The Best Mini-Games Within a Game (ft. Seth Sturgill)

[00:00:00] I have to shout out Blitzball from Final Fantasy X. He's giving me the slow nod. He's like, okay, all right, let's see where this goes. I know a lot of people love that shit, but I could not figure it out. Therefore, I hate it. But I mean, good on the people that actually do learn it.

[00:00:30] Hey, what it do? It's Aaron. You know me. You've seen me a million times before. It's another topic time. You know, just a good old-fashioned topic time. We pick a topic. We talk about it. That's it. This time around, I've got a brand spanking new guest to the whole channel. I've got Seth with me, who does quite a few shows. You do a whole bunch of... It's all in media, right? Yes, although we're rebranding pretty soon.

[00:00:59] So, I don't know exactly when. Hopefully, sometime within the next few weeks or so, we are rebranding. So, that information will be outdated soon enough, but for now, yes. Right on, man. I know you guys do... I always get the name mixed up. It's 8-Bit Harmony, right? Just Bit Harmony. Bit Harmony. I don't know why I keep thinking that, but... Frequent listener to that one. Big VGM-aholic, I guess, is the...

[00:01:27] That's the term I give myself. So, that shit is always good. Always tuning into a Girl Fashioned VGM podcast. Thank you. Yeah, no. We've been doing that for over two years now, which is crazy. It's... Yeah, if you like video game music, yeah, you should check it out. Bit Harmony, a video game music podcast. I do it with one of my best friends, Matt. And, yeah, we just talk about video game music. We have an episode on Cuphead coming out.

[00:01:54] We usually focus on a game, and we really deep dive into not only the music, but the game itself. We usually discover a bunch of random facts and whatnot. And while we kind of do our research for it, we take listener voicemails on the show. So, essentially, the pitch for the show is it's like a car talk or like an NPR show, but with video game music hosted by like two dorks. That's basically what it is. So...

[00:02:24] I love it, dude. Is there anything else you want to shout out? I do do a lot of stuff. I'm YouTube, $2 Hero. I do a bunch of YouTube content. I do Let's Plays and long plays and streams and stuff over there. If you like indie games, check that out. Let's see. Yeah, the all-in media stuff. I'm part of the team at Carpool Gaming. I do a podcast called the Nintendo Drive over there. I do a bunch of Patreon stuff over there.

[00:02:52] Behind the scenes, do a bunch of things with Extra Life. So, yeah, I do all kinds of things. I do voice acting is kind of my main gig. So... Nice. Yeah. Hell yeah, man. I like it. I like it. I'm a busy guy as well, too. It's always good to see that I'm not the only person that's working myself to death. Thank goodness. Yeah. No kidding.

[00:03:25] This week's topic, we're going to talk about the best mini games in video games. Or I guess just best mini games, whatever. Whatever. And not necessarily like, you know, WarioWare micro games or like Mario Party Pokemon Stadium mini games. I'm talking about like, not like a full-blown game within a game, but just like a side game within a game, pretty much. And I mean, I'm ready to just take a crack at one of my picks. Go for it. Unless you wanted to go first. No, go for it. Okay. Go for it.

[00:03:55] Oh, man. Okay. So the game Eastward. I don't know. Have you ever played Eastward before? I have played Eastward. Yes. Oh, it's got this little RPG, just a cozy little short RPG within the game called Earthborn. It's basically just like a Dragon Quest style. I wouldn't say 8-bit RPG, but it's got the first person view in combat. And there's all sorts of different characters that you can pick up along the way as you go to fight.

[00:04:24] Crap, what's the bad guy's name? Am I forgetting? It's just the Dark Lord. Yeah, something like that. Sounds about right. Then, yeah, there's your typical knight, hunter, thief. You can also get a merchant, priest. You can get a monkey. The monkey is actually pretty good. He does little party tricks, and he can throw darts, I think. Or maybe that's the merchant I'm thinking of. But yeah, it's just a cool little RPG within an already pretty goddamn long game.

[00:04:54] It feels longer than it actually is. I've talked about this before. Eastward is a cool game, but for some reason, I think it's just the pacing of it. It's a pretty slow-paced game. And something about that. When I rolled credits on it, it took me like 12 hours or something, but it felt like 25. And that's not necessarily me saying the game is bad. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It just felt long.

[00:05:21] It just felt like a lot happened in a short runtime. It's a cool little game, though. It's got some of the best pixel art I've ever seen. Yeah. It's got really good music, too. I really love quite a few tracks in there, specifically the one when you're on the train. Anytime you're on the train, I'll always vibe out to that shit. Or the... What was it? Toward the end, you're on a train that's filled with monkeys. There's a track that plays in there, and that was really good, too. Yeah, everybody go check out Eastward and check out Eastbourne.

