The 3DO Experience - Episode 39: Army Men: 3DO's Flagship Turned Sinking Ship!

[00:00:00] Have you experienced the awesome power of the Panasonic Real 3DO System?

[00:00:05] Obviously.

[00:00:06] Presenting 3DO.

[00:00:09] The most advanced home gaming system in the universe.

[00:00:13] It's time to put away your toys.

[00:00:17] 3DO from Panasonic Gold Star and Creative Labs.

[00:00:21] A new low price and free games.

[00:00:22] Enjoying graphics of Panasonic Real 3DO.

[00:00:25] 3DO.

[00:00:36] Hello everybody and welcome back to the 3DO Experience, the 3DO Retrospective Podcast.

[00:00:41] Where we talk about all things 3DO, the 3DO company, the console and everything in between.

[00:00:45] I'm Bill and this is Thrak.

[00:00:47] How are you doing Thrak?

[00:00:48] I'm doing alright Bill.

[00:00:49] I'm doing alright.

[00:00:50] How are you?

[00:00:52] I'm doing pretty good.

[00:00:53] I've started running again recently.

[00:00:54] So that's been fun.

[00:00:57] Getting back into try.

[00:00:59] I want to get back into shape this summer.

[00:01:01] So I've been trying to do at least 15 minutes of running a day.

[00:01:06] Do you do the thing where you say like walk on the treadmill and just play a game for like an hour?

[00:01:11] So what I do is I bike on I have a stationary bike and I'll play like Tetris on that for like an hour

[00:01:17] and then I'll do my 15 minute run after and I'll usually just put like a music video on or something in the background distract me.

[00:01:24] Sounds good.

[00:01:24] Yeah, usually when I'm working out like say if I'm playing a game,

[00:01:29] I'll just like when the cutscene happens is when I'll do some like reps or you know, some sit-ups or whatever.

[00:01:35] So that's all cool.

[00:01:37] Yeah, I've been at the racetrack.

[00:01:39] I've been playing good old Forza Horizon the first one.

[00:01:43] I think I'm like halfway done like the game progressions at like 53% for like 10 and a half hours in it and it's great.

[00:01:51] Really enjoy it.

[00:01:51] I'll probably end up like finishing all the races trying to get all the cars, you know,

[00:01:56] I can't get every achievement because a lot of them are locked behind online stuff and those servers are long dead.

[00:02:02] But it's a great game.

[00:02:05] Speaking of racing, your mom got the perfect Mother's Day gift this weekend.

[00:02:09] Yes.

[00:02:09] Yes.

[00:02:10] So my mom she likes NASCAR and her favorite driver is Mr.

[00:02:14] Brad Kozlowski and he had had like it's like a two plus a year streak where he hadn't won a race which was around the time

[00:02:22] he changed like ownership to be a part owner of his car had a lot of issues with it.

[00:02:28] I think a lot of the issue was just him trying to figure out the business side.

[00:02:31] So it's kind of him like not thinking about the racing side, but he's had a lot of better finishes this year.

[00:02:38] Like he's finished second quite a few times could have won a race.

[00:02:41] I think earlier in the year if you know, he didn't say like I get in the accidents or whatever, but he finally won one last time.

[00:02:50] And when you told me that that happened because I knew he was running second.

[00:02:54] My mom was behind because she always like tapes and watches it later and I saw she had like 30 laps to go.

[00:03:00] So I just sat there and watched it with her.

[00:03:02] So that was that was good to see those those good for her to finally get that win and the ending was pretty solid too.

[00:03:09] That was it was a cool finish like the two guys wrecked each other at the end and then Brad just like kind of was like see ya.

[00:03:15] Yeah, and and Bush are like went up to reddick and he's just like dude, what the fuck you try to wreck me you fuck, you know, and the reddick kept his helmet on because I think he thought Bush was going to punch him.

[00:03:25] So I think what happened was like because I was rewatching that I think what happened is he actually legitimately had just gotten out of the car and didn't even have time and because there's video clips of Bush.

[00:03:36] He's just fucking coming.

[00:03:37] Oh, yeah, he books it.

[00:03:39] It's amazing.

[00:03:40] I don't think he had time because if you watch the whole the whole interaction, he takes his helmet off in the middle of it.

[00:03:45] So he wasn't really like afraid.

[00:03:48] He was probably thinking at some point he's like, yeah, maybe I'll keep this on just in case but as they kept talking it probably cooled down.

[00:03:54] He's like, okay, I'm okay.

[00:03:56] Well, I mean he took the blame right away.

[00:03:58] Like he didn't try to like oh, yeah.

[00:04:00] Yeah, because well, I think it's busher thought that reddick tried to wreck him and reddick said and I think reddick was was correct watching it back reddick's like.

[00:04:10] I tried to go past him and I couldn't so as I was like coming back, he just kind of slid into him.

[00:04:16] This is a right way, but I could see why busher would think that I can see what the thing with Bush is I know why he was upset because he literally the last week literally lost to the closest finish in NASCAR history.

[00:04:28] Yeah, the photo finish which I mean even though he lost to that like that's that's in the history books man.

[00:04:35] Like you're part of the closest finish and NASCAR history.

[00:04:38] It doesn't matter that you won or lost like people will always be like, oh who were the cars in that photo finish and his name will always be there.

[00:04:46] So he made history even without winning like winning.

[00:04:49] Yes would be nice in the short term but like 10 years from now, he's probably not going to remember that he's going to be like, yeah, I was part of that big moment.

[00:04:55] People ask me about it all the time.

[00:04:57] You know, like that's his legacy.

[00:05:00] Yeah, no, I mean and he's a really good driver.

[00:05:02] I mean he was the fastest Ford arguably last year and all yeah about the entire series and Ford finally had a win with Brad.

[00:05:10] I know the freaking they've been struggling hard this year.

[00:05:13] I really the thing with Brad to me is like he left Penske because he wanted to be an owner and he basically bought into the Roush team and the Roush team is a one of those teams that was really big back in the day and they like they've really fell on hard times like they couldn't keep up with the modern stuff and Brad comes in.

[00:05:31] He basically rebuilds the team from scratch, like basically throws everything out and starts over.

[00:05:36] It took it took him a couple of years, but he's finally it's paying off and to see him finally win I think shows how much work he's done to that team in sports terms.

[00:05:46] We call that a rebuild and rebuilds can take a while to finally get there.

[00:05:52] And I'm sure the win it helps, I think legitimize the move in his eyes because maybe there were points along the road where he's like, oh, maybe I shouldn't have done that because he was struggling so much.

[00:06:03] But I think that when helps legitimize them a little bit more and it shows to everybody that oh Brad can still do it.

[00:06:10] Like he's not he's not a has-been or anything like that.

[00:06:14] It says a lot to considering that six car before Brad stepped into it had been notoriously just like all over the place.

[00:06:22] Yeah, like the last time the six car won was 2011.

[00:06:28] And then the last time it won on a non super speedway track was like 2005.

[00:06:32] So wow, it's it's been through the ringer ever since like Mark Martin stepped out of it.

[00:06:38] Yeah, but who knows maybe this will be the momentum that Brad needs to start winning again.

[00:06:44] I think his spotter said more said in an interview that like he's he's finally gotten over like the whole like he realizes he can win now that's out of his head now.

[00:06:54] Yeah, so now like the floodgates aren't could open and this could be the start of something crazy.

[00:06:58] Oh, yeah, I don't know if he'll ever repeat 2012.

[00:07:01] But you know, it's possible.

[00:07:04] I mean, he's had really good years like 2020.

[00:07:08] He was one of the best drivers that year.

[00:07:11] He just the format kind of makes it all up to one race.

[00:07:14] So yeah.

[00:07:16] Yeah.

[00:07:17] But anyways back to Forza Horizon is great game.

[00:07:19] I love it.

[00:07:20] The first what I like about one is that it's not massively huge like it's just big enough to get the open feeling but it's not so much that it's overwhelming like some of the later Horizon games are.

[00:07:32] So I've put like 10 and a half hours into it and I've I've about 50 percent.

[00:07:37] I think a little bit more than that completed it.

[00:07:39] So I'll probably keep working on that through the week and get it done.

[00:07:42] It's been nice because work's been kind of not great.

[00:07:46] So like I'll just come come here turn it on and just kind of zone out for a few hours and just kind of zoom through Colorado and it helps clear the brain.

[00:07:55] So and also before that I beat immortality the latest San Barlo game and I post a review of it on some of the other discords in my super pod blog and it is probably the best game I've played this year.

[00:08:12] I it's a meat.

[00:08:13] It's a me ass game because her story was great.

[00:08:16] I still need to play telling lies but immortality definitely feels like the best representation of what he's trying to do with this like FM like using FMV in a more sort of modern way like immortality is probably the best FMV game ever made.

[00:08:32] I think like the acting is incredible.

[00:08:34] The story is just fascinating and engaging and there's little hints of gameplay.

[00:08:41] I think that's what I'll say and it goes a lot of interesting places.

[00:08:45] There's a there's a heavy David Lynch influence on it very and and I don't know if you've played it or not but basically you're following this one this one actress named Marissa who.

[00:09:02] She was like in a soap commercial and she got spotted in that and then she stars in this like one big movie that didn't get released but then her and the director of photography from that movie start working on another movie called Minsky which also didn't get released for.

[00:09:21] You'll see and so there's a break like a long gap because I was the first movie was 68 the second was 70 and then there's a huge break and then in 99.

[00:09:31] She comes back to do a third movie that doesn't get released either and then she disappears after that and the whole game is you you get one clip.

[00:09:42] And then in the clips you can take you can pause at like any frame and then click on like a specific thing and it'll give you a new clip to look at and so you spend that you spend the game like piecing together I think it's like well over 200 clips.

[00:09:56] From like the movies like the like actual like clips from the movies like behind the scenes stuff interviews like talk show appearances that kind of stuff and there's more going on beneath the surface.

[00:10:10] And when I finished it I had to I did have to read a story synopsis to be like OK what the fuck was that and read through it went oh OK that's what was happening OK so it all makes sense and is is he's cooking.

[00:10:24] Sam Barlow is fucking cooking like it is it was a 10 for me I love that don't go for all the achievements because it was a nightmare at the end because there was one clip I didn't have.

[00:10:35] And I was scrubbing through everything to find I eventually did find it but it was pain in the ass so but it was great I don't know where he goes from here.

[00:10:43] If he wants to do another game in this style or do something completely different I don't know but I definitely need to play telling lies at this point.

[00:10:51] Because I need to I need to see that connecting the thread but yeah immortality play it play it right love it it gets the thrack seal of approval.

[00:10:59] Nice I'm so hyped for the thousand year door release coming out soon that's next week isn't it.

