Geek Addicts - Episode 62: Let's Talk About Fighting Games!

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome to Geek Addicts. Hello everybody and welcome back to your favorite pop culture podcast. That's right, this is Geek Addicts with our quarter circle combo button smash whatever the hell I don't know super move fighting games shit. I am Bill and this is Matt. How you doing Matt?

[00:00:53] Combo breaker. C-c-c-combo breaker. Oh yeah. I wonder if anyone who didn't read the title knows what we're talking about in this episode. Yeah, right. Oh boy, it is a bit since we last recorded. It depends on your perspective. Just technically we recorded three days ago. True, but that was for a different show.

[00:01:22] And that podcast will already be out by the time this comes out. Probably have will have been out for a bit actually. Yeah, yeah. A few days ago we recorded the the GNC anime wrap up and I have already finished watching my assigned show. So yes. Oh man. So I had to ask for another assignment because I felt like I was cheating only getting a 13 episode one.

[00:01:53] Yeah. Alex won. She beat us single-handedly pretty much. So well, you know what as she was listing off her stuff and I realized that she was counting individual seasons and like individual specials and OBAs and stuff like that. If I had broken up my list like that, I feel like I might have given her a run for her money. I didn't realize that she was counting that counting it that way. True. Well, I mean I I counted individual OBAs.

[00:02:21] So to be fair though, the genius behind the GNC year-end anime recap is we don't have any rules. Everyone's list is exactly how they want to present it. That's and well, you know what next year I'm going to go by her rules just so I can hopefully blow everyone out of the water. Yeah, I don't know. She might not be as over the top next year because she might I think she said this year she wants to focus on other media a little bit. So makes sense.

[00:02:51] I mean, that's kind of like what this year was for me. So yeah, because I want to definitely do more manga. I want to get more into American comics all sorts of crazy stuff like that. Agreed. Yeah, I still got it. But now that I've gone through all the MCU and I'm trying to stay caught up with that like I I feel like I want to start jumping more into DC stuff.

[00:03:15] So hopefully, you know, maybe in the next couple episodes, we can try to plan out to do like a DC animated movie or something. Or we could do like Batman 87 or 89 or whatever the fuck it is. That'd be fun. Oh, the Tim Burton movie? Yeah. One of the worst. The movie is good, but the Batman in that movie is horrible. I love it. It's so fucking cheesy. He kills people left and right. Like what the fuck? It's amazing. I think he kills more people than the Joker.

[00:03:45] No, he does. The Joker just dances half the movie. I swear to God. It's fantastic. Batman just throws people off the fucking roof. And I'm like, Jesus. I'm like, OK, it's about right. All right. This Batman is a this is a very liberal attempt at Batman. That's for sure. I still enjoy the movie, though. Oh, the movie is great. It's just when you're you're very used to a certain Batman at this point.

[00:04:09] And when we go to like some very interpretive definitions of that, man, that one always makes me laugh because I'm like, wow, his no kill code is it's being stretched here quite a bit. Yeah, I think it'll be fun to go through all the Batman movies. Like go through all the live go through all the live actions and then go through like the animated stuff. It'll be fun for two movies. And then we get to the Joel Schumacher movies and I just go and then I still find things that are enjoyable about them. They're still it's still entertaining.

[00:04:39] It doesn't make them good, but much in the way that the Netflix Death Note movie isn't good, but it's entertaining. See, forever. I can I can get through forever. Forever is OK. Batman and Robin. Oh, my God. That movie. That movie is funny at points for just how bad it is. But at the same time, like when he starts kicking his heels together and ice skates come out, I'm like, what the fuck? What is this? I used to see you. The back credit card is funny. Happened tap dance and ice skates. I don't know. That's a little weird. That's weird.

[00:05:09] Yeah, that's fair. Chicks dig the car, right? Yeah, that's whatever shit. Something like that. Something like that. Yeah, I still haven't seen the Dark Knight Rises. I've only seen the first two of those movies. It's it's fine. Tom Hardy plays a good Bane. I've seen the the the backbreaking scene about a million times and a bunch of like goofy, like like bad lip reading clips and stuff of that movie, which are really funny. See, the back of that movie I've seen.

[00:05:38] The backbreaking scene to me is like it was cool and all, but like when you actually read the comic adaption of like that storyline, it's like, wow, they. They did it. It's they certainly they may. They certainly did an adaption of it. That's for sure. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, I think it would be fun to kind of just spread out and do some more of that kind of stuff. I mean, we got the new Superman trailer just came out. Also.

[00:06:05] So I've mentioned multiple times that I'm not super big and or I haven't until recently been very big into emulation. Mm hmm. Um, and I listened to an episode of Retro Rehab where they had them for them later on and I discovered them's layer through that. And I was like, holy shit, how did I not know about this sooner? So especially once I get my new laptop, I'm going to be playing around with that a lot. So hopefully I'll have.

[00:06:34] I mean, I don't know how many of them I actually going to complete fully, but I'm definitely going to fuck around with a lot more classic games than that I have before. Oh, yeah. Emulation is fun. I still have a ton of ROMs on my hard drive. Actually, I think on that black hard drive that I had you put that anime on, I think I have a ton of emulation stuff in there. No shit. I didn't even think of it at the time.

[00:06:58] Well, maybe next time, whether it's you visiting or us visiting, we'll have to break into it and see what you got. Yeah. You don't have anything on there you don't want anyone to see, do you? I don't think so. I mean, I can't promise, but. I don't do. I don't know. All I'll say is I don't use my computer. Depends on how old it is.

[00:07:25] Well, all I'll say is I don't use my computer for what you may be insinuating. That's a phone thing. Fair enough. Fair enough. Also, don't ever hold someone else's phone. Just think about that one for a minute. I'm not even talking about that. Think about the fact that the majority of phone time is when people are on the shitter. This is true. I don't think I've ever seen somebody like wipe down their phone either.