[00:05:51] Let me know what you think about that. Because I think it's short. It's like maybe an hour long, I think, to beat Eastbourne. And then you get a new game plus after you beat it. And you unlock new color palettes, kind of like Downwell. You unlock a blue color palette, a red color palette, I think. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. Yeah, more people should play Eastward. It's good. They put out that... What's it called? It's like Octo Valley or something. Or...

[00:06:21] It's something like that. It's like their farming sim spinoff for Eastward. They put that out. And I messed with that for a little bit. But I did not... I didn't finish it. I didn't go super deep into it. But it was cool. Like, you know, a neat idea. So... That is kind of cool. Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess to kick off my list here. This is...

[00:06:44] Anybody who is listening to this, who listens to Bit Harmony, or who knows me at all, this is... We call this a Seth-ass list. Like, this list is just... This is me to a T here. So how do I not start off my list by talking about Monkey Target from Super Monkey Ball? Oh! God damn. I almost put this on my list. I almost put this on here. I love Monkey Target. It is my favorite...

[00:07:13] It's my favorite, like, Monkey Ball side game. It also... Another kind of accidental recurring theme of my list is that for each of my entries here, most of them have, like, my favorite song in the games in question and Monkey Target. Nice. Specifically, Monkey Target 2 from Monkey Ball 2. That's, like, probably in my top 10 video game tracks, like, single video game music tracks of all time. Like, I love Monkey Target 2. It's so good.

[00:07:44] But yeah, just fun. Like, I played this a bunch with my family. It's, like, a fun little... You know, it's one of those games that's very simple but difficult to master. Oh, yeah. Fantastic vibes, just like Monkey Ball always has. Because if you know what you're doing, like, it is way more precise than it seems on the surface. It also has just that right amount of, like, physics jank to wrap your head around that,

[00:08:11] like, you can get, like, delightfully frustrated at. It's funny. There's a... I had always wished that Monkey Target could just be made into its own game. Yeah. And there's this developer... Oh, I'm blanking on the name of them. An independent developer that basically made that. It's a game called Bonito Days. And it basically is Monkey Target made as, like, a full video game. God damn it.

[00:08:39] And you should check it out because you would like it. The art direction of it is very nice. It has this kind of, like, pastel look to it. The music is all, like, Japanese city pop. It's really good. Ooh. Yeah. Very good. Oh, my God. Yeah. Let's... You know what? Shout out to all the other Super Monkey Ball minigames, too. Yeah. Like, it's not enough that super, like, base Super Monkey Ball is already addictive and hard to put down.

[00:09:07] But then you boot up, like, Monkey Bowling or Monkey Target, Monkey Golf. Crap. What's the other one? Billiards. Monkey Billiards. Monkey Dogfight, I think. Yeah. Super Monkey Ball, too. That was good shit, too. I forget the other ones. But they always pack that... They always pack those games so full of minigames. And, yeah, that shit rules. Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to...

[00:09:36] I'm trying to save the best for last, but I don't know. Fuck it. How... I forget the actual name for it. But the whole, like, Ichiban confectionery business management shit in Yakuza Like a Dragon or Yakuza 7, however you want to say it. I wish there was more of that because I love that kind of shit so much. That was so fun to... Like, just coming into it for the first time, I was like, God, I'm going to bomb this so hard. I have no clue what I'm doing here.

[00:10:06] And then after maybe, like, two hours, it all clicked. And I was like, I can't put this down. I need to make more cookies. I need to buy more properties. I need to hire more old ladies to make these cookies. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's just so good. Like, you keep leveling up your employees and then promoting them to managers and then pushing them over here and you buy a new property, sell it, buy a new one, sell that to you, buy this one, upgrade it. It's just such a good fucking flow to it.

[00:10:36] And it's so tough to put down. And I guess the same could be said about, like, any Yakuza minigame. Like, the... Pretty much. Was it the slot cars? The Cabaret Club? Oh, there's too many. There's too many good ones. You know, it's interesting that you bring this up. We did not consult each other on our lists, by the way, beforehand, before recording this. He has no idea what's on my list.

[00:11:02] But on my list is the Cabaret Club from Yakuza 0. Now, when it came... Like a dragon, I played it a little bit when it came out. And now, I didn't finish it, but I really enjoyed it. But I'm kind of, like, waiting for them to inevitably be ported to Switch 2 at this point. Yeah. Because they just seem to be going through the line of Yakuza games and porting them over.

