

[01:10:26] Spoiler free, by the way, and it's bad box office take in a second.

[01:10:33] All right, Steve, we both saw Furiosa in the past few days.

[01:11:12] I saw on Sunday, I think as of this recording you saw it yesterday.

[01:11:16] What did you think?

[01:11:17] Let's start there.

[01:11:18] You know, Andre, I think I had more fun than I thought I was going to have.

[01:11:21] I'm always a bit skeptical once we get to the third or fourth thing of something, even if we do space it up by however many years.

[01:11:30] In this case, fifth.

[01:11:31] Yeah.

[01:11:32] So I had I had fun for two and a half hours.

[01:11:37] I think it could have just been two hours, but I feel like that way about a lot of things.

[01:11:41] Yeah, you know, I'm also the person who says I think a lot of movies could have 20 minutes cut out of it.

[01:11:47] This is not the case where I felt that way.

[01:11:49] Honestly, I liked all of it.

[01:11:51] I didn't feel like there was any egregiously slow part.

[01:11:54] I thought, well, you know what this is, though?

[01:11:58] This is now like a real last Mad Max movie with the characters and all them freaks and stuff.

[01:12:04] Yeah, Fury Road had that.

[01:12:06] But that was also like George Miller hadn't got to make these in like forever.

[01:12:11] So he's just like, I'm going to do every ball to the wall thing I can possibly think of in one.

[01:12:16] Which is great.

[01:12:17] And that's why it's one of the best movies of all time.

[01:12:20] Furiosa actually takes his time.

[01:12:22] You still have that action, right?

[01:12:24] But it's it's a lot more I don't even want to say character driven, but he expands his world.

[01:12:32] He finally tells us about his world.

[01:12:33] There's a gas town and there's there's a Leopard Town or whatever.

[01:12:38] Yeah, the bullet farm, right?

[01:12:40] That's so ridiculous in the year 2024.

[01:12:42] But here it is anyway.

[01:12:44] Anyway, I really enjoyed Furiosa.

[01:12:46] Unfortunately, it hasn't been doing well at the box office.

[01:12:51] It made twenty six million dollars over a Memorial Day weekend, which is abysmal.

[01:12:59] That is terrible.

[01:13:00] As of this recording, it is sitting at 50 million domestic and one hundred and sixty million worldwide.

[01:13:07] Steve, this seems like a good time to mention that this movie cost one hundred and sixty eight million dollars to make.

[01:13:13] If we were doing one of our movie podcasts, this is where I would say this didn't make a profit at all.

[01:13:22] Well, I mean, I don't think this movie I look there's still time, right?

[01:13:27] You never really know.

[01:13:28] But I don't think it's really going to.

[01:13:32] And of course, everyone is equating this to the death of movie theaters and blah, blah, blah, which I don't want to do because I think that's dumb because I don't think that's true.

[01:13:40] I don't think that's what's happening here.

[01:13:42] But at the same time, Steve, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I have all the answers.

[01:13:47] I think we can explore this together.

[01:13:49] The reasons why this movie is bombing.

[01:13:52] And so what I want to do is that I'll just kind of make a proposal and you can agree with me, disagree with me, et cetera.

[01:14:01] OK, I got six of them here.

[01:14:03] So let's let's see what you think.

[01:14:05] Here's reason number one.

[01:14:07] Why don't think Furiosa is doing well?

[01:14:09] Does anyone remember out there that like Mad Max isn't actually that big of a box office thing?

[01:14:16] Because it's not.

[01:14:18] Fury Road did the numbers it did because of the critical acclaim.

[01:14:21] It was so high and everyone who saw it loved it that it practically willed itself into being like a barely financial success or I guess maybe we should say modest.

[01:14:32] But Fury Road barely made its budget in America, which I think was like one hundred and fifty mil.

[01:14:38] That's because it's a two hour R rated action movie about a bunch of fucking freaks.

[01:14:44] You know?

[01:14:45] And guess what?

[01:14:46] Furiosa has even less action and more freaks.

[01:14:49] So I love this shit.

[01:14:51] You love this shit.

[01:14:52] But Steve, I do not think that Mad Max is mainstream fodder.

[01:14:57] What do you think?

[01:14:58] No, you're right.

[01:14:59] Mad Max was always the niche film that the right people saw the right people being other creatives that kept referencing it directly or indirectly in their work ensuring that we'd always remember it in the zeitgeist.

[01:15:14] Like, you know, because you may have seen a Mad Max.

[01:15:18] Yeah.

[01:15:19] You know, whoever I cannot remember his name right now.

[01:15:23] But what is Fist of the North Star?

[01:15:25] If not Mad Max, it's exactly Mad Max with martial arts.