[00:07:49] And I hate to tell you this, listeners out there, but I guarantee you when you're at home, a lot of people, they don't wash their hands. I can have to confirm or deny this. I'm just saying. When you're at home, it's your own house and you're not thinking about it. I can guarantee you sometimes you just don't wash your hands and you don't even think about it. So keep that in mind. I'm just saying. Whenever someone says, hey, look at this, and they give you their phone.

[00:08:19] Just keep that in mind. These are the things I think about when I'm bored. Yeah. No shit. But yeah, so on the subject we were talking about earlier, I did, in fact, watch Odd Taxi over the past couple of days. Nice. And I was really not expecting. I thought it was just going to be like a goofy little slice of life kind of thing, but it actually had kind of an intense story. And there's like a twist at the end. And I was not. I don't know.

[00:08:49] Have you watched it? I have not yet. Well, yeah, it's pretty entertaining. It wouldn't surprise me if Alex threw it on for an enemy swap. But yeah, it was a very fun show. I enjoyed it. Yeah, definitely. I got to listen to that. I'm actually going to be watching the other show that Slade gave you pretty soon. Excuse me. Pretty soon. So. Yeah, I'm excited to jump into that. I like the slow burn, like story heavy kind of shows.

[00:09:19] Yeah. That one's also like one that no one will shut up about. So I have to see what the hype is. For sure. Yeah. Other than that, though, me and Alex went food shopping today. We saw like pre-Christmas. For anybody who's wondering, it still isn't Christmas yet at the time of this recording. The pre-Christmas insanity of people just like last minute shoppers and stuff. It's it's pretty insane.

[00:09:45] Yeah, we actually Cindy and I went out this morning trying to, you know, go out early to, you know, make things a little bit easier. And yeah, it wasn't as easy as we were hoping. I mean, it still wasn't that bad. It definitely could have been a hell of a lot worse. But I mean, we went to five below first and that was actually pretty empty for the most part. It was a few people, but it wasn't too bad. Walmart, on the other hand, was a little crazy. It's actually funny.

[00:10:12] Last night, me and Alex went to we went to the pizza place where I took you and Cindy. That place is great. Great pizza. Yeah, we went there because we it was a lot. So I'm as of this recording, I'm on vacation for the rest of the year. Alex is on vacation for the rest of the year. We're just kind of killing and we were like, fuck it. Let's go out, get some drinks, go get some pizza. I ordered this martini. Oh, man, they pour heavy there. Holy shit.

[00:10:38] Well, yeah, the iced tea that we got was like because remember, like Cindy had a headache and I had to happen to drink hers, too. I had to like pound them both. I was like, Jesus Christ. I was like drunk for like the next hour. I took I took one sip of the martini because I had not eaten anything by this point because I didn't have time to eat in the morning. I took one sip and I went, oh, I got to wait till the food shows up. Like I am not going to survive drinking this. Yeah. And then we walked around. Make him strong.

[00:11:05] And then we walked around Target for like half an hour to walk it off because, oh, man. Oh, by the way, Cindy picked out a little something for you. Shouldn't have to do that. Yeah, I know. But she she wanted to because you were you were a very nice host and you got us a couple of Christmas things while we were there. So we got you a little something. I appreciate it. Yeah.

[00:11:35] Other than that, though, any other current events or do you want to jump into our topic for today's episode? I'm not in particular. No, pretty much. I mean, it's only been a few days since we did this, really. So not a whole lot has happened. I have two more days before I go on vacation. So. That'll be nice. I mean, I still have like a I think I have like just under two weeks off. So I'm excited about that. Yeah, it's nice. Like I haven't really had a vacation.

[00:12:04] I've looked forward to as much as this one in a while. So it'll be good. I don't know yet. Honestly, I've got a lot of I got some personal stuff I got to take care of. And I finally have time to do that. I'm not going to dive too deep into that. Other than that, though, I really want to catch up on reading. I want to actually play some games for once. Like who would have thought the game collector doesn't play games ever? Yeah. Right. I mean, we got our trip up to.

[00:12:35] Our parents asked for Christmas, me and Alex. Other than that, though, I'm not sure yet. I've got a few plans of things. Should be fun. I just went to the discount comic shop again and I bought a whole stack of books. Because I'm trying to collect a whole bunch of stuff I missed out on during my comic book hiatus during the. From like 2011 to 2016.

[00:13:02] When DC was doing their new 52 reboot thing and I wasn't into it. Now that that's over and I've grown up a little, I'm actually going back and reading some of those stories. The ones I missed and actually realizing there was some good shit here. Especially now that DC has recently in their many continuity reshuffles. They've just kind of, they've established in their continuity that everything is canon now. And don't think about it too hard.

[00:13:32] Yeah, it's one of those things. So it's basically they have like a sliding scale kind of continuity now where they can just like, if they run into a continuity error, they can just pretend that didn't happen and erase it from the timeline. That's right. It's kind of what Marvel's been doing forever, but like now DC is doing it. But the way DC is doing it's funny because they've like rebooted so many times and like their continuity is a mess. So it just makes sense at this point.

[00:14:02] Just make it so everything's canon and just work with what you want. I gotcha. Yeah, on the subject of comics, I'm hoping that I can use some Christmas money to fill out some of my manga series that are included. Like I want to get the last four 3-in-1s for Yu-Gi-Oh that I need. And then I think I'm like, I think I need like eight more volumes for like original Boruto. I don't know if they started releasing two Blue Vortex and collected volumes yet.

[00:14:31] I haven't seen a single one, so I don't think so. Okay. So yeah, so if I just get those eight, I'll be good on Boruto and Yu-Gi-Oh with it. That would be good. I'm trying to think. I don't think I have any other unfinisheds at the moment. Off the top of my head. Unless you count Pokemon. But I mean, each section is kind of its own isolated story. So you can make an argument that I've completed it like eight times now. Yeah.

