Game Scoop! 843: Did an Extra $10 Kill a Franchise?

8:32Peer Schneider:Yeah, it almost happened at GTA.

8:37Justin Davis:And of course, also, Xbox originally announced an$80 price tag for the Outerworld 2. Now, they eventually walked that back. But do you think it's a case where it did, or it soured people on the game already? I don't know.

8:50Daemon Hatfield:It was also in Game Pass, right? Yeah. I don't know. I think when they openly say it's a failure, that means people on Game Pass didn't play it either, right? I mean, there's this big subscriber audience there it just didn't like people just maybe there was too much competition out there too many similar games and people just didn't have the time to play it as well

9:11Peer Schneider:i can't say this enough too like they got they got really lucky that there wasn't gta at this time and everything and there was a kind of a quiet fall so it should have had good chances but man this would have made a great game to play in june you know just like everybody's home from school got to play a single player big open game well they can just all the fall release windows

9:29Daemon Hatfield:is not helping games. They can hire some external company and port it to Switch 2 now.

9:35Peer Schneider:I'm surprised we didn't hear about it today.

9:37Daemon Hatfield:Yeah.

9:39Justin Davis:I wonder if also, is there anything to the fact that, so what, Elder Worlds 1 was 2019, Elder Worlds 2 was 2025, and right in the middle was Baldur's Gate 3. Does that sort of like raise the bar for what people expect for an open world RPG where you have companions?

9:56Daemon Hatfield:Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. yeah but look we got oblivion remastered and other things they're just there were a lot of things to play if you if you actually look back at last year right yeah speaking of baldur's gate three sam do you have any updates yeah i started playing cairn okay well my update is that i played

10:21Peer Schneider:a little bit more baldur's gate i can continue to play it i have no problems with it um in fact i like it a lot but i did start playing karen okay do you want me to talk about that uh well first

10:29Justin Davis:i want to share that i i'm afraid my adventures in balls yet you might have come to a premature end because i seem to i think i'm soft locked in camp i went to long rest and i'm so i'm in camp and to end the day and heal you have to use your sleeping bag but when i try to use the sleeping bag it says you can't fast travel right now uh-oh and that's it if i switch to another character try to use the sleeping bag no you can't fast travel right now so i don't know if anyone in Scoop Nation has any tips. I'm not sure I can get out of my camp.

10:58Daemon Hatfield:You can just blow on it.

10:59Justin Davis:I'll blow on the data that's on my PS5 hard drive.

11:05Peer Schneider:Did you try putting it in the refrigerator? Wrap a towel around it.

11:11Daemon Hatfield:It sucks when there are these bugs that only you encounter in a video game and then there's no apparent solution. I still cannot 100 % Indiana Jones because there's that stupid bug with a wheel. it's gonna be out on switch before you can be on xbox every time there's a patch i'm like nope i just i cannot 100 but they acknowledge the bug that you had well yeah you could play it it's in all wiki we describe how it happens maybe you could play it again on switch 2 and finish it there it's such a story driven game i don't feel like replaying it is that cross

11:45Justin Davis:save just pick it up maybe okay all right so just pay for it again is what you're saying that'll fix it uh how what and how is cairn sam okay so cairn is a climb everything and to be

12:00Peer Schneider:clear we're not saying cairn right no cairn yes but yes no it's c-a-i-r-n which means a pile of stones it's a so it's a climb everything um really difficult uh open world uh game about rocks did i sell anybody i got everybody there you got you got so excited with the rocks i got a nine out of ten on ign and you know other critics like it too uh you know you're climbing mountains that's what it's about it looks really fast so well you know it has this kind of you know dark souls combat level of like movement where it's like it's like you have to like find the seams and get the right stuff and everything i actually turned on a little uh assist that tells you where your perfect hand grips are because once the game gets to a certain point and you want to do a bunch of extra stuff that's been helpful it's not like uh it's there's other options and again the game is very hard so there's other options in there that'll let you like have more um you know places ways to save and stuff like that but i didn't turn those on um because that they they warn you in the game this game is meant to be hard if you turn these on it kind of ruins it so i didn't do that but i turned it up anyway so what you do in this game is you're exploring this cliff face and this mountain and cave system.

13:14Peer Schneider:Shaky leg. Yeah, that's really bad when that happens.

13:18Justin Davis:It's jittery or because his muscles are exhausted?

13:20Peer Schneider:It's cramping. And so you can press a button to shake out one arm and breathe for a second and try again. But you have to be in a really good position to do that. Otherwise, you got to use these anchor points, which you only have a couple of. So if you run out of those cliff face, you're just never going to get there. When you die in this game, game, you lose 1520 minutes. It's like it's like Dark Souls in that like you lose a long time. So you have to be really it gets really stressful. You know, you're when you're climbing. But what's cool is that the mountains full of cool stuff. There's a backstory about like a troglodyte race that has like tombs and like, you know, like war.

14:00Peer Schneider:And it's like, you know, like some, you know, fake British shirt. I started straight European country. I know Switzerland or France or something like that. You know, it's supposed to be like a fake country thing. I know. So then they have all that. And then there's like secrets. And then there's, of course, what happens on Everest, like people die and they leave bodies everywhere. So you find these like ghoulish scenes. And then you like have to like loot them and like find cool stuff to like use from like a skeleton. It's it's fantastic. I love every minute of it. I've been helping make some guide pages for it because I found stuff so hard in it.

14:32Peer Schneider:But like, I don't know, everybody on this show would love this game. Like it, it feels like the parts of Zelda that are like, I'm just going to get up this damn thing, you know, and you just like commit to it. And if that's what the game is with a lot of walking and running around segments that are not like that because you're exploring, but there's a great inventory management system. It's actually really good. Whatever you can cram into your bag and you can actually like tamp it down by shaking your bag and cram more stuff into it, like organically. Like it's like if you feel like you can't get any more, not because there's like not a cube left it's like you can squish stuff in there it's so fun

15:06Daemon Hatfield:is what and you need what platforms carry and cook is that everything can i play this on

15:12Peer Schneider:it's on ps5 and pc can you wear a hat in this yeah you're wearing a hat the whole time it's like a knit hat um but uh this you know damon's gonna cut this segment because as we all know i don't like any games and so whenever i talk about a game i like on this like metroid frame 4 or something Like we don't actually, we cut it from the episode, but for this one, I thought you guys might be interested. I'm actually going to play it. It's so good. It looks very good. I have it downloaded. I have it downloaded. I'm looking forward to starting. And I do, I really do recommend turning on just this one thing.

15:44Peer Schneider:All it does right now, like what you're looking for is corners and seams and that's fine. But the game isn't perfect at that because if you're, if it's overhanging you a little bit, you can't really, unless you really spend a long time with each hand grip. then it's a little bit more annoying than just turning on this box that says like you got it you got it you need that also rain it sucked so bad that first time that happened i was like because i have breath of the wild in my mind right i'm like everything's ruined it's not so bad don't worry about it okay don't worry about it you shouldn't climb like this but it's funny if you

16:17Daemon Hatfield:do it i was i was updating the igm playlist homepage and i'm like oh why why is everybody playing this game um it was right at the top so it must be must be popular are you playing on steam

16:28Peer Schneider:deck sam no i'm playing on ps5 and it's i i would recommend playing on a controller because like my hands are like sweaty and like cramping from you know how much i'm like focusing on this game and like i wouldn't want to do that on this team deck necessarily cool that was not on my radar but it

16:45Justin Davis:looks good yep i love it i've also returned to tear down anyone remember this one from a yes Yes. Cool. This is the like smash everything heist Minecraft graphics game. I guess I played it a couple of years ago with Kingo because it was on PlayStation Plus. Then they removed it, which is super lame PlayStation. And Kingo was super bummed. So I've been waiting for a sale. And last week, the base game is$30. But last week, the special edition, whatever it's called, was$20. I was like, that doesn't make sense, but whatever. I'm sorry. I got the...

17:21Peer Schneider:This game is so goofy.

