S2E11

the games thatshaped us. pt 1. (feat. Kitetsu) [The Counter Hit #11]

October 14, 2026 · 01:51:11

Hello.

This is the counter hit where we counter

the hits of life that beat

us down with our own vibe.

I'm your host and resident vibe.

Zishan scare quotes, but you can call me

Bob

today's show dives into

video games that shaped us

and much more, but first let's introduce

our guest this week player fighting

games, sci-fi junkie

and occasional writer.

It's cadets.

Hi kid.

How you doing?

Hey scare quotes.

How are you doing?

I'm doing all right.

Happy to have you on the show.

Dude.

I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, I'm happy to have you as well.

Yeah, we have a little bit of a history.

We've played video games on occasion.

Oh, yeah, I'd say so

once in a while.

We've talked.

We've mingled.

Yeah, we've chatted.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Speaking of which you have been asking

everyone including people that probably

are like, dude, you're a crazy man.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Just random people on the street.

About this meme that's going around

called my nine games or the nine video

games that shaped me.

Now, you've been asking me, you've been

asking everyone about this.

Everybody.

Where's this come from?

Because I saw it come through and like,

what the heck is this?

What's this about?

So I was, you know, being

very productive at work one day.

Very productive.

And I saw this.

It showed up in one of our Slack channels

and I was like, and I thought first I

thought actually, oh, it's our nine

favorite video games.

And then I look closer and it's not that

a lot of people think it's that but I

think this is a much more interesting

question because it's not your favorite

video games per se, although that

obviously is going to be a factor, but

it's the nine things that shaped who you

are and maybe more precisely shaped your

understanding of the

medium of video games.

Yeah.

And I thought that was a super

interesting question

because I never thought about it.

And then I spent like two

weeks thinking about it.

Wow.

Yeah, and I was like, I have to do that

now that I spent two

weeks thinking about it.

I need to make sure everybody else is

spending two weeks thinking about it.

Yes, you suffer to know

everyone else needs to suffer.

I need to not feel bad about this time

I've put into this endeavor.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

You're right.

I mean, it is a great question because at

first I was like, okay, what are the like

the nine best video games?

I'm like, but wait, this

is a different question.

This is one of the games that shaped me,

who I am and what understanding of this

medium really is and I saw it all over my

feet on blue sky and other

places and then you started.

What's yours?

And I'm like, all

right, and it was tough.

It is really tough to

come up with the nine.

It's such an arbitrary number.

It really doesn't mean

like you could do 2550.

2550.

I even thought, you know, it's an even

easier number to do five,

but no, this isn't five.

It's nine.

No, it's nine.

Nine.

Yeah.

All right.

for this, we have a couple different

visuals here for those that are watching

the podcast via video.

This is one of the benefits.

You get a little bit of a visual, but

don't worry if you're listening via your

ear holes, you're not going to miss out

on anything right here.

And so looking at this list right now, we

got we got a very compelling list.

This is your top nine right here.

I've got things like Metal

Gear Solid Shenmue Subnautica.

This little indie game called Street

Fighter 3 Third Strike.

I'm not sure anyone's

heard about it over here.

Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask.

I have a lot of questions about that one.

Half-Life, Ninja Gaiden Black, Kirby

Superstar, and of course Final Fantasy 7.

So zooming in here folks, I have to ask

you Kit, my good buddy here.

Yeah, talk to me about Metal Gear Solid.

Oh my God.

This question is annoying to me because I

feel like no matter what they say on this

topic, it'll never be enough.

Okay, that's kind of

frustrating because sure

I would not be this might be a little bit

dramatic to say but I would not be

exaggerating to say that a very large

part of my foundation my Constitution if

you will, yeah person

comes from Metal Gear.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm honestly not

exaggerating when I say that I

didn't you know, just

quick little small story.

I didn't really like

video games pre age 9.

You didn't like wait wait.

I did.

Yeah, yeah age 9 you're like now is age

9 and so he let me explain

so most of the video games.

I was running into were very much, you

know of the Super Nintendo Genesis NES

Gameboy that era, right and a lot of

Nintendo a lot of kind of like sprite

based, you know, games simple games

platformers that kind of stuff and at

that age I had a very annoying complex

where I wanted to be an adult right now

as soon as possible.

Oh, yeah, yeah, and and so I disregarded

anything that I

perceived as made for children.

Yeah, and so my the way I viewed the

world was if it was made for children, it

wasn't worth my time and I love pretty

much all video games into that because I

saw them as like toys.

Yeah, and I'm talking Mario Sonic, you

know, your standard sure video game fair.

I mean they are toys, right?

We are toys toys.

We can say that and here's the thing

nowadays as an adult.

I can respect that there's great power in

a toy is nothing wrong

with yeah toys are great.

But as a child, I didn't understand that

I thought toys were meant to be, you

know, you know, they're for children.

They're not for me who's an

adult at 9 years old, right?

And I looked at them with such disdain

and what Metal Gear did was take me out

of that and say hey, this

medium isn't just for kids.

Yeah, it's for everybody.

And in a way it kind of brought in my

mind about the medium because again, I

relegated it to hey, this is a toy.

This is the same thing.

You pull in a toy box.

You pull Mario you pull Sonic you pull,

you know, whatever action figure whatever

doll you pull out of your toy box.

You do the same thing with those games

and I just I didn't want to be part of

that and Metal Gear took me out of that

kind of limited scope

of what video games are.

Yeah, literally in some respect shook me.

It's like I was blown away.

It's pure away.

Okay, and this game

once you get past that initial shock,

then you get into it.

It's just it's a it's just a revolution

of of the video game medium.

Yeah, and and and almost every aspect of

it has touched me in some way, right?

Almost everything from the sound design

to the visuals to the the voice acting

the the writing the dialogue the

even like like weird details like the

credits playing for you when you are

literally soon as you swim up and you

step out of the water

the credits on the screen.

Yeah during the gameplay that has never

left my brain and mind-blowing be and I

was like I was like this is not a movie.

It's not a game either though.

Yeah.

And I know I don't know what this is and

I think me not understanding what it is

just God so compelling automatically it's

like I can't there's something there's

something compelling about something you

can't quite describe.

It's like you have a feeling you feel it

you feel it but you don't

you can't put it into a box.

You can't figure out

what it put into a box.

Yeah, and there's automatic magic when

you can't put something into a box.

You can't describe it.

You you've basically you you've revealed

the mystery and and by revealed I mean

you don't know what you don't know what

the mystery you don't know what the

mystery is but you reveal that there is a

mystery here and you

can't quite make sense of it.

Yeah.

Yeah, and this game and did that for me.

It just completely blown in mind.

Yeah, and it's it's still

blowing my mind even to this day.

Absolutely.

I got it's so funny.

You talk about your story about a feeling

that games were a toy.

So I have a similar journey in that I I

would have put it exactly like that.

But there was a moment in my life where

like video games are a thing you do when

you are a kid and you

will grow out of them, right?

That's that was my idea.

Yep, and I can absolutely say Metal Gear

was one of the games that I played that

was like oh, I'm adult.

I'm older now.

Yes, I understand the world

more and this is a holy crap.

This is format.

Whatever this is still speaks to me and

I'm learning from it in the same way that

you know adults learn from films and

books and other stuff.

I'm like, yes, that's kind of amazing.

That's kind of incredible.

So yeah, I resonate

that with that completely.

I remember I had played video games that

had voice acting in them before but it

was always like 90s Saturday morning

cartoon voice actor.

That is correct.

I know your solid was like, whoa, we're

taking this seriously.

What we're taking this very seriously,

even though it's goofy as hell at the

end, but doesn't matter even if

it's goofy, even if it's goofy, it's

somehow still being taken seriously.

Yeah, kind of crazy.

And you're watching that, you know that

opening crawl as you're kind of still in

the opening cavern area and

you're like games can do this.

Yeah, games can do this.

Yes, I did not think this was possible.

I did not think video

games could do this.

Wow.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, like I said, this list is so hard

because metal gear

solid was almost on my list.

Yeah, there's another game on this list.

That's that's what we'll talk about but

very similar reasons.

I almost put this up here.

No, listen, I get it.

I understand.

Listen, I understand the rules is also by

the way, this is not

my favorite metal gear.

Yeah, I'm with you.

100% that's the crazy thing about this.

I don't this is not my favorite metal

gear, but it's the one that

shaped me without a doubt.

You know, I got the chance to replay all

the metal gears recently with a colleague

of mine and middle year solid one.

We played through a

couple times actually.

The tone is just so

it's peak man.

It just gets that tone really well.

And of course, they're borrowing from

John Carpenter's

escape from 100% that right.

But like, it just gets that

grit that yes, it's so good.

So good.

Yeah, and then yeah,

I was gonna say blew my mind

about the genre just really

for sure and you and I were

silly dumb Americans, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

That's right.

We go back and we go like to Japan.

They've had metal gear one.

They've had metal gear two and then they

had Kojima's snatcher and police knots.

They kind of had a

lead up to this moment.

We did not.

It was like we did not drop right in.

Yeah.

Yeah, I knew metal gear from the NES and

I was like, oh, it's like the same game.

Okay, I guess so and having no idea that

it was like this and no idea when he

talks about when snake in the early parts

is talking about his past and talking

about, you know, outer

heaven and taking down big boss.

I'm like, wait that

happened in the NES game.

Like wait, all this lore

happened in the NES game.

One of the cool things about MGS one I

can say is and I think probably some of

my favorite things in the world do this

is you dive right in and you get the

sense that this world is lived in like

there's a history to everything here 100%

it doesn't like hit you on

the head with it necessarily.

I mean, there are lower dumps, right?

But like, yeah, a credit to I think

Jeremy Bao steam's localization.

This is absolutely one game he worked on

and there's a tonal difference between

this and later games in the series.

It just feels these are characters that

have existed prior to you coming into it

and then they're going to exist far after

you're done with your

experience with them.

That's always super cool.

Yeah, I think the literary turn of people

like these is organic, but

like that's exactly what it is.

Like you feel the history of everything

you see touch here immediately.

Yeah, absolutely.

And of course, we're

not even talking spoilers.

There's a lot of stuff to spoil and then

all the twists and turns

in the particular game.

Oh for sure.

There's tons of stuff for oh my god.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

We're just talking about we're just

talking we're just setting the table.

Like yeah, literally could you could just

keep going with this.

We could spend the entire seven-hour

podcast talking about the first act of

Metal Gear Solid 1 literally.

It was just the first

act which seven hours easy.

Easy.

That's that's like no joke.

Yeah, and you know, I mean it even

convinced me that oh, wow, there's like a

career in like voice

acting like people can do this.

Yeah, so like David Hader

and a bunch of other

people did their roles.

I got the chance to meet David Hader

about over the summer which was awesome.

I mean it really was a formative

experience for sure.

Yeah, so that's awesome man.

And it's always cool when we write

something off and then something comes

back goes wait a minute.

Hold on.

Hello.

There's more to this.

Trust me.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I imagine in your world because

of how much you love this game and how

much it's meant to you.

Yep.

You probably have this problem that a lot

of people do which is you play more games

looking for the same feeling and

experience and you don't often get it and

it can be disappointing for a while

chasing the dragon or in this case, maybe

chasing the Rex is yeah

chasing the Rex chasing the Rex.

Yeah.

Yeah, so show so show.

Yeah.