[01:15:29] I mean, it's easy to see all these other things and then imagine, of course, it did well.

[01:15:33] Look at all this other shit that spun off from it.

[01:15:35] But no, I mean, even only remember this earlier today.

[01:15:40] There's a Super Mario Bros.

[01:15:41] Super Show of all things where Toad rolls in on a motorcycle like I'm that Toad warrior.

[01:15:49] And he's got like a spiked helmet mushroom head on.

[01:15:53] Am I go?

[01:15:54] Like even they're doing my own God.

[01:15:57] Yeah.

[01:15:58] See, it became such a cultural thing that people know.

[01:16:01] But like the movies and not necessarily the biggest draws.

[01:16:06] I am sure this was like a big rental rental head.

[01:16:10] Like, I'm sure a lot of people took it out of Blockbuster or the store box office and never know.

[01:16:17] Never was.

[01:16:18] Well, I mean, I could imagine this being shown on like HBO back in the day.

[01:16:23] Right. A lot or whatever.

[01:16:26] When HBO started, 1977.

[01:16:28] Yeah.

[01:16:29] They would have been in time for this.

[01:16:31] So anyway, point number two, for the last 15 years or so, the Memorial Day weekend has been dominated by some big Marvel movie usually.

[01:16:41] Right.

[01:16:42] That's not the case right now.

[01:16:43] But still, Memorial Day is the weekend for like family crowd pleasers, not a post-apocalyptic freak show.

[01:16:51] So do you think Furiosa would have done better released in like August or something?

[01:16:57] Ordinarily, I would think this.

[01:17:00] But overall, I would say it was the time that it took in between Fury Road and Furiosa, combined with the general inflation woes that we're all suffering from.

[01:17:11] That's the enemy of this right here.

[01:17:13] Because Garfield was the family crowd pleaser for that weekend, and it was neck and neck with Furiosa the whole time.

[01:17:21] Yeah.

[01:17:22] People are just feeling the pinch right now and going to the movies for a fuck ton of money.

[01:17:30] If it's something like AMC or Regal, that's very easy to cut from the budget, I would say, especially when nearly everything hits streaming a few weeks later.

[01:17:40] Yeah.

[01:17:41] I'm not saying doom and gloom for movie theaters either, but it's been going through some rough patches.

[01:17:48] And this is just another one of those I'm going to say for now.

[01:17:52] I mean, there was a reason back in the day we had such long waits between movie theater and then second run theaters, which barely, I feel like we don't really have those anymore.

[01:18:03] There isn't any more around here anyway.

[01:18:06] The one I used to go to died when I was a kid too.

[01:18:09] Yeah.

[01:18:10] Like, I mean, we used to have like, you know, if you wanted to watch whatever on VHS, you're going to have to wait like a year.

[01:18:17] It was it used to be an insult to be direct to video in like six months or something like that.

[01:18:23] Now it's like three months.

[01:18:25] If that man direct to video, I guess we really don't do that at all.

[01:18:29] I know we have this discussion for OV times, but that's just not even a consideration anymore.

[01:18:37] It's just streaming or not.

[01:18:40] Yeah.

[01:18:41] But of course by direct to video, I do mean VOD and streaming and whatever, but it's just like there used to be that and we don't have that anymore.

[01:18:49] But anyway, that's another discussion.

[01:18:51] Let me run this by point number three.

[01:18:54] We already had a Furiosa movie and it was called Mad Max Fury Road.

[01:18:59] You know, like that movie was not about Mad Max.

[01:19:03] He was just along for the ride literally and figuratively.

[01:19:07] Furiosa was already the main character of a Mad Max movie if you ask me.

[01:19:13] So I don't know how much of a draw it is to be like here's the Furiosa movie and it's like, well, we already had one.

[01:19:20] It's not the first time you show up for one thing and then you use the name people are familiar with to get people into the seats.

[01:19:28] And then when you get in there, you're stuck with the story we're telling you too bad.

[01:19:32] But I think there would have been some appeal to this if I don't know if it was marketed better.

[01:19:37] Like did people really know this was a prequel at all until they sat down?

[01:19:42] I feel like I really didn't know anything about this movie at all.

[01:19:45] Well, that's my next point.

[01:19:47] I think the marketing on this movie was terrible.

[01:19:50] Like, I haven't seen a single commercial for Furiosa that if I didn't know what this was already, I don't know if it would make me care about it.

[01:20:00] I've been to a few movies this winter and like early spring, mostly rated R ones where they would show a trailer like Furiosa.

[01:20:07] And I never saw a trailer for this movie ever.

[01:20:11] And that's weird.