17:22Justin Davis:I got the special edition. We've been playing that. It's like a perfect sandbox for kids because he doesn't even care about stealing the stuff. He just wants to smash all the buildings. He'll get in a van, drive through a building, and just laugh hysterically. It's great. Oh, that's great. I'll let him play for a few minutes before bed. And then after I put him to bed, I come back and play a couple missions because it's a really, really fun, clever game. It's got a really satisfying gameplay loop because you arrive on the scene and there's no time limit to start. So you can just sort of, you find what it is you have to steal or destroy.

17:50Justin Davis:And then you have to work backwards to figure out how you're going to get to your getaway car because you only have one minute once you pick up the item that you're supposed to steal. But it's really fun. You might have to like -

17:59Peer Schneider:So you might have to stand there and plan your route and then you drive your thing and run.

18:02Justin Davis:You plan your route. You may have to destroy holes through walls to make you, you know, you can run as fast as possible.

18:06Peer Schneider:Oh, so you can path it out too.

18:08Justin Davis:Yes, that's the whole game. And you have a can of spray paint that you can use to spray your path so you can just follow the path that you made. It's really, really fun and clever. Sometimes the thing you have to steal might be movable if it's in the bed of a truck or on a boat and you can drive it closer to your getaway car. It's a very clever game. Oh, awesome. That's Teardown. Perry, you've been playing Fire Emblem on the GameCube version on Nintendo Switch. That's right.

18:32Daemon Hatfield:Path of Radiance, notably one of the two-parter games in the Fire Emblem series. Radiant Dawn for the Wii follows up on it. There was actually connective tissue. You could transfer items from the GameCube game to the Wii game, which probably means that they wanted it to come out on GameCube. With your saves, you collect these coins that can be used to forge stuff. I went through it already. I finished it. I spent 45 hours or something. I fixed up our guide a little bit. It's so freaking good, man. I love this game. It's an SRPG, which stands for Shove RPG because the game introduces the shove and the smite moves where when a character is just out of reach of an opponent, another character can shove them forward as long as they're lighter and so you can get extra movement range.

19:23Daemon Hatfield:It makes it really strategic. It's really fun. It's great. And then it doesn't have... I feel like I love Fire Emblem. I've played every game ever in the series except for the mobile one. And I always feel like the later ones sometimes get a little bloated with the things that you do in between the strategy missions. This one has the right amount of building support, recruitment, and sort of conversational stuff. it's really good. The only downside is, and by the way, it runs at 60, it's up-res. Nice. The only downside, it's 4x3, and it's still, Nintendo to this date insists on having the hideous sidebar graphics that you can't turn off, even though modern displays, you actually get more burn-in with these patterns than not having them, right?

20:12Daemon Hatfield:It's just like a subtle

20:13Justin Davis:kind of grayscale.

20:14Daemon Hatfield:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's still, why on an OLED, you don't, why light? Why turn on the lights if you don't have to? You should be able to choose

20:24Peer Schneider:flying toasters or rat maze or something like that for you. Don't need anything on modern screens. Can you shove people off cliffs and stuff like enemies?

20:34Justin Davis:No, no, it's not like that. Is there any verticality to it? Is there any verticality to the levels?

20:39Daemon Hatfield:Yeah, sometimes you go up a mountain pass and so the horses can't go as fast as somebody on foot. Are there Pegasus riders? Those are my favorite. Pegasus, Wyverns, Falcons Love those I love those I just like making strong ones And then most notably One of the coolest things about this game Is there's In the last three missions I think second to last mission There's the Black Knight And like The game wants you to not be able to beat him And you can Like you have to really plan How you spec out Ike The main character How you What skill you give him In order to even have a chance At beating the Black Knight Most people go through the game Never beat the Black Knight it's okay you can run away if you fight him and lose you're dead and you have to redo like an hour of the last mission it's really brutal but yeah most people just run away don't fight him and then they get a character recruit that's not as good as the one you would get if you beat him anyway it's a fantastic game it feels really really modern in every way except for voice acting is cheesy of course you can just put on the black knight pinball soundtrack while you

21:41Peer Schneider:there you go beat the black knight yeah this is this game isn't this game like 80 hours long isn't it crazy it's about 50 it's about 50 realistically i mean you know i haven't played it since it was new and i just remember it just going on and on and on and on you know what now

21:55Daemon Hatfield:because you have safe states on gamecube on on switch 2 it actually you can probably do it in like 30 and you know i i paused a lot to write down stuff and and improve our guides so it probably

22:06Peer Schneider:is such a huge boon i mean it's permadeath in this game too it is permadeath and like you can cheat

22:12Daemon Hatfield:now with safe states you know the the stats upgrades and the main mode are randomized and so if you don't get your speed boost on ike when you wanted it you can just put a safe state before you

22:21Peer Schneider:level up and then go back and try it again so what year did this come out 2001 no no 2004 three five maybe yeah so definitely two towers was out by now and they should have called shove toss toss me yeah toss me you're gonna you're gonna have to toss me yeah you look i mean look it's

22:40Daemon Hatfield:It's just great. I mean, it's like, it's polygonal. It still looks nice on today's screens. It's fairly fast, too. You can turn off combat animations and just do it in the field like here. So it's great.

22:54Justin Davis:I will have to revisit this one. And Justin has been playing Watch the Bear, right?

22:59Peer Schneider:I did finish watching the bear. I'm in between video games right now, so I did start back up Lord of the Rings online. So, boy, like, we'll see if it sticks. We've lost him. yeah that's exactly like i know it's like i have this reputation as a big low trope booster and super fan and i've talked about it off and on over the show for the last decade but i don't really like what happens is i go back to that game and because it's an mmo i don't remember where i am or what any of my abilities are anything that's in my inventory and i have no idea what's going on and so what i actually do is i start lord of the rings over and i do the shire and brie and the lone lands and maybe if i'm you know really stick with it i'll make it to rivendell and so i play I've played like the first 40 or 50 hours of that game, probably five times in my life.

23:45Peer Schneider:I've almost never made it farther than that, which in MMO terms, like I barely made it out of like the early game, you know, and then I bounce off it and go do something else. But in non-MMO terms, it's like, well, you know, like 50 hours, that's like a whole video game's worth of game. But it's great. I'm playing a Hobbit Guardian. um i also have i also have a hobbit burglar is another fun class to play burglar and the shire is so good i mean it's so you know it's early game mmo stuff so it's all the garbage that you normally hate in a in a massively multiplayer game where it's like i you know go deliver you know these flowers and go like i'm i literally spent like all morning just delivering pies to people and that was it and like in other games you would hate that but in this game it just feels very peaceful and homey and it's very hobbity and they're all really cute and um so it's a lot of i really like running around the shire in that game nice

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25:55Justin Davis:Okay, Nintendo silent on Metroid Prime 4 beyond sales, prompting fan concern over the series' future. Nintendo's latest financial results are notably silent on the sales performance of Metroid Prime 4, which has not appeared in the company's list of million copy-selling games for either Switch 1 or Switch 2, although have you seen that Nintendo has since clarified that combined sales have exceeded a million.

26:16Daemon Hatfield:Yeah.

26:17Peer Schneider:But even so, I mean, you know, we've been talking about Nintendo financials on this show. You know, they reveal them once a quarter, And we just marvel at like, you know, 80 million copies of this and 4 million copies of that. And like the part that always drove that, like really hammered home to me how insane Nintendo's successful run is not necessarily the 50 million sellers and the 80 million sellers, but that every single random Nintendo game, 3 million of this and 4 million of that, it'd be a mega hit for any other company. And so for Metroid to barely eke out a combined million in sales between the Switch and Switch 2 version, it's kind of a catastrophe.

26:55It's a bummer, but guys, it missed the big holiday shopping season.

27:01Daemon Hatfield:It was a December release, right?

27:03Justin Davis:Yeah.

