Hyper 110 - Morrowind (The Elder Scrolls III) [S2E12]

WEBVTT
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Uh, hey, Ty, how do you feel about Vegemite? Oh, uh,
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I've always been both curious and scared to try it. Well,
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good news. Pack your bags, because we're going down under.
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All right. Let me just do the safety dance real quick.
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Ha ha ha. You've got Fun Factor, two old gamers
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reviewing old video game magazine reviews. I'm Ty Shelter, he's
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Aidan Moher, and we're two professional writers who grew up
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loving the video games and video game magazines of the 1980s, 1990s,
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and 2000s. Every episode, we take a critical look back
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on the games media that, for better and for worse,
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inspired us to do what we do. First, go to funfactorpod.com,
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follow the show on your podcatcher of choice. Leave us
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a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you
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get your podcasts. We'll read the best, kindest, funniest, and
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most insightful ones on the air in our letters section.
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Please consider becoming a member of Fun Factor Ultra, our
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premium tiers that unlock ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and the
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our homepage. That will give you access to the live
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recording sessions like this one that we do for our
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Fun Factor Ultra members. It's super fun. Just do it.
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It's worth it. And then, Help us spread the word.
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Shout us out on BlueSky at FunFactorPod.com and everywhere else
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at FunFactorPod. Okay, so, Ty, last season, we covered the
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transitional period between the 16-bit and the 32-bit consoles, that
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raw and experimental period of game design. At the same time, however,
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in sort of the mid to late 90s, running circles
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around all of the consoles... Was the PC nowadays like
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PC gaming and console gaming overlap, like almost completely with
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like even Sony putting out PlayStation exclusives on PC storefronts
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back then though, like PC gaming was on a different
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level than console gaming. Many of the best games from
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that generation, like doom quake, Warcraft two Diablo two Baldur's gate.
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They were like either locked away on PC. or they
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had much like lesser console adaptations, which we've talked about,
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you know, even the best of the best of those like, um, quake, uh,
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on the Saturn was like still not the PC version. Right. No,
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but like what started with compromised, if impressive versions of
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like classic games, like Starcraft on the Nintendo 64 Diablo
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on the PlayStation started to like blossom and close the gap. Um,
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In the early aughts, the period that we're covering here
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in season two, you know, and one of those games
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we're going to talk about today in this episode, it's
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Morrowind on the Xbox. This was like more or less
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the time I started to get out of PC gaming,
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largely due to like my family's computers, just not being
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able to keep up with a lot of modern games
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in the early 2000s. But also because I was really
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into console RPGs on the PlayStation 2. because of course
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it was fabulous for that. I was also out of
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the house a lot. And so my Game Boy Advance
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was getting more and more and more of my gaming
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time during this period. What were your thoughts on sort
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of the merging of PC gaming and console gaming in
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the early 2000s? Like was the PCification of the Xbox
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appealing to you or not? Like where did you fall
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on that? Yeah, and this was very tough because for me,
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like we talked about a little bit before, I got
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a hand-me-down computer from my uncle. I had talked to
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my mom finally into buying a computer when I was
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like 16, and I got her to get it to
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pay for AOL when I was like 17. And, you know,
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I tried to kind of guide the purchase. And so
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it was an AMD K63 with 16 megs of RAM.
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Very fun. Four sticks of four, everybody. Super cool. Megabytes. Megabytes.
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That's right. But then I got into it. My uncle
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had an old HP Pavilion he gave me. I started
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modding that. And when I went to college, as I've
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told before on the pod, the credit union associated with
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my college said, hey, all incoming freshmen get a $ 1, 500
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limit credit card. No questions asked. So I loaded up
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a Newegg cart. And the second it came in, I
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swiped it and got, you know, $ 492 worth of computer parts.
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And then my phone rang and they're like, sir, sir,
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your new credit card's been stolen. Nope. They're like, oh, oh.
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So I got into PC gaming, but the thing was
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that the PCification and consoleification of PCs, you know, it
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was two ways where, okay, because of competing standards with
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DirectX and OpenGL, What video card you bought helped determine
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what games you were going to buy and vice versa, right? And,
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you know, all these competing chipsets, you know, and even
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you go, okay, cool, I'm going to get a Voodoo card. Okay, well,
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what Voodoo card, right? There's 18 Voodoo cards out there.
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Even the ones that are all the same model have
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different makers, different chipsets, different VRAM, right? And so you're like, wow,
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this is so complicated. There's so many options. And like,
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if you're an enthusiast, that's good news, right? If you're
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casual and you just want to play the game that
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everybody's talking about, that's bad news. And then consoles, you know,
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people were beating, you know, the, the doom drums going.
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If we, if we allow consoles to have patches, right.
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If we, if we allow console games to be what
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you're going to buy a game and you got to
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wait for the patch, that's crazy. And like day, you know,
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giant day one patches. That is our reality, right? We
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got there. Um, so, you know, there was good and
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bad and, and again, same thing with, with, okay, well,
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what happens when you get your, your Xbox and what
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are you going to do? Put a new video card
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in your Xbox. You could, well, then how our Xbox
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developer is going to develop that. And then we have
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that again with PlayStation and PlayStation pro now on this
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Tik TOK cycle of like, okay, you've got a split
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user base that you have to handle switch and switch to,
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as you just saw Aiden, you'd done a brand new brand, brand,
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brand new Castlevania game. Not even out yet. Not even
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out yet. and positioned to do awesome. It should look
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awesome on the switch too. And instead it's a switch
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version that just runs twice as fast on switch too.
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And you're like, this looks deeply compromised because they had to,
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you know, accommodate this, this split user base. Right. And
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so that wasn't necessarily a reality in the console market
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at this time, right in 2002, but it was, it
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was on the horizon and I definitely felt left out
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of a lot of, huge gaming experiences uh because i
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wasn't i didn't have a proper gaming pc early enough
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i didn't have internet good internet fast enough um and
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then when i did have good internet i was and
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a good pc it was like okay amazing but this
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is still not cheap or easy and getting users you
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know i talked about in golden eye when you're talking
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about golden eye we all have you know, brand new
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computers on a hardwired ethernet 10 megabit per second network
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in our dorm room. And people are like, Ty, come
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down and play like GoldenEye. I've got four-way GoldenEye going.
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And I'm like, guys, I've got a Quake 2 server running.
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Like what? Just, just play on the LAN with like
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10 ping. What are we doing? You know? So like
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there was still that, that, wildly disparate federated experience that,
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you know, it kind of degraded, I think it kind
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of degraded both experiences, right? Being on console and knowing
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there was all this really cool stuff online and with
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PC was a bummer, but then getting into that world
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of PC and going, Oh, this is the reason we
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play console games because they're cheaper and simpler and you
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just buy them and play them.
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Yeah.
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And I mean, like I've just gotten back into PC
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gaming and I bought my first like windows PC in like,
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20 years, I think. I think 2005. No. When was it? Yeah. 2006, 2007.
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Somewhere around there, I made the switch to Mac. And
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I've been dealing with all of that stuff. I have
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RAM that I'm having to figure out the timing. Can
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I run it? I can't run it at 3600 megahertz
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because my motherboard only supports it at 3200, but there's
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no documentation for that. I have to like go into
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the BIOS, try to like manually overclock it, see if
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my games crash. Yeah. And if they do, then it
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means I'm running it too fast, even though it's lower
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than the clock speed of the actual, you know, like,
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and I'm dealing with this stuff and like part of
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my brain loves it. And part of my brain is like, man,
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I wish my kids would just give me my switch back.
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You know, and it kind of goes both ways. And
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I'm also like, I was excited because I have a
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pretty decent graphics card and stuff in here. The Witcher
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3 remaster just came out. I can push all the
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ray tracing and all that kind of stuff, right? I'm
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sitting here playing it at 100 frames a second with
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frame gen, path tracing on, like all this cool stuff.
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But I'm also like, man, I kind of wish I
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was just playing this on my TV screen in the
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living room. Whereas like, My friend and I, like going
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back a couple of years, we both got Baldur's Gate 3.
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I bought it on PlayStation because I didn't have a
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PC at the time that could run it. He bought
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it on PC and we were having a conversation. I
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was like, yeah, I'm liking Baldur's Gate 3, but I'm
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20 hours in and I really wish I was playing
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this on PC. Like I wish I just had hotkeys,
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wish I had a mouse. And he's like, oh, that's funny.
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I'm playing it on my laptop and all I can
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think is I wish I was playing this on console.
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And so like that... specific like experience of like sitting
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on a couch playing games with a controller versus like
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sitting at my desk where I work is very different. Like,
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you know, it's not always preferable one way or the other.
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Like I've been playing Diablo 4, a game I bought
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on PlayStation 5 two years ago when it came out.
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never really could get into it. And then all of
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a sudden I had it, it was on sale for
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15 bucks, bought it on my PC and I just
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couldn't stop playing it. Yeah. Um, and so like, you know,
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there's so much more to like PC gaming versus console
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gaming than just like, it's a computer versus it's a
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console or it's easy versus it's not. Um, Xbox was
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obviously like the big defining factor in sort of this merging, right?
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Like Microsoft coming into the games world with its dominant
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background in PC software. Um, the console taking its name
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from DirectX, which is like still synonymous with PC gaming. Sorry, Vulkan. Sorry, OpenGL.
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Console boards, like you were sort of saying, like, weren't
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really all that interesting to me at the time because
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in the nineties, at least like in the mid nineties,
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because I could play the real version of Diablo. I
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didn't do the PlayStation version of Diablo. Yeah. Me and my,
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me and my buddy, me and my best friend, Matt, um,
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He joined me my sophomore year in college. He commuted
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his first year, second year. And so then his uncle
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helped him build a gaming PC. And the 3D card
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he used, we tried to play Madden, you know, because
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we could play Madden on the console, right? We tried
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to play Madden on PC. And his graphics card would just, like,
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not render body parts. Like, you'd see through their chest,
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or they wouldn't have a helmet, or, like, they would
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have no arms. Or you could see, like, outlines of
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the textures, but not the weapons. And we're like, what is,
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it's some sort of weird driver issue. Like what, you know,
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we're trying to solve it. And it's just like, okay,
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well we should be, we should be playing Madden with
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like better graphics and everything. And instead this is just
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like a wildly degrading or degraded. And I guess also
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degrading experience because we're Googling, how do we get Madden
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to work on a computer instead of just playing Madden?
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Yeah.
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Yeah. And like largely it comes down to the fact
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that like PCs at like have always been more powerful
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than consoles, but because of console user bases and like
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the consistency, everybody with PlayStation five has a PlayStation five. Yeah. Um,
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or pro you're only, you know, optimizing for two skews. Right.
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And so PC games like Madden or whatever, or even
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like modern games like Spider-Man on PC is not very
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good because it's just not optimized. It's a console game
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that's optimized for console. Um, and the PC versions just
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come in not great. Yeah. But by the time of
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the Xbox, which we're covering at this point in this season,
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like you were starting to get stuff like Morrowind, Knights
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of the Old Republic. And these started to feel like
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the first time this started to feel like the first
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time console games were offering like a legitimately compelling experience
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in genres or styles of genres that were previously only
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available on PC. That's it. Yep. Like even Halo. finally
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figured out how to do first-person shooter games on console, like,
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with all due respect to that PlayStation Alien game, which
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is pretty cool. Yeah. But, like, Halo was the one
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that was like, hey, we did it. You thought Goldeneye
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was good, but, like, Halo is... It feels perfect. And
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we still, like, use the Halo control scheme now for
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first-person shooters. And so, like, how do you think games...
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would look now if Microsoft hadn't entered the hardware space,
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hadn't entered console gaming and brought that mentality of like, Hey,
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we're going to bring our PC games with us. Yeah,
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that's fascinating. And I just looked a little bit ahead
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at the script that I've been trying to think about it.
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Cause it's, it's, it's a fascinating question. I feel like
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there had to be some sort of overlap because you
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have the internet, right? That was the driver of everything
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was the driver of culture. It was clearly the future
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of tech, of media, the interactivity, right? Consoles were coming online. Um,
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you know, the Dreamcast had the modem that was huge. Um,
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and yeah, as we've discussed, you know, PlayStation 2 has
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like the optional modem with Final Fantasy 11, right? So
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like this is coming online and it's been a key
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part of early tech adopters. And like you said, there's
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been these genres, okay, flight simulators, war games, et cetera, strategy,
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you know, RTSs, of course, that are just like, have,
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were always computer games. And as we've discussed, and are
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certainly about to discuss, RPGs on PCs versus console were
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also a different experience, right? And so as consoles got
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more powerful, this was kind of inevitable to a sense,
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but if Microsoft doesn't enter the market, we're still talking about, okay,
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we have the GameCube, which is, you know, the Pikmin,
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Wind Waker, Mario Sunshine machine, and then you have PlayStation 2,
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which is everything else. And it does feel kind of
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like there was a path. There was room for a third,
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you know, obviously this is because that's what happened in history,
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but like, it does feel like there was room for
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another competitor. Um, the dream cast, uh, might've hung on
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a little longer, right. Or, or found a buyer or
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something like that. Right. There's cause the other thing is
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the arcade, like run windows. Yes, it could. Yes, it could. So,
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you know, yeah, if the Dreamcast hangs on a little longer,
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you know, or there's some sort of like that arcade
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legacy because arcades were still kind of big and arcade
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tech was still a little bit ahead of the consoles, right?
