Game Scoop! 851: Sony's Surprising Slump

11:34Sam Claiborn:Yes. Oh, yeah. People were very excited about that and it was kind of just mid reception.

11:38Justin Davis:And then there were two Destiny 2 expansions that both got low scores. So they just got dragged down by all that. It's so weird that they're the publisher for Destiny. Yeah. I mean, you know, speaking of losing all sense of time, Like we're in the sixth year of these consoles, the sixth year of the PS5 now, which is a little bit we're in the fifth year because it turned six. Sixth calendar year. Yeah, exactly. So they're going to Sony is going to win this console generation. Convincingly, they crushed Xbox without releasing any games. They just they don't need to make video. I mean, and I don't mean literally none commenters, but just like where are all the games?

12:15Yep. Like no new Uncharted game, no new Last of Us game. The theory that we tested on Next Gen Console Watch this week is that this generation is going to go for another freaking six to seven years anyway, and you're going to get them by then. We're going to get everything skewed because how are people going to afford a$1 ,000 system? We're just going to have to have inflation catch up to it.

12:33Justin Davis:Yeah, I haven't actually sat down and done this, but I want to look at how many games Sony published on PS4 compared to PS5 because it feels like they're many, many. When you look at lists like this, it might actually be so much more than you think on board. maybe there is some they do astrobot yeah well that wasn't last year though but yes well i'm just saying it's a ps5 game yeah yeah one of the best ps5 games all right at number 20 ahead of sony is atari they're back this is their big comeback year atari is back last year they put out 10 games last year 57 of them were good none of them were bad none of they all got good scores you didn't review any of them right their best one was see expansion stuff like this gets included but you know people reviewed it it's the Atari 50 anniversary celebration of the Namco legendary pack which has an 84 on Metacritic because people reviewed it good for them

13:29Sam Claiborn:that's awesome

13:30Justin Davis:I mean I gave the base game a 10 that game is really fun they put out a lot of reissues reissues remasters compilations not all of them work but they've got they include games published by night dive studios infograms and digital eclipse okay they own all

13:48Sam Claiborn:this did night dive do what system shock was that last year or system shock 2 system yeah one of

13:54Justin Davis:them yeah one of like remakes or something all right number 19 is p cube seven games released 67 of them were good best one was irakura aria for pc which has an 83 much better than sony last year holding them back were some duds like Beyond the Ice Palace 2 which is a sequel to a nearly 40 year old Commodore 64 platformer wait wait wait Jobber can you scrub back to that B-roll 10 seconds ago what do we say is it before this no there's it'll be with the next line I think

14:32Sam Claiborn:that tickles there it is that was it it looks very House of Fata Morgana visual novel, which people can't seem to get enough of. That tickles. What's with you calling them Tootsies anyway? My feet made me smile. Tootsies are colloquially known as feet, or as its feet, right? Yep, yep, yep. Yes. This is a Commodore, what? A Commodore 64 game? This is the Akura Aria.

15:01Justin Davis:Not Beyond the Ice Palace 2. Yeah, okay. Good night. It's a sequel to strip poker on the Commodore 64. Or please stay with me. Justin, I think PQ has just found a niche. Yeah. This looks nice. Oh, look at the Resident Evil style maps. Room turn red. Turn the room screen. Okay, number 18 is a publisher I've never heard of. I think they're pretty new. Clear River Games. They're out of Sweden. They released a handful of decent PS5 and Switch games last year. Seven games total. Oh, this is what it is. Their best game was Operation Night Strikers, which is a collection of like operation wolf operation thunderbolt and i think operation well night strikers yeah just night striker anyway space gun old arcade games they get lumped in and because they play it it's safe and just do a collection of old games they get ranked higher

15:50Sam Claiborn:than sony night trickers just got like a remake right like or a new entry i believe uh came out like late last year early this year i remember uh the digital foundry or john linderman was

16:02Justin Davis:like all over i love that getting ready scene in operation wolf it looks so good that's amazing okay this was an era big sprites yep big sprites so pretty so good i played this game a lot when i was a kid oh man the fake 3d with the sprites is so cool oh what's space gun this looks kind of sick yeah this looks like a new game right no i think that's an old arcade game anyway uh the The listeners have no idea what we're looking at. Number 17 is Marvelous slash XSEED. Put out seven games. 64 % of them are good. The best one was the 100-line Last Defense Academy on Nintendo Switch. That's an 85.

16:40Sam Claiborn:People love that game. One day I'll check it out.

16:43Justin Davis:They also had... Seems like a Nick game. Story of Seasons Grand Bazaar, which is... It's basically Harvest Moon, right?

16:49Sam Claiborn:Yes, yes.

16:51Justin Davis:But they also put out less successful stuff, like Daemon X Machina, Titanic Scion, and a dungeon crawler mashup game with restaurant management, Cuisineer. Sounds like the delicious in Dungeon. Yeah, that sounds really cool. Cuisineer was a good name. Space Gun's a 1990 Taito arcade game, Blightgum game, and it looks amazing. Cool. It has graphics like I've never seen before. It's like pastels that they had in Super Nintendo. Oh, man, got to look into this game. Number 16 is Don't Nod. They put out five games. 69 % of them are good. Best one was Lost Records, Bloomin' Rage, Tape 1. which is probably an expensive expansion.

17:28Justin Davis:I was going to say, I remember you talking about that, Sam. It sounded cool. Wasn't it episodic though? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's, you know, what's their, what's their big game? Life is strange. Life is strange. Yeah. So it's like a life is strange, but it's about like, um, a little bit more of a, um, there's like a rock and roll theme because the kids are in a band. And then also it's in a, like a kind of a twin peaks. They are kind of twin peaks. So it had that going for it. But that also, I also think that, um, they developed, that and then Square Enix published it and this was them sort of doing their own thing I believe.

18:01That's right. That is what I recall happening there but I might not be right about that. Alright.

18:08Justin Davis:I love this one. Number 15 is Konami. They're back baby. We keep talking about how they're back. They put out 10 games last year. 68 % of them were good. Best one was Gradius Origins. Which included a new game. An actual new Gradius game in there.

18:22Sam Claiborn:They also had Silent Hill F. Silent Hill. They had Metal Gear Delta. Bolt Bangers.

18:30Justin Davis:But they had a Yu-Gi-Oh compilation and Eden's Zero and Survival Kids.

18:37Sam Claiborn:I have zero issue with it, but I've never heard anyone pronounce it Yu-Gi-Oh, which is crazy. It's Yu-Gi-Oh, but I was like, whoa, it took me. Sorry, I was a big Yu-Gi-Oh head back in the day, so it's just one of those things. It stood out to me. It caught my ear.

18:51Justin Davis:It's animated GIFs, so I should have known better. Yujiro's Mansion.

19:00I'm really curious where Sunsoft falls in this list of ancient video game publishers, including Atari and Konami.

19:07Justin Davis:I don't know if they put out five games. I don't know if they'll make the list. Number 14 is Devolver Digital, everyone's favorite indie publishing house. Put out 12 games. The only publisher brave enough to go up against Grand Theft Auto this year. No. 60 uh the 69 percent nice of their games were good and best one was ball pit yeah dude but there should be so it's like i and i i guess i'm kind of we were goofing at the beginning on the kind of convoluted metacritic um you know scoring system of like you get bonus points for this and that and it's like just take the average of your scores but it's like maybe you should get even more bonus points if you make something that's like a game of the year candidate or winner because surely, Ball Pit's like a generational game.

19:51It's so good. It should get them more than just five bonus points.

19:54Justin Davis:Other highlights were The Tallest Principle Reawakened, a platformer called Shotgun Cop Man.

20:00Sam Claiborn:Oh, yeah. That one's really good. That one's really, really good.

20:03Justin Davis:That's a video game title. Mitchell has some really cool gameplay of that,

20:08Sam Claiborn:and it got my attention.