27:04Daemon Hatfield:And I mean, that's a choice. It means that we got less than a month of sales in there. I hope it picks up. And there was just a lot of negativity around the launch too. Like I thoroughly, we talked about this. Sam and I both really liked this game. We enjoyed it. Yeah, it has issues, but to constantly always lead with the issues when there's so much good stuff in this game feels like underselling all the, just the cool moments you have in this game. It's just the atmosphere is fantastic. Look at it. It's such a tech demo too, really shows the Switch too. So hopefully people will pick it up. Maybe it'll go down in price someday and entices some people.

27:46Daemon Hatfield:Maybe Switch 2 owners are stingy. I don't know. Yeah.

27:51Justin Davis:So I didn't play it. What? I didn't play it. You should play it. Well, maybe. Except here's the reason why is that Metroid Prime 1 is a 10 out of 10 game. Yeah. So an 8 out of 10 Metroid Prime is kind of like, oh, well, maybe.

28:03Daemon Hatfield:See, it's an 8 out of 10 because it has like an annoying fetch quest thing. Yeah. But Wind Waker had that too. And if you think about the...

28:11Justin Davis:But Wind Waker's 10 out of 10.

28:12Daemon Hatfield:Huh? But Wind Waker's 10 out of 10. Yeah, but if you go back to Wind Waker now, the original, not the HD version, you would be annoyed at the Triforce Shards quest. And like, it would impact your history. I think Wind Waker is more annoying than this. Yeah, and then same with stuff like Skyward Sword and games like that. I feel like it's so funny because the things that are the worst in this game are the things that are the most Zelda. It's the horse riding around the overworld in Twilight Princess, you know, like that sort of stuff. Yeah.

28:42Peer Schneider:You don't have to do that stuff either. like we 100 %ed this game

28:45Daemon Hatfield:the crystals you have to

28:47Peer Schneider:yeah but like that takes a long time and I did it

28:50Daemon Hatfield:no I know but that's not fun the crystal collection is smashing into crystals is fun but after like doing it five minutes you're like I'm saying that just going

28:58Peer Schneider:you barely you don't do a lot of like backtracking travel through the desert and you're like oh this sucks like I need a radio like that's all nonsense that's not how this game works

29:06Daemon Hatfield:I think you'll play it and like for the first half of the game you're like what the hell are people talking about it's it is honestly some of the stuff is just amazing. It's just one of the fun.

29:16Peer Schneider:I would argue that the back half then picks up like there's maybe a middle but like the ice part is amazing. The fire part's amazing. Those are all the later games.

29:27Daemon Hatfield:It's got a dumbass ending. So like it's like this story is not It does have a dumbass ending. But if you like collecting like everything and stuff like going back for like a missile tank or something like is generally fun in this game. They built these really cool puzzles around some of the extra stuff you don't have to get.

29:49Peer Schneider:But there's definitely, I mean, we've been talking forever, for years on this show, about how video game review scores are more than just math. It's not like a game is 10 out of 10 and then, oh, oops, now it's an 8 out of 10 because it has this fetch quest. And so that's part of, I think, in Metroid Prime 4's case that works to its detriment. It's not just like, oh, let's make a list of like, I don't like these four things about it, but it just feels kind of old school. Like it feels like a game that could have been released on the GameCube, you know, just from a game design sense. And like, that can be a pro for some people, like, you know, that there's a comfort in that and they're ready to go back to that kind of like style of, you know, game design.

30:31Peer Schneider:But I think for general audiences, it's like tastes just feel like they've kind of moved on a little bit. Like Zelda evolved with the times and Mario evolved with the times metroid kind of hasn't and and i think so like if we got half-life 3 and it was so much like half-life 2 and it was all gravity gun puzzles and really good story like who cares like that's a retro game now basically but it would be really cool and that's how i look at it i mean every time there's a 3d platformer that like really works like astrobotment like you know like it there's points of innovation that game but like it's also pretty old school

31:04Daemon Hatfield:yeah i i look i i i want to believe that people will give this game a chance and go go back and play it it's i was generally sad when it was over and i think that to me is always a sign that ultimately for all the criticisms i have i could talk for an hour and i actually did uh logan and i did a spoiler cast we we we talked more about the things that annoyed us and then we kept stopping ourselves going like but i really liked it um and i think when the game is over i go like i kind of want to play it again and i think that that is a sign that that it it was a good experience and

31:35Justin Davis:it's freaking gorgeous it is good every time i see it i just can't believe this is a nintendo

31:39Peer Schneider:switch yeah and like you can live up to that like you can't show what you're actually seeing in this game like when you're playing it and you're in these like ice caves and like everything is like covered in frost and damage is looking really good on like it looks awesome it looks so good

31:55Daemon Hatfield:it's like doom or something and you can have these visuals at 120 frames per second on switch too

31:59Peer Schneider:yeah yeah yeah i i really do i can't recommend it more i think it's a total damey game and i think you should play it despite it's where you know we can do we can go in the archives and

32:09Daemon Hatfield:and lower all the other scores yeah i'll do that after this show i'll just change all the scores

32:14Justin Davis:yeah here's what we do let's do let's do an is it still fun today episode on it okay that's great

32:22Daemon Hatfield:no please just it's just a review please please play it it's not you know it honestly it is it It is a game in the vein of Wind Waker. And so if you like Wind Waker and Skyward Sword has, you know, annoyed me in some parts, it's like if you enjoyed that, this game is good to play.

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35:24Justin Davis:Sticking with Nintendo, Pair, last week we were talking about Dispatch. It came to Switch 2. Have you played Dispatch yet? No, no, it's censored. Well, not on other platforms.

35:33Daemon Hatfield:I was actually going to play it, and then all the negative chatter, I'm like, I'm going to wait and see what happens. It's a fantastic game.

35:40Justin Davis:I really love the game I played it on. I'll play it on one of the other consoles. But it's unfortunately censored on Switch 2, which is really weird because there's other games that have nudity and...

35:50Daemon Hatfield:And they ain't talking about it. But Sam, you said it's actually funnier when there's like a big black bar dangling instead of a thing.

35:57Peer Schneider:You know what's great about the black bars? I don't think it detracts from the game too much. But we keep using this image on IGN of like a black bar, but it's like kind of by like her collar. But like, that's real. That's actually a censored moment. Yeah, that's how they do it. It's really funny. That was their solution. It looks like we're trolling people.

36:15Daemon Hatfield:I mean, you probably wouldn't even notice there was nudity if that black box wasn't there, but now you know.

36:20Peer Schneider:That's the point of the game, too. That's actually a funny moment in it. That's a funny... Yeah. So, yeah, it's really weird. That is a part you would miss out on.

36:27Justin Davis:It seemed initially that Nintendo had forced the censorship, but then there was a theory that it was the Japanese ratings board, Cero, that just doesn't allow that stuff. And games like Cyberpunk 2, CD Projekt created a separate version for Japan, like an edited version of the game, and then they sold a different version elsewhere. And so the theory was that Adhoc, the developer here, wouldn't or couldn't make a new version for Japan, so they just made one censored version for the world. However, that's not confirmed. That's just a theory. Neither Nintendo or Adhoc has confirmed that. In fact, this week, Adhoc says it is legally unable to explain why it couldn't release a separate uncut version.

37:04Justin Davis:What? It's legally unable to explain? No, it's not.

37:08Daemon Hatfield:But the confusing thing is like the Witcher 3 exists on Switch. Exactly. And like there's nudity in it. And so I'm not sure what happened. Like somebody just call each other. Just somebody call someone.

37:25Justin Davis:What law would be broken if they explained why? Or who would sue them? Would Nintendo sue them? Because that would look really bad for Nintendo.