[00:11:08] Shit I get the thing so yeah yeah because because hell blade 2 is the 21st so next week at the time we're recording this and then the 20th.

[00:11:21] Third I believe is thousand year door remake so I cannot wait it's going to be a busy week for me because I'm playing both those fucking games because I'm excited for both.

[00:11:33] Thousand your door is.

[00:11:35] I think Bowser's inside stories the best Mario RPG ever made thousand your door is so close like the copy I got as a kid.

[00:11:50] Nice I had to pull it out like I remember getting this I saw this at the game stop and like.

[00:11:59] Something like that.

[00:12:02] And it was I think I was no fiber six it says best seller on it but it's not players choice.

[00:12:08] See I have the awful players choice version with the yellow.

[00:12:12] Oh yeah and of course it's the I be.

[00:12:16] Nice it's one of the most valuable games I have and I've beaten this copy at least two or three times like I love this game I know this game pretty well it is like this was the game one of the few games that made me go oh RPGs can be fun.

[00:12:34] Yeah see that was the Mario Luigi series for me that's fair that's fair and I didn't play those until much much later.

[00:12:42] See I didn't have a game cube so I was stuck with those yeah which to be fair they're both excellent series.

[00:12:49] Oh absolutely if they both fall off the cliff after a while but.

[00:12:53] After the third entry well Mario Luigi not as drastically if Mario.

[00:13:01] Yeah yeah like 64 is great thousand your door is a masterpiece.

[00:13:06] I have a strong Super Paper Mario defender it has some good things about it it's not as good as the first two but I think it stands on its own.

[00:13:15] It has the best thing in the series like I will fan forever yeah fantastic story the weird mixture of 2D and 3D works better than you'd think.

[00:13:26] There's a lot to like about it it's just I the whole like action RPG kind of combat in that game like jumping on a goomba and not immediately killing it.

[00:13:35] Yeah it just feels weird yeah it feels so wrong but it's better than sticker star sticker stars trash that is a lot of that is such a.

[00:13:45] And then and then there was also a color splash and we you I never played that I never played it I watched our little game.

[00:13:55] Like as a puzzle adventure game it's fine but as an RPG it's trash.

[00:13:59] Yeah I watched our loads review of it and so it was a pretty comprehensive review of it and from what I saw of it I'm like it would probably be fine.

[00:14:09] But it would leave you feeling kind of empty because there's not a lot they're like it's a concept that could work in a different game I'm not I'm not quite sure like origami King I have origami I'm not gonna blow it origami King.

[00:14:24] Origami King is I thought it was okay like it's a step in the right direction the game is gorgeous.

[00:14:30] The writing is really good.

[00:14:33] The like exploring finding all the toads a lot of that stuff like everything that isn't the combat is great.

[00:14:41] In my opinion it's the combat that really lets the game down like the whole ring system it's it's a neat idea but the more you did you play origami King.

[00:14:51] Oh yeah.

[00:14:52] Okay yeah I put like 40 50 hours into it anyway the ring combat like it's a neat idea but when you play the game you realize oh they didn't really have enough ideas for it it was just an idea.

[00:15:07] But by the end of the game it's like oh yeah there's they don't really develop this in a way that a Nintendo game would develop it you know what I mean.

[00:15:17] I have a strong feeling because of how successful the the Mario RPG remake was and I have a very strong suspicion that the Paper Mario re-release is going to do very well.

[00:15:29] Maybe that will finally kick Nintendo in the ass to be like yo people like RPGs.

[00:15:35] Well they know people like RPGs like the Xenoblade games do really well.

[00:15:39] True they just don't want to make a Mario.

[00:15:41] Fire Emblem does really well.

[00:15:43] True.

[00:15:44] So well I think maybe we'll see what happens we'll see what happens but.

[00:15:48] Well their excuse for the longest time was they were always like well the Mario and Luigi series is the RPG series which pissed everyone off.

[00:15:56] Yeah because that doesn't exist anymore.

[00:15:58] Oh yeah now it's even more like bad because that franchise is dead which sucks but that's besides the point.

[00:16:04] Yeah Nintendo had a hand in that series death and then yeah Paper Mario is just kind of coasted.

[00:16:12] For a good long time and and yeah well we'll see but yeah I'm here I'm here for this guy I'll have I'll have both of them.

[00:16:21] Next week I will I will have the switch one and well not next week but yeah I'll have the switch one here.

[00:16:26] So I'll probably play through and beat Hellblade 2 first that'll probably be a quick play like maybe 10 hours and then.

[00:16:34] And then I will get back I will be playing Paper Mario again which which is a good feeling.

[00:16:40] Good it's good to play that one again because I remember when I first got it I had no idea was an RPG even looking at the back like.

[00:16:49] If you didn't know you wouldn't think it's an RPG.

[00:16:53] And when I was a kid I was like man all this like turn based comic like this shit is weird man but I'll deal with it because it's Mario.

[00:17:00] You know and then I and then but I got into it you know like I eventually got into it so.

[00:17:06] We have my first insane like one of the best love like worlds in that game is the wrestling ring it's literally just.

[00:17:13] I love that I love the train like the train the murder mystery is great when you meet.

[00:17:21] The guy's.

[00:17:23] Bombory said his name but yeah bomb on the island you deliver the letter to his wife the Pianta mafia like that stuff's fantastic.

[00:17:34] The entire.

[00:17:36] Go.

[00:17:37] I was gonna say the dark the dark world with all the fucking like X identity crisis shit that that that whole level is fucking amazing.

[00:17:46] Yeah and the whole storyline with peach in the computer like if you're like falling in love with peach.

[00:17:53] It's it's one of the few times that it's implied that peaches naked.

[00:17:58] Yes she takes her dress off and you run around yeah but she's invisible yes yes which is very raunchy for Nintendo and also.

[00:18:07] Where oh she's not on the cover that's crazy she's down the car Vivian.

[00:18:14] Oh yeah they're actually gonna go into the they're doing a they're doing a proper translation of it and I guarantee you it's going to piss some people off.

[00:18:23] Because they're not going to know they're going to be like oh they're doing this woke thing and then people are going to be like bro she was always that.

[00:18:29] Those who don't for those of you who don't know in paper Mario you run into a ghost named Vivian she's part of a gang of other like sister ghosts and in the original Japanese version you find out that she is trans.

[00:18:43] And in the American and I believe the European translations she is not they take that out.

[00:18:51] Yeah they just don't even reference it just completely.

[00:18:55] Yep it's like it's like a bird oh situation.

[00:18:59] 2003 I get it just the time frame but nowadays it makes sense to just do it the right way.

[00:19:05] But even then it's like I could be wrong on this but I feel like you know 304 if there was that I don't think people would be so freaked out by it.

[00:19:15] I don't even think it would have been they would have it would have freaked people out I think it was more just I think it would have just been confusing because like it was super known at the time it wasn't a mainstream thing like it is now.

[00:19:26] Yeah I think it just was more of a they didn't want to confuse kids.

[00:19:30] Probably just because it's like such a weird thing to do and bringing that up maybe in 2003 wouldn't have been best because the.

[00:19:39] The I did the attitudes people had towards that in back then were not great but but it was mostly people just being like I don't know.

[00:19:48] It's also not exactly like flat out said it's more subtle I mean it's all it's kind of derogatory the way it's.

[00:19:56] Yeah game but it's also not exactly.

[00:20:00] Direct either it's it's kind of just a thing where I get why they took it out but nowadays it just makes more now that people know about it I understand why they would put it in.

[00:20:09] Yeah just throw it in there why not do a proper translation we'll see we'll see probably grums or somebody get mad about on Twitter and not know people who have never played the game and have no intention of playing the game are going to get angry for no reason.

[00:20:21] Yeah honestly grums feels like that kind of guy who like doesn't play games because he's too busy on Twitter talking about how Maddy is.

[00:20:27] Probably you know so but yeah but yeah it'll be it'll be a good game I mean it's always been a good game I don't know how they'd fuck it up I know some people are mad it's 30 instead of 60 but I'm like it's a fucking RPG gives a shit.

[00:20:42] Oh the frame rate yeah I mean.

[00:20:46] It's gonna make that much of a difference it's an RPG like I know it has the action commands but they're not it's not fucking Dark Souls they're not that picky okay like and Nintendo is so good at optimizing 30 frames.

[00:20:59] You wouldn't even know it like Kirby in the Forgotten Land is 30 frames and it's the smoothest 30 frame game I've ever played you wouldn't even think it's 30 so as long as the input lag is next to zero it'll be fine.

[00:21:13] Yeah that's honestly why they're probably doing 30 because they don't want to risk the switch not being able to handle it.

[00:21:18] Well the people the issue people have is the GameCube version is 60.

[00:21:22] That's incredibly common with GameCube ports though like because like the Tales of Symphonia like every port re-release of that game is capped at 30.

[00:21:31] But that's because it's based on the PS3 version which is based on the PS2 version which the frame rate was cut in half.

[00:21:40] But most people don't realize that and they get mad about it.

[00:21:45] Yeah like like if they did a switch port of say FZ or GX and that was running at 30 instead of 60 I would be mad about that because that game kind of needs to be in 60 it's a game still to this day.

[00:22:01] Put that shit in Dolphin at 4k.

[00:22:04] So good so good.

[00:22:07] Rip your hair out because it's so fucking cheap at times.

[00:22:10] But it's so fun.

[00:22:13] It's got such a great soundtrack and it whizzes by like god fucking damn it.

[00:22:17] It also has mid-2000 Sega voice acting and it's hilarious.

[00:22:21] Oh yes yes Sega was cooking back then.

[00:22:24] I still love that line of Captain Falcon when he gets like pulled out of the bar like where are you taking me?

[00:22:29] It's like who thought that? Who approved of that?

[00:22:34] Yeah video game voice acting was not it was barely a thing in 2005.

[00:22:43] Yeah that'll be great I'm excited for Hellblade 2.

[00:22:46] That's gonna be great.

[00:22:48] I know people aren't high on Xbox right now and for good reason.

[00:22:52] But the whole studio shutdown thing that was we didn't talk about that last week did we?

[00:22:58] We covered it last week.

[00:22:59] Okay yeah. God it's been that long already.

[00:23:02] And again some people worried about Ninja Theory.

[00:23:05] I think Ninja Theory will be fine.

[00:23:08] Hellblade 2 I imagine will be a very good game.

[00:23:11] What's funny is one of the dudes in one of his discords Artful Scruff or Scuff or whatever.

[00:23:17] Like he loved Hellblade 1 but he refuses to play 2 because he's like I don't know like

[00:23:22] I think it's just to him the idea of a sequel seems pointless from where the story ended in Hellblade 1.

[00:23:28] And I could see that but I view it as I need to know where they're going though.

[00:23:32] Like how do they follow that up?