20:09Justin Davis:This is news to me. They published Monster Train 2. Whoa. I like them even more. yeah i mean think about the choices this developer made to or not developer this publisher made to find like cool games and put them out though like that's that's the dream right for publishers yeah so shotgun cop man is from the crew of uh my friend pedro yeah but the platforming is done

20:30Sam Claiborn:via the shotgun that propels you it's great right it's like a rocket jump but shotgun this game looks is this also the n n plus people that's what it looks like but it's clearly evoking that style yeah yeah i like that game a lot uh devolver's big mish was big miss was tron catalyst yeah that was a mike bithel game i believe was it i believe so yeah what type of game was that i i don't i don't remember yeah i think it was i want to say i don't i don't want to say because i might be wrong yeah tron aries that was quite a movie

21:05Justin Davis:shot of playing number 13 is Koei Tecmo 9 games

21:10Sam Claiborn:Dynasty Warriors Origins was that last year?

21:14Justin Davis:yep that was on there but their best game was Atelier Ryza Secret Trilogy Deluxe Pack for Nintendo Switch

21:20Sam Claiborn:you know one of these days I might check out the old Atelier Risa

21:25Justin Davis:yeah Dynasty Warriors Origins and then Ninja Gaiden 2 Black but it's biggest dud was Warriors Abyss I guess it attempted to add a roguelite element to Dynasty Warriors. With mixed results. That sounds kind of cool though. Yeah, for sure. And here we are at number 12 is Nintendo. Wow. We pegged them for number one maybe. Number 12. But they put out 18 games. The best one was Tears of the Kingdom Nintendo Switch 2 edition. 95. Perfect game. the charts Breath of the Wild would be there as well I would assume yep yep that's up there as well too and obviously they had Mario Kart World which even though it was disappointing still very good game high scores 8s and such Donkey Kong Bonanza we gave that a 10 right there were two games that Nintendo got really low scores for last year

22:21Sam Claiborn:oh oh the wheelchair one Drag Drive yes And was there a Kirby or Princess game? It wasn't Princess Peach, right? That was the year before. That was the year before.

22:36Justin Davis:Everyone forgot about the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour.

22:40Sam Claiborn:I like Welcome Tour. Welcome Tour. I spent money on that. I like it. Totally. It's cute. You don't need to defend Welcome Tour. It's cool.

22:52Justin Davis:You think it's something that Nintendo should have charged money for? I mean I didn't say that

22:57Sam Claiborn:I'm just saying it's a well made and well constructed thing

23:05Justin Davis:number 11 is Ubisoft and everyone is just flipping their tables now that Ubisoft is ranked higher than Nintendo AC Shadows but they put out 8 games and they have 81 % of them were good the best one was actually the From the Ashes From the Ashes expansion for Avatar Frontiers of Pandora

23:23Sam Claiborn:I heard good stuff about this

23:25Justin Davis:But they put out Assassin's Creed Shadows and the Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown, and then also Anno 117, Pax Romana.

23:32Sam Claiborn:The Lost Crown was last year?

23:34Justin Davis:Or like January. Oh my gosh. Wow. Yeah. I can't help but notice we haven't got the 2K yet. Yep. Oh yeah, well. It's hard. Like five games is like kind of a high-ish bar, depending on what type of company you are.

23:51Sam Claiborn:Yeah. Avatar in third person goes crazy. This looks cool.

23:56Justin Davis:All right. We arrive at the top 10. Number 10 is Raw Fury. They put out nine games. The best one is Blueprints. That's nice. They actually published Blueprints last year. They also did the Seance at Blake Manor.

24:08Sam Claiborn:I've heard nothing but good things about that one.

24:10Justin Davis:And a point and click detective adventure, Kathy Rain 2 Soothsayer. But their misses were Post Trauma and a deck builder called Knights in Tight Spaces.

24:18Sam Claiborn:Post Trauma is a horror game, I believe. Number nine is... People didn't like Knights in Tight Spaces. that game looks so cool I didn't get good reviews I like the original it's like a deck builder roguelike right

24:32Justin Davis:they call it a deck builder ok number 9 is Dot Emu they put out 8 games the best one was Absalom which I played just a little bit of it seems like I would like it if I put more time into it they also had Ninja Gaiden Ragebound I love that game so much and then Cross Blitz some kind of a RPG hybrid game um yeah and they include their alternate label the arcade crew their misses were a deck builder called shuffle tactics and a first-person shooter called abyssus cool name and here you go sam number eight is electronic arts okay battlefield a good year uh 12 games 79 good best one was

25:12Sam Claiborn:split fiction well oh wow geez i forgot that was last year too i know i know uh all their sports

25:19Justin Davis:games get good scores except for NHL. Aw. That one should get good scores. Yeah. Battlefield was well-received as well.

25:28Sam Claiborn:I enjoyed Battlefield quite a bit. What's that, Justin? Oh, just better video game company than Sony and Nintendo.

25:38Justin Davis:Well, since Nintendo, neither Nintendo or EA are number one, does anyone want to pick a different... Well, hold on. EA was rated the worst company in the world. 15 years ago. Remember that? Yeah. That was great. What could be number one? Maybe. I have a hard time. I'm the same as you. I can't remember what came out last year. I don't know. Xbox? I don't know. What did they release last year?

26:03Sam Claiborn:Xbox Game Studios? Xbox has to be up there because they definitely put out more than five games. Bethesda, do they count? Or do we just count Xbox there?

26:14Justin Davis:That's Activision. Let's read on to find out. Number seven is Sega 17 games whoa the best one being Sonic Racing Cross Worlds which yes I've been playing recently with Kingo and it's very near Mario Kart quality it looks really fun it's very close to it it's everything is exactly the same and it plays like you would expect Mario Kart 2 and Kart including the drifting the only thing that's different is when you drift they don't do a little hop into it so I miss it so much that little hop is so sad game feel man yeah it's important game feel it is game feel um they also did shinobi art of vengeance which is great and justin they had two-point museum yeah the two-point games are great i didn't play museum i bought and i don't remember if it was in a humble bundle or what but i bought two-point university for i think literally three dollars and you know because it was like some 90 off sale and then i played it for you know 20 hours like it was great i loved it but um sega apparently had underwhelming releases like Warhammer 40K Space Marine Master Crafted Edition and a very buggy Football Manager 26.

27:20Justin Davis:Which I don't know why Sega is publishing Football Manager. They always have. Always? Wow. Yeah. Okay, number six is Take-Two. There they are. Nice. Seven games. And actually, the best one is just because of the narrative around this game release, it's funny. But it was Borderlands 4. At least on Xbox. That has a 90 on Medicare. Yeah, it got good scores, though. Everybody ended up liking it a lot. Big DLC. 90 on Metacritic. Wow. I wouldn't have guessed that high. I mean, you know, I knew it was well-liked, well-received, but that's very high. A big comeback for Borderlands. This says that Take-Two had generally positive reviews for all of its 2025 games not named Mafia the Old Country.

28:01Justin Davis:Rude. You liked that game, Sam. Did people not like that game? It was great. Did it not get good reviews? I thought it got good reviews. What's the Metacritic score? I'm looking it up right now. It has a 73? Yeah. Which is not green, not good on Metacritic. It has to be 75. That's interesting. I can't recommend it enough. It's a great game. Number five is Microsoft.

28:25Sam Claiborn:Okay, wow.

28:26Justin Davis:Which it does include Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard, everything. Highest rated game, Forza Horizon 5 for PS5. They put out 21 games last year. Wow. Actually, Microsoft's two highest scoring 2025 games were PlayStation products, Forza Horizon 5 and Indiana Jones in the Great Circle on PS5. Those were their highest scoring games. But they also had Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4, Outer Worlds 2. The lower scored games were Black Ops 7, and then apparently the Indiana Jones DLC was not great.

28:59Sam Claiborn:Avowed was up there too, right?

29:01Justin Davis:Well, it was last year. They don't mention it, but yeah.

29:04Sam Claiborn:What the heck?