Well, that's a good one.

I mean, that's that's that's it and the

entire Metal Gear series could have

filled up someone's top nine.

I'm sure easily.

I wouldn't even wouldn't even bat an eye.

I wouldn't even bat an eye

wouldn't even bat an eye.

Yeah, it's like why not?

Okay.

Well with that.

We're gonna alternate between our top

games your top games but are the nine

games that shaped us right?

Like you said you can see there is a

Metal Gear game in my in my top nine or

my my nine games that shaped me.

Ekaruga flashback Street Fighter 2 a

little indie game called Street Fighter 2

not sure you've ever heard of it.

Shout out the Colossus Prince Bird Sandal

Time the Bard's Tale Metal Gear Solid 2

Link's Awakening

and Doom.

So I guess I'll alternate here and talk

about talk about my guy here and we'll

focus on the first one Ekaruga.

Yeah, it's so funny.

I look at your list and it could almost

easily be my list as well.

Oh, that's hilarious.

That is hilarious.

Yeah, so this is what the

year 2002 2003 early 2000s.

Yep, I'm kind of sort of I've already

played Metal Gear Solid like you right.

I've been like man games are awesome

games can just be like kind of anything.

This is truly incredible.

But I'm in the stage of

like looking for high form art.

I'm looking for like complete like

30-hour games that tell a compelling

story and oh, yes, the artiste did use

that and I'm bought into this narrative

that oh as games keep progressing certain

genres are just dead now.

So space shooters are dead.

You don't play space shooters anymore.

That's that's an antiquated age.

Yeah, and I'm at the game store and I see

this cover of this game.

That's got black and white with some some

very sketchy art and

says the word Ekaruga.

I couldn't even pronounce it like what

the hell is this and it had like this

accolade on it like a really great game.

I flip it over.

I don't understand the

screenshots that I'm looking at

and what makes me settle on

getting it is back in the day.

They don't do this anymore.

Remember the webcomic Penny arcade?

I do.

They used to do game

reviews back in the day.

And one of the game reviews I did was for

the Dreamcast version of this game called

Ekaruga and they gave a glowing praise

like it was like amazing and incredible

and I'm looking at this thing.

I'm like it says on there that you'll get

a kick out of this anime style cutscenes,

which is a total lie.

It's not in the game, but I'm like, okay.

It was like 40 or 50.

I forget how much it was

a kind of expensive game.

I'm like, I'll pick it up.

I'll grab it.

Yeah, you boot the game up.

It's very simple.

There's no intro.

There's no cinematic.

Nothing just title screen.

Here you go.

Get some really cool music one time.

I don't know what I'm doing.

So I just push the button that gives you

a small tutorial and I start the start

the game start whatever and I'm dying

like left and right.

Like I don't make it very far.

I'm just getting my ass killed.

I don't even make it

past the first level.

I don't think a couple times.

This is a game where you are a space

shooter and you don't have any power-ups.

Nothing.

All you can do is switch

polarity between black and white.

That's it.

That's right.

And so you absorb bullets and then those

bullets become your bombs

later if you want to use them.

And so trying to rewire my brain to like

learn about that was kind of interesting.

But I remember like you start the game

and you have like maybe

like one or two continues.

You know, I'm like, how

do you ever beat this game?

Like I just keep dying.

I lose all my lives and I'm

dead and I'm dead and I'm dead.

And after an hour passes it says, oh,

you've unlocked another continue.

And I keep playing.

Oh, you've locked another continue.

And you've locked it unlocked and you

keep the more time you

add to the game counter.

You unlock more and

more and more continues.

I forget.

I think it caps out like 20.

It's something like that.

Yeah.

So I finally unlock enough continues to

beat the first level and then it goes to

the next one and then I'm

starting to get really hooked.

I'm like, oh wow, like there's a way to

like beat there's a way to one CC this I

didn't know one CC meant

I was like, what's one CC?

Like you beat the whole game

without how do you do that?

I don't understand how you do that.

But I'm amazed by the visuals.

I'm amazed by the music.

It's perfectly syncopated

with the action in this game.

Wonderful.

Wonderful music.

And I didn't know this until later.

The game director is

also the game composer.

Oh, I didn't know that either.

In my mind.

Oh, that's crazy.

And it's only got five

levels, but each level is unique.

It doesn't waste your time.

It goes right into what it's trying to

convey to you and I'll even argue it has

a kind of an

interesting story at the very end.

Yeah.

What your character does and what your

spaceship does and it kind of kind of

ends on a down note

somewhat kind of yeah.

Yeah, but before I know it kid, I'm

logging like 40 hours in this game.

I've unlocked free play

mode, but I don't care anymore.

And I'm just trying to

like get good at this game.

And when you beat a level beat a game, it

gives you a code you

can go into a website.

You could pop in your top score.

Yeah, and at one point this probably

isn't super impressive.

But at one point I'm like I'm in like the

top 20 for like level one like being able

to I'm almost up there and there's a

bunch of entries here and then I joined

like an IRC chat just doing nothing but

talking about ekuruga, right?

And this game made me realize that I mean

if we're watching we have a let's play

kind of in the background right now.

The let's play is 25 minutes long.

That's how long the game is from

beginning to end if you play

it perfectly and don't die.

Yes without dying, right, right, right,

but I can get just as much

time and value into something.

That's only 25 minutes long.

In fact, I might get more value out of it

versus a 30 to 40 hour

fifth, you know campaign which

is crazy to say today.

It is absolutely

insane that that's the case.

Yeah, and I love this game and I know

some shoot them up fans deride this game

now because I think it's overrated but I

would argue that it's because of this

game shmups came back and now they're I

would I would argue the same thing.

There are there are venerable niche genre

now that I still play all the time.

I love them.

Yes, and treasure is one of my favorite

game developers of all time.

Like they don't miss in my opinion.

They made Gunstar

Heroes, you know, right?

Gunstar Heroes love it.

Love guns are you reading Silvergun?

They've done Guardian Heroes.

They've done a ton of

stuff sin and punishment.

Such good stuff.

Another classic.

Yeah.

So a game that completely came out of

nowhere surprised the heck out of me.

Yep.

Made me second-guess my understanding of

video games and what they could possibly

do and made me realize that I can spend

as much time on a game if I like it

enough and it can give me

as much value if not more.

Then whatever, you know, you go to the

game website and says, oh, this gives you

40 hours of replay value.

I don't know what that means anymore.

I have no idea.

All I know is do I like it enough?

I want to keep playing it.

Your story, it's interesting because as

you're you pretty much hit

the nail on the head with that.

This game teaches you how to value your

time in a way that it this is one of the

most poignant video games.

I think it's ever been made.

Yeah.

It's not it doesn't shy.

It's not about what it is.

It doesn't try to be something.

It's not

and it teaches you value in every second

every minute of the game.

You see the value and I like you took a

chance on this too, right?

This wasn't something you were

necessarily excited to play.

I was not I was like

looking for something.

I had some disposable cash.

I'm at the store and like

this has a weird cover to it.

Yeah, okay.

That's all that's all I knew that's and

then that's if you took

a chance and my God like

it's funny how the game

just found you in a way it did.

Think about it, right?

Yeah, it did.

I even I got so obsessed with this game.

I got my CRT and I

flipped it on its side.

So I can play it in critical mode.

Yeah, I got so obsessed with this game.

That's amazing.

That's

and then wow and the to

kind of end things off.

I will say to people all the time if

people put a gun in my head, what do you

think is the quote

unquote perfect video game?

I'm like, well, it's kind of a construct.

But if you really want me to like give

you a quick answer, I think he was very

close to being a very

perfect video game for what it is.

I would have to agree.

I did for what it is.

I think it's a perfect game

and I had a buddy of mine asked me this

and he's like, oh, okay.

Can I try it out?

I'm like sure we can try it.

Not sure you're gonna love it.

We can try it.

Yeah, and I gave him free play.

He just he played it.

He went through it in 25 minutes.

You died bajillions of times and he's

like, yeah, I don't

know what that was about.

Okay, like he did not affect him at all

in the same way that affected me.

Yeah, that's probably because of the free

play because I had to just keep grinding

and grinding and grinding like there.

Yeah, you know, okay, wait, there's a

lyric from a song that I love so much and

the lyric is basically it just it

basically sums up what you

just kind of illustrated.

What is success without persistence?

Right?

Yeah,

and that's kind of

what we're seeing here.

It's like if you play this on free play

and not that you can't have a good time,

but are you getting the full breadth of

what the journey has to offer?

Yeah,

that's the thing here.

This conversation, none of us put any

kind of Dark Souls game on here, but a

lot of time that's a conversation that

comes up which is should Miyazaki change

or dumb down the experience to make the

game more accessible and I'm of the

opinion that this is just my opinion.

Of course.

I want to choose my words very carefully.

I never want to get anyone from

experiencing anything.

I want everyone to enjoy everything.

However, I think in that same vein, I

don't think it's reasonable for all

artists creatives to make their thing

bestowed to all people meaning if I want

to make this thing that's important to me

a certain kind of person is going to love

it and a lot of people

won't and that's perfectly fine.

I think there should be more things made

for different kinds of players different

kinds of people different kinds of

preferences that does not mean this thing

that a lot of people like should be

changed to cater to that audience with

within reason, you know accessibility,

you know stuff like colorblind is like

that's different, but I'm like that's

that's different when it comes to raw

like the Dark Souls games are about

difficulty in Ikaruga.

This is all about difficulty

and like persevering I die.

I lose I get a game over.

I don't get any RPG points.

I don't get any experience.

What did I learn from that?

How can I get better and that's a certain

experience in and of itself.

Absolutely and that's that's that's

that's part of the

magic on the game for sure.

It teaches you that teaches you that I

agree with I think that we can have

diversity in our games and we can have

games that fit multiple different types

of you know gamers, you know regardless

of what they're looking for and I think

it's also helpful to play things that

don't agree with you.

Yes, you know because it helps you help

shape your understanding of what what not

only what you are what

you potentially could be.

Yeah, absolutely.

So yeah, I mean no, I agree

with and I I also I agree.

I think this is for what it is.

I think it's it's one of the most

complete poignant perfect

games that are being made.

Yeah, because I mean you might think oh,

there's only five levels.

They could have added more

levels now if you play it.

They use up all of their ideas in those

five levels and that's that yeah,

yeah, it doesn't waste.

It doesn't waste anything and it doesn't

it doesn't shove more than

what's needed in your face.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's a

killer killer entry.

My guy is a good one.

It's a good one.

Absolute killer entry now.

We got alternate.

Yeah, number number two for you or I

don't think it's in any list, but I mean

the second entry here.

I have is Shenmue.

Yeah, no, it actually

it is an order for me.

Okay.

I don't think I did mine in order.

So you're better than.

So I'm going to run into the it's Metal

Gear part 2 essentially here.

It's funny because Shenmue was it wasn't

that much longer after Metal Gear.

I think it was like maybe a year and a

half maybe two years.

It was it was it was close.

I think it was Metal Gear was like 98 and

then I think Chevy was 2000.

I want to say maybe 99 in

Japan than the US release.

God, where do I even

begin with this game?

Metal Gear had started the foundation of

expanding my understanding

of what the medium could be.

Yeah, and Shenmue took that baton in the

relay race and just kept running.

In a few very specific ways.

Metal Gear was more general.

Yeah, this game.