[00:23:34] So yeah we shall see.

[00:23:37] So I will be playing it and put on your headphones when you play it kids.

[00:23:42] Not 100%.

[00:23:44] I'm gonna play that one again the original Hellblade.

[00:23:47] Great game have all the achievements for it.

[00:23:49] I loved it.

[00:23:50] It was a great experience.

[00:23:52] I thought it was gonna be like a horror game and it's not really.

[00:23:56] But it's creepy.

[00:23:58] Like immortality.

[00:23:59] It's not scary.

[00:24:01] But it is creepy.

[00:24:02] Speaking of creepy we need to talk about Army Men don't we?

[00:24:07] Ah yes Army Men.

[00:24:09] Army Men.

[00:24:11] The beginning of a sub series.

[00:24:15] Audio listeners he held up like maybe 25% of the Army Men games which is like 30 of them.

[00:24:23] Yeah.

[00:24:24] Yeah it's insane.

[00:24:26] It's insane.

[00:24:28] Keep in mind too most of these games came out in the span of 3 years.

[00:24:33] Blew my mind because one day after a pod we were just chatting and we were talking about Army Men.

[00:24:39] And then I looked up the list of games and I was surprised at how many games they shoved out.

[00:24:45] Or released to be nicer.

[00:24:48] In a span of what from like 97 to like 2001?

[00:24:53] Like it's crazy.

[00:24:55] 3DO's time with the franchise was 1998 to 2003.

[00:25:00] And in that time there was what like 100 games?

[00:25:06] There was at least 20.

[00:25:08] At least like 20.

[00:25:10] Good God man.

[00:25:12] So interesting fact this is the first episode of the show that we're doing that's covering something post console 3DO.

[00:25:20] It was about time.

[00:25:22] So we're officially into...

[00:25:24] We haven't covered the official transition from console to third party yet.

[00:25:30] But we're officially in the period of time now where 3DO went full third party.

[00:25:35] They tried to do a Sega before Sega.

[00:25:38] To have much less success.

[00:25:45] Yeah I think it's like 20 games.

[00:25:49] In 4 years.

[00:25:51] That's insane.

[00:25:55] So I always joke saying that Army Men went from 3DO's flagship series and it turned into their sinking ship really fast.

[00:26:08] Yeah it was clear they had something that was kind of cool that people liked.

[00:26:13] And then they just rode that wave way too hard.

[00:26:17] Well it was 3DO was so...

[00:26:20] Post console 3DO the company really kind of changed because what I loved about the console era of 3DO was they were really creative and they did a lot of interesting things.

[00:26:31] Army when it came...

[00:26:33] The concept of Army Men is interesting.

[00:26:35] Well I want to get into the whole idea behind how they created the series.

[00:26:40] It's just like before we get into that 3DO's third party publisher era.

[00:26:45] It's like they were so creatively bankrupt at times where it's like they'd find one thing that worked.

[00:26:52] And then they would just...

[00:26:53] They do the Activision method of milk it till it's dead and then keep milking it.

[00:26:58] But at least Activision...

[00:27:00] Well say with the Call of Duty series there's just like one a year.

[00:27:04] But like I mean hell I watched a video from a while ago about the Guitar Hero series.

[00:27:11] Fuck it was a club I believe did it on YouTube y'all should watch it.

[00:27:15] He plays every Guitar Hero game goes through the whole thing.

[00:27:18] It's a fantastic series and basically yeah from like 2009 had one two three four five six.

[00:27:27] Including DJ Hero had like six games in one year.

[00:27:31] And they expected you to buy a fucking $400...

[00:27:33] Guitar every time.

[00:27:35] Yeah like I didn't realize until I look at it like yeah like they milked Guitar Hero really fucking quick.

[00:27:42] Like it was huge for that time frame we were all there right?

[00:27:46] They milked Guitar Hero, they milked Tony Hawk.

[00:27:48] Oh yeah poor Tony Hawk.

[00:27:52] Yeah that one was rough.

[00:27:54] They tried milking like Crash and Spyro but that really didn't work.

[00:28:01] Yeah.

[00:28:03] I mean and they milked Call of Duty but that still seems to work.

[00:28:06] There's still a lot of milk in that tea.

[00:28:08] They get away with that one by having like every developer they have work on it so they can keep up with the demands.

[00:28:15] Like they have three dev studios just making Call of Duty so they do one every like three years.

[00:28:22] So each one gets like a three year cycle.

[00:28:27] Yeah but then they also have all their side studios just contributing just to make sure that it comes out on time.

[00:28:33] Yeah which is just crazy.

[00:28:36] I mean I really hope that calms down in the future but I mean who knows?

[00:28:42] Well unfortunately they keep...

[00:28:44] It's like Pokemon they keep selling so they have no reason to change.

[00:28:48] I know, I know.

[00:28:50] It's like how I feel about say like yearly sports series you know.

[00:28:54] Like you know me I like the Madden series and I just wish they would take a fucking break and actually like fix all the problems with it.

[00:29:01] But there's no fucking need to.

[00:29:03] Like the audience that they go to, most of them don't fucking care.

[00:29:07] And it saddens me man.

[00:29:11] So going back to Army Men now.

[00:29:13] The way this series kind of came to be I found was really interesting.

[00:29:18] The whole idea was like they wanted to make like a strategy game very similar to say like Command and Conquer.

[00:29:24] But they...

[00:29:26] To avoid censorship they had to kind of get around...

[00:29:30] Obviously they couldn't have blood or realistic violence.

[00:29:34] So they came up with the idea of let's make them little toys.

[00:29:37] And make it like the little toys basically running around on the board.

[00:29:42] Because that immediately takes away all of the violence and tones it down to a consumer friendly kind of area.

[00:29:50] And they kind of played around with the idea the farther the series went.

[00:29:56] Yeah like apparently the say like with Command and Conquer in certain areas of the world they would censor it like really hard.

[00:30:04] Like censor it to the point where they would have to essentially make a whole new version of the game just to appease that audience.

[00:30:10] And so they were probably thinking hey with Army Men we could just yeah make it like this brutally violent thing.

[00:30:16] But they're all just like little plastic toys that everybody knows.

[00:30:19] Like everybody's familiar with the little green Army Men.

[00:30:21] So it's something that has an immediate identifiable look to it.

[00:30:27] And you can make it like brutally violent because say if you're a kid playing Army Men that's probably what you were thinking in your head anyways.

[00:30:33] So it allows for some creativity and sort of like you know like environmental design and sort of game setup.

[00:30:41] And it leaves it open to be like so many different genres which they tackled so many different genres with the series.

[00:30:47] They sure did.

[00:30:49] Yeah like the concept of Army Men as a series does make a lot of sense if you just want something kind of plain that you can experiment within.

[00:30:57] You know?

[00:30:59] Like it totally makes sense.

[00:31:02] You know?

[00:31:04] Like the first two Army Men games that were originally released on a PC they were like straight up real time tactical games like Isometric.

[00:31:14] They were later also ported to Game Boy Color and these are actually solid ports.

[00:31:20] They don't look as nice but they're basically the same game which is pretty cool.

[00:31:24] Yeah I'm pretty sure the original Army Men was originally going to be on the M2.

[00:31:30] It was.

[00:31:32] I believe, I don't know if it actually got into development because the M2 literally like was a thing and then it wasn't a thing very quick.

[00:31:40] It might have started development on that but it could have been like it was so it was closer to like a PC so they could probably pivot to make it a PC game real quick.

[00:31:52] It's one of those things where if there was work started it's either completely gone forever or it's like lost media because I don't think, because there is M2 games out there.

[00:32:06] Because M2 hardware was actually, we'll probably get into it more when we actually do an episode discussing the M2.

[00:32:12] Yeah.

[00:32:14] But a lot of the M2's hardware was actually used in arcade cabinets that did release to the public.

[00:32:20] Wasn't the hardware recycled for like vending machines or something?

[00:32:24] I think so.

[00:32:26] I'd have to relook into that.

[00:32:28] I think it might have been kind of like the Jaguar in a sense.

[00:32:30] But like this never released so people probably wouldn't know.

[00:32:36] You know what I mean?

[00:32:38] Whereas with the Jag, seeing that stuff was just incredible.

[00:32:40] I'm trying to find one of those dentists things just because I think it would be kind of funny to ask.

[00:32:45] It would probably be less expensive than a Jaguar.

[00:32:47] Honestly yeah.

[00:32:50] Apparently there are like prototypes of the M2 floating around.

[00:32:54] It looked cool.

[00:32:56] It was a cool looking system.

[00:32:58] It looks fucking weird though.

[00:33:00] I mean it was smart of them to standardize the top loading thing.

[00:33:06] But I don't know, it just has this weird 90's lab top look to it.

[00:33:10] Yeah it does.

[00:33:12] Or it's like a square PS1.

[00:33:14] You know what I mean?

[00:33:18] It looks like it's mimicking that.

[00:33:20] I kind of like it, I won't lie.

[00:33:22] But then again I just like that aesthetic.

[00:33:26] That's fair.

[00:33:28] I would have been curious to what the controller would have been.

[00:33:30] Yeah it's unknown.

[00:33:32] Also apparently they had basically partnered exclusively with Panasonic by that point which pissed off Goldstar and everybody to no end.

[00:33:40] I mean they should have done that in the fucking first place but...

[00:33:42] Yeah.

[00:33:44] Is what it is.

[00:33:46] Here's a picture of a potential M2 controller.

[00:33:48] And it looks like a fucked up N64 controller.

[00:33:54] Yeah.

[00:33:56] Have you seen this?

[00:33:58] I've seen the one that you're referring to.

[00:34:00] It's unknown if that actually is an M2 controller or it's just something that they theorize might have been.

[00:34:06] I mean it looks like a picture of actually one.

[00:34:10] You know what I mean?

[00:34:12] It is a funky looking controller, that's all I'll say.

[00:34:15] Yeah basically just imagine like a weird third party N64 controller.

[00:34:19] That's kind of what it looks like.

[00:34:21] And it looks like it would have been...

[00:34:23] I mean hopefully they would have finalized what it looked like because this looks really uncomfortable.

[00:34:27] Like having the six face buttons, like a weird analog stick in the middle, then the D-pad and apparently an analog steering wheel on the outside of the D-pad.

[00:34:39] Yeah, I kind of like that.

[00:34:41] I don't know how I feel about that.

[00:34:43] It's kind of like...

[00:34:45] Do you remember that Mad Cat's Xbox 360 joystick they tried making that had the weird...

[00:34:49] Oh, that fucking piece of shit.

[00:34:51] Yeah, and it had that weird scrolly wheel thing around the analog stick because there was a separate analog stick with your joystick.

