S2E12

the games that shaped us. pt 2. (feat. Kitetsu) [The Counter Hit #12]

October 21, 2026 · 02:36:02

Hey, this is a counter hit where we

counter the hits of life that beat us

down with our own vibe.

I'm your host and resident vibe position

scare quotes, also known as Sam.

But you can call me.

John

today's show is going to

dive into more video games.

That's right.

This is part two from

last week's episode.

We were talking about the nine games that

shaped me and someone else,

someone else behind the scenes.

That's right.

Our player of fighting games, our sci fi

junkie, our occasional and aspiring

writer himself, Kitetsu.

Hey, don't bud.

Dude, I'm good.

How are you doing?

Every single time I introduce you, you're

just like, hey, man, how you doing?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's my it's my radio voice.

I got to like get low.

I got to get low.

Yeah.

Real low.

Hold on.

Got to get real low.

Oh my God.

Wow.

I only get that once.

You only get that once.

I even do.

I'm good, man.

I'm excited.

You're good.

You're chilling.

I'm chilling.

Yeah.

We were talking for so long last week.

I had to cut our discussion short.

I know.

It was a shame.

I was bummed out.

Yeah, me too.

But we ended things off with your number

five pick, which was the Legend of Zelda,

the George Mash game that shaped you.

No, it's a fun discussion because you

grew up with that game before Ocarina of

Time, everyone's favorite game, which is

getting a remake coming

out in a couple of weeks.

I heard.

I heard it's a video

game that needs a remake.

Did you know that I do now video games

need remakes all the time, all of them

all the time, every single one folks.

If there's a video game that you want to

play, don't you bother

playing it right now?

Instead, you know what you should do.

Wait until they remake it.

That's the only way to play games

and don't play the first remake, play the

second remake, the second

remake.

Yeah.

I think I was telling you this.

There was a popular YouTube show.

I won't name the show,

but on the show, someone said, oh yeah,

I've heard really good

things about Chrono Trigger.

They should remake that so I can play it.

That's literally what the person said.

That is that hurts.

Hey, Kit, I really want to play Street

Fighter three, third strike.

I've heard it's a really great game.

They should remake it so I can play it.

Yeah.

Call it for the strike.

Yeah.

Remake it.

Oh,

geez.

Oh boy.

Well, folks, I think it's about time we

get to my number five picks.

I think we skipped this last time.

My number five pick.

Yep.

My number five pick is just this little

old game called Prince of

Persia, the sands of time.

Or like I like to call

pop pop pop pop pop pop.

Did you play the POP games, the trilogy?

I have played every POP game.

You've played them all.

Okay.

So you know what's up with this.

I know.

I have beloved.

I love this series.

Yeah.

So we on our other show that we have a

secret show here on zero dot my wife and

I talked a bit about this game, but it's

such a good game, such a good game that

absolutely had to talk

about it with you all today.

Let me get my thing up and running here.

There we go.

Oh, oh my geez.

Got to get that bigger.

Come on.

What are you doing?

There you go.

All right.

Yeah.

So Prince of Persia, sands of time.

And once again, I have a fun story about

this one, but first let's

talk about the base plate stuff.

It is a remake restart retelling pseudo

spiritual thing to the Prince of Persia

games from the eighties, you know, the MS

DAS and the Apple two GS

ports from Jordan Meckner.

There were two of them.

There was a Prince of Persia one, then

Prince Persia two shadow in the flame.

And then there was a

Prince of Persia 3d game.

Did you ever play the 3d game?

My guy?

No.

I've seen it.

Yeah.

You're probably in the best bet because

many people will say it's not a game

worth playing, but

watching it maybe is okay.

Yeah.

It was a video game.

It was one of the first 3d games of its

kind, kind of coming around

the same time as Tomb Raider did.

Jordan Meckner worked on that

and he was so ashamed by it.

He was so upset by that game.

He actually just quit

video game development.

So I don't want to do this ever again.

He just quit.

And then Ubisoft gets the rights to it

and they want to make a sequel or they

want to make something and they get some

development team who had worked on a

Daffy Duck game of all games to make a

prototype with like animation of the

Prince doing stuff, like running on walls

and getting the ladders and so forth and

showing how smooth the gameplay was.

They do a pitch meeting for Jordan

Meckner to kind of get his blessing.

And Jordan Meckner not only gives his

blessing, but he

loves what he saw so much.

He then dives in and becomes the lead

writer for the game for this game only.

It's like, I'm going to

write the script for this game.

And if you remember, this game has a very

storybook kind of storytelling element,

which is why I think this game is kind of

unique because later games, Jordan

Meckner had nothing to do with them.

But the first one, Prince of Purge, Sands

of Time had something to do with it.

And so you see really smooth animation.

You get a storybook kind of narrative

storytelling trope where Prince is always

like talking with a player, at least you

think you're the player until the very

end when you realize who the player is.

And really smooth animation, parkour, you

know, back before we

even knew what parkour was

really cool combat.

I think in my opinion, some people don't

like it, but I think it's

a pretty cool combat thing.

And of course, the ability to rewind time

partially temporarily for a smidge of

time, you know, make a mistake and you

can go back a couple of

steps and replay through that.

Now I think the reason I love this game

is so much is I think

there's two reasons.

The first one is my story with it, which

was it's a Friday night hanging out with

my one buddy and we want to

play a video game together.

And I heard that this game was good, but

maybe it wasn't worth buying.

Maybe it wasn't worth owning because it's

such a short game, they said, and it has

no quote unquote replay value.

So we go to this is going to be dating

me, get the blockbuster blockbuster.

Oh my goodness.

Go to the blockbuster.

They have a copy of it.

We rent it.

It was four bucks to rent it.

Bring it home.

It doesn't boot up.

It doesn't work.

I test every other game in my library and

I'm playing this on the PS2.

All my other games work.

I look at the disc.

It looks perfectly fine.

Nothing wrong with it.

It looks practically brand new, but for

some reason it just would not boot up.

We go back to the blockbuster.

We've wasted about an hour

trying to get this to work.

I go to the receptionist

like, Hey, can I get another copy?

This one doesn't seem to work.

And he tells me, I'm sorry,

that's the last one we have.

I can't, can't have

you any of the copies.

And I turn around and I see on the kiosk

like 12 copies of this game

that are brand new to Bob.

And I asked the guy, can't you just like

open up one of those and let me use it?

No, I'm sorry.

Those are specifically for sale.

I'm like,

but you're going to make more money if

you, if you just open up one of those

copies and make it a rental

copy, like you can do this.

I know you can do this.

I would learn this later because I would

later become a blockbuster

employee for a little bit of time.

I know for a fact you can do this, but

even then I'm pushing a little bit and

the guy's like, I'm sorry, man.

I don't have any copies.

We can't rent you anymore.

You can buy it though if you'd like.

And I'm looking at my buddy and we've

only got a couple more hours left before

the night's over and he, I don't know if

you have a friend like this kid, but like

you just have that friend who's like only

available randomly at certain times.

Oh yeah.

And like this might be the last time you

had to hang with that with them until

like another month goes by or something.

I don't know that person cause it's me.

And I'm thinking to

myself, Oh man, I feel bad.

He's wasting his entire night with this.

So I go ahead and I buy the goddamn game.

I pick it up like fine, whatever.

And I'm mad at the clerk too for not like

working with me, but I buy it

and man, like the, the next couple of

hours we're playing through it, we're

having such a blast.

Like, Oh my God, I

fucking love this game.

My friend loves it so much.

He goes and buys a copy himself the next

morning so he can play it.

Oh wow.

And then, you know,

it's a very short game.

You can beat it over

the weekend and I do.

I love the story of it where you find out

that the, every time you've made a

mistake and the prince goes, no, no, no,

not, not quite like that.

You find out he's been

talking to Farah the entire time.

But it's so fucking cool.

Very cool.

And you beat the game and that's it.

That the game is over.

There's really nothing

else to do in the game.

Doesn't give you a new game.

Plus doesn't give you

any extra perks, nothing.

And I like to use this example as a game

that has a ton of replay value

intrinsically versus extrinsically.

Oh, okay.

So a lot of people that talk about replay

value to talk about

extrinsic replay value.

Like I get something

for having replayed it.

Something new is

different in this experience.

Meanwhile, I replay this game at least

once a year all the time

because I just love it.

I love the journey that you go on.

It's so wonderfully done.

I enjoy being in this space.

And to me, I would say,

yeah, this game has replay value.

It's intrinsic.

You play it because you love

it, but it's not extrinsic.

And so I'm always calling people on that.

So what do you mean by replay value?

What do you mean?

Because I can play

this game all the time.

I'm going to have a great time with it.

I replay this game after playing where

within spoiler alert.

I'm not the biggest fan of that game.

Oh, very different game.

Very different game.

I replay this game

after playing two thrones.

I was like, this is okay.

It gets a little bit

better, but not my favorite.

And then I replayed again when I played

forgotten sands on the Wii, which is a

totally different version

than the 360 and PS3 versions.

And it's actually a really good game and

solid, but it reminds me

more of what this game is about.

So if you were looking for a fun story

where the narrative Jordan Meckner wrote

the script, so like everything ties into

the gameplay, like he drinks water and

the water hydrates him.

He talks about how refreshing the water

is and everything is context base and the

kind of the fights that the Prince gets

in with the other characters,

especially Farah and so forth.

And then he's trying to get the

motivation behind, you know, where he was

trying to get the dagger for glory.

And then later he's trying to get the,

he's trying to save the world basically.

And you know, there's, there's, there's

some good Hollywood beat moments to it

that when they announced they were going

to make a movie about this game, I was

like, Oh, that makes sense because, you

know, this kind of has

some Hollywood-ish ness to it.

Yeah.

The video game movie adaptation with Jake

Yellen Hall is okay.

Whitewashing and all.

It's not the greatest thing

ever, but it is what it is.

And Jordan Mechener worked on that movie.

Jordan Mechener actually wrote the script

to that movie, which was kind of

interesting in its own right.

So you say you've played

all the Prince of Persia's.

I've played them all pretty much.

Yeah.

Even the 2008 one.

Yeah.

The one where you can't die.

Yep.

Correct.

That one's not bad for what it is.

Yeah.

It's all right.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts on Sands of Time?

I want to echo everything you said.

I think it's, it's such a tight game.

It really doesn't waste.

It doesn't waste your time at all.

It really gives you, it

shows you what it's about.

You very quickly get what it is.

And really what it is is like, if you

were to like distill it,

it's really just a kind of

solid platformer action game.

Right.

And it sounds like I'm, you know, like

it's almost generic, but it's so, it's so

well done in what it is.

It's such a, it's

such a great platformer.

It's got a unique twist to be in a

platform with rewinding time,

which is great because a lot of people,

one of the things they get frustrated

with with platformers is

having to make a lot of mistakes.

Yeah.

And this game not only doesn't have a

corrective measure for that, but it also

ties into the story too.

So it's kind of killing

two birds in one stone.

This is almost like a kind of like, it's

a new age, refreshed look at the

platformer action genre, if you will.

And it does it so well.

I don't think it does anything

revolutionary, but I think that's also

kind of what's great about it.

It's taking an old try and true formula,

sprucing it up for the modern day a bit,

giving it some great narrative twists,

and then just putting

it in a type package.

Right.

Yeah.

It's just so much fun.

It's a video, you know, you know the

phrase video game ass video game?

It's a video game ass video game.

This is a video game ass video game.

And you can't help but just if you like

video games, it's kind of

impossible not to enjoy this.

Yeah, because it's

such a pure video game.

There's there's

nothing political about it.

There's nothing like, you know, overtly

frustrating about it.

It's such a just a great video game.

And I could play this game

right now with no problem.

Yeah.

Right.

I don't have to get into a headspace to

play even some of my favorite games.

I'm like, do I really want to play that?

I really want to boot this up this game.

I can boot it up right

now and just play it.

Yeah.

Like it's it's it's really polished.

Great.

I think it's probably the

first 3D non Nintendo game.

I'm like, oh, they figured out movement.

Yes.

I feel like Nintendo master

this and Sega to an extent.

Absolutely.

Those are the platform kings.

Right.

And then I'm like, oh, we

softest figured this out now.

Oh, cool.

Great.

Yeah.

Because everything else felt floaty.

Everything else felt cartoony.

This was not quite right.

A real weight to it.

Yet it felt playful and fun.

Yes, absolutely.

And it doesn't waste your time.

I know the main criticism for this game

is the combat is super simple, but they

literally give you a mechanic that lets

you speed through the combat really

quickly if you spend your sand.

So and I enjoy I enjoy a

simple combat if it's done well.

I love it because I don't think combat is

the focus of the game either.

No, I don't think so.

It's a break.

It's like the reward you get for having

gone through a pretty

tough platform section.

Absolutely.

100%.

It's icing on the cake for what is a

platformer fundamentally.

And it also helps like because in order

for you to you can choose, I

guess, to do it very slowly.

But if you use up your sand powers in the

combat, that might hurt you in later

platform challenges.

Like it's a piece of the thing.

Do you have to play a kind of, you know,

choice game a little

bit and how you use stuff?

Yeah.

Not a big fan of the sequels, but the

first one is amazing.

It's incredible.

Yep.

I'm showing game game cube footage just

from my homie kit

because he requested it.

So according to according to development,

Ubisoft development, this is the best

version that the game

runs on is the game version.

They say that it in terms of specs, the

game cube had the best technical specs

across all three versions.

PS2.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So game cube, they recommended in their

development logs that if you if you want

to play it optimally,

game cube is the way to go.

That's interesting.

I don't know that.

I did play it on PS2 and Xbox.

I did not like the Xbox version.

They actually update like his face and

his hair and they add blooming.

I didn't like it very much.

Yeah.

A lot of Xbox games did that.

I think they really wanted to because the

Xbox was such a powerful system compared

to the PS2 and game cube.

Yeah.

I think they really wanted to flex kind

of what that system could do.

Yeah.

They took any time they had an

opportunity to do something extra.

They usually did.

They usually would.

Yeah.

For sure.

Yeah.

Sure.

But it runs well on PS2.

I've played it on PS2.

It's a fun time.

Yeah.

Great game.

Anything else I have to say about it?

No, I guess it's just great.

And again, it's just a formative part of

my lineage as a gamer.

Oh, yeah.

Same.

It taught me about simplicity, taught me

about you can make good storytelling

without being over the top.

Yep.

And again, if your game is good enough, I

will replay it many,

many, many, many, many times.

And it does not matter.

Yeah.

If I get anything out of it, if it's good

enough, I will replay it.

That's the best replay

value, though, honestly.

And this is probably a good fork in the

road for some gamers out

there who I've talked to.

I know them well.

There's some of them are my friends.

They do not believe in

ever replaying a video game.

You never do that.

Yeah.

You play it once.

You've experienced it.

You move on to the next thing.

I used to be like that.

You never do it.

And I've,

I mean, maybe it's a happenstance of

living in a poor upbringing, it's a

happenstance of not getting too many

games and just having to

live with the game that you got.

Maybe it's this game.

I don't know.

But like replaying games,

it's just part of video gaming.

You just replay them because they're fun.

I agree.

Plus you spend a lot of

money on these things.

Like this was $49.99 when I bought it.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Apparently is half of

what GTA six is going to be.

But still, it was a lot of money then.

Yeah.

So you want to squeeze as much enjoyment

out of it as you can.

That makes sense to me.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

You don't know when you're

going to get your next game.

You have no idea.

No idea.

Not even a little idea.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, that's, that's for me.

Oh God, here.

I'm trying to do the steam deck thing.

And I keep remembering it doesn't work.

That's my number five pick.

My number five pick.

I think it was, I think it was in my

honorable mentions, but I don't remember.

Mmm.

But now we're moving on.

Yeah.

I haven't do this on the browser stinks.

Moving on to your number six pick.

A little indie game called,

that's weird.

I've heard of full life.

What the heck is Half-Life?

All the time.

Half-Life.

Half-Life, you know,

it's, it's interesting to me.

Half-Life has kind of shifted in the

zeitgeist, if you will.

People, it's not the name

brand that it used to be.

Have you noticed that?

Like, yeah.

It's not like the weight, the name

doesn't carry the weight that it used to.

Yeah.

I think you're right.

And I don't know why.

I don't know why either.

I mean, maybe just because it's been so

long since the last Half-Life came out.

I don't know.

But this is a juggernaut of a game.

Yeah.

I mean, it changed everything.

It changed everything.

Gaming changed like it.

It,

it was a, it's a revolution in PC gaming,

but it's a revolution in technology.

It's a revolution in, and, and, and the

full disclaimer, this game is on this

list, not just as Half-Life, but also for

everything Half-Life gives you.

Yeah.

And I think that's kind of important

because when you buy into Half-Life, you

buy into a valve and

mod community ecosystem

that you get to enjoy as well.