So martial arts is a

big part of my background.

I did martial arts for

many many many years.

And fighting games though, they've been a

big part of my life as well.

Fighting games.

Yeah.

This this game this game took

the concept of a martial arts.

Epic and package it in a video game.

Okay, and then and then and then put it

in a world and blew that world up.

Yeah.

Shenmue to me is

it's it's

you know, we talked about how you know,

the how a game can be organic, right?

How it can like feel lived in

and usually it's characters.

You're talking about

this game is the world.

The world is the character.

Yes game.

The world is alive.

The world is organic.

The world is breathing and everybody is

just living in that world.

Whereas I would say in Metal Gear, you're

you're deriving the world from the

characters and I would say in this game.

It's almost the opposite.

You're deriving the

characters from the world.

Everybody has their place in the world.

It's almost very Eastern philosophy in

respect and that's another thing this

game kind of showed me it started my

journey into Japan if you will into into

the Eastern philosophy into, you know,

not only Japanese culture, but also just

like I would say Buddhism.

I would say just basically,

you know, I'm a dumb American.

I've never really

experienced another culture.

Right.

There you go.

Up to that point never even really knew

anybody from another you know, you know

other than like, you know, Americans, you

know, second-gen Americans third-gen

Americans, but like this was me.

This was me able to

experience a different culture.

And it was able it was a I was able to

put myself in that culture.

And truly live his life.

And I supply him in that world.

Yeah, and so and on top of that, it's

it's a martial arts epic.

So it just it it took what Metal Gear did

blew it up expanded it and then gave me

my appreciation for the Eastern

philosophies and for martial arts as a

whole and also I would

also say this game right here.

It's almost in very much a sense a

single-player fighting game.

Yeah, I mean it started off as a virtual

fighter RPG, which I

found out way later on.

I didn't even know that sure.

Yeah, and so it makes

perfect sense when you play it.

It's like if I were to try to craft the

perfect, you know, this is a weird thing

is a single-player fighting game.

But if I were to try to

craft it, it would be this game.

This is what you get

when you try to do that.

If you try to encapsulate a fighting game

experience into an

open-world narrative is what you get.

That's a really good and call out because

when I think about

fighting games, I love them.

You love them.

Yeah, one of the challenges of trying to

make them compelling is that the

single-player space, I think is we focus

so much in the fighting, but I think

what's important about fighting games is

location and place too.

And that's one of the things I think like

Street Fighter gets pretty well, like you

get the sensor going places around the

world like any travel is that yes, I want

to give props or props is due the Fatal

Fury series takes place in South Town.

So you get a sense of

what South Town is all about.

So yeah, I mean, that's right.

I think Shenmue getting

that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it gets in a big bad way.

And

again, like Metal Gear, it's very much

foundational to who I am.

It's such a it's such

a it's a simple story.

It's a very simple story, but the story

is is second fiddle to the world.

Yeah, I talked about the world being the

character and everybody's living in it.

The world is what you're there for the

and you're just living in it.

Yeah, it's Metal Gear is

a game where you go in.

Oh my gosh, the terrorists

are taking over Shadow Moses.

You're two objectives.

Save the DARPA chief saved the arms tech

president and then what happens next

twists and turns bound.

This is like very simple slice of life

and to find out more you have to interact

with the world and as you keep

interacting more kernels keep coming

through and your curiosity gets kind of

picked up from there.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And so funny because like on paper,

Shenmue sounds kind of boring.

It does like on paper

like you write it down.

This is kind of

what and you know what you know what this

is not even a hot thing.

Hot take to say it is kind of boring.

Okay, but that's also part of the point.

Yeah.

Video games don't have to be explosive.

They don't have to be they don't they can

just literally be yeah, you're just in it

and that and also that's real life to

real life is sometimes very boring.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

And if you're trying to capture that you

can't shy away from it sometimes

you just can't.

So in your cannon of like understanding

games can be more than just toys.

Yeah.

If Metal Gear is like oh my gosh, I know

games could do this.

I didn't know his legs.

Hey, it can be representative of life and

that can still be absolutely interesting.

Wow, 100% 100% man.

That's cool.

I need I needed Metal Gear to come first

and this to come second.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, respect.

Yeah, I'll be honest.

I've only ever I've gone to people's

houses and played a

little bit of Shenmue.

I'm aware of Shenmue.

Shenmue is a kind of a blind spot for me.

Yeah, I'm aware.

I'm aware of

it being at the time the most expensive

video game to be made.

No, that's that's right.

Yes.

I'm aware of that.

I'm aware that some

people don't like Shenmue 2.

I don't know why but people have said

that and I also know that there's a

Shenmue 3 that came out what

10 years ago now or is there?

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

and I do have a lot more experience in

the Yakuza series, which I think there's

a lot of commonality there.

Absolutely.

I love I love a huge Yakuza fan.

Yeah.

And then of course, we're both fans of

Virtua Fighter and there's

of course, there's VF in here.

Well, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Love it and I love it when the Dreamcast

seems to be a progenitor of a lot of

innovative things that never get 100%

capitalized but then other game

developers steal stuff that is correct.

You see that is

stolen stuff from Shenmue.

You've seen 100% you've seen it.

You've seen it.

Absolutely.

Yeah, the Dreamcast.

I mean, it's probably my favorite video

game console of all time.

Wow.

And it came out at a time.

It was ahead of its it was

ahead of the competition.

It was early and it was

very much an ideal console.

Like you just said it started these big

ideas and then other other games took

took those ideas and sometimes improved

upon it sometimes not so much.

Yeah, but it's definitely where the idea

starts and then other people flush it

out, you know, for better for worse.

Sure.

And yeah, no, it's it's

the library is emblematic

of really really good ideas.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's probably the

best way to describe Dreamcast.

Good stuff.

Yeah, maybe we'll have

to do a let's play of it.

Did I be down?

I'm down.

It'll take 15 years,

but it'll take forever.

It'll take forever.

Yeah, but that's also

the point of Shenmue.

Sure.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Moving on along then back to my list for

the second game in your list

flashback quest for identity.

Is this the game you weren't familiar

you'd ever heard of the game?

I've never heard of.

All right.

So let's talk about history of flashback

before we talk about

my experience with it.

flashback is in a genre of video game

called cinematic platformer.

So cinematic platformers at this time in

the early 90s are predominantly games

that use rotoscoping world.

That was the first game that came on my

mind when you said that word.

That's first game came on mine

and out of this world.

Another world's great.

It's an amazing game.

But again, like Ekaruga beyond all the

trial and error a full playthrough.

This game's like five minutes.

Yeah, and that's more about the

technology like it took them so long to

animate each frame and do all of this the

way it does and it's beautiful.

It's wonderful, but it's

done in about five minutes.

Nothing against it.

Just that's the way the game is.

And then I'm forgetting.

I think the way it works is Delphine

software published one of the ports of

out of this world and then from that

understanding made their game called

flashback and flashback is very much like

out of this world or another world.

The difference being is that a full

playthrough is like two

and a half hours long.

So it's like it's a big massive game

compared to another world and it's all

rotoscoped and it follows this story of

this character named Conrad

who you literally start the game and

you're running away from people trying to

kill you and I'll show the intro in just

a moment and then you wake up and you

don't remember anything.

You have no memory.

You don't know why they're trying to kill

you don't know where you are, but you

open up this little cube.

That's a hologram of you

from the past telling you.

Hey, you don't know what's going on and

there's a reason for that.

But trust me, just do this thing and keep

going and you're going along this

narrative and you have no idea where

things are leading but the past you did

but you're just trusting that past you

and it's so it dives into

like unreliable narration.

It dives into cinematic platforming.

You have a you have a firearm in the game

and it's a very it's a pretty long

experience for what it is.

I'll pop it up here.

Man, I want to play this Wow.

Fast for identity.

And we're going to do

the Mega Drive version.

There we go.

Yeah,

so I mean that you're looking at the

cinematic there you've been running

around and I'm going to shoot you down.

There's that

animation here in the forest.

Bam, you get shot the enemy.

I guess stops looking for you.

There's the smoke trail.

And then you get the title screen and

you're like what what's going on?

Wow.

And this is 1992 93

really cool pixel art.

It was actually made for the Sega Genesis

and then it was backported to like other

computer programs like Amiga and Super

Nintendo whatever so it was a Sega

Genesis game and it came with a Marvel

comic book to kind of illustrate the

backstory of your character prior to

and so there you are.

There's Conrad.

He's waking up and

this is all rotoscoped.

And you wake up your cube.

You don't know what it is falls and now

you have to find your cube and so the

game thing goes from there you go.

You go across all different kinds of

places you travel different and again,

you have kind of a downtrodden ending.

But it's a cool ending.

So now he's going to

pick up the hollow cube and

again all rotoscoped

animation click the button.

There you go.

Dude that rotoscope has aged very well.

It really has.

My gosh.

And so you get on this pliggle intrigue

of figuring out that you've gone from

being an insomnia and amnesiac to

understanding oh wait, there's a little

bit more to your story and oh wow, you

are involved in a big

conspiracy of sorts and what

spoiler for a big long game.

Part of the trying to save the day is you

knowing you're part of this conspiracy

literally wiped your brain on purpose.

But you gave yourself instructions of

what to do so that way you wouldn't have

too much information along the way.

It's amazing because you as the player

don't know what's going on.

Very very big meta narrative there.

That's a lot for 1992.

Isn't it?

Yeah.

Wow.

It's kind of wild kind of crazy.

That's nuts.

Yeah, it's a cinematic platformer in the

vein of like Prince of

Persian out of this world.

You can run you can jump your all your

animations are super lifelike.

I remember playing this game.

I played this game before I played

ekuruga, but this is back in the Jenny

days and this was the game that made me

go wait games aren't

made for kids all the time.

Yeah, this was like what?

It's a reoccurring theme.

I swear

and so I play this game in 92 right and I

had this I've literally had this idea.

I'm like, oh man if games ever become 3d,

wouldn't it be cool to like see your

character from a

third-person perspective?

In 3d like that's the

thought I have as a kid.

Yeah, not knowing where we are now.

Like that's the common we

call them booty shooters now.

Right right right.

Yeah, there's his big

giant leapfrog there.

Oh, yeah, and you can die

from falling from too far.

If you if your jump is

too high you will die.

You'll just okay.

Yeah, just pretty cool.

Yeah, really cool soundtrack cool

animations fun fact.

They actually made this game for the Sega

CD later and like CD platforms and the

animations are crap because they actually

use 3d garbage nonsense for the

animations instead of

the rotoscope pixel art.

That you're seeing right now.

Yeah,

sometimes sometimes that happens.

Yeah, better technology is not always

what's best for the game.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So I would say this is a game that you go

to you you went this dating me now

Blockbuster number good.

Oh Blockbuster.

Oh, yeah, you go there you see it and all

the cover just says CD quality graphics.

It's all it said I'm like, oh

that sounds pretty impressive.

So I picked it up not

knowing where it's going.

I'm like, holy crap.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's become

one of my favorites.

Like I said, it's like like a two-hour

maybe two and a half hour

long game, which is short.

But again, it was long for

its standards and its time

for what it is.

I mean that I think

that's a great length.

Yeah, so what it is this game is kind of

doing Metal Gear to you a little bit.

Yeah,

it's taking you out of the

toy mode for lack of a better.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah,

and I recommend people play it.