[00:34:57] See, yeah that's cool because say if you're trying to put like Breakout or like Pong or something on the live arcade, that's great for it.

[00:35:05] But that's different from having it like say down here.

[00:35:11] Say you're holding a controller and then you have to hit this and do this kind of motion.

[00:35:17] You know what I mean?

[00:35:19] Just doing that doesn't feel comfortable.

[00:35:21] It was the experimental era of game controllers where they were just trying shit.

[00:35:25] Yeah, for real.

[00:35:28] So going back to Army Men now, like the first two games were pretty big successes for the most part.

[00:35:34] The second one more so than the first one.

[00:35:36] The first one didn't really play with the Army Men gimmick as much as it honestly could have.

[00:35:42] They kind of...

[00:35:44] It was like basically they made a Command and Conquer game and then just stuck Army Men in there just so they get away with the violence.

[00:35:52] The second one was more where they really started kind of playing around the fact that these are toys and we can kind of make a joke out of that.

[00:35:58] Yeah, I think it does the thing a lot of the Army Men games do and that is it'll have a world that's like their world and then they sort of like transition to say our world.

[00:36:10] And then our world is where like say they're like fighting on like kitchen tops or in like bathrooms or whatever.

[00:36:16] Yeah, like so we'll get into as we go along but the Army Men series kind of diverges in half.

[00:36:22] There is like two storylines going on.

[00:36:24] There is the realistic storylines based around the first two games and then there's the Sarge storyline which becomes its own wacky thing as we go on.

[00:36:34] Yeah, like Sarge was their attempt at like a mascot for the series.

[00:36:38] Yes.

[00:36:40] And I guess it worked?

[00:36:42] Because when people think of Army Men, that's probably what they think of is like the Sarge games.

[00:36:46] Yes, that or they think of this one Army Men 3D which maybe possibly this was I think the most successful game in the series from what I've read.

[00:36:58] It's either this or Air Attack.

[00:37:01] Army Men 3D is interesting because it's actually a 3D remake of the first Army Men game.

[00:37:05] Only it's a third person shooter and it's a little bit it's kind of real.

[00:37:11] It's trying to be a little too realistic for its own good at times which makes it kind of awkward but it's pretty fun and you get a flamethrower and you can legitimately play it.

[00:37:21] See that's great.

[00:37:23] Like that's just violent and I kind of love it.

[00:37:25] I mean you can get away with it.

[00:37:27] They're just little plastic things.

[00:37:29] Yeah, I mean this game is fun.

[00:37:31] It had a really fun multiplayer mode where like you could it was kind of like capture the flag essentially.

[00:37:35] Yeah, I mean it's a really fun game.

[00:37:37] It's a really fun game.

[00:37:39] It's a really fun game.

[00:37:41] It's a really fun game.

[00:37:43] It's a really fun game.

[00:37:45] It's a really fun game.

[00:37:47] It's a really fun game.

[00:37:49] I remember playing that with my dad and Alex a lot back in the day.

[00:37:53] Going on from there though then that's when we get into of course the Sarge games.

[00:38:02] The beginning, the true beginning.

[00:38:04] I had the N64 version just imagine it here listeners.

[00:38:10] And because it was cheap and I was like oh that game looks cool.

[00:38:14] And I got to say from what I remember playing of the N64 version it's not good.

[00:38:18] It's very slow and clunky and really hard to line up shots and kind of get anywhere.

[00:38:22] But I get the sense that is more a fault with the N64 than the game itself.

[00:38:26] So Sarge's Heroes was a really weird game.

[00:38:30] The N64 version looked like a little bit of a game.

[00:38:34] It was a little bit of a game.

[00:38:36] It was a little bit of a game.

[00:38:38] It was a little bit of a game.

[00:38:40] It was a really weird game.

[00:38:42] The N64 version looked the best but played weird because the N64's weird hardware problems.

[00:38:48] The PS1 version played better but looked like shit because PS1.

[00:38:54] Then you get the weird best of both worlds where you get the Dreamcast version which is based off the N64 version but plays better because of the controller.

[00:39:03] Yeah, Sarge's Heroes is a weird one though because it's like where the series got really fucking weird.

[00:39:14] If you look at the back on the screenshots there's like one of the screenshots is literally Sarge climbing on some toy blocks.

[00:39:20] It's really the point where they started this whole storyline involving Sarge and the Tan Army which was basically the villains of the series.

[00:39:32] There was also this blue army that was like these double agents running around.

[00:39:37] The storyline got really surprisingly complicated for whatever reason.

[00:39:43] Go on.

[00:39:45] No, no, no you're good.

[00:39:47] I was just going to say though this is where they got really goofy where they would play around with the fact that they're toys and they'd try to do slapstick humor in the background during the cutscenes.

[00:39:56] The cutscenes for these games, did the N64 version have cutscenes?

[00:40:00] Yes.

[00:40:02] Were they full motion video or were they kind of like the N64-ish cutscenes?

[00:40:08] Yeah, I remember it had them.

[00:40:10] I don't think there is a bit crushed as some people might think.

[00:40:14] The N64 could run cleaner audio and video than I think people realize.

[00:40:19] It was only really limited by using the cartridges.

[00:40:22] But from what I remember the Sarge's Heroes stuff was perfectly fine.

[00:40:25] But I haven't played that game in a very, very long time because I've got rid of my N64 in that collection many, many years ago.

[00:40:33] Before I remember I think it did have cutscenes.

[00:40:36] Okay, because the PlayStation version and Dreamcast definitely did.

[00:40:40] And I love the cutscenes in this series because they literally use like old wartime like movie tone news clip cutscenes for everything.

[00:40:48] Yeah.

[00:40:51] And it's charming.

[00:40:53] Like you could tell they were still trying at this point during the production of the series.

[00:40:59] Which led to the direct sequel.

[00:41:02] Well, not really sequel but another game in the Sarge storyline.

[00:41:05] And what I consider the best game, best army man game made personally.

[00:41:11] The Air Attack.

[00:41:13] Yes, yes. You've told me before that you're quite a fan.

[00:41:17] Yeah.

[00:41:19] So Air Attack takes place in the same universe as like Sarge's Heroes.

[00:41:23] Like Sarge appears in the cutscenes and everything.

[00:41:25] The whole gimmick with these ones is instead of being like action platformer third person shooter games.

[00:41:32] They're air combat games where you do have a bunch of missions and you basically control helicopters.

[00:41:38] And you just basically get your objective at the start and you kind of have to go through the level and do it avoid enemy fire.

[00:41:44] It's simple fun, just nonsense.

[00:41:46] And this game in particular has held up wonderfully over the years.

[00:41:54] From what I've seen people do tend to really enjoy the Air Attack games quite a bit.

[00:41:58] I've never played them.

[00:42:00] I definitely recommend the first one.

[00:42:02] The levels are hilarious because you'll go through one where it's literally in the backyard and you're going through the garden of the family's house that the army men inhabit.

[00:42:16] There's another level where you have to free bugs that the tan army has kidnapped.

[00:42:22] And whenever you free the bugs they're like, we're free!

[00:42:24] And then they go and attack the tan army.

[00:42:26] That's amazing.

[00:42:28] It's just goofy shit like that.

[00:42:30] It's charming in a weird sense.

[00:42:34] Yeah, I get the sense.

[00:42:36] I feel like that's a summation of the series as a whole.

[00:42:39] Charming in a weird way.

[00:42:41] Yes.

[00:42:43] Moving on.

[00:42:45] This is where things get a little confusing.

[00:42:47] So, Army Men 3D was really popular and a lot of people really wanted basically more of that style and not the weird goofy shit that was going on with the Sarge games.

[00:43:01] So, Army Men 3DO decided to compromise and they proceeded to release four games in the World War series.

[00:43:11] Man, they got to four World Wars in real life and only have two.

[00:43:15] So, fun fact about these games.

[00:43:17] They're basically just Army Men 3D again but slightly different and they're barely changed between game.

[00:43:27] Man.

[00:43:29] They didn't even try!

[00:43:31] No, they really didn't.

[00:43:33] These are basically the World War games.

[00:43:35] And they're essentially, if Army Men was trying to be serious.

[00:43:39] But they're fucking toys.

[00:43:41] So, it's like the illusion is just bad.

[00:43:43] Is it the Army Men's Call of Duty?

[00:43:45] You know what I mean?

[00:43:47] In a sense but Call of Duty is significantly better.

[00:43:49] Yeah, but you know what I mean.

[00:43:51] Where it's trying to take it seriously in that sense.

[00:43:53] Yeah, basically they're trying to actually be gritty and realistic but they're still playing as the Army Men for whatever reason.

[00:43:58] I don't know how you make that work.

[00:44:00] They really didn't because Army Men 3D is well regarded.

[00:44:04] The World War games are all just like, they're just half-assed continuations of that but without any substance to really make them more realistic.

[00:44:12] They're just half-assed continuations of that but without any substance to really make them more realistic.

[00:44:18] So, it's not like the Army Men 3D is the only game that's not as realistic.

[00:44:22] They're just half-assed continuations of that but without any substance to really make them worth playing.

[00:44:30] Yeah, the Sarge's Heroes games feel like more effort was actually put into them.

[00:44:36] In a way they have more direction because they can be more silly.

[00:44:44] They can have more varied level design and have these defined characters and try to do something with them.

[00:44:52] Where it feels like 3D and the others don't have anything resembling character or anything that gives you a reason to stay engaged with what's going on.

[00:45:04] So, you still play as Sarge in them but he's not the fun Sarge from Sarge's Heroes.

[00:45:10] Is it a different Sarge?

[00:45:13] It's like the same character but he's boring and they don't have any of his sidekicks.

[00:45:21] Or that girl, that lady. What's her name?

[00:45:25] What is her name?

[00:45:27] Vicky Green I think.

[00:45:29] Vicky Grimm.

[00:45:31] Vicky Grimm.

[00:45:33] Vicky Green's a better fucking name.

[00:45:37] Well, she's the daughter of one of the general...

[00:45:41] It's deep lore guys I swear.

[00:45:45] But yeah, so Sarge's Heroes 2.

[00:45:49] I remember it's better.

[00:45:51] It was on N64, PS1, Game Boy Color PS2.

[00:45:55] I thought it was on Dreamcast.

[00:45:57] It was not.

[00:45:59] The only armyman game on Dreamcast is Sarge's Heroes 1.

[00:46:03] Okay, so I probably just get them mixed up.

[00:46:05] So, it's more of the same. It's more refined.

[00:46:09] Honestly, more fun.

[00:46:11] The only thing is the PS2 version...

[00:46:15] It might be on PS2 but this game was very clearly designed with the N64 in mind.

[00:46:21] And graphically it looks like an N64 game still.

[00:46:25] Yeah, even on PS2?

[00:46:27] Yeah, it's kind of like...