[00:11:28] So, I'm really hopeful that pretty soon, like a dragon and infinite wealth will come to Switch 2. And I'll just snag both of those and play them. But no, 0, though, was my first Yakuza game. And I loved it. Like, I thought it was fantastic. I spent so much time in it. And yes, like, over the course of my, like, I don't know, 50-hour playthrough or something, probably, like, 10 to 15 of those hours was in the Cabaret Club.

[00:11:57] Like, that minigame is so good and so in-depth. Because, I mean, it's similar to what you're talking about. Like, you hire these hostesses. You can give them, like, training and boost their stats. You can learn, like, over time, you start to learn, like, the little hand signals that they can give to you to signify, like, what would make the date that they're having with their customer better. They're, like, rival cabaret gangs and stuff that you have to take down.

[00:12:24] It's a very, like, they basically put another little game inside of Yakuza 0 that has this cabaret management at its core. But it really is like a little RPG. You can dress up the hostesses to increase their stats and stuff. And one of the hostesses, I don't remember her name, but she's an old, like, grandma with a purple afro and, like, cheetah print. Oh, hell yeah. A cheetah print dress.

[00:12:52] And she, I think she might have, like, some of the best stats in the game, too. Like, she's fantastic. It's just so good. Like, and then there's another situation where the cabaret club music in Yakuza 0 is, like, the best track in that game. Like, so good. And yeah, Yakuza always crushes this stuff. Dude, yeah, they do. Even music, too. I, unironically, well, not, I don't know why I say it unironically.

[00:13:19] I do a, on the side, I do a chill VGM podcast, chill skate. And I frequently, well, no, not frequently. I've done Yakuza tracks on there a couple times because some of them are just too good to pass up. It'll be like, well, you know what? I'm doing this theme. I might as well put a Yakuza game in there, you know? Yeah. I mean, look, we do, on Bit Harmony, there's kind of a recurring bit where Matt and I always love horns.

[00:13:47] Our audience lovingly refers to us as horn boys. Horn boys. And Cabaret Club has some, that's a horn boy song. It's good stuff. That's what they say, horns. They're talking about like brass horn, like trumpets and shit like that. Okay. Yeah. We love it. We go crazy saxophone. Like, we go crazy for all that stuff. Oh, man. Yeah.

[00:14:13] How do you guys feel about the soundtrack for Pokemon, like Ruby and Sapphire and Emerald with all the little, like, digitized trumpets and shit? Because that shit is so good. Yeah. We haven't done an episode specifically on those, but for some reason or another, we did cover that in some capacity. I think maybe a listener requested a song from the games or something. But yeah, I love that too.

[00:14:38] Like, at any time, especially Game Boy Advance, like, any time in that era where they just tried their best to replicate the sounds of, like, real instruments. Like, I'm thinking of Monsoon Jungle from Wario Land 4, like, where they replicate the sound of, like, the fingers sliding on the guitar and stuff. Like, I love that. I'm a big fan of when video game soundtracks have the doot, doot, doot, doot.

[00:15:06] Like the, I guess the doot is what you call it. Big fan of the doot. Yeah. Oh, man. I forget what song I was listening to recently. But, yeah. No, it was from the Neo Geo CD version of Neo Turf Masters. I think it's the Australia Golf Course. It's like, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. Yeah. That shit's good. Side tangent over. Main tangent. Here we go. The Mercenaries in Resident Evil 4 and 5.

[00:15:36] Classic. Holy shit. I could play that for, well, I have played it for hours. But the original one on Resident Evil 4 was, I'd spent too many goddamn hours trying to master that shit because you have to, I forget if you have to beat a certain score to get the hand cannon in RE4 or. I think you do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:04] I would just run through that shit constantly with Krauser trying to get the best possible score. And then you get to 5. And a lot of people like to shit on 5 for being way too action forward and whatever. But the Mercenaries in that game was top goddamn notch. Like, you have multiple characters from all across Resident Evil with different movesets and different, I guess, different item sets as well, too. And some of them have different cool abilities.

[00:16:33] Like, Rebecca, she gets more healing items. And man, that shit was just so much fucking fun that I loved going through every character, experimenting with them, and then calling a friend over to be like, dude, you need to come over and play Mercenaries right now. Like, I really love using Rebecca. You can be anybody else, not Rebecca. Are you five? That's I think are you five. You're going to see it before too long. I think you're going to see the narrative flip on RE5.