29:05Justin Davis:I think we gave it a 7 though, even though I liked that game a lot. Yeah. Yeah, man. how good how good was any ajones unbelievable i know i know it's crazy i think i mean my hot take i don't don't hold me let me let me let me just think about this i'm gonna say it and then i'll validate it later but like i think xbox has put out like much better games than playstation this generation they've certainly put out more like i just i'm thinking about like you know i because like my thought i'm like how good was forza how good was indiana jones and then it's like oh man I know all the discourse around it, but I thought Halo Infinite was really great.

29:43I like the campaign a lot.

29:44Sam Claiborn:I still play Halo Infinite to this day. It's always downloaded on my computer. I bet Starfield is better now. I'll check it out in April when the DLC comes out. All right. The second wave of it.

30:01Justin Davis:Number four is Thunderful. They put out six games. 90 % of them were good. the best one was islanders new shores for pc i played the original it's very cool a very sort of peaceful chill you know uh it it's a puzzle game where i don't know how to describe it like you're you're building a little town and then it's sort of roguelikey where like you don't get to choose what parts of the town that you build and so it's like meditative and peaceful but like you're plopping down houses and plopping down businesses and you score points for putting them I didn't know that's what this was. They're kind of like making arcade scoring out of a sim game.

30:36Yeah, yes. That's awesome. Yeah. And then you build them. So you can play it a couple different ways. You can just be like, I want to make something that's aesthetically cool. Or you can min max. Like, no, I really want to like absolutely maximize my points. It's got a style going for it too. Was this on phones also? I don't know. I played it on Steam. Good Steam Deck game.

30:57Justin Davis:Thunderfall also had Lost in Random, the Eternal Die. Yeah, I played that too.

31:02Sam Claiborn:A spinoff or a sequel? Oh, well, no. I played the original then. Because I didn't realize that wasn't the same thing. But it was on Game Pass.

31:11Justin Davis:Okay, the top three. We arrived at the top three. And number three was Capcom.

31:17Sam Claiborn:I thought they just had Monster Hunter Wilds. I don't remember.

31:21Justin Davis:That was their best reviewed game last year. Wow. They put out seven games. Seven? Yeah. but they were held back by Onimusha 2 Samurai's Destiny Remaster

31:32Sam Claiborn:that's because the kids aren't used to PS2 games nowadays

31:37Justin Davis:obviously they're off to a very good start in 2026

31:40Sam Claiborn:what else did they have besides those?

31:43Justin Davis:I don't have the full

31:44Sam Claiborn:list here there had to be like a Mega Man collection or something yeah maybe a collection or is that published by Digital Eclipse or something? No. This year we have still pragmata we just had a high rated monster hunter and then there's probably a megaman this year right dude i cannot no i think megaman's gonna be next year but that said really yeah i think so but

32:06Justin Davis:pragmata was um that uh justin what was the it has a japanese title and it's kind of a tower defense game oh uh uh kunigami did i yeah kitsugami or something like that yeah yeah

32:24Sam Claiborn:it's like a pikmin like yeah i believe no i think that was two years ago okay kunitsugami kunitsugami there you go that looked great yeah fun game i don't know if it yeah i don't know if it still is but i played that on game pass for a long time too did they publish dragon's dogma uh dragon's dogma is capcom was that last year no i think that was two years ago i don't know why it's two years ago i think so okay wow all right number two is not a

32:52Justin Davis:publisher I'm familiar with, but they had 100 % good games. Five games all had good scores. It's Mirror Games, formerly known as Gamera Games.

33:01Sam Claiborn:They probably had to change that for legal reasons. It's a Chinese indie publisher.

33:06Justin Davis:All five of their games had green scores. The best one was Absalom, the PC version of Absalom.

33:12Sam Claiborn:Oh, interesting.

33:14Justin Davis:Which means the number one goes to Square Enix. Whoa! Nine games. Best of the year. 100 % of them good. The highest rated game being the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth for PC. PC, yeah. But also more Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games. Even its worst score game, Saga Frontier 2 Remastered, was still good. Dang.

33:39Sam Claiborn:One of these days I'll get weird. Was Square Enix selling off companies and contracting and stuff last year too? They're not publishing Two Raiders and Western stuff anymore. They got rid of Crystal Dynamics a long time ago. They sold off that. And the Eidos Montreal stuff. I feel like they've been telling this story that they're always disappointed with sales. And that could be true even with good scores, right? They should just add Tifa. It's easy as that. You heard it here first. Tifa DLC for every Square Enix game moving forward. I actually heard it here second because I said this last week also.

34:14Sam Claiborn:Give Tifa her own game. But after the bouncer 2 Tifa edition. they also they published power wash simulator which was oh cool that's a real bright spot last

34:25Justin Davis:year yeah so there you have it the publisher rankings and if you in case you're curious previous year's number one ranking the year before was sega number one then capcom which would have been after the year of uh resident evil 4 remake and maybe that was dragon's dogma 2 that was a dragon dogma 2 year i believe uh and probably a smaller monster hunter that got a great score the year before that 2021 was microsoft the year of forza horizon 4 and halo infinite then sega 505 games then capcom bethesda like ea sega again nintendo take two electronic arts microsoft and then 2010 the first year they started doing it was take two for gta 5 okay except gta 5 cd project never stands a chance but the year they put out the most games they put out like gwent at the same time as witcher yeah yeah

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37:21Justin Davis:If I were in the market for a new wireless plan, I'd be looking at Mint Mobile. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash gamescoop that's mintmobile.com slash gamescoop up front payment of 45 for three months five gigabyte plan required equivalent to 15 a month new customer offer for first three months only then full price plan options available taxes and fees extra see mint mobile for details let's talk about the price of a playstation 5 today oh the day we're recording yeah the day we're recording this april 2nd uh the new price of a playstation 5 is now 650 a digital edition is$600.

38:01Justin Davis:PS5 Pro is right. Oh, wait, Damon. We need to stop down because you made a mistake. You said$650. There's no way that can be right. For the base console. No, I'm talking about for the base console. Yep. Well, I agree that there's no way this is sustainable. This is not right. And it doesn't play games any better than it did five years ago. Is that right? Yeah, we're moving in the wrong direction. The PS5 Pro is now$900. Oh, my gosh. $900. So the digital edition costs 50 % more than at launch now. From 400 to 600. No, 50 % more. I see what you're saying. A 50 % price increase on the digital PS5.

38:42Justin Davis:Ugh. It's crazy. So I was like, Damon and I had a meeting about this topic for next-gen console watch. And I was remarking, like, you know, consoles don't exactly have a history of coming down in price over the generations. and that, you know, do we really expect, you know, a system to ever cost, you know,$500 again? But then Damon made the point that generally within the system's lifespan, they do come down. That's what I was saying. That's why I was saying we're moving in the wrong direction is it makes it feel doubly bad. Like obviously a price rise and a big price rise is already just such a gut punch.

39:17But it's like, we should have like, you know, a$250 PS5 now and then they shock the world by going to 200 on like Black Friday, right? Yes. We're six years in. The Wii. We should have all invested in PS5s and just got a whole garage of them and taken them to GameStop and made$25 in each one.

39:36Sam Claiborn:The Wii and what? Like the PS2 dropped to like$99 over the course of their life cycle, right? Yeah. Hell yeah. The red Wii. Remember that one? Yeah. It's so cool. Well, and then it's like, you know, so the Xbox, I think the Xbox Series X is also. It's that RAM. That's what it is. It is the RAM. I think the Series X might also be$650. I don't know if I can be fact-checked on that. But it also had a price rise, but it was when the console was already kind of struggling and it just buried it, right? Like nobody's buying Xboxes anymore. And so all Sony had to do was like, hang on. They're like, well, we're also going to raise the price of our console, but we're going to wait eight months to do it.

40:16What a bummer. Whatever happened to taking a loss on a console and just heating that up and trying to put out a bunch of software? I know. And like who, like we're just so quickly, like we had this, it was this crazy concept two years ago that now is becoming more normal by the day that like consoles are something that are just for like old dudes. And like, why would you, it's becoming this thing of like, if you're a kid, you play on your phone or you play on your computer and like who wants to own a game console anymore? And like just the narrow minded, like these companies have to look at the big picture and like if you want your console business to be healthy and sustainable.