[00:46:31] You ever played Donald Duck Goin' Quackers?

[00:46:33] Yes I have.

[00:46:35] It's kind of like that game on PS2 or GameCube where it looks nicer but you can still clearly tell it was an N64 game.

[00:46:43] Yeah, yeah.

[00:46:45] It's like...

[00:46:46] If you've ever played a lot of those early 360 ports of games like Tony Hawk's American Wasteland or even Gun...

[00:46:55] They're shinier.

[00:46:58] They're running in HD and they're much cleaner looking.

[00:47:04] It's essentially like taking an old game and running it through an emulator.

[00:47:07] Like, it looks nicer but the assets are still old assets.

[00:47:11] Yes.

[00:47:13] It's very much kind of like you take a PS1 or N64 game and put it on Dreamcast.

[00:47:18] It just looks nicer but it's still very much a PS2, N64 game.

[00:47:24] Exactly.

[00:47:26] But speaking of that we also get Air Attack 2.

[00:47:30] Which, me, I would say is the last good Army Men game but there's one coming up that we can't forget when we get to it.

[00:47:41] It's the same thing as Air Attack 1.

[00:47:43] Same idea, just more levels and it looks slightly nicer.

[00:47:47] This one was also on PS1 and N64 as well, I believe.

[00:47:51] Yeah, the GameCube version of this is the Elite Missions, right?

[00:47:54] Yes.

[00:47:55] Okay.

[00:47:57] Good game, more of the same.

[00:48:00] It's the third fucking sub-series in this goddamn thing.

[00:48:05] Because you have like the World War series, the Sarge's series and now like the Air Combat series.

[00:48:11] So, the Air Combat games are technically part of the Sarge series because they have the same plot but they're just a different style of gameplay.

[00:48:19] Okay.

[00:48:21] And speaking of that series we also have Green Rogue.

[00:48:27] This game, I don't know why but this game reminds me of GoldenEye Rogue Agent.

[00:48:34] Honestly, I'd rather play that.

[00:48:36] And that game's not great either.

[00:48:38] Exactly.

[00:48:40] So, this one is essentially, forget trying to make a competent war shooter, just make it an arcade style shoot-em-up, the kids will love that.

[00:48:52] That doesn't seem like a bad idea though, like this guy in a Contra game? Sure, why not?

[00:48:59] It's not bad. It's just generic, I think is the way to best describe it.

[00:49:06] Yeah, well to be fair the PS2 Contra games are better and people give them credit for it but Neo Contra and Contra Shattered Soldier.

[00:49:17] Those games aren't terrible.

[00:49:20] The thing about Green Rogue is you play it and you're just kind of like, this is fine.

[00:49:26] But it's also there's just so many better games of this style on PS2.

[00:49:31] Yeah.

[00:49:33] It's also like just super ridiculous because it's still part of the Sarge series but you're playing as this random Green Rogue guy.

[00:49:44] Yeah, I don't understand this.

[00:49:47] It's cheap so if you find it for cheap, go for it.

[00:49:53] With all these games.

[00:49:55] Yeah. Now we get to probably the most infamous and interesting game in this series.

[00:50:02] Army Men Advance?

[00:50:04] Portal Runner.

[00:50:06] Oh yeah, fucking poor. I didn't know this game existed until like a couple weeks ago.

[00:50:10] I didn't know this was an Army Men game until I bought it, until I did a deep dive into the series.

[00:50:15] Yeah, this looks like a nightmare.

[00:50:18] So it is an action platforming game.

[00:50:25] It's a thing.

[00:50:29] So this was only on PS2. It still looks like an N64 game.

[00:50:35] It's just mediocre in every way possible and

[00:50:41] Crip Hawkins was so upset by the bad reviews that he left a drunken email to one of the reviewer sites threatening to pull advertisement.

[00:50:53] That's so funny.

[00:50:55] It is like, Crip Hawkins is from everything I've read generally seen as a really nice guy but that's like one of his few not great moments.

[00:51:05] Yeah, this game looks like, I don't know why, I'm looking at gameplay of it and it feels very like that sort of weird run of the mill 3D platformer game.

[00:51:18] Like less of a Mario Sunshine and more of a, I don't know, Spyro Enter the Dragonfly?

[00:51:27] Blasto maybe?

[00:51:29] Blasto, yeah.

[00:51:30] Without Phil Hartman making it worth it.

[00:51:33] Yeah, RIP to a legend.

[00:51:35] Honestly you could tell me this game was like a wee shovelware and I would have believed you.

[00:51:42] Yeah, it reminds me of that ninja bread man.

[00:51:46] Yeah, yeah. To be fair there's a lot of shovelware on PS2.

[00:51:50] I don't have an official count but I think there's like 5,000 PS2 games or something crazy like that.

[00:51:56] And I guarantee you 20% of that is just bullshit.

[00:52:00] Oh yeah.

[00:52:01] Like this.

[00:52:03] So before we get into the last PS2 game I do want to divert over to Army Mid-Advance.

[00:52:12] I've played it. It's alright.

[00:52:14] It's fun. It's like a top down shoot em up.

[00:52:18] Yeah, and those work really well on GBA.

[00:52:20] They do. You can play as either Sarge or Vicky Grimm.

[00:52:25] Yeah.

[00:52:26] Go through a bunch of levels. It's fine.

[00:52:32] Listeners, if you want a really good top down shooter for the GBA I recommend Medal of Honor Infiltrator.

[00:52:41] The anger of a game.

[00:52:43] Very hard though.

[00:52:45] Yes.

[00:52:46] And we also got, there was two other Army Men games on GBA.

[00:52:52] They're not the same as Army Mid-Advance.

[00:52:56] Was it Turf Wars and Operation Green?

[00:52:58] My favorite names ever. Operation Green and Turf Wars.

[00:53:03] You're in the Army Men like gang.

[00:53:06] So Operation Green and Turf Wars are interesting because they're actually like throwbacks to the original two games where they're like isometric.

[00:53:16] They're not quite real time like strategy tactics games.

[00:53:21] They're more like isometric shooters with minor tactical elements.

[00:53:26] But they're fine for what they are.

[00:53:30] Like a Battalion Wars.

[00:53:32] Kinda.

[00:53:34] If Battalion Wars sucked.

[00:53:36] If Battalion Wars was incredibly mediocre, yes.

[00:53:40] And it is not. It is not.

[00:53:43] It is a very underrated series. I will say.

[00:53:45] I fucking love Battalion Wars.

[00:53:47] I think like a fan account of Battalion Wars follows me on Twitter.

[00:53:51] Nice.

[00:53:53] What's funny is Operation Green is somewhat well known.

[00:53:57] Turf Wars, I swear to God this game is just completely forgotten to time at times.

[00:54:02] It doesn't have a Wikipedia article and all these other fucking games do.

[00:54:06] Yeah.

[00:54:08] Turf Wars also fun fact was the final Army Men game to be released under 3DO.

[00:54:14] Went out on a banger.

[00:54:16] Yeah. Well, you could say the actual final game 3DO put out was a banger,

[00:54:23] which is also hilarious because they didn't actually make it.

[00:54:27] RTS.

[00:54:30] RTS is a great fucking game.

[00:54:32] My favorite NBA game.

[00:54:35] Why does it have an NBA sticker on it?

[00:54:38] This was probably recased at some point and they just used an NBA case but left the sticker.

[00:54:43] And I've left it there because I think it's funny.

[00:54:45] Okay. Fair enough.

[00:54:49] Just imagine like Draymond Green playing that game be like, Dan, this is great.

[00:54:54] Why we have this?

[00:54:56] So Army Men RTS is literally an RTS on console and it's a really solid game.

[00:55:02] And I convinced the majority of the reason for that is because of those guys right there.

[00:55:09] Beautiful.

[00:55:11] Audio listeners Army Men RTS was made by Pandemic Studios.

[00:55:17] One of the best studios that is dead.

[00:55:22] Yeah, they originally it was formed by a couple guys who left Activision and they got acquired by I think they got acquired by some like holding company.

[00:55:35] And then we're sold the EA.

[00:55:37] In fact, Bioware was also involved in that as well.

[00:55:40] And yeah, Pandemic Studios is known for games like the Star Wars Battlefront games, the original ones, the two-

[00:55:47] Destroy All Humans.

[00:55:49] Destroy All Humans, Full Spectrum Warrior, fucking Mercenaries, Playground of Destruction and Mercenaries 2 World in Flames.

[00:55:56] They even did a Lord of the Rings version of Battlefront called Lord of the Rings Conquest which is pretty good.

[00:56:02] And then ended on a game called the Saboteur, which is fine.

[00:56:07] I'm not the biggest fan of Saboteur but it is a very ambitious game that I would have loved to have seen them try again.

[00:56:14] You know, if you've played it, you know what I'm talking about.

[00:56:17] It's a gem from that era.

[00:56:18] But really me, it's fucking Mercenaries.

[00:56:20] I love the Mercenaries games to death.

[00:56:23] What's funny is RTS was actually one of their first games too, which is pretty interesting.

[00:56:28] Yeah, it wasn't their first.

[00:56:29] Their first is some Battlezone 2 Combat Commander thing, whatever.

[00:56:33] A lot of fucking studios started making tank games.

[00:56:35] I don't know what's up with that.

[00:56:36] They made a baseball game for EA, Triple Play 2002, which I've never played.

[00:56:42] And yeah, yeah, Army Men RTS, which I think if it's not considered the best Army Men game, it's up there for sure.

[00:56:49] It's in the top five usually.

[00:56:52] Yeah, like you can get this game on Steam.

[00:56:55] I think I got on Steam for like a buck fifty or something and it was more than worth that price.

[00:57:00] Like it runs pretty well on my machine as well.

[00:57:02] My fucking laptop.

[00:57:03] And yeah, it's a great game.

[00:57:05] I love Army Men RTS.

[00:57:06] It's kind of in its own canon.

[00:57:09] Like it's not really attached to the Sarge games at all or the World War.

[00:57:14] Boring Fest that that was.

[00:57:16] It feels like it's trying to return to the series roots by having tactics.

[00:57:22] It's just like a straight up RTS, like a straight up command and conquer game.

[00:57:25] But it's very direct in that it has like the linear kind of like campaign.

[00:57:32] And you don't have to be that strategic with it as far as like the base building and everything.

[00:57:38] Like you can do that.

[00:57:39] But there is an element of like more real time tactics where it's like assemble your group and then go take out the tan army kind of thing.

[00:57:47] It finds a way of blending like just straight up combat with the strategy, like base building elements, you know, which can which makes this game very if you want to get into strategy like real time strategy games like this is like a decent kind of starter.

[00:58:01] It's kind of see if you give a shit, you know, it's obviously one of the best console RTS has ever made.