[01:20:14] I've been seeing more movies than I have been lately and I didn't see trailers.

[01:20:19] I haven't seen ads.

[01:20:21] No one had a poster up in the theater, Furiosa coming May.

[01:20:25] I mean, I just feel like we used to advertise this sort of thing more in general.

[01:20:33] I'm not saying I need to go to Burger King and see the Furiosa kids meal toys and crown for the month.

[01:20:38] But though come on, that'd be awesome.

[01:20:41] I would love to have the Furiosa Mad Max movie story crown.

[01:20:45] Back when we promoted R rated movies to kids, yeah.

[01:20:49] But you know, there used to be a movie ad on a billboard road, on the road here or some other kind of ill-advised tie in somewhere else.

[01:20:59] Like remember, A Quiet Place 2 had a tie in with Bugles right before the pandemic.

[01:21:07] Hell, I was at the store yesterday and I saw Garfield on the front of the Stouffer's lasagna.

[01:21:13] I was like perfect.

[01:21:16] I feel like we did that more.

[01:21:18] You know, it was stupid, but it lets you know it's movie time.

[01:21:22] What are you people doing with the marketing budgets?

[01:21:25] I don't know what happened here.

[01:21:26] Yeah, it's weird.

[01:21:27] I think they just thought people would come out just because, oh, it's Mad Max.

[01:21:31] People like that one.

[01:21:32] But guess what?

[01:21:33] And that's my next point.

[01:21:35] Fury Road was nine years ago, dog.

[01:21:37] That shit came out in like 2015.

[01:21:41] Like that's a very long time ago.

[01:21:46] And I really think that hurt this prequel's prospects.

[01:21:50] The right move would have been to capitalize on the Fury Road buzz as soon as possible, I think.

[01:21:55] But I don't know.

[01:21:56] I guess he had to do with 3000 years of longing and God knows what else, George Miller.

[01:22:01] I mean, you do you.

[01:22:02] But at the same time, like, I don't know, man, they should have this should have come out way sooner.

[01:22:07] My brain is broken because I could have sworn Fury Road came out in 2019.

[01:22:15] Fifteen, maybe.

[01:22:17] Yeah, OK.

[01:22:18] I know I'm fucked up that way, but maybe just maybe everyone else's brain shouldn't have been, you know, the people that do this for a living

[01:22:28] maybe should have kept better track of the calendar.

[01:22:31] I'm sure that sugar lump would have waited for George Miller.

[01:22:36] Nobody knows who Sugar Lump is.

[01:22:38] Unless you were a hardcore listener of this show.

[01:22:42] They would have if they listened to our 3000 years of longing episode live on iTunes and other platforms.

[01:22:47] But that's my joke response.

[01:22:50] My serious response is WB's been fucking around a lot longer than we realize.

[01:22:57] They just haven't.

[01:22:59] I don't know, man.

[01:23:01] Kind of a half point.

[01:23:02] Also, I feel like the people who went to see this movie and didn't really like it were I think we're expecting Fury Road to which would not work.

[01:23:12] I don't think you can just do that movie again.

[01:23:14] It's kind of one of a kind.

[01:23:16] You can't just be like, here's your two hours chase scenes.

[01:23:18] Right.

[01:23:19] I don't think that would have hit the same.

[01:23:21] At the same time, I don't think they were prepared for like a Mad Max story like the original trilogy from the 70s and 80s because that's what this is more like.

[01:23:32] So again, so like if you're a Mad Max person, you will like this.

[01:23:37] But if you were just a Fury Road person and don't really know anything about Mad Max, you have a much better chance of being like, I don't know about this.

[01:23:46] I feel like being a movie prequel almost comes with the expectation of being at least a little bit of a character study.

[01:23:54] Like it couldn't be a cut scene because it's a prequel, a cut scene.

[01:23:59] It could be a chase scene because it's a prequel.

[01:24:01] I know what you meant.

[01:24:03] But also like George Miller when it comes to Mad Max, he does not care about continuity at all.

[01:24:10] So this is like the first time this is like directly following.

[01:24:14] Mad Max before this was almost like Zelda, where it was like we're just the hero, the elements and we're going to do whatever the fuck we want each time.

[01:24:23] Yep.

[01:24:24] And with Furiosa, much like Tears of the Kingdom, if you will, it's kind of one of the few times where he's not doing that.

[01:24:32] So I guess it carries a certain amount of expectation.

[01:24:36] But here's my last point.

[01:24:39] I want to run this by you.

[01:24:40] Everyone says we're past the era of the movie star, right?

[01:24:45] Being the big draw.

[01:24:46] We're attracted to franchises and not like stars, which is kind of true, right?