40:50What's the future? yeah exactly

40:53Justin Davis:yeah that's my whole thing all these little stands these playstations are on I just have never used any of these things it's really funny to see the little these things in action that's why you do it apparently my PS5 stand is in a drawer under my entertainment center and then it's just going to be there did you see that little clear thing that was on the end like it was some kind of baby grand piano

41:15Sam Claiborn:I got destroyed in an unboxing video because I unboxed the PS5 pro when they came out and then people i pulled i was like oh what's this little plastic thing i've never seen that before people look at this idiot he doesn't know what the heck this is like i bought an og one dude be an adult just put it in your entertainment console it's fine i know close it in a cabinet so you hear it go every time a cut scene happens it needs to sound like a jet

41:42Justin Davis:nick when you're in a gaming video never say you don't know what something is either just

41:46Sam Claiborn:this is the video wait this is the one

41:49Justin Davis:either just don't address it or confidently say something like you did revisit the trauma

41:55Sam Claiborn:this is the summer flange

42:01see there it is at the moment Jobert what are you doing this is PTSD why am I even wearing gloves well at least you didn't get fingerprints on that little piece

42:10Sam Claiborn:see that's why you wear the gloves folks I know the GameScoop audience would never why I'm wearing these gloves. If you are, I'm bringing us back, guys. I have something on topic to actually talk about. If you are a kid and, you know, you like video games, you're video game curious, A, no one's releasing video games anymore as we talked about on the show a few weeks ago. If you're a fan of Dragon Quest or Pokemon or whatever, you're going to go from being like, you know, four years old to 11 years old before the next game's even going to come out. And then B, you have to spend$650 dollars or your family does to like have you buy in and play this thing yeah it's it's beyond what

42:50Justin Davis:people are willing to accept for 40 years consoles have cost a few hundred dollars atari 2600 was 200 bucks in 1977 30 years later 35 years later the ps4 400 the switch was 300 and the ps5 xbox series x and the nintendo switch 2 are 500 like that's it there's a family isn't going to be like oh sure let's just get a thousand dollar playstation 6 like it's way beyond what and like a normal like nothing but the hardest hardcore gamer would accept to pay it's pretty

43:24Sam Claiborn:interesting they're just gonna go ahead go ahead nick i don't know just just to juxtapose the ps3 like console um launch price because it was what 599 or something what the ps3 when they said oh yeah but yeah you will work people wouldn't accept it you will work two jobs in order to afford this Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it's a little bit interesting scenario. Yeah, I know. And the kids still want to play video games, right? The interest in this medium is real, but it's like, they're just going to, like, what's on my iPad? What's on my Android tablet? What can I play on my school?

44:03Roblox and Fortnite.

44:04Justin Davis:There's no friction to them pulling up Roblox on a tablet or Minecraft. You know, like there's Sony is creating so much friction to get people into their ecosystem. You know, Sam talks about them, you know, eating some of the costs to the console. It's got to be worth it because if you become a fan, we're so weird and tribalistic about our video game consoles. If you become a fan of that one, you're highly likely to buy the next one. Yes. And the one after that, they get you for life if they can get you in. And if you can afford to get into the ecosystem. Yeah. People just buy it like. Obviously, Nintendo knows that, right?

44:40They are trying to get... I know it was an expensive Switch, too, but they are trying to get those in-houses a lot more than Sony is.

44:47Justin Davis:Yeah. This is a product of its exact time this month, this year, too, because of the RAM shortage and because of projected delivery prices because of the oil problems right now and all that stuff that's happening. but like we also didn't really see a period in which it went down because i think of because because greed i guess so it's like you know this this trajectory is not sustainable we're all talking about that way but it's also like i don't know how they change it yeah everything's more expensive like you feel we do feel kind of locked in like we're boxed in now um which is which feels bad i mean i think what they do is they change it by not making another one for a long time that's what we're just talking about i mean i'm console watch that's out the same day as this i'm when i play resident evil requiem on my my base ps5 i have no feelings of oh i can't wait for the next generation like i'm perfectly happy playing games that look like this on my system

45:49Sam Claiborn:that i already have i mean they're gonna do the playstation thing that they did this entire life cycle though right where it was just the games released simultaneously on ps4 ps5 and then at some point it will be just ps5 only yeah or ps6 it'd be interesting to see like so they they take out the disc drive and it's like what 50 bucks off yeah is that right yeah so what else can you take out like take out that little stand make it a square instead of looking like a really stupid george lucas car and like you know and and just try to like pull out things that would make this system cheaper like take take the power supply but outside of it you know like i know it's a redesign but like that's the forward thinking that needed to be happening here is like what are the things we can piecemeal out to make sure that this goes to$400, you know, in, in six years.

46:39It's crazy. Yeah. You need a smaller one. You know, you need to, you gotta, you gotta make these changes. Six with one stick of Ram instead of two. One stick. I mean, we talked about Nintendo, like the switch to is expensive, like$450. That's a lot of money for the, for the console, but they, you know, they announced the price of their console and then, you know, Trump announced all the tariffs and then Nintendo said, hold on. We need to talk about the price of our console. And then after a period of deliberation, they came back and said, no, we're not raising the price of the console. For now.

47:10Yeah, for now. We're going to launch it$450. And so, like, you know, I'm sure that was a very fraught moment for Nintendo. We'll never know. We'll probably never know, like, what that costs the company and, like, how kind of tricky, you know, those discussions were. but this is a company that's been around 100 years and is making decisions because they'd like to be around and successful for another 100 years. You gotta have kids playing your games.

47:38Justin Davis:Here's the thing. The best-selling consoles of all time sell well over 100 million units. PlayStation 2, the PS4 is well over 100 million. PS5 is almost at 100 million. If consoles cost$1 ,000, they'll sell 10 million. like you'll just never have a hundred million selling console ever again you'll completely shrink your audience uh and the only people who could who are playing your console are affluent hardcore gamers it's going to be a really small group of people you know one other reason why you you lower your your console's price over the years is that the secondhand market is undercutting you and you're trying to make more systems still instead of just having those ones in circulation and that's you know clearly not going to happen either that it's yeah yeah feels bad man it does

48:35Justin Davis:okay let's move on to some of these weird headlines which i think are more fun who remembers jaleco i remember jaleco yeah they made city connection they made city connection and now a company called City Connection has like the rights to old Jaleco games. Lots of 8 and 16 bit games and then they did a bunch of sports games like Bases Loaded. So three new Jaleco sports games have been announced this week including two bases loaded ones. And this is why it's so weird. Yep, this is why it's so weird. So let me pull this up. Two. Two bases loaded except it's called, okay. Publisher Hollow Indie and developer Clover Lab, I'm reading from Gematsu, have announced Hollow Base a pixel art baseball game based on the classic Jalico title bases loaded dude i missed this completely this sounds sick but hold on it's a bases loaded pixel art game where you play as a hollow live or like it's a japanese yes v vtuber yeah yeah so it's weird oh they're all v they're all hollow live vtubers yes the players in this new bases loaded are all hollow live vtubers which I guess maybe if you're they have fans and people might recognize them

49:45Sam Claiborn:they took over Dodger Stadium last year one night where there was a hollow live night and I wish I was there in the crowd because I just want to see that overlap yeah this era of baseball game is like really fundamentally easy to play so it's kind of cool to cram it into that as like a shell because they're very fun to play with a friend yeah the second as you all know I've played every garlic like there is every vampire survivor game and and the second best one is a hollow live fan game that is free oh my god i don't remember the name of it but if you google hollow live vampire survivors fan game i'm sure you'll find it it's on steam you can add it to your steam library it's completely free because it has to be non-commercial um and it's amazing it's great well the the about

50:33Justin Davis:for this says a full-scale classic baseball game bases loaded returns on hollow indie a baseball game where you build a team with hololive talents fans and mascots inspired by holobase and compete in exciting matches it looks like a pretty solid game i mean maybe it's just i just said it was weird right it is weird yeah that's not the only jaleco sports game announced this week they also announced jaleco sports bases loaded two which this one yeah sick that's great it says oh wow Bases Loaded 2 second season was originally released for the NES in 1989.