37:32Peer Schneider:yeah they like signed an nda in censoring their game uh for nintendo standards and then in that nda it said you can't talk about what you censored or why or what our rules are i don't know oh it's

37:44Daemon Hatfield:probably i'm legally not allowed to explain legal things and nintendo probably doesn't want a list

37:50Peer Schneider:of the things that have to be censored in a game out there because like a you know nipple is obvious but there's probably shit that they want censored that's not obvious that like is a little bit controversy there's nipple in mario odyssey that's true male nipple this yeah so and so they

38:05Justin Davis:censor they censor a middle finger uh they censor like there's a there's a a sex scene they censor

38:12Peer Schneider:some noises okay yeah there's a lot of nipple in uh mario kart that's the cow oh the cow

38:21Justin Davis:teats sam yeah those are called teats uh okay jobert let's get this ready so everyone i have something to share with the class. So I just want to point out the complete insanity that a fantastic game like Dispatch that has a boob and a middle finger and a hanging dong that's in shadow, that had to be censored. While at the same time this is allowed on the eShop, no problemo Call of Beauty. This is fine. This is fine. Call of Beauty. It's a, for our our listeners, this is a new game on the eShop available right now. Call of Duty, it's a jigsaw puzzle game where you make jigsaw puzzles of AI slop women wearing scantily clad military outfits.

39:10Daemon Hatfield:Well, at least, look, I appreciate that they went for a wholly original idea.

39:16Justin Davis:And yes, Call of Duty is the exact Call of Duty font, the old school Call of Duty font. Yes, amazing.

39:21Peer Schneider:Can I play this on my bar top monitor in 1992? What does this stuff get through?

39:27Justin Davis:It's because there's a Nintendo seal of quantity. Yes, I know. I am familiar with the seal of quantity. There's nobody paying. Well, apparently someone is paying attention because dispatch couldn't get through.

39:38Peer Schneider:Yeah, but this company can't legally say why they're allowed to put this in the store.

39:42Justin Davis:Yeah. Well, I was curious. So this is made by a company. It's not made by any person. It is.

39:51Peer Schneider:I am company. it's made by a developer called

39:54Justin Davis:where is it? 17 Studio and they have a website and I went to check a website and all of their images didn't load but they do have a slogan so 17 Studio the developer of Call of Beauty's slogan is we don't make games we make only good games

40:10Peer Schneider:oh good I like that I like that the Nintendo seal of quantity there's a related feature that's been developing over time where the Nintendo seal of quantity is also becoming Damon goes down the rabbit hole and we just see like you know look it turns out

40:31Daemon Hatfield:do you remember the Wii age did you did you go to Best Buy and stop at the cash register and look in the giant bucket of Wii games it was amazing I know I know like I don't think there's a complete catalog of all that stuff

40:42Peer Schneider:yeah the Game Boy Advance version of that there was just like a tumble of dented cardboard boxes and a big bin at costco and like half of them were episodes of like you know

40:54Daemon Hatfield:cartoon network shows yes gba video gba video majestu still discovering new wii games to this

41:01Justin Davis:day uh thank you to super fighting robot on twitter for pointing out call of beauty to me

41:07Peer Schneider:that was quite quite how partial do you think the nudity is in in call of beauty yeah it says There's one way to find out.

41:17Justin Davis:So speaking of Twitter, this whole thing with Dispatch and the developer AdHoc, like it could have been, the part that's really crappy is that they didn't tell people ahead of time. Like AdHoc has a social following. They have 140 ,000 Twitter followers. So I will look back through a feed. They were promoting the Switch 2 launch of Dispatch, saying pre-order now. At no point did they say, hey, heads up, anyone, everyone, we just want to let you know that due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to censor dispatch on Switch 2. We're sorry if you're disappointed. We just wanted to let you know before you pre-order, it will be a censored version.

41:53Justin Davis:They never did that. And that's the crappy part. They took people's money without telling them it was going to be censored.

41:59Peer Schneider:I still maintain that it's funnier with the black bars.

42:02Justin Davis:Oh, it was you who said that. I'm not arguing against it, but the people who bought the game should make that choice.

42:07Peer Schneider:Sure. Agreed. And they should have the choice to turn it on or off.

42:11Justin Davis:Yeah. Exactly.

42:17Justin Davis:Okay, there was a Nintendo Partner Direct today. My biggest question coming out of it is, Pear, are you getting the Leon Amiibo?

42:27Daemon Hatfield:Yeah, and Claire. Have you seen my new display in my office?

42:31Justin Davis:I saw people building it for you. You had two people in there building it for you.

42:35Daemon Hatfield:I had some small shells put in that are just deep enough for Amiibo. Yeah. We're going bankrupt because Pear got new shelves. No, no. I just had a couple of new shelves because I couldn't fit all the Amiibo anymore. Yeah, I will get those. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. It's stupid now. This thing is getting away from Nintendo a little bit where they're making bigger characters. I don't like that stuff. But many of them are still really nicely made. Yeah. Except for Leon. Does he look derpy? I haven't really seen him. Yeah, he is super derpy. It does not look great. yeah but they're but they're actually it's like a kid took a magnifying glass to him in the sun yeah his face is melting for for for a while if you remember amiibo i don't want to talk too much about it maybe people are like switching off and like leaving already and buying call of beauty but um in the very beginning they were sort of locked in to do the smash brothers poses and then they had to like come up with ways to actually make them stand up that's how you got like p stand p stand link and all of that with that yellow that was really a stream coming out of his legs and like here they can do any pose they want and like this is the pose they chose for leon i'm like come on leon looks so good in the game too i don't know what they're doing

43:48Peer Schneider:should we have leon doing something interesting no he should just be standing there yeah same

43:52Justin Davis:with claire okay got it do they do anything our our article didn't say if these amiibo do anything

43:58Peer Schneider:in game it's all bs yeah they unlock weapons right or weapon skins yeah i mean it's the usual amiibo stuff like which by the way like nintendo and i love nintendo but they absolutely get a pass for like cool costumes and stuff are just locked behind these you know$30$40 at this point

44:15Daemon Hatfield:make them half the price and take the tech out right like take the NFC stuff out because like in the beginning remember the concept was you swipe your amiibo it can store data and you bring it to your friend's house and you load your amiibo character or something like that sort of stuff would be really fun like you could use an amiibo to like instantly create a custom uh uh like login or whatever on your friends when you're playing Smash Bros. to load your name and all of that. There's actually a reason. There was a good idea at one point and then they just turned it into collectible.

44:46Justin Davis:But when Breath of the Wild came out, I would bring my Switch into the office so I could use your Amiibo to get meat and gold and arrows and tons of actual useful stuff in the game. Well, you get something useful in Metroid Prime 4

44:58Daemon Hatfield:which people really, really liked.

44:59Peer Schneider:What, the music? Yes. uh yeah that was so that was the biggest non-traversy of our generation it does not

45:08Justin Davis:change i don't know about that although it's justin biggest gaming non-traversies yeah a good

45:14Peer Schneider:feature there yeah that's a good feature but if you uh it's such nonsense and like you do need to listen to a podcast as i keep mentioning while you play the while you collect your green crystals but having having the the techno bops doesn't help listening to a podcast while you play is something

45:30Justin Davis:that Sony has a solution for, Sam, which we'll get to in just a moment.

45:33Daemon Hatfield:Oh, God. They're coming for us. Did you like the Nintendo Direct? It was, it's fine. It was, yeah. Logan on NVC was reading from my Path of Radiance review from like 200 years ago. And my final paragraph was all about how it's great that there's a drought of Nintendo games because it makes Nintendo translate games to English that would have never seen the light of day. I mean, we got Fire Emblem because there weren't any other GameCube games coming out. That started the sort of Western discovery, GBA games and GameCube games of Fire Emblem, right? And this Direct felt like that. It was like, here are all these Japanese games.

46:12Daemon Hatfield:There's literally a visual novel game in here that I don't think would be in an official Nintendo Direct if there was a lot of Western support.

46:21Peer Schneider:I mean, the console is getting real third-party support, not just kind of lip service support, but no big actual video games. So it's like, that's a big deal. And that's exciting to see as a Switch 2.

46:32Daemon Hatfield:I mean, the story goes that Switch 2 dev kits went out really late to some devs and especially smaller devs. And so there's this sort of, there's a little bit of a gap. And so if you watch this direct, like it is mostly, I don't want to say sloppy seconds because they're good seconds, right? Like Valheim, they're like quality games coming to Indiana Jones coming to the Switch 2 now. So there's a lot of good stuff, but like there were some really funny Japanese games that in the end I'm happy that we're getting them and that they're getting translated to English.