[00:14:58] I mean, I'll keep an eye out for that black and white series if it's still there. I really wanted to get that too. I just thought I was going to have more money that weekend. And I felt like, all right, well, if I'm going to pay 50 bucks for comics, I feel like I should be using that money for Christmas stuff. So yeah. No, it was just one of those like timing things where I was kind of like, I didn't think about it. But I gotcha.

[00:15:28] Well, I mean, just like looking around on like Amazon and eBay, like I could probably get them for the same, if not a little bit cheaper. So it's not the biggest deal in the world. It was a huge temptation though, having them all right in front of me though. That's for sure. Yeah, I know. Especially because like those aren't the easiest to find right now. For sure. Yeah, I'll keep a lookout though.

[00:15:53] If I see them and then I'll, I'll, I'll just keep you posted. Okay. Sounds good. But yeah, I think we've waffled on enough. Yes, Alex, I said waffle. I really need to make like a banner for that just to drive her nuts. But yeah, I mean, like I make like a, like a clip show of just all the times that you've said waffle Don and set it to her. Yeah, I know.

[00:16:23] I get to like get a background of like a waffle spinning or something just like to have in the background whenever I say that. But that being said, we do have a topic for this episode. You probably could have guessed it by the, that really bad attempt at comedy. I started it with the episode with. We're talking about fighting games. Cause when Matt was visiting this week, last weekend, we had played a bunch of really shitty anime fighters just for some lols. And I thought, Hey, this could be a fun topic.

[00:16:53] And then Cindy and I played a couple of decent ones. Once you were busy with a super ghost. Yeah. We were doing anti game of the year. Be sure to check that out by the way. You'll understand some chaos happened. Yeah. So fighting games are fighting games are a genre of game that I swear to God is like, either you love them or hate them. Like there really isn't a in between. I mean, I think. I think for the most part, I mean, there's definitely people who, who play casually.

[00:17:21] Like, like I personally, like I have no interest in playing fighting games online because I, I just not built for it. But I, I love playing them casually with people that I'm hanging out with. Like, that's a totally different story, you know? Yeah. Um, and like every now, like if, uh, if it's a game, like say more, like the new mortal combat games, like from like 2009 onward, where they have like very in-depth stories.

[00:17:45] Um, like I, I like playing the story modes on like those kinds of games, but for the most part, those are, those are just kind of like, um, like couch, uh, you know, cooperative play kind of thing. Or versus or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Like the only online, um, the only online, uh, fighters I like to play are like, if I'm playing with friends online, like I don't like playing with randos.

[00:18:14] Cause like, you'll always get that one guy who's like the tryhard. He's like so good at the game that he just makes playing the game. Not fun. Well, that's the thing is like, when you're playing online, it's just like nothing but those people. And it's just like, I don't have any room to try and improve. And I'm just getting absolutely mollywopped. Like the one time I tried to play, what was it? Was it raging blast? I think I tried to play raging blast two online once and I'd never again, never again.

[00:18:44] Like I have no way. Like when I, when I start playing sparking zero, I'm not playing out online. I have no interest. That's understandable. Like I played, especially since I'm so late. Yeah. Like I tried playing fighter, fighter Z online for a little bit and I was like, nah, these people have already just, they're too good. This isn't fun. Yeah. I did that too. When I, when I first got it, like right when it came out and I think I was like a month late getting it.

[00:19:12] And by that point, everybody was already like, because all the people online, those are all remote and just went straight into ranked matches and stuff. So yeah. It was crazy people. I kid mostly. It's just not my thing, but I will say like, I said it in the smash brothers episode. Like when it me, my thoughts on fighting games are like, I'm the kind of guy when I play smash where like, if you're going to play smash, I play with items.

[00:19:41] I play with all the goofy shit because that's just how I put, if you're going to play smash brothers, that's how you play. If you're going to play, if you're going to turn all the items off and make it boring like a regular fighter, I'd rather just play street at that point. Yeah, exactly. So I'm guessing you, you tend to prefer 2d fighters as opposed to like arenas. Depends on the game. I'm my problem with arena fighters is like, they kind of tend to too much shit kind of

[00:20:10] goes on and I'm not great at like figuring that out, especially when like you got a player who's just better than you. Cause I mean, like I've played like the 10kai, Budokai 10kai Ichis and like, I understand the appeal, but I am fucking terrible at them. I played like other stuff like that. I enjoy a 2d fighter to me, I think works. Cause at least you're, you're, you're on a plane. You kind of just stay there and you don't have to deal with any bullshit.

[00:20:39] Cause like when I, so when, when I say like 2d fighter, I also mean like a 3d fighter, like that's like, like a Tekken or like a virtual fighter style 3d, not like an open ended arena fighter. That's a different beast in its own right. Cause like my preferred fighting game, if I had to pick one is I'm a Tekken guy. I really enjoy Tekken's whole style of like, you know, buttons kind of equal different limbs and stuff.

[00:21:06] And it's very like, it, it make, it makes sense when you play it. It's kind of hard to explain. It's, it's been a very long time since I played a Tekken guy. I played it like way back on like, I think PS2. And this is like early, early, like period. It had even been PS1. I'm not sure. It was a long time ago. I haven't, I don't even know which one it was, but I, I haven't played a Tekken game in a very long time. I do remember liking it. And I think I watched the Tekken movie too, when I was a kid.

[00:21:37] It was an anime movie. The thing with Tekken is like, it's just, it's so Tekken was created by, it was, it was a Namco game, but I believe a lot of the people who worked on it came from Sega and the virtual fighter team. And it's basically a more, it's a less like virtual fighter to me is like the pinnacle of like, like, like virtual fighter is all about the technical side of everything.