[00:17:03] I think eventually people are going to come around and be like, that was good, actually. It's going to have that kind of, you know, amount of time past that people are ready to reevaluate it. Because I enjoyed that game quite a bit for what it was. Yes, I understand. And it was super action-y, but it was good. I played it through entirely in co-op with my cousin. And we had a blast. Like, we had a great time with it. Punch the rock. You know? Love the rock. Make up with it. It's a good rock.

[00:17:30] Even the, oh my god, even with all the quick time, like the annoying as hell quick time events, like the, I think it's also right at the end where Shiva's hanging on, just barely hanging on for like, you had to tap X for like 30 fucking minutes to hang on while Chris annihilates that boulder. Fuck. Even with all those in there, it was still an awesome game. And yeah, you get the mercenaries after you beat the game, so it's worth it. Go play that shit. It's awesome.

[00:17:58] A lot of people are wanting them to go in and add that mercenaries mode to Resident Evil 9. Like, they just had that, I think it's called like Leon Must Die DLC or something like that. Yeah, the roguelike type thing? Yeah. Yeah. So that just came out and everybody was like disappointed that it wasn't mercenaries. So hopefully they'll be doing that in the future. Damn it. Hey, we gave you new, it was free, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think it was free.

[00:18:29] Capcom comes in, hey, here's free DLC. Hope you like it. And then, yeah, that's stupid. Everybody's mad about it. It's free. Nobody's happy. Nobody's happy with anything. Goddamn, man. What a shame. Well, let me see if I can piss off your audience here with this one. Do it. That I have to shout out. This is either going to be something that makes people turn this off right now, or it's going to, you know, people will resonate with it. And those are my people.

[00:19:00] I have to shout out Blitzball from Final Fantasy X. Ooh. That's. He's giving me the slow nod. He's like, okay, all right, let's see where this goes. I know a lot of people live. A lot of people love that shit, but I could not figure it out. Therefore, I hate it. But I mean, good on the people that actually do learn it and love it because. Yeah, it does seem really, really cool. But yeah, tell me all about it.

[00:19:25] Well, the first time I played the game when I was like a teenager or whatever, I also hated it. And they specifically like the first time when you're playing the game and you encounter Blitzball for the first time, it's when you're going up against like the Luka goers or whatever. And it's pretty weighted against you to lose that first Blitzball encounter. And so I think that thematically it's kind of cool in hindsight, but in the moment you're

[00:19:54] like, well, this sucks. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going to lose this. So I think that a lot of people kind of decided in that moment how they felt about Blitzball. But if you give it time and you actually, you know, engage with it and learn it and you have to do a whole bunch of it to get Titus and Wakka's like ultimate weapon or whatever, you know, like it's a genuinely good and in-depth little almost sports RPG.

[00:20:21] You, you know, put your team together, you kind of level them up, you learn strategies and, you know, you, you go and find like this all bed guy named like brother who's like the MVP and you just like, he's got like a Mohawk and you know, I love that stuff. It's also Final Fantasy 10 is maybe pound for pound. My favorite video game soundtrack of all time. Fuck yeah, dude. It's a, it's depending on the day it's up there, but it is top three for sure.

[00:20:50] And that Blitzball song rules. I love that song so much and I think it's cool too. The, the very concept of like having this underwater, like soccer in a fantasy setting, I think just rules. Like it's, it's just very, very neat. So I'm, I'm a huge Blitzball, Blitzball defender. So come at me, I guess. I'll defend you, man.

[00:21:16] I, again, yeah, I didn't really, I couldn't understand Blitzball. Therefore I hated it. Typical boomer shit, but I mean, I appreciate it though. It is fucking cool. And I totally fucking agree that Final Fantasy 10, not even like just the soundtrack, like the game itself is up there. I love it. It's so fucking good, but oh man. Maximum summer vibes with the, the beach track. One of the all time great video game songs. Besaid. Yeah.

[00:21:46] Fuck. Fuck. Even just the, the battle theme. Well, uh, the Xanarkin theme. No, I'm not even going to. Yeah. I'm going to talk all night about the goddamn Final Fantasy 10 soundtrack. We did a whole, we recently, it was a couple episodes ago. We did a whole Final Fantasy 10 episode of Bit Harmony and it's like a three and a half hour episode or something like, and, and we do that often. Um, the super monkey ball episode that we did, I think is nearly five hours. Like it's that. Holy shit. It's that kind of show. Oh my God. Yeah.