47:04Peer Schneider:This is the game I was going to talk about so it's perfectly timed. I remember that moment where Live Alive was announced and then no one knew what was going on or cared except Pear and you were losing your mind. Did you see that this game is like Live Alive that they showed? Elliot. The moment in this direct for me that was that was that card game, Damon. It was Cold Sept. Yeah, Cold Sept came back. By the way, if you've never played it, that's what that card game was. It's absolutely a damey game where, you know, the elevator pitches, it's kind of like half Monopoly where you're moving around a board game board and then you're taking over and like owning spaces on this board game.

47:42Peer Schneider:But then it's half like card battler where if you land on a board game square that someone else has like claimed and put a monster on, then you fight them with cards that you have in your own hand. And I played it on the PS1 and was absolutely enamored. And sometimes I feel like I'm the only person on earth that cares about and knows about this game franchise. And so they announced not one, but two Cold Sept games today of an updated re-release of the original with some quality of life features and then a brand new Cold Sept as well. So I'm pumped.

48:15Daemon Hatfield:There was a pair game in the Direct, but it was only in the Japanese Direct. And that was the Goemon Collection. Konami finally woke up from its slumber since they released Goemon on the DS. That's the last game. And they're releasing a 13-game collection. So they got their, I think it was four Super NES games.

48:33Peer Schneider:Does it have that crazy Super Nintendo one in it

48:35Daemon Hatfield:with all the amazing like mech stuff and everything? Yeah, yeah, Goemon too. On the Super NES. Yeah, all four Super NES games, the NES games and the Game Boy games are in this collection. So anything in the 2D realm before it went to. We call that Legend of the Mystical Ninja here. Before Mystical Ninja 64 and all that.

48:52Justin Davis:I can reveal to you all now that I swapped out our 20 questions game last minute right before we recorded because it was going to be Legend of the Mystical Ninja. I had a whole conversation about that with Pear this morning. I was like, it's too soon. Too soon. I have to switch it out. That's so mean. That game's so good. But I was waiting for an episode that Pear was on to do Mystical Ninja.

49:12Daemon Hatfield:Now you can never do it.

49:14Justin Davis:Never. My cul-de-sup story real quick is I played a cul-de-sup game on 360. and just is right and it was like this is so me board game card game there's some sort of like getting characters to marry and and then you play as like their lineage but then i realized after a long time put into it the game was total bs because like i was like playing a level and my dice rolls weren't going the way i wanted to so i was like i'm gonna start over i'm gonna start over and i did that a couple times then i was like wait a minute every time i restart over the dice rolls are exactly the same. It's not random at all.

49:47Justin Davis:You're kidding me. So it was total BS.

49:49Peer Schneider:Really? The game, and I say this like, look, as I said, I might be one of the biggest Colts of fans in the United States, but that is 100 % true. Like the game will hose you. Like you'll have, if I land on any single square, I'm fine except this square. If I land on this square, I'm hosed and every single time it'll like, it'll like the AI the AI cheats like hell. And so hopefully that's something that can be addressed. That's funny. How did I never play this? Real quick, I'm at... It's a pair of games. You're basically playing Fortune Street on Wii. That's right.

50:21Justin Davis:Real quick, Jobron, I'm at 1 % on my IFB.

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52:27Are we good?

52:29Peer Schneider:Yeah, we wrapped this episode. Okay. We're done, Damon. Damon, we're done. Episode's over. Okay, well, that's all the scoops we have for this week.

52:39Justin Davis:The other one I wanted to call it is Adventures of Elliot, The Millennium Tales, which, yeah, I guess was announced last summer, but I missed. And this is another 2D HD game from Square Enix, but this one is an action RPG. So what more Secret of Evermore? Secret of Mana, yeah. Yeah, Secret of Mana. The good secret one. Then Final Fantasy. And this looks really cool. Like, I love this art style. This looks great. My one concern is that it seems super serious and melodramatic, and there's all this really, really dense lore building and weird names for everything. That's my one concern.

53:13Daemon Hatfield:You can try out a demo. You can play it.

53:15Justin Davis:Yeah, the demo is out on Switch. Yeah.

53:17Daemon Hatfield:I thought this was really exciting. I really love this approach to the art style because you can make very pretty games on hardware that is not super duper powerful, and they keep getting better and better at it. maybe someday they'll make a chrono trigger like that, that would be really nice but it's got seven times in keeping with Square Enix naming strategy can they just come up with a cool name like just once Octopath Traveler, that's so bad like Live Alive is bad too, I love that game

53:52Peer Schneider:just call it Dragon Lancer or something and they'll sell like ten times as many copies

53:58Daemon Hatfield:This is not, like, if your name is Elliot, I don't mean to insult you, but, like, you're not...

54:03Peer Schneider:Elliot.

54:04Daemon Hatfield:You're not Aerithorn or Aragorn. Like, you're, you know, like, pick a cool name out of the...

54:10Peer Schneider:Yeah, they missed the mark on that one. It ain't a legendary character name, really, is it?

54:14Daemon Hatfield:Yeah.

54:14Peer Schneider:Elliot. Look how cool that looks, that pullout, the establishing shot of that town. Yeah.

54:19Justin Davis:It looks great. I just hope it's actually fun. The demo is fun. I enjoyed it. Cool. You already played the demo? Wow, you are fast.

54:27Peer Schneider:Does it have slimes?

54:29Justin Davis:Not a Dragon Quest. Not a Jockway.

54:32Peer Schneider:But do you start at little dinky enemies and there's a lot of them, or is it pretty interesting? No, it's fun.

54:37Daemon Hatfield:It's also puzzly. Oh, interesting.

54:41Justin Davis:The other thing to note is that the folks that do the arcade archives are now doing console archives, so bringing back old console games. I saw that. Which is cool.

54:48Daemon Hatfield:They ran out of obscure shmups for you, man. No, they haven't. They haven't. There's no way they have. Every time a new one comes out, But I'm like, man, we don't even have this run in our database. It's like some obscure Japan-only arcade game. And so now they're going to do it with console games, like the first games that they're releasing. They're doing Cool Borders. Okay, that's known. That was an early PlayStation game.

55:10Justin Davis:Yeah, but then they're also doing Ninja Gaiden 2, which that's also very known.

55:13Daemon Hatfield:But then they go, and then Doraemon. That's like Famicom 1986. But I mean, I love that they're, and this is my criticism with Konami, If Konami would translate some of the Super NES Goemon games, they're some of the best third-party platformers on the Super Famicom.

55:33Peer Schneider:Oh, would they have to be translated to a genre?

55:36Daemon Hatfield:Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have city scenes where sometimes you have to show somebody a pass to get by.

55:42Peer Schneider:I thought that's what kept the Ninja mystical.

55:44Daemon Hatfield:Yeah, no, there's a lot of town stuff in those. But yeah, I mean, they're apparently releasing Doraemon for the first time in the West.

55:55Justin Davis:oh that's coming out here now? I missed that, I thought it was just this one is not coming out

56:00Daemon Hatfield:Ninja Gaiden 2 and Cool Borders no Doraemon is a TBA game it's coming too and for the first time in the west you can be a robot cat everybody let's be realistic too like obviously messing with old code is not fun but like fans have translated many of these games and it did not take them years and it would not be very costly to translate NES games with limited text. They just don't have that much. One of the difficulties is that Japanese is very compact and English is not. Isn't that the Mother 3 thing? People fan translate it but they never... It's impossible to translate. Come on, give me a break.

56:37Daemon Hatfield:Seriously, call a fan and they'll do it for you in two weeks. That's why Reggie retired. Yeah, exactly.

56:45Peer Schneider:We're like one month away from AI being able to completely just code that game for free.

56:51Daemon Hatfield:You're right. And that would be a good use of AI because they're fantastic games that were never translated and released here. 13 Goemon games.

57:05Justin Davis:Well, speaking of AI, Sony patent system to generate AI podcasts in the voices of your favorite PlayStation characters.