[00:22:06] And it's very, there's not, there's really no story. It's very, it's a very technical fighter. And that's kind of why like virtual fighters fun, but it's also not the easiest to get into. Tekken's a bit more fun. Like it has a full story, like lore. Sure. The gameplay is a bit smoother and easier to pick up, but it is still, it's engaging enough that it's not super crazy to pick up. Yeah. Makes sense.

[00:22:35] But yeah, I think, I think like taking the focus away from like, you know, Dragon Ball games, I think the fighter I played the most was probably Mortal Kombat, like the Mortal Kombat series. Mortal Kombat is very good. And I, I've always liked like that kind of style as well. Like, cause I played a lot of the games that have the kind of like, you know, like, I don't know how to describe it.

[00:23:04] Cause with Mortal Kombat, there's a lot of like, it's not just like quarter circle turns and stuff like that. It's, it's, you know, you gotta like up, down or left, left or whatever, you know, like all sorts of different combinations of different ways to do it. And every character feels unique in that way. There's definitely a lot of fighters out there where they're all just kind of cutting pace with like the fighting styles and stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, with all the fighters there are out there, you're going to get your street fighter

[00:23:34] clones. You're going to get your Mortal Kombat clones. Cause kind of like when it comes to pure 2d fighters, like a lot of them, like there's like street fighter style, there's like SNK style. Then there's like Mortal Kombat style and they kind of other people would kind of copy that and make their own variation on it over the years. Yeah. Cause, cause Mortal Kombat is, if you're like a big time street fighter guy and you jump

[00:24:00] right into Mortal Kombat, it is such a weird shift because Mortal Kombat plays nothing like a street fighter. See, I had like the reverse thing where I played a lot of Mortal Kombat and then I tried street fighter a few times. Like I don't have a ton of experience with street fighter. I played a fair amount of Marvel versus Capcom 3. I think it was with a buddy of mine years ago.

[00:24:27] And I played a little bit of two in actual arcades. If anybody remembers those. Yep. And yeah, that's about it. Did you notice how all arcades back when they like, no matter like where the location was, they were always grungy as fuck. Oh yeah, for sure. Like I remember like back in my, back in Kingston, back from where we're from, there used to be

[00:24:53] an arcade in that mall and it was the grungiest fucking arcade I would, you would ever see. I loved it back then though. That was when arcades were still arcades. It was like the very last like wave of them. I still remember that arcade because like you'd go in there and you'd see like, you'd get like the mall gots and the JNCO jeans like walking around and shit in the corner. You had like the people obviously smoking pot in one corner back when pot was very illegal still.

[00:25:21] Um, you'd have like the innocent children with their parents and the parents look terrified. Yeah. Walking around and then you'd have just like the average teenagers actually playing the games. I always remember it was such a disgusting yet like nostalgic like experience back in the day. Hmm. You'd also get the one kid cheating at skee-ball. This is always a kid cheating at skee-ball. Always. Always. I know what's funny is like whenever like you'd see, you go into one of those arcades,

[00:25:50] you'd always feel like the person behind the counter, uh, like part times at Hot Topic. Yeah. Yeah. And if they don't, they definitely shop there. Well, yeah, that was like pure early 2000s. Like everyone shopped at Hot Topic. I swear. Um, this is where you got all your band t-shirts and now you go into Hot Topics now and it's like an anime store and you're like, oh, this is weird. Which is funny because now I feel like I would actually have more to do with a Hot Topic

[00:26:19] than back then. So this is completely off topic, but this is just something I have to bring up because it pisses me off. So Hot Topic has a sister store chain called Box Lunch and Box Lunch started out as like an anime focused store. I swear to God, you go into Box Lunch now, it's like 80% Disney shit. That's weird. There's more anime shit in the Hot Topic than there is in the quote unquote anime version of Hot Topic. I'm always like, what the hell? Like, like this makes no sense.

[00:26:49] I don't need a Moana t-shirt. All right. Well, I remember when I first went into like a box lunch, the first time they started popping up, I remember they had like Inuyasha shit and like fruit basket shit. It's like, it's like this is stuff that you don't find anywhere because it's like, it's kind of niche. You could get a fucking Sailor Moon crock. Why would you need one? I don't know, but it was there. I think there was also a Dragon Ball Z one, which made it even funnier. That's about right.

[00:27:15] But yeah, like that's where I got like my little Kagome coffee mug and stuff. It was at a box lunch back when they still were cool. But anyways, fighting games. Yeah. Yeah. So, so would you say Tekken is your, is your favorite fighting game or is that just kind of like? Tekken's the one I go back to the most. I don't really have a favorite favorite per se because I mean, I love SNK fighters like SNK fighters are also up there. Like I'm a huge Samurai Shodown fan.

[00:27:45] I love the King of Fighters. There's more of them. Fatal Fury. Like I love that style because SNK just had a very flashy personalized style. I love Soul Calibur. That's like a more weapon. It's like Tekken, but with weapons. I played a little bit of Soul Calibur, but not very much. Soul Calibur was Soul Calibur two in particular is such an iconic game. Like they were big for the, the cameo fighters.

[00:28:15] Is that the one with Yoda? Yoda was in four. I want to say, because I know who was famous for you. The GameCube version had Link. The PlayStation version had Hiachi from Tekken and the Xbox version had spawn for some reason. Everyone's spot. Everyone's spawn was relevant. Yeah.

[00:28:43] And then they've always kind of just had like the guest fighters as just a thing. Like I remember Darth Vader was in one of them, like just goopy stuff like that. Those were always fun. I think Geralt is in the newest one, isn't it? I believe so. I mean, it's new is funny because like, it's been like a couple of years, but. Yeah. Well, I just remember because my father-in-law had one of the newer ones.

[00:29:09] I remember I played it with him a little bit and I know I played as Geralt at one point. Yeah. What's another good fighter? Oh, we made a joke about it in the intro, but. Killer Instinct. That is like a classic fighter from back in the day. Mostly for the announcer in that game who just goes so over the top. Like that's what the famous like combo breaker comes from.