[00:22:16] Oh man. Uh, I like that you did Final Fantasy 10 cause my next one is Final Fantasy nine. I'm talking Tetra master. Oh, hell yeah. I'm a big defender of that. I know a lot of people prefer, um, uh, uh, blanked on the name, triple triad or queen's blood. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people love that, but Tetra master, I feel like it's kind of slept on just because of how like, it's easy to learn, but just like everything else, it's kind of difficult to master.

[00:22:45] It's, um, what is it? You got this, it's a three by three grid, I think. Mm-hmm. And you'll each card. Well, not all cards are the same cause you could have like four of the same type of card, but it'll have different stats or different points on each corner. Cause in each of the eight corners, there's, um, there'll be an arrow and holy shit. So you throw a card down and then say your enemy throws a card down and theirs has an

[00:23:12] arrow pointing to a spot on your card that does not have an arrow. Boom. They captured your card and then you can do the same thing to them. Yada, yada, yada. Then the point of the whole game is to have the most cards captured at the end. And, um, it's so fucking so satisfying. And so like, you'll have just the biggest shit eating grin on your face when you pull off, like you trick your opponent into playing a card here and then here, and then you play a card down there and you capture both of their fucking cards in one swoop.

[00:23:41] You're like, ha ha ha. Now I've got 10 and you've got nothing. And then you take their best card. Um, that's another thing too, that I love about the whole thing is that when you lose or when your opponent or when you lose, your opponent gets a card from you and then vice versa, your opponent can take a card or you take one for your opponent. Your opponent takes one from you. I fucked that. Yeah. But, um, and then yeah, all throughout, all throughout the entire game, there's hidden cards fucking everywhere. Yeah.

[00:24:10] Like right away in the beginning of the game, before you get, go get your starter cards from like alleyway Jack or whatever, you can find like five flans and goblins and shit just right in the beginning of Alexandria. And later on in the game, you'll find some really powerful shit. If you just kind of, I guess, hug the walls of every single place you go to and tap X. Yeah. And yeah, man, it's just a really fucking fun game. You can challenge goddamn near anybody to Tetra master.

[00:24:39] And then it's just so fun to, uh, to experiment with and try to find those new cards. Be like, Oh, I got a, a Shiva card that has like basically every single corner filled, but one holy shit. And it's got 22 magic king of games. That's the king of games. The stuff that I, I, I love that. I love it when you in, in a game like that, where you earn the cards or whatever it is that

[00:25:06] you're using the game pieces and you earn it in the game properly. Like I love that synergy. I love that stuff. Yeah. God damn. Oh, it's so good. And that track the plays in the background. Yeah. Also shout out slash honorable mention to, um, I forget the name of it, but the card game from shovel night, king of cards. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Joustous.

[00:25:34] I think, I think that's right. Yeah. That shit's really good. I really love that too. Yep. That's, that's a good one. I had a couple honorable mentions myself. Um, Junimo cart from Stardew Valley. Uh, I love it's, it's just an auto scrolling, you know, DK mind cart level basically is, is what it is, but it's just a fun, like, it's way more challenging than you think. Like if you sit there and really play a bunch of Junimo cart, um, you can spend a lot of

[00:26:04] time with Junimo cart. Uh, it's, it's good. And then I also, you know, I'm a big night in the woods is, is one of my favorite games of all time. And, uh, in night in the woods, there's a really like shockingly deep, like action roguelite tower climbing thing, uh, called demon tower. And, um, it's shit. It's like a fully formed little, little game, little action game. It's pretty good. And, um, I don't know, just, just fun.

[00:26:32] Like just, it's neat that they put that in there. Like that you can just discover this whole other little thing within that game. So, yeah. God, I love when games do that. Um, I just had another honorable mention on my mind, but I forgot. Oh my God. What was it? Um, oh, you're talking about carts. Oh, oh my God. Okay. So, uh, so the game Smite, uh, the, the MOBA with gods has been around for a really

[00:27:00] long time for a hot minute back in, I think like 2017 or 2018, they had a really horribly broken, terribly made cart racing mode in it where you could, um, if you got to first place or if you did so many races, I forget you'd get a limited, limited edition skin for, um,

[00:27:22] Apollo or someone was just so broken and so horribly made, but it's cool that a fucking MOBA had a cart racing mini game in it. Hell yeah. So love that. Yeah. There, there's, um, I don't know if you ever played sea of stars. Um, I, yeah. Yeah. I, I thought the game was good. Like I, I didn't love it. Like a lot of other people seem to, I liked it. Like it was good.

[00:27:49] However, um, there's that game wheels that's within it. Oh shit. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good. Like I, I quite enjoyed it. I kind of wish that the only problem is because it's similar to what you're talking about. Final fantasy nine. Like you, you get pieces that you can use in the, in the game while you're playing it and stuff and you can challenge people, but there's only a handful of people in the game that you can actually play it against.