Here's the sad part.

This game has gotten a bunch of sequels

that aren't very good

by different developers.

Also, that's also on point.

I would argue if you play the game,

it doesn't need a sequel.

So the sequels are all kind of pointless.

Yeah, it's gotten like two remakes and

remasters that aren't very good.

There's one remaster that came out on 360

that instead of being a cinematic

platformer, you use the right stick to

aim your laser sight

like like Leon Kennedy.

Of course, of course.

I'm not going to show that footage, but

that is a game that exists.

The Resident Evil for

the industry that game.

Oh boy.

Okay, and then

the company that made the last port of

this game, you can buy it

on like switch PC Steam.

It's everywhere.

It's

I don't remember the company's name.

I should look into it, but they were

slated to be the ones who worked on the

Sega Genesis Mini for Sega.

So the mini console

that Sega was selling.

Right.

They are the ones that were going to be

working on that for them, but the outrage

of their quote unquote success in the

flash back port they

made apparently was so poor.

It was so bad.

Wow.

That Sega pulled the contract from them

and they gave it to different companies.

They gave it to M2.

M2 did it.

Wow.

Which is a good call because M2 is great.

Yeah, M2 is great.

Yeah.

So this is a game that probably has a

tarnished reputation for

reasons that are not its fault.

But if you get a chance to play it on the

Sega Genesis or play like the Amiga

original on PC back or the DOS version, I

think it's a good time.

It's a good game.

Good soundtrack, good vibes.

Animation is gorgeous and really took you

took you out of like toy video game

landed into this world.

Has Blade Runner vibes towards the end.

Definitely.

I see it right now.

Yeah.

And again, as you keep unveiling you

figure out that your character Conrad

plays a very large role in this

conspiracy that's happening.

But again, you never

really get your memories back.

You just get a hologram kind of

explaining things to you.

So yeah, that's cool.

That's got like meta commentary to it.

Yeah, there's a lot you

can say about that for sure.

Oh, yeah.

And like I said, I don't

think this is the best game ever.

I just think it's a game that when it

came out, it was like, whoa.

I mean, I've never heard of it, but just

the fact that that contract could get

cancelled because of the poor reception.

Yeah, tells you in the bigger pictures, I

guys that this game is, you

know, it is that impactful.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Interesting.

It's often seen as a sequel or made by

the same people who did

another world out of this world.

Yeah.

It's not I could see that for sure.

I would have thought the same thing.

If I didn't know anything, no context and

just saw this, I would

have thought the same thing.

Yeah.

Also fun fact in the Sega Genesis

version, this character has a white shirt

like we're seeing right

now in all other versions.

He has a red shirt.

Don't know why just that's the way it is.

Yeah.

All right.

I guess I guess like minimum color

palette, you know Sega only has so many

colors you can play

with that kind of thing.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah.

Wow.

So not exactly the most exciting thing on

my list, but I had to put it on there.

I think it's

no, no, I mean, listen, I, you know,

Shemew is not my not

very exciting at all.

And I think again, if the game touched

you in a formative way,

like you have to put it right.

Yeah, no choice.

You have to.

Absolutely.

It is what it is.

That's the game that got

you to where you are now.

Yeah, I can't deny it

as much as I want to.

I can't as much as I want to.

I mean, it's a good time.

It's a good game.

Yeah, for sure.

For sure.

But now going to

the third game on your list sub Nautica.

This is a game.

I do disclosure.

We've got to be honest

to our audience members.

I cannot play this game by us because you

bought this game for me as a gift.

Oh, that's right.

I did.

You did.

I forgot about that.

So I can't, you know, my

opinion is clouded, but

yeah, that's fair.

I have a secret, not so secret goal.

Is in its to get every human being

addicted to this game.

So like it's very easy for me to get me

to buy this for you.

But

my God sub Nautica.

This is definitely the

newest game on my list.

I first played it.

I want to say maybe

three years ago.

Okay, three or four

years, three or four years ago.

So it's definitely the news game.

I've since played it probably over a

hundred times at this time.

Wow.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah, probably not like completed, but

probably started up

played it shorted into it.

Probably probably and like started the

session probably about a hundred times.

Okay, I finished it.

I think I finished it

probably about 15, 20 times.

Wow.

I already put a number to it.

Yeah.

Subnautica is really funny

in that when I was younger,

the generation above me, you know, they

were big on the NES.

Final Fantasy 6 is their

favorite Final Fantasy.

They love Legend of

Zelda on the NES, right?

Yeah.

They always said to me that the problem

with video games is that they hold your

hand and they don't let you be your own

person and discover your own way.

Right.

And that was always their criticism of

modern gaming at the time.

Today too, you probably say the same

thing, but that was always their

reoccurring criticism

of the modern games.

And I didn't understand

that until I played this game.

Hmm.

This game,

it breaks free of what traditional video

game conventions are.

This game does something that a lot of

older games did where they

drop you into a situation.

Yeah.

And they say here's some tools.

Here's some resources and

here's not a lot of information.

Survive.

Yep.

And if you think about it, that's a lot

of video games before

certain point in time.

A lot of video games did that where they

don't equip you with a whole whole lot,

at least by today's standards.

It's like you have a

game control in hand.

Just mash some buttons and figure out

what works and just go

figure exactly exactly.

But because this is a survival game

predominantly, you have to be very

careful about that

because resources are low.

Yeah, exactly.

It is survival is the name of the game

and they do press that button.

They do let you know that but they also

say, hey, there are no real rules here.

Okay.

The only rule is survival and maybe

figuring out what happened

to you and why you're here.

And that's like that's that's really your

second order of business.

Your first order business is survival

because you are a

human on the alien planet.

And what do humans need?

We need food.

We need water.

We need, you know, habitation.

Yeah.

We need direction.

So that's your first

order of business for you.

You can really do anything else.

That's what you have to think about.

Right.

Number part two is like,

okay, well, how did we get here?

Okay, my ship my ship

crashed on this planet and like

what what should be the goal?

What's the goal now?

Are there other people?

What should we be doing and you have a

PDA which gives you some information

doesn't it does give you a lot of

information but it doesn't

give you enough information.

Right.

Which is I think very important because

this is a game about carving your own

path and this game because of that no two

people have the same

experience playing this game.

Gotcha.

You're never going to see

two people who have the same

road map from start to

finish for this game.

Yeah, because you can do everything in

whatever order you want pretty much.

It is almost that free.

I've seen playthroughs that I'm like, I

didn't even think I didn't even think

about that and I didn't

even know that was possible.

Yeah, it really is a drop-in and almost

craft your own experience.

It's craft a no pun intended because

you're crafting this game non-stop, but

but this is a this is a build craft

create your own experience emergent to

use that popular word

gameplay experience.

That's what this is.

Emergent gameplay.

And you you do the best you can and you

figure it out along the way and

you

you learn how to be the

best version of yourself.

Gotcha.

In this game.

Yeah, that's what the game is.

Oh man.

This is the most this is the most free

I've ever felt in a video game most free.

I can say yeah, the most free the most

freedom the most creatively open-ended

experience I've ever had in a video game.

I've never been off the rails

more than in this video game.

Okay, this one right here.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah, I've played it

enough to get to a place.

I know you're not talking about it, but

like there's a place where the narrative

starts changing and you go.

Oh, oh, you start discovering more about

the world and it takes a little bit of a

turn like oh, that's what I'm like.

Oh, this is really cool.

This is neat.

Yeah, and then I was like,

I need to take a look at it.

Take a break and when I have more time to

really just literally dive in.

Yeah, dive in.

I'm gonna do that.

But it was interesting.

My question for you is this I've never

thought of you as someone who's like a

catch them all person like a sure like a

collective on and this has a lot of

collectathon ishness to it.

How did you navigate that?

Here's the thing.

I don't like collective thoughts.

Yeah, I don't need it.

The difference is that everything you

collect in this game has

a purpose has a purpose.

Yeah, it's not collecting

for the sake of collecting.

You are collecting a lot, but you're

collecting for an ultimate goal.

Sure.

The prop the problem I have with almost

every modern sandbox survival game that

exists is that they're almost games

created for the sake of sandbox survival.

Okay, this game is not that this game has

a story has a narrative has an almost

like its own like sense of existence.

Yeah, and the survival

sandbox is a means to that end.

Gotcha.

It's not not the reason for the game.

It's not the goal of the game.

The goal of this game is not to craft and

build and you know, collect.

That's not the goal.

That is a that is a means to an end and

ultimate ultimately it's survival.

You do it to survive and to solve the

mystery of what happened.

Yeah, okay.

That's what's different about this game

between every other and I trust me.

I went out of a crazy one year.

I went nuts and just played every single

3d sandbox survival that game that

including no man's guy

including no man's guy.

I played I think I've played them all and

and there's some very good ones.

Don't get me wrong, but a lot of them

exists for the sake of

doing that sandbox loop.

This game doesn't yeah all everything you

do in this game is a means to an end.

Yeah, I can definitely see that for sure.

For sure.

Yeah, it's a gorgeous game.

I've been playing on my ultra wide set up

and it's just gorgeous that way.

That's that's great.

I might pick it up on switch to just to

have it like in my portable and just be

able to get my headphones in and just

really get lost in it.

I've heard the switch to

version is pretty good.

Yeah.

And I you told me like playing this on

keyboard and mouse or is this no I

I played it.

I played it on ps4, but I've mostly

played on keyboard and mouse.

I think that's the best.

You think that's the best way.

Okay.

Yeah, just because of the way the key

bindings work and the items the way

you're moving items between inventory and

boxes that makes like that at the

keyboard mouse makes

it makes the most sense.

I mean, no shocker was

designed for keyboard and mouse.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I like I

really liked what I've

played of this game visually.

It's gorgeous.

I like that, you know, we need more games

that take place in the ocean because we

have this whole fascination with space

and look I got nothing against space, but

like there's so much about the ocean.

We don't know about like there's a whole

other world in that ocean.

What's the joke?

They say it's the it's

truly the last frontier.

It is the last frontier.

Yeah, it is the last frontier.

Let me say this because

you brought the ocean.

Let me say something

else about this game.

I have a I have a this is going to this

is going to sound funny given

that this game is on my list.

I have a terrible fear of deep water.

Interesting.

It's called a foul Sesaphobia, right?

Okay, sure.

Actual name.

It's fear open water.

I have that in a very bad way and this

game triggers me and so you might think

to yourself why the hell would I want to

play this game when that triggers me?

But the thing is I am fascinated.

Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but I am

fascinated by what scares me.

Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't turn me off.

It turns me on.

I want to know more about why I'm scared.

And I almost like

you're playing in a safe.

I'm safe.

Yeah, I don't feel safe.

Don't be honest.

Sure.

Yeah, this when I'm in that situation my

brain, I'm freaking out but my

fascination overrides my fear.

Like the fear is high.

The fear is is extremely high.

Yeah, my fascination is

just a little bit higher.

Yeah.

And so I would rather appease that than

the fear than just turn it off.

Another fun fact about this game.

You get an achievement for jumping into

the water for the first time.

I think something only like 60% of

players have that achievement which means

yeah, which means there's a lot of people

that are putting up this game looking

around and seeing the big open ocean and

being like no, no turning it off.

Wow.

Yeah,

which is really funny.

That's hilarious.

Yeah, that's a crazy stat.