51:11Justin Davis:Or wait, where is it? I don't know. I've lost it here. But this is basically a compilation of Bases Loaded games. That includes Bases Loaded 2, but also Moero Pro Yaku 88 Kitai Ban and Super Bases Loaded and Super 3D Baseball. But they call it Jaleco Sports Bases Loaded 2. Wow. Great. Maybe we're on the SEO for that one. The 3D one looks crazy. yeah like though that era of like sprite based sports games it's like look it's totally nostalgia they're not like objectively better than what we're getting now but it's like so arcadey and pick up and play and like so fun and like just takes me back to my youth me and everybody else right so like i'm totally on board for this the third one is goal two jalico sports goal two includes four games three from the nes and uh one from super nintendo i guess so in there in 89 we got goal two on the nes you can see this in your mind palace sam yes it's new very much it's it's the word two but in europe they got goal numeral two and in japan they just got goal and they're always the same year and then super nintendo got super goal numeral two got it makes total sense yeah um i remember going to like a friend's house in iowa and um they would have bases loaded want to play that and i'd be like oh my god i actually liked bases loaded you know even though i it was always fine but like this the sports nes kids i just i just i it's just difficult can we just play megaman x come on yeah 100 i mean i i've never been athletic or into sports in life when i was a kid i wanted to play every every nes game basically so i loved bases loaded i liked technoball i liked kings of the beach volleyball i loved all these games yeah what about jordan versus bird.

53:10Yeah, I played that too.

53:11Justin Davis:Blades of Steel. You can break the rim. Smash it. Yep. Double dribble. Double dribble. That was really good.

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54:12Sam Claiborn:No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. And if people haven't heard about your brand, you can get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you with easy to run email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, shopify and start hearing sign up for your one dollar per month trial today at shopify.com slash realm go to shopify.com slash realm that's shopify.com slash realm

54:50let's check in with the listeners hey listeners yo listeners remember you can always reach us

54:55Justin Davis:at the email address gamescoop at ign.com just like bryden did who says hello dami and the scoops My name is Bryden and I'm from the Cincinnati area. I recently finished the Is It Still Fun episode about Resident Evil? Nice. And just finished listening to the episode on Resident Evil Requiem. The game's look and sound absolutely incredible to me. I've actually never played a Resident Evil game. With that being said, my questions are what Resident Evil games are worth my time to go back and play? And what order should I play them in? Requiem looks so good, but I want to play the other main lines that directly lead into this plot.

55:25Justin Davis:What do you guys think? I have a funny way to start this that we go into the real answer. But first of all, hey, Cincinnati. But we immediately so we can see, you know, what strategy guides people are playing at any given time. And as soon as people kind of stopped playing Requiem, they all started playing Resident Evil 2 remake, which I thought was so cool. They went straight to the first Leon appearance. So we can talk about the Leon story, but that would be my answer. Yeah, if you wanted to, you know, sort of lead up to Requiem, the games would be Resident Evil 2, then you do the remake, then do the RE4 remake, and then you can do Requiem.

56:07Justin Davis:However, the original Resident Evil remake that we did, remade in 2022, remastered in 2015, very accessible today, super fun. It rules. it's a great game I think we already had this conversation somewhere because I remember saying this but I think it's better to go back to RE1 after playing the 2 remake or 4 remake or something because even it has it has a little bit of jank and like you really understand it more when you play another game with typewriter ribbons that makes a lot more sense and with puzzles that are in a police station for some reason I know why it's because it used to be a museum and then you go back and play that game

56:46Sam Claiborn:um but it's so fun i i think i i would like if you want to be like ingest all of it and understand like the series as a whole i think one remake two remake three remake four remake skip five skip six seven eight nine uh but that's a lot of commitment i replayed five recently and it was agonizing like a month ago i i wanted it to end but i just kept going but that said for re9 the streamlined version the cliff notes do the raccoon city saga is what i'm calling it re2 remake re3 remake uh you should just play for remake uh as well because leon and then um requiem but i would say i would say re3

57:27Justin Davis:good game but unessential for this yes but it is nice to go to areas that you go to in raccoon

57:34Sam Claiborn:city that you see glimpses of in requiem that you don't get to see um otherwise so i think there's a lot there and I think you have a better understanding of what Raccoon City was going through as a whole in Requiem whereas 2 gives you a very distilled snapshot of just one location. That's my take. Plus I think 3 just don't spend more than like 20 bucks for and you should be good. Because it's like a 3 hour 4 hour experience.

58:01Justin Davis:But out of all the mainline Resident Evils they're all great except for 5 and 6 in my opinion.

58:07Sam Claiborn:They had 2 options after they made 4 and I remember when at first i replayed five like a billion times on xbox 360 and for academic purposes played it about a month ago uh they just chose really doesn't hold up the different i'm sure it's fine for a lot of people but they just like what if we took out all the cool stuff like exploring and item hunting and what if we just made it about killing which is fine but exactly what opposite of what i want for my resident evil game and it felt like you know needles in in my arm the entire time i just did not feel good really playing five free in 2026 that but i am a no one punches that boulder it is very funny though it is a very funny game there's a lot of good moments like that but man the dlc is good though where you go to this the new spencer mansion that part's kind of sick but the rest is bad i reviewed that i believe and i really liked it lost in nightmares is what it's called pretty solid yeah yeah good stuff uh i'm continuing my

59:04Justin Davis:no healing playthrough of Requiem. I'm in the final stretch. I'm at the part where the final grace section at the end in the arc. That's right. Nice. Totally doable, huh? Yep. It's actually, turns out it's totally doable on casual mode. And it's still very fun. And still actually scary in moments like when the girl is stalking you. But Justin, you were telling us before the show that you've got what, over 30 hours in Crimson Desert? Yeah, 31 hours, which I know we've all become used to, you know, content creators and other people. Like we just become kind of a nerd to like, you know i i've spent 150 hours into this game i've been playing it 12 hours a day but like for mere mortals like me that i have a regular job and i have a family 30 hours is a lot dude because that i dadded up that's like 9 p.m to midnight every single night since the game came out um and i was goofing on the show so much last week we recorded early and so the game's opening two or three hours are terrible.

1:00:00They're absolutely terrible. And now I keep liking it more and more and more the more time that goes on. When I'm not playing it, I'm thinking about it. It's been the first game in a long time where I'm kind of losing sleep. I'm like, maybe I'll just do one more thing. And it's got its hooks into me bad, man. But Nick, I don't know how much you're playing it or if you played it very much. It's a deeply confusing game because it's like, you know, like, look, like the quests are bad. The characters are bad. Like they did patch movement, but it still doesn't feel that great. So it's like, I can't, I don't know.

1:00:45It's casting some kind of weird spell on me. I understand the spell. It's kind of hard for me. it's hard for me to search my feelings and like understand understand that's how i felt about

1:00:55Sam Claiborn:resident evil 5 no i'm in complete agreement with justin here i know it's one of those things where i know it's not particularly cohesive in any meaningful way but i can't help but like exploring the world i think that's why i'm playing it i just like to see what's around that mountain uh i do legitimately enjoy some of the puzzle stuff because i like the idea of the puzzles being like, yeah, just figure it out. I don't know, man. You don't have to do it. And I really, I really respect that. I respect that. I really appreciate that. They have this, like, I can't tell, I can't decide if it's good design or bad design, where sometimes the puzzle doesn't even tell you what you're trying to do.