[00:28:14] If they had fleshed that out and made it so that, um, I could challenge like, you know, two, three, four times the amount of people in it, uh, I probably would have doubled my playtime and see if stars playing that's a very fun little like strategy game. It's, it's fun. Hell yeah. Now. Okay. Now all the cylinders are firing in my brain. Um, I've got, I've got one final pick in my list, but before I do that, I'm going

[00:28:41] to rattle off a whole bunch more because, um, dude, I fucking, I love like cooking style mini games within a game. Um, and I think it's professor Layton in the diabolical box. You get to make teas with different, uh, shit like that. I love that. Um, I mean, you could kind of maybe call the sushi restaurant and Dave, the diver, a mini game, maybe, or maybe that's just half of the game. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. I love that.

[00:29:11] But any game that lets you cook, I really love that shit. And, um, any game that also has just, just a separate card game within it because I'm a big card game junkie. Uh, I think it's called B and D in a, in bravely default to it's okay. I never played that one. Oh man. It's, um, you need it in order or you need to play the game in order to get this, uh, class, the gambler or something, but it's a really fun little mini game within that

[00:29:40] already fucking gigantic game, but all right. Um, my final pick, I'm going to probably talk about this for the next 20, 40 minutes. Just kidding. Probably not do the chow garden from Sonic adventure one and two. Okay. Oh shit. Okay. So real quick before, before I let you go off on this, I told you before we started recording that I have a few hot takes that I wanted to anger your audience with and this is relevant.

[00:30:10] My first hot take the chow gardens in the Sonic adventure games are far better than both of the base games themselves. That's my first hot take. So I agree. I love the chow gardens. I, yeah, I agree to some of those fucking levels in Sonic adventure. I really both of them. Some of those are fucking broken and well, absolutely weird, but yeah, the fucking chow garden.

[00:30:37] Like I really don't care which game they're both pretty good. I mean, I know the, the second one adds a whole lot more to it, but yeah, the first game has like the most immaculate beach. Well, not maybe not beach vibes, but, um, yeah, just picking up that egg and just giving it a shake. And then, well, I guess maybe you're not supposed to shake it, but, um, just picking up that egg and then watching your chow pop out of there.

[00:31:04] And then you give it the little animals or, or the berries or whatever the hell else you want to give them to maybe change their appearance and their stats and all that shit. Um, the first game, I forget what the fuck many games they had. I think that was the chow kindergarten or something, or maybe no, they had the obstacle courses. Yeah. I, I believe they had the obstacle courses at the very least, like the, the races and stuff like that.

[00:31:30] I'm pretty sure they had that at least in the first game, but yeah, the, no man, the second one I, I have as a kid, I played both of these games on the, uh, the GameCube, um, director's cut. Yeah. And the second one, I, I definitely spent the most time on cause you get what three different chow gardens. You get way more mini games that you get chow racing karate kindergarten. Like you can teach them to read and spell or something.

[00:31:59] Uh, and there's a couple more mini games. I forget. Like you can find all these different animals in the base game. So, I mean, I guess you have a reason to go play the base game, but you can give your chow, uh, a little parrot to give them wings and change their colors, give them a little bunny to increase their jump stat and they get little bunny ears. You can abuse them and turn them into dark chow, uh, unlock the dark chow garden, which is super fucking cool.

[00:32:28] It's kind of like the little purple sky and then the big castles and everything. Yeah. What's your, what's your, uh, what's your thought on the chow garden or thoughts? I know. I, I love it. I love the vibes of the, of the chow garden. I love just like spending time in there. I love that you could put the chow on like, what, what is it? The VMU little thing. You could put that on there and it'd be like almost a little Tamagotchi or something. Like very, very cool. I love that. And yeah, like, it's just like, it's, it's nice.

[00:32:58] It is involved, but it's also kind of relaxing. Their designs are super cute and good. It's unbelievable to me that they have not revisited the chow garden concept. I feel like Sonic fans, like I'm not even like a huge Sonic guy, but I feel like Sonic fans have been clamoring for the chow garden to come back. And I'm like, why are you guys refusing to, to do this to the point where, um, I don't

[00:33:27] know if you've ever heard of Bobo Bay. There's a indie game that came out, I think last month called Bobo Bay. And somebody said, I'll just make a full chow garden game basically. And that's what Bobo Bay is. Yeah. It's on steam. It's PC only right now. Um, and I want to say it's either a solo dev or like a very small team and it is basically they made chow garden and fully like fleshed it out into a whole game. So yeah.