Yeah, I could be wrong with those

numbers, but it's something like that.

It's like not everybody is jumping in the

water who buys this game is the point.

So Kit part of your

your fear that you have.

Have you ever been in the water or is it

just you've seen it and you just don't

want to approach it?

I grew up in South Florida.

Yeah, and I spent most of my

life in the Atlantic Ocean.

Oh, so did something happen?

No, nothing happened.

You just do I used to I used to swim out

so far that I couldn't

see the shore anymore

and I used to do I guess the technical

term is free diving.

I did a lot of free diving and and it as

a child, it didn't bother me at all.

I had no fear of the ocean.

It wasn't until I became an

adult that I got that fear.

Interesting.

Which is bizarre.

I had no traumatic

experience in the ocean.

Absolutely nothing.

But for some reason one day I woke up and

like my memories of the ocean terrify me.

Wow.

Right.

That's great because I remember most of

my time in the ocean.

It's like I was not afraid back then but

now now I'm terrified of it and I don't

know how you can acquire a fear like that

later in life, but you certainly can.

Yeah, that's gonna say, you know, I've

been in the ocean a lot.

I've done a lot of diving.

The one thing that you can't the game

can't give you that I think is hard for

me is the deeper you go down the more

pressure you feel like you are correct.

You're feeling the water on

your skull and everything.

And so like yes, I actually I can only go

maybe 20 feet down before

like my head hurts so much.

I have to go back up and in this game,

you just keep going going until you run

out of resources

light all the other stuff.

So correct, correct,

correct.

Yeah, but you do get a sense of that

pressure when you're in your vehicles

because you have a depth.

You have a depth threshold.

Yes, right.

So you do get a sense that

but no, you're absolutely right.

Like this game is not

gonna do that for you.

Although I will say in VR.

This game is absolutely incredible.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's that

oculus rift or what so you

have to mod it oculus rift.

Yeah, you can do but you generally want

to mod the hell out of it.

Okay.

Well, because I have a psvr to

psvr to

I don't feel like I think is

ideal for this interesting.

Okay.

Yeah, I think most people go oculus for

this, but it's been a while.

I know it's been updated to hell.

I could be off base with that.

But yeah, the VR experience, you know,

once you mod it is pretty cool.

Cool.

All right.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, I mean one of the cool things

about this is like

I've only put maybe maybe

maybe seven or six hours into the game

and I think I'm still scratching the

surface of what I've got.

Oh, absolutely.

And I got to be honest, like I'm getting

senses that there's more to this story in

subnautic that you get glimmers of it and

that gets me interested and then hearing

you talk about it makes me interested.

I'm like, okay, I'll give this I'll give

this game more of a shot.

I'll play more of it.

I think it's a very unassuming game.

It's so much bigger and

deeper than you think it is.

How many more points can we make?

We can just all day with

these all day, baby all day.

All day.

Okay.

All right.

Well, good stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, dude.

All right.

What's on my list?

Hmm, a little little indie game here.

Let's see.

This is a special game.

Yeah, this is just a little bit of a man.

Let me make sure I get the right footage

for talk about talk

about industry impact.

Oh Lord.

Wow.

Talk about cultural impact.

Yeah, Jesus.

Just a small little indie game.

No big deal.

I get the footage up.

Let's see.

I'm going to won't be the exact version

that's on the screen here, but

so my third game is a little indie game

by the name of Street

Fighter numero dulce.

Man, I'm gonna put some footage up here

of a Super Turbo

tournament while I talk about it.

Yeah.

So Street Fighter two.

I played it the first time in arcades

and I was like, this is a really cool

button mashy type of game.

This is neat.

You can mash some buttons.

It has something on the cabinet about

special moves and like I just figured you

just waggle the stick and special moves

might happen at the time.

The characters were massive.

It might not seem like it

now, but the sprites were huge

and I remember

picking good old Rambo guy.

That's what I call them.

Rambo guy with the red bandana.

That's what we call them.

And I thought it was pretty good at this

game because I could sweep and I could do

a uppercut and I mastered this game.

Yeah.

And of course, I

thought throws were cheap.

I thought throws were terrible.

What throws were cheap.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, they were cheap.

But then one time I'm in a diner and I

see they have a Street Fighter machine

and it looks different

than what I'm used to.

It's blue.

It's big.

It's massive.

And I decide I go to the coin op and

there's no one at the machine.

So I pop quarter and I'm

a young kid at this point.

It's got a couple quarters to my name.

I see the character select screen.

I see there's more characters there that

I'm used to but doesn't matter.

I'm going to pick Rambo

guy and I pick Rambo guy.

I pronounce his name

is Ryu back in the day.

I'm having fun.

I'm playing, you know, doing whatever and

then a posse of teenage kids come by.

All the posse and one person comes up

much taller than me.

He pops a quarter in.

He also picks Rambo guy, but his Rambo

guy has a blue bandana now.

I'm like, whoa, you can do that because I

was used to not being able

to pick the same character.

That's right.

Yeah, so I figure I'm going to play

two-player with this other kid.

I'm like the controls are like up here

and he's much taller than me.

Yep.

And he's doing special.

He's doing a fireball.

He's doing he's doing hurricane kicks.

He's doing soaring punches just on

command just dominating me.

I'm like wait about the greatest strategy

with sweep or uppercut and he's just like

destroying me and he's calm.

He's calculated just doing the moves.

It's kicking my butt.

And of course all the kids are laughing

at me because I'm just mashing buttons.

I don't know what I'm doing.

Yeah, and then I walk away

and I say to myself

I want to get good

enough to beat that guy.

Now the cool thing about this story is I

don't know his name.

Nope.

Never met him ever again.

He's probably got a wife and kids and

moved on with his life.

Probably forever in my head.

He will be better than me and I want to

get I want to beat him.

Yep.

And so that

that lesson taught me that fighting games

were something you there's a there's a

vast amount of skill

that I underestimated.

Yeah.

And then of course there's many different

versions of Street Fighter 2 and then it

wasn't until that had like a second

reckoning and like the 2000s from like

wait people are still playing these

fighting games like hyper competitively

like a global scale.

Holy crap and that changed everything.

Yeah, but yeah, I thought

Street Fighter was a cool game.

I thought had cool music cool characters,

but I thought was a button

masher up until that moment.

That's right.

And what they're and of course, I'm

bringing up champion edition at that

point like that's two player.

It's mirror matches.

You can play the boss characters now.

Is that the first version

where you do mirror matches?

Correct.

Yeah, okay.

Okay.

And then and then in my friends who had a

Super Nintendo they had turbo.

I didn't have a Super

Nintendo at the time.

So I go to their house and learn from

them, but then I get special champion

edition on the Sega

Genesis and played that version.

I loved Super Street Fighter 2 when it

came out, which I know some people didn't

like but I thought that was a great

version of the game and

well, I'm talking to the choir.

Our lives have completely changed as a

result of Street Fighter Street Fighter

is a big part of my life.

I love it.

Understatement of the year and it is the

fighting game that I play whenever I get

burnt out on fighting games and it always

brings my love back because that happens.

I play fighting games.

I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm

not into this anymore.

There's a lot of fighting games out there

right now and don't even

like this genre anymore.

I don't know.

I fucking hate this game.

This is genre.

Then I pop in Street Fighter 2 and like,

oh, yeah, this is what I love.

Yeah.

And it has been so funny to be a Street

Fighter 2 fan because

the game hasn't changed.

We're getting better all the time, but

the generations keep changing and now I

was at a meetup with some friends of mine

and it was me playing Street Fighter 2

and someone other guy and someone else

wanted to pop in and try it out says, yo,

why is this game so fast?

Yo, this is so hard.

Like, why are the inputs so hard?

And I'm like, oh, that's just the way

this game is and like yep.

And having that understanding of that and

realizing that as games keep progressing,

they're always going to be made easier

for the next generation because it's made

for the person that goes this game would

be cool if I could do XYZ thing and they

say, okay, let's try to get rid of that

obstacle every single time and every

single time they do that, they don't make

the game better or worse.

It's just different

and I grew up with this and this is what

I love and I could talk all

day about Street Fighter 2.

I'm literally holding myself back.

Dude, I can see it.

I can feel it and I share that with you.

I mean, I could talk about the

development history.

I could talk about all that stuff, but

it's pretty magical game.

It literally magical

changed fighting games forever.

If you love a fighting game today, it's

because of this game.

It's because of this without a doubt,

even if you're on the SMK side, even

you're on the Mortal Kombat side, even if

you're on the Virtual Fighter side, all

of them are have been

influenced by Street Fighter 2.

If you are playing a fighting game that

came out in the year 2026 and you love

it, you have to think

Street Fighter 2 for it.

Absolutely.

But

there's no way around it.

Yeah, but it's funny you brought the

comment about like gaming being feeling

like it's for kids and I think you've

said before unofficially that like you

thought Street Fighter

2 was like a kitty game

and your own with my next entry.

I'm going to be

talking about that for sure.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

It was funny though.

Like my understanding was yeah, it was a

button-mashing game at first.

Yeah, and then I found out

oh, there's more layers to it.

That's right.

The curtain kind of got unveiled.

Yeah, yeah, and that

was like my experience.

Oh, no, this is not

necessarily a kitty game.

It can be.

You want to mash buttons have fun time.

Like if you want to take it that next

level you will get destroyed.

That's right.

And that old Street Fighter 2 also taught

me again, I could talk all day about

this, but I'll just leave with this

fighting games have

multiple lives in them.

Yes, and you and I can

be playing the same game.

But for playing separately, our

experiences are totally different and

they're totally different video games.

Just totally fundamentally different

video games depending on their the crew

we're playing with depending

on how we're playing it, etc.

Yeah.

Oh my god.

That's well said.

They're personalized for

each person and experience.

Yeah, that's

that's God the true statement that could

be said about

fighting games is that yeah.

Oh my god, and I

would leave it with this.

If you don't like Street

Fighter 2, that's cool.

If you like Street

Fighter 2, that's cool.

I've not met a single person though who

play Street Fighter 2 and doesn't tell me

oh, I'm actually getting better other

fighting games because I'm

playing Street Fighter 2.

Yeah, because there's

such a bare-bones experience.

That's right.

You're forced to refine things like

zoning and spacing and tick throws and

mind games and

because that's all you have.

There's no other

defensive mechanic really.

I mean every game relies on foundation

and fundamentals and this

is the pinnacle of that.

So you sharpen those skills when you

reduce it down to that simplicity.

Yeah, so yeah, you yeah, it's it's it's

the perfect fighting game respectfully,

you know, it really is for with all its

flaws all its flaws.

Yeah, well, it's not a perfect game, but

it is a perfect package

for what it is.

And it has informed my opinion on

fighting games in the sense that when

games get overly defensive like they have

a myriad of defensive mechanics.

Yeah, yeah.

It makes the

characters feel less powerful.

Yes, you make the game focused on

aggression, which Street Fighter 2 is the

only defensive

mechanic you have is blocking.

That's right.

You force the characters to use their

offensive tools defensively and I've

always found that incredibly fascinating.

That is amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean

honestly, we could talk

about you there too all day long.

We could easily.

It's the game that you know, we won't.

Oh man, I saw this on your list and I was

like, oh my god, Jesus.

Well, let me ask you this.

There's of the five arcade

versions of Street Fighter 2.

You got World Warrior, Champion Edition,

Hyper Fighting, Super and Super Turbo.