[00:29:39] And the ultra combo. But yeah, I feel like the majority of my experience of fighting games come from like Dragon Ball games. There was a lot of anime fighters. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Dragon Ball ones in particular because Dragon Ball loved the 2D fighters for a bit there. And they still like obviously with fighters, you know, like we get we still get them every now and then.

[00:30:07] I remember actually before fighters came out, I was playing Extreme Butoden on the 3DS. That was actually solid. That was a decent. Well, that's the same studio that did fighters, I believe. Arc System. Yeah. They did the kind of a more simplified version for the handheld. Yeah, I played a bit of that. I have it somewhere. But I remember it being very simplistic. The storyline is laughably pointless. But as a fighter.

[00:30:37] I mean, it's silly. You know, it's just a silly, goofy little. It's the Z storyline. Like everyone's played it. Everyone knows it. But now you get to play a fighter with it. Well, not Extreme Butoden. That one had like an original story. I remember there was one point where Master Roshi was gathering the Dragon Balls because he was going to wish for youth. And I was like, this is a good idea. Why don't more things do this? Maybe I didn't play enough of it because I just played the base story mode, which just had the Z story again. Oh, okay. Gotcha.

[00:31:06] Yeah, that one didn't stick with me very much, obviously. Yeah, it's funny. When it comes to anime video games, you get like two options. You either get a fighting game or you get an RPG. There's like no in between. Yeah. Although, well, I guess it depends on your perspective on what Xenoverse is. Because it is definitely an RPG, but it's also definitely Arena Fighter. That's kind of both.

[00:31:32] Or it's like either RPG or action adventure because God knows what the hell Saga was supposed to be. Yeah. I think Kakarot would be more action adventure-ish. Because that would actually have an exploration aspect to it. Well, that is actually a full-on RPG, though. Like it has like actual RPG mechanics. Yeah, Saga was just a... Saga was an interesting experiment. That's the way I like to put it. I still enjoy it.

[00:32:01] I go back to it every now and then. It was made by the tech in the Power of Juju studio. I was friends for that. It's too funny. So I guess we could bring up some of those anime fighters. Because we played a few of them when you had visited. Like we played... I had to finally enlighten you to the wonder that is Dragon Ball Z Final Thou. Yeah, my first time playing it. And holy shit, that game was a mess.

[00:32:30] I mean, just aside from the fact that it controls like ass. And the models are even... Well, no, actually, no. That game came out in 96. So I can't really blame the models too much. To me, my favorite part of that game is the... Hilarious voice cast. Hmm. For sure. Like the biggest one that everyone remembers is Steve Bloom as Goku. Excuse me, as Goku. But like all the other voices are just so wrong.

[00:33:00] And it's like the greatest thing ever. Yeah. It's pretty funny. Then we were playing it. We couldn't figure out how to fly for like the first like six fights. Until I somehow accidentally flew. And I was like, how do I get back down? Yeah, I'm just down there on the ground. Like, what am I supposed to do here? How do I get you? Yeah. That game is so... That game is hilariously awful.

[00:33:26] I'm still not sure if it's worse than Ultimate Battle 22 or not. Because Ultimate Battle 22 is also pretty awful. Well, I mean, they can at least be satisfied in the knowledge that they're still both better than Taiketsu. Yeah. Yeah. Because that is a god awful fighter. You can't even call it a fighter. It's so bad. Yeah, that studio was like either like...

[00:33:55] That studio was banging a million right there. Because they either had the Legend of... Legacy of Goku series, which were like... Hit or miss. I know you loved the first one, but that first game is the definition of jank. Like... Oh, I'll never argue that point for sure. Taiketsu's awful. But then they made Legacy 2 and Boo's Fury, which are great games. And then they made that god awful beat-em-up GT thing.

[00:34:25] I still don't think... I still don't think Transformations is that bad. It's not that it's bad. It's just it's like you paid like 40 bucks for that. And it was over in like 20 minutes. I mean, I didn't. Well, I'm just talking about the people who bought that day one. I think I got that for like 10 bucks at most at like a GameStop. And the little case that they have with all the loose carts. I rented it at a damn Blockbuster. That was the most disappointing rental ever.

[00:34:53] It was like, oh, it was done in a fucking day. Great. Well, see, apparently they... I don't know. There's some sort of limitation. Because apparently they were going to do it in the style of Legacy of Goku. And then, I don't know. Like, maybe their budget took a hit. Or like they didn't have as much time as they thought they were going to have. So they ended up just making a beat-em-up. Or they saw the critical reception of GT at the time and went, eh. Did we want to put the money into this?

[00:35:21] I mean, if they had just done it the way they did Legacy of Goku 2 and Boo's Fury, I feel like they would have done well. And honestly, like, yeah, looking back on it, people have a lot of shit to say about GT. But I feel like when it was airing at the time, like, it wasn't as universally hated as it is now. And even saying universally hated, like, even that's a stretch. Because there's a lot of GT fans out there. See, are they fans of GT or are they just fans of Super Saiyan 4?

[00:35:52] Yes. Okay. That's all I need to know. Moving on, though. I guess, yeah, Final Bout was bad. Vegeta's voice was funny. Yeah. He didn't sound anything like Vegeta. Like, if you picture Brian Drummond and then you picture Chris Sabat, don't picture that for this voice because they completely did not understand the character. Yeah, for sure.

[00:36:21] I really enjoyed playing that Inuyasha fighter, though. That was fun. So the Inuyasha fighter, it's it. The name of the game, it's on PlayStation. It's called Inuyasha, a Feudal Fairy Tale. That one is legitimately pretty good. Like, that was made by Dimps, the same company that made the Budokai series. Oh, nice. And it's like a beautifully animated, like, 2D fighter. Like, the sprite animations are just gorgeous.