[00:33:57] Oh, I love when devs do that, man. Final do it myself is what they say. There's another indie game that I think either, I forget the name of it, but there's another indie game that's like heavily based on Kirby air ride and Sonic riders. Oh, sure. I forget the name of that shit, but I love when devs take a game that's been abandoned by devs for so goddamn long. And then whoosh, here you go. Oh my God. What's your, uh, what's your last pick? What would you have?

[00:34:27] So my, my three main picks were monkey target blitz ball and cabaret club. And then I had my honorable mentions demon tower and Junimo cart, but I do have two more hot takes that I'll throw your way if you'd like. Hell yeah. Go for it. So, okay. This is, I don't know how hot these takes are, but these are just mine. And this is just based on the stuff, the, the sort of discourse I've seen on the internet for years. Here you go.

[00:34:53] The gummy ship sequences in the kingdom hearts games are good. Actually. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank people hate on the gummy shit. I always liked the gummy ship sequences. And I even liked, um, like building my own gummy ship. Like I, I really enjoyed that. I like that. Again, that's another example of you can find parts and then we get to kingdom hearts three. They fully flesh it out into kind of like a little, almost like a little space exploration shooter thing.

[00:35:22] It's really neat. I think they're really good little, uh, you know, side content in kingdom hearts. So shout outs to gummy ships. I don't care if you don't like them. I like them. I like them too. I'm behind you. I'll stand with you up on there. Hell yeah. Uh, I also want to, this is my, my last hot take here. Table turf battle in Splatoon three is highly underrated and should be expanded into its own thing on the side. Flesh it out, give it online PVP and sell it for $10.

[00:35:51] And it would be among the best digital kind of PVP card games. There are, I don't know if you played table turf battle in Splatoon three. It's excellent. It just like, it's kind of, so think of it like, you know, it's Splatoon. So the whole idea is that you're doing like turf where you're trying to cover more turf than the enemy. Um, but in this case, your cards have almost like Tetronimo, like Tetris shapes.

[00:36:18] So you are strategically placing your cards in such a way that you wind up blocking where your enemy can place theirs or just trying to cover more of the battlefield than your enemy. And it's very, very simple, but there's like a deceptive amount of depth to it. And as you play the single player, um, you can unlock table turf battle cards. And I just, I think it's like low key genius and nobody talks about it.

[00:36:46] Like when people talk about Splatoon that never, ever, ever comes up. And I think it is just such like underutilized, like they could totally do something with that. Um, you know, so there you go. I don't know. I don't know if that's a hot take or not, but that was my last hot take. Some of these, I'm surprised that they don't make into full blown games. Like, do you, do you not want money? Don't you want money? I'd buy it.

[00:37:15] Fuck the chow garden. I would pay upwards of, well, maybe not upwards. I would pay up to $10 for that. If Sega made its own little standalone thing, just even put it on mobile. I'll play it on mobile. That'd be the only thing I play on mobile for Christ's sakes. Oh, they'll make it some micro transaction laden garbage and, you know, 99 cents a chow. Cough it up. It'll be a gotcha game where you, you get like a random roll for what chow you get. Oh my fucking God.

[00:37:45] No shit. That is, uh, that's it for my list. I can't think of any more off the top of my head, but, uh, yeah, man. Why don't you tell the people where they can find you?

[00:38:15] Uh, like, uh, the websites, uh, blue sky, what have you? Best way to do it is probably blue sky. I'm $2 hero on there. Yeah. Like I said, $2 here on YouTube, um, for the all in stuff, all in dot media is as the website there again, that will be changing soon. So it'll be, this'll be outdated information in like a month or something, but for now, all in dot media, um, and then carpoolgaming.com. Um, you can find all of carpool stuff there too. That's pretty much it.

[00:38:44] So gotcha. Hell yeah, man. You know what? I'll, I'll end this on a hot take that just came to mind. Oh, please. Completely unrelated. So it'll be good. I promise. Uh, peanut M&Ms are the best kind of peanut M&Ms. I'll, I'll die on that hill. Oh yeah. I, I love. So let me ask you this, when you eat a peanut M&M, do you eat it whole just like, or do you crack the shell and extract the peanut from the inside of the M&M and eat it that way?

[00:39:14] What kind of peanut M&M enjoy are you? I guess it depends on what's happening. Like we just had a movie night, um, with my youngest the other night. And like, if I'm not paying attention and I'm just focused on the movie, I'll just gobble them up as they are. But if I'm actually taking my time, I got three different ways to do it. So yeah, number one, just shovel them in, whatever, put them in the face. Uh, number two, yeah.