Which one's your favorite?

Hyper Fighting.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good one.

That's a good feeling one.

It's the virtual

fighter of Street Fighter 2.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I can absolutely say it's so weird,

but something gets lost in translation

when you have the things come up on

screen and tell you whether you reversal

or not, whether you combo it or not.

Yeah, in Hyper Fighting.

You don't have any of that.

It's just if it

comboed, it means it worked.

That's all that matters.

It works dirty.

Yeah, that kind of thing.

The result is all that matters, not the

numbers on the screen.

Yeah, and I miss that

about fighting games.

I yeah, we could talk all day about how

much I think as exciting as super moves

are and they are cool and flashy.

Oh, I have a hot take.

That's like I think they've kind of

ruined fighting games in a way.

I you know what?

I thought you were crazy the first time I

heard you said I was like,

what is this guy smoking?

And now I am coming around to that idea.

Because I mean you're smoking the Virtua

Fighter pipe right now.

I'm a dude.

That's why I play.

That's a great time.

Hours six hours yesterday.

Wow.

Oh my God.

And there's no I'm no combo counter, no

reversal counter, no tech hit

counter, no super's nothing.

And I do think we've

lost something there.

Yeah, I have to agree.

I have to agree.

What a big game.

What a big boy game.

I'm sure we'll talk

about that some other time.

But oh, yeah, I'm sure

I'm sure but moving on.

What's number three on your list?

What's this little indie game?

What's this about?

Oh man, what's this?

So someone call it the red-headed

stepchild of the Street Fighter series or

at least they used to nowadays.

They don't really anymore.

Everybody acts like it's always been

great or always been seen as great but

it's only recently that it's getting kind

of the respect it deserves.

Yeah,

but

you know in the same way and I you know,

I'd mention this when you're when we're

doing Street Fighter 2 just now the same

way that Metal Gear showed me that this

is not just for kids.

They're strike did that

for fighting games for me.

I looked at Street Fighter 2 in a similar

way that I looked at

Mario Brothers at the time.

Okay, I saw the sprites.

I saw the graphics and I

saw something childish there.

And that you know, mind you these are

very untrained ignorant young eyes that

I'm making that assessment.

Yeah, and I'm wrong in that assessment,

but it doesn't matter

because that's my assessment.

Yeah, right regardless of

whether I'm right or wrong.

That was my assessment as a child third

strike was the antidote to that for me.

Yeah, it was.

Oh, this is not for children.

This is for every anybody or more

specifically for adults and then on top

of that you splice in, you know, I love

hip-hop is near and dear to my heart.

Yeah, you know, it's

it's it's it's in my soul.

It's in my bones.

You know, I live and breathe hip-hop

this game fuses hip-hop fighting games

and just that kind of you know, my

family's from New York, my entire

family's from York just this kind of New

York scent this New York

State of mind, if you will.

Yeah, you can define that a multitude of

ways, but this game is the New York State

of mind mixed with fighting games mixed

with hip-hop and then

expressed as a video game.

don't know.

I don't know if that even that doesn't do

it justice describing how

wonderful this game is to me.

When I was playing third strike the first

time, I remember thinking to myself, so

in the arcade culture, hip-hop was there

in the arcade culture.

It was dirty.

It was grimy, but you had to go to the

arcades to feel that third strike was a

game where you could just play this by

itself and you got that

feeling coming out of the screen.

Like it was coming to you.

Yeah, it's you can taste it.

It's on your tongue when

you're playing it, right?

And if you love that you just

get hooked on it immediately.

I mean the announcer literally is like.

We await your return warrior like there's

the implication that this game is not

complete without you the player.

That is correct, which I had always felt

but this game is like no, we're going to

like pop in your face.

Like you are our player

in this in this cannon.

We're about to experience right now.

Yeah, and a lot of the texts is you know,

it's fight for the future.

You know, this is the future but man even

the small the small thing when your meter

fills up and you hear let's go let's go

which is Adam West my

yeah, I mean that that

is it's it's instilling hype in you which

is which is a very New York thing to do.

Yeah, right.

It's it's it's it's your hype man in your

corner egging you on so to speak.

So what's the time frame that you fell in

love with this game?

What year was it?

It was Dreamcast.

It was 9 2001.

Yeah, 999 2000.

I had a burn copy of it.

Sure.

Act.

Yeah, I had a Dreamcast zero that could

play burn copies like, okay,

and I had this I had Marbles cow come to

this wasn't the first fighting game that

I played but it was it was the first one

that I that I fell in love with.

Yeah, okay, but I you know, I played it

and it was I would say when I was in high

school, I kind of revisited it, you know,

kind of like what you did in the 2000

with two better two.

I revisited it in high school.

Yeah, and I think and then I think maybe

like two year three two or

three years after high school.

I think the first

version of GG PO came out.

I think that was like 2010 ish.

I want to say okay.

I don't remember.

I could be a little off in those years,

but I read that I'm right.

I revisited in high school.

It wasn't popular in Florida.

Really.

Nobody played their strike.

It was yeah, there was a few people there

was like two or three guys, but they were

so jaded that nobody wanted to play third

strike that it was really hard to get

games going in that local scene.

Yeah, it wasn't until I moved to Texas

that I got read got introduced to the

third strike in the arcade culture of in

that sense because huge arcade culture

here for third strike.

In fact, the arcade that I go to it's

known for his third strike the scene.

That's that's what it's famous for sure.

And I'll never forget my

very first arcade match.

I think this was 2014.

I believe

I sat down and I played a guy

and it seemed like no matter what move I

made he had a counter for it

and it seemed like he knew exactly what I

was going to do no matter what I did and

I even tried to be random and he still

seemed to know what I was doing and I was

like, oh, I'm just

completely out of my depth here.

This is insane.

And this is just a random

person that I sat down with.

Yeah, like I can't imagine what the

operational on looks like right and then

I find out it was Yuki one of the best

players in the United States.

And so I didn't know that at the time,

but then I asked him afterward.

I was like, hey, how did you know what I

was doing and this was what was really

blowing my he's like, well, you know, the

first few seconds of the match.

I felt you out and I got a

sense for what your level was.

And based on where your level is, I could

pretty much guess on what kind of things

you would do based on

the level you're at.

And I was like, wow, you just profiled me

off of a few seconds of few interactions.

You just profiled me immediately.

Yeah, and and it blew my mind.

I was like, oh, this you

can do that with this game.

This is this is a game that has so many

levels to it that it would take you

probably a few months to even try to, you

know, lay them all out on paper.

Just how many different levels you can go

in this game and then we're still

discovering new levels

in this game to this day.

This is the game that

will never be finished.

It'll never be complete.

It'll never be

figured out truly.

Yeah, people say that I know people like

to say, hey, this game is figured out.

It's not even close to being figured out.

Mmm, like we're just we're discovering

things as of yesterday.

They discovered something that that is

changing things in a big bad way already.

We know about things that you can do in

this game that nobody does yet, which is

a crazy thing to say.

Like there are things you can do in this

game that people are not

doing, but you could be doing.

Yeah, but it would change the meta in

such a way that people are not ready to

start doing that stuff yet.

It's almost like we're not ready for the

technology that we created ourselves.

Yeah.

I honestly I could I could go all day

with this game, but it's it's a it's a

transcendence experience.

It's a it's a it's

a it's an eye-opening.

It's an eye-opening experience of love

craft and just heart and soul in a

fighting game package.

Yeah, I think all fighting games have

this ability where if you within seconds

you can determine who where

your opponent is on a level.

Yes, I would say third strike.

Because of the fact that it has I'm going

to use the phrase kind of an

infinite defensive mechanic.

Yes, yes,

you have to rely on that more like I have

to figure I have to very quickly classify

where I think you are so I can get my

game plan up and running

100% Yeah, 100% Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

They say Super Turbo is like 95% figured

out, but you're still you still find out

funny weird things

about all different games.

Absolutely.

Yeah, no doubt.

I want to give third

strike some props here.

You know, my beloved game Super Turbo had

a rebalance patch by an individual who

will remain nameless.

That's right.

And that is what that is successful or

not spending on your

viewpoint and I'll leave that there.

I love the fact that Capcom and I'm

actually in a credit Seth Killian here on

this one's like we could have made a

rebalanced version of third strike.

We made third strike online edition for

PS3 and 360, but we kind of

figured let's not do that.

Let's just focus on making a quote

unquote arcade perfect

version and you know what?

I don't I don't hear a single third

strike player complaining about that.

Third strike players are

just happy to play third strike.

I'm just

happy to play third strike.

It's like man.

I remember I heard I love when someone

says something that you're feeling like

you can't articulate it because you're

not as smart as they are.

But you hear them saying you're like, oh

wow, you just captured my feelings.

What's his name?

The Nika KO, the New York Yang player.

He said, you know, I'll play third strike

any way I can every way I can

and I was like man,

that's it right there, dude.

Yeah, absolutely.

And

before we move on, I'm curious to hear

your thoughts about this as people who

play modern fighting games today.

Yeah.

Playing one of your favorite games.

It did get a couple of quick revisions,

but the community was like, no, we want

to play version a like that's

the version we want to play.

Yeah, there's something

really nice about playing game.

That's it's done.

We shouldn't expect

any kind of big updates.

There's nothing happening.

You're gonna keep playing third strike

the way that it is and newer fighting

game players now who constantly play

online or play the newest modern stuff.

I don't know if they know what that's

like because they are going to a system

where update update update until the game

is dead then move on to the next game

update update update

update till the game is dead.

Yep.

Yeah, it's a it's a nasty

cycle of false and and miss

misunderstood expectations.

And you know, like I'm not I don't want

to criticize it too much because there's

certainly value in a

game that gets updated.

You know, there's something appealing

about that right sure, but but there's

also something lost in that too because

you never really get a chance to let to

see the the opportunities the potential

of a game that's changing.

Right.

It's changing.

So so the moment you even start to

breathe in, you know,

it's potential it's changed.

So now it's almost like the rug got

pulled out from underneath you.

Yeah, right.

And I do think there's

something lost in that.

I really do.

Yeah.

I mean as we get better, we are

participating in the game and the game is

evolving as a result of that.

It's it's it's evolving.

Yeah.

And there's there's a

lot of beauty in that.

You know, there's

Bobby Sabi in that 100% and

if there's something that I can

appreciate about the

third strike die-hard fan.

Yeah, they appreciate that more than

other entities might

appreciate that for sure.

Yeah, and almost because they had no

choice if they want to play the game,

they have to kind of you have to kind of,

you know, resolve yourself to that fact.

Absolutely.

You just have to die on that

Hill and be okay with that.

Yeah, you know, so yeah, no, it's it's a

it's a fascinating idea.

It really is.

That's cool, man.

Yeah, yeah.

Got to be honest when I

first played third strike

hearing the soundtrack.

It was cool, but like it

didn't have the melodies.

I was used to didn't have like that.

Hey that like that like sing-songy melody

that I was used to with almost all

fighting games up until that point.

I think it's aged super well and it's

it's more timeless and it's vibey and

it's like yeah, man, like this is cool.

This is neat.

Yeah, no, I get you and you know what and

I'll say this to anybody.

I don't think it's for everybody.

I really don't.

You know, I try not to say that about one

of my favorite games of all time.

Like I want this game to be for

everybody, but I really don't think it's

for everybody and I think that's okay.