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I feel like there was room for some other player
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to come in. But if we don't get Microsoft, I
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think the other thing is who takes command of the
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online space? Who ends up leading with Xbox Live? We
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talked about how we thought Microsoft, in the official Xbox magazine,
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promoting Xbox Live as, oh, this is our in in Japan,
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when nothing could end up being further from the truth.
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Japanese gamers were not super eager to get in Halo
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slur fights with American tweens. So, I mean, who can say?
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But The merging of tech and the internet, I think,
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just made it inevitable that these markets were going to
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colonize each other to one extent or another. Yeah. And nowadays,
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we're seeing not just the PC experience on consoles and
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the console experience on PCs, but we're seeing stuff like
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the Steam Machine, where PCs are just moving into living rooms. Yes.
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It's like a reversal of the Xbox era. I got
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into that. In a little bit, you know, a couple
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of years from this point, I got the ATI Radeon
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All in Wonder that had cable in. And I got
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a wireless keyboard. And I did, you know, composite or component?
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Video component. Yeah. Component video out to my CRT and
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digital out to the optical digital, the little fiber optic
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one to my AV receiver and my, you know, four
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and a half foot tall Wharfdale loudspeakers. You know, people
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would come over and be like, what the hell is
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going on? I'd be like, I'm fucking gaming. What do
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you think is going on? Yeah, you got some MP3s.
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Give them to I'll put them on the playlist. Like,
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let's just plug it into the Winamp. Let's party. You know,
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I'd like it was there. It wasn't really that it
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wasn't a great experience. You know, so much of it
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was flawed and you had to really be a sicko to, like,
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make it all work. But it, and people were like,
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I can't believe this is possible even. Yeah. And we're
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still not even really, really there in terms of the integration. Yeah.
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My brother like wired his apartment around a bunch of
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HDMI and stuff from his PC to his living room TV.
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And so he'll sit and play like, you know, wireless
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keyboard or get a controller and steam a big picture mode,
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obviously is meant to bring that sort of like console
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UI experience to, steam for people who want to use
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the steam box or they have their own you know
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they build their own steam machine or whatever um and
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i think that it's interesting to see options and i
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think like pc was always interesting to me and the
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reason the big reason i got a windows pc earlier
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this year is because of indie games and just like
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experimental games i would get I would run across so
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many interesting looking little indie games on Steam for 10
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bucks that just weren't on consoles or weren't on consoles
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yet or whatever. And even back during this time, like
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the PC has always been an open platform, right? You
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had to go through licensing with Nintendo, with Sony. Sony
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during the PlayStation era was like very like experimental and
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letting lots of weird stuff onto its console, but you
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still had to go through licensing, right? You still had
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to get Sony to agree to like put your game out. Yeah,
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you couldn't have somebody, like nobody could make a game
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in their bedroom and then publish it on PlayStation and Nintendo.
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Whereas I think Xbox was sort of bringing that forward,
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and it really started to flourish in the Xbox 360
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era with Xbox Live Arcade, where you started to get
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all these indie games, like Braid being probably one of
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the first big boom indie games, Geometry Wars. And you
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00:19:24.019 --> 00:19:28.160
just weren't getting those small experiences necessarily on consoles. You'd
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get them on the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, but
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you weren't getting them on consoles. And I think that
343
00:19:33.119 --> 00:19:35.359
that was a really important part of Microsoft bringing that
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PC mentality of like, hey, we can have big games
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like Morrowind, but we can also have small games like
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Geometry Wars. And so it would take a little bit
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of time to get there. But I think it was
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important to have that PC mentality of more open games.
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00:19:50.130 --> 00:19:54.349
game design, more room for like small games, small developers. Um,
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00:19:55.390 --> 00:19:56.970
and I think we've come to a place now, like
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even world of Warcraft has a controller friendly mode with
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the release of forever. And like that to me is
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00:20:03.019 --> 00:20:07.299
the ultimate coming together of like PC. and consoles. Uh,
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it's not on consoles yet, but they've released the console UI.
355
00:20:10.730 --> 00:20:12.829
So it's only a matter of time. Like wow. It
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00:20:12.849 --> 00:20:17.339
was probably like the biggest game. Yes. Not on consoles. Uh,
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kind of like historically speaking. Uh, so I think like,
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00:20:22.579 --> 00:20:25.759
have we reached that singularity where there's no delineation between
359
00:20:25.799 --> 00:20:29.480
console and PC gaming, uh, besides Nintendo, they're doing their thing,
360
00:20:29.640 --> 00:20:31.980
but like, are we there? Is that like, is gaming
361
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just gaming, whether you're doing it on console or, I
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00:20:35.420 --> 00:20:40.069
think we're remiss to have this conversation without discussing mobile.
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Because mobile is still ultimately how the majority of people
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who play video games play video games. Broadly speaking. When
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00:20:49.750 --> 00:20:51.970
we're talking about the AAA. Especially when you bring in
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just regular people. Casual games, yes. Quote-unquote gamers.
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00:20:56.049 --> 00:20:56.210
Right.
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00:20:56.470 --> 00:20:59.690
But also, I want to actually... Shoot, I forget who
369
00:20:59.750 --> 00:21:01.950
pointed this out. Somebody on Blue Sky. I apologize. I'll
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00:21:01.970 --> 00:21:03.630
try and put it in the show notes. But it
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00:21:03.650 --> 00:21:08.170
kind of went, hey... You know how romance novels were
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00:21:08.289 --> 00:21:12.549
the biggest selling genre of novel for 40 years? Well,
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00:21:12.730 --> 00:21:16.910
millions more people are playing romance visual novels right now
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on mobile than at any other game. And the entire
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00:21:20.470 --> 00:21:22.500
games media industry is simply not covering it because they
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don't think it counts in the exact same way. So
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00:21:25.160 --> 00:21:28.920
I want to bring that in. But between mobile PC,
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00:21:29.099 --> 00:21:33.960
mobile console, there are plenty of games... you know, a
379
00:21:34.819 --> 00:21:36.789
lot of gotcha games to, you know, like catch an impact.
380
00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:38.309
You know, you can play that on PC. You can
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play that on console. You can play that on mobile.
382
00:21:40.309 --> 00:21:43.029
You can play that, you know, you can switch between platforms, right?
383
00:21:43.049 --> 00:21:45.210
You can play cross platform. Cross save. That's a huge
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00:21:45.289 --> 00:21:49.539
cross save. Right. Like not just switching between consoles, but
385
00:21:49.579 --> 00:21:52.029
like I can play the witcher on my computer and,
386
00:21:53.019 --> 00:21:54.839
On my lunch break in my office and then play
387
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it on my TV.
388
00:21:55.440 --> 00:21:55.539
Yes.
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00:21:55.819 --> 00:21:57.880
And pick up my save. Pick it up. So, like,
390
00:21:57.940 --> 00:22:00.220
you know, that cross integration is something that I hadn't
391
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:02.460
really considered in this conversation yet. And yet at the
392
00:22:02.500 --> 00:22:04.680
same time, just last night while I was driving my
393
00:22:04.740 --> 00:22:08.279
wife back from the airport, Remap did a three and
394
00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:12.480
a half hour interview, Rob and Patrick, with Chris Person
395
00:22:12.519 --> 00:22:17.589
from Aftermath. Yeah. uh, uh, weird tech in general, but
396
00:22:17.650 --> 00:22:21.440
most specifically around VR and the steam frame. And, you know,
397
00:22:21.700 --> 00:22:24.039
he's talking, well, I'm in the video codec discords, man.
398
00:22:24.059 --> 00:22:26.819
Those guys are crazy. You know, we're, we're talking about like,
399
00:22:26.859 --> 00:22:28.500
don't come in here unless you don't come in here
400
00:22:28.519 --> 00:22:30.940
with your vibe coded slop. I saw this one guy
401
00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:33.329
who was working on this open source video codec there,
402
00:22:33.349 --> 00:22:35.349
but you know, and so that won't wait. And Rob's like, Oh,
403
00:22:35.390 --> 00:22:37.250
wait a minute. Like, you know, I've got my racing rig.
404
00:22:37.309 --> 00:22:39.490
Like what if I had a, maybe I need a
405
00:22:39.569 --> 00:22:42.190
steam frames that I, And I can keep my racing
406
00:22:42.250 --> 00:22:46.049
rig set up in some, you know, put aside corner
407
00:22:46.490 --> 00:22:48.430
instead of having to drag it out and reassemble it
408
00:22:48.710 --> 00:22:50.990
in front of my TV every time. Hmm. You know,
409
00:22:51.009 --> 00:22:52.750
and I'm just sitting here like, wow. Okay. But we
410
00:22:52.829 --> 00:22:55.569
still are, you know, I've got my Radion all in
411
00:22:55.630 --> 00:22:58.289
wonder and I'm trying to, you know, look, I can change.
412
00:22:58.650 --> 00:23:00.630
I've got my, I can change the TV. I'm looking,
413
00:23:00.650 --> 00:23:05.359
I'm watching TV through my computer. Isn't that great guys? Okay.
414
00:23:05.400 --> 00:23:05.759
All right.
415
00:23:05.799 --> 00:23:07.920
Yeah. All I had to do was like download this
416
00:23:07.960 --> 00:23:11.549
weird driver and you know, da da da. I've been
417
00:23:11.670 --> 00:23:13.789
like in the process of like, I have a NAS,
418
00:23:14.109 --> 00:23:16.190
which we use for fun factor stuff. Like that's where
419
00:23:16.210 --> 00:23:17.880
we archive a lot of our footage. That's where I
420
00:23:18.299 --> 00:23:20.400
keep all of the gameplay capture that I use in episodes,
421
00:23:20.720 --> 00:23:22.400
but I'm also setting it up as a, as a
422
00:23:22.420 --> 00:23:25.940
media server, uh, to be able to like have stuff.
423
00:23:26.019 --> 00:23:29.309
Like I have my, the, the fun factor, uh, magazine
424
00:23:29.369 --> 00:23:32.049
archive that I have. So all the PDFs, the CBZs,
425
00:23:32.309 --> 00:23:35.089
they're all on this NAS and I can access them, um,
426
00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:38.630
through a media server just on my phone when i
427
00:23:38.670 --> 00:23:40.890
need to or if i need to or any laptop
428
00:23:40.930 --> 00:23:44.009
that i um have on my network any computer that
429
00:23:44.029 --> 00:23:47.089
i have on my network anywhere um and so like
430
00:23:47.269 --> 00:23:49.369
that is sort of the same idea like i'm not
431
00:23:49.410 --> 00:23:53.289
running hdmi to my tv right right but i am
432
00:23:53.369 --> 00:23:55.650
connected through just like the internet and it's been a
433
00:23:55.670 --> 00:23:58.680
lot of like random weird setup and it's like you know,
434
00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:00.900
I've been, I've been having to download all these weird
435
00:24:00.920 --> 00:24:05.079
packages and then sideload them onto this. Uh, it's the
436
00:24:05.099 --> 00:24:07.400
same idea as having something that you're like, you know,
437
00:24:07.440 --> 00:24:10.940
trying to run analog video from your all in one,
438
00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:14.039
the handheld. What the heck is moonlight? What does it follow?
439
00:24:14.079 --> 00:24:15.960
Moonlight and sunlight is the next step for me. It's like,
440
00:24:16.029 --> 00:24:19.630
Oh wait, I could play these PC games on my TV, uh,
441
00:24:19.710 --> 00:24:22.329
by installing sunlight and moonlight and sunlight. And it's like, okay,
442
00:24:22.369 --> 00:24:26.450
like there's so much there. And like, I think just like, uh,
443
00:24:28.960 --> 00:24:32.059
the core of people who get into PC gaming, there's
444
00:24:32.119 --> 00:24:35.200
like that desire to tinker. Yes. Like I, I just,
445
00:24:35.339 --> 00:24:37.960
I want to tinker. And you know, I just yesterday
446
00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:41.359
got a new mechanical keyboard with like hot swap switches.
447
00:24:41.380 --> 00:24:46.430
It's like four pounds, like literally it's two kilograms. And
448
00:24:46.490 --> 00:24:48.970
it's like, I'm like, okay, now what can I do?
449
00:24:49.509 --> 00:24:51.990
And like, just that like desire to want to tinker
450
00:24:52.049 --> 00:24:54.470
and break things and figure out how it works, put
451
00:24:54.509 --> 00:24:56.450
it all together and then have something like you're saying
452
00:24:56.470 --> 00:24:58.490
that that you can like show off and be like, Hey,
453
00:24:58.529 --> 00:25:01.140
look at my setup. You couldn't do that with consoles.
454
00:25:01.500 --> 00:25:04.140
It's legit. This is getting like, I think far off field.
455
00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:07.680
Way off topic, but that's okay. If you, if you
456
00:25:07.799 --> 00:25:10.089
like fun factor, you've got to be okay with this.
457
00:25:10.190 --> 00:25:12.369
Cause you must like to take your two. You must
458
00:25:12.769 --> 00:25:15.829
be curious. You must, I want to think deeply and
459
00:25:15.849 --> 00:25:18.569
critically about how you consume media and what you think
460
00:25:18.630 --> 00:25:20.849
about it when you do it. So I think it
461
00:25:20.910 --> 00:25:23.059
is time to open the cover. If you are not
462
00:25:23.170 --> 00:25:26.140
already a Fun Factor Ultra member, getting ad-free episodes are
463
00:25:26.240 --> 00:25:28.859
watching us as we record this live in chat with us.