57:14Peer Schneider:I think it'll be so natural. Do you think Kratos would have a Manosphere podcast? Yeah, that's like you're going to be listening

57:22Justin Davis:to Kratos hosting a podcast? Talking about politics. So I have some stuff to read here. This is from a patent submitted in mid-2024, and it claims the system dubbed LLM-based generative podcasts for gamers will generate, reading from the patent, unique personalized podcasts of news that a particular gamer would find interesting and could be presented in the voice of a video game character from a game already played by the respective gamer. It appears this could be offered to players on the home screen when they power on their PlayStation console. Video game platforms currently lack the ability to provide unique and targeted content to gamers to update the gamers about things that are happening on the platform.

58:03Justin Davis:There are currently no adequate solutions to the foregoing computer-related technological problem. That's patent speak for, there's gotta be another way. In some examples, if the gaming platform wants to highlight specific games for players to experiment with, the podcast can suggest different games to different players based on a cluster to which the relevant player is assigned. These game recommendations can also be provided in the generative AI podcasts in game-specific character voices, no less. Recommendations may be prioritized and jump out a little more to the listener to get the listener to note the recommendation.

58:37Peer Schneider:You know, a voice actor did the voices for those. It's kind of brutal. So this is not Aloy telling you about her day finding herbs, which she already does. Well, you play the game. That's all she talks about. so it's not that it's that it will tell you all of the e-slop games you could be playing in the shop in the voice of Kratos it'll be like boy did you play

58:59Daemon Hatfield:Call of Duty did you play Call of Duty

59:04Justin Davis:IGN commenter wild360 I think some to the best I can't think of a more soulless experience than an AI generated podcast discussing my recent trophies it's good

59:17Daemon Hatfield:it's always tough to judge stuff like this because if you go back in history it's things that seem stupid and impossible become commonplace over time right like i can't tell you how if you remember when the iphone was announced people said no i want buttons right it was as simple as that it's like don't get rid of the buttons i need the buttons you cannot use a phone without buttons you need to tap numbers and then now you will never think about it and like if you watch movies like blade runner where harrison ford or what's his name, Gosling, who was in the second one? Ryan Gosling. Yeah, well, Gosling talks to an AI character and she feels like a real person because she's played by a real person.

59:55Daemon Hatfield:Like the more natural it gets, it's just inevitable that we'll go down that road that these things will get better. Well, it's too bad for you, Pear,

1:00:05Peer Schneider:because they patented it. I know, I know, I can't do it.

1:00:08Daemon Hatfield:But I imagine in a future Witcher game, the NPC dialogue is generated on the fly and like what will make it interesting is that it sucks man that's the worst i know but it's reacting to the things you already did and so as long as there's good story structure and personalities and all that stuff i'm just saying like don't knock it i hate i hate the thought of you know voice actors being replaced and hopefully people get compensated when they turn kratos's voice into now a podcast right but like what what empty calories empty calories It's a good way to put it.

1:00:40Peer Schneider:I hear you. But I feel... You know, it's... We don't need people consuming, you know, the thoughts and words that have never been thought before. Like, there's just no... There's no... Which, by the way, like, the Pope said that recently. I didn't... That's not my quote. Like, but it just... Like, so there's Radiant Quest and, like, Skyrim, right? Yeah. And, you know, and Fallout. And then in the beginning, like, you know, for the first week that those games are out, people are like, oh, man, this is amazing. Like they keep sending me on all these quests and like, it just, you know, the game never ends.

1:01:11Peer Schneider:And then people figured out that it was this treadmill that never ends.

1:01:16Justin Davis:Bounce me off of fallout four.

1:01:18Peer Schneider:Yeah. And once you're out of sort of handcrafted content like this, this is kind of hoity toity, uh, perspective of art is that it's like, you know, you having a conversation and engaging with the artists. It's you engaging with the creatives that created that. Right. And like, I don't ever really put that much thought into it. I'm just like, well, I'm, you know, I'm here to have a good time. I want to play the video game. But then I realized that there actually is some truth to that. And I do want my video games to kind of challenge me and say something and have a perspective, because if it's just AI creating something that's tailored for me that no one has ever seen before, then I don't I'm not interested.

1:01:56Peer Schneider:You know, I want to experience something that someone else made. Otherwise, I otherwise there's no point. This is my argument against Mario Maker. I don't want to... But the levels are all made by creators.

1:02:08Daemon Hatfield:Yeah, Mario Maker is a great example of things can go off the rails. But I don't want to be Sarah Connor here, but I fear eventually, Justin, you won't be able to tell the difference. That's the point.

1:02:19Peer Schneider:I think the issue is that if you have an NPC that recognizes that you're in a banana costume and they didn't need to write that because you designed the banana costume yourself, that's pretty interesting. but all they have to do is offhandedly say like wow you look like an idiot banana and then get on with a written dialogue like that's that's you know if it's indistinguishable but then also like we all played you know like games when there was text and stuff like that i'm interested if games can trick me into thinking that it's written the stuff but like it says we're not even close to that right i mean we're even close i don't necessarily want that anyway but that's not even what this is about this is about podcasts about information and that is a trend in the world right now where people study or or especially in you know for school where they they digest a textbook and then listen to people talk about it as a podcast that is what kids do now it's like this is getting ahead of like well how do i make a decision about something i want to hear it in podcast yeah

1:03:16Daemon Hatfield:personally i cannot i cannot free myself from the artifice of that when i when i see that right like there's it's this sort of uncanny valley thing but you know obviously younger audiences

1:03:27Peer Schneider:is i'm very torn between you know you're right we're like you know people didn't like it's the henry ford quote right like before the car was invented if you asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse so like there's an element of like you know you need to tell people and show people what they want but then but then i but then like i'm at war with myself because in the other half of my brain it's like they're solving a problem that no one no one is asking for this zero playstation owners are like this is what i want on my home screen well I don't believe this and I'll play devil's advocate here.

1:03:55Peer Schneider:What you were, all I just asked for was for game development time to not take five years. And one way to do that is to fake all the audio. So, you know, it is, it is filling a problem, unfortunately. And I'm not saying that's a good thing and it's not a good solution. Well,

1:04:11Justin Davis:to be fair, Sony patents weird things all the time. And, you know, sometimes they patent things so others don't do it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's true.

1:04:21Peer Schneider:So advertisements they want, they say if we can get people listening to this 10 minute podcast about what's new in the eShop, then we can sell a spot in the middle of that to Activision when the new Call of Duty comes out. Yeah. Bad example set by Microsoft, but whatever. To be clear, Justin's point about this being something that nobody asked for. I totally get that he's talking about the podcast thing, but I was just doing a callback to the previous thing where unfortunately, people are looking at game development times and saying like, how are we going to shorten all this and make this easy on us?

1:04:53Peer Schneider:This stuff is not cut and dry. Like, you know, so there's a movement with gamers and I'm painting with a broad brush. Gamers aren't a monolith, but generally speaking, they're anti-AI, right? Like they don't want it in their games. We see it in our comments. We see it on YouTube, but it's like, but it's not, there's nuance here of like software has been putting trees in your open world games forever for 20 years, you know, and like you click a button and it generates a thousand different versions of an oak tree that are not identical and then plops them into your world for you. So like, you know, like, just like, that's generative, like that's generative, you know, content creation.

1:05:29Peer Schneider:Right. So like, where does, where does, you know, people need to have a kind of reckoning with themselves or maybe they don't, but like, you know, everything's a, you're totally right. Everything's a culture war too. And so you're, you're just saying like, you know, like all these, like people are like anti AI probably, maybe not all of them. I can't wait for the pro AI, like, you know, political movement where it's like, no, I want everything to be AI. It's so much cooler than humans. And you've been fully fooled by the robots. So I think part of it is a narrative. Like that's where people get a little bit queasy feeling.

1:06:02Peer Schneider:It's like, yeah, use software to generate my trees and my biomes in Minecraft. But maybe not to be creating sort of endless narrative experiences for me is where things start to feel a little bit icky. Yeah.