[00:58:08] Like, yeah, I put it up there.

[00:58:10] I put it up there with it's up there with like Pikmin and like Halo Wars is like just like console style RTS games or even Age of Empires four, which originally came on PC.

[00:58:26] But the console version of it on Xbox is fantastic.

[00:58:30] Oh yeah.

[00:58:31] No, 100 percent.

[00:58:33] And I will say like for 3Dio's last officially released major game, it was a pretty solid way to go out.

[00:58:42] Yeah, it has like I mean all the army men games did not review well, like their Metacritic scores aren't great.

[00:58:50] You look at the reviews for them.

[00:58:51] One of the higher ones.

[00:58:53] You look at the reviews for the army men games like in order and they kind of start pretty decent and it's like just a slope down.

[00:59:00] For real.

[00:59:01] And it's a shame that this one kind of got sucked in that mixture average kind of thing.

[00:59:06] But I think it had to do with it was just in the mold of the time.

[00:59:11] You have like there was just so many of these games that it probably it probably just felt like they all blended together and you could and you could only imagine like reviewers being like after review, like three of these games in a one year.

[00:59:23] Like calm the hell down guys.

[00:59:25] Army like at least Madden does just one a year.

[00:59:28] You know, see army men RTS is biggest downfall is the fact that it was a game based off of a tainted brand by this point.

[00:59:37] Yeah, for sure.

[00:59:39] And unfortunately after that, that's when 3Dio finally threw in the towel and they filed for bankruptcy and completely fizzled out, which we will be an episode will be discussing way down the line from now.

[00:59:53] Talking about the bankruptcy and closure of 3Dio.

[00:59:56] But the 3Dio's assets got kind of shuffled around to a bunch of different studios like famously Might and Magic went to Ubisoft and they've done fuck all with the series pretty much since.

[01:00:08] Yeah, thanks guys.

[01:00:11] And army men was purchased by a company called Global Star Software who I think is now part of 2K.

[01:00:23] They don't exist anymore though, I know that.

[01:00:27] Take two. Yeah.

[01:00:28] Yes, known for such games like the PC version of Austin Powers Pinball.

[01:00:33] And my favorite crappy racing game ever Ford versus Chevy.

[01:00:38] Like Freddy versus Jason.

[01:00:40] Developed by the masters behind Ride to Hell Redemption, Eutechnics.

[01:00:48] They did publish Sirius San, The Next Encounter, which one of the lead designers on the game is Sam Barla.

[01:01:03] He had a weird trajectory man.

[01:01:08] Like he made that weird game called Isle, which is like a one move game.

[01:01:13] He was on like Sirius San, the PS2 Ghost Rider game, did some of the Silent Hill stuff and is now doing what he's doing now.

[01:01:21] So weirdly enough I can connect Sam Barlow to army.

[01:01:25] Hell yeah.

[01:01:27] So yeah, speaking of Global Star though.

[01:01:32] Oh boy.

[01:01:33] So when they bought the rights to army men, they also inherited the last game that 3DO was working on at the time that was unfinished.

[01:01:42] And that was the final game in the Sarge series.

[01:01:45] Sarge's War.

[01:01:47] There was actually time, which is crazy.

[01:01:49] Which is crazy.

[01:01:50] Army men RTS came or RTS and Turf Wars came out in 2002, and then there was no army men game in 2003, which must have freaked some people out.

[01:02:00] And then in 2004 we got Sarge's War.

[01:02:03] I've played a bit of this one.

[01:02:05] People tend to not like this one.

[01:02:07] I'm honestly not sure why because what I played of it, I thought it was solid.

[01:02:13] So a lot of the dislike comes from the fact that this is literally the shadow of the hedgehog of army men.

[01:02:20] Yeah, I can see that.

[01:02:22] Look at that cover.

[01:02:25] Get a good look at that cover.

[01:02:28] That is kind of amazing.

[01:02:32] The most notable thing to write off the bat is notice that the guns are no longer like plastic.

[01:02:37] They're made of metal now.

[01:02:39] This is like part of I think it's part of the game storyline, isn't it?

[01:02:44] Oh, this game is grim.

[01:02:47] Yeah, I remember that.

[01:02:49] Like it is dark.

[01:02:51] Like I think all your fucking buddies die.

[01:02:55] Spoiler for this game if anyone really cares.

[01:02:59] Vicky Grimm dies within the first mission.

[01:03:02] And you get one of the most hilarious cutscenes.

[01:03:05] Watch Matt McMusles playthrough of this.

[01:03:08] It is fucking hilarious how fucking stupid this game is.

[01:03:12] Yeah, it's fucking weird, man.

[01:03:16] Like the violence is so high in this one.

[01:03:18] Like they actually like you see the characters like blown to pieces and it's like that wasn't really a thing in the previous games.

[01:03:25] I mean, it definitely looks like they're finally taking advantage of this generation's hardware.

[01:03:32] Yes, that is long.

[01:03:34] It still looks like shit.

[01:03:35] I'm not going to lie.

[01:03:36] Yeah, but it's better than the other ones, though.

[01:03:40] It's already a low bar.

[01:03:42] That is true.

[01:03:43] Yeah, it doesn't look as bad as it could look.

[01:03:47] How about that?

[01:03:48] I'll say this is better than like Green Rogue or the World War games.

[01:03:54] Like it's basically just Sarge's Heroes three.

[01:03:57] It's better than Portal Runner.

[01:03:59] Oh, yeah.

[01:04:00] It's still an army men game, so the bar isn't super high.

[01:04:04] There's this really nice banner image like a decent high quality photo of that cover.

[01:04:12] This is beautiful.

[01:04:13] I'm going to send it to you real quick.

[01:04:15] Like this is nice.

[01:04:17] My favorite is you know how you get like the splash like text on the back of the games and it always has like a big quote or something.

[01:04:25] Yeah.

[01:04:26] It's the fact that this one, it's literally just it's war.

[01:04:30] They're army men.

[01:04:31] It's always war.

[01:04:33] But this time it's serious.

[01:04:37] I'm just imagining like Shadow the Hedgehog.

[01:04:41] Like that opening cutscene where like Sonic kind of like falls and then shadows there and he just like cocks a rifle that's not meant to be cocked.

[01:04:47] But instead it's Sarge.

[01:04:50] And then he karate chops the tan guy in the head.

[01:04:53] I forget the general plastro.

[01:04:55] No, I want to see Sarge karate chop robot.

[01:05:01] This is who I am.

[01:05:05] I'm a green plastic man.

[01:05:08] So I won't lie like Shadow the Hedgehog.

[01:05:10] J Leno jaw.

[01:05:11] Like what the hell is with that jaw, man?

[01:05:14] I like Shadow the Hedgehog though.

[01:05:16] I love this game because it's so fucking ridiculous.

[01:05:19] Yeah, for real.

[01:05:21] We will play and review this one eventually.

[01:05:23] Like he's holding up the Xbox version.

[01:05:26] Hopefully by next week I have an original Xbox and I will hunt down a copy of this game.

[01:05:31] And I'm like, you know what?

[01:05:32] I may beat this with the fucking Duke controller.

[01:05:34] Let's do it, man.

[01:05:36] Like I will say we will.

[01:05:37] We will cover a bunch of these individually.

[01:05:40] Yes.

[01:05:41] Yes, absolutely.

[01:05:42] We need to.

[01:05:43] In fact, we should probably get some guests on for some of the greatest crappy games.

[01:05:46] We need people to understand.

[01:05:49] Yes, Aaron, if you're listening, pick an army man game.

[01:05:52] This is the guest for it.

[01:05:54] It doesn't matter.

[01:05:55] It doesn't matter which one he wants to do.

[01:05:56] We'll do it.

[01:05:57] I'm not going to lie.

[01:05:58] This is such an Aaron series.

[01:06:02] I'm surprised he hasn't played these.

[01:06:06] I think he has.

[01:06:07] He'll let us know because he'll be listening.

[01:06:09] He'll let us know.

[01:06:10] It's an Aaron series that I don't know.

[01:06:13] I don't know if I should be offended for him or not.

[01:06:16] I love Aaron, but some of the games that he plays, I'm always like Aaron, man.

[01:06:21] Yeah.

[01:06:22] But it's fun.

[01:06:24] This is the shit.

[01:06:25] This is kind of the shit we live for when it comes to games.

[01:06:29] Finding this weird stuff and being like, what the fuck is this?

[01:06:33] Everybody knows the big stuff, but it's fun to dig in and be like, what the hell is this?

[01:06:38] You know, this is the fun stuff.

[01:06:41] Like, that's what I liked when I was record collecting is I would just find the most like a cover that would just intrigue me.

[01:06:48] And I'm like, what is this?

[01:06:49] And then I'd go and listen to it.

[01:06:51] That was like me with my CD collection, honestly.

[01:06:53] Yeah.

[01:06:55] That being said, though, so Sarge's War technically started by 3DO, so it still very much feels like a 3DO army men game.

[01:07:03] And that green Xbox case really fits.

[01:07:06] I know it does.

[01:07:07] Yeah.

[01:07:08] Mountain Dew Green.

[01:07:09] Unfortunately, Global Software's first real attempt at it.

[01:07:14] Not nearly as great.

[01:07:16] That is major malfunction.

[01:07:18] What a fucking ironic title.

[01:07:20] Which fun fact, they didn't even make it.

[01:07:22] They farmed it out to Team 17.

[01:07:24] The Worms people?

[01:07:26] Yeah.

[01:07:27] And Team 17.

[01:07:29] Why did the Worms team make a fucking army men game?

[01:07:33] They're better than this.

[01:07:36] Well, they clearly just did this for a paycheck because this game is fucking atrocious.

[01:07:40] Yeah.

[01:07:41] Like if it was say like Worms but army men, that would probably be good.

[01:07:45] Like this game, like legitimately like art style, stylized graphics.

[01:07:52] They aren't great, but they look pretty decent compared to the rest of the series.

[01:07:57] It's going to be weird seeing that next to my copy of like Splinter Cell.

[01:08:03] This game, on the other hand, what is this art style?

[01:08:07] Generic.

[01:08:08] You got Samus Aran and Robocop back there, I guess.

[01:08:14] Mega Man maybe.

[01:08:16] Yeah.

[01:08:17] It was that they recycled Maverick Hunter, which was going to be like the Metroid Prime Mega Man game.

[01:08:24] They recycled that guy.

[01:08:26] Also graphically, this game, it looks horrendous.

[01:08:29] Like Sergeant Warlock looks better.

[01:08:31] Like I've seen this cover like a million times.

[01:08:34] Like if you go into any like retro game story, you'll find like a handful of these games.

[01:08:39] But I've never seen this one in action.

[01:08:42] It's it is like the most mediocre shooter like ever made in all honesty.