[01:24:51] I think there's some truth to that.

[01:24:53] But this is still a world where you can't just replace Charlize Theron with Anya Taylor-Joy and call it good.

[01:25:00] And don't get me wrong, Anya Taylor-Joy was really good in this movie.

[01:25:03] She was a great Furiosa.

[01:25:04] I'm not saying anything about her performance.

[01:25:06] I thought, OK, I'll just say I thought she was just as good as Charlize Theron.

[01:25:10] At the same time, that's not the same thing.

[01:25:14] And I think that matters for like a box office draw.

[01:25:18] I think it's fine for a prequel that they did that.

[01:25:21] But at the same time, you couldn't put Theron at the end where we're fully Furiosa'd.

[01:25:29] Well, I mean, OK, this isn't a spoiler.

[01:25:32] But over the end credits, they just showed clips of the entirety of Fury Road.

[01:25:37] Did you catch it?

[01:25:39] It's like, yeah, it's just like, OK, yeah, OK.

[01:25:42] Now the movie begins that you saw nine years ago, maybe.

[01:25:45] That was weird.

[01:25:47] But generally speaking, I really don't get why people, you know, the Hollywood people think they can get away with that in the edge of the Internet where everything can be looked up.

[01:25:58] I know this happened on TV all the time in our parents younger ish times.

[01:26:02] You know, an actor died or went nuts or took on an ill-advised live show somewhere and they just slot in a new actor to play the same character.

[01:26:11] They're still doing that on TV, by the way.

[01:26:13] Yep.

[01:26:14] Last Man Standing, which was Borderline Maga home improvement.

[01:26:19] Yeah.

[01:26:20] Ended a number of years ago now.

[01:26:21] Swapped out the middle daughter when she moved on to something else.

[01:26:25] Come on, guys.

[01:26:26] We all see it.

[01:26:28] Just say she took on an opportunity overseas or something.

[01:26:33] I think the first time I ever got shocked like that is when they replaced Becky in season five of Roseanne.

[01:26:39] I was like, yeah, that's not Becky.

[01:26:43] That was Sarah Chalk that replaced her, which is a fine actress in her own right.

[01:26:47] But it was just like, huh?

[01:26:49] Who the hell was this?

[01:26:50] Right.

[01:26:51] And then there was that weird season.

[01:26:53] I think it was season eight where they had like both of them in particular episodes.

[01:26:58] I don't remember this.

[01:26:59] Yeah, it was weird.

[01:27:02] There was even because you know, like sometimes during a code, I don't know how much Roseanne you've ever watched, but like they always have like a kind of over the credits.

[01:27:09] Say like a short like a short, short scene.

[01:27:12] There was one of those that had both Beckys and it was fucking weird.

[01:27:15] Anyway, I just don't think you can do that as readily nowadays.

[01:27:19] We just know too much or we care too much or whatever.

[01:27:23] And again, I'll say it again.

[01:27:25] Anya Taylor Joy.

[01:27:26] Great job.

[01:27:27] Just as good as Shirley Starr on a few.

[01:27:29] Excellent.

[01:27:30] But man, I don't know.

[01:27:33] That's our that's our I'll still root for our Princess Peach voice up there.

[01:27:38] Be enough.

[01:27:39] Furiosa even though she didn't get to say fuck.

[01:27:41] She didn't didn't she?

[01:27:43] Nah, nobody got to say fuck this time.

[01:27:45] Mad Max, Tom Hardy barely got to say fuck in Fury Road.

[01:27:49] Barely.

[01:27:50] He had the strain to hear it with his little grill mass thing when he's strapped to the car.

[01:27:55] Yeah, that's the only time anyway.

[01:27:58] Maybe maybe the bombs that went off in Australia.

[01:28:01] Oh, by the way, do you like how the movie zoomed in on Australia from the globe?

[01:28:05] Like it takes place here.

[01:28:08] Like where else would that take place?

[01:28:12] I don't know.

[01:28:13] I don't know.

[01:28:16] It's weird.

[01:28:17] Anyway, should we get the fuck out of here?

[01:28:20] We've we've talked a lot today.

[01:28:22] Yeah.

[01:28:23] OK, that was thank you for indulging my points about Furiosa.

[01:28:25] Great movie.

[01:28:26] If you're a Mad Max person, go see it.

[01:28:28] If you're not a Mad Max person, still go see it.

[01:28:30] Great movie.

[01:28:31] We'll catch you next time on Find Time.

[01:28:33] Follow us on Twitter at Find Time Podcast.

[01:28:35] Check description of this podcast to find our names on Blue Sky.

[01:28:39] See you next time.

[01:28:40] Bye.

[01:28:43] Man.