464
00:25:29.339 --> 00:25:31.259
As we talk about all this stuff, just hang tight
465
00:25:31.279 --> 00:25:33.460
through the break. And when we come back, we will
466
00:25:33.660 --> 00:25:37.460
flip through... Wait, what, Hayden? What?
467
00:25:37.660 --> 00:25:37.799
What?
468
00:25:38.099 --> 00:25:42.269
What magazine is this? You're not familiar with Hyper Magazine? No.
469
00:25:42.859 --> 00:25:45.900
I'm not familiar with Hyper Magazine. This is a very
470
00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:49.190
rare treat this deep into the show. So a new
471
00:25:49.230 --> 00:25:52.950
magazine we have talked about. We will open up issue
472
00:25:52.950 --> 00:25:56.990
110 of Hyper right here on Fun Factors. Fun Factors
473
00:26:14.569 --> 00:26:16.809
Welcome back to Fun Factor, where two old gamers review
474
00:26:16.890 --> 00:26:19.190
old video game magazine reviews. Of course, we want you
475
00:26:19.349 --> 00:26:22.089
to review us. To get a full 5.0 in Fun Factor,
476
00:26:22.509 --> 00:26:24.309
leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and we'll read
477
00:26:24.349 --> 00:26:31.480
the best, funniest, kindest, and most entertaining ones on the air. So, Ty. Yes.
478
00:26:32.220 --> 00:26:34.960
On this episode, we're looking at a magazine that I
479
00:26:35.059 --> 00:26:40.009
know you're super familiar with. Hyper! Hyper! Yeah, as we
480
00:26:40.029 --> 00:26:43.250
discussed immediately before the break, no, I'm not. I have not.
481
00:26:43.650 --> 00:26:46.869
I have not heard of Hyper. What if I told
482
00:26:46.910 --> 00:26:51.230
you that Hyper is one of the longest running video
483
00:26:51.259 --> 00:26:54.559
game magazines of all time? Really? Published from 1993 to 2019.
484
00:26:54.559 --> 00:26:54.690
2019!
485
00:26:54.690 --> 00:27:05.769
2019! That's... Wow. Okay. Incredible. Incredible. This Hyper is an
486
00:27:05.829 --> 00:27:11.430
Australian gaming magazine published by Next Media from 1993 to
487
00:27:11.430 --> 00:27:14.359
2018 when it was sold to Future alongside a few
488
00:27:14.390 --> 00:27:19.740
other like gamey and computer-y magazines. No surprise, Future shuttered
489
00:27:19.799 --> 00:27:23.579
it the next year because games media is awful and
490
00:27:23.619 --> 00:27:29.339
was still pretty awful in 2019. Yeah. But today we're
491
00:27:29.359 --> 00:27:35.430
looking at issue number 110 of Hyper. From December, 2002. Uh,
492
00:27:36.430 --> 00:27:39.930
it's 102 pages long, so not super long, but also
493
00:27:39.970 --> 00:27:43.339
like fairly densely packed as we'll, we'll find out. Uh,
494
00:27:43.380 --> 00:27:48.359
there were 21 games reviewed for five systems, PlayStation two, Xbox, GameCube, PC,
495
00:27:48.559 --> 00:27:56.710
and the Game Boy Advance. Um, being an Australian magazine,
496
00:27:56.789 --> 00:27:59.970
we'll look at the masthead in a moment here, but, uh,
497
00:28:00.250 --> 00:28:03.609
being an Australian magazine, uh, And not having Luke Plunkett
498
00:28:03.750 --> 00:28:08.019
on staff means the masthead here is full of people
499
00:28:08.059 --> 00:28:12.700
I don't really have any personal experience with reading. So
500
00:28:12.720 --> 00:28:15.019
it was a lot of new names. The editorial staff
501
00:28:15.420 --> 00:28:20.569
on Hyper is just three full-timers. Editor-in-Chief Elliot Fish, Deputy
502
00:28:20.650 --> 00:28:25.450
Editor Cam Shea, and Art Director Malcolm Campbell. The contributor
503
00:28:25.490 --> 00:28:29.130
section has about a dozen writers and a dog, though.
504
00:28:29.829 --> 00:28:31.569
So you had a small core team that was then
505
00:28:31.710 --> 00:28:36.589
freelancing out a ton of work. After leaving Hyper Magazine,
506
00:28:36.869 --> 00:28:42.680
the editor-in-chief Elliot Fish, in his own words, started quote-unquote
507
00:28:42.740 --> 00:28:45.920
slumming it in freelance writing, picking up gigs with places
508
00:28:45.960 --> 00:28:50.099
like Game Informer, the Aussie versions of Edge, OXM, and GamePro,
509
00:28:50.440 --> 00:28:52.380
which I didn't know existed and could give us some
510
00:28:52.420 --> 00:29:02.539
good content for future episodes, along with a Place called D-Bag? D-Bag?
511
00:29:03.799 --> 00:29:07.680
I don't know. Okay. But however, in October 2009, Fish
512
00:29:07.789 --> 00:29:11.630
joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a senior producer, which
513
00:29:11.690 --> 00:29:15.049
I assume is similar to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which
514
00:29:15.109 --> 00:29:20.119
is like a federally funded news and television and radio
515
00:29:20.779 --> 00:29:26.160
multimedia service. That's pretty great. In Canada, he's been there
516
00:29:26.200 --> 00:29:31.390
ever since. Specifically, though, he's produced many video game-related shows, podcasts,
517
00:29:31.430 --> 00:29:36.210
web series for ABC, including Good Game, Help! My Kid
518
00:29:36.269 --> 00:29:40.119
is a Gamer, and How Games Play Us. And so
519
00:29:40.220 --> 00:29:43.799
he was somebody who left games media, sort of, but
520
00:29:43.900 --> 00:29:47.279
moved into mainstream media and brought games coverage with him,
521
00:29:47.900 --> 00:29:50.799
which I think is really interesting. Yeah, you didn't use
522
00:29:50.880 --> 00:29:54.099
quotes around the titles in the script, so I realize
523
00:29:54.140 --> 00:29:58.369
this is including Good Game, Help! Which I think is
524
00:29:59.390 --> 00:30:01.910
very funny. Pretty, that would be good too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
525
00:30:01.930 --> 00:30:04.609
We could have a whole episode on games. It's funny, actually,
526
00:30:04.650 --> 00:30:09.150
the opening, I was wanting to do Animal Crossing for
527
00:30:09.190 --> 00:30:12.170
this episode, but couldn't find a good review that I
528
00:30:12.190 --> 00:30:14.519
wanted to cover or an angle that I thought was interesting.
529
00:30:14.539 --> 00:30:16.940
But the opening discussion for that episode would have been
530
00:30:16.960 --> 00:30:19.700
games that we got obsessed with. Sure, sure, sure. Good
531
00:30:19.720 --> 00:30:22.480
Game Help would be a great title for that. Yes.
532
00:30:22.839 --> 00:30:28.029
Deputy Editor Cam Shea left Hyper... And joined IGN as
533
00:30:28.049 --> 00:30:32.809
games editor in 2007, eventually becoming EIC and studio lead
534
00:30:32.829 --> 00:30:38.170
for IGN Australia, which is pretty wild. So like a
535
00:30:38.230 --> 00:30:42.529
pretty big leap there for him. He left IGN in
536
00:30:42.529 --> 00:30:45.910
2023 to pursue travel writing and video, but was writing
537
00:30:46.089 --> 00:30:48.569
on that site as recently as July of this year,
538
00:30:49.630 --> 00:30:50.250
which is interesting.
539
00:30:50.410 --> 00:30:53.190
So he was writing about some Magic the Gathering, the
540
00:30:53.210 --> 00:30:54.750
Marvel release in Magic the Gathering.
541
00:30:55.170 --> 00:30:58.759
So still doing some of that freelance writing. I was
542
00:30:58.839 --> 00:31:01.839
unable to find any information about art director Malcolm Campbell online.
543
00:31:02.460 --> 00:31:07.900
I am immensely jealous of him. As somebody who is
544
00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:14.549
like just terminally online, that is something I am envious of.
545
00:31:16.670 --> 00:31:20.519
As I was doing research on not just this issue,
546
00:31:20.579 --> 00:31:23.900
not just the people, but like, uh, hyper magazine period
547
00:31:23.940 --> 00:31:26.009
because I was not familiar with it. I found a,
548
00:31:26.119 --> 00:31:29.619
a feature on forgotten worlds, which is this like fabulous
549
00:31:29.660 --> 00:31:33.769
blog that deep dives into the history of games media. Um,
550
00:31:34.390 --> 00:31:37.569
which obviously would be appealing to listeners and fans of
551
00:31:37.609 --> 00:31:40.269
fun factor. Uh, it has a deep dive with a
552
00:31:40.329 --> 00:31:45.099
hyper editor, Dan Wilkes, who joined, um, the magazine a
553
00:31:45.160 --> 00:31:49.480
little later past where we're covering it right now. Uh,
554
00:31:49.500 --> 00:31:53.119
so he wasn't on this issue, but, uh, They talk
555
00:31:53.160 --> 00:31:55.119
about how and why the magazine sort of died a
556
00:31:55.160 --> 00:31:57.700
slow death through budget cuts, but also a lack of
557
00:31:57.940 --> 00:32:02.259
ability to transition into the era of internet media. We'll
558
00:32:02.299 --> 00:32:03.819
link to it in the show notes. I won't go
559
00:32:03.880 --> 00:32:06.529
too deep on it, but it's absolutely worth a read.
560
00:32:07.470 --> 00:32:11.210
Really fascinating inside look at the decline of print media.
561
00:32:12.730 --> 00:32:17.970
I think that places like Australia and England have... are
562
00:32:18.029 --> 00:32:22.029
interesting ecosystems for print media for a few reasons. And
563
00:32:22.069 --> 00:32:25.650
so it's a good read. Oh, yeah, this does look
564
00:32:25.730 --> 00:32:28.880
really cool. Yeah, that'll go in the show notes. This
565
00:32:29.039 --> 00:32:31.400
is kind of a topic that fascinates me because we,
566
00:32:31.819 --> 00:32:34.039
I mean, part of it is what we're doing anyway, right,
567
00:32:34.079 --> 00:32:36.920
is looking at these magazines and how they transitioned or
568
00:32:36.980 --> 00:32:40.589
didn't into the digital age and what that change meant.
569
00:32:40.609 --> 00:32:43.829
But it's also directly relevant to a couple of bonus
570
00:32:43.849 --> 00:32:46.309
episode topics I am pursuing and looking for guests for. So,
571
00:32:47.700 --> 00:32:50.900
Some breadcrumbs here for that, for sure. But hey, Aiden,
572
00:32:50.940 --> 00:32:52.859
I think it's time to get past the masthead. I
573
00:32:52.880 --> 00:33:03.220
think it's time for the flip through. Okay, so Ty,
574
00:33:03.480 --> 00:33:05.539
like I said, we're looking at issue 110 of Hyper.
575
00:33:07.119 --> 00:33:12.920
Can you paint me a word picture of this striking cover? Yeah, well,
576
00:33:13.089 --> 00:33:19.109
as Jason WFD in chat went, Can you smell what
577
00:33:19.150 --> 00:33:25.970
The Rock is gaming? Incredibly young Dwayne The Rock Johnson here.
578
00:33:25.990 --> 00:33:29.140
Looking small. With hair. Still not a ton of hair,
579
00:33:29.859 --> 00:33:32.980
but does have hair, which is like, wow. And he
580
00:33:33.019 --> 00:33:39.309
looks a lot more like naturally ripped, you know, as
581
00:33:39.369 --> 00:33:43.829
opposed to like 2026 peptides and other chemicals ripped. Yeah.
582
00:33:44.640 --> 00:33:51.490
The longhorn belt buckle, that's really something. But then outside
583
00:33:51.529 --> 00:33:53.369
of that, it's interesting because we've got a red, white,
584
00:33:53.390 --> 00:33:58.269
and blue color scheme here. It's Australia's gaming authority, Hyper.
585
00:33:58.289 --> 00:34:01.769
And as is kind of the style, it's got the
586
00:34:02.470 --> 00:34:05.720
title set behind all the other graphical elements. So you
587
00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:08.489
just kind of have to know... that this is the
588
00:34:08.530 --> 00:34:13.650
magazine thing. Uh, but you know, Colin McRae rally three, uh,
589
00:34:13.659 --> 00:34:18.099
with Colin McRae is, uh, Ford escort, uh, for those
590
00:34:18.119 --> 00:34:21.739
who know, um, yeah, just lots of cool PC gaming
591
00:34:21.760 --> 00:34:26.769
gets unreal, unreal tournament, 2003 rollercoaster tycoon two as a
592
00:34:26.829 --> 00:34:32.090
story about rollercoaster taking two. Um, yeah, so it's, I don't,
593
00:34:33.900 --> 00:34:36.179
Does this look like a video game magazine to you? No,
594
00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:38.280
not really. This is kind of what I'm driving at.
595
00:34:38.340 --> 00:34:42.730
It's busy, but it's not too busy. It's clean, but
596
00:34:42.929 --> 00:34:45.670
there's not just a ton of clutter, but it is
597
00:34:45.730 --> 00:34:49.090
kind of cluttered. And we've got all of this stuff,
598
00:34:49.349 --> 00:34:55.730
and outside of the word saying games, it's not games forward.