And I think that's really

where this series shines.

Like I was Half-Life is great and I, and

I could certainly talk about Half-Life,

but I think where these games shine is

what you get from buying this game.

Because I mean, maybe this is again, I'm

also kind of dating myself here a little

bit, but back in the day, you know, the

modding was such a, this revolutionary

idea of getting

multiple games out of one game.

Right.

It's like you buy a game and you have

access to every mod that

people make for that game.

Free of charge, like accessible.

I mean, you have to have a little bit of

PC knowledge, but nothing crazy.

Free of charge,

accessible, full fledged mods.

And listen, some of those mods go into,

to become full games in their own right.

Like there's games that I could tell you

right now, and I'll say the game name to

you and you'll probably recognize it and

not realize that that

started as a Half-Life mod.

The biggest being Counter-Strike.

Counter-Strike baby.

But then you have my

favorite, which is Natural Selection.

Yeah.

Not as big a name anymore as it used to

be, but you know, in its

day, very, very big game.

And not to cut you off, but Half-Life, it

can be argued, it's just a mod of Quake 2

because they use the Quake 2 engine.

Absolutely.

And you know, I think what we're getting

into with this entry, we're getting into

the power of PC gaming here.

Yeah.

Because PC gaming gives you this flexible

core that you can then pivot into a

variety of different games, whether it be

spin-offs, new games, or mods.

Right?

So you're getting like 50 plus gaming

experiences in this one game.

Yeah.

And that's what's incredible

about this entire ecosystem.

You know, you just, whatever, whatever

your flavor or taste is, you're not going

to get a mod for that, or there's a

spin-off game for that.

And you start here.

Half-Life is your starting point.

It's

the game, it gives you

like the term, you know,

the term bang for your buck.

This is the biggest gaming bang for your

buck that's ever banged for your buck.

Almost all Valve titles.

I mean, you just grab

all of them on Steam.

They're almost always cheap.

And you get access to so

many things as a result.

You get so much.

You get a treasure trove

of games from this one game.

Yeah.

You know, I remember one year, I only

remember when the orange box came out.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

And I was working at GameStop when I came

out and I had to explain

to people what this was.

They're like, what is this?

I'm like, this is like five games in one.

And they're like, are

these like mini games?

No.

No, they're full blown

mother flipping games.

Mother flipping games in one package.

You get all this stuff.

And it's like, and this was this is the

first time people

discovered left for dead.

That's how people discover that portal.

Yeah, portal.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's like these full fledged games and

you and it all starts

in this one center point.

It's just half life.

It's a revolution of

PC gaming is what it is.

This is the revolution right here.

It's half life.

Half life itself, you

know, just just the game.

Almost a horror game.

Almost a horror.

Yeah.

I would say maybe more mystery than

horror, but I mean,

good horror is mystery.

So they definitely cross over there.

But yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, you're a

theoretical physicist who's working in

his lab and something goes wrong.

And then it turns into a

survival game, so to speak, right?

A kind of pseudo FPS survival game.

You're dealing with aliens, but you're

also dealing with humans who are trying

to like, like government types.

Like it's very government conspiracy.

So you've got this.

This is, you know, I think in most FPS is

our most a lot of action games.

You're used to kind of dealing with one

kind of threat, you know,

whatever the bad guy is.

But this game, you're doing multiple

threats, you know, for different

motivation, different reasons.

Very unique on that front.

Like I've played very few games where

that was so seamlessly incorporated.

It's like, you have multiple enemies, you

know, and they could also be fighting

amongst themselves too.

Yeah.

So super dynamic and

innovative gameplay without a doubt.

And that's again, and then of course you

just buy into this whole suite of these,

this huge community buy into.

I can't tell you how many, how many hours

I spent just going into that mod treasure

chest and just trying to

see what was out there.

It's like, Oh, this mod came out.

What is this?

Oh, it's a mod that's

based on the matrix.

Oh, this mod here.

Yeah.

Why not?

This mod here is based

on a height and seek.

It's a height and seek mod.

It's like the sky was the limit.

You literally could just like spend

hundreds of thousands of hours just

digging through the mod

database of what exists.

Yeah.

And then all of a sudden you found your

favorite game in there, right?

Your favorite game is probably a mod.

Yeah, it probably is.

It probably is.

And my favorite game from this ecosystem

is natural and that's a game where you

play, you got one size

Marines, one side is aliens.

And that blew my mind.

So I was like, wait a second, how can you

have one side be

aliens, one side Marines?

They're going to be completely different.

And the game's like, you're right.

They are going to be

completely different.

And then I would kind of how that's,

that's an asymmetric multiplayer game.

Right.

And those are very few.

They're very hard to make.

A lot of people are afraid of that.

The famous one nowadays

would be like dead by daylight.

Right.

That's probably the most famous but you

don't really get that

without natural selection.

These are a lot of these other games that

are kind of paving the way for that.

But yeah, I mean, I honestly half-life I

could, I literally could have done a top

nine, which was half-life in the middle

and the new other eight were mods.

And I could have done that easily.

Like this is such a big, and that's kind

of why I said this is kind of a cop out

answer because I'm not

just talking about half-life.

I'm talking about the

entire ecosystem, if you will.

But yeah, it's the gift that this is the

gift that keeps on giving.

This is the PC revolution.

This is buy one game and entertain

yourself for the next 15, 20 years.

Yeah.

When I think about half-life,

I mean, I think you're right.

Like people don't, people talk about

half-life two more than one now, even

though I think one is the more monumental

release in many ways.

I think to appreciate half-life, you

probably should play a little bit pre

half-life stuff, whatever that is.

And we'll talk about that for my list.

But

PC gaming was always this interesting

anomaly of like, it couldn't do scrolling

super well for 2D games.

It couldn't do streaming very well, but

it could load big chunks of data and have

you be in that data set for a set, then

load the next piece of data, which was

why you get games like Doom and Quake who

just put you in a level, find some keys,

beat the monsters, get a way out.

And that's how 99% of PC games ran.

Half-life borrowed a little bit from

Quake two, but Quake two, you know, was

like the progenitor of it.

It's like, we're going to give you a

streamless experience

the entire way through.

A couple of loading screens here and

there, but we're just going to keep going

and keep going and keep going.

You're like, PC gaming can do

anything.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

Incredible.

And I

do like half-life, but my thing was

counter-striking, 1.6 especially.

In fact, to this day, when I play source

and I play the other counter strikes, I'm

like, now I'm in the same 1.6.

Hey, 1.6 was pivotal.

A lot of people, I played a lot of 1.5.

Yeah.

I played a lot of source.

I played a lot of 1.6.

Absolutely.

I mean, my God, I guarantee you, most

people don't even realize

counter-strike's

relationship with half-life.

I guarantee you they don't.

That's how big

counter-strike is on its own.

Yeah.

And I forget the guy who, there's one guy

who made counter-strike who modded

half-life to make it.

Yeah.

I don't remember his name.

I think he got one thank you royalty

check 20 years later from Valve.

Oh, something like that.

He did not get, I didn't ask for money.

It was a free thing you could just get.

Right.

It didn't cost anything.

But I mean, the amount of money valve is

made from counter-strike alone is insane.

It probably built what is valve today.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, now, now counter-strike's almost

kind of gross with all the

microtransactions you can do.

It's just 100%.

And it's, it's, it's

eclipsed half-life too.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Easily.

Absolutely.

And then so like, yeah, this isn't on the

list, but like, I think about this and

almost always very closely related to it

is max pain in that same vein of linear

storytelling, just constantly going from

beat to beat to beat.

Like, man, PC gaming is the future.

Yeah.

There was even, there was even a mod that

was similar to max pain

called the specialist.

Yeah.

Good game.

I think there's like a couple of

remasters of it that

are on the Steam page.

You can buy, I've not played any of them.

There's a fan remake as

well called black Mesa.

Black Mesa.

Yeah.

Is that any good?

I have no idea.

Yeah. It's good.

It's not the full game.

I think it's only part

one, but yeah, it's very good.

Very good.

Okay.

Yeah.

Very good.

But I'd recommend playing the OG in

whatever way you can.

Definitely recommend it.

And I definitely recommend, I mean,

again, do yourself a favor and do a deep

dive into all the kind of root tendrils

of what half-life led to one day.

And you'll see it's like it has impacted

everything into some respect.

Yep.

Yeah.

I did.

I was re I was replaying half-life one on

a steam deck recently.

It runs really well on that as you'd

expect, but you know, you never know.

I think it's free.

I think you can just

download it for free on, on steam.

Yeah.

Half-life one.

I think so.

Here's what you don't do.

Don't play the unreleased dreamcast port.

Oh, I forgot about that.

It's okay.

It controls okay.

Cause you don't have the right stick.

You just got to figure it out.

Right.

But the loading screens, it's like every

other beat has to load in an area.

And that's why PC gaming was great.

You didn't have to deal with that.

That was a dreamcast

problem in general too.

A buddy of mine has the PS two version.

And apparently that's a

lot better, but I don't know.

I, I'm just saying stay away

from the dreamcast version.

The PS two version, the hardware on the

PS two, it has a street, it has much

better streaming buffer around the buses.

So it probably streams.

It probably is a better experience.

So it's two.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, yeah, that's, I

mean, that's a good game.

I could have seen half-life one or two on

my list in some capacity.

Valve is such an

important, such an important.

But I kind of, when they were a dev, back

when they were deaf, that's right.

Now they're a juggernaut.

I kind of wanted to put valve in that

half-life makes the most sense.

I think.

Yeah.

And I think valve is the,

this half-life one is the street fighter

two in that people

forget how important this

game is, how influential and how

connected it is to

all your favorite games.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, that's good.

What's next for our list?

Let's see.

What's on the list?

Do I have any good games to talk about?

Probably not.

I think we're done at fed five.

I think there's no

more games to talk about.

Oh, what's this little game?

The bards tale, the bards tale, bards

tale tales of the unknown.

Yeah.

You ever play any bards tale ever here

with the bards tale?

I'm familiar with it.

I've never played it,

but I am familiar with it.

All right.

So once again, this is the

games that shaped us, right?

I'm not saying it's the

best game in the world.

I'm just saying it's,

you know, it's a game.

Yeah.

It's a pretty good game.

The bards tale was a kind of dungeon

crawler, first person, well, dungeon

crawler, RPG of sorts.

But this is back

before doom and other stuff.

So it was like point and click.

Let me pop this up so you can see.

This is what mid eighties I want to say.

Yeah, absolutely.

Mid eighties.

For sure.

And you would, you would build a party.

Human elf dwarf warrior, condor,

magician, rogue, bard,

paladin, hunter, monk, et cetera.

And you would go on the tail that the,

the bard had kind of

set you on and you go.

There's a couple towns you could visit.

You go into a couple of different

dungeons, a couple different, a couple of

different caves and so forth.

What's important about this game is that

we had it on our apple two GS at home.

We had an apple two GS.

Uh,

so this is where the

Oregon trail existed on.

This is where a lot of edutainment games,

but this was like not really edutainment.

It was, it was an RPG.

It was my first real

experience to a real RPG.

Yeah.

This game is why I didn't

like playing RPGs on consoles.

Cause I'm like, how do you

need the keyboard and mouse?

You can be able to figure out, you know,

the stats and so forth.

And so I just could not wrap my head

around how you'd ever play an RPG on

anything that wasn't keyboard

and mouse first person mode.

But this also

introduced me to the grinding.

And if you, if you grinded a game from a

communal aspect, it was actually really

endearing because I

never played this game alone.

I played it with my father,

my brother, my father's friend.

Like we would all huddle around the

computer together and play it together.

And my dad would like get a graph paper

and draw out maps because the game

doesn't give you a map.

You have to figure out,

you map out, you click once.

Okay.

That's one block click another time.

That's another block.

And like he was tracking that.

Another guy was tracking how much money

we were making, even though the game

would tell you, but he would track kind

of where all the, the healing spots were.

And then I would do some clicking and my

brother would do some combat stuff.

Like we all did it together.

And I'm like, you can play a single

player game, like cooperatively.

That's wild to me.

Now people listening and probably like,

yeah, of course you can do that.

But I mean, I just, I just thought it was

such a neat, cool experience.

That's awesome.

It's almost, it's almost dungeon and

dragons, like paper, RPG like where you

would do that with a group, but here we

are on digital form.

Yeah, absolutely.

It was my first kind

of experience with that.

And Ashley, because this game automated

so much of it for you, I was afraid to do

dungeons and dragons, like

TTRPG alone on a piece of paper.

Cause I'm like, well, what

if I get something wrong?

The game would always do it right.

Yeah.

But I've only ever played the first, I

think the first episode there's multiple

episodes of the bard's tail.

This game has been remade.

It's actually on Xbox

one series X, whatever.

I think it's called Xbox series X.

God damn it.

Microsoft get your shit together.

Oh my God.

They remade it with 3d

graphics, which feel gross to me.

Yeah.

But what I, again, you're seeing right

here, will your stalwart

band choose to fight around?

You always had opportunity to run, which

again, I know is a very common RPG thing,

but people forget that you

can always run away from combat.

That's right.

You can.

And this was like a dark souls game in

the sense that it was

pretty hard in the beginning.

Like you would die a lot.

Yeah.

Like a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot until you

got good enough and ground enough and

like leveled yourself up.

So we, some of the minor enemies could,

you know, you could kill them quickly.

At one point we had so much gold.

We blanked out the, the, the counter on

the screen, like get over a billion gold

and it couldn't keep up

with what we had anymore.

So we definitely overplayed this one game

in this one episode for

way, way, way too long.

Yeah.

But I love this game.

It's a, it's a fun game.

Is it for everyone?

Probably not.

But if you've played like the first

dragon quest, you

probably will get a taste of it.

If you've played some of earlier final

fantasies, you might like that.

I know that these style

of games are popular again.

Now, thanks to the PC and the kind of

boulders gate, Baldur's gate.

Yeah.

Baldur's gate's huge.

My wife loves Baldur's gate.

That's, I think she's

played that game like 12 times.

Like she just loves it that much.

Yeah.

But yeah, this was my first taste of it

and understanding that it was

a group and community effort.

It also understanding that

you're never going to be good at the game

at first, you're going to die a lot and

you're going to learn more of lay the

land, the map and other stuff.

And when you learn that you get better

and better and better and start.

It's important that

you die a lot to learn.

It really is.

Cause I think, you know, speaking of

Prince version 2008, I liked that game.

It's pretty good.

It's my favorite.

I don't think it's terrible, but that was

the game people used as an example of

like, maybe we shouldn't

have game over screens anymore.

And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

No.

That, that, yeah, that was, that was

handholding taken to the extreme.

Yeah.

Game over screens, I

think are really important.

They don't, you don't

have to have them in a game.

Now every game needs a game over screen,

but it is a, it's good for storytelling.

It's good for you developing that, that

huts both like, okay, I died this time.

Let me try to do it

better the second time.

You need to be okay with failure and

failure should not be shameful.

Yeah.

And I think game over screens, their

existence allow you to be reminded that,

Hey, because, because, because yeah,

there's a game over screen, but there's

also a continue button.

It's a continue button.

You can always go back and do it again.

I remember when we died in this game

quite a few times in the early days, my

father, his friend would always be like,

well, that's what we

could trade about video games.

You just always do it again.

So what do we do now?

We're going to do it differently.

But again, unless you

use turbo fire on us.

That's true.

Then you don't get to continue.

One buddy had a turbo fire control.

It somehow bypassed that.

It bypassed.

Somehow there's a few out there.

There's a few out there that do that.

Yeah.

Uh, but yeah, I mean,

I love it.

I also got me into computer gaming

because I always thought gaming was like,

there's edutainment.

Sure.

Then gaming was on a console.

I'm like, Oh, PC gaming

is like a legit thing.

Oh, yeah.

I didn't know that either.

Honestly.

Yeah.

Took me, took me a minute.

Took me, took me a bit.

And you know, looking at the, looking at

the screen right now, this is charming

looking like if someone made it, I think

I've seen retro people make, uh, games in

this style and just, it looks nice.

Can I just say it looks,

it still looks good to me.

Yeah.

It holds up.

It holds up, man.

It looks good.

Looks good.

Cool pixel graphics.

Cool.

Pixel graphics.

It's charming.

It's, it's, it's delightful.

Yeah.

I dig it.

All right.

I'm, I'm, we're going to

take a slight tangent here.

What is up with this war

against pixel graphics?

I'm seeing it everywhere.

People hate pixel graphics today and I, I

don't understand it.

Do you understand it?

Cause I don't,

I don't know that I don't

know that I understand it.

I've definitely seen it.

Um, I think there's, I think video games

are in a weird spot right now where we

have, we've got a new generation that

because our, you know, our generation, we

kind of, and then the game industry has

actually said this, we grew up with the

evolution of video games

in a, in a big, bad way.