[00:39:41] Extract the peanut and then, then eat the shell afterward. And then number three, I just put it in my, just put it into your mouth and then just let it melt for a little bit. And then you got a peanut leftover and then crunch it up. Yeah. I, every time I eat a peanut M&M, I put it in my mouth. I crack it, uh, crack the shell and I kind of seed a little bit, but, but it, you know, I guess so. But except that, you know, rather than it being like the, the shell of the seed or whatever, it's like a candy coated chocolate shell. Yeah.

[00:40:11] Um, and then, yeah, you have the, I eat the peanut and then you have like the chocolate shell after I think it's such a satisfying candy to eat. It's one of my favorite candies of all time. Um, yeah, I, I love peanut M&Ms and I agree. I think they're like in my, and maybe this is a hot take. I don't know. A, an M&M on its own is mid, like, like pretty mid, just an M&M by itself.

[00:40:36] What you need, the, the M&M needs the help of peanuts or, you know, peanut butter, or I like the, um, I, they don't make them anymore, but the, the ones that have like the crunch bar stuff in it, crispy M&Ms, I think they called it. Yep. Yeah. Those were good. I like the mini M&Ms and the tube. Um, but, but a standard M&M is, is mid. I'm sorry. It's just not that great. Oh man. We're going to be here all night with hot takes. I just love another one too. Kind of related to this whole thing.

[00:41:04] Like regular Hershey's kisses are pretty mid. And then also Tootsie Rolls. Can we just stop handing those out? I'm not a Tootsie Roll fan. I don't. I'm all right with them. Here's what I appreciate about Tootsie Rolls. Now you really got me on a tangent now. This is, this is unfortunate. Here's what I appreciate about Tootsie Rolls. Do you, are you familiar with the history of Tootsie Rolls? Not at all. Okay. Real, real quick tangent.

[00:41:33] Um, Tootsie Rolls obviously were very popular in like World War II. They would put them in, you know, ration kits for soldiers and stuff. Cause it's like a little sweet treat and gives them a little bit of morale boost during the war. Um, ever since the advent of Tootsie Rolls back in the wartime, they have saved a little bit of every batch and worked it into the next batch. So by proxy, you are, every time you eat a Tootsie Roll,

[00:42:02] you are kind of eating the entire history of Tootsie Rolls, which I think is kind of neat, you know, for it being such a sort of boring, um, kind of non candy. Uh, I think it's kind of neat that they do that. I kind of appreciate that a bit about Tootsie Rolls, if nothing else. And I do like a Tootsie Roll pop. You know what? Yeah, I'll give them that. The Tootsie Pops are pretty fucking good. I remember back in the day, uh, what was it?

[00:42:31] There would be a star on the wrapper. Oh yeah. And you gave the wrapper with the star to wherever you bought it from. Like, so holy shit, super unrelated once more, but I mean, whatever. It's, it's the show. Um, I grew up in a, uh, I grew up in many small towns in Iowa and there was this bar that my sister and I would go to cause they sold candy, not just boo. We'd be able to buy booze. We bought candy and you'd buy Tootsie Roll. They've had a star on the wrapper. You give it back to the cashier. They give you a free one or a second one for free or whatever.

[00:43:01] And then, yeah, that shit was cool. I like that. That rules. Not everybody did that. That was kind of like a, you know, like a, just a rumor that caught traction. Um, and, and yeah, like some places would, would honor it, which I thought was very cute. I will say this looping it back to video games. Hell yeah. Uh, they, they referenced that in, I think, fallout new Vegas. Um, there's a whole side quest where every night you're you'll, uh, I think it's the

[00:43:29] sunset sarsaparilla soda or whatever. Um, whenever you open one and drink one in the game, there's like a, whatever, 2% chance that one of them has a star on it. And it, it, the first time you get one, it starts a side quest where you can go to the sunset sarsaparilla factory and, you know, read all about it. Turns out it's like overtaken by robots and stuff. And anyway, it's a fun little reference to the whole Tootsie Pop star, the arrow star thing.

[00:44:00] Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah. Ooh, that's it for, uh, all my hot takes and side tangents. Um, I guess that is, that's it for this episode. It's, uh, oh man, I'm all worn out by the heat. My eyes are freaking out. Thanks for having me. It was super fun. Hell yeah, man. I'd love to have you on again sometime.

[00:44:25] We'll cook up another topic or something, but, uh, all right, listeners, uh, go on and get by. Bye.