1:01:40Like, you know, where it's, it doesn't say like, oh, get the power turned back on like that. It's like, okay, now I'm going to go around and turn around how to figure, you know, I'm going to run all around and figure out how to get the power turn back on it just plops you into a space and then says nothing and then like maybe you don't even know there's a puzzle like and that can be really cool and exciting and like you know every once in a while i'm like i'm just gonna try this and like it does something and i'm like oh like that feeling of like it feels like bombing a wall in zelda one like it can feel kind of incredible but then sometimes it plops me into a space and like you know there's some weird dragon statue and like the game clearly wants me to do something but it's like i can't even figure out what i'm what problem i'm trying to solve and it's like is this good or bad i don't know but it's interesting like i haven't played anything

1:02:31Sam Claiborn:like it the game does not teach you all of that you can do within its given space and i think that's to its biggest detriment because there's areas that you can revisit from earlier like you have to go here as part of the main the main line of the story that you just assume oh i never have to go back there again but i decided to and i poked around like oh wait there's like stuff to find here that is doesn't tell you it and it doesn't indicate any meaningful way it does not communicate with you and occasionally you will stumble across stuff that you're like how was i ever supposed to find this like normally game in zelda right there you learn the shorthand of the original zelda that there's one bombable wall in every single screen you kind of intuit that after a while and you get conditioned to it this game does not teach you any meaningful way that there are secrets within secrets and stuff like that which is exciting if you are the one percent of players who will find said secret but otherwise you miss so much stuff in a way where i guess ultimately it doesn't matter because nothing kind of matters what you find in this game matters in this game but i do there's no but but like i did i like finding it i i think it's also like this illusion that the game is so expensive looking that i'm like wow the graphics go crazy i love this like i like looking at this game and existing within its spaces but it's like it does feel a little bit better though i will argue against justin there i do think i don't want to vomit when i move cliff every time now it feels better he doesn't move like red dead now where it's like not that kind of game.

1:04:01It's very, there's so much stuff of like, is this good or bad? I don't know. Like there's, there's, you know, like collectibles and secrets and weapons and things like that don't have like a shimmer or don't have anything on them. And so you can just walk right by some badass sword and you don't know what's there. Like you can't pick it up. And like, on the one hand, that's kind of cool and interesting, exciting, pay attention, like be immersed in this world and look at the cave and is the skeleton holding a weapon you pick up like there's not like a visual signal like you just need to clock it for yourself and so it's kind of a good thing but it's also like kind of a shit thing where like just the the the friction it like the game just fights you a lot

1:04:43Sam Claiborn:in a lot of different apart from the bosses i feel like trying to just pick up items to justin's point is also kind of its own battle where i'm like no i just want to get this thing that's tucked in between these things i know i can grab it but the ui is fighting you constantly like we i've played this game every single night for hours for 10 or 11 or 12 nights now and i saw a reddit post that was um hey like i'm trying to figure out how to breed animals on my farm how do i get these animals to breed they're not breeding and i've never seen a farm i've never seen a farm i don't have any animals and i don't know what that reddit post is talking about it's like what even is this game i saw another i saw one mission is like well okay i'll tell you this david i've played the game for 30 hours and i've never even come close to the crimson desert yeah okay what is the real place it's a red desert yeah and like i've never and like there's there's like there's elephants and stuff in it it's like it's this whole other like not only have i not gotten to the crimson desert but if you look at the map i'm not even anywhere close to the crimson desert like it's unbelievable i have seen some footage that looks like it's just a different game where there's like someone riding a dragon parachuting and like latching onto another dragon the dragon gets like an anime transformation and gets like a suit of armor i was like what the heck and i was like this looks cool but how much of the game do i gotta play you guys are lucky because they have a few months to develop that part of the game before you get there i saw i saw another reddit post like there's a whole there's a whole steampunk zone in the game where someone said that their current quest was to clean a bunch of solar panels and like that's what they're doing in the game now and i'm like i just can't you can tell me you can tell me anything about this game and i would believe it i would believe it at this point like so i don't know man like we i i have to give i have to give one more anecdote of like this game just seems to run so hot and cold of like i'll do the most amazing cinematic optional boss fight that has like interesting voice acting and interesting lore behind it and i'll be like oh my god like this game's so good and then like the very next quest I did this happened to me last night so I'm 30 hours into the game and I got a quest that tutorializes the fast travel system and like how it works like you step on these little pads in the world and it activates a fast travel point and I have fast traveled a thousand times in this game it's at the end of this quest line and the quest is like you know you're doing quests for this noble and he's like oh my scouts found something like weird I think it might be like a weapon go check it out and you go check it out and it's like a fast travel point and you go back to the guy and you tell him like oh no it was nothing don't worry about it and like that was the whole quest and i'm like why like it's just so baffling like for every single thing that's like it's beautiful and like fun and immersive then it does something else that's just completely inexplicable did you see him trying to get on that dragon and die yeah i was like well that

1:07:42Justin Davis:looks like yeah it started to look cool and then it was like oh you know you can't get on that's the mount yeah it's like time locked and all this stuff anyway i like it i like it i just finished i just finished chapter six was where i am in the main story if that is going to mean something to people listening to the show so there's a certain type of commenter on ign that thinks we're so mad that uh people are enjoying the game but no justin and mark medina and lots of people on staff are having a great time with crimson desert even i don't like i don't i don't i don't i'd have to again, I'd have to search my feelings.

1:08:13Like my personal score might still be a six. It's like a six that I'm kind of addicted to maybe, or, or sometimes I think it's like a nine that I kind of hate.

1:08:22Sam Claiborn:I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what it is. I mean, I used to play bad games on the PS2 all the time that I was fond of, you know, that's fine. You can like, you can like Castlevania on the Game Boy.

1:08:31Justin Davis:Yeah, that's the, I like Castlevania 64. Not the GBA games, I mean.

1:08:43Justin Davis:Very quick extracurricular activities. I've not seen the Mario Galaxy movie yet. I'm seeing it tomorrow. Very excited. Sam, I know you saw it. No spoilers. I saw it. Thumbs up. No spoilers. Thumbs up. There's nothing to spoil. There's not really any plot to the movie. Just vignettes of Mario and everybody shouting. Just from everything I've heard, if I'm going to be watching Nintendo references the movie with my six-year-old who loves Nintendo, I can't wait. It sounds so fun. You have nothing to worry about. It's awesome. It's great. I loved sitting through it. I don't, you know, like, there wasn't enough depth that I want to see it again to make sure I didn't miss anything, because you really don't, but it really is Nintendo references the movie.

1:09:22But there's some, it's interesting, like, so it starts, there's just deep cuts that, like, I know this sounds cool when I'm saying it, there's deep cuts that only GameScoop people are going to get. But they're also really expensive to put in there. So, like, why? Like, it's just really confusing. like everybody's gonna get the smash brothers you know references and there's there's stuff like that like the the very like the the illumination intro has like the um minions uh one of them gets a hammer and is like breaking a logo and the other one's playing on a keyboard no child for 35 years has has heard that donkey con smash brothers they've heard or you may have heard it in smash brothers but yeah maybe yeah maybe as like the deepest smash brothers cut but it's just like that's just like why choose that yeah it's weird and then you know you've all seen that like warts in it that that part if you look at it it's in a casino and why is that in a casino because super mario brothers 2 when you start a level or beat a level i mean you you you do that part the dude do do do do do do do do where it rolls the little slot machine so they made a section of this movie around that like and then like you know the bosses from mario 2 are all in there these ninja ninjas and stuff like all of this like that stuff's not in any mario game like claw grip and mouser and what it's just it's just surprising and then i'll give you one other example again again like this is enjoyable for me i'm just like confused um another example is uh they have rob as like a background thing in it and the joke is that rob moves really slow and it makes a noise and it goes that's what rob does a hundred percent so you would have had to own a rob like my man damon hatfield here have hooked it up yep have played gyro might with it to like get why that's in there and now it doesn't matter because the joke lands for all these other ways i'm not saying these jokes are bad i'm just surprised that like all of this effort went in to like match these things up and i i just i just thought it was an interesting take from it but just in general it's a gorgeous 3d animated movie that just goes from thing to thing to thing with a bunch of characters you know and you know everything's just entertaining yeah i i could not be more excited to see it tomorrow however i did see project hail mary ah i want to watch which is great super super super good have you seen that jessen oh we're going this weekend okay well fam it's great no good

1:12:00Justin Davis:it's just a very what's that i have one more thing a throwaway line in martin the mario movie is you'll i'm hooked on the brothers like toad says that yeah you'll be hooked on which is a reference to the super mario brothers rap from the super mario super show which was in the first movie as Here we go.