599
00:34:55.789 --> 00:34:57.889
You wouldn't necessarily know this is a gaming magazine. This
600
00:34:57.909 --> 00:34:59.949
looks like it could be any magazine. It could be
601
00:34:59.969 --> 00:35:02.539
a car magazine. It could be a wrestling magazine. It
602
00:35:02.579 --> 00:35:05.519
could be a lad mag. Right. That's exactly what we're
603
00:35:05.539 --> 00:35:09.800
getting at. Yeah. So that's interesting. Which is unusual. The
604
00:35:09.960 --> 00:35:12.619
other issues surrounding this do look a lot more like
605
00:35:12.659 --> 00:35:15.920
video game magazines. And I actually like avoided clicking on
606
00:35:15.960 --> 00:35:18.019
this one as I was looking for issues to cover
607
00:35:18.079 --> 00:35:20.840
because I was like, eh, that's not appealing to me.
608
00:35:21.119 --> 00:35:21.320
Right.
609
00:35:21.929 --> 00:35:24.610
So same thing, like, you know, same impulses that would
610
00:35:24.929 --> 00:35:27.010
dictate which magazine I was picking up at the store.
611
00:35:27.110 --> 00:35:30.260
If I was, you know, at the grocery store or whatever. Um,
612
00:35:30.539 --> 00:35:32.539
but I think it's interesting that this one leans very
613
00:35:32.579 --> 00:35:35.949
heavily into that sort of lad mag look. Yeah. Um,
614
00:35:36.389 --> 00:35:39.610
but enough of the cover. We're going to flip through
615
00:35:40.110 --> 00:35:43.829
the magazine, do the flip through. That's what the section's called. Yeah. Uh,
616
00:35:44.230 --> 00:35:47.860
we're going to flip past four straight pages of wrestling ads. Wow.
617
00:35:48.019 --> 00:35:51.139
A lot of like sweaty shirtless men. Yeah. A lot
618
00:35:51.159 --> 00:35:57.119
of the rock he's on the cover one, two, three
619
00:35:57.139 --> 00:36:00.630
of the four pages as well. And then we're going
620
00:36:00.650 --> 00:36:03.510
to get to the table of contents here, starting on
621
00:36:03.550 --> 00:36:06.650
page four. This looks cool. I like this. It does
622
00:36:06.690 --> 00:36:09.329
look cool. It's a really nice table of contents. It
623
00:36:09.349 --> 00:36:13.010
spans pages four and five. Last episode, you were complaining
624
00:36:13.050 --> 00:36:15.840
about how hard it was to, like, calculate the number
625
00:36:16.039 --> 00:36:20.460
of reviews and systems reviewed for. Yes. Right here, we've
626
00:36:20.480 --> 00:36:24.260
got a really nice bright red pullout, like, sidebar that
627
00:36:24.300 --> 00:36:27.159
lists all the reviews and their consoles. So it was, like,
628
00:36:27.780 --> 00:36:30.539
super easy. for me to get in there and count, uh,
629
00:36:31.019 --> 00:36:34.460
and count reviews. Um, on the first page we.
630
00:36:34.380 --> 00:36:39.260
Have like big, bold sort of like feature sections, uh, for, uh,
631
00:36:39.300 --> 00:36:41.050
Christmas buyer's guide, which is always fun.
632
00:36:41.130 --> 00:36:44.010
Yeah. The top 50 best games readers poll, which is
633
00:36:44.530 --> 00:36:47.130
not what I expected it to be. Yeah. Yoshi's Island
634
00:36:47.250 --> 00:36:52.960
comes to the GBA. Um, what strikes me about this
635
00:36:53.000 --> 00:36:55.980
table of contents, however, is that it's very different than
636
00:36:56.000 --> 00:36:59.699
the cover. Like it, it, It doesn't feature really anything
637
00:36:59.760 --> 00:37:04.030
on the cover. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Because normally a
638
00:37:04.110 --> 00:37:07.329
top 50 best games readers poll would be the cover story.
639
00:37:07.570 --> 00:37:10.690
Or the Hyper Christmas Buyer's Guide would be the cover story.
640
00:37:11.349 --> 00:37:15.789
And I don't... I think it did say Xmas Buyer's Guide. Yes,
641
00:37:15.989 --> 00:37:19.070
it did under the GBA here. But it absolutely doesn't
642
00:37:19.110 --> 00:37:19.630
stand out.
643
00:37:21.969 --> 00:37:22.170
Yeah.
644
00:37:22.289 --> 00:37:25.280
Yeah. it's, it's weird. Cause that would normally be what
645
00:37:25.559 --> 00:37:27.659
we see on the cover. This is about, and instead
646
00:37:27.679 --> 00:37:31.219
this is just about Dwayne, the rock Johnson and, you know,
647
00:37:31.420 --> 00:37:34.260
WWE SmackDown. And it kind of goes to show like
648
00:37:34.320 --> 00:37:37.019
how marketing on the store shelves is diff kind of
649
00:37:37.059 --> 00:37:42.969
differs from like how they actually like put the magazine together. Yeah. Uh-huh. Um,
650
00:37:43.550 --> 00:37:46.769
page six has the bass head, which we've already gone over.
651
00:37:46.809 --> 00:37:50.829
It also has an editorial here from, uh, Elliot fish
652
00:37:51.250 --> 00:37:55.280
editor in chief about how like, sequels are good now?
653
00:37:56.139 --> 00:38:00.239
Like that, like game quote, quote, gone are the days
654
00:38:00.300 --> 00:38:05.000
of sequels be nothing more than mere cash leeching tools. Uh,
655
00:38:05.059 --> 00:38:06.780
I don't know that this is like the period of
656
00:38:06.820 --> 00:38:09.480
time when I would say it was like, you know,
657
00:38:09.519 --> 00:38:12.900
the apex of, of sequels. And like one of the
658
00:38:12.980 --> 00:38:17.960
main examples in fish's editorial of like how good sequels
659
00:38:18.019 --> 00:38:21.409
are these days is Tony Hawk pro skater four. Literally,
660
00:38:21.650 --> 00:38:23.889
I was about to bring that up as an example
661
00:38:23.969 --> 00:38:28.349
from our last episode of everyone agrees this is when
662
00:38:28.409 --> 00:38:30.300
it was just the same thing over and over. Yeah,
663
00:38:30.320 --> 00:38:33.519
when the series kind of gets on that. That's so funny.
664
00:38:33.539 --> 00:38:39.900
So very strange editorial. I don't really, I don't know.
665
00:38:40.280 --> 00:38:44.760
That seems like something that was written like last minute. Yeah,
666
00:38:44.820 --> 00:38:50.550
remember when sequels like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Zelda
667
00:38:50.710 --> 00:38:54.909
A Link to the Past, yeah, just like pointless cash grabs?
668
00:38:55.590 --> 00:38:56.900
Now we have TimeSplitters 2.
669
00:38:56.889 --> 00:39:00.710
TimeSplitters 2 is actually supposed to be pretty good.
670
00:39:00.869 --> 00:39:02.909
I'm sure, but like, you know, they're like, oh, now
671
00:39:02.949 --> 00:39:07.570
we have artistically ambitious sequels. It's funny to me.
672
00:39:07.829 --> 00:39:12.469
Page 8 kicks off the news section, which is called News...
673
00:39:13.050 --> 00:39:21.199
with a half-page preview news rumor thing about Blizzard announcing
674
00:39:21.219 --> 00:39:25.530
StarCraft Ghost. It says, when I read the title, I
675
00:39:25.550 --> 00:39:28.010
thought it was about Ghost being cancelled, because the title
676
00:39:28.409 --> 00:39:30.750
of the article is, quote, Blizzard.
677
00:39:31.050 --> 00:39:34.469
Give up the Ghost. And then the subhead is, quote,
678
00:39:34.869 --> 00:39:37.429
give up info on StarCraft Ghost, that is.
679
00:39:38.039 --> 00:39:38.579
Very weird.
680
00:39:38.659 --> 00:39:41.119
And so it's like, it's just funny, because there's three
681
00:39:41.159 --> 00:39:44.730
screenshots here. But then the opening of the article says, Quote,
682
00:39:44.929 --> 00:39:47.130
with the buzz going around that Blizzard were about to
683
00:39:47.170 --> 00:39:49.690
announce a brand new game, most of the industry were
684
00:39:49.730 --> 00:39:55.010
expecting the inevitable announcement of StarCraft 2. Yeah, I mean,
685
00:39:55.619 --> 00:39:59.920
StarCraft Ghost is just such a fascinating example of game
686
00:39:59.960 --> 00:40:04.300
cancellations and Blizzard trying to experiment, but starting to get
687
00:40:04.340 --> 00:40:09.199
too big for their britches a bit and stuff. Game
688
00:40:09.239 --> 00:40:13.909
that definitely, famously, definitely, for sure came out. Um, another
689
00:40:13.969 --> 00:40:16.429
magazine from this time, it might even have been hyper,
690
00:40:16.449 --> 00:40:20.130
but it was like the big feature was like the
691
00:40:20.170 --> 00:40:23.469
best games of 2003 and Starcraft ghost was like on
692
00:40:23.510 --> 00:40:28.519
that list, which, uh, which I thought was funny, but notably, um,
693
00:40:29.760 --> 00:40:32.360
this piece and tying it into the overall conversation we're
694
00:40:32.380 --> 00:40:36.820
having on this episode, the article mentions that it's been.
695
00:40:36.840 --> 00:40:42.219
Co-developed by nihilistic software, but was not in big capital letters.
696
00:40:42.710 --> 00:40:46.809
Coming for PC or Mac. So this was an opportunity
697
00:40:47.030 --> 00:40:52.230
where Blizzard was trying to break into the console gaming market.
698
00:40:52.429 --> 00:40:55.079
And their games at the time were not very console friendly,
699
00:40:55.119 --> 00:40:59.880
like Warcraft, like Starcraft, like Diablo. Some of those games
700
00:40:59.960 --> 00:41:02.940
made it to consoles, but they were compromised experiences. So
701
00:41:03.480 --> 00:41:06.840
Starcraft Ghost was that opportunity for Blizzard to try to
702
00:41:06.900 --> 00:41:10.010
create a console game. Not a PC game that gets
703
00:41:10.050 --> 00:41:13.769
released on console, but something that was like specifically meant
704
00:41:13.889 --> 00:41:16.840
to play well and lean into the strengths of consoles.
705
00:41:17.559 --> 00:41:20.659
And then of course it just never came out. And now,
706
00:41:20.699 --> 00:41:24.079
but now we're getting kind of it. Cause they have
707
00:41:24.119 --> 00:41:28.440
the new Starcraft. That's like a first person shooter or
708
00:41:28.480 --> 00:41:37.230
whatever that they've recently announced. Um, excuse me. Okay. We're
709
00:41:37.250 --> 00:41:39.250
going to now, so from page eight, we're going to
710
00:41:39.269 --> 00:41:43.400
skip past some more news. Uh, uh, Delightful converse ad
711
00:41:43.599 --> 00:41:47.610
with a bunch of like nerdy guys with Afros for
712
00:41:47.650 --> 00:41:52.889
some reason. Oh. There is Get Nude on the Xbox,
713
00:41:53.170 --> 00:41:57.519
which is a preview for a game called Nude. Natural
714
00:41:57.659 --> 00:42:01.340
ultimate digital experience. But we're going to go all the
715
00:42:01.380 --> 00:42:05.340
way to page 18, which is where the Hyper Christmas
716
00:42:05.400 --> 00:42:06.719
Buyer's Guide starts.
717
00:42:07.469 --> 00:42:10.030
I always liked Christmas buying guides. I always enjoyed them
718
00:42:10.050 --> 00:42:12.320
when I was, uh, reading them at the time.
719
00:42:12.340 --> 00:42:16.019
Um, this one kicks off pretty strongly with the wave bird, which,
720
00:42:16.380 --> 00:42:19.039
you know, we talked about previously, uh, on the last episode,
721
00:42:19.559 --> 00:42:21.559
be one of my favorite game controllers of all time.
722
00:42:22.380 --> 00:42:26.159
But the first item is the Panasonic Q cube. Um,
723
00:42:27.619 --> 00:42:29.519
I don't remember it ever being called the Q cube,
724
00:42:29.559 --> 00:42:32.820
just the Panasonic Q. Um, but this was a device
725
00:42:33.199 --> 00:42:37.280
put out by Panasonic that was like a game cube.
726
00:42:38.050 --> 00:42:43.909
That could play DVDs. What? So for people listening, the
727
00:42:44.030 --> 00:42:47.920
Panasonic Q is like a big silver box, shaped like
728
00:42:47.960 --> 00:42:50.880
a GameCube, but bigger and bulkier, with a lot of
729
00:42:50.960 --> 00:42:54.019
physical buttons on the front. It's got the four controller ports.
730
00:42:54.159 --> 00:42:56.880
It's got two memory card ports. It has a GameCube logo,
731
00:42:57.059 --> 00:43:01.900
but it has a big DVD drive, a slide-out mechanical drive. Wow.