[00:36:49] Like, there are some amazing, like, animations there. It's one of those lovely fighters where, like, you can just enter the cheat codes at the start menu and then just get all the fighters instantly, which is really nice. Cool music. And some of the moves, like, the fighters have are just hilarious. Like, I still remember the first fight we did. I was playing as Kagome. And, like, one of her special moves is she just takes her fucking backpack and just crushes you with it.

[00:37:17] And I'm just like, and it would just come out of nowhere and be like, how the fuck do I do the backpack? I love it. I love it. My favorite, though, is when I discovered that Shippo is just broken. Well, yeah, because he's tiny, impossible to hit, and his moveset is fucking absurd. Because he's a shapeshift. He's like a Tanuki. So, like, he's doing all this crazy shit. Yeah. Just transforming into random stuff and doing all these crazy moves. Like, it was awesome. I loved it.

[00:37:43] I think I was fighting as Moroku at the time, too, and I just couldn't hit you, like, at all. You're like, how do I do the wind tunnel? Yeah, I know, right? I was like, how do I just end every fight? Yeah, it was a fun game. I enjoyed that one a lot. Yeah, we should have played. We didn't have the PS2 set up at the time because I had to go record. But we should have played the other Inuyasha fighter, the Feudal Combat on PS2, because I've heard that one's really entertaining as well.

[00:38:10] Maybe next time we come down, we can hit up some more of them. Maybe we'll do, like, a part two. Yeah, because you guys, you and Cindy, had got to play Super Dragon Ball Z, one of the most underrated Dragon Ball fighters of all time. Yes, and it had been a long time. Because I used to own this game, and I think it was, like, I brought it over a friend's house years ago. And nothing crazy happened or whatever. We just kind of drifted apart, and I never got it back.

[00:38:41] So I just haven't been able to play that in a very long time. And being able to pick it up again and being more familiar with proper fighting games now, I now recognize it as a very competent fighter. Yeah. In a much greater way than games like Budokai were. Yeah, Budokai is... I'd say Budokai 2 and 3 are competent fighters as well.

[00:39:11] Budokai 1 is... You don't play Budokai 1 for the fighting. You play Budokai 1 for the story mode. And then Tenkaichi's its own thing. Super Dragon Ball Z, though, that was actually meant to be a competitive fighter, I believe. That was developed by Arika, who... They're more known for making Tetris games, but I think they've made a few fighters as well.

[00:39:39] And it showed, because my god, that game controls very nice. Oh, it's smooth as hell. And I could be wrong. I feel like I have a distinct memory of playing it in an arcade once. It might have been on arcades. Well, I know. Actually, I'm going to fact check that. I don't know. I have this very distinct memory of playing it in the Kingston Mall one time. And I don't know why. Let me see, because I am not sure.

[00:40:13] Because it wouldn't surprise me, because I know that they definitely made a lot of those kinds of... Yep. It had an arcade. It had an arcade. It wasn't released over here, technically, but they probably could have imported the machine. It's possible. Yeah, because I remember when I had it on PS2, and I was going through the menu, when you decide, oh, you're going to do the tournament mode or versus or whatever. It was definitely set up like an arcade game.

[00:40:44] So apparently, a lot of the staff that worked on it were former Capcom employees that worked on Street Fighter and Darkstalkers. So it kind of makes sense. Yeah. Because it definitely... I feel like it plays a lot like a Street Fighter game. Yeah. And it's also notable. It has one of the more unique casts for Fuff Fighter. It's like the one fighter where you can play as like a teen Chi Chi for whatever reason. Yeah. And she's actually pretty dope. I was actually upset because I was trying to find a...

[00:41:12] I don't know if maybe I just didn't look hard enough, but I was trying to find a cheat code to get all the fighters. Because it only gave us like a handful to start. And I could be wrong, but I think Toriyama did like a redesign for Mecha Frieza for that game. Maybe. I'd have to look because I haven't played that game in decades. But I love the King Kai stage in that game. It was awesome.

[00:41:41] Does Chi Chi use the Bancho Fan as a weapon in that game? Or am I thinking of... Okay, so it is this one. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Wish they'd bring that damn thing back. That fan is kind of like useful and they never use it again. Yeah. Well, you know what? It would have been a really good time to use it like, you know, with like the current stuff with Dima. Because they're kind of playing around a lot more with like that kind of thing. You know, magic and whatnot.

[00:42:11] Excuse me. Yeah, true. Yeah, it's weird though that that's like the one Dragon Ball fighter that's kind of like a Black Feep. Kind of thing. It really is. And it doesn't deserve it. Yeah. Because it's like they immediately... I think after that one, they were still making like Budokai's and Tenkaichi's. Yeah, because it was during the PS2 era of games. Yeah. When did it come out? It came out...

[00:42:40] I want to say like 2006 or 2007. 2006, yeah. So that was right around Tenkaichi's. The Tenkaichi's were already out. I don't know if Infinite Worlds was out by this point. Not that you want to play Infinite Worlds because fuck that game. I'm not sure. Infinite Worlds is the one where they fucked up the balancing and somehow Yamcha's OP for some reason. As it should be. Yeah. As it should be. Was it a fuck up or was it intentional? The world may never know.

[00:43:14] But yeah, we also played the Yu Yu Hakusho Dark Tournament on PS2 while you were doing your thing. And unfortunately, that game also had a lot of people locked. That's most fighters too. It only gave you the team, you're a meshy. And there was like 30 other characters that were locked. I was like, god damn it. Yeah. So we ended up... We played around a little bit with those characters. And then moved on to the things.

[00:43:42] But that game was very similar to Super DBZ. Maybe it wasn't quite as smooth. But it had a similar style to it. And the moves worked a lot. A lot of the same. Yeah, we should probably talk a little bit about Arc System Fighters. Like the company that made Dragon Ball Fighters. Because those games are fucking flashy as shit.