There wasn't a lot of

video games before us, right?

Like not substantially anyway.

Like our, our start is there is very much

largely the, the, the big

start of the gaming industry.

And it's kind of evolving with us, right?

Like we're on PlayStation five now and

we, me and you grew up

with the PlayStation one.

We grew up.

Exactly.

The new generation

doesn't have that history.

So I think what you're

having is a market and industry.

And again, I know, I'm not saying I can

explain this, but I'm just kind of trying

to perceive what I see as a clash.

Yeah.

The market is so used to us, but it's now

having to contend with this new group

that doesn't have that history.

Yeah.

And I think there's a clash there about

what they want and what we want.

And I think that, and then the market's

kind of caught in the middle.

Not sure who to play Kate.

Maybe you're right.

Yeah.

And I'm, and I'm seeing

this happen with remakes.

I'm even seeing it happen with the

Ocarina time remake where it's like the

old head have, has one idea about it, but

then the new person looks at it and has a

completely different view because they

don't have the history.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying one is right and one

is wrong, but I'm saying there's a,

there's a, there's a, there's a, there's

a, there's a, there's
a, there's a

culture clash there.

But that's the only thing I can think of

as far as like what I'm

seeing as a kind of a discrepancy.

Yeah.

A lot of people don't like certain things

and you know, pixel art comes up, I think

in that conversation a lot.

Cause I think it's gorgeous.

I think it looks great.

I think it's amazing what they can do

with such limited resources.

I think it looks fantastic.

But I've talked to

people who think it's ugly.

I'm like, Oh, me too.

Me too.

And I'm trying to understand, like I'm

not trying to judge like what is it that

you think is ugly about this.

And, and what I try to do is I try to

think about what was the thing that I

thought was ugly when I was their age

and, and was I, was I not like, what was

I missing without the

history that they had?

You know, I sometimes

try to think about that.

I think when I was younger, I thought

there was a linearity to things.

Yeah.

You keep going, you keep going forward.

You keep there, there's, there's, there's

good and there's quote unquote bad.

Yeah.

So I can relate to that.

I, I,

yeah, I can, I can

relate a little bit to that.

Yeah.

I'm trying to remember what made me

realize that was, that was dog shit.

Yeah.

Like what made me go,

that doesn't make sense.

That doesn't make sense.

Yeah.

What was it?

Probably wasn't just one thing.

It was probably multiple things.

Just probably lots of things kind of

coming together with that.

Cause I've never once

thought this game looked ugly.

Probably because again, I was a child

when I played it and then I would look

back on it later and

look, Oh, it looks great.

Maybe that's nostalgia talking.

There have been a couple of games that I

thought were ugly, but I

think are still kind of ugly.

Like L H X helicopter on the Sega Genesis

is an awful looking video game.

Have you ever played that game?

No, I'm not.

Okay.

I, I, I feel compelled to show you then.

That's amazing.

L H X helicopter on the Sega

is a video game that they were like, Hey

guys, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey guys, hold on.

I'm calling, I'm

calling this the sub game.

The sub game conversation.

All right.

So they were like, okay.

We know the superintendent

has like the, the FX chip.

Yeah.

We're never going to get that.

So we're just going to

pretend like it's not real.

So they do 3d graphics and this is the

real frame rate that the game runs.

This is what you're seeing right here.

Oh my God.

This is real 3d graphics here.

Hey, can you put the video on normal

speed while you're playing this here?

Let me speed it up to four times.

Oh my goodness.

And then it's all in first person.

And yep, that's a runway

you're looking at right there.

And let's see,

zoom in a little more.

What was this for?

The Sega Genesis.

Oh man.

So I mean, take my hat off for a second.

It's really ambitious.

Like wow.

Cool.

And some of the art elements are

interesting to see how you're able to get it.

It's like, oh, I know what they're able

to do with it, but like, come on man.

Come on.

It's a PC SIM on the Genesis, right?

Yep.

And it's exclusive to the Genesis.

Right.

Actually, no, I'm wrong.

Apparently it did come out on the PC.

This looks

like a PC game to me.

Yeah.

Now the re now you might be asking, why

would me be, have any

exposure to a game like this?

Yeah.

This is, this is what tells you I'm a

real eighties kid kid

because of airwolf man.

I was obsessed with the TV show airwolf.

Oh my God.

Do you ever see airwolf?

No, I know of it.

I've never seen it.

Probably get demonetized for that one.

No,

it was a really bad show.

It was just about a secret

agent guy who had a super secret

helicopter helicopter called the airwolf.

Yes.

It was basically ripping off of night

rider, but this

didn't have a personality.

It was just a really

cutting edge piece of tech.

And he'd always be in the mountains

fighting bad guys doing whatever.

I was obsessed as a kid.

So my dad's like, Hey, yeah,

yeah, here's a helicopter game.

Here you go.

He got me the wrong

helicopter game desert strike.

Could give me urban strike.

Could it get me jungle strike?

No, he got me.

Yeah.

It's fine.

Yeah.

This is in our non, this is the nine

games that did not shape us.

Did not shape us or did shape us.

Unfortunately.

Unfortunately, yeah.

I should have been more ironic with that.

So overall, uh, love Bart's tail.

It's a fun time.

Yeah.

Taught me about RPGs

and a spoiler warning.

I'm not the biggest RPG fan, but I have

an appreciation for it.

And I do try to play a couple of RPGs a

year to kind of expose myself to it and

remind myself of what makes RPGs special.

What are the RPGs do you play a year just

to kind of keep yourself?

So I, I'm going through what is probably

the longest play through of

dragon quest 11 right now.

I'm like my fifth year of it.

I play it in very small bursts.

Uh,

I did, I, you know, there was a time when

I was a final fantasy head.

I played, um,

I loved this.

People are going to hate me for this.

I actually liked eight a lot.

People don't like eight.

It's, it's, it's great.

I played nine.

I went back to play seven later and I

didn't quite get what everyone else loved

about it, but you don't

respect whatever respect is.

Um, I've, I've played with my wife when

playing balters gate with her.

I love dungeon crawlers.

Sure.

Ergo.

You see the legacy of that.

So I'll play like

entry and Odyssey a bit.

Um, I love strategy RPGs.

So, you know, tactics, ogre, shining, uh,

final fantasy tactics as well as the

shining force games are great.

I call those tactical RPGs.

I'm just saying you use strategy RPG.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

S RPGs.

That's sure.

That's what they're

called on the on lines.

Yeah.

Um, I like, I like RPGs where I feel like

I have more autonomy in the choices,

whereas sometimes I play an RPG and I

feel like I'm doing a lot of planning

before and then it just happens.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

I get you.

Do you feel like there's a, do you feel

at odds with JRPGs versus Western RPGs or

does it matter to you?

You just kind of,

I am at odds because it feels to me that

a JRPG its main

function is to tell a story.

Yes.

A specific story the

author has come up with.

Right.

And I love adventure games.

I love story based games.

The RPG does not have to be the only way

in which you tell the story that you want

to tell, but it seems to be the way in

which they want to do that.

Like every time.

Yeah.

Whereas CRPGs, you make your own story.

Generally speaking, you have more

autonomy, you have more choices and you

get to create what your own narrative is.

So I do distinguish between the two.

Um, I find both fine.

Okay.

I just, I just get confused sometimes

when like, Oh, I want

to play a good story.

So I'm going to play a JRPG.

I'm like, is that the only way to do it?

Yeah.

No, I see that.

I think the JRPG, like the reputation and

the length of them just kind of like mean

story in some people's brains.

I feel like.

Yeah.

And some of them are long, long and I'm

like, why is this taking so long?

Not a, not an RPG at all, but I just did

a, I did a performance let's play for a

game called Schrodinger's call.

Wow.

Um, it's a narrative game where all the

actors, myself included played whatever

role you have and we

don't know what's coming.

We just have no idea.

We're just going through it.

We're just narrating

each thing that's happening.

Very cool.

Very neat.

In-prong narration.

Very neat.

But I mean, that was a game that overly

explained everything to like a nauseating

degree that I'm like, we could have shot

this by like four hours, man.

Like this is,

this is like JRPG levels

like over explaining stuff.

Come on.

I get it.

That's the bad guy.

I get it.

I learned that like three turns ago.

Can we just, okay, stop

explaining this to you?

Okay.

It's fine.

I played the cat called Hamlet.

The cat called Hamlet.

Hamlet.

He's a guiding character to the

protagonist and he's a

very mischievous character.

As a cat.

Yeah.

But he's the one that breaks the fourth

wall in the very end and realizes we've

been playing a game the whole time.

Whoa.

Wow.

It's very cool.

Interesting.

It was very cool to be in the room and

all of us are realizing

the same things together.

Like, wow.

Very cool.

Anyway, enough about me.

That's Bard's Tale.

Bard's Tale.

Now we're on to your seventh pick.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

Oh man.

Oh boy.

Um,

this game, this game,

this game right here,

this game.

Oh, it's a good one.

It's a good one.

This game right here.

So you remember how I said metal gear

showed me what video games could be?

Yes.

And then Shamu showed me a deeper dive

into their potential.

Okay.

Especially in an open world setting.

And then Majora's also, I would say did

the something along the similar path of

just kind of showing me what a video game

could be in its potential.

This is, this is another

step in that direction.

Okay.

I didn't know a game could do this.

Okay.

I didn't know a game could be this

and we're talking about an action game.

How long is your game?

Black Ninja Gaiden black.

Just be clear.

We're talking about the Xbox game.

We're talking about the

game and not the remake.

We're talking about Ninja Gaiden black on

the Xbox and not OG Ninja

game either on the Xbox.

Which is a very good game.

Very good game.

Ninja Gaiden black on the Xbox.

It's, it's the game that I, it's the game

that I played the

most on the Xbox by far.

I, I, when I say this next sentence, I'm

not really exaggerating

because I still think it's true.

This is maybe the greatest looking video

game I've ever seen in my life.

Greatest looking, greatest looking.

Even today, I still feel like, like I've

never seen to see this

game back in the day.

Again, going back to the Metal Gear show

me Majora path of I didn't

know a game could do this.

I didn't know a game

could look this good.

I didn't know a game

could play this good.

I didn't do this.

I didn't know that I could be put

forward, put front and center of an

action masterpiece like this and be mind

blown by what was

possible for an action piece.

Again, like it's not a

very complicated game, but

it's to such a degree that I didn't think

was possible for a video game.

Yeah.

And a lot of these games,

that's a really current trend.

Like this game showed me the potential of

what the gaming medium could do.

And this game does, does this on a

graphical technical and on

an action gameplay level.

It's one of the most impressive action

games I've ever seen,

but also ever played.

When you say it's the most impressive

game that how it looks to tell that

explain that to me, because I think I

follow, but what do you mean?

take, you know, what this came out while

I want to say 2000, two, chosen three,

maybe it was like 2003, right?

Right.

Yeah.

I think so.

If you think about action games prior to

that, none of them come even

close to looking like this.

Yeah.

I mean, it's such a stark contrast.

2004.

Okay.

None of them come even close to looking

like this, playing like this, the fluid,

the movement, the feel of it.

Again, like I didn't, it felt like I was

playing a game from the future.

Yeah.

It felt like someone time traveled and

said, Hey, this is the game

we're playing in 20 years.

Here you go.

Is what this game feels like to me.

And I can say the same thing about chemu

and about metal gear to

some respect, but this game,

it, like I thought I was up to date on

what a video game could be.

In this case, it's what

an action game can be.

And this game raised the bar on my, on my

expectations of what that is.

And again, graphically, I had never seen

a game that looked this good before in

terms of presentation, in terms of

cinematics, in terms of animations.

Frame rate.

Like I was used to action games really

suffering in it, like really having to

play this game of like, well, do we want

to have a game that's looking great, but

also sacrifice right?

Or do we want to have a game that has

beautiful frame rate, but it's a very,

you know, lower spec kind of game.

Sure.

This game was like, no,

we're going to do both.

No, we're going to do both.

This game doesn't compromise.

I think that's kind

of what I'm getting at.

This game doesn't make any compromises.

Sure.

Most games have to do that.

Tobin, tall, Toma Nobu,

eat, eat a guy eat a gecky.

If I'm pronouncing that correctly, was

basically like he was working on this

game on PS2 and he

thought the PS2 is too weak.

And he really migrated over to the Xbox.

And he gave the compelling argument.

Oh, okay.

No, I mean, you couldn't, you couldn't,

you really couldn't make

this game on another system.

It had to be Xbox.

The closest is Devil May Cry 3.

Devil May Cry 3.

Yeah.

But again, I'm losing, I'm

a huge Devil May Cry fan.

Devil May Cry is on

my honorable mentions.

Devil May Cry 3, especially.

Yeah.

I love Devil May Cry.

Doesn't come close to this in terms of

presentation looks

like this game is mine.

That first boss is the

first boss battle on the blimp.

Yeah.

The electric Gatling gun guy.

Yeah.

I had a hard time beating that not

because it was difficult because I

couldn't stop staring at it and I'm

getting killed while I'm staring at it.

Yeah.

That's never happened before.

Like up to that point.

And really since then, I don't really get

that mesmerized anymore.

But up to that point, I was like, I was

staring at the game so much I was dying

because I'm just staring at it.

Yeah.

Again, once again, no

compromises on what a game can be.

This game right here.

And listen, I didn't know that story

about him switching off the PS2, but it

makes sense because he

didn't want to compromise.

And it's like, I can use,

he's kind of known for that.

You're seeing me, he

wears a leather jacket.

He's a little uncompromising.

He's a little bit of a brazen individual.

Exactly.

This is ammunition to

be like, Oh, nevermind.

He knows what he's talking about.

Like he, he, he doesn't, he, he doesn't

want to, like he's the guy,

you know, you know, he is,

he's the guy who goes, okay,

I want the sushi restaurant.

I want the high end sushi restaurant.

And I also want this fast food burger and

I want to put him on.

And everyone's like, you're an idiot.

You're an idiot.

You're crazy.

And he's like, no, I want to do both.

And you're all going

to tell me I'm crazy.

You're all going to tell me I'm wrong and

I'm going to do it

and prove you're wrong.

Right.

And that's why we get this.

And that's why we get,

I think, dead or alive.

And that's why we get what we get in no

compromise is and rest in peace, right?

No compromises for what I want to make.

Yeah.

And

Edogaki, I credit his dead or alive

success and probably this game to, to him

having a conversation with, I think the

VP of creative design at

Sega at like a, at like a bar.

And he's like, yo, tell me

how Virtua Fighter works.

I can't figure out how you

made Virtua Fighter work.

And apparently in that conversation

mapped out how Virtua Fighter worked.

And then he took that

and made dead or alive.

Yeah, that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense.

Yeah.

Again, the, the, the, the roots are

there, especially with that are alive.

You know, you see the virtual fighter,

but you see his style come out and again,

he doesn't want to compromise either way.

He's like, I want to do the thing that

you did, but I also

want to infuse my style.

Sure.

Yeah.

And this game is, I want to, I wanted to

present the way I wanted to present, but

I want it to be a fluid,

perfect action game as well.

And we're not going to

compromise either one.

Damn, the consequences

almost is his attitude, right?

And the thing that gets lost because we

live in a post ninja guide in black

world, we live in a ninja Sigma world and

a two and a whatever.

Yeah.

The first Ninja guide in this one in

black has like a Zelda element to it.

Like you're, you're going down a journey.

Like there's a little bit of an

overworld, like you're solving a little

bit of, there's not that many puzzles,

but there's a couple of things where like

you feel like this world is connected.

Yes.

Almost.

I would almost say a dark souls quality.

Yeah.

A little bit.

Yeah.

And I've always liked that about Ninja

guide in black specifically.

Absolutely.

100%.

Yeah.

Not, not even like having even talked

about the actual game, really talking

about how it, how it,

what's different about.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

It absolutely has a Zelda dark, dark

souls interconnectivity

open world vibe to it.

It's wonderful.

And by the way, I

don't know if this is true.

I've heard rumor.

Maybe you know, I heard they melted X

boxes in development of making this game.

Oh, I don't know that.

I, I, it's

possible.

I heard during development, they were,

they were, they, they were so intense,

the gross overload that they were melting

X boxes because of how much

they needed for this game.

I, it wouldn't surprise me.

It wouldn't surprise me either, but

that's what I heard.

I don't know how true that is.

Yeah.

This game almost made my list because it

is in my opinion, the definition of what

I would call a killer app in that I

bought an X box just to play this game.

Absolutely.

So Xbox was around.

Halo was about, but like, I didn't, I

played enough

first-person shooters in my day.

I didn't think Halo was enough of a

reason for me to get an X box for them.

But this game comes out and I go,

I don't think the PS2 can do this.

No, the game cube can't do it.

And I love, I love ninja

guide and like on the NES.

Like I grew up with that.

Yeah.

So I literally bought

an X box and this game.