732
00:43:02.820 --> 00:43:06.130
And on the top, there's like a LCD screen. That
733
00:43:06.150 --> 00:43:08.860
says GameCube. So you know it's a GameCube because it
734
00:43:08.889 --> 00:43:11.079
says it. So you know it's a GameCube. And presumably
735
00:43:11.119 --> 00:43:13.440
that gives you information about the DVD that you're watching
736
00:43:13.500 --> 00:43:18.519
or whatever. Outside of the Net-a-Rose, I don't think I've
737
00:43:18.880 --> 00:43:24.010
ever wanted like a console variant more than I wanted
738
00:43:24.030 --> 00:43:30.090
a Panasonic Q. The price listed here is over a
739
00:43:30.230 --> 00:43:34.179
thousand Australian dollars. So I mean, I don't know what
740
00:43:34.199 --> 00:43:36.909
that would have converted to in like U.S. dollars at
741
00:43:36.949 --> 00:43:41.320
the time, but presumably that would have been $ 700 U.S.
742
00:43:41.880 --> 00:43:47.420
at the time. These were not common. I've never seen one. Oh, yeah.
743
00:43:47.480 --> 00:43:50.099
In real life. But I would still love one. It's
744
00:43:50.139 --> 00:43:56.239
pretty sweet. Very, very early aughts design. It's also like
745
00:43:56.360 --> 00:43:59.119
the GameCube to me is like a perfectly designed game console.
746
00:43:59.159 --> 00:44:02.079
It's beautiful. But like the Panasonic Q in this picture
747
00:44:02.219 --> 00:44:04.579
is like everything that the GameCube's not.
748
00:44:04.599 --> 00:44:04.679
Yeah.
749
00:44:06.010 --> 00:44:11.269
Yeah. But this is, this is extraordinary. This is extraordinary. I, I,
750
00:44:11.510 --> 00:44:15.550
I also want it and I'm stunned that I'm stunned
751
00:44:15.570 --> 00:44:20.369
that Nintendo licensed right. This technology that they've really not
752
00:44:20.489 --> 00:44:21.989
ever done anything like this.
753
00:44:22.690 --> 00:44:22.909
No.
754
00:44:23.909 --> 00:44:28.909
And like, you know, licensed console collabs like this, like
755
00:44:28.949 --> 00:44:32.360
hardware collabs were a little more common previously. Like there
756
00:44:32.409 --> 00:44:35.449
was that TV. that could play super Nintendo games, like
757
00:44:35.469 --> 00:44:38.019
had a super Nintendo built into it, which again, I
758
00:44:38.519 --> 00:44:40.719
guess maybe that's the console variant I want is a
759
00:44:40.760 --> 00:44:43.699
CRT with a built-in super Nintendo only released in Japan,
760
00:44:43.739 --> 00:44:47.980
I think for like hotels. Um, there was the V Saturn,
761
00:44:48.000 --> 00:44:52.000
like Victor was able to produce Saturn consoles for some reason. Like,
762
00:44:52.039 --> 00:44:55.900
I don't understand why. Um, but I cannot imagine Nintendo
763
00:44:55.920 --> 00:44:59.460
teaming up with like Samsung or Panasonic or whatever to
764
00:44:59.500 --> 00:45:09.739
like release unique hardware, uh, In 2026. It's pretty wild. That's, yeah. Unbelievable.
765
00:45:09.780 --> 00:45:13.440
The next page of the buyer's guide brings us, you know,
766
00:45:13.460 --> 00:45:16.780
the platinum colored Game Boy Advance, which is just like
767
00:45:16.800 --> 00:45:19.860
a silver color. The GBA link cable for the GameCube.
768
00:45:21.210 --> 00:45:26.139
Awful looking Logitech wireless PlayStation controller. Yeah, that's bad. At
769
00:45:26.159 --> 00:45:27.440
the top of the pages.
770
00:45:27.739 --> 00:45:30.300
So the top of page 20 and top page 21
771
00:45:30.300 --> 00:45:32.340
or two items that like would never appear in a
772
00:45:32.420 --> 00:45:33.780
North American gift guide.
773
00:45:34.389 --> 00:45:37.130
One is called the freeloader. And the other one is
774
00:45:37.309 --> 00:45:42.090
the DVD zone free. And these are discs basically designed
775
00:45:42.130 --> 00:45:47.949
to like bypass region locking. And so Australia being like
776
00:45:47.989 --> 00:45:51.679
a pal region and not being able to access Japanese
777
00:45:51.719 --> 00:45:55.349
media or North American media. Um, you needed some way
778
00:45:55.369 --> 00:45:59.010
to bypass that. And so these were the freeloader was,
779
00:45:59.230 --> 00:46:02.889
it says quote here, details, freeloader disc sounds like a godsend.
780
00:46:03.269 --> 00:46:05.250
It's a GameCube size boot disc that allows you to
781
00:46:05.289 --> 00:46:08.199
play Japanese and US games on a PAL machine without
782
00:46:08.619 --> 00:46:12.980
any internal modification. Thus keeping any, or thus keeping your
783
00:46:13.019 --> 00:46:16.360
warranty intact. And DVD zone free is the same thing.
784
00:46:16.420 --> 00:46:19.510
It's like you pop this in and it like breaks,
785
00:46:20.239 --> 00:46:23.480
like it validates, I guess, the region lock. And then
786
00:46:23.559 --> 00:46:25.760
you load in whatever disc you want to actually play.
787
00:46:26.119 --> 00:46:28.940
Very similar to when I was like doing disc swapping
788
00:46:28.980 --> 00:46:33.769
on my PlayStation so that I could play bootleg PlayStation games. Um,
789
00:46:33.829 --> 00:46:36.769
but you'd never see this in a North American magazine. Uh,
790
00:46:36.829 --> 00:46:39.849
it's very, very much like a power region type thing,
791
00:46:40.210 --> 00:46:45.530
which I think is, is pretty cool. Legal in Australia, man. Yeah.
792
00:46:45.949 --> 00:46:48.630
And Europe, I assume these were available in Europe to
793
00:46:48.969 --> 00:46:54.030
any power region, really. Um, But then without any warning
794
00:46:54.070 --> 00:46:58.949
at all after this. Oh, wait. Actually, Steel Battalion 2 controller.
795
00:46:58.989 --> 00:47:02.030
I missed that one. I was going to say. There's
796
00:47:02.070 --> 00:47:08.559
some real legends in here. Yeah. I actually, that terrible
797
00:47:08.599 --> 00:47:11.659
PlayStation controller, I know I've held it at some point.
798
00:47:12.119 --> 00:47:14.639
I don't think I owned it, but I know I've
799
00:47:14.699 --> 00:47:17.679
held that in my hands at some point. And were
800
00:47:17.719 --> 00:47:19.980
you going to point out the thing I was going
801
00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:23.820
to point out? I don't know. It's my video card
802
00:47:23.840 --> 00:47:27.559
that I was just talking about. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh.
803
00:47:28.539 --> 00:47:32.199
There it is. ATI all in wonder. I had no idea.
804
00:47:32.320 --> 00:47:34.769
That's so funny. Now I didn't have, I don't think
805
00:47:34.789 --> 00:47:37.769
I had the 9,700 pro yet. No, no, that's a
806
00:47:37.809 --> 00:47:42.289
thousand Australian. So that's not what, not what I paid.
807
00:47:42.309 --> 00:47:47.340
I want to say I paid like three 75. I
808
00:47:47.389 --> 00:47:51.130
might've had the 9,500 pro. I might've had the 9700.
809
00:47:51.130 --> 00:47:54.099
I can't remember, but like this, this was my card.
810
00:47:54.260 --> 00:47:57.980
This is what I had. My gosh. It has a coaxial. Yeah.
811
00:47:58.059 --> 00:48:02.059
Literally you put the cake out. Well, that's in. So
812
00:48:02.400 --> 00:48:06.250
you put the cable, you put the cable TV directly
813
00:48:06.550 --> 00:48:13.969
in to your video card and then DBI out and, and, or, uh, or, um,
814
00:48:14.199 --> 00:48:16.760
S video, uh, That's S-video in and S-video out. So
815
00:48:17.030 --> 00:48:20.750
you can, you know, S-video your camcorder in or whatever,
816
00:48:20.789 --> 00:48:23.309
whatever video source you have, and then S-video out to
817
00:48:23.329 --> 00:48:26.929
the TV. So, yeah. So you can just watch TV
818
00:48:27.590 --> 00:48:31.090
on your computer, you know, and people will just be like,
819
00:48:31.860 --> 00:48:34.119
what is happening? Why am I looking at a Windows desktop?
820
00:48:34.179 --> 00:48:37.099
And I just, like, bring up a window of the TV.
821
00:48:37.119 --> 00:48:39.980
And we just watch it on the, you know, full screen,
822
00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:43.360
the window. I mean, the concept is exactly the same
823
00:48:43.400 --> 00:48:46.699
as my Elgato... like capture card that I use to
824
00:48:46.739 --> 00:48:49.920
capture game footage, right? Yes. Plug a signal in so
825
00:48:49.960 --> 00:48:52.590
I can get it on my computer. Uh, that's so funny.
826
00:48:52.860 --> 00:48:56.489
That's sweet. Uh, I also like the controller type S
827
00:48:56.630 --> 00:48:59.369
the Xbox controller. I was not a fan of the Duke, uh,
828
00:48:59.389 --> 00:49:01.289
but the controller type S, uh, very nice.
829
00:49:01.349 --> 00:49:01.590
Yeah.
830
00:49:01.610 --> 00:49:04.530
But in any case enough, the holiday gift guide, uh,
831
00:49:04.829 --> 00:49:08.809
because suddenly without any warning on page 24, the preview
832
00:49:08.829 --> 00:49:12.599
section starts, it's called insight, but there's no like, cover
833
00:49:12.909 --> 00:49:15.610
there's no like oh yeah and there's no table of
834
00:49:15.650 --> 00:49:19.739
contents it just starts i'm just talking games but there's
835
00:49:19.780 --> 00:49:23.179
a tiny tab in the bottom right of the two-page
836
00:49:23.239 --> 00:49:26.340
spread that's like insight like yeah oh okay all right
837
00:49:26.420 --> 00:49:28.480
cool yeah that's it that's all you got and i
838
00:49:28.500 --> 00:49:31.239
think the yellow scheme might be like the insight color
839
00:49:31.260 --> 00:49:33.219
scheme but okay okay it does kick off with like
840
00:49:33.500 --> 00:49:36.809
a pretty nice preview of xenosaga episode one yeah this
841
00:49:36.869 --> 00:49:40.199
is good uh which is pretty nice like it's Loaded
842
00:49:40.239 --> 00:49:44.400
with great screenshots. It's a pretty robust look at the game, too. Like,
843
00:49:44.440 --> 00:49:46.280
if you dig into it, like, it's digging into the
844
00:49:46.320 --> 00:49:52.699
meaning of the German subtitle, which comes from, like, Nietzsche's work. So,
845
00:49:52.760 --> 00:49:55.650
you know, it's pretty good. It's pretty well written. What
846
00:49:55.690 --> 00:49:57.389
I'd really like to draw your attention to, though, is
847
00:49:57.409 --> 00:50:00.429
the yellow sidebar on the right hand, bottom right hand
848
00:50:00.449 --> 00:50:06.710
page of page 25. Sacrilege. Quote. Sacrilege. The best game
849
00:50:06.849 --> 00:50:11.960
ever that no one ever heard of. It's Xenogears. Sorry,
850
00:50:12.019 --> 00:50:14.539
they're talking about Xenogears. That nobody ever heard of. The
851
00:50:14.559 --> 00:50:16.679
game that sold so many copies in North America. It
852
00:50:16.699 --> 00:50:19.059
got a Greatest Hits release, which I know because that's
853
00:50:19.079 --> 00:50:21.340
the one I own. That no one ever heard of.
854
00:50:21.340 --> 00:50:24.760
Which I just think is very funny. Come on. And
855
00:50:24.800 --> 00:50:27.610
I do wonder, maybe it didn't get released in PAL regions.
856
00:50:27.650 --> 00:50:30.250
I'm not actually sure. That's what I was going to say.
857
00:50:30.409 --> 00:50:33.530
The only explanation is it didn't get a contemporary release
858
00:50:33.550 --> 00:50:36.510
or didn't get a very wide release in Australia. I
859
00:50:36.550 --> 00:50:40.250
know there was... Because Australia and Japan are much closer
860
00:50:40.289 --> 00:50:44.010
than Australia and the US. I know there's cars. This
861
00:50:44.030 --> 00:50:47.900
is a thing. As a car guy at this time also,
862
00:50:48.699 --> 00:50:53.920
Australians got a lot of higher powered or sport models
863
00:50:54.260 --> 00:50:58.079
of Japanese cars that the US didn't get. Because I
864
00:50:58.079 --> 00:51:00.400
think it was also right hand drive. So they could
865
00:51:00.420 --> 00:51:03.010
just export the ones they're making in Japan for Japan
866
00:51:03.050 --> 00:51:08.289
directly to Australia. Whereas the Americans, they don't want. you know,
867
00:51:08.329 --> 00:51:11.309
the fancy models and it's, it's expensive to make these,
868
00:51:11.650 --> 00:51:14.590
you know, fancy ones. So, uh, yeah. So I, I,
869
00:51:14.829 --> 00:51:17.449
I know there's stuff that got Japanese stuff that got
870
00:51:17.489 --> 00:51:20.949
released in Australia and not elsewhere, but also then Australia
871
00:51:21.010 --> 00:51:23.789
didn't get a lot of the, like, you know, like
872
00:51:23.829 --> 00:51:27.280
the international version, right. You're talking about final fantasy seven international.