[00:44:09] Like they're famous for games like Guilty Gear, BlazBlue. They did the BlazBlue Cross Tournament Fighters. Which is the one that combines all of the different series that Arc has worked on. They did the awesome Persona 4 Arena fighting game. I still haven't played that one. I have played the BlazBlue...

[00:44:37] Was it the tag team or whatever it is? Yeah, cross tag team or something. Yeah. It had like the Ruby characters and the Persona characters and all that. Persona 4 Arena plays very similar to that. Okay. Yeah. It feels like with their fighting games, they tend to kind of use the same type of system. It's all about combos and flashiness. Yeah. The same kind of combos and style, I guess. Yeah.

[00:45:07] It's like 100%. It's all about crazy flashy combos and style over being super... I mean, they're still technical fighters, but they're very easy to pick up and play, I'd say. I think that's why Cindy has so much trouble with Dragon Ball Fighters. It's because it's so flashy that it's kind of hard to tell what's going on sometimes. And it's very fast. It's a very fast-moving fighting game. Yeah. And it's not really a game you can button mash.

[00:45:34] You kind of have to move some stuff around and actually kind of experiment with combos. Mm-hmm. I mean... I mean, if you're both button mashing, you can pull off some fun stuff. Yeah. Once again, that kind of extension of the whole couch... multiplayer versus online multiplayer. True. Oh, yeah. We forgot to talk about it.

[00:46:03] We played that fucking 3DO Yu Yu Hakusho Fighter. Yeah. My first and only time playing a 3DO game. Yeah. If we had more time, I would have shown you the fucking Street Fighter port on that console. Because holy shit, is it good? Yeah. It was just poor timing that you just happened to have something set up for that night. So next time, hopefully, we'll have freer schedules. And we can play around with more different kinds of games. Yeah. Yeah. Because the Yu Yu Hakusho game is very interesting.

[00:46:32] That's all I will say. Yeah. That's for sure. It's very much on the same level as Dragon Ball Final Bout and Ultimate Battle 22. Mm-hmm. There was a lot of fighting games around that point that were very fast thrown together. Yeah. No kidding. I will say the most entertaining part... We'll probably get deeper into it when we eventually talk about this game for the 3DO experience.

[00:46:59] But the most interesting part of that game is definitely the menus. Mm-hmm. Where you just got Botan being like, two sides. They're all in Japanese. What do they mean? I don't know. But have fun. Have fun. Yeah. Yeah. It was an interesting experience. I had fun, though. It was good. Yeah. You got to experience the wonders of daisy-chaining fucking 3DO controllers. That's so goofy.

[00:47:29] I like it. I think it's great. I wish all companies did that going forward. You can be a petty bitch and unplug player 2. And then also screw over players 3, 4, and 5. Because they're all connected. Oh, jeez. I'm trying to think of some other fighters. Because we've had so many different fighting game franchises over the years. Oh, yeah. And so many licensed fighters.

[00:47:59] We were talking about the Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, all that. I'm trying to think of their... I don't know if I've really played any other anime fighters. I mean, I've played a couple Naruto games. But those weren't like... Yeah, those were always... They were always somewhere between Arena Fighter and 2D Fighter. It's like they're not 100% sure what they want to be. Yeah, the only ones I can think of that are like straight up 2D fighters are like those ones on the GameCube.

[00:48:27] They're like the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Fighter or something like that. I'd have to look up the name. There's a few early ones that are kind of shit. But most... A lot of these games are just kind of shit. I think I played one of those on PS2. And I feel like it was kind of like a precursor to the Ultimate Ninja Storm games. Because they had a similar... Clash of Ninja. That was the one.

[00:48:57] Maybe I didn't play that one. I'm not 100% sure. It was only on GameCube. Okay. So yeah, I didn't. That's the one I thought of. All I remember is it being kind of shit. You know what's a game I do want to try though? I want to try that JoJo's Fighting game. I've heard those are pretty good. Thought that would be interesting. Especially with Part 7 coming out soon. Or... Stealball Run. In production. It's actually... I saw a thing yesterday when that comes out.

[00:49:26] It comes out May of 2025. Oh, really? Yeah. It's that soon? Jesus. Okay. Alright. I can dig it. I guess that means Jolene's arc isn't that long. Or they've already fucking blasted through that. Well, Jol... What, are we talking manga or are we talking anime? Manga. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, Jolene's been going...

[00:49:55] Like, Jolene's still got chapters coming out, I think. Yeah. But they usually start the next section of the thing after they finish the previous one. Hmm. I don't really know. I'm not a big JoJo's person. I just saw it on Reddit, so... Well, I do think that is one that you should get in. And that one's good, too, because you don't have to just watch the whole series all at once. You can watch it in parts.

[00:50:19] And you don't really lose anything by just watching one part at a time and then taking a break and going to the next one. Because it's a whole different cast of characters every time. Yeah. They are connected, though, to a degree. Ultimately, but, like... Loosely enough where you can have space between them and not really lose much.

[00:50:42] I was like, oh, by the way, I forgot to mention at the top of the episode, did you see that we have, like, an estimated release date for Spy Family Season 3? Yeah, it's not until the fucking end of next year. At least we have something to look forward to. Like, it's better than just not knowing, honestly. Yeah. Yeah, it's, like, October of next year, so... We'll be waiting. Hopefully there'll be a good amount of content to cover in it, so... Yeah, it's probably going to be another 12-hour.

[00:51:10] It's probably going to try and give themselves enough space to... You know... It's then also the fact that Cloverworks is just really busy. Mm-hmm. Makes sense. Any other fighters that we can think of off the top of our heads, or...? I mean, the Smash Brothers, but, I mean, first of all, we already did a whole episode on that, and second of all, like, that's kind of, like, its own monster. Did you ever play Sony's Smash Brothers? Oh, the, like...