And it was one of the

greatest decisions ever made.

I'm like, holy

crap, this game's amazing.

Listen, I was a Shinobi fan.

Yeah.

I love Shinobi on the PlayStation too.

And then this came

and just took that spot.

100%.

You're going to get right from it.

Yeah.

It was so good.

And then so good.

And then unfortunately I sold, I kept the

Xbox for like a year and I played a

couple of X box titles, but nothing

really impressed me that I'm like, I'm

just going to sell it.

Yeah.

And I regret it.

Cause then like shortly after

black comes out, God damn it.

Yeah.

I did play the hurricane packs though.

Okay.

And the hurricane packs is

very similar to what's in black.

In fact, in the hurricane pack, there's a

technique that you get like a reflect

technique or something

like a Perry basically.

And it's so powerful that they actually

removed it in black.

It's called intercept.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

So what happens is it basically is a

Perry where you can counteract any enemy

attack, including bosses, including

bosses and attack them back.

And it was really powerful.

It was too strong.

It was only in one of the hurt and one of

the DLC hurricane packs.

And it was so powerful.

They got rid of it in black.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I can see that.

Interesting.

And in case it wasn't clear, I think it

is at this point, but my name Kitezu

comes from this game.

if you needed proof of how

much this game means to me,

and to be fair, it's a combination of one

piece and this game.

Cause there's a, there's a sword in one

piece called Kitezu as well.

But I've always been, and they're both

similar because obviously that's the

root, the root mythology behind Kitezu.

I've always been

fascinated by curse swords.

I love curse swords to me are so cool.

And the Kitezu in this game is it's a

sword drains your health.

And then in later

versions, you can remove that.

But yeah, the sword drains your health.

You get a credible power,

but it drains your health.

And then in one piece, the Sandaikitezu

is a curse sword as well.

Yeah.

And you know, I love Ninja Gaiden 2,

especially if you can run it on a series

X, cause then it can run a 4k perfect 60.

It doesn't drop frames anymore.

Right.

But black is really special.

I don't quite like Sigma very much.

And I don't either.

I don't love Sigma 2 at all.

And then, um, sometimes when I feel like

punishing myself, a razor's edge, uh, is

a game I play sometimes.

I've never played four.

Okay.

I was just going to

ask you to be played for.

I haven't played four yet.

Okay.

I recommend playing it.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

It's very different from Ninja Gaiden.

Um, and when you see, I mean, you see it

was developed by, it makes sense, but,

uh, yeah, it's, it's not, it's very

different than Gaiden.

I would say.

Gotcha.

All right.

Yeah.

I mean, I enjoyed it.

Great game.

Great soundtrack.

Oh yeah.

I love the main theme to this game.

It's very like dark and oppressive, kind

of like a Danny Elfman vibe.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

No, I, I, I honestly like, I'm surprised

it's as low on my list as it is.

It really should be higher, but I think

it, again, it, it, it

didn't revolutionize me.

It pushed the envelope.

Yeah.

For gaming had this game, had I played

this first before these other games, it

probably would have been higher.

Yeah.

For sure.

It just, it, it took the foundation of

the revolution that I already had and

then just kind of pushed it further.

You know,

that's, that's what this game, this is,

this is one of those games that just kind

of pushes my understanding of game, the

medium to have to further, you know, and

I mean, I know for me when I

played Ninja Gaiden loved it.

And then I was waiting for that next game

to like come close to it.

Yeah.

It never really came.

Never really came.

Oh my God.

I remember playing devil

McRae three, loved the game.

Yeah.

Well, shading the game at all.

But I'm like, this is

nothing compared to doesn't come.

Ninja Gaiden black.

Doesn't honestly, it

doesn't come close for me.

And I'm a huge development cry fan.

Yeah.

Fun fact from a vibe perspective, I like

the vibes of DMC one more like in terms

of that Gothic almost kind of resin.

I missed that.

I get that.

I totally get that.

It's, it's Gothic, Resident Evil.

It's castles.

I get it.

Like I don't know.

Car one is a

phenomenal, I love don't know.

It's phenomenal.

You know, a game that I think

I like this game better, but I, I, I,

Sekiro for me, there was something about

Sekiro that had a very

Ninja Gaiden vibe to it.

Okay.

But, but no, I, I still, nothing really

has come close to this game.

Yeah.

Game black.

It's to me, it's kind of a peak.

It's peak action, peak technical

performance, peak action.

Now I think because of Sekiro, which is,

I think the only Dark Souls game I've

been able to get through this.

Yeah.

And this one

I've been, I, I might have a handicap and

it comes to enjoying

like Dark Souls games.

Cause like to me,

this is Dark Souls esque.

It's got a lot of that same elements.

It does.

I cut my teeth on this game.

It's great.

And so now you're asking me to do exactly

the same thing, but in

a slower RPG dynamic.

That's the problem.

The bar is too high for me.

Yeah.

And you're, you're, you're

trying to get me to lower it.

And I'm just like, ah, I don't want to.

Yeah.

Because I played the game from the guy

who doesn't want to compromise anything.

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's tough.

It's rough.

It's tough.

Yeah.

So it's tough.

And I've, and even when this game is

quote unquote worse, meaning the Sigma

version, it's still a great game.

It's still the bones are so good.

The bones.

Yeah.

I mean, again, even if you just played

the Sigma version, that's fine.

Like you're still going to be blown away.

I played the Sigma version

of the Vita the other day.

Wow.

It runs at 30 frames per

second, but it's solid.

I bet it does.

It doesn't drop.

That's pretty awesome.

And it was still very fun and playable.

Can you real quick just play the first

boss battle for Ninja

Gaiden black on the blimp?

I don't even know.

It's in this footage, but I

just, for anyone who's, I just want to

show that because just

so you can get an idea

of, of how I'm blowing.

Yeah.

Fighting on a blimp during a thunderstorm

with a guy that uses electricity.

So cool.

I mean,

I mean, what more do you want?

And the way his armor

was shiny and stuff.

Yes.

Yeah.

Look at this.

This is cinematics.

My God.

Incredible.

I remember thinking, Oh, in a couple of

years, we'll have in-game graphics as

good as these cinematics

and not quite, not quite.

No, like technically we do, but the arts,

the art artistry isn't always there.

Yes.

That's the problem.

Yeah.

Amazing.

It's cool.

And hot take in Sigma that the very first

fight you have is against

Dojima.

What's his name?

The arms, the scent, the black samurai

that the ghost sent.

What's his name?

Um,

I'm forgetting his name.

I can't remember his name either.

Um, doesn't your father fight him in

this guy, right?

Yeah.

Sigma, you actually fight this battle.

I think it's worse.

You do fight this battle.

I don't think you

should be able to fight him.

I think you need to see this whole

cinematic where he gets his ass kicked.

I think so too.

That's the whole point of the journey.

Yeah.

Right there.

Bam.

Yeah.

So you get spoiler warning.

Ryu Hayabusa dies, man.

Dies.

And it's the dragon sword that saves him.

I love, I love that his, uh, you read his

stats and in Dutter live, Rio Hayabusa

and his, his hobby is,

is antique store owner.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

Great game.

Cinematic game, hard game,

fun game, replayable game.

Yep.

And it's a ninja game.

I love ninja games.

Ninja games are great.

When

they're done, right.

There's some of the best video games you

could possibly play.

And when they're done, awfully, they can

sometimes be the worst.

But who cares?

Yeah.

I mean, I mean, it's still,

you're still playing as a ninja.

We're still playing as a ninja.

That's correct.

Yeah.

I could have did a top

nine, just ninja games.

No joke.

Oh yeah.

Maybe we should do that.

I don't know.

We'll see.

I could, I could do that easily.

Easily.

Right.

Easily do that.

All right.

Well now it's up to me.

Oh man.

What's this game about?

Oh my God.

Oh my God, dude.

Oh my goodness.

Metal Gear Solid 2, the Sons of Liberty.

Oh my goodness.

The Sons of Liberty.

Oh my God.

You had MGS one on your list.

I did.

And I thought about it.

Yeah.

I really thought about it.

I'm glad.

I'm glad this is on your list.

I really am.

Uh, MGS one could have been on the list.

MGS three could have been on the list.

I thought long and hard about this.

Yep.

I settled on two for a very good reason.

Well, at least I hope

it was a good reason.

I don't know.

It's absolutely, it's

absolutely good reason.

Uh, let's see if I can move this here.

There's no bad reason

for selling on MGS two.

I'm sorry.

So I'm, uh, oop, did I just lose you?

No.

No, I did.

How do you do it?

In the feed, you're gone.

Oh yeah.

I am.

You can hear me though.

I can hear you.

Just, you're gone, gone.

And my, I'm just on

my, my camera's still on.

Your camera is not on anymore.

Let me try it.

Let me, let me do it.

Let me try it again.

My camera is broadcasting,

but I'm not on the feed for some reason.

Hold on.

I think I know why.

How about that?

There we go.

Ah, there we go.

Yeah.

MGS two is, uh, wow.

Okay.

So MGS one comes out

and it blows my socks off.

Just like your story does.

It blew my soul.

I was like, holy crap.

Socks are gone.

And then I was so obsessed with MGS that

I needed to play VR

missions when it came out.

And I was obsessed with VR missions.

Of course.

Obsessed.

And then we see like the first trailer

for MGS two, which is a nine minute E

three trailer, which they actually

broadcast in Paramount movie lots.

And that got sold out like every time

they kept showing it.

And it just blew my mind.

It's like, holy crap.

Insane insanity.

And then I get the game

and a lot of people had their own

experience playing the

game for the first time.

And it was common for a lot of people to

be upset, angry, frustrated.

They felt hoodwinked, whatever.

And I'm, I'm walking

away in my experience.

Like this is fucking genius.

This is fucking genius.

how do you follow up one of

the great games of all time?

You tell people you're going to get

exactly what you want.

And then we flip it on its head and like,

now we're going to give you something

totally different and we're going to

point the finger at you and

say, this is what you want.

Right.

And now you're getting it.

Um, I, I still, I'm not

spoil how this game goes.

I want people to play it, but it is a

game that even if you kind of know the

twist that happens halfway through, if

you know what's coming, it still will

give you tons of interesting surprises

and it'll make you

look inside of yourself.

Um, if you've played VR missions,

I think there's a very strong theory.

And sometimes I subscribe to this that

MGS two is the end of a trilogy.

It's it's MGS one VR missions.

And then this game.

Okay.

I've heard this before.

And you're it.

MGS two recontextualizes MGS one in that

what you were seeing in MGS one aren't

really the real events.

It was what was fed

to you in a simulation.

Yeah.

And you were another character kind of

reliving that experience.

And again, Hideo has said many times it

was supposed to be the final MGS before

he was kind of forced

into making more games.

And sometimes he does a good job.

Sometimes he doesn't have my opinion, but

it could have ended here.

And I would have been

super happy with it.

I'm showing footage of substance right

now because, uh, part of me wanted to do

the original, but part of

me loves substance as well.

Cause I love the VR missions.

I was so, I was

obsessed with VR missions.

I was also obsessed with VR missions and

I was a avid, a regular practitioner of

clear codes with VR missions.

Yeah.

Cause we give you a code every time you

did a mission and you could load it up to

the official Konami website.

That's right.

Just like Ekaruga did when I was talking

about that last episode.

Yeah.

I believe some of my

scores are still up there.

Yeah.

Still.

Yeah.

I mean, I have a, there was one guy that

I, that I battled feverishly with.

Um, and I still was

one, one of my best friend.

I still junk with him.

I saw his username.

His username was MB craftsman.

And we would go back and forth.

That's awesome.

I would clear faster than him.

Then he would beat mine.

And then I would do him.

And we just kind of back and forth, back

and forth, back and forth.

And just to, yeah, it's, it's so good.

And MGS two is still by far, in my

opinion, on the hardest difficulty, the

hardest stealth action Metal Gear game.

Oh, oh my God.

Yeah.

Because on MGS in European extreme, if

you want to get the highest rank, you can

only save eight times.

You can only have so many bullets.

It counts how many

bullets you, like it is

insane.

It taxes you every step of the way.

Yeah.

I think it's perfect though, that this

game comes out after your game because I

love Ninja Gaiden black and it absolutely

could never have happened on any other

piece of hardware than the X-Box.

But if you tried to play this game on the

X-Box, cause there was an X-Box version,

there was of substance.

It was, um, it can't

keep the rain effects.

It can't, the frame rate

just drops like mad crazy.

Yeah.

They, they did a lot of clever

architecture stuff with this game on the

PS2 that I don't think

you can replicate very well.

So this game taught me that you don't

have to have the most

cutting edge technology.

You have to have just the

most creative engineers.

That is correct.

And on top of it, I love

the storytelling element.

I loved how verbose the storytelling was

compared to the first game.

The first came in a very different

storytelling style, very action, very,

very American, probably

because of Jeremy Blaustein.

This one had more of like a Japanese like

meanderingness to it that I love.

I thought what worked really well for the

narrative it was telling.

Yeah.

And I would have loved an alternative

universe where if we had to get an MGS

three slash four, we weren't playing a

snake like character just because of how

this game ends and the way it sets things

up for snake kind of

being done with everything.

Yeah.

We don't get back, but you

know, that is what it is.

The graphics were amazing.

It took me a while to wrestle with the

controls because now you have first

person aiming, which

you didn't have before.

That took me a minute to figure that out.

You, you had first

person, but not aiming.

Right.

And then if you played MGS one integral,

you got an entire bonus mode that was

just in first person.

You could play the entire game in first

person mode, which was wild.

Yeah.

I forgot about that, but I

love the, the music is great.

Uh, people often credit the music to

Harry Greggs and Williams,

but I gotta be honest folks.

There's another unsung here when it comes

to the music of MGS two.

Hold on.

I want to make sure I

get their name right.

Cause I always get it wrong.

Hold on.

Come on.

What's her name?

Uh, Norihiko Hibino, who

is actually a jazz musician.

He did all the in game music, like the

battle music, the jazz positions.

Yes.

He does this MGS

threes entire soundtrack.

And then he does a couple of tracks and

then just four and then he's gone.

We don't ever hear from him again.

I think Harry Greggs, Williams gets,

because I think this is the only video

game he's ever done.

If I'm not,

he does this some bits of three and some

bits of four, but he was a movie.

I'm sorry.

Let me rephrase that.

Only, only series.

Yes.

Uh-huh.

He's never done any

other video game series.

And he's a, he's a film like composer.

Exactly.

And I, I think that's why he gets so much

credit just because, Hey, he doesn't do

games, but he did this game, this series.

Yeah.

And we know Hideo loves his Hollywood.

That exactly.

That's what I'm getting at.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, if there's any, if there's one flaw

this game makes in my opinion, sure.

MGS one has two

different endings you can get.

Yep.

This one says one of

those endings is canon.

Correct.

And for me, I always thought the most

interesting ending of MGS

one was when Merrill dies.

I think that's the cooler,

better ending just from a stare.

No, I agree.

Yeah.

I agree.

And this game plays as if auticons ending

is when you, when you walk into this

game, it almost feels like it's the

autocon ending at first.

It almost does.

But then there's like one codec call that

implies that that's not the case.

I'm like,

yeah.

Yeah.

That, that felt the best to me.

Um, these, what we're seeing right now,

we're seeing like computer

graphics where the art used to be.

I love the original art of

MGS one of the codec calls.

I think that does look better, but it was

amazing to see this happen in real life.

Holy cow.

Yeah.

It felt it was, it was a cool tech devo

jump from this experience.

Right.

And you could zoom in on their faces.

You could click the bar stick and have

them talk what their inner thoughts were.

You could move it around in the frame.

Yep.

Very interactive.

It felt like this is the game where it

felt like you were

playing in a mini sandbox.

Absolutely.

Because of all the little itty bitty

things you could do within the tanker and

within the second chapter of the game.

Yes.

It's a very almost like toy like

experience in some respect.

Yeah.

Like everything is, everything is

touchable, you know.

And then I'd be remiss if I didn't at

least say that I got my, I got my

bachelor's degree of

English because of this game.

Dude, that's a wild

thesis is about this game.

That's a wild sentence to say.

And I'm wearing the cap unreliable

narrator for a reason.

Yeah.

Yeah. About this particular game in particular,

the PS2 was just known for the sis and

silent Hill two or just like, yes, yes.

Kings of like, uh, what you're getting by

the way, what's that same

year, same year, same year.

You're right.

And both Konami, right?

Yeah.

But yeah, I did not walk away being

bummed out by how the game works out.

I thought it was great.

I loved it.

And I was ready for, if they ever made an

MGS three and snake wasn't in the picture

anymore, I was ready for that.

Cause it felt, it felt

like his arc was done.

I felt like we were done with it.

We kind of got that

kind of sort of

kind of, we got snake,

but not snake, right?

Yep.

So yeah.