1:12:19Sam Claiborn:So the family here Performing for you If you know the words You can join in two Put your hands together If you want to clap As we take you through This monkey rap I-E-C-A Donkey Kong That brings us to

1:12:40Justin Davis:Video Game 20 Questions And this week I thought I would ask Jim and I if someone were playing 20 questions what are the most useful questions to ask gemini provide some responses i don't know if they're useful but would you like to hear what gemini thinks just a couple does it know we're asking about a video game oh yeah i mean it also knows all of your names and the types of questions you tend to ask what the heck okay uh gemini says if you're trying to play like the game scoop crew the goal isn't just to win it's to narrow down the search space as efficiently as possible using a binary search strategy you want questions that split the entire history of video games in half here the most i say this all the time here are the most important questions to ask uh so questions one through five are the big filters and gemini says these are the non-negotiables if you don't ask these early you'll be wandering in the dark at question 15 so was this game originally released on a nintendo platform this is a classic scoop opening it immediately separates it immediately separates the mario Zelda Pokemon World from Sony, Xbox, and PC.

1:13:40Justin Davis:Except no, was this game originally released on a Nintendo platform? Could be Resident Evil Requiem. That's not Gemini. That's not very useful. Was this game released after the year 2000? Again, that splits the Nintendo 64 generation in half. Maybe not that useful. But that is a normal opening. Yeah, it's true. It's a bold gambit. Nailing it. Does this game feature a controllable human character? That one's actually pretty good. we've asked that yeah yeah questions six through ten once you have the error in the platform you need to find the gameplay loop so like does this feature combat can you play this game with other people or was this game developed in japan questions like that can we how about we all just take let's just do it let's just do this let's use these questions okay and i have i actually have some email i need to go answer and so we can just let gem and i do 20 questions the end game questions 16 through 20 this is where you go for the kill gemini says unless we've already won is this a first party title was this game developed by studio name does the title of the game contain the name of the main character but gemini says examples like like zelda or halo wait a second hold on no hold up

1:14:55Sam Claiborn:mr halo it's mr halo we all know tacking the power of juju that was the game pro tip for

1:15:01Justin Davis:GameScoop fans, the cops often get stuck because they forgot to ask about remakes or remasters. If the answer says the game came out in 2024, it might be a remake of a 1998 game. That's the last. I guess that's true. Jim and I calls us the cops. I don't know. Anyway, let's see if that was useful to you. I don't know. Our suggestion this week comes from Mike, who says, long-time gamer, newer GameScooper. My suggestion for 20 questions is redacted for the redacted. Let the questioning begin. all right well was this i didn't bring up fair day again what was the first gemini question was this an intent on a nintendo console um how did they word it was this game originally released

1:15:40Sam Claiborn:on a nintendo platform was this game originally released on a nintendo platform yes oh maybe there is a thing we bifurcated video games into two yeah exactly asking binary based questions search scope what was the next question you want to know the next one yeah we're going to do it

1:16:05Justin Davis:was this game released after the year 2000 was this game released after the year 2000 no the next one is is this an indie game have we been doing games have we been doing 20 questions maybe 10 years yeah so the interesting thing about that is the 2000 question it becomes more and more like it's in balance now roughly right like 26 years is around the start of video games like close but like it was not in balance 10 years ago so i don't know that's it like there's just more and more games it gets harder over time because more games are coming out damon right right um was this it's no no no don't ask before it's from before 2000 on a nintendo console oh so not an indie game we can skip that one what was next damon is this an indie game Oh, but the one after that?

1:16:56Justin Davis:Is this part of a series?

1:16:59Sam Claiborn:Is it part of a series? No. Ice Climbers. Did this come out as an arcade game at some point? No. Was this on the Super Nintendo? Sounds like Quest 64.

1:17:11Justin Davis:Not Super Nintendo, that's five. Same question, NES. No. Same question, N64. No.

1:17:21Sam Claiborn:was this was this on a color screen handheld no so that means it's a game boy on the original game boy yes okay so a game that okay it's on the game boy not part of a series on the game boy that's all we know we did not follow gemini's advice and now we're in the now we're in now we're in trouble wandering in the dark at question 15 oh i'll bring it back to gemini do we play as a human okay oh he's got to think about it no i don't have to think about it the answer is yes

1:18:01Justin Davis:but just remember what that could possibly mean and that's 10 it means that it could be like a strategy game the character you're playing as is human okay the character i don't understand what the significance of that is. Character you are playing as is a human. Maybe it's like Arkanoid where secretly aren't you in a spaceship. Yeah. What's that called? It's called

1:18:31Breakout. No, no, no. Alleyway. It's called Alleyway. Did Nintendo publish this game? Yes.

1:18:40Sam Claiborn:Okay. Is this a puzzle game?

1:18:50Nintendo published Game Boy game not part of a series that question actually was a little bit clutch

1:19:00Sam Claiborn:you play as a human but not necessarily there's like the first run of games called like baseball tennis but that's very clearly a human yeah that's a good point okay i retract my question it's not a puzzle game so i don't know the og game boy library that well i mean you know besides all the obvious nintendo games everybody knows i feel like there's a game where you like swap pieces to let me know that's a puzzle game though yeah so much so much was i mean pick cross and stuff like that right yeah oh does this be a racing game or something yeah go ahead go ahead well i don't know i can't even think of a racing game on like excite bike well that's a series though that's what i'm saying man what do we have how many questions that's 12 is this game have a well it's not part of a series but is it silly to ask like if it has a contemporary version like if there's yes okay that yes that is silly yeah well it's a series then right at that point yeah um what would what did gemini suggest we do well how about this can you can you see your can you see the human character while you're playing no yeah no it's not bad okay sick are you piloting sorry go ahead go ahead no you go jim and i and at this time in

1:20:32Justin Davis:the game jim and i would ask uh was it a launch title uh does it have a medical score of 90 or higher is the main character a mascot or does the game involve guns none of these are helpful the shooting part is helpful you can't see your character so that means i mean it's game boy so it's not first person unless look either it's chess or like something weird like that or you know or you're in a vehicle in the game yeah i'm having a hard time thinking of like racing games apart from excite bike are you piloting some sort of craft in this game yes i mean is alleyway not a puzzle game no i don't think so really I don't know I wouldn't count that as puzzle I don't think

1:21:23Sam Claiborn:I wouldn't count that as a puzzle game it's just an arcade game does this game is this game kind of modeled on an arcade game meaning what a specific arcade game yeah no that's 15 because alleyways modeled on Arkanoid maybe narrowing down the type the vehicle or breakout yeah i'm i just i can't even think of any nintendo made you know car games space game yeah car games on the game boy does this game uh does your craft feature wheels no so maybe it's like a spaceship or a boat battleship those are it land sea and air that's all we've got right yeah let's guess our space it's a space shooter i think was there like a like a like a gradius or something not a gradius yeah i mean nintendo would have published weird stuff like our type balloon fighter was there a balloon fighter on Game Boy?

1:22:34There was a brood Loon Fight. But that's a series. It's a series though. Yeah, there's a lesser known Loon Fight on the Game Boy. Everyone always knows the NES one.

1:22:47Justin Davis:Your hint is that I owned this game, played a lot, but today I would not have known that Nintendo published this game. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. The encouragement is to broaden your thinking beyond games that you know or Nintendo games. Yeah. It is, I think you're probably right, Sam, where they probably published the Game Boy version of like, you know, Gradius or R-Type or something like that.

1:23:16Sam Claiborn:Space game? Is this game set? It's just hard to think of this. A space game? Is that what you're going to say? Yeah. Is this game set in space? Yes. Two questions and a guess. Is there like an Asteroids or a...