[00:51:39] PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale. No, I never did, no. There's way too many... It's fine. The way that they designed it is kind of not as fun. It's a fun enough game, it just isn't as fun as Smash, because the way they designed it was, like...

[00:52:00] They took the idea of Final Smashes, but instead of making them, like, a random thing, it's that you build up for them, and then you need them to actually defeat enemies, like fighters. Interesting. So you have to use your ultimate move to finish people off? Yeah. So it's like Mortal Kombat, if Mortal Kombat, like, required you to use Fatalities every time? Yeah, kind of. I mean, you build them up super fast, because you build them up by fighting. It was a fun, it's a fun enough game. It's...

[00:52:29] I lost my interest with it very fast. I had it on Vita, I played a lot of it on that. The selection of characters was a little weird. I understand why, just because, like, they couldn't use a lot of characters people wanted them to use, because Sony technically doesn't own those characters, but... Because I know the big thing when that came out was everyone was like, where's Crash and Spyro? And it's like, Sony doesn't own Crash and Spyro.

[00:52:57] Oh, what about Pokken Tournament? You play any of that? I played a little bit of it. I don't like the camera angle. I know, it's weird. Like, when you get, like, to the close combat fighting, and it just kind of, like, defaults to, like, a traditional 2D, it's the fact that it shifts between 2D and, like, arena. What I did not like about it was the fact that when you do, like, couch co-op, it does split screen. I'm like, split screen? No, I'm like, this is dumb.

[00:53:26] I'm like... I've never seen it do... See, I'd like it better, honestly, if it did, like, a split screen thing when it's in the arena side. Because when it's not... At least every time I've played it, it'll have, like, one character way off in the back, and then it'll have, like, whoever's first player will be right in the front as if, like, they're the only one being controlled, you know? It's really bizarre. Yeah, I just remember, like, the way that they set it up. I just did not care for it. Very much.

[00:53:56] Then the selection was kind of lacking, in my opinion. Like, they didn't really have... It was some odd choices. Yeah. Yeah. Like, they had a lot that made sense, and then others, I was like, really? I was like, okay. You're like, Chandelure? Seriously? Like... Yeah. Where's my damn ice cream cone? Yeah, right? Or the pile of trash. I want to play as the trash Pokemon. Yeah, no kidding. But yeah, I mean, we could...

[00:54:23] I don't know, see, that's the thing, is, like, the majority of my experience with fighters is Dragon Ball games, and we kind of already covered a lot of Dragon Ball games in that way, so... Yeah. I mean, there's... There's a lot of them out there. Like, we didn't really talk about, like, say, like, Bloody Roar, or, like... God, like, the shit ton of fighters on fucking Greencast. Like, one of my favorite fighting games is Rival Schools. Like, that's, unfortunately, a very hard-to-find fighter.

[00:54:52] It's essentially a Capcom 3D fighter, but it, like, has a really cool storyline. I think I remember playing an X-Men fighter in arcades. Or, actually, no, it was at a pizza joint on an arcade cabinet. Yeah, yeah, there's a... There was Street Fighter versus Marvel Super Heroes. I know that. There's probably some... There's probably some X-Men ones as well, because I know Capcom had the Marvel license for a while. Mm-hmm.

[00:55:21] I also remember playing... I actually really liked the Mortal Kombat vs. DC game. The fighting was fine. I just hated how they neutered everything in that game. Yeah, they definitely had to tone everything down, which kind of sucked. But, I mean, I still found it entertaining. And the story was convoluted as fuck, but it was entertaining, at least. I know. The problem was they couldn't do, like, the same fatality shit in that game.

[00:55:50] Because, let's be real, like, no one's going to fucking behead Superman. Like, that just isn't going to work. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, that game did lead us into Injustice, which I also really enjoyed. See, I haven't actually played an Injustice game. That's something that I plan on hitting up at some point, but... It's basically just Mortal Kombat, but with DC fighters. Which is pretty cool. I like that. It is. The story's dark as fuck for no reason, but... I mean, for...

[00:56:20] Is it made by NetherRealm? The game is made by NetherRealm. The story... So, I'm not sure if the story in-game was made by NetherRealm themselves, but there actually was, like, an Injustice comic. That went along with it. That was made by DC, and holy fuck, it's dark. Hmm. I mean, understandably, the world that that game takes place in, but... Yeah, those games are kind of cool.

[00:56:48] I still wish we'd get Mortal Kombat versus Street Fighter. That's, like, the one game everybody wants, but I don't think it'll ever happen. Probably not. Or it'll happen, like, way down the line. It'll happen after nobody cares. Of course. Um, yeah. That's really about all I got for this one, though. Yeah. It... Short and sweet, you know? I mean, there's only so much...

[00:57:15] So much you can talk about any given fighting game without, like, going real deep into the mechanics. Yeah. Without being, like... We're not super... We're not super fighting game guys, so... We're very casual. Yeah. I mean, I know a bunch of fighters, but I couldn't tell you anything about the combos or the friggin' everything in between there. I just like to play games. Yeah, pretty much. But, um... Yeah.

[00:57:43] I guess, once again, guys, thank you for joining us on Geek Addicts. You can find Geek Addicts on all the major podcasting platforms, particularly Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also find us over on the SuperPod Network. That is superpodnetwork.com.

[00:57:59] It is an awesome site where you can find all sorts of different blogs, videos, podcasts, including other great shows like SuperPod Saga, SuperGhost Radio, Retro Rehab, Tommy's Video Game Ride Along, A Novel Console, Bar Silence, Fine Time, The Elder Trolls Gaming Podcast, Remember 64, Gaming Together, Friday Night Gamecast, the GNC shows, Gaming and Collecting, The 3DO Experience, and Geek Addicts. You can also find The Retro Wildlands, Press B to Cancel, and the Pre-Order Bonus Podcast.

[00:58:29] And with that, everybody, we will see you all later. Have a good one.