And my criticism of just three is the

amount of jokes they make

about Rykoff who is AKA.

Yes.

And that was Hideo showing that he will

never stick to his original thesis.

He wants to make people happy and he

wants people to like him.

I have a criticism about him about that.

Like he, I think that's fair.

He'll come up with this really ambitious

thing, but then if you don't like it,

he'll, he'll come

back and make you happy.

Yeah.

I mean, that's by nature,

that's what MGS three going it.

Cause he, cause he was done after this.

He was done.

So it kind

of is that from the,

from just by the default.

Yeah.

Now I loved the way this game controlled

so much that I was so

on board for twin snakes.

Cause the premise was let's take MGS one,

the story and give you the

controls and systems of MGS two.

That was literally the selling point.

That was exactly what it was.

I was super excited.

I still like that game quite a bit.

And

the main difference being how the

cinematics work and how

some of the bosses work.

Oh yeah.

But I've always envisioned that is

if MGS one is the

simulation that Raiden plays in

twin snakes is Raiden's

recollection of those moments.

Oh, interesting little twist, which of

course, if you're remembering how badass

snake is, of course you did

a back flip off of a rocket.

Of course he did.

Cause he's fucking snake snake.

Yeah.

Of course you did.

Yeah.

No, that, that, that, that is

more like a dreamlike sequence.

If you think of it like that.

Yeah.

And look at how the rain hits the, lens.

Love it, dude.

That was so impressive.

This entire opening is

one of the most, one of the crowning

achievements for the PS2

and that city line is just a 2d texture,

but it looks like it's not quite now.

Yeah.

They did a lot of cool little tricks to

just kind of make things look way better

than they actually were.

Yeah.

And then, you know, if you want to get

real meta gamey about it

in, in the first part, the tanker, you

only see like one half of the tanker.

You never see the other half.

Right.

You get, you can see it.

If you go up to the top of that tower,

you can see a little bit of it, but like

you never get access to it.

You don't get that right.

Right.

And then the second chapter of this game,

you're told there's two plants.

You only really get access to one.

That's right.

And like, that's the

whole thing about the game.

You never fully get the

thing that you're wanting.

You never, you're always unsatisfied.

And I love that in, it's a very Japanese

sentiment, but I love

that in, in my gaming.

And so this was a moment of me going, I

love this game and everyone around me is

like, Oh, this game fucking sucks.

I hate it.

It was the worst game ever made.

I'm like, what did we play the same game?

Did we play the same game?

Here's the thing.

Those people are wrong.

And

yeah,

I'm of the opinion that I'd rather end on

a question mark than a really boring

solution to everything.

Ooh, every time.

I always want the imp, I

want to end on a question mark.

I want to end on a right before, like, I

mean, if you've seen inception, does the

dreidel drop or not gives a shit?

It cuts before you

get to see what happens.

Like I want to end on that moment of

like, what could happen?

And so, and just who gave me that?

like a good solution, but I'll take a

more interesting

question over a boring solution.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

No doubt.

Funny thing about this game.

I wanted this game so bad

when zoning enders came out.

Yeah.

Okay.

Had a demo of this game.

So me thinking I was smart, went to

blockbuster and was like, Hey, let me

rent zone of the enders.

Meanwhile, I'm like, Hey,

I'm going to steal this demo.

So I get the game.

And of course what happened?

Everybody already stole the demos.

Of course.

They're all gone.

So I was like, I don't want to play this

zone of the, what I want to play.

This zone of the whatever, whatever it is.

Sure.

One of the enders.

What does that mean?

I don't want to play this.

I won't play metal gears halt too.

So I'm just going to

buy the game 50 bucks.

I borrowed the money

because I didn't have any money

for a long time.

I didn't know.

I was starting money

until like last year.

Anyway,

I bought, I borrowed the

money, bought the game,

played that demo for

like three months straight.

Seriously.

Yeah.

Like literally.

And it was the Japanese version played it

like three months straight and just

understood everything about that demo.

I had, I played that demo so much.

I had fantasies of the demo glitching out

and giving me more of the game on

accident, you know, stuff like that.

And then one day I was like, like three

or four months later, I

was like, you know what?

I bought, I paid $50 for this game.

Let me play the actual game that I

bought, which is zone of the enders.

And it's one of my

favorite games of all time.

That ends on the enders too.

I say second runners.

Great.

Yeah.

I love zone the enders so much.

So the enders was on my honorable

mentions that almost made this list, but

it just goes to show you, it's like, Hey,

you know, try the thing out for you.

But I played this so much and then when

medical saw two came out,

I was in seventh grade.

I skipped school.

Of course I did.

Now, now here was the

challenge for me though.

At this time they were still giving

emirate games to kids,

but a bunch of parents had

complained at my local KB toys.

So even though the industry was still not

ready for that, like this, my KB toys in

particular was getting strict about it.

So my, I had a whole game plan of like,

okay, I'm skipping school.

I'm going to, I'm going

to head down to KB toys.

How am I going to trick

them into giving me this game?

So I came up with like 14 different

scenarios for how I could

get this game from them.

Like one was like, Oh, I'm getting it

from my older brother.

It's like, he's right outside.

Like he's super pissed off today.

Cause he just got laid off from work.

Like I created a whole

scenario so they don't question it.

And I, and I was like, how

am I going to get this wrong?

And I came up with like

14 different scenarios.

And I went in there and I'm like,

let me get MGS two.

And the reason why,

and he goes, here you go.

I was like, what?

He's like, yeah.

I was like, Oh, you

just, you just gave it to me.

I spent like the whole walk, like several

miles, by the way, walking, trying to

figure out how I was

going to snake this from you.

But you're just like, Oh, here you go.

Snake it.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's my MGS two story.

And then I played this game religiously

for the next two years.

I mean, God.

Yeah.

There's so, and by the way, I've played

this game more than I played

any other Metal Gear by far.

Okay.

Like by a large margin.

And partly reasons cause I got obsessed

with VR clear codes, right?

Yeah.

Sure.

As I talked about, I got so obsessed with

those every single week I was going

online and trying to figure out, I didn't

even have a computer.

I would try to find a computer that I

could go online and try to find that MB

craftsman beat my score today.

And then he would beat it.

And I'd be like, that's son of a bitch.

And I'd have to get in

there, that game and beat that.

And then substance had clear codes too.

I did the same thing in substance.

Yep.

You know, so yeah, I played this more

than any other Metal Gear

by far by a large margin.

My disc, I literally broke almost, I

think my original disc is good, but I

definitely broke my substance disc just

from handling it so much.

And I had to get it resurfaced.

Yeah.

But I just handling

the substance so much.

I definitely scratched it up.

You know, I think I'm just too, would

have been in my most played.

I think yeah, up until

what's your most played?

Is it three?

I think it might be three now.

Oh, understand fair.

Because I've like mastered that game and

how to play it on European extreme, get

fought, you know,

get, right, get Fox rank.

Like I've just devoured

that particular game so much.

But, but that was,

we're kind of going ahead a little bit,

but like the first time I played MGS

three, I played it once.

I crawled the entire time.

I thought that's what

you're supposed to do.

And I thought it was an okay video game.

I didn't love it.

Like I did MGS two.

Played it a second time a year later when

subsistence came out.

Yeah.

Finally understood what

the game really was about.

Loved it.

But then I still spent most of my time

playing Metal Gear Online, like the PS2

version of Metal Gear Online.

Of course, of course.

And I don't really, I think it was

maybe 10 years ago.

Okay.

So 2015, that's when I got back into MGS

three and just was

replaying it over and over.

And then that might have gotten me over

this, but before then, yes.

MGS two was absolutely the game.

I played it.

So prior to the new jump, it was MGS two.

Okay.

And,

and again, I love Peace Walker because

Peace Walker marries the elements of VR

missions, the structure of that into a

Metal Gear game and just,

Absolutely.

And just to, it's amazing.

It's fantastic.

Also no ray tracing, no

advanced physics engines.

Glasses break and you're shooting things

out that an artist just did all of that.

Yup.

So good.

Yup.

And they, they, they

would mask frame rate.

They would take technical things that

were technically intense that would cause

huge frame rate drips, dips.

They would mask it with motion blur.

So they would do these little visual

effect tricks to mask.

And it was cinematic.

And it was, oh, it's cinematic.

It's not bad frame rate.

It's cinematic.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

What a great game.

Amazing.

Legendary.

One of the greatest games of all time.

Absolutely.

And again, I could have put MGS one.

I could have put MGS three.

I just was like two, man.

There's no wrong answer.

There's just not.

Like MGS two was the very

top of my honorable mentions.

I think for me, if MGS two had been a

true straight sequel to one, it would

have somehow been disappointing.

So the fact that it just really flips

everything on its

head, changes things up.

Yeah.

It's so crazy how it, I don't want to say

ignores MGS one, but it really

is its own identity of a game.

It really isn't trying

to be MGS two per se.

Right.

Yeah.

I've always felt that it is, okay, this

is what you get if you really wanted to

live in a world where MGS one exists, you

are now that person.

You try to rise up and be this snake

character that by the way

is fictitious, isn't real.

See what happens.

Have fun with that.

Yeah.

But I've always, I, you know, I don't

want to steal your thunder when you talk

about this game, but like, I've always

liked the archetype of the person who is

new in a rookie, into a situation and

trying to figure out the

world, just like I am as the player.

I think that's a really cool thing.

The fish out of water character.

So for that reason, I've always liked

Leon Kennedy in RE two specifically.

Sure.

Not necessarily for in the other games,

but like in that one where he's like,

he's competent, which by the way, there's

a whole thing about competence porn.

Like I love it when someone is competent,

but like still in a scary

situation, but still being unsure.

And I always felt that way about Raiden.

I never felt some of the

complaints that character gets.

I've never felt that way about right.

I, I, I very quickly

jumped on the bandwagon.

Okay.

I'm being honest and hated Raiden.

Sure.

But when I started

thinking for myself, I loved him

thinking for yourself,

wait, you can't do that.

You're not allowed.

You're not allowed to, but,

but it's secret.

You can, as long as no

one's watching, you can

don't give up your street cred, right?

Yeah.

Don't get your street cred

in front of people bandwagon.

But when you're by

yourself, think for yourself.

Now, what I will never get over about

this game is a core memory that I have

where I think I got it the weekend it

came out, but a buddy of mine gone the

day it came out, like

the midnight release.

Yep.

And to this day, I can't tell if this

guy's lying to me or not, but he tells me

that he got it at the midnight release

and he, I see him the next day at school.

And he says he beat it.

Part of me thinks that's possible.

And part of me goes no fucking way.

And I can't, I think he's

lying, but it is possible.

Uh, I remember people, it's kind of

reminds me of people buying Grand Theft

Auto three and saying they beat it

without a memory card because a lot of

people didn't have memory cards.

Like they bought the system and GTA

three, but didn't get a memory card cause

they couldn't afford it.

So they just played it in one session.

People said the same thing about that.

I don't think so, but

it's, it's certainly possible.

Yeah.

Cause spoiler, it's a short

game, but it's a short game.

Yeah.

It's not, I can't imagine like, I can't

that's so hard for me to process.

That would be so difficult to do.

It would be so stressful to do too, by

the way, you'd speed through it.

Yeah.

And also why,

why would you do that?

I think when I played them just one for

the first time, it took me a whole

weekend, but I, it was like three whole

days of just continuous playing.

Yeah.

I think it, yeah, it took me a few days.

I definitely, but that first run through

was a few days for me.

Yeah.

And I remember when the game ended, I was

like, whoa, I got to sit on this.

I got, yeah.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

I had to re-examine all my, my entire

worldview on video games.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

She's spoiler warning.

Just play MGS.

It's great.

It's a good time.

Um, play them in release order.

Don't do the whole, don't do it.

Just three first.

Don't do chronological order.

I tell everybody, don't do that.

Play them in release order.

The games were not

developed with that in mind.

They were developed with

the release order in mind.

Yeah.

Like things, the games won't make sense

if you do chronological order.

Yeah.

I, uh, I almost put snatcher on the list

too, but just, just blame it.

They're a good time.

They're, they're great time.

Great time.

All right.

Uh, now we have a hyper violent game

right here about, you know, murdering

little things and, you

know, sucking up their bodies.

Didn't know you're such

a body horror guy, man.

Dude loves sucking up

stuff and becoming new things.

Didn't know you were a devour.

Dude love it.

Love it.

Can't get enough of it.

Kirby superstar.

Uh, is that one game?

Is that 12 games?

Is it three games?

It's 12 games.

It's 12 games in one. 12 games in one.

Basically, basically is what it is.

Um, uh, you know what's funny?

This is the most recent

game on my list that I play.

Like in terms of games that I did, uh,

well, when, no, I'm sorry.

I'm some nautical probably is

this, this is up there though.

I discovered this game

like the last like 10 years.

Sure.

Okay.

Pretty recent.

I didn't play it when it came out.

Okay.

Um,

this is my, my, my best friends, this is

one of his favorite games all the time

and he kind of showed it to me.

Um, so I was talking to Noli about this.

The other day, cause I, cause he,

take a, take a, take a beat them up game.

You know, you know, what

beat them up is, right?

You take a beat them up streets of rage.

Peace.

Streets of rage was

almost on my list, man.

It was there for like a hot minute.

Streets of, streets

of rage was on my list.

This was streets, streets

of rage one was in this slot.

Uh-huh.

And then at the last

second I flipped it for this.

It was streets of rage.

It was, that's what it was.

Uh, I have the image of what

streets of rage on it still.

Anyway, take a, take, take,

take, take a beat them up.

Take the best beat

them up you've ever seen.

Take the best action

platform you've ever seen.

Take one of the best fighting you've ever

seen and take one of the best part social

party games you've ever seen and merge

all of that into one video game package.

And that is Kirby superstar.

Yeah.

You are getting the

best four different worlds.

You're getting a pseudo fighting game

with move sets and special moves.

You're getting a pseudo platformer with

amazing platform action.

You're getting a

pseudo, pseudo beat them up.

That's two player co-op beat them up, uh,

side scrolling action platform.

You're getting all these

pieces into one package.

And then you have a party

game system on top of it.

There's, the way this game works is

there's multiple games.

So you put up the menu and there's

multiple games to choose

from and they're all different.

You're like, what is going on?

And it's kind of a collage.

You see the menu.

It's a collage of different pictures and

you select what picture you want.

And some of them are social party games

and some of them are like full co-op two

player, you know, epics.

Yeah.

This, this is one of them.

And it's like, you're getting this, like,

it's almost like, like, uh,

it feels like, it feels

like, like a 12 game one.

Do you remember that?

Um, just for the NES, it was Mario

all-star where it had

every Mario game on the SNES.

Do you remember that?

It had like Mario one,

two, three, lost levels.

Yeah.

This feels like that,

but with original stuff.

Yeah.

This feels like a collection of games,

the game, but the game, this is the first

time you're playing the games.

They don't exist anywhere else.

It's like a collection of games, but this

is the first time

you're experiencing them.

In fact, when I first played this game,

that's what I thought it was.

I thought this was a collection of like

previously released games.

I was like, Oh, this

is a great little pack.

And they're like, no,

no, this is the game.

There's no, this is another.

And I was like, I was

like, are you kidding me?

This is like 12

different games and one in each.

They're all amazing.

Like, and the thing I bullshied about

this game, there's very few video games

where I can grab a random person, put

them and there's something here for them.

Sure.

They're going to have fun.

No matter.

I don't care if they never

played a video game before.

I don't care if they've been playing

video games for 55 years and there are

grandmasters and Buddha

Buddha ultra gamer Lord.

Yeah.

Both of those people, the old, the five,

the 55 year old Zen

grandmaster Buddha gaming Zen Lord.

And the person I just plucked from the

streets, never touched a

video game in their life.

Both of them are going to play this game

and have the best time.

Yeah.

This is a goat game.

Nothing against the NES

Kirby, which I liked a lot.

But this just seems like

15 levels above all that.

It is.

It just is.

It's the final form of Kirby.

It's the final evolution of Kirby and

you're never going to

top this no Kirby game.

And I like Kirby games.

None of them even come close to this

before or doesn't even come close.

One of the things that's interesting

about Kirby, this one included is like

you could technically just float up to

the top and just get

to the end every time.

The game doesn't stop you from doing

that, but there's so much stuff to do

that it's more fun to not do that.

And so Sakurai who made this game and

later would make a little indie game

called smash brothers.

It's just an innovator in the sense that

like the number one thing

should be fun all the time.

Give people the option

to cheat if they want.

Who cares?

Sure.

But if you make the fun thing more fun,

then they're going to do the fun thing.

That's what people want.

They just want to chase fun.

Yeah.

I mean, I mean, if your goal is to make

the most fun video game ever, which is a

weird goal, why would you do that?

Why would you do that?

God, these are supposed to be serious.

Supposed to be serious.