1:06:16Justin Davis:I mean, it can't take five years to write a story for a video game. I don't believe it or I don't think it should. It can't take five years to design your characters.

1:06:26Peer Schneider:They certainly are not that good. George R. R. Martin's taking a lot longer.

1:06:31Justin Davis:Yeah, sure. Anyway, I just think they're...

1:06:35Peer Schneider:George R. R. Martin taking shots here randomly at the end of an episode of Game Scoop. You think every day he's like, dear chat GPT, what would Sansa do next? in this scenario. I finished the book.

1:06:50Justin Davis:I finished the book. Okay. Well, on that note, I am really, really liking A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, by the way. It's good. It's really, really good. Okay.

1:07:12Justin Davis:That brings us to Video Game 20 Questions. First, we have a little anecdote from Charlie Gadsden in San Diego who says, to answer Sam's question at the end of last week's episode, yes, the team is on a winning streak. Four wins in a row to start the year. An average of 19 questions needed. That's your average. So you get either 18 or 20 questions.

1:07:31Peer Schneider:The average can't be higher than that. Oh, because we could get it in 20.

1:07:37Daemon Hatfield:I think I played Destiny with Charlie Gadsden

1:07:39Justin Davis:like 10 years ago. And Charlie says, all four games picked this year have been from after the year 2000. So do with that information. Could have done Mystical Ninja to Damon.

1:07:49Daemon Hatfield:We are going to get Goemon on and then

1:07:50Peer Schneider:Paira to screw us.

1:07:52Daemon Hatfield:All I said to Damon was the Japanese director at Goemon and then he had a funny look on his face and I thought I was boring him but he was already calculating what to replace him.

1:08:03Peer Schneider:We know Damon. This is so easy. He switched to Bomberman so we can get this in one question.

1:08:08Daemon Hatfield:It probably is Super Bomberman. There is a Bomberman collection coming.

1:08:11Justin Davis:Let's find out. our suggestion this week comes from Rodel also in San Diego and says my son and I listen to the show every week recently he discovered Redacted and is in love with the Redacted he keeps bugging me to suggest Redacted for 20 questions so here's my shot and with that let the questioning

1:08:32Daemon Hatfield:begin so if he's like he recently discovered Pokemon and he's obsessed with the Pokemon yeah because like what would you be obsessed with

1:08:41Peer Schneider:he's obsessed with the gritty realistic reboot of Bomberman yes okay did this game come out in the 70s 80s or 90s yes

1:08:51Daemon Hatfield:does the game title have a number in it yes that's a great question

1:08:56Peer Schneider:I thought we weren't allowed to ask that question really? you don't ask does the game start with the letter

1:09:01Daemon Hatfield:start with an A wait so it came out in the 70s 80s or 90s yeah

1:09:09Peer Schneider:let's wordle this one

1:09:10Daemon Hatfield:So, good dad, letting his kid discover a classic. Thank you. Sonic 2.

1:09:17Peer Schneider:Mega Man, maybe? Yeah. Okay, did this game originally come out on the 16-bit console? No. It's not Sonic 2. Is this on the NES? Yes. Could be Mega Man's. You're right. Was this made by Capcom? Yes, that's five. Okay, let's try to get this. Really quick. Everybody calm down. Should we do... Six Mega Men.

1:09:43Daemon Hatfield:It can't be Mega Man 1. Nope. But hold on. Capcom made more than just the Mega Men. You know, it made ghosts and goblins. Games with sequels.

1:09:53Peer Schneider:We know. Yeah. There's not that many. There's like Chip and Ale, DuckTales. And not that many with two in the title from Capcom on the NES. Two or more. I just named them.

1:10:03Daemon Hatfield:Yeah. Should we ask if it's a 2D side-squirreler?

1:10:07Peer Schneider:Why are we doing this? It is going to. It is going to. yeah ask him it's a mega man game is it a mega man game yes

1:10:16Justin Davis:you don't think his son was obsessed with mickey mouse capade

1:10:22Peer Schneider:i was i don't i don't have sucked does this game have an even number in the title yes all right i don't i don't know where i don't know i don't have a clever way it's not mega

1:10:34Daemon Hatfield:man three or five i'm not i'm not a mega man guy it's mega man too let's just end it in mega

1:10:39Peer Schneider:It's Mega Man 2, 4, or 6.

1:10:42Daemon Hatfield:Yeah. But do you guys know NES Mega Man? Is there one that's notable? Because you wouldn't pick one that's...

1:10:49Peer Schneider:It is absolutely 2. I just don't have a clever way to... 4 and 6 have Rush in them, and 2 doesn't. Is that true? Yeah. Rush is in 3, but we know it's not 3. 3 forward. Okay, yeah. Does this have Rush the dog in it? No. Is it Mega Man 2? Yep. Mega Man 2. you guys were so fast

1:11:10Justin Davis:that's ridiculous you've brought down your average now

1:11:15Peer Schneider:an interesting thing we brought down the average for 20 years Mega Man 2 that's the best one Mega Man 2 and then there was this contingent of people that I actually think Mega Man 3 might be better there's been an un-actually contingent for Mega Man 3 and now I swear if you were to chart over the last decade Mega Man 3 is now getting it's flowers and more people are like maybe that's the best one Consumer sentiment. You do get to fight the Mega Man 2 bosses in the end of Mega Man 3, which is an unbelievable feat for NES.

1:11:45Daemon Hatfield:I always had such a blind spot for Mega Man games because my first Mega Man game was on the Super Famicom, not on the Famicom or NES. Rockman 7. Huh? Rockman 7. And I played it and I was like, eh.

1:11:57Peer Schneider:I cannot believe Sam Clayborne spoiled another game by telling us about the end of Mega Man 3.

1:12:02Justin Davis:It starts with a joke that you wouldn't get then. because like Mega Man's not wearing his hat in the beginning and before he runs off to start the level his like robot friend gives him one of the construction worker hats to put on

1:12:12Daemon Hatfield:okay

1:12:13Justin Davis:and then he's like well maybe try this hat instead so you playing him must be like what the heck's going on yeah I had no idea what was going on

1:12:19Peer Schneider:that hat looked a lot safer what was it was the anecdote that his kid was like he discovered the Mega Man collection

1:12:26Justin Davis:and he's been in love with the kids that's cool

1:12:28Daemon Hatfield:ah so that's cool that's cool that's great I mean like I did this when my kids were little, we would go back to, we hooked up the Super NES and just would go back to older games and, you know, kids need to be classically trained.

1:12:44Peer Schneider:Per and I on our team, we have a co-worker, Mitchell, whose kid is obsessed with Mega Man as well, and I've seen him playing Mega Man in the background during meetings and stuff. He's very, very young, just a couple years old, so this is a thing. Mega Man can appeal to the young still. That's funny, just because my daughters have absolutely know like they just cry whenever they die in a game so like you know they're not interested in anything like that yeah I was like 19 or 20 when I stopped crying when I did games yeah they get it from

1:13:14Daemon Hatfield:their dad I'm the one who's who is crying with hard games and make my son beat them dude I

1:13:20Peer Schneider:you could you could cry playing Karen it's so brutal if you're in that game it's like I really just spent 20 minutes like meticulously like planning this this thing and then die it's just like

1:13:30Daemon Hatfield:I don't mind the games where I It's hard and I die because I was being an idiot and not careful enough. It's just like, you know, as you get older, your reflexes get a little slower. So, you know, like I was very mad. Keep going.

1:13:46Peer Schneider:Well, these games, the Mega Man games, were harder in Japan. They made easier versions for Americans. I see. Okay, well, that explains it all. Sad little thing.