[01:08:50] I'm looking at it just looks so whatever.

[01:08:54] You know what I mean?

[01:08:56] It literally to me, it's just Team 17 got offered this like for a certain amount of money and they just did the bare minimum.

[01:09:04] It's literally just a generic third person shooter.

[01:09:06] That's all the game is.

[01:09:08] Well, if there's no charge anymore, it's like a new character.

[01:09:13] I mean, just looking at gameplay on this, like, oh, the motion blur is terrible.

[01:09:19] It just feels like they're like, oh, we'll just make what people think an Army Men game would be like.

[01:09:25] I get the sense it probably plays OK.

[01:09:28] You know, I remember not enjoying it, but yeah, I also only played it once.

[01:09:34] So yeah, we don't worry.

[01:09:37] Don't worry, gang. We will find out one of these days.

[01:09:40] Now, I don't own the last one because I don't I just don't care.

[01:09:44] There was there was one final Army Men game before the series kind of died.

[01:09:52] The fact the fact that this game is part of the series like kind of kills me a little bit.

[01:09:59] Basically, after that major malfunction flopped, Global Star just kind of gave up and the series kind of floated in limbo for a while until zoo publishing got the rights to it.

[01:10:12] So she games.

[01:10:14] Yes, that's what they go by now.

[01:10:16] Now they're dead.

[01:10:18] Oh, well, OK. Fair enough.

[01:10:22] Yes. So Soldiers of Misfortune is it looks nothing like an Army Men game.

[01:10:27] It's so out of the they literally just bought their naming rights and just kind of went with something.

[01:10:34] Yeah, like Soldier Misfortune.

[01:10:35] It honestly looks like major malfunction, like gameplay wise, but with like a different art style where for some reason now you're like a kid.

[01:10:45] But like it's fucking weird.

[01:10:47] Like it looks like, say, major malfunction.

[01:10:50] But instead of a little Army Men going through this like big oversized like bedroom, it's instead like a kid just like a real ass kid with a front like shrunk down and like, yeah, yeah, honey.

[01:11:02] I shrunk the Army Men like what?

[01:11:04] What is this?

[01:11:05] Like it came out.

[01:11:06] It came out on the Wii, which our listeners, if you have been a retro story, look through the Wii games.

[01:11:11] You probably have seen this one.

[01:11:12] It also came out in the DS and the PS2.

[01:11:16] A lot of Wii games came out in the PS2.

[01:11:18] So fun fact about this game.

[01:11:21] I completely didn't even realize it was part of the series.

[01:11:25] And the only reason I found out about it was actually Scott the Was did his we shovelware variety hour series.

[01:11:32] And this game was part of that.

[01:11:34] And I was like, play this as part of that.

[01:11:36] Yeah, he couldn't beat the first level.

[01:11:38] OK, because he had the three parts right?

[01:11:41] Yes.

[01:11:42] OK, it must have got mixed in there because I don't remember him playing this one.

[01:11:46] Like actually, I bought one game purely based on his review of it.

[01:11:50] And that was Mercury Meltdown Revolution.

[01:11:53] He's like it because he's like it was actually good.

[01:11:56] What the fuck?

[01:11:57] And I've played it.

[01:11:58] It is actually like really good.

[01:12:00] I have the one on PSP.

[01:12:01] I play the hell out of it.

[01:12:03] I almost bought Pizza Delivery Boy.

[01:12:06] I saw it somewhere, but it was 20 bucks.

[01:12:08] I'm like, am I going to play 20 bucks for this game?

[01:12:10] No.

[01:12:11] I mean, if I ever see Ninja Bread Man like on a shelf or like nothing, I'll grab it just to have that.

[01:12:17] I get that rock and roll Elvis one or the Spinks two or whatever.

[01:12:23] I mean, they're all the same game.

[01:12:25] They really are.

[01:12:26] Yeah.

[01:12:27] But yeah, soldiers of his fortune.

[01:12:28] That looks nasty.

[01:12:29] I don't I would feel so dirty playing that game.

[01:12:32] Oh, we didn't talk about Toys in Space.

[01:12:35] Not that it matters.

[01:12:37] Was that part of the original line?

[01:12:40] So that tactics games?

[01:12:43] Yes, it came out after 3D, but it was still part.

[01:12:46] Actually, no, it came out after Sarge's Heroes as well.

[01:12:49] But this is like the worst one, right?

[01:12:52] Yeah, it's it got to like fantastical like the aliens in space and stuff.

[01:12:58] And it was just it lost kind of like the charm of the original two.

[01:13:03] And it was just kind of like it just didn't need to.

[01:13:08] It really didn't need to happen.

[01:13:11] Gotcha.

[01:13:12] It's got a 29 percent on game ranking.

[01:13:14] So that's all you need to know.

[01:13:18] Rough.

[01:13:19] There was also Army Men air tactics, which was a tactical based version of the Army Men air attack games that came out on PSP and PSP.

[01:13:28] Yeah, PC.

[01:13:30] Could you imagine I had to play it?

[01:13:35] I'm just imagining like a Sarge's War two on the 360.

[01:13:41] That would have been a nightmare.

[01:13:42] That would have been something.

[01:13:45] Apparently, it was just like it was a tactical kind of game like the first two games, but they incorporated the helicopters and stuff into it.

[01:13:53] I reviews don't look great.

[01:13:55] So your mileage may vary on that.

[01:14:01] And then other than that, since Soldiers of Misfortune, we've gotten mobile ops and voice toy wars.

[01:14:10] Both of which are mobile games that I don't think exist anymore.

[01:14:14] So and apparently there is a fan game called Army Men three, which is based on the first two.

[01:14:25] I don't know if it ever got finished.

[01:14:27] No, it was canceled, but they left the engine.

[01:14:30] They basically left it open source.

[01:14:32] So if anyone wants to finish it, go for it, I guess.

[01:14:36] Yeah. If you want to dig through it.

[01:14:37] And I looked at the page for it and its last update was March 2nd of last year.

[01:14:47] And it's had no downloads this week.

[01:14:50] I'm like, should I just so they get one and wake somebody up?

[01:14:54] Like, what the fuck?

[01:14:57] And then immediately delete it because I'm like, what am I supposed to do with all these assets?

[01:15:02] Yeah, I don't know what I would do with these assets.

[01:15:08] Yeah, that was a neat idea.

[01:15:10] But I remember when it was first announced and they were actually working on it.

[01:15:14] It was kind of interesting.

[01:15:15] But then like it just disappeared.

[01:15:17] And I was like, I wasn't that interested.

[01:15:20] Fair enough. See, I would do a Sarge's Heroes three or something like that.

[01:15:25] That'd be funny. Well, we kind of got Sarge's Heroes three.

[01:15:29] Oh shit. That's right.

[01:15:32] Sarge's villains.

[01:15:35] Sorry, Sarge Resurrection.

[01:15:41] He's back.

[01:15:43] And this time he's mad.

[01:15:47] If you know that, if you know, if you know that quote, I'll give you a dollar.

[01:15:53] So, yeah, that's the Army Men series, though it is literally like the perfect example of like milking a franchise

[01:16:01] into the ground and essentially imploding your entire company.

[01:16:05] Yeah, and like the worst possible way of like milking a franchise.

[01:16:09] Like a lot of these other companies have gotten milking a franchise down to a science, man.

[01:16:16] Like Call of Duty and a lot of the EA sports games, like they have it down to a science

[01:16:22] towards like, yeah, they're milking it.

[01:16:24] But like we know everybody knows.

[01:16:27] I mean, hell, you could argue that like Mario is milked to death.

[01:16:31] You could make that argument because they just constantly are making Mario shit.

[01:16:35] But the quality is much higher.

[01:16:38] You know, that's the key, because not only did they milk Army Men, but they also oversaturated the market with these games.

[01:16:45] And they just got worse and worse.

[01:16:47] They never improved.

[01:16:49] They didn't put the effort into making complete games.

[01:16:53] Like you'd get one every now and then that was pretty good, like Air Attack, Air Attack 2, RTS.

[01:16:59] Well, RTS doesn't really count because that wasn't made by them.

[01:17:03] It's in the family.

[01:17:05] It's in the family.

[01:17:07] That one you can understand why it's good, though, because it was literally handled by someone else who had all the time in the world to make it.

[01:17:15] Yeah.

[01:17:17] Not not by one studio that was like spread thin on like 12 games plus some might and magic shit and whatever else 3DO was working on at the time.

[01:17:26] Exactly.

[01:17:27] You can tell it was made by a studio that was hungry and like ready to like prove to prove to the world that they could actually like make some like high quality games, which they eventually did.

[01:17:39] And then and then got killed because EA sucks.

[01:17:42] See, to me, I always wonder like maybe if they just like didn't do all the World War games because those are pointless.

[01:17:50] No one no one asked for that.

[01:17:52] Well, apparently people did ask for those, but like no one needed those.

[01:17:56] They and they focus solely on like the Sarge's Heroes and Air Attack games and like made like one a year.

[01:18:02] They could have arguably probably lasted longer.

[01:18:06] Yeah, they probably would have.

[01:18:09] Apparently 3DO wasn't doing great, though.

[01:18:11] And that's one of the main one of the reasons why they forced so many of these out is because they were desperate for money.

[01:18:17] Yeah, which is kind of a shame because 3DO did have some winners like there was a series called Battle Tanks, which we're going to cover some point in the future.

[01:18:28] Yes, we need to we need to get Quest 64 on that because he's a big Battle Tanks guy.

[01:18:34] And those are some those are some actual decent games 3DO made during their third party days.

[01:18:42] 3DO also made the first massive MMO, which is still apparently active with private servers, not something I'd ever play now, but it's something interesting.

[01:18:54] They fucking made that?

[01:18:56] Meridian 95, yeah.

[01:18:58] That's weird as hell.

[01:19:00] That's what I'm saying. 3DO is a weird company.

[01:19:03] But yeah, that's Army Men.

[01:19:08] Play these games. Play these games at your own risk, I guess.

[01:19:12] I mean, I will recommend the first two Air Attack RTS.

[01:19:18] Maybe the Sarge's Heroes games if you're feeling you're feeling risky, if you're feeling risky, I guess you're feeling brave.

[01:19:28] From what I've played of the series, I highly recommend RTS.

[01:19:33] I think it's a fantastic game.

[01:19:35] Like if you're a big real time strategy person, you'll probably think it's kind of like primitive.

[01:19:39] But if you're trying to get into them, I can't think of a better way to get into them without it being overwhelming.

[01:19:48] Like I have a soft spot for Sarge's War, try just because it's kind of silly.

[01:19:53] And I just feel like control gameplay wise, it felt like an improvement from Sarge's Heroes 1 and 2.