But if you're trying to make a fun game,

you want to be

different and make a fun game.

This is the game you make.

It's the most, this is the most fun game

you make right here.

And by the way, um, there's a lot of

smash brothers in this game and you see

that there's a lot of smash boys and I

played smash bars and there's a lot of

Kirby superstar ideas in smash brothers.

And I was like, Oh wow.

Yeah, I see it.

So yeah, just, uh, I honestly like,

again, this is another

video game ass video.

I was about to say, I think this is the

most video game ass

video game on this list.

It's the most video game.

It's the most video

game ass video game by far.

Like, by far.

Hey, you want to play a video game?

Sure.

It's this one.

What do I do?

Just figure it out.

Just don't worry.

Don't worry about it.

Just don't worry.

You're going to

have a good time figuring it out.

Yeah.

But like, what do I do?

We're just trying to get to the end, man.

Don't worry.

Just don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it.

Yeah.

It's a good time.

It's the damn good time and everyone's

going to have a good time and no one's

going to be, no one's

going to leave this.

I don't care.

You're depressed.

You're having a hard time in life.

You're going to walk away happier and

less depressed are playing this game.

This game cures depression.

No, it doesn't cure depression, but it

comes very close to mine.

It might.

It's so unbelievably amazing.

Yeah.

I do.

I want to give props to the, uh, there's

the Kirby we came return to dreamland.

What's that?

It's like a four player.

I want to say I've played that.

I'm not sure.

That's probably my favorite Kirby game

because it's basically this, but just

bigger, longer, more to do.

Yeah.

But I mean, yeah, this is amazing.

Uh, yeah.

Love the pixel art.

Love everything about it.

Um,

and listen, I had streets of rage here.

It was tough, but this game, it does more

than streets of rage does for me.

You know what?

It shapes me more than

streets of rage does.

I have yet.

Yeah.

Okay.

So she's raised on my list and it's a

game that I can get any, I can get almost

anyone to play that with me.

Anyone, but there's always going to be

some resistance to it.

There's going to be some like, Oh yeah.

I don't play beat them ups.

I don't do this.

I don't do that.

Don't worry about it.

You're going to have a good time.

And then eventually they're like, yeah,

like this game, like, like maybe level

three, level four, they love the game.

This is like, man, just play a game.

Yes.

And they're going to have a good time.

They're going to have a good time.

You're right.

There is a resistance to beat them up.

And this, this game's the antidote to

that in a kind of a similar way.

Smash blurs for a lot of people as an

antidote to playing a fighting game.

Yeah.

You know, people go, Hey, I don't want to

play a fighting game, but

they'll play smash brothers.

And you can say, Oh, I don't want to play

beat them up, but

they'll, you'll play this.

This is almost a bridge game to a genre

that you're afraid to play.

Yeah.

Sakurai is such a smart guy.

Apparently Sakurai was one

of the lead advisors on RE4.

Like in secret, like he's the one that

made the letterbox, like zoomed in camera

for Leon to make it more actiony.

He's the guy that brought that idea.

Oh, I didn't know that.

He's been a consultant on a

bunch of like shadow projects.

Interesting.

And one of the, one of the interviews of

Sakurai for one of the smash directs that

he did is he talked about the problem

that fighting games have, which is

no one wants to admit it, but like the

moment people get better at the game, you

have to keep complicating the game to

give people the same feeling they had

when they first played a game.

Like the first time you played street

fighter to all that stuff.

Sure.

And like, unfortunately that in and of

itself, gate keeps people because there's

going to be people that they love

fighting games because

it wasn't complicated.

They just got to mash

buttons and have a good time.

Right.

And he's such a smart guy.

He understands what

makes games work and fun.

And so his whole goal with smash was to

create the feeling of what it was like to

play street fighter

two for the first time.

Yeah.

And then listen, there's a reason why,

you know, when there's a, when I'm back

against the wall on a mass with the,

what's the best fighting ever made

spashes, usually what I say,

usually I say is back to us.

And then I would say

virtual fighter as well.

Sure.

Those two.

Yeah.

He's a genius.

He is.

He really is.

I would love for Sakurai

to get headhunted by Capcom and work on

street fighter seven.

That would be me so happy.

Yeah.

I feel like he'd do, he'd do something

justice personally, but

anyway, we're not talking about that.

We're talking about Kirby.

Kirby's a good time.

Love the graphics.

Love that in this game.

I remember playing this game back, back,

back when there was like a, there was a

screen for everything.

There was a victory screen.

There was this screen.

There was so much unique graphics to each

sequence of the game.

I was like, what the hell is this game?

There's no, this game has it all.

It's it's, it's the

kitchen sink video game.

It's got everything.

It's like, do you like video games?

No.

Well, have you played Kirby superstar?

No.

Well, then you

haven't played video games.

You don't play, you haven't played video

games and you haven't had as much fun

with a video game

until you played this one.

That was true.

Yeah.

That's a good one, man.

That's a good one.

I don't know if I can top that.

I don't know if I can,

I don't know if I can top that.

I can't even top that.

Yeah.

I mean, if only there was some way we

could bring back this unreliable

narrator, just at least one more time.

If only that was possible.

Oh wait, what's this game?

Legend of Zorda, Zordark's awakening.

Big fan of Lark.

Yeah.

Lark's a good guy.

Yeah.

He's a good guy.

We got two legends of

Zeldas on our lists.

That's crazy.

That is kind of crazy.

That means you're a fan boy.

Oh, I'm the worst.

That's what that means.

And again, I could have put a lot of

different Zeldas on this particular list.

All the Zeldas on this list.

I thought long and hard about putting the

first Zelda, which was

like my first real love.

Yeah.

I thought long and hard about

Breath of the Wild.

Oh, sure.

I thought long and hard

about Link to the Past.

Yeah, easily.

Majora's Mask was up there because I love

what that game does.

Wind Waker was even up there.

Yeah, I did with Wind Waker.

Some of the boss

battles in the Zelda series.

Yeah, but I decided to

go with Link's Awakening

because,

well,

because I mean, this game does so much

for a goddamn little handheld.

Just to confirm, this is OG

Link's Wing and not DX, right?

I'm talking about OG.

Okay.

That's my favorite way to play it.

Okay.

Or the Switch version.

That Switch version's very good.

Okay.

DX, no disrespect to that version, but I

think the graph, the

color's too gaudy for me.

I think the...

Interesting.

And this isn't even what you're seeing on

the screen doesn't even do it disservice

because the game had like a greenish hue

on the original Game Boy.

Yes, yes it did.

And if you, spoiler warning, this game

has a lot of Twin Peaks vibes

and Twin Peaks has like

a green hazy vibe to it.

So I think that there's

more commonality there.

Interesting.

So in the world of video games, I always

thought that there was the first game

that is like the big mega hit.

And then the sequel is

always a weird experimental title.

So there's Zelda I, Zelda II, Castlevania

I, Castlevania II, Super Mario Bros.

I, Super Mario Bros. 2, right?

Not knowing that Super Mario Bros. 2, our

version of that's different.

I had no idea.

I just always thought that's the deal.

And then the third game might return to

form in some capacity or maybe there

would never be a third game.

Who knows?

That was what I believed

video games, the narrative was.

So here's the fourth game in the series

and it's on a handheld.

And I was so puzzled by

how story driven it was.

It was the most story driven Zelda game

up until this point.

Because I think Link to the

Past was kind of story driven until you

get to a certain point,

then it opens things up.

This is almost always

handholding you in this experience.

And at first, I hated this.

I was like, "Let me play Zelda like Zelda

I where like you just, you just in a

field, got to figure shit out and just

like make it work out."

But then I see the benefit of what

happens when you guide the player along a

very specific journey.

They get to go down a very specific story

beat the way you want it to.

And then I had something happen where

it's, it's only happened a

couple of times since where

knowing what the next story beat is,

because this game does a great job

telling you what's about to

come up before it happens.

It like alludes to it.

You don't want to keep playing, but you

want to keep playing as you

keep existing in this world.

So if you were playing Link's Awakening.

Yes.

So I mean, there's a twist that happens

halfway through at the face

shrine where it's implied that

yeah, if you want to get

home, you're stuck on an island.

If you want to get home,

you've got to wake the wind fish.

But once you wake the wind fish, all

these people that you're in, they're

going to die because this is all a

figment of your imagination.

And it's not real.

You know, this halfway through the game.

And so then every single element in the

game is playing on that idea that you're

progressing the game to beat the game.

But every single step you're taking is,

is going one step

towards everyone's destruction.

Yeah.

And like shortly afterwards, you spend

some time with Marin and you get to bond

with her and you know, the entire time

this is all going to go

away, but she doesn't.

And it's just, it fucks with you, man.

For an eight bit Game Boy game to do that

for a flagship title,

I was like, what the

fuck?

I've talked to so many people who played

it first when they were younger, a lot of

that went over their head and they

revisit as an adult

and were like, Oh, damn,

damn, damn.

Yeah.

Add on top of that.

I think this game has the better up until

this point, the best dungeon design

better than links linked

to link link to the past.

Okay.

I also think it does the

best job with a single design.

Whereas linked to the past has two

overworlds you're alternating

between two the entire time.

I think this,

this shows what can happen if you really

tighten that up and just

make it just one overworld.

I do love the design of this overworld.

Yeah.

I love the Pegasus boots.

I love that you can combine

abilities, which was awesome.

Like, because you're gonna have two

buttons, you don't

always have to have a sword.

That's right.

That was so cool.

To this day, I think what hurts Zelda is

that it's so fixated on the master sword.

Like, yeah, I really don't like that.

I think that's Ocarina's fault.

It is 100%.

That's what I think.

Yeah.

Because in, in link to the past or yeah,

link to the past, you get two

more swords after that's right.

Master sword and they're more powerful.

Yeah.

But in Ocarina, the master sword is the

strongest standard sword.

And so it became, it almost kind of

became Zelda's new identity.

Yeah.

Which bummed me out.

Yeah.

Although breath the

wild is kind of a break.

They do a good job at that.

Yeah.

I don't love the way they

handle it, but I love the idea.

Yeah.

I remember the promotional art for

Skyward Sword implied that the master

sword wasn't going to make an appearance.

It does.

Yeah.

I was looking forward to that, but this,

this showed me that you can be really

creative with this formula.

I love, I love the black and white

design, the, the single monochrome

design, just four colors

is all you can mess with.

It's very charming.

The pixel art's gorgeous.

The music is amazing.

Yeah.

And a lot of the designers that worked on

this game kind of disappeared.

They kind of just fell out after this and

just kind of didn't

work on any other projects.

Just, this was interesting.

And of course, this game has a lot of

twin peaks influence.

And at the time, twin

peaks is really popular.

Yeah.

And I loved it.

I thought it was great.

I want my Zelda games

to be weird and funky.

I want to go in not

knowing what to expect.

Yeah.

Which is why I like you would.

Yeah.

Probably Majora's mass is

probably the most akin to this.

Yeah.

And honestly, I get, I get a little sad

thinking of when you get

to the end of the game and

everything exactly happens, how they said

it was going to happen.

And by the end of the fifth dungeon is

that everything disappears and fades and

dies and all that stuff.

And it was all, you know,

you know, links awakening.

And you find out that Marry was just a

representation of what

Zelda was in your mind.

And they don't exist anymore.

And it's sad.

It's sad.

It's a good time.

Probably will not be 3d remade.

Yeah.

They've already remade it on switch.

Yeah.

That's a good one.

That's a good version of the game.

Wonderful soundtrack.

I'm curious though.

I'm not.

I'm curious about it.

One of our core friends, Sean pie.

He loves that version of the game.

Oh, he does.

He now.

He said he loves both, but

the, he really stands by that.

Especially just the music and he's right.

The music is phenomenal.

Interesting.

Because, um, they incorporate the game

boy sounds into the

orchestral sounds in the soundtrack.

They don't try to like undo it.

They try to embrace it.

Right.

They actually embrace it.

Yeah.

Which is super cool.

That is cool.

Um, have you played link between worlds?

I have.

That's a good game.

I haven't, but I'm just curious about it.

Uh, the most controversial part is that

you have to buy your items.

Like, Oh, you buy like the boomerang and

the bone arrow and you rent them.

You don't, you don't own them.

Oh, I see.

But at any point, if you want a specific

item, you just go to the store and rent

it out and swap it for something else.

I see.

Interesting.

But you know what the puzzles are great.

It's like a sequel to a link to the past.

And if you know the overworld from that,

they very much are one-to-one similar.

it's a good time.

Yeah.

I didn't play the Zelda, like the actual

Zelda one where you play a Zelda.

Oh, right.

You did that.

I heard mixed things, but I'd like to

check that out at some point.

Yeah.

I'm curious about it too.

Also, uh, no master sword in this game.

You get the seashell sword.

If you get all the seashells, you can

upgrade it to a seashell sword.

That's right.

I do remember the seashell thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Lovely game.

Um, and then after this, we get Ocarina

of Time and you get the

quintology of Zelda games.

And I would say after Ocarina of Time,

well, after Majora's, we start seeing the

megaliths of what Zelda becomes and it

becomes this big monolithic thing.

Yeah.

Um, instead of just being

a fun adventure story game.

I don't know.

It's a good time.

I like this game quite a bit.

I do too.

And it formed me because I was

actually a Sega game gear guy.

I did not have a Game Boy.

I was, I'm a Genesis guy.

So yeah, same.

And so every time I go to a buddy's

house, he'd have a Game Boy.

I'd play whatever Game Boy game he had.

I'm like, this sucks.

This sucks.

But then he had this game.

I'm like, Oh, this is good.

Oh, this is good.

So I had to get a Game Boy afterwards.

Had to.

I think I played this

later on my Game Boy pocket.

Ah, yeah.

It's my, I had a silver Game Boy pocket.

Nice.

Yeah.

And again, this game taught me once

again, it's not about the

graphics or the technology.

Yeah.

Just really good design.

Because by definition, this thing is like

one eighth of a super

Nintendo, like, yep.

And I had to wait a little bit because I

was still in my games

and for, you know, kids.

Sure.

Yeah.

So I had to come back to this, you know,

and I had an old Game Boy

pocket, but I got to play it.

So speaking of mods, you spoke about it.

Um, there's a free online version of the

original Zelda that's on

PC called Zelda classic.

Interesting.

And on there is a meaning there are

thousands of thousands upon mods where

people have made their own Zelda games

with the Zelda one engine.

That's pretty cool.

And someone made, they recreated this

game into the Zelda one

engine on Zelda classic.

And that was super fun to play on PC.

Interesting.

Wow.

I don't know why Nintendo

hasn't come after them yet.

It's been around for like 20 plus years.

Yeah.

It must not be splashing

enough for them to realize it.

I don't know.

But it's a reverse engineered piece of

code that takes Zelda one and you can

just do whatever you want with it.

Make new quests, the second quest, the

third quest, the fourth quest, et cetera.

Or they don't think there's much harm in

doing that for a game that they're no

longer really banking on.

I guess, but it's going

after everyone these days.

They are.

I'm just trying to think of why they

wouldn't go after them.

I don't know.

Maybe they've tried, but like, because of

how it's reverse engineered.

Cause it is reverse and like, there's no

raw, there's no NES data in the game.

He just literally went frame by frame and

just perfectly replicated it.

I was talking to a guy recently who was

talking, they were talking about

console breaking because he's big into

console breaking in that industry.

And a lot of it is for preservation.

It's not even for various reasons.

And they just recently cracked the Xbox

one, which was like considered

uncrackable for a but

he says something to me.

He said that game companies are, they

don't try to make

systems that are unbreakable.

That's not really their goal.

Their goal is to make a system that's

unbreakable just for the lifespan of its

existence in the market.

They don't care as much if you break it

once it's kind of left its, its cycle.

You'll notice there's a lot more

scrutiny, legal scrutiny on breaking it

within its cycle as opposed to breaking

it out of its outside of its cycle.

That makes sense.

And I can see maybe, maybe like they just

see the NES as like a

write off at this point.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I mean, it's, it's crazy that

Nintendo's going after all these piracy

sites, which fine, you know, due to

diligence, you know, yeah, anti-piracy,

but like, then they have the audacity to

sell you a ROM that

they took from those sites.

And it's not the

official, you know what I mean?

Like that's crazy.

Like literally the text file is on there.

Yeah.

Crazy.

It's crazy.

It's insane.

That's crazy.

And also this song, this game has a,

there's a Game Boy trend for Nintendo

games where hip Tanaka was like an audio

engineer for Nintendo and

a lot of Nintendo games.

And this one had it.

If you put in a secret code, you would

get hip Tanaka song and it's an eight bit

chip rendition of his song.

It's on there.

Cute, neat, fun.

And hip Tanaka, I believe

worked on the first Metroid game.

The entire soundtrack of that is there.

So,

so yeah,

not all I have to say about

this, but it's a great one.