873
00:51:27.760 --> 00:51:30.559
It wouldn't surprise me if Australia got the Japanese release,
874
00:51:30.599 --> 00:51:33.400
but not the international release. Right. So like, I'm, I'm
875
00:51:33.420 --> 00:51:35.340
making this up, I'm guessing, but I'm just saying it,
876
00:51:35.480 --> 00:51:38.650
it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't get, nearly as
877
00:51:38.809 --> 00:51:41.050
big of a release or maybe didn't even get a
878
00:51:41.070 --> 00:51:43.849
release of Xena gears. Yeah. And like, even here in
879
00:51:43.889 --> 00:51:47.869
this preview for Xeno saga, uh, in the little subhead area,
880
00:51:47.949 --> 00:51:50.489
it says available, like it has a Japanese date and
881
00:51:50.530 --> 00:51:54.550
then it says spring Oh three us Australia and UK
882
00:51:54.630 --> 00:51:58.340
release unconfirmed. And so like in North America, of course
883
00:51:58.380 --> 00:52:00.360
there were games, Japanese games that we did get, cuz
884
00:52:00.380 --> 00:52:03.659
they were never localized. There were few, you know, rare
885
00:52:03.699 --> 00:52:06.559
examples of like localized games. We didn't get like terror enigma.
886
00:52:07.489 --> 00:52:09.170
But for the most part, we took it for granted,
887
00:52:09.230 --> 00:52:12.090
especially by this time period that like we were going
888
00:52:12.110 --> 00:52:14.050
to just get games. They're going to come out. Maybe
889
00:52:14.070 --> 00:52:16.010
it would take a year. Maybe it would take nine months,
890
00:52:16.250 --> 00:52:19.969
but we would get them. But outside of North America,
891
00:52:20.010 --> 00:52:23.150
we didn't, you know, a lot of like other regions
892
00:52:23.210 --> 00:52:26.929
didn't have that level of certainty, that privilege of knowing
893
00:52:26.949 --> 00:52:29.690
that they were going to get them. Before we move on, though,
894
00:52:29.730 --> 00:52:31.769
I do think it's funny. There's a little screenshot in
895
00:52:32.110 --> 00:52:35.710
the bottom left corner of page 24 that I think
896
00:52:35.769 --> 00:52:39.210
it must be Cosmos, the Android from the game, wearing
897
00:52:39.230 --> 00:52:45.800
this Genova-style mask over most of their face. And the
898
00:52:45.820 --> 00:52:50.960
quote is, VR headsets? How 1990s? Which is pretty funny,
899
00:52:51.239 --> 00:52:56.820
because time is a circle. Get your Steam frame, kids. Yeah, exactly.
900
00:52:57.820 --> 00:53:01.550
Moving on, we have some more previews of games that
901
00:53:01.750 --> 00:53:06.809
I Didn't really care to play? Well, very briefly, you
902
00:53:06.829 --> 00:53:10.429
scroll past Pro Evolution Soccer 2, which I know through
903
00:53:10.570 --> 00:53:17.329
soccer osmosis as this was an absolutely gigantic game outside of...
904
00:53:17.820 --> 00:53:23.380
For international soccer fans at the time, there were times
905
00:53:23.400 --> 00:53:25.300
when it was bigger than FIFA. There were times when
906
00:53:25.320 --> 00:53:27.260
people were like, oh yeah, this is the soccer game, right?
907
00:53:27.340 --> 00:53:31.750
And so PES... Is like, you'll hear if you hear about,
908
00:53:31.769 --> 00:53:36.769
you know, UK, Aussie, like other European, South American. Also,
909
00:53:37.070 --> 00:53:39.800
I think PES was huge in South America, right? So
910
00:53:39.840 --> 00:53:42.500
like this one will get brought up as akin to
911
00:53:42.519 --> 00:53:45.579
a Madden if you're not in the North American market.
912
00:53:45.780 --> 00:53:49.500
And most of us never heard of it. Yeah. Okay. Sure.
913
00:53:49.519 --> 00:53:54.349
I like, yeah. Great. Good for them. Not in the
914
00:53:54.369 --> 00:53:57.429
soccer games. I'm just trying to bring the Aussie flavor.
915
00:53:57.469 --> 00:53:59.659
This was, that would have been a big deal. Soccer heaven. Yeah.
916
00:53:59.719 --> 00:54:03.539
But like, yeah. Okay. Anyway, Aussie rules.
917
00:54:03.679 --> 00:54:08.039
That would get me interested in an Aussie rules video game.
918
00:54:08.139 --> 00:54:13.849
Yeah. Yeah. But page 31, we have an ad for
919
00:54:13.909 --> 00:54:14.969
just Crash Bandicoot.
920
00:54:15.449 --> 00:54:15.829
Oh, man.
921
00:54:15.849 --> 00:54:18.030
Like a bunch of different games. Can you please paint
922
00:54:18.050 --> 00:54:23.920
a word picture here? Ty. This is gross. I think
923
00:54:24.059 --> 00:54:27.739
up in the top right corner, there's a G. There is.
924
00:54:27.800 --> 00:54:30.590
On Australia, like emblem. So I believe this is for
925
00:54:30.630 --> 00:54:33.050
a game that has been rated G by whatever the
926
00:54:33.090 --> 00:54:37.269
ratings board is in Australia at the time. Does G
927
00:54:37.329 --> 00:54:42.780
stand for horny? Because I... So we have Crash Bandicoot
928
00:54:43.619 --> 00:54:51.699
in bed, sitting under the covers with four women, two
929
00:54:51.820 --> 00:54:56.489
in each arm, and his arms are around them. and
930
00:54:56.909 --> 00:54:59.070
all their legs are under the covers, and then it says,
931
00:54:59.269 --> 00:55:03.409
he's got to have them all! Crash Bandicoot, now available
932
00:55:03.530 --> 00:55:11.199
on Nintendo GameCube. And beneath it, it's like, available, available, October, available, November.
933
00:55:11.639 --> 00:55:14.019
And so it's like, oh, it's four different platforms, Game
934
00:55:14.039 --> 00:55:19.190
Boy Advance, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube. I'm not sure
935
00:55:19.769 --> 00:55:23.570
if an attempt has been made to equate... These four
936
00:55:23.630 --> 00:55:27.710
ladies to the game consoles, they are meant to represent.
937
00:55:27.730 --> 00:55:30.809
If we got a Gajinka thing going on here, I
938
00:55:30.869 --> 00:55:33.789
don't think we do. It's just four women and it's
939
00:55:33.989 --> 00:55:38.110
very weird. It's very weird. The blonde woman does not
940
00:55:38.150 --> 00:55:42.289
look comfortable. No, actually she doesn't. But like, I just
941
00:55:42.309 --> 00:55:46.710
like how, like what, like, and this looks like airbrushed,
942
00:55:46.829 --> 00:55:53.400
like winks, like the art is just awful. It does. So, like,
943
00:55:54.519 --> 00:55:57.800
how was this, who came, like, how was this pitched?
944
00:55:58.090 --> 00:56:00.750
I don't know. I don't know. Like, what does this imply?
945
00:56:01.250 --> 00:56:06.349
Nothing good. No. You know, a game being marketed to kids,
946
00:56:06.750 --> 00:56:09.989
rated for everyone. And it's like, oh, yeah. Like, for, like,
947
00:56:10.030 --> 00:56:13.329
a game series that was meant to be, like, Sony's Sonic.
948
00:56:14.110 --> 00:56:17.690
And Sony's, like, Mario. And now, I mean, it's on
949
00:56:17.929 --> 00:56:20.110
all sorts of consoles now. But, like, I don't know,
950
00:56:20.130 --> 00:56:23.480
just weird. And, like, Crash Bandicoot wasn't like this. That's
951
00:56:23.500 --> 00:56:24.719
what I was going to say. I'm like, this is
952
00:56:24.760 --> 00:56:27.679
nothing like the character. It's like, there were characters that were, like,
953
00:56:27.949 --> 00:56:31.030
flirty or horny or whatever. Yeah, it feels like Conker's
954
00:56:31.070 --> 00:56:34.610
bad fur day or whatever. Like, fine, it would still be, like,
955
00:56:35.110 --> 00:56:37.809
tasteless and gross. Communicating what the thing is. This does
956
00:56:37.849 --> 00:56:39.409
not communicate what the thing is.
957
00:56:39.889 --> 00:56:40.130
No.
958
00:56:40.750 --> 00:56:44.000
At all. It's just weird. And his arms are, like,
959
00:56:44.380 --> 00:56:49.369
eight feet long. Like, it's just so, like... Yeah. Moving on.
960
00:56:50.070 --> 00:56:52.610
We have, oh my gosh, I lost my place in
961
00:56:52.659 --> 00:56:56.340
the script because I was so upset. Uh, wild times
962
00:56:56.860 --> 00:56:59.159
is what I wrote in the script. Uh, so page
963
00:56:59.159 --> 00:57:04.019
34 will be the start of the best games readers
964
00:57:04.059 --> 00:57:08.230
pull top 50. You can win a game because this
965
00:57:08.289 --> 00:57:12.369
is just the ballot for the top 50 games. Oh,
966
00:57:12.570 --> 00:57:14.690
so what we have here. So on the first page,
967
00:57:14.829 --> 00:57:16.750
it looks, you know, it says top 50 best games
968
00:57:16.789 --> 00:57:20.119
reader pool. With a big exclamation mark. But on the
969
00:57:20.159 --> 00:57:24.800
right side, it has a big cutout where the editorial
970
00:57:24.820 --> 00:57:28.480
staff is talking about whatever. Like, oh, good games. But
971
00:57:28.500 --> 00:57:35.550
then there's an actual cutout. Like, cut here, perforated thing, scissors, ballot.
972
00:57:35.909 --> 00:57:38.329
So you can fill in up to 20 points. It's
973
00:57:38.349 --> 00:57:41.590
like a ranked ballot, kind of. So your first slot
974
00:57:41.610 --> 00:57:44.369
is worth 20 points. Second slot, 19 points. All the
975
00:57:44.409 --> 00:57:45.969
way down to slot 20, which is worth 1 point.
976
00:57:46.690 --> 00:57:46.929
Huh?
977
00:57:47.250 --> 00:57:52.230
Uh, name, age, address, email, phone, gaming systems owned. You
978
00:57:52.269 --> 00:57:56.690
send that in to hyper magazine, but what they've done
979
00:57:56.750 --> 00:58:01.949
is curate a list of eligible games. So on pages
980
00:58:01.949 --> 00:58:06.860
36 and 37, you have 100 games over 100 games
981
00:58:07.400 --> 00:58:11.079
that quote, the hyper team has selected as worthy contenders.
982
00:58:11.639 --> 00:58:13.800
Your task is to pick just 20 and rank the
983
00:58:13.860 --> 00:58:17.380
order them in order of preference. So, you know, we've
984
00:58:17.400 --> 00:58:21.420
gone over, like, the EGM best, you know, game, best
985
00:58:21.420 --> 00:58:24.039
100 games of all time, best 150 or whatever, right? Yeah. Like,
986
00:58:24.300 --> 00:58:28.920
those issues are epic. They're the best. We've talked about, like,
987
00:58:29.159 --> 00:58:32.010
and we've heard from people like Greg Seward, friend of
988
00:58:32.030 --> 00:58:35.989
the show, about how much, like, effort and infighting and, like,
989
00:58:36.190 --> 00:58:39.369
debate went into those. Yeah, uh-huh. This one is just, like,
990
00:58:39.630 --> 00:58:42.210
they're like, we can't decide. We're just going to let
991
00:58:42.230 --> 00:58:44.300
you guys do it. Yeah. And so they have... over
992
00:58:44.300 --> 00:58:47.760
100 games to choose from it's an alphabetical order uh
993
00:58:47.960 --> 00:58:51.949
but like there are no there's only final fantasy 7
994
00:58:51.949 --> 00:58:55.369
final fantasy 10 out of the final fantasy games pro
995
00:58:55.389 --> 00:58:59.230
evolution soccer is not on here by the way underscore
996
00:58:59.369 --> 00:59:02.369
pro evolution soccer pro okay so just i'm just again
997
00:59:02.590 --> 00:59:06.210
underscoring my point yeah this was huge in sure many
998
00:59:06.250 --> 00:59:09.789
non-north american so is castlevania circle of the moon which
999
00:59:09.809 --> 00:59:12.590
i don't think anybody was arguing was a top 50
1000
00:59:12.590 --> 00:59:16.260
game of all time even at that time right um
1001
00:59:16.510 --> 00:59:21.320
so you had like doom 2 but no doom which
1002
00:59:21.360 --> 00:59:25.139
is weird yeah right yeah you have fallout but not
1003
00:59:25.179 --> 00:59:29.179
fallout 2 like fallout 2 is out at this point Right? Yeah.
1004
00:59:29.219 --> 00:59:32.320
So it's just like, it's very strange. Gran Turismo 3 A-spec,
1005
00:59:32.340 --> 00:59:38.079
but no Gran Turismo 1 or 2. Yeah. Just very,
1006
00:59:38.159 --> 00:59:40.849
very strange. So Legend of Zelda, but the only choices
1007
00:59:40.909 --> 00:59:44.510
are Oracles of Ages and Seasons as one choice. They're
1008
00:59:44.550 --> 00:59:49.989
two completely different games. Or Ocarina of Time slash Majora's Mask.
1009
00:59:50.369 --> 00:59:53.869
Also two completely separate games. Yeah. But no Link to
1010
00:59:53.889 --> 00:59:54.369
the Past.