1:13:56Justin Davis:Because I was young when I played this. when Kingo is getting Nintendo Switch time I often find him playing Pilotwink 64 or Star Fox 64 he likes playing those two games

1:14:10Daemon Hatfield:Star Fox 64 is really good

1:14:13Justin Davis:well nicely job thank you for the suggestion Rodel viewers listeners if you have your own suggestions for video game 20 questions email them to me at the email address gamescoop at IGN.com and hey listen right now you can get Humble Choice for just$14.99 and score a curated bundle of PC games for February, including Resident Evil Village, Date Everything, Core Keeper, Starvaders, SteamWorld Build, Squirrel with a Gun, Bus Simulator 21, and Big Helmet Heroes. This month's choice supports InPower, a charity whose mission is to move people from poverty through tech skills, training, and quality job placement.

1:14:46Justin Davis:Head to HumbleBundle.com to start playing today and support a good cause. And that's all the scoops that we have for you this week. Thank you, Pear. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Justin. Thank you to Jobert, working behind the scenes to make this episode possible. My name is Damon. This is IG Game Scoop. And try to do that, PlayStation AI podcasts.

1:15:25Thank you.

1:16:00Daemon Hatfield:No prompter. No prompter. I don't think we want that heat. By the way, Gamescope is like Game of Thrones now with all your spinoffs. You got like brought back Gamescope, which I watched. It was awesome. That was really fun.

1:16:15Justin Davis:We got to plan a version. Sam had that great idea to gamify it like at IGN Live and have two teams where they work together.

1:16:22Daemon Hatfield:So a mark of a good video is like, if my son actually is interested. Like I was watching it and he just came over and then he stood there and he watched the entire GameScope and he was greatly amused. Did he guess any of the games? No, he was like, this is bullshit. How can you tell it from those bricks? Those bricks. Sweet. Those birds of bricks.

1:16:48Peer Schneider:We're not going to talk about it on the show then, but did you see that game is loosely like a Chrono Trigger Live Alive kind of knockoff. Which one? We'll talk about the HD2D game, the Elliot game.

1:16:58Daemon Hatfield:Elliot, so just to be clear, Elliot was already announced before. But save it for the show, I want to talk about that. Yeah, yeah. He wants to talk about it. No, Elliot was announced before, but I...

1:17:08Peer Schneider:Is that the one you're talking about?

1:17:10Daemon Hatfield:I wish... Yeah, it looks great. I wish Square would ever make a good name for a game. Yeah, that's a bad name. Save this stuff for the show, man. What else was in the direct? Like, that direct was so boring, I thought. I mean,

1:17:24Peer Schneider:They showed off that really cool 80s anime style. Oh, that one's good. Yeah, yeah. The anime one. Yeah. I try not to be too taken in by... It's like, yeah, the art style is incredible, but it's like... But it is what everybody wants right now, right? It's like the co-op, couch co-op. Yeah, the game looks cool.

1:17:42Daemon Hatfield:It looked really fun. The co-op action looked really fun to me.

1:17:46Peer Schneider:I'm surprised that somebody in Japan kind of looked at these Western, trendy games that are winning awards, right? and they're like let's make one of those and make it our way yes I can

1:18:06Daemon Hatfield:I was telling Jobit that when my wife and I lived in Japan it was like all of the TV shows were this nonsense Jesus Christ and like it just cannot like I think they all die and we just never hear about it. Yeah.

1:18:26Justin Davis:Is there a point to this? Is something going to happen or are they just doing it just to do it?

1:18:30Daemon Hatfield:It says challenge complete and now it says oh no.

1:18:33Justin Davis:Can you do it? Can you be wrapped up like a mummy? Like of course you can.

1:18:37Daemon Hatfield:Well you don't understand what the goal is of this challenge. Yeah I don't.

1:18:42Peer Schneider:That pharaoh is talking.

1:18:43Daemon Hatfield:I think she now needs to say things and they need to be able to understand what she says.

1:18:48Peer Schneider:Okay. That makes sense.

1:18:52Daemon Hatfield:imagine you have to come up with these ideas

1:18:55Peer Schneider:have you all

1:18:57Daemon Hatfield:watched

1:18:59Peer Schneider:or started the new season of shrinking which I think is good I haven't watched it yet it is such a Ted Lasso successor it's like feel good but really funny that type of stuff

1:19:14Justin Davis:but doesn't veer as far into sentimentality than Ted Lasso it doesn't

1:19:19Peer Schneider:No, it does in maybe in a counseling session or whatever, but the main characters are all well done. It has fucking Brett. It has the co-creator of Ted Lasso, who's also co-created. That's the big British guy that plays Roy Kent.

1:19:38Justin Davis:Oh, yeah. He's on the show now? Yeah.

1:19:42Peer Schneider:He's been a main character since the first season. Oh, God. This is the shit where they

1:19:47Daemon Hatfield:blow cockroaches into each other's mouths.

1:19:48Justin Davis:No, this is too gross, man.

1:19:50Peer Schneider:Oh, Jesus Christ. No way. No way. It's too gross. This is terrible. This is terrible. You think since this is all Japanese TV, like by the end, like every Japanese person ends up on two of these shows at some point in their life.

1:20:05Daemon Hatfield:Eventually.

1:20:07Peer Schneider:I think about that with Great British Bake Off. It's like that island's not that big. Like, and they get 12 bakers every year. They hate it. Like they must run through them eventually.

1:20:17Daemon Hatfield:Yeah. Well, you saw that problem with, have you ever watched Lego Masters?

1:20:23Peer Schneider:Yeah, they ran out of all the Lego Masters.

1:20:25Daemon Hatfield:Dude, first two seasons. That's so funny. Amazing builds. I tune into fifth season and they're like building shit my kids build. I'm like, what is this?

1:20:32Peer Schneider:Oh, this is so fast. So what you're saying is this show was good until they ran out of cockroach blowers? That's right. I'm just saying every Japanese person in time. Oh, no.

1:20:41Justin Davis:Joe Bird. No.

1:20:42Daemon Hatfield:What the fuck, man? Come on.

1:20:44Justin Davis:No, take it off. Why is it a cockroach? use like a cricket or something

1:20:49Peer Schneider:sometimes they use I think it's like a Jerusalem cricket it might be a cricket but it's a bug

1:20:55Justin Davis:I hate this I want to go back to the German cutting things in half show

1:20:59Daemon Hatfield:yeah do the German shopping cart challenge

1:21:03Peer Schneider:I 100 % cut a banana that way this week and showed my wife and she's like what are you doing I'm like you're German right you understand

1:21:19Too bad.

1:21:20Justin Davis:That's a long sentence. Bring it to me.

1:21:22Daemon Hatfield:Jobit, you got to show them the German marble track making the marble land on a toy train challenge. Oh, what? That's excellent.

1:21:31Peer Schneider:It's like launching off of a little toy onto a train.

1:21:35Daemon Hatfield:Yeah, there's a really convoluted marble track and you have to time the marble so it falls onto a container on the back of a toy train.

1:21:42Peer Schneider:We've all played video games with that exact type of challenge.

1:21:44Daemon Hatfield:But you're not allowed to see it when the other team does it. You have to be blindfolded. And then, you know. So, like, you're getting closer and closer.

1:21:52Peer Schneider:When I get really, really stressed out at work, I sometimes will watch, like, Marble Track, like Rube Goldberg Marble Track videos on YouTube.

1:21:59Daemon Hatfield:You know what? That's been ruined, though.

1:22:01Peer Schneider:Does Germany, like, anything more than model trains? That's, like, the height of German culture.

1:22:06Daemon Hatfield:Germany loves, loves model trains. But, yeah, board games would be better. Okay, here we go. It's called Eisenbahn.

1:22:15Peer Schneider:did he time it right now it's way too fast oh no it's slowing down so cool

1:22:23Daemon Hatfield:well remember there's different points for the different oh i see i see yeah number one okay

1:22:31Justin Davis:if we are ready uh i do need to kingo has his first baseball practice tonight oh okay cool

1:22:38Peer Schneider:uh well you can watch this instead right yeah we'll just do this instead of scoop

1:22:44Daemon Hatfield:maybe we should do like react scoop sometime we should

1:22:52Peer Schneider:now we can't use this clip there well just cut that part out

1:22:57Justin Davis:or i'll bleep it i could even bleep it that's even better

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