It's a good one.

Great, great game.

It's a fun time.

Great game.

We're just about to wrap up with yours.

I wonder what is on your list.

I wonder what the final

game on this list could be.

Was I just shit talking it before I

couldn't have been.

You were just talking it and I was like,

Oh, this motherfucker.

Oh motherfucker.

But here it is.

It's guy with storm.

It's berserk.

It's, it's, it's berserk.

I mean, the game does make you berserk.

Yeah.

No, it is berserk.

You everybody should like,

you said FFA was your favorite, but you

put this one on here instead.

You got to tell me that story.

Yeah.

Because this game,

again, this is a game that sh that

reshape my understanding.

I don't like RPG.

I didn't at the time.

I didn't like RPGs.

Like what is this whole

like wait to attack thing?

Why are we, why, why am I doing that?

This game is yeah.

Okay.

True.

You don't have to wait to attack,

but think about what you can do.

So instead of focusing on your next

reaction, now you can plan

for what you're going to do.

Yeah.

And I was like, Oh, why?

And then I've kind of found, and this is

a weird connection to matters, the

gathering, but these kinds of games kind

of showed me the power of, of being able

to think before you act.

And I was like, Oh, before you act, you

know, I think fighting games that are, is

a lot of thinking while you're acting.

And I think a lot of these games are

thinking before you act.

Yeah.

And

I saw that and I got to see that this,

this is like my first, this is not my,

this is, this is a game that I got

wrapped up in it in a way

that it's not my favorite RPG.

And again, like my favorite RPG is

probably the version of the Dragoon.

Right.

But that's later on.

So before we get there, I have to first

realize that I like turn

based RPG to discover it.

Yeah, I have to discover it.

And I play a little bit of pharmacy six.

I played, I think maybe a little bit of

dragon quest, but I really

wasn't loving the vibes of those.

And that's the thing.

I needed the vibes to match what I

already thought was a boring game or else

I'm not going to play it.

Sure.

I have to have a reason

to, to, to, to almost like

to hang tough in the game.

I don't like, do you know what I mean?

The vibes have to be good enough that I'm

willing to suffer this thing.

I don't like until, until I get to a

point where I realized how great it is.

And the vibes of this game are so dope to

me that I was able to

suffer this awful battles.

I didn't like it, but I got to a point

where it almost taught me

patience in a weird kind of way.

Yeah.

I had no patience and it

kind of taught me patience.

Sure.

In a, in a weird kind of way, a turn

based RPG is kind of the

opposite of a fighting game.

Right.

Yeah.

But I'm a review player.

So we want everything we want to do.

We want everything and everything.

You want to be Goku.

I want to, I want to be, I absolutely,

absolutely want to be good.

So it's like this, this, this is the game

that taught me patience for a slower pace

game and the vibes are just right so that

I can appreciate that.

Yeah.

But when I get to pharmacy eight, I, I

wouldn't have been able to play pharmacy.

This is why this game shaped me.

I wouldn't have been able to appreciate

pharmacy eight without this game.

Yeah.

I wouldn't have been able to appreciate

legendary dragoon without this game.

I needed this game to come first and I

played a little bit of fantasy six and

the vibes were not right for me.

I didn't like the vibes because guess why

they were too childish to me.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

I looked at FF six and

I saw a children's game.

This game didn't look

like a child's game to me.

It didn't feel like a child's game to me.

It felt very like the art style is very,

like it's very dystopian.

It's very almost mecca, like mechanized

Neo golf kind of thing going on.

Yeah.

I don't know how to describe it.

Exactly.

I'm sure someone smarter than me can

explain what that is, but it's got an

environmental punk environmental punk.

There you go.

That's a great way to describe it.

That's not childish to me.

Yeah.

The child can't understand that.

So the vibes immediately hit me well.

It's like, oh, this is

not a children's game.

I played Final Fantasy eight firsts.

So when everyone was telling me, no, oh,

that's what everyone's telling me.

No, that game's shit.

Seven's better.

I'm playing this.

Like why does

everyone look super deformed?

They look like kids to me.

Yeah.

No, no.

And you know, listen, I feel the same way

and what's why I found this day is my

favorite Final Fantasy.

I feel the exact same way, but that's

what, but that's a critical difference.

You play in that first before this.

Yeah.

That's going to reshape

your entire understanding.

Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah.

I had to have had played this first.

Otherwise I wouldn't even, you know, that

wouldn't even work for me.

You're right though.

That's a crazy, that is

a crazy jump by the way.

This to eight is a wild job.

Isn't it?

Yeah.

That is insane.

What got me to finally take this and like

it is I had to go back and play the super

Nintendo ones like five and six.

You have to kind of reshape your.

And then I got to, okay,

this is how we got to seven.

And then I got to enjoy it.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And then also you're, you're part of a,

you're basically, you're basically part

of a gorilla task force that is trying to

topple and make a corporation.

Also, I didn't think

that was for children.

I was like, children.

Sure.

I understand that.

Right.

Yeah.

I'm a big, I'm a big adult man at nine.

I understand it, but the

children don't understand this.

You know, even though

I didn't understand it.

And so, yeah, this game is hitting every

vibe for me and it's

teaching me patience.

It's teaching me how to appreciate RPGs.

And I would go on from this

game to play hundreds of JRPGs.

I'm now a huge JRPG fan.

Yeah.

But this is the game that this is the,

this is my, this is my

gateway drug to JRPGs.

And I think that's what a lot of people,

a lot of people would say.

A lot of people would say that.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

They'll say, this is the game that

taught, that showed me some people's

their first video game.

You know, it's like, yeah, this is the

game that I got introduced to that.

It's not my favorite, but it's definitely

the one that shaped me without a doubt.

Everything from the music to the premise

to kind of this more emotional story that

I wasn't used to, to this kind of

psychological thriller that

it turns into a little bit,

to these characters that I was not ready

to absolutely fall in

love with, so to speak.

It was hitting me on every single note.

Yeah.

And so it opened the door.

It opened the JRPG door.

All these other games on my list are

opening some kind of door.

This is opening the JRPG door.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny.

I remember everyone and their mother

telling me how great this game was.

Yeah.

And I felt that I was getting gate kept

from playing this game.

Because I'd go to a buddy's house and be

like, Hey, I hear nothing but great

things about this game.

Can I play it for a little

bit while we're hanging out?

And every time, no, you can't.

Why not?

It will just take too long.

What do you mean?

It'll take too long.

Just boot it up and let me play the game.

Nope.

It'll take too long.

It'll, it'll take too long.

It'll take too long.

So I felt like,

how dare you?

But of course now I know what he meant.

It's like, it's going to take you like

bajillions of hours before you even get

to the beginning of the game.

No, I'm not going to do that.

And I think a lot of people were like,

man, this is a lot of game

for the game I just bought.

Yep.

That's true.

Right.

It's like, Oh, it's

three discs by the way.

What, what do you mean it's three discs?

I don't understand.

What does that mean?

Three discs.

And it's not like, it's not like Resident

Evil two where it's like two different

characters, you know, two different,

there's two different reasons.

There's a reason why it's two discs.

Cause like you're playing two different

characters, pathways.

This is like one game is three discs.

Like the same one game is three.

That's a weird concept.

I think for a lot of

people, especially that.

Yeah.

No, I mean, in retrospect, it's got a

fantastic soundtrack.

I even like the super deformed look.

I love,

I love that it probably started off as a

super Nintendo game.

Probably.

And then they just kind of were like,

screw you, Nintendo

for making cartridges.

We're going to make this on CDs, man.

I mean, then there was the whole Nintendo

Sony backstab thing.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So yeah.

And I don't know if this is true, but I

feel like I've read that square soft was

like really not doing great financially.

And this was like their only game like

get it.

And turns out it paid off in droves.

It paid off in droves.

I mean, that's true of

the original fun of fantasy.

That's why they called it funnel fantasy.

Yep.

That's true.

It was supposed to be the final one.

The final one.

Right.

Yeah.

And then here we are on

final fantasy 29 or whatever.

I love the cover art,

love the characters.

The cover art is fantastic.

Oh yeah.

Um,

I like the idea that the remake is a

remix of what you expect to happen.

It's not exactly the same thing.

I also appreciate that.

And I've done a 180 on that philosophy.

I used to think a remake should be,

should, should replace the original.

Now in recent years, I've done a 180 on

that belief and I think

it should be different.

Yeah.

Cause I never want

anything to replace the original.

The original is the original.

Let's do this thing.

Let it let, let the

original be its own game.

Yeah.

Except for a street

fighter three thirds strike.

Let's remake that.

Cause then I can play it.

How do I unplug the entire, I just want a

heart exit right now.

I just want to yank everything off.

You know, it's also nice.

It's a complete game.

It ends on a note.

They're, they're not going to make any

continuations or sequels.

Oh no, of course not.

And the remake won't stretch it out and

pad it out to three more games.

That's, that's, that's the, that's the

one thing I don't like about the remake.

I don't, I don't want to

buy this game three times.

I just, I don't really want to do that.

I have yet to fruit truly play it, but

I've seen my wife played the first part.

I was like, Oh, that's cool.

They're making some changes, whatever.

And yeah.

And I keep saying when they announced

they were going to put in three parts,

okay, I'll wait till

all three parts are done.

That's what I said too.

And so I'm still on that camp.

I bought the first two parts cause

they're on sale on steam, but yeah, I

essentially was in the same boat.

I was like, I'm going to wait

till it was all three parts.

Yeah.

Great soundtrack.

Great vibes.

Amazing.

Cool characters.

So cool.

And you know what?

RPGs, even though they're not my

favorite, I'm glad more people can play

them and people vibe with them.

And I think if it had not been for this

game, the RP, I think a lot of gaming

would be different

without this game successful.

Oh, just in general, I think gaming would

just be in a totally different landscape.

This is a pivotal game for the industry.

Absolutely.

I don't think even MGS

one would have happened

because this is, this, this is 97 if I

recall, this is right as before.

And just as 98 end of 98,

I do know that a lot of the people that

work in MGS one were playing this.

So probably,

uh, the original creator of Castlevania

was super excited for this game and said,

if I, if you ever allow me to make

another Castlevania game, I

would love to make one like this.

That's what he said.

That's a crazy statement.

Isn't that crazy?

That's a crazy statement.

I think this game had the same director.

I think it's the same director as far as

he nine and 10, but not eight.

I think eight is unique.

Right.

I thought nine was the

final fantasy creator.

Right.

But I, but it wasn't, but

that's seven wasn't though.

Right.

I think seven was the same

version did six, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Hold on.

The internet's going to

kill me if I don't get this.

Right.

Yeah.

We're going to get this right.

It was, it was, yes, it was.

Yeah.

He, the director, Kitase Yoshinori,

Kitase, he did six

corner trigger and seven.

Oh, he did eight as well.

I'm sorry.

Nine was the outlier.

He didn't do nine.

He did seven, eight and 10.

Yeah.

Is what he did.

Interesting.

Nine was the outlier.

And, uh, our producer and creative

artist, director extraordinaire, Daniel

AKA double cross, his

favorite game is final fantasy 10.

Oh, okay.

So, you know, I noticed that pharmacy 10

is a lot of people's pharmacy seven.

Yep.

That's kind of like, it's kind of the,

the JPG that shaped them.

And depending on where you are, like, I

noticed that 10 seems to be a common jump

off point for a lot of people set it's

for, it's for me at seven.

And I think for a lot of our generation

at seven or six, but 10 does seem to be a

jump off point of a lot of people.

And I, I, I didn't love

10 when I first played it.

I had to go back to it and appreciate it.

But, um,

I want to ask you what, what, if you're a

play pharmacy nine, what did

you think of pharmacy nine?

I remember at the time I

thought we were going backwards.

Sure.

But now I love it.

And I think I like it more than seven.

I, I, I was talking to

him one of my best friends.

I was like, I think nine on paper might

be the greatest fun as he ever made.

Yeah.

I think so too.

It's not my favorite, but I

think it might be on paper.

If you were to like list all the

attributes of a font, fantasy game, nine

checks every single box.

Yeah.

So on paper, I think it's might be the

grandest one honestly, but, but I see the

10 because 10 is such an

important game for so many people.

Like I get it.

Yeah.

I think what I liked most about 10

was that it was just a leap in graphics.

It looked amazing.

It was like, holy crap.

First time voice acting too.

Right.

First time you get voice acted.

Pretty big deal.

Anything you can do like with water

effects was cool on the PS2.

Yeah.

I, there aren't too many people, but

there are some people where their first

final fantasy was 13 with lightning.

Yeah, that's right.

I know a buddy who has a lightning

tattooed all across his like leg.

Like he's a big lightning fan, like his

favorite video game

character of all time.

Amazing video game character.

Very interesting choice of the game that

you would choose that one.

Yep.

Man.

Oof.

Yeah.

Final fantasy, man.

Yeah.

If only ever they get to the final one.

I'm waiting.

They're not going to.

I'm waiting for the final one.

No, they, they final

fantasy will

call it eternal fantasy now, right?

Because we're not going

to get to the final one.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

We're not going to do it.

So.

All right.

We are at the final.

The final, the final, not final fantasy.

Final, final, the final,

final, final something.

Wonder, wonder what my final game could

be in the games that shaped me.

What could it be?

Oh, my God.

Talk about revolutionary games.

It's doom.

Oh my goodness.

So.

It's 93 maybe.

And my understanding of video games are

whatever you can get on the

Nintendo or a Sega console.

Right.

And then like RPGs are like more, more

brainy artsy fartsy games on computer.

Yes.

And then I see a

screenshot for this game.

Like what the fuck is this game?

Yeah.

And.

We were not a very well off family.

So.

I wasn't going to be able to play it with

whatever hardware we had.

But at one point, my, my father worked

for a company and he had a business

computer that had color

graphics on the laptop.

Color graphics card.

It was massive.

It was huge.

It was crazy.

And it's on an operating

system called OS 10, not Mac OS 10.

It was just called OS.

It was made for business computers.

It was an IBM like offshoot.

Okay.

But it could run doom.

And I'm like at the, I'm at like the

pharmacy and I, they had the shareware

disc for five bucks.

Yeah.

And I had five bucks and I bought it and

I installed the shareware disc to it.

And oh, my God, man,

I cannot describe how

this changed my life.

Like I was like, it was my first real

first person shooter, you know, beyond

Bard's tale, which was like a first

person clicky, crawly game.

The smooth scrolling was

something I'd never seen on a PC.

The violence was cool.

I think the character icon for your doom

guy was just neat just to

see his facial expression.

His facial expressions.

So cool.

I didn't, I would learn later, learn that

John Romero, who would design the first

couple of levels in the first episode of

doom, big Zelda fan and a

big street fighter two fan.

Like he considered those like the two

most important games ever,

but I became obsessed with this game.

I memorized all the cheat codes so I can

unlock weapons that you can't get in the,

in the first chapter or whatever.

And then doom was like the game to get

and play in whatever way you could.

And I felt like I

unlocked a piece of myself.

Like all my friends were playing on a

game level that I had never achieved and

suddenly this is what doom is.

Oh my God.

The music was great.

I mean, it's, it's, it's midi butt metal

reverse engineered to sound like

Metallica, but not quite.

Yeah.

The shotgun's one of the, is literally

the greatest shotgun in gaming history.

If I ever play a shotgun and it feels

worse than the shotgun, I'm

already like, nah, nah, nah.

Monsters were cool.

And the funny thing is there was a time

when after playing this game obsessively

forever and then moving on to things like

quake and quake two half-life, even I

thought, oh, doom is antiquated.

Doom is, doom is terrible.

Tomb is, doom is clearly of its time.

You go back to it, man.

And it's really playable.

It's got some interesting designs, uh,

choices that I think modern games could

learn a thing to from.

And it's fast.

It is just blazingly fast.

And I'm like, oh, that's right.

Games don't be a slow crawl

every time you played them.

I played it in a browser recently and I

was surprised at how playable it was.

Yeah.

Like today.

I also had a lot of fun playing this game

multiplayer on a, I think it was Z doom.

We download the client for Z doom.

Z doom.

Wow.

And, uh, obviously the best weapon is a

super shotgun and

everything's almost an instant kill.

And there's no aiming of any kind.

You just like, just run around, just

click, click, click,

click, shoot, shoot, shoot.

But it is so much fun.

I, uh, I sometimes think that's the best

first person multiplayer you can have.

As the podcast goes silent, cause we're

just watching the gameplay.

I honestly, I'm like, I'm amazed at how

well this game holds up.

It's bright and colorful.

So you know what leads to what like, it

even has quote unquote shadows, which

aren't real shadows, but I guess it's how

the textures work to make you think

you're in a shadowy area.

Like it just was so neat and innovative.

Yeah.

Uh, is, is this the most I mean, I, I

kind of feel like it might be, but is

this the most

revolutionary video game of all time

in terms of shaking what a video game is

or what video games will become?