I don't think there's

anything wrong with that.

All good piece of art should

not be for everyone, right?

They shouldn't be for everybody.

Yeah, there's beauty in

it not being for everybody.

Honestly,

and there's a famous quote from Akira

Yasuda who's the art director slash.

He wasn't the creator of this game, but

he helped work on it.

Yeah, yeah, he helped

work on Street Fighter 2.

He's like we knew we would never be able

to compete with 3d games.

Yeah, but we tried anyway, try it anyway,

and that's pretty awesome.

That's awesome.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

Oof.

Yes,

I got just chills chills

just run down your spine.

to my list top of the first three now on

to shadow of the Colossus boy.

Shadow of the Colossus.

Wow.

I have a lot to say about this game.

Man.

Just get some footage up here.

No, not the remake.

Please.

No, nothing against the remake.

I haven't played it yet.

There we go.

Listen.

This AI slop.

Is it?

Nope, it's good.

Okay.

We'll do this.

Okay.

Drip derrip der.

All right.

this is an emotional game for me because

it's another example of

me taking a risk on a game.

This was.

What's the year the game comes out in?

Let me triple check.

So I'm pretty sure it was 2005.

Let's see.

I think I was a sophomore on this camera.

2005 your rights.

Yeah.

So it's October 2005 and I'm actually

senior year in high school

and we decide myself, my mother, my

brother decide to visit my grandmother

and some of our family there in

Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Just spend a week with them.

Not how your school system worked out.

But like when I told my all my teachers,

I'm going to be gone for

a week visiting family.

They were like, that's a long

time spent away from school.

You know, got to be careful making sure

that you keep up with your grades and got

to make sure that you're careful with

colleges and all that stuff.

And I'm like, okay, well,

I'm just going to spend a week.

It's a family trip.

I can't do anything about it.

Yeah.

Spend some time seeing my grandma, seeing

my nieces, seeing you

know, my aunts and uncles, etc.

The day before we're about to fly back,

our grandmother starts declining

incredibly quickly in terms of health

to the point where we

have to get an EMT out there.

We take her to critical care

and I'll save the gruesome

details, but I watch her pass away

right in front of me.

I see it happen.

And so we do some logistics and planning

and my brother has to go back to school.

He's in college at this point.

He has to fly out the next day.

He cannot do that.

And I make the decision because my mom's

going to stay an extra

week and help sort things out.

I'm going to stay with her

to be her support for this.

I don't think about what's happening in

my current life doesn't matter.

Like this is family.

Got to take care of it.

We pack up the Grandma's house.

We put in boxes.

We spend time with family.

It's pretty, I mean, my

mom just lost her mom, right?

And I got to witness that happen.

It's pretty awful.

And come back after being gone for now

two weeks and I explained what happened

and I already told them like this is

what's going on and all I get is the riot

act from everyone saying, oh, you can't

take any more time off

or you're going to fail.

You're not going to

be able to pass school.

And I was a pretty good

student at this point.

I talked to all my teachers about the

situation says, yeah, well, you know,

I'll give you some time, but like not

much and you're already behind by two

weeks and you've lost all this and like

the first two days back from school, like

I'm getting beat up real good.

I'm doing the best I can.

I got to spend a whole

eight to nine hours at school.

Then I've got to

do more time studying after school.

And I've already I've still

got my job of a paperout boy.

I was a paper boy waking up at 4 in the

morning delivering papers and like I'm

just getting so beat up and there's a

certain point where I just I give up.

I'm like, you know what?

Who cares?

Like no one's giving me any

kind of grace or sympathy.

They're all threatening me that I'm not

going to pass high school

all because my grandma died

and it's like a Friday and

there's this game I heard of called

Shadow of the Colossus.

I heard it was a weird game.

I heard was head like bosses didn't

understand that how do you have a game

with bosses but no levels?

That's weird and I pick up the game.

I just hunker down in my bedroom and I'm

playing it on my old on my CRT and spend

all weekend playing and I

think it's like Saturday night.

Maybe Sunday night when I've beaten the

game and I just I'm crying.

I'm just I'm my grief from

having lost my grandmother.

Everything is hitting me all at once.

Those don't know Shadow Colossus is a

game about you're trying to bring back

the life of a loved one.

You play the character of Wander and at

the end of that game, I won't spoil it

too much, but you find out that maybe you

were the monster all along and your

partner does come back.

But at what cost and the cost is that you

know, you get reincarnated

as a child and as a baby.

And so she your partner now is going to

take care of you as a

mother and not as a lover.

And so it gave me the semblance of like

the rebirth of life and healing from that

and I mean, I just I just sobbed forever

and I finally I felt like the release

finally come out from from that and I

went to school like the next week and I I

did my best I could but I basically told

all my teachers yeah, this upcoming test

you're all giving me.

I'm going to fail it.

There's nothing I can do

about that and it's your choice.

If you want to pass me or not, but I will

from now on I'm going to

keep doing the best that I can

and

the only person that gave me any kind of

grace during this entire period was my

best friend who is now my wife.

Crystal she was the only one that that

like when she saw me

she gave me a big hug.

She was so sorry.

I was going through this experience.

She gave me that level of sanity here.

And so this game is

incredible for a lot of reasons.

It's such an artistic vision.

It's a game that's not trying to make

apologies for what it is.

It is.

It's an empty vast world

of nothing for a reason.

It is.

A poignant game has

beautiful gorgeous music.

The story is amazing.

Not once was I bothered by the quote

unquote frame rate that people say is so

bad because it's very has like a motion

blur effect as you're seeing on screen

right now and it felt

like a pastiche painting.

Yeah, and it made me think to myself if I

ever make a work of art writing music,

whatever I do, I want to give the same

feeling that this game gave to me and I

think about all the developers and the

creatives that worked on this game and

like what their

vision was and to this day.

I have my save file.

I have my disc somewhere every time I try

to boot it up just to play it again.

I can't it's like it's

a very emotional thing.

Yeah, and I've tried to play the remaster

and I've tried to play the remake and I

can't do it because to me

something is lost there.

It's not quite the same.

So that also gave me an idea

of like the original vision.

There's nothing wrong with the remake

necessarily, but a remake never is better

or replaces the original.

It is just something

different for a different person.

Yeah, and for me this game is perfect.

So that's my story with

Shadow of the Colossus.

Oh man,

powerful story for a very powerful game.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a great but game by itself

outside of that context.

It's phenomenal.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Honestly, it's it's it's when people talk

about video games as a work of art, you

know, sometimes you know, sometimes you

want to roll your eyes a little bit

because you're like, okay,

well, it's supposed to be fun.

Not necessarily a work of art, not

necessarily, you know, that's not the

goal here and why we're playing this.

We're not trying to play a work of art.

This is the game where

that gets flipped on its head.

This is the work of art.

Yeah, this is this is

video game art form, you know,

in its purest form, if you will.

Absolutely.

If you were to make a digital museum or

like instead of paintings or sculptures,

you put up like a kind of I don't know an

LCD screen and you run a you

run some kind of game on it.

This is the very first game I would

nominate to be on that wall.

I can't think of a game that hits that

note truer than this.

It's and also just real quick.

Can we just appreciate

this is on the PlayStation

PlayStation goddamn to play station to

like wow, it's it's it's really a

testament to the PlayStation 2, but it's

also a testament to what you

can do with so little right?

It's it's it's the biggest package in in

the smallest form and I'm

amazed that it exists at all.

Honestly,

you're absolutely right.

I mean, I remember seeing

before I decided to buy it.

I was watching some reviews of it and

they're like, yeah, it's kind of weird.

Let's like an 8.5 game.

It's like, you know, yeah,

not it's not for everyone.

I remember seeing it at a kiosk.

I'm like, holy crap.

You're on this big giant

Titan and you're like climbing it.

You're doing.

How does the PS2 do this?

Yeah, yeah.

I even remember if you

if you play the game,

there's every button does something but

like there's times when wander doesn't do

exactly what you want him to do.

Right and remember in the moment being

frustrated by that but

that's also part of it.

Like yes, it's about bless best laid

plans doing the best you can and then

sometimes the world or the Titan has

different things and kind of says screw

you like you got to screw you keep

persisting keep

persisting if you want to.

What is success without persistence and

through your grit you you overcome you

overcome the challenge of not only, you

know, trying to play this wonderful game,

but you feel his challenge of trying to

overcome these incredible beasts.

Yeah, and you're playing each other

almost in a manner of speaking.

Yeah, no, I mean, I don't say this about

a lot of games, but I do think this is a

perfect game for what it is.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would definitely agree and one of

the challenges is

that I played this game.

It had such a huge impact on me and then

maybe a couple years later this little

game called Zelda Twilight Princess comes

out and I'm looking at that game and I'm

like, what does this game do that show

the Colossus didn't already do way better

and on one hand, they're

totally different games.

But you can absolutely tell Twilight

Princess was trying to tap

into this overall aesthetic.

I think that's a I think

Zelda is a good comparison.

Yeah.

Yeah different games like you said, but

but that comparison makes sense to me

like the argument I would make and I'm

not here to should talk games, but the

argument I'd made is the overworld of

Twilight Princess feels more vacant and

empty than the overworld of this and it's

supposed to feel all empty

and absolutely absolutely the the the the

vacantness of this game.

It's a character in and of itself.

It's it's it it adds to your experience.

It's not there to just be an

obstacle in your traversal.

It actually adds to your own atmospheric

experience of the game, which is weird

because I thought you know, like

everybody that oh they can

see an open world is bad.

This game shows you that no it can be

used to great advantage.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Incredible game.

Incredible game

recommend everyone plays it

everybody.

Even if you got to play

the remake, it's fine.

You don't have to appease my my things.

Yeah, but I

haven't played it, but I also I'm

hesitant to play it.

I just I have such fond

memories of the PS 2 on that.

I'm hesitant to even want to try it.

Yeah.

And the soundtrack is amazing.

I I've only bought a couple of

soundtracks from video games.

This was one of them.

I imported it from Japan.

Like I had to get this sound.

Yeah.

It's so good.

Incredible soundtrack.

Incredible.

I it and it it goes so well with just how

it's such an epic.

It's an epic journey and it needed a

soundtrack to add to that that had to be

an important part of that journey.

Yeah, to be it really did.

Yeah, and again, like this is team eco,

which I know they make like avant-garde

games, but like it was a big risk for

them to make this game huge risk massive.

Huge.

Absolutely incredible.

Yeah, man.

probably a cop-out, but I just had to

like it's on my list man.

No, no, it was in my honorable mentions.

It was in my it was like like in my 20

games and I had his honorable mention.

It was in that list is on there.

And when I saw it on your

list, I was like, thank God.

Because I want we need to talk about this

game and oh my God, thank God.

Whoo.

Also happy.

Yeah.

Jeez takes me back.

Thanks.

Yeah back incredible incredible game any

any piece of art that

helps you grief with grief.

I think is absolutely

absolutely worthy and notable.

Speaking of grief and

darkness got one more.

One more.

We're halfway through this list.

Yeah, and we've been talking a lot.

We're going to have to

have a part two here, but

speaking of Zelda.

Oh man, this Zelda game

right here called Majora's Mask.

Majora's Mask.

What's this about me?

I know I had a few people bring this up

when I showed them my list.

They're like Majora's Mask, not a Karina

and awkward was a lot

of dimensions, of course.