1011
00:59:55.070 --> 00:59:55.530
Like, it's just.
1012
00:59:56.179 --> 00:59:59.599
it's technically they also have a grand theft auto three,
1013
00:59:59.639 --> 01:00:02.340
but not vice city, which is funny to me, which is,
1014
01:00:02.619 --> 01:00:04.599
which had just come out or was about to come
1015
01:00:04.659 --> 01:00:06.820
out at this time. Right. But they do have quake,
1016
01:00:06.960 --> 01:00:11.159
quake two and quake three arena. Okay. Resident evil, but
1017
01:00:11.199 --> 01:00:14.780
no resident evil too. So it's just like, it's such
1018
01:00:14.860 --> 01:00:19.300
a like random assortment of games like super Mario 64
1019
01:00:19.300 --> 01:00:22.159
sunshine and world, which is cool. They do have Yoshi's Island,
1020
01:00:22.179 --> 01:00:28.190
but like no super Mario brothers three. Now, if you
1021
01:00:28.250 --> 01:00:32.530
go back a little bit in the opening editorial thing,
1022
01:00:32.550 --> 01:00:34.510
they're kind of like, oh, how do we even make
1023
01:00:34.570 --> 01:00:37.750
a top 50? How far back in gaming history should
1024
01:00:37.769 --> 01:00:38.289
you go?
1025
01:00:39.429 --> 01:00:42.190
So they're also equivocating a little bit.
1026
01:00:42.369 --> 01:00:45.650
Even the 16-bit age.
1027
01:00:45.489 --> 01:00:47.909
Of the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive could now
1028
01:00:47.949 --> 01:00:51.650
be considered two clouded and fond, weepy memories to evaluate.
1029
01:00:52.030 --> 01:00:58.230
Objectively final fantasy seven, definitely a potential goat final fantasy six.
1030
01:00:58.769 --> 01:01:03.960
This is, this is nostalgia bait. This is, this is, uh, you're,
1031
01:01:04.000 --> 01:01:09.219
you're clouded by your glory. Yeah. Right. Right. Like pining
1032
01:01:09.300 --> 01:01:16.800
for the, for your lost youth of five years ago. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Uh,
1033
01:01:16.929 --> 01:01:20.789
and like, there are like, they have Yoshi's Island GBA
1034
01:01:20.889 --> 01:01:24.539
on here. Which is like an objectively inferior version of
1035
01:01:24.579 --> 01:01:29.079
Yoshi's Island from the Super Nintendo. Yeah, you mentioned Super
1036
01:01:29.119 --> 01:01:33.750
Mario World for Game Boy Advance. Like, okay. Right? So
1037
01:01:33.829 --> 01:01:36.570
it's just very strange. They do have Vagrant Story on here,
1038
01:01:36.590 --> 01:01:41.110
which I'm quite happy about. Wave Race 64. So there's
1039
01:01:41.130 --> 01:01:43.329
some good games on here, but it's very strange to
1040
01:01:43.369 --> 01:01:47.369
have a curated list that people are then supposed to
1041
01:01:47.409 --> 01:01:56.070
pick from. Wipeout 2097 is wild. That is diabolical work. Yeah.
1042
01:01:56.150 --> 01:01:59.889
It's good stuff. Time Submitters 2, which they just reviewed
1043
01:01:59.949 --> 01:02:03.539
and most readers probably haven't played it yet. Oh, yeah,
1044
01:02:03.579 --> 01:02:09.980
that's true. Which is, yeah, it's just very weird. Weird idea,
1045
01:02:10.099 --> 01:02:16.239
weird execution, weird thing to, like, market the magazine with.
1046
01:02:17.019 --> 01:02:20.500
But I guess, like, so here's Hyper Magazine's top 100
1047
01:02:20.500 --> 01:02:23.900
games of all time. And now you guys get to choose,
1048
01:02:24.679 --> 01:02:27.239
but like, this is not an inspiring list of.
1049
01:02:28.920 --> 01:02:29.119
Games.
1050
01:02:29.280 --> 01:02:31.719
It's weird because it's like, okay, it's worth doing a
1051
01:02:31.760 --> 01:02:35.269
reader poll. Yeah. But then like, you're still going to
1052
01:02:35.309 --> 01:02:38.269
have to do all the work of collating these answers. Yeah.
1053
01:02:38.409 --> 01:02:40.670
And so like, you might as well let people put whatever,
1054
01:02:40.769 --> 01:02:42.969
like it doesn't. Yeah. I don't think it saves you
1055
01:02:43.010 --> 01:02:45.730
a ton of time to prescreen the list. And then
1056
01:02:45.769 --> 01:02:48.530
I also don't understand what prescreening the list to like,
1057
01:02:50.710 --> 01:02:54.750
a hundred of our favorites from the last few years
1058
01:02:55.869 --> 01:02:59.039
really gets us in terms of all time. Like I,
1059
01:02:59.690 --> 01:03:01.110
and again, this is just part of, you know, as
1060
01:03:01.139 --> 01:03:05.920
we've talked about before, the like unbelievable focus on next
1061
01:03:06.000 --> 01:03:08.599
that like, yes, new technology is coming out all the time.
1062
01:03:09.179 --> 01:03:13.960
You know, hardware and software developments are constantly leapfrogging themselves
1063
01:03:14.000 --> 01:03:16.860
in each other. And, and it seems like whatever's next
1064
01:03:16.960 --> 01:03:20.619
is going to be huge. and the internet revolution is
1065
01:03:20.659 --> 01:03:23.360
revolutionizing everything about the way we do everything. And like,
1066
01:03:23.400 --> 01:03:26.460
what's next is so exciting, but I've, I don't think
1067
01:03:26.480 --> 01:03:29.489
I've ever seen a list. That's like, this is the
1068
01:03:29.530 --> 01:03:34.110
best games of all time. And we are just going
1069
01:03:34.150 --> 01:03:37.190
to enshrine recency bias. We are just going to say,
1070
01:03:37.590 --> 01:03:40.949
there's no way that anything from the super Nintendo could
1071
01:03:40.989 --> 01:03:43.969
be as good a game as anything that's on the PlayStation.
1072
01:03:43.989 --> 01:03:49.489
Like what? And like, Yeah, it's just, you know, at
1073
01:03:49.510 --> 01:03:53.670
this point, like, Baldur's Gate came out in 1998, right? Yeah. Like,
1074
01:03:54.070 --> 01:03:58.530
same year, probably before stuff like, I guess they just
1075
01:03:58.550 --> 01:04:02.469
don't like Final Fantasy VIII, but, like, it's just, yeah.
1076
01:04:02.570 --> 01:04:04.489
And I can see them going. It feels, like, really arbitrary.
1077
01:04:04.570 --> 01:04:07.409
And then, like, trying to, like, fit certain games in,
1078
01:04:07.489 --> 01:04:10.550
like Tetris DX on the Game Boy Color. Like, is
1079
01:04:10.570 --> 01:04:14.739
that a better game than the original Tetris on Game Boy? No. No. No,
1080
01:04:14.840 --> 01:04:16.769
like Super Mario World, like you said, on GBA is
1081
01:04:16.809 --> 01:04:19.789
not a better game than Super Mario World on the
1082
01:04:19.809 --> 01:04:23.489
Super Nintendo. So they're just trying to shoehorn in games
1083
01:04:23.530 --> 01:04:25.909
that they know should be on the list, but aren't
1084
01:04:25.929 --> 01:04:28.469
because of their own arbitrary. Because they haven't been re-released
1085
01:04:28.530 --> 01:04:30.929
or whatever. So like, would Final Fantasy VI be allowed
1086
01:04:30.949 --> 01:04:33.030
to be on here if it had been released on
1087
01:04:33.050 --> 01:04:36.980
the GBA at that point? Right, yeah. And they have
1088
01:04:37.000 --> 01:04:41.010
like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. for the ps1 dreamcast
1089
01:04:41.030 --> 01:04:43.550
pc and gba like the gba version and the ps1
1090
01:04:43.570 --> 01:04:47.090
version are completely different yes so like just feels like
1091
01:04:47.210 --> 01:04:51.210
very arbitrary and like there are no like they try
1092
01:04:51.250 --> 01:04:54.530
to set themselves limits and like be like oh we're
1093
01:04:54.570 --> 01:05:00.030
above rose-tinted glasses like we can't objectively analyze these games
1094
01:05:00.090 --> 01:05:04.329
anymore uh but then they like just slap majora's mask
1095
01:05:04.530 --> 01:05:07.599
and Ocarina of Time together. As the same game. As
1096
01:05:07.900 --> 01:05:11.480
one game. I don't know. It's very strange. Yeah. But
1097
01:05:11.500 --> 01:05:14.500
I do think we need to carry on at this point.
1098
01:05:16.119 --> 01:05:18.719
I do have to say, though, Falcon 4.0 made the
1099
01:05:18.780 --> 01:05:22.230
list here. Oh, wow. Which definitely must be one of
1100
01:05:22.289 --> 01:05:26.590
the best games of all time. Is that the F-16
1101
01:05:26.650 --> 01:05:36.739
flight simulator? I have no idea. I think... Okay. I'm checking. Okay. Yes. Yes.
1102
01:05:37.099 --> 01:05:43.599
That is a F-16 specifically. The Fighting Falcon. Okay. My
1103
01:05:43.639 --> 01:05:47.650
favorite fighter jet of all time. Certainly. Oh, okay. Ultimate
1104
01:05:47.670 --> 01:05:51.530
development in the Falcon series from Spectrum Holobite that began
1105
01:05:51.550 --> 01:05:56.250
in 1984. Holobite had acquired Microprose. Started using that name
1106
01:05:56.269 --> 01:06:00.820
for all of its titles. In 2000... Okay, after Microprose
1107
01:06:00.860 --> 01:06:04.659
was purchased by Hasbro... Official development ended in 2000. A
1108
01:06:04.820 --> 01:06:07.039
source code leak allowed continued development of the game by
1109
01:06:07.079 --> 01:06:09.420
members of the gaming community. Many of these additions were
1110
01:06:09.440 --> 01:06:12.019
collected by League Pursuit, which arranged an official license of
1111
01:06:12.059 --> 01:06:15.400
the original code base for owner Atari. These were published
1112
01:06:15.460 --> 01:06:17.280
as Falcon 4.0 Allied Force in 2005. That is bananas. What?
1113
01:06:23.289 --> 01:06:27.769
Holy cow. But anyway, yes, Falcon was a series, a
1114
01:06:27.889 --> 01:06:31.860
long running series of flight simulators for just the F-16
1115
01:06:31.880 --> 01:06:38.000
fighting Falcon fighter jet. Okay, cool. Not everybody went to
1116
01:06:38.159 --> 01:06:39.179
aviation camp.
1117
01:06:39.199 --> 01:06:41.780
My favorite fighter jet was the Avro Arrow, the greatest
1118
01:06:41.820 --> 01:06:42.980
fighter jet of all time.
1119
01:06:43.099 --> 01:06:48.119
Oh, yes. Vowed it down. Google it, kids.
1120
01:06:49.039 --> 01:06:53.579
In Forgotten Worlds, the feature I mentioned earlier, it's mentioned
1121
01:06:53.599 --> 01:06:57.670
that Hyper's inability to adapt to the internet played a
1122
01:06:57.829 --> 01:06:59.670
big role in its slow demise.
1123
01:07:00.530 --> 01:07:07.739
Page 40 here has a section called Lynx. Yeah! Lynx.
1124
01:07:08.469 --> 01:07:11.190
to the internet. Yes. I love this shit. The big
1125
01:07:11.210 --> 01:07:15.710
primary one though is ZippoTricks.com. Yeah. This would have been
1126
01:07:15.730 --> 01:07:20.010
my jam in 2002. I never smoked, but I had
1127
01:07:20.050 --> 01:07:21.150
a Zippo and I loved it.
1128
01:07:21.219 --> 01:07:25.039
And being able to do tricks with a Zippo was like, Legit.
1129
01:07:25.119 --> 01:07:27.659
Give me this TikTok channel. Give me this TikTok channel now.
1130
01:07:27.940 --> 01:07:30.059
I'm all over ZippoTricks.com.
1131
01:07:30.099 --> 01:07:34.659
This rocks. However, do not try to go to ZippoTricks.com. Oh.
1132
01:07:35.280 --> 01:07:35.409
Oh.
1133
01:07:35.510 --> 01:07:42.510
Because it now redirects to, quote, macOS-new.com, which seemed dodgy
1134
01:07:42.570 --> 01:07:45.610
as hell, so I did not click the verification check button.
1135
01:07:45.630 --> 01:07:46.849
So, worry.
1136
01:07:46.869 --> 01:07:49.829
It could be worse. Do not go to ZippoTricks.com. Could
1137
01:07:49.869 --> 01:07:53.210
be worse. But ZippoTricks, like, this was when the internet
1138
01:07:53.230 --> 01:07:57.000
was good. Yeah. You know, when you had a website
1139
01:07:57.019 --> 01:07:58.860
that was just about like how to do cool tricks
1140
01:07:58.920 --> 01:08:05.170
on your Zippo. Lighter. Outstanding. Good stuff. But just like that,
1141
01:08:05.190 --> 01:08:07.469
we're at the review section.
1142
01:08:08.630 --> 01:08:08.949
All right.