Is this the most revolutionary?

You had to, you had to choose a game

because I can't think of anything more

bigger than this in

terms of like a revolution.

I mean, for me half my

version of this game is half-life.

Sure.

Yeah.

But I feel like this game is maybe the

original revolution.

So I think so because as a dumb, stupid

kid, I was like, man, wouldn't it be cool

if like you played in like VR and like

you could like be in the thing and you

could see your hands and everything.

And this was like, Oh

yeah, we can probably do that.

Like we can actually probably do that.

VR is like a thing now.

Like, yeah.

And it's probably no coincidence that

John Carmack is like at the head of like

VR development, I think for a matter.

I think.

Okay.

He was the programmer on this game.

Like that makes sense.

But yeah, I think

this changed everything.

And I think it did too.

And just to be clear, if you take the

camera out of the equation, all this

really is, is a smash TV clone.

It's a, sure.

Sure.

It's a twin joy stick.

I see what you're saying.

Yeah.

Like if you zoom out and just have the

camp, the map view, that's all it is, but

you changed the perspective and suddenly

it's a totally different game.

It's a totally different game.

Yeah.

And honestly, when I play games like Duke

Nukem 3D, which is also a very good game

and like quake, sometimes I'm like, man,

I don't really miss the aiming.

I know that seems funny because aiming is

like a big part of games now, but like,

especially FPS games, right.

And like, I sometimes don't miss it.

Yeah.

Think about all the seconds you waste

trying to figure out if you aim right at

the right spot versus

just spray and pray.

Just go spray and pray.

Yeah.

It's more about what gun do

you have than where do you aim?

Sure.

Yeah.

And this game had a small a

smidgen of auto aiming to it.

Yeah.

Just to help you out.

Yeah.

I mean, I can't say

enough good words about doom.

I can say the shareware episode, which is

episode one is probably

the best episode of doom one.

Cause if you play the other two, there's

some sloppy design that's like, doesn't

really stand up to scrutiny.

Sure.

Doom two is the better game.

Cause you've got the super shotgun and

more enemy types, but

it gets even messier.

It gets a little unbalanced, but I mean,

this just changed everything.

And then do you ever play checks quest?

No.

So dude, the cereal checks.

Oh my God.

They made a doom clone that

you got in your cereal box.

Oh, I remember.

I think I saw that on a

YouTube video on time.

I've actually played it and it was pretty

damn good for what it was.

That's pretty funny.

Wow.

That's what checks quest.

That's funny.

And a fun fact for all you PC gaming

master race people, the original doom had

a max frame rate of 35 frames per second,

which is kind of crazy.

Not 60 35 35.

What a weird number.

That's weird.

Now, of course, in the most recent doom

ports, you can play this game using 60

FPS, even 120, you know,

it just runs circles on it.

You can do 9,000 FPS.

Yeah, for sure.

No, no, no, no.

We should mention this in

the S version that got ports.

Oh yeah.

That was a version of the game.

There's actually two

versions of that now.

Oh, really?

So there's the version you're talking

about, which is the super

effects chip that is right.

A version of the video game.

Right.

And then I think limited run games made

an updated port with the super FX to chip

that makes it runs at an

actual stable frame rate.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

Interesting.

I wonder if I can grab that here.

Doom do

see how this works out.

Hold on.

Oh no.

Pop out baby.

Here we go.

Let's sit.

Hey.

Oh wow.

I mean, it's running.

Yeah.

I actually even think it runs

better than the 32 X version.

I mean, like if this is your first like

frame of reference for the game, doom,

like you could, you have

a great time with this.

Yeah.

This like, well, like when I first

started playing half life, I was playing

on a dial up modem and when I play, when

I play online, people, you know, my

character would stop

every like three seconds.

Yeah.

I was just like, oh,

that's how the game works.

And I didn't know that was lack.

I had no idea.

All right.

So this is the updated limited run games,

updated port of the game.

It's even got this.

Whoa.

This Bethesda animation to it.

Fancy.

Look at all these animations.

That's where all the chip comes from.

R and R digital.

I don't know what that is.

Yeah.

Bitmap bureau worked on it.

Oh, they're good.

They're a good group.

All right.

Let's see how the frame rate goes.

I'm going to skip

around here a little second.

Hey, look at that.

Hey, that's good.

Look how stable that frame rate is.

Stable.

Don't pause the game.

I'm in the middle of watching you.

Come on.

I'm a voyeur here.

Here we go.

Look at that.

Look how impressive that is.

It looks good.

It's really good.

Turns out if you put, if

you update the graphics chip,

it'll

run better.

Look at that.

The CPU is not the problem.

I think the devs, the Arganite, the

Arganite studio devs who made Star Fox

were like, yeah, so the super Nintendo is

just a conduit for us to run our chip and

the chip is just a way to run our chip.

And that's how the game runs.

That's right.

It's like, it almost

ignores the super Nintendo.

Yeah, basically.

Yeah.

It uses it for like the

resolution and that's it.

That's right.

Yeah.

Look at that.

And look at that.

Dang.

Pretty cool.

Pretty sick.

Again, we're watching a,

the recent rerelease of

Doom on the Super NES.

But yeah, man, I mean, I feel stupid to

say how awesome Doom is,

but Doom is pretty awesome.

It's very playable still today.

You can pick it up for like five bucks

and get Doom one, Doom two final Doom,

all the expansions and multiplayer on it.

Yep.

I heard that there was a, I forget which

nine inch nails album it was, but the

nine inch nails album that

corresponds to this game came out.

Their, their album got delayed by like a

few months, like six or seven months.

And everybody thought it's cause they

thought the album wasn't good enough.

So they were re-tweaking it and the

singer was like, Oh

no, Doom just came out.

And so we just,

yeah, we were just playing Doom.

Yeah.

And then that's what

became of Quake one soundtrack.

Yeah.

No, Trent Reznor is

such a big fan of Doom.

Yeah.

That's the social

network composer, everyone,

the social network composer,

but any who,

I think that's what

has that been everything.

All the games that have shaped us.

There's so many more we

could add, but yeah, that's yeah.

Any, any parting thoughts you

have before we wrap this part,

man, like I first, I, I was thought maybe

like my list was not good enough.

I thought maybe I thought

your list was really good.

And, but honestly, I think these are, I

think these are the right lists.

Like I'm happy with, I'm happy with your,

like your explanation for like,

you, you, you had a very compelling

thought process for every game.

So like, I'm confident

in those games for you.

And then looking at my list, sometimes I

doubt my list a little bit, but I'm like,

no, this is the right list.

Yeah.

I mean, there's no wrong answer.

These are the games that shaped you.

Right.

You know, and you know what?

I'm honestly more interested in these

types of discussions than I am in like,

okay, so this game just came out and I

give it like an 8.3 and here's why I'd

give it 8.3 because it's missing this

feature and that feature.

And there's a critical flaw here.

And I'm like, I don't care, man.

Just tell me why you liked it.

That's all I want to hear anymore.

And that's why I got so excited when I

was at like, I was like ordering

everybody to tell me their

favorite nine or their nine.

Cause I just thought this was the one of

the most interesting

questions I've heard in a long time.

Yeah.

You know, like I

don't want to hear about,

I dunno, man.

Like I get real, I get real mad at these

days when like anything comes out and

it's like, it's good, but there's this

one thing in a like, or this, that I'm

like, okay, tell me

you liked it or you don't

hyper obsessive, uh, new game fixing new

game, like hyper fixation.

It's like this weird,

like it's, it's like, um,

the cutting edge analysis.

Like I'm going to like pick apart this

brand new thing and just came out and

just dissect it every

possible, which way.

Um, and I'm gonna tell you, I don't know.

Yeah.

There's something

very shallow about that.

It's like assuming a video game is a

product in a service sense

meant to serve me instead

of being like, no,

these, these are people.

This is a man-made

thing that people made.

Like I'm trying to set up

my Yelp review for the game.

Yeah.

Like, yeah.

Yeah.

And I just don't care about that anymore.

And maybe it's because I'm getting older.

I just don't care.

I don't really care either.

Uh, I, I roll when I hear

that kind of stuff these days.

In fact, if I talked to someone and

someone says I'm spending hundreds of

hours playing this one

video game, Oh, cool.

What's great about it?

Oh, nothing.

What?

So you're, so what's,

what's great about your time.

That means nothing, I guess.

I guess.

I mean, like, yeah.

Yeah.

I just, I want to hear good stories about

good games and what they meant to you.

Me too.

I want to know why like, like, what's the

passion for like, what, what is the

driving passion of this game?

I don't want to hear about that.

Yeah.

That's what I want to know.

Cause that's what I hear when I, when I

hear your voice, it's like how, how games

have, have been artful expressions from

someone and how we've

been able to feel it.

And that's pretty cool.

Yeah.

And they're not the newest games either,

or the latest games.

It's almost never that.

Yeah.

In fact, you know, there have been some

games where I didn't like them the first

15 times I played them.

Absolutely.

But then the 16th time,

16th time.

Yeah.

That's right.

That's what it, if you had to pick, you

had to pick one game and your honorable

mentions that you would just real quick,

just throw up as a possibility to

interplay something on your list.

What game would it be?

My God.

Honorable mentions.

Jesus Christ.

Just one game that could have gone on the

list that didn't go, but

very easily could have.

Yeah.

This was on the list at

one point and I took it off.

For all probably like, it was like a hair

of a difference, but Sonic the Hedgehog,

or first one, the first Genesis.

Okay.

Beautiful.

Wonderful.

That was on my, my, one

of my best friends list.

I was on his list.

Yeah.

That was my platformer of

choice when I was growing up.

And that's important

for me for two reasons.

One, I love the game when

I was growing up as a kid.

I think Sonic two and one, when I went

back to revisit them at 10 years

afterwards, I was like, holy shit, these

games still stand up.

They do.

And they look gorgeous.

They look amazing.

And oh my God, like, so my myth of

believing that we should always keep

moving forward and that old games are bad

and new games are good got completely

destroyed with that.

Cause I was like, this game plays better

than the newest Sonic games right now.

Yup.

That almost made the list, but I

had to make room for.

Yeah.

I think I had to make

room for street fighter two.

It was like, two part two.

Hey, that fair.

That's that's slowly fair.

Um, easily.

It could have done that too, but no, I

think Sonic's a great choice.

It's a game that has shaped everybody

for, especially in our generation.

It has touch interviewed or played it.

It's probably shaped you in some way.

And I think I feel like an imposter

because I don't love all versions of

Sonic and I don't, oh yeah.

I'm not even a big fan of the 3d Sonic

games, but like, yeah, you

give me the Sega Genesis ones.

Yeah.

We're talking, we're cooking.

I do love Sonic adventure one and two,

but I'm also a dream cast head.

So there's that.

I played adventure two

before I played adventure one.

A lot of people did.

I think I liked adventure two, but then I

was told over and over again, no

adventure one so much better, so much

better, so much better.

I wouldn't say that.

And I made the mistake of playing

adventure one on the game cubes.

I think is a

horrendous piece of software.

I don't like the game.

The only version I think that's good of

adventure one is the dreamcast version.

I think it's a dreamcast.

I think you should

play the dreamcast one.

Don't even play the X box, Xbox live or

just play the dreamcast original.

Cast one runs at 30 frames per second,

but it's more or less stable.

Fun story.

I got gifted a dreamcast.

My uncle in law who went to comic book

store and I wanted Sonic so

bad that they were sold out.

Couldn't get it.

So he got me this game

called power stone instead.

And I was like, I was like, I wanted

Sonic, but all right,

let me try this game.

Oh my God.

This game is amazing.

Oh my God.

This is absolutely freaking fantastic.

Power stones in my honorable mentions.

I love power stone.

So another situation where I didn't get

what I want, but I got what I want.

You know, so that's great.

Yeah, that's not my

honorable mention game.

Mine is the longest journey, but

power stone easily could have been it.

The longest journey.

I don't think I've played that long.

Oh dude.

The longest journey is

the longest journey.

I'm going to go look it

up and I'll buy it for you.

No, you're going to play it.

It's fine.

It's the longest journey is

the greatest journey ever.

It's on Steam.

It's absolutely on Steam.

Yeah.

Yo, I'm pretty well

aversed of like point and clicks.

Why have I not heard of this?

Because I

know more about adventure games than I do

RPGs and I'm like, what is this?

You have never heard of the greatest fun.

Come.

Yeah.

You've never heard of the

greatest, but that's interesting.

I'm trying.

Why haven't I heard that?

It's slipped your radar.

Listen, I'm not joking.

When I say it is, it is the greatest

point and click

adventure game of all time.

I mean, it has incredibly

overwhelming reviews on Steam.

I say that with, with easily.

I say that it is the greatest adventure

point click adventure game of all time.

By far it is a revolution of the medium

of point click adventure without without.

Yeah, that game, it easily was on my

list, but I had to make

room for I think it was for.

I think I had it up.

It was a toss up.

I originally had it

instead of Majora's mask.

It was kind of a toss

between this and Majora's mask.

But yeah, longest

journey is absolutely amazing.

Literally the quote here is the longest

journey is not only the best adventure

game in recent years.

It's one of the best games ever.

It absolutely is.

It's absolutely one of the

greatest games ever made.

Damn.

All right.

I'm hyped.

I'm putting this on my wish list.

Favorite do a play,

get CC to play it as well

because it's amazing.

The longest journey.

All right.

Awesome respect.

All right, dude.

It's amazing.

Well, Kit, it's been a pleasure going

down memory lane with you.

Thanks for all that stuff.

I hope you've all

enjoyed this recollection.

Let us know in the comments below what

games have shaped you.

Maybe there's a game there that I know

and I'll be like,

Hey, I'll comment on it.

Maybe there's a game I don't know.

And I'll just be just like just now.

I'm like, I'm going

to add it to the list.

Yeah.

What is a game that you

would not put on your list

ever.

And you've put a

stupid amount of time in.

Oh, oh, oh, that I put a stupid on time

that I would never put on the list.

There's so many I could put on the list.

I'll be brave.

I have legal legends.

Okay.

Yeah.

I would never, I would never put legal

legends on this, but I

have put a lot of time.

I've at least over a

thousand hours into this game.

Oh my God.

And I would never put this on the list.

And that's Street Fighter four.

Oh my God.

Me too.

Oh my God.

Street Fighter four.

Oh,

absolutely.

And I'm not going to disrespect the game.

I'm just saying I just would

never put that on my list.

I would never put true.

I've, I've easily done

well over a thousand hours.

I would never put you

on a formal list ever.

Yeah.

That's a good call out.

Sure.

Of course.

Yeah.

And a, I, a lot of people,

that's for street fighter too.

So I can understand what I would do.

Absolutely.

And I had a, I asked my friend what this,

who just had a child recently, I said to

him, if your child is going to pick a

street fighter game to play as their

first street fighter, do they start with

two like we did or do they,

because their street fighter

two would be a few better six.

So it's like, yeah,

would they start with six?

Would that be more appropriate?

And as I really don't know the answer to

that question, I'm not sure.

I don't know either.

I don't know.

Cause their child, they're, they're,

they're one years old.

So it's like,

you know, what do you

have them start with?

I don't know.

I think if you do it, like you make them

be a curmudgeon and start the beginning,

you run the risk of making

them think the way you think.

And you never want that, right?

That's what I'm afraid of.

Right.

So you want them to think differently.

I want them to think differently.

So that's why you

probably share with them and the newest,

whatever the thing is right now, that's

probably the smart thing to do.

That's probably the smart thing to do.

And then I can say

this cause I've seen this

hanging out with people who only play

street fighter six or five whatever the

newest game is and getting them to play

the new, the old thing with them.

They're surprised at all

the things the old thing does.

And they're like, wow, this game's fast.

I'm like, yeah, it's fast.

It's fast.

Yeah.

Now it doesn't matter.

You know, it is the heat.

Now to be fair, he's going to be playing

third strike with me anyway.

Oh yeah.

But I was just curious and I, what you

said makes a lot of sense just so they

don't think exactly the way

we think we kind of want to.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't have kids of my own, but

if I ever did, I would not want my, my

son or daughter or them or they to think

like me, I'd want them

to be their own person.

Yeah.

It's tempting to just want to say, no,

you got to play this original, but.

Cause I used to make a

joke with my buddies.

Like I'm going to make my

kids play Mario brothers one.

And then once you beat that, then you're

allowed to play two and then you're

allowed to, we, we made that joke all the

time, but like, of course.

Yeah.

Something wrong about that.

Yeah.

Well folks, this has been another episode

of the counter it special.

Thank you for katetsu for

being with us on this journey.

Maybe we'll see katetsu again later.

Who knows?

We'll find out.

Cheers all.

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the games that shaped us. pt 2. (feat. Kitetsu) [The Counter Hit #12]

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