So I played Majora's first.

Why?

Yeah, I did.

I don't actually think this is the reason

why it's awkward at times

because I love awkward at times.

Yeah, but I played Majora's first.

Sure.

Because remember I was an angsty kid who

didn't like Nintendo games.

Okay, fair enough.

So all of them are toys to me and it

wasn't until I was older

because I played Zelda later.

I played it as a when I was in high

school is when I played Zelda.

I was in senior year.

I think is when I first played Zelda.

And at that point in time, I had gotten

over my angsty child-like behavior of

like everything has to be for adults and

I was absolutely able to appreciate, you

know, Nintendo and anything else that

wasn't necessarily for

adults but could be for everybody.

Yeah.

And so I played Majora's first just kind

of ignorantly not understanding that this

game came out after awkward at time

and I was blown away.

And when I got to awkward at time, I was

kind of, I was very

confused because I was expecting

awkward at time to be, you

know, in line with this game.

This game is completely

different from awkward at time.

In a crazy kind of way.

So was Majora's Mask

your first Zelda game?

I think I had touched Link to the Past.

Okay.

So I think that was my first one, but it

was the first game that I played by

myself to completion.

Yes.

That's awesome.

To full completion.

Yeah, it was the first one.

And Majora's Mask is, I mean anyone who's

played it understands

how different it is.

It's,

you know, I talked about it with Shemew

how the world is the character.

Yeah.

This game is similar to that in that you

are dropped into a world.

I mean, Link is literally

dropped into a different world.

Right.

And this world has rules.

And it's a living,

breathing world with rules.

Yeah.

And once you understand

those rules, you can navigate it.

And one of the rules of this world is in

three days, the whole

thing is going to be destroyed.

That's a pretty powerful rule to learn.

Yeah.

Oh, and another rule is

you could go back in time.

That's another rule that you learn.

So which you learn after the world ends

the first time you learn after

the world has that's correct.

At first, you're like, oh my gosh, I

don't have so much time.

That's right.

You're sent into a panic.

I think the 3DS version does a little bit

of a faux pas and that it kind of implies

to you on your first playthrough that

that won't be the case.

But in the N64, it's like in the N64 one.

Yeah, no, it's well, I've

never played the DS one.

So I know 3DS one.

I never played it.

They do a couple of things like quality

of life things, but I think that yeah,

that makes it less anxiety inducing the

first time you go

through those first three days.

But the first time

you're like, oh my gosh,

it is panic-inducing.

And honestly, it's panic-inducing every

time even when you know, you can go back.

Right.

It just the impending doom that that

hangs over you even with

the power to go back in time.

It's still nerve-wracking.

Yeah.

This is a game that is it's built.

It's built on on anxiety.

Okay, the framework of

this game is anxiety.

Yeah, and it's tension and it's

nerve-wracking and it's it's scary.

This is almost a horror game.

This is almost a Zelda horror game.

And the horror is impending doom.

Right because even though you can go back

in time, you can't go forward in time,

right in the sense that you can't go

beyond the three days.

So you still have to deal with this even

though you can go back in time.

You're almost delaying the inevitable.

Yeah.

So the anxiety

problem isn't solved, right?

Like what is anxiety?

It's fear of the future, right?

So you're just you're just resetting that

fear every time you go back in time.

That that's a that's a level of

complexity that I've never even

encountered in a video

game, let alone a Zelda game.

Right and I haven't even got to this

organic world that's living and

breathing, you know, this town that is in

the middle of this destruction, this

impending instruction and you getting to

know this world inside and out and all

the people that live in it.

And so think of that Shenmue element of

like your it's got a Shenmue element.

Yeah, yeah, you're going

you're dropping this world.

You're living in it and it's about to be

destroyed and you're

meeting these characters.

You're living you're living this life.

You're learning their stories.

You're learning about them.

And you every time you get a new

connection, it motivates you to do

something about this world.

It motivates you to try

to solve this problem.

It motivates you to to feel what they're

feeling this impending doom.

And now you are invested in this world in

a way that you've never been invested in

anything in your life in a video game.

Yeah,

and and it's kind of crazy that this game

exists in my opinion.

It's kind of wild.

It's such a wild take

on the Zelda formula.

And call it.

It's an experiment.

No doubt.

And I think that's why it rubs on people

the wrong way because it's such it's such

an experiment compared

to every other Zelda game.

There's no Zelda game like this.

There's no there's a very few video games

like this let alone Zelda games.

Yeah, and not to mention the layout of

the game is very interesting.

You got these this almost like compass

like layout where you got

North East South and West.

Yeah, and very very different

environments for each of those and each

each direction is a is its own

independent world in so to speak.

And you almost you almost step into you

know, a kind of like

I don't know like a shimmering mirror and

then you're now in that new world and

you're now surrounded by its culture.

And you almost become part of that

culture and you can see that with the

masks and if you ever played this game

before yeah, you literally embody the

inhabitants of that of that world.

So with a Deku you become a Deku with the

Zora's you become Zora

and they talk to you differently based on

what mask you're wearing

a hundred percent.

Yeah, this whole train warm.

Yeah, you transform this whole game masks

are such a key part of this game.

There's so many there's so many

philosophical Center pieces to this game.

There's the masks.

There's the impending doom.

There's the the four

corners of the world.

There's you know, just the organic, you

know, inner workings of

the people in that world.

There's so many layers upon layers upon

layers and you're just kind of like stuck

in the middle of them and you're just

doing your best to

try to figure them out.

It's it's it's one of the most organic

video games I've ever played in very

similar to Shenmue, but I think it even

takes that idea further.

Yeah, in many ways it

takes that idea further.

Whereas where Shenmue is

there is a living real world.

This is a living fantasy world.

Yeah,

they're both doing the same thing, but

they're both completely different

frameworks for that.

It had like a sim-like quality to it.

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely without a doubt that a doubt

and that's why I say it's it's the most

unique Zelda game that's

ever been made without a doubt.

It's fascinating though that you played

this before you played Ocarina.

I don't think that's not a

common thing that happens.

No, it's not and I mean, I do think it

impacted my understanding a lot, but but

I just if anything it made me confused

because this is not the game you probably

want to play first just because of how

radically different it is

that that kind of set up a weird

expectation because I was I was looking

for at least something radical even if

it's not the same thing and every other

Zelda game is so I hate to use the word

generic and I you know, formulaic is

maybe a better word.

Yeah, they are and this game takes that

script and throws it out the window and

says no, we're not going to be formulaic.

Okay, we're going to do something

completely different.

We're going to still call it Zelda, but

maybe we shouldn't have.

I love Majora's Mask.

It's it's dark.

So I played Ocarina first and when I

played Ocarina, I thought the Mask

Salesman was creepy.

So to have him be like a big center for

character Majora's was like,

oh God, even more creepy, right?

Very creepy.

There's a couple of Ocarina doesn't hold

a candle, but there's a couple of dark

moments in Ocarina that make you go like,

Oh man, what if you leaned more in that

direction and Majora's Mask is kind of

the answer to that question.

It is that yeah, that's

why I jokingly refer to it.

It's a horror game for Zelda

basically.

Yeah, you know, yeah, and

I also love Majora's Mask.

I think it's the first Zelda game where

you can like replay Dungeons.

Yeah, you can go back to it because

you're going back in time, right?

You can just replay the dungeon if you

want to just replay the dungeon.

That's right.

Yeah, that's one of the sad parts about

Zelda in many cases when

you replay the dungeon.

There's no reason to ever go back.

So that's right.

That's right.

And then you usually closed off from

replaying the dungeon.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Yeah, no super interesting.

little there's little moments in this

game that are kind of etched in my brain.

One of them is every time you put on a

mask a transformation.

It's like it's so traumatic.

Yeah, and it's interesting that they

chose for it to be that traumatic.

They didn't have to do that.

It could have been a very simple process,

but they made it very traumatic for Link

to Dawn these masks and literally

transform into these new creatures and

it's like they want you to feel that they

want you to feel how traumatic it is.

Yeah, and and it's a weird

detail and it's just it stuck.

It always stuck with me always

and they go from this

and they go to Wind Waker

totally different aesthetic, right?

Yeah, yeah, and you know, it's funny.

A lot of future Zelda games are developed

based on the reaction to this game.

Yeah.

This game, you know, it's no secret.

This game rubs people a

lot of people the wrong way.

And so I think a lot of direction going

forward is like well, we don't want to

rub people the wrong way.

So let's let's pivot so that we don't run

into this prop this situation again.

Yeah, and I think I think what we end up

with is that I don't want to say they're

not bad games, but I do think they're not

as authentic as they maybe could be.

Yeah, like that.

Yeah.

I love Majora's.

It's a game that like you ask someone.

Hey man, do you like Zelda?

Yeah, I love Majora.

I'm like, oh, you're a real gamer.

You know, you're talking about.

You know, yeah,

you are an absolute

weirdo is what you are.

Zelda does thrive on duologies, right?

Like so Zelda 1 then Zelda

2 totally different game.

Very different.

Link's Awakening is very different in

some ways than Zelda 3.

Majora's Mask very

different from Ocarina.

Poof man.

Yeah, it often thrives in

that particular capacity.

Majora's Mask is it's a real one.

It's a good one.

It's dark.

It's weird.

It's macabre.

Yeah.

Love the soundtrack.

Funnily enough, you get the Zelda theme

and when you're in terminal field, you

actually get the Hyrule like Zelda theme.

You don't get that in Ocarina of time.

Never once they play that song.

That's right.

Yeah.

That's a great game.

It's great and it's so interesting.

I'll never it's so interesting.

This was like your

first real Zelda experience.

So like you have a very different vision

of what Zelda is whereas other people a

lot of them their first one was Ocarina

and then for the new generation people

their first one was Twilight Princess.

That's right.

And now there's a whole generation where

Breath of the Wild was their first.

Breath of the Wild,

which I think is not odd.

I think that's a I think

that's a Legend of Zelda remake.

The first one.

Yeah.

Loz.

Yeah.

That's what it feels like to me.

Yeah.

As someone who played the original Zelda,

I don't want to get too far off script

here, but like I played the first one and

like you don't know

what you're supposed to do.

You're just wandering

about and just figuring out.

That's right.

I was so surprised to play later Zelda

games where it's just very guided and

you're like, huh, very guided.

So it was nice to play Breath of the Wild

and get that little oh, it's coming back.

Look at that.

Nintendo trusts us again.

We can use our brains.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, that's that's halfway through our

list halfway through.

What a good discussion.

That's two hours of talking.

Holy cow.

I knew this was going to happen because

these these games are insane.

Yeah, but it's good.

That means there's

probably gonna be a part two.

Hopefully.

Yeah.

What's that?

The podcast is already wrapping up, but

we haven't seen the top nine games that

shaped Kitezu and Scarequotes.

That's because this week is a two parter.

That's right.

This is just part one.

Part two concludes next week.

Come find out more information at

www.thecounterhit.com or you can check

out our patreon page at patreon.com slash

zero dot media to get access to next

week's episode sooner rather than later.

Otherwise, we'll see you next time.

Cheers and remember

we're team human.

View episode details

Listen to The Counter Hit using one of many popular podcasting apps or directories.

← Previous · All Episodes · Next →

the games thatshaped us. pt 1. (feat. Kitetsu) [The Counter Hit #11]

Subscribe