[01:19:59] But it could have been just I was playing on better hardware.

[01:20:02] Outside of that, I don't know.

[01:20:05] Play the Air Games, I guess, because people seem to like the Air Attack ones.

[01:20:10] But yeah, eventually it'll probably be like a sub series for us where we will go through each of these games and talk about them in some kind of detail.

[01:20:18] Because I'm sure these games deserve to be fine tooth combed.

[01:20:23] Like we need somebody needs to do it and I think it's going to be us.

[01:20:27] And then we'll find out about the secret army men cult who will get mad at us for not being able to appreciate how cool these games are.

[01:20:35] Do you remember that review like we found online last time?

[01:20:38] That was like the guy like ranking them in his list was so fucking bad.

[01:20:42] It wasn't even funny.

[01:20:43] Yeah, we did that off stream or off show.

[01:20:46] Amazing. He had some of the most questionable games in his top five.

[01:20:52] That's for sure.

[01:20:53] It was on Giant Bomb's website because I think Giant Bomb back in the day used to prioritize a lot of like user based content.

[01:21:02] So you could just make random crap on there and some dude ranked all the army men games and the little descriptions he had for them were hilarious and completely inconsistent.

[01:21:11] Like his reasoning for stuff was all over the place.

[01:21:14] He put Portal Runner above the air attack games and I was like, I was like what?

[01:21:19] Like die.

[01:21:21] You almost went Sarge's war on him.

[01:21:24] Just that scene of Sarge fucking screaming in the air.

[01:21:27] Just play that over and over.

[01:21:30] Sarge is unleashed.

[01:21:33] Basically the scene after he discovers Vicky died just like hits him screaming in the air.

[01:21:39] It's like the greatest fucking trash ever.

[01:21:42] I've seen it.

[01:21:43] It's amazing.

[01:21:45] Oh, yeah.

[01:21:46] Can't wait to play that game again.

[01:21:48] Oh, yeah.

[01:21:49] I'm looking forward to revisiting a bunch of these because they are they are fascinating.

[01:21:53] Yeah.

[01:21:54] Yeah, we need to do it.

[01:21:56] So what better what better podcast to do this?

[01:22:00] I'm looking forward to covering more of the post console 3DO games because like they're interesting.

[01:22:07] Yeah, I can only I can only do so many just straight up.

[01:22:10] I can only do so many just straight up 3DO games before I lose my mind.

[01:22:14] You know, it's like I need to play some fucking actual games.

[01:22:17] Yeah.

[01:22:18] Oh, boy.

[01:22:19] But yes.

[01:22:20] Next.

[01:22:21] I think we agreed that next time we were going to do the the horde.

[01:22:24] Yes, we will do the horde.

[01:22:26] Which I'm looking forward to.

[01:22:27] That's a Toys for Bob game and I love Toys for Bob.

[01:22:29] Yes, do I.

[01:22:30] And I was able.

[01:22:31] I actually have a physical of it.

[01:22:33] Gettos.

[01:22:34] I had to I had to.

[01:22:37] I don't know if it's the power version or not, but I literally ordered it from some dude in Greece who was selling it for like a decent price and it showed up very quickly for an international package.

[01:22:49] And it works just fine.

[01:22:51] I put like I think I put like an hour into it.

[01:22:54] So I will reserve my thoughts for now.

[01:22:57] I'll be playing the Saturn version just because I don't have the 3D version at the moment.

[01:23:01] But it is an expensive game.

[01:23:03] Like I was I think I got it for like 40, 50 bucks, which is actually pretty good.

[01:23:07] Yeah, we should honestly do a Toys for Bob episode at some point too because they're a hell yeah they're an interesting developer.

[01:23:14] Yes, they are.

[01:23:15] And I'm I cannot wait to see what they have up next.

[01:23:19] The Miro 4.

[01:23:20] I can't wait.

[01:23:22] Yeah.

[01:23:23] What entered the Dragonfly that already came out.

[01:23:27] They'll probably reference it.

[01:23:30] They'll probably reference it.

[01:23:32] Yeah, like they didn't crash for crash or they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, where they're like, wait, we fought each other more than three times.

[01:23:40] Right. What do you mean?

[01:23:42] Especially because especially because Wrath of Cortex is literally crash for in Japan.

[01:23:47] Yeah, it's fine.

[01:23:49] It's a fine game.

[01:23:50] It's OK.

[01:23:51] Yeah, but it's Traveler's Tale.

[01:23:54] So it's so it's average.

[01:23:56] I mean, they also made Insanity and that's a great games.

[01:23:59] Well, Insanity has that really cool gimmick to it, which I think helps that game stick out.

[01:24:03] And it has an amazing for some reason they did like a whole a cappella group soundtrack spiral mouth.

[01:24:09] I can love them. Yeah, but it's fucking good.

[01:24:11] Like, God damn, like giving that game to like like a nine year old me was was quite an experience.

[01:24:19] Even though it's painfully unfinished, which is very apparent.

[01:24:22] Yeah.

[01:24:23] Yeah. Well, like it starts out really strong, but I think it's somewhere in the second half where you're like, oh, man.

[01:24:31] You play it now and you notice a lot of things are like, but it's still it's finished enough to be playable.

[01:24:40] And that's oh, yeah. Yeah, you can beat the game.

[01:24:42] Yeah. And I hope I mean, there's no guarantee, but it'd be really sweet if that game became backwards compatible in the series.

[01:24:48] But it's Activision and Microsoft owns them now, but who knows about that?

[01:24:54] I mean, maybe in June we'll learn something about all these like Activision games.

[01:24:59] Like if they're going to game pass or if they're going to make them more backwards compatible, I have no idea.

[01:25:03] That'd be nice to see.

[01:25:05] But we got a couple of weeks.

[01:25:07] The director of Twinsanity actually reached out and said that like he if if at the time of Activision,

[01:25:14] but maybe Microsoft gave the OK, he'd love to finish the game.

[01:25:18] That'd be great. Like imagine like a remaster.

[01:25:21] Oh, yeah, that'd be great.

[01:25:23] Like hell, give that to Toys for Bob.

[01:25:25] Like, like get him to like team up with Toys for Bob and be like, hey, let's get that source code and let's finish it.

[01:25:32] Yeah, that would be awesome.

[01:25:34] That would be fucking cool because because I know like the crash fandom like has a pretty deep love for Twinsanity

[01:25:41] because it's one of the few post Naughty Dog games that people tend to really like.

[01:25:46] They got Steve-O and Chris Pontius to do ads for that game.

[01:25:50] Oh, yeah.

[01:25:52] I've seen that.

[01:25:54] I saw it on YouTube a couple years back.

[01:25:56] They'd reenact the stunts you could do in the game.

[01:25:58] It was great.

[01:25:59] It was that era.

[01:26:01] So yeah, crash another weird series.

[01:26:05] Yeah, honestly, not as bad as Spyro in terms of the game.

[01:26:10] Not as bad as Spyro in terms of like what that guy, what he went through.

[01:26:14] But it was pretty rough still.

[01:26:16] Yeah, the Crash Bandicoot I think has a higher batting average than Spyro, but I will always prefer Spyro.

[01:26:22] True.

[01:26:23] Well, I mean, Heroes Tale was like the game that was advertised along.

[01:26:28] I fucking love Heroes Tale, man.

[01:26:30] It's good.

[01:26:31] It's not it's not I mean, it's not broken like End of the Dragonfly.

[01:26:35] So that's no, no.

[01:26:37] And Heroes Tale, I got to Insanity and Heroes Tale around the same time in both those games.

[01:26:42] I'm like, yes, these games are great.

[01:26:45] You know, I haven't played Heroes Tale in a long time, though.

[01:26:48] Like I haven't played it since, I don't know, like 2007 or something.

[01:26:52] So it holds up.

[01:26:54] I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece.

[01:26:55] Like obviously the Spyro trilogy like who made it.

[01:26:59] Oh, Eurocom made it.

[01:27:00] So it's probably good.

[01:27:02] Just Harnell voices Spyro's voice.

[01:27:04] Yeah, the Dragonfly was two studios who don't have a Wikipedia page.

[01:27:09] Oh, Equinox and Slash Six.

[01:27:12] Check six.

[01:27:13] Although check six, I believe, was the main developer Equinox.

[01:27:16] I think Matt McMussell said in his What Happened?

[01:27:19] Like, nobody really knows what the fuck Equinox did during that game.

[01:27:23] They ruined it.

[01:27:24] That's probably what they did.

[01:27:27] I mean, the holiday rush is what ruined that game.

[01:27:30] But yeah, for sure.

[01:27:32] Yeah.

[01:27:33] But Heroes Tale is really cool.

[01:27:34] And it was Eurocom and RIP.

[01:27:36] Eurocom is a great dev.

[01:27:39] But yeah, so once again, guys, thanks for joining us on the 3DO experience.

[01:27:43] The 3DO experience can be found on all the major podcasting platforms, particularly Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

[01:27:49] You can also find us on YouTube with video versions, I guess.

[01:27:53] And if you could find all of our links at linktree slash The Barber Who Games.

[01:27:59] And you can join us at the GNC Podcast Network Discord server where you can find all things GNC, 3DO experience, geeked, x-talk, gaming, anime or just general nonsense.

[01:28:08] And Threk streams on Wednesday nights, which is tonight.

[01:28:11] So you can find his streams down below there at twitch.tv slash Threk 94.

[01:28:17] Well, I am currently on hiatus.

[01:28:19] You didn't read my Twitter.

[01:28:21] Yeah, like, yeah.

[01:28:22] So I'm just taking a little break from streaming right now just so I can get like, you know, career stuff figured out.

[01:28:29] The VODs are still up on Twitch.

[01:28:32] They're also on my YouTube at Threk 94.

[01:28:34] If you want to watch those, you should watch them.

[01:28:36] Tell your friends.

[01:28:37] Get those.

[01:28:38] Follow me on Twitch, man, so I can get to 50 followers and be an affiliate.

[01:28:42] That's all I'm missing.

[01:28:43] But I will return at some point.

[01:28:45] I just I just need to get some like real life stuff kind of figured out.

[01:28:49] Yeah.

[01:28:50] And then once I get that squared away, I will come back to streaming because streaming is a lot of fun.

[01:28:55] But I just don't really have the mental capacity for it at this current stage.

[01:28:59] Gotcha.

[01:29:00] But it will return.

[01:29:02] I do promise.

[01:29:04] Nice.

[01:29:05] Well, the links down there anyways.

[01:29:07] So if anyone would like to check those out, it's very easy to find.

[01:29:11] I just have ice.

[01:29:12] I don't have any water.

[01:29:13] The struggle is real.

[01:29:14] And with that, everybody, we will see you all later.

[01:29:17] Bye bye.