1:23:31uh galaxian or galaga on the game boy or like a cute shooter like stinger or something like that

1:23:39Sam Claiborn:because like galaga would have been um was that namco so like maybe nintendo published the the game boy version of it but it's not modeled after an arcade everything we're talking about yeah exactly exactly everything we're talking about is a series so clearly yeah so like a one-off spacey game like i just don't know if i know the name of it or like what it is i mean i can't like so it's like i'm curious about like is it vertically scrolling or horizontal scrolling or is it single screen but i don't know that that helps me like am i allowed to ask i always forget the rules regarding regarding the metagaming of it but are we allowed to ask like is it a one word title i don't know there's no cops man you can do whatever you want i think generally we avoid the alphabet and stuff like that we didn't we generally avoid questions of yeah about the alphabet but we do sometimes we do ask about um you know the title of the game or something like that but not often yeah like is it is the character of the this game and its title which is a fun question i don't know i don't think i know this game so it's it's difficult for me to get what's the shooter oh my god yeah I don't know either something is the name of your vehicle the name of the game I don't know okay it's not tubing yeah not tubing confirmed um

1:25:17Sam Claiborn:is this a well known game I thought it was better known than this. All right. Maybe we're just blanking, man. Well, we got one and a guess. One and a guess.

1:25:32I'm trying to think of any Japanese named shooter type space game at all. And I just don't know. But it could be a pinball game too, I guess.

1:25:47Could it? well if you're paddling spaceships yeah but we said you pilot a vehicle oh yeah another thing I did in Crimson Desert last night was I fought a tank like with a gun you can call in an airstrike okay like it's an artillery strike there's cannons stationed nearby you shoot it with a special arrow and then they know where to rain their cannon fire

1:26:15Sam Claiborn:what else could it be Um, I don't know. Do you shoot aliens? Yep. All right. Yeah, I know this game called, it's called Alien. It's on the tip of my tongue. Is it? It's not Alien Storm. Yeah, I have one kind of on the tip of my brain too, and then I'm actually not completely sure I'm not just making it up. Hey, Onkyo Alien is just a Sokoban game, right? Hank, there. That one, that might be it. Hanko Alien. I think that's just a box pushing game though. maybe Alien Storm is a video game or maybe that's something that we're just it's a false memory that doesn't even exist I have one in my head of something there's like Striker there's like Strike something but then maybe I'm just thinking about Desert Strike on the SNES and I'm not really sure but I can't remember what it is

1:27:07Justin Davis:I mean is it Hankyo Alien it's not Hankyo Alien Justin got so close to solar striker no solar striker solar solar striker developed and published by nintendo i think the only shmup nintendo's ever made yeah this looks sick i liked it a lot well they made shmups in the arcade they made a couple of them uh pre-donkey kong wow okay yeah space invaders likes this is very manageable i mean it's game boy game boy remember that's what i'm saying this would be blurry as heck when i was playing this in 1990 i think it was called solar fox is one of them i think is maybe the name of it yeah the solar striker solar striker developed by nintendo

1:27:48Sam Claiborn:not just published by i know it's really odd right it's actually gunpei yokai oh wow what i'm gonna look up the father of the game boy himself honestly sounds like a super nintendo game solar striker even more like a super nintendo game i would have guessed this is a game i mean the fact that this is a first party developed nintendo game you know and nintendo like all japanese companies like people work there their whole career like i just i can't believe there's not references to solar strikers it's not a trophy in smash brothers and like you know a mini game so i don't i don't recognize the game boy box art from america but i do recognize the japanese box art

1:28:27Justin Davis:and it's amazing okay well if joe can really really cool maybe he can pull that up wow yeah

1:28:33Sam Claiborn:no i had never heard of this game but yeah it looks cool i had this game and yeah you're a human

1:28:38Justin Davis:they're aliens

1:28:40Sam Claiborn:I mean all the pieces were there we just didn't know the name what do the peas do give you more guns

1:28:46Justin Davis:powering up yeah gotta power up oh wow what's the impressive boss this looks cool

1:28:52Sam Claiborn:that's a whole screen screen filling bosses

1:28:56Justin Davis:I mean this looks like one of the bosses in

1:28:58Sam Claiborn:like life force yeah yeah this looks great that's why I would have guessed that is it a short game it's very short yeah

1:29:04Justin Davis:I think maybe six levels nicely attempt Thank you for the suggestion, Mike, in an undisclosed location. Viewers and listeners, if you have your own suggestions for a video game, 20 questions, email them to me at the email address, gamescoop at igin.com. And that's all the scoops that we have here this week. Again, I'm off next week. I'll be gallivanting around Tokyo with my kids. So please keep me in your thoughts and prayers. But Sam will be hosting the episode next week in my stead. So thank you, Nick. Go to book off. So I remember that the Game Boy, the US Game Boy art there. I don't think I've ever seen the Japanese one.

1:29:39Justin Davis:Isn't it cool? I love that. The logo is much cooler in the Japanese box. Yeah, it's really cool. Thank you, Nick. 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 iGinGameScoop. And we're out.

1:30:10We're flying high

1:30:13Justin Davis:It's passing us by Reach out to me If you still believe If you still believe

1:30:48wait my mic wasn't on and i had a joke uh when you uh are trying to sell your car and it has hail damage and you're just hoping for the best would you call that a project tail mary okay i got there it's a long walk the the sirens are going off again yeah i can hear them yeah i can hear him um i told jamie just got home and i told her i said i'm going into game scoop let me know if i need to take the show yeah the scoop must go on yeah he died doing what he loved i can i can scoop i can scoop from our bunker if i need to okay all right r.i.p justin and then what do you do do you have do you have like an earthen covered basement we have a i mean i wasn't joking about the bunker we have a tornado room in our it's not they when we bought the house they called it a tornado room and we've been calling that ever since but it's like a it's like in our utility room there's another little room inside that doesn't so they really do make houses with that i don't think they made it that way on purpose i think it's just this weird kind of bonus utility store is it a pretty new house or is it like an old yeah it is that's really interesting you could retrofit that into a panic room then yeah for sure it's it's surrounded by concrete because it's the basement and then it's just this concrete room in our utility room i'm looking at the weather is it getting crazy i mean what it's just already stormy or is that now how tornadoes work yeah no there's like a huge storm cell that's about to move through so it is looking a little bit dicey but it's fine i'm gonna scoop and then jamie will come Come tell me if I need to.

1:32:27I mean, for the first time in my life, we got a tornado warning in San Francisco, first of all, but I never got them in Arizona either. And it was, you know, they're called water spouts when they're in the ocean. And we got one in Daly City and it was moving this direction. It was forming. That's what the, you know, like that, that earthquake type alert says it's like forming water spout conditions are forming off of Daly City, California. and it was like five in the morning and i was like helene do do we actually react to this like should we actually like i can't i really can't tell but it turned out we did we went downstairs with the cat and we you know we have a lower area but it everybody like was kind of talking about it all day it's like yeah this is something that can happen what yeah i know it's a very scary

1:33:14Sam Claiborn:thing but seeing a water hearing the words a water spout is forming is probably evoking the coolest imagery possible with like Linkin Park playing in the background and stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's a whirlpool above the ocean. Yeah, that sounds sick. I mean, I was going to say it sounds like something you would fight in suplex in Final Fantasy 6 when you're like on your ship. Dude, that's Typhoon, bro. That's a whole summit. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, totally. And then that's the type of thing that like sends like showers of fish to like some other state. Oh, yeah, yeah. Which I heard about a lot as a kid, but I don't think it's happened.

1:33:48I thought it'd be something

1:33:49Justin Davis:I think I dealt with more as I grew up. It's like quicksand. Yeah, exactly. Not nearly as big a problem as I was led to believe. But weirdly, my wife the other day was like, oh, did you see that thing on Instagram about quicksand? It's really scary. I'm like, I haven't been scared of quicksand in 35 years. Yeah, it's really scary. Show me what you're talking about. Is this real? And it was like, you know, somebody like slogging through like, you know, very wet sand. and it's like, yeah, they're trying to get quicksand back, everybody. Why isn't anybody doing anything about the Bermuda Triangle?

1:34:26Just letting all these ships disappear.