1143
01:08:08.969 --> 01:08:11.550
Which kicks off on page 42 of this 102 page
1144
01:08:13.090 --> 01:08:16.399
long issue. It also means it's time for a break.
1145
01:08:16.739 --> 01:08:19.239
I was going to say, if you didn't, it is time.
1146
01:08:19.710 --> 01:08:22.439
To go to break. So, we are going to take
1147
01:08:22.479 --> 01:08:24.720
a break. We are going to pay some bills. When
1148
01:08:24.779 --> 01:08:31.899
we come back, we will dig into Hyper's review of Morrowind.
1149
01:08:32.420 --> 01:08:35.300
I'm so excited for this. Just stay tuned through the break.
1150
01:08:35.359 --> 01:08:37.039
We will come back. We will do the thing we
1151
01:08:37.079 --> 01:08:59.909
do right here on Fun Factor. We're having five stars.
1152
01:08:59.939 --> 01:09:01.659
out of five stars worth of fun today. And folks,
1153
01:09:01.699 --> 01:09:03.810
if you are to leave a rating and review on
1154
01:09:03.909 --> 01:09:06.869
Apple Podcasts, it has been a minute since we've gotten
1155
01:09:06.970 --> 01:09:10.109
a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Please go ahead.
1156
01:09:10.149 --> 01:09:13.069
Leave that rating. Leave that review. We'll read the best, funniest,
1157
01:09:13.109 --> 01:09:15.729
kindest and most entertaining ones on the air. Also, if
1158
01:09:15.750 --> 01:09:18.210
you want to interact with us on YouTube, leave comments
1159
01:09:18.369 --> 01:09:22.020
under the posts. We promise we interact with those as well.
1160
01:09:22.350 --> 01:09:23.760
We know a lot more of you have been watching
1161
01:09:23.880 --> 01:09:26.399
on YouTube lately. That is super cool for us because
1162
01:09:26.420 --> 01:09:29.939
you're also still listening in the podcast app. So number
1163
01:09:29.979 --> 01:09:32.699
go up. That's great because it helps us do what
1164
01:09:32.800 --> 01:09:36.850
we like to do. Yeah. Now it's time to do
1165
01:09:36.949 --> 01:09:40.310
what we do and review the reviews. What is Hyper?
1166
01:09:40.350 --> 01:09:43.329
This magazine we are unfamiliar with up until now. How
1167
01:09:43.369 --> 01:09:46.489
do they review their games? Okay, so Hyper's review section
1168
01:09:46.590 --> 01:09:48.579
kicks off with a big intro page, kind of like
1169
01:09:48.600 --> 01:09:51.579
what I was expecting the preview section would have. Sure, sure, sure.
1170
01:09:52.739 --> 01:09:55.880
Highlighting their game of the month, which is TimeSplitters 2.
1171
01:09:55.880 --> 01:10:00.550
Remember that. Okay. There's another index of the reviewed games
1172
01:10:00.789 --> 01:10:04.229
in this section. And then there's a game theory sidebar.
1173
01:10:04.270 --> 01:10:07.029
So it's sort of like an editorial for the review section.
1174
01:10:07.670 --> 01:10:11.350
This one's written by Daniel Staines. It's kind of interesting.
1175
01:10:11.729 --> 01:10:16.859
So Staines weighs in on sort of as part of
1176
01:10:16.899 --> 01:10:21.539
an ongoing conversation through these game theory editorials, he weighs
1177
01:10:21.619 --> 01:10:25.310
in on the, like, design over tech in game reviews
1178
01:10:25.600 --> 01:10:30.949
and how to, like, evaluate games and weigh those two elements.
1179
01:10:31.189 --> 01:10:35.630
It's kind of cool that they have this ongoing conversation and, like,
1180
01:10:35.949 --> 01:10:42.090
look at the craft of criticism. I haven't seen this
1181
01:10:42.130 --> 01:10:44.869
in any other magazine, and it really stood out to
1182
01:10:44.909 --> 01:10:48.760
me here. Staines also happens to be the person reviewing
1183
01:10:49.800 --> 01:10:54.640
Morrowind in this issue. He still writes, mostly from an
1184
01:10:54.699 --> 01:11:01.279
academic perspective, most recently publishing, quote, ruptures of design, trophies,
1185
01:11:01.560 --> 01:11:05.930
live service games, and anti-nuclear meta commentary in Metal Gear
1186
01:11:05.970 --> 01:11:12.090
Solid 5 in the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds.
1187
01:11:12.289 --> 01:11:15.449
In 2009, he actually published a large feature in Hyper called, quote,
1188
01:11:15.850 --> 01:11:18.489
What is this thing we call AI that looks at
1189
01:11:18.510 --> 01:11:22.989
the use of algorithms, heuristics, et cetera, in gaming? Worth
1190
01:11:23.020 --> 01:11:26.020
a read. We'll link to the PDF archive that he
1191
01:11:26.079 --> 01:11:30.180
has on his website in our show notes. But it also,
1192
01:11:30.220 --> 01:11:33.119
I think, is worth reading from the perspective of how
1193
01:11:33.420 --> 01:11:36.899
the term AI has been sort of co-opted by LLMs
1194
01:11:37.279 --> 01:11:46.489
trying to sell us whatever happiness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I
1195
01:11:46.550 --> 01:11:50.510
remember being unhappy with the term AI to be like, yeah,
1196
01:11:50.550 --> 01:11:52.670
the enemy AI in this is blah, blah, blah. And
1197
01:11:52.710 --> 01:11:55.829
it's kind of like, okay, I don't, I didn't super
1198
01:11:55.890 --> 01:11:57.289
love it because it's like, it's not the thing, but
1199
01:11:57.310 --> 01:11:58.689
I think everybody using the term understood. It wasn't really
1200
01:11:58.710 --> 01:12:01.609
trying to anthropomorphize enemy behavior. This is not actual artificial intelligence.
1201
01:12:01.640 --> 01:12:06.500
The movement of enemies in Halo is not. LLM chatbots.
1202
01:12:06.720 --> 01:12:06.979
No.
1203
01:12:07.460 --> 01:12:14.600
Now. Right. Yeah. No, and this, this game theory, this
1204
01:12:14.640 --> 01:12:17.960
column here, just in this issue, uh, is, is fascinating.
1205
01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:20.479
You can tell it's, he's got a really thoughtful approach
1206
01:12:20.539 --> 01:12:25.699
to game design and how it interfaces with, uh, critical theory. Yeah.
1207
01:12:26.460 --> 01:12:28.890
It'll be interesting then to see how he actually writes
1208
01:12:29.550 --> 01:12:35.449
game criticism. Uh, we have another sidebar here where the
1209
01:12:35.489 --> 01:12:38.470
hyper crew, that's what they call themselves, lists their top five.
1210
01:12:38.930 --> 01:12:43.689
And so this has, uh, Elliot Fish, Cam, Shay, Malcolm Campbell,
1211
01:12:44.229 --> 01:12:46.729
listing off their top five. And then Jackson, who I
1212
01:12:46.770 --> 01:12:49.739
guess is one of the staff writers, they just list
1213
01:12:49.840 --> 01:12:52.659
off five games they like and give a little quote
1214
01:12:53.159 --> 01:12:56.300
for the top game on their list. Jackson's number one,
1215
01:12:56.380 --> 01:13:02.880
Pro Evolution Soccer 2, and his little quote, in parentheses, speechless. Also,
1216
01:13:02.979 --> 01:13:08.840
Elliot's number one is Championship Manager 0102, another very different
1217
01:13:09.140 --> 01:13:11.310
soccer game. And his quote is, what the hell has
1218
01:13:11.350 --> 01:13:12.430
this game done to me? Help!
1219
01:13:13.409 --> 01:13:13.750
Help!
1220
01:13:14.470 --> 01:13:17.729
Which, for those who don't know, championship manager, football manager,
1221
01:13:18.149 --> 01:13:21.119
is kind of like the franchise mode of Madden. But
1222
01:13:21.140 --> 01:13:24.920
if that was the whole game. But the whole game. Yeah.
1223
01:13:26.000 --> 01:13:29.060
Then at the bottom of the second page there, page 43,
1224
01:13:29.060 --> 01:13:32.619
we have a small breakdown of their scoring system. Hyper
1225
01:13:32.699 --> 01:13:38.810
uses a 100-point scale. And describes it thusly. So 90
1226
01:13:38.810 --> 01:13:42.529
plus is, quote, excellent and worthy of a big rubber stamp.
1227
01:13:42.890 --> 01:13:46.369
Buy it. I like the rubber stamp. That's good. And then, yes,
1228
01:13:46.409 --> 01:13:47.989
and then there is like a rubber stamp. Can you
1229
01:13:48.029 --> 01:13:51.380
zoom in on that? The actual rubber stamp? I don't
1230
01:13:51.409 --> 01:13:53.119
know how to zoom in. You don't have to do
1231
01:13:53.140 --> 01:13:55.260
it live, but, you know, when you edit this. Yeah,
1232
01:13:55.279 --> 01:13:57.119
but I'll zoom in and we'll get a good look
1233
01:13:57.140 --> 01:14:00.039
at that in the video version on YouTube. Cool, cool, cool. Yes. Subscribe,
1234
01:14:00.180 --> 01:14:03.539
hit the bell. Yes, yes, yes. Like, comment. Um, 80
1235
01:14:03.539 --> 01:14:06.550
to 89 is quote, very good. This is a quality game,
1236
01:14:06.590 --> 01:14:11.609
but not perfect. 70 to 79 is good. Virgin on average.
1237
01:14:11.810 --> 01:14:17.850
Try before you buy. Um, 60 to 69. Nice is average.
1238
01:14:18.069 --> 01:14:24.619
Virgin on bad. This game is badly flawed. Uh, 50
1239
01:14:24.619 --> 01:14:28.220
to 59 is bad game design and possibly not even
1240
01:14:28.260 --> 01:14:32.149
worth renting. Zero to 49 is Is quote, these games
1241
01:14:32.189 --> 01:14:35.670
simply suck a total waste of money. So it's a
1242
01:14:35.710 --> 01:14:38.050
hundred point scale, but really broken down this way. You
1243
01:14:38.069 --> 01:14:40.369
have a six point scale. Yeah.
1244
01:14:40.369 --> 01:14:45.069
90 plus 80 to 89, 70 to 79, 60 to 69.
1245
01:14:45.069 --> 01:14:48.029
Nice. 50 to 59 and zero to 49. I was
1246
01:14:48.050 --> 01:14:50.090
going to say, I was totally on board with them
1247
01:14:50.130 --> 01:14:54.010
until we got to 60, 69 average verging on bad.
1248
01:14:54.470 --> 01:14:57.649
This game is badly flawed. Okay. So that makes it
1249
01:14:57.689 --> 01:15:01.779
sound like it's worse than average. And then 50 through
1250
01:15:01.779 --> 01:15:07.350
59 is bad game design and possibly not even worth renting. So, like,
1251
01:15:08.729 --> 01:15:12.170
probably worth $ 3. Anything below a 70 is basically bad. Yeah.
1252
01:15:12.369 --> 01:15:17.119
Anything worth, maybe worth, a $ 3 rental gets you the
1253
01:15:17.159 --> 01:15:22.180
first 60 points on the scale. It's like, you know. Yeah. So, like,
1254
01:15:22.640 --> 01:15:26.199
you could really argue that it's a four-point scale, right? Yeah. 90,
1255
01:15:26.199 --> 01:15:31.270
80 to 89. Yeah. 70 to 79. And then everything
1256
01:15:31.310 --> 01:15:35.189
below that is like, don't bother. It's a hundred point scale.
1257
01:15:35.210 --> 01:15:37.710
They use the whole hundred, like the whole scale, but
1258
01:15:37.729 --> 01:15:42.430
there's no differentiation, like at a granular level. So like, yeah,
1259
01:15:42.590 --> 01:15:45.149
half of it just means the same thing. I will say,
1260
01:15:45.229 --> 01:15:48.010
and we critique this as an approach. The one thing
1261
01:15:48.050 --> 01:15:50.689
I will say is top to bottom, they are consistent
1262
01:15:50.810 --> 01:15:54.020
about what this means, which is, is it worth your money? Right.
1263
01:15:54.090 --> 01:15:56.229
Like whether we think that's a good thing or not,
1264
01:15:56.489 --> 01:15:58.869
it's like if we give this a 90 plus, we
1265
01:15:58.909 --> 01:16:01.850
promise go spend your money. It's worth it. And that's
1266
01:16:01.890 --> 01:16:04.689
like all the way down to this might not even
1267
01:16:04.729 --> 01:16:08.189
be worth a rental. And this is definitely not even
1268
01:16:08.229 --> 01:16:10.850
worth a rental. Do not even bother. Don't spend a
1269
01:16:10.869 --> 01:16:13.529
cent on this. So like, again, good or bad that
1270
01:16:13.550 --> 01:16:16.130
that's the scale. But at least I think in that sense,
1271
01:16:16.210 --> 01:16:21.529
it's consistent. But yeah, we shall see. We'll see. The
1272
01:16:21.569 --> 01:16:25.460
section leads off with a. huge review for the game
1273
01:16:25.500 --> 01:16:29.689
of the month time splitters two uh it's two pages
1274
01:16:30.100 --> 01:16:33.569
lots of screenshots tons of text like it's it's a
1275
01:16:33.590 --> 01:16:36.229
good looking review it stands up against like the other
1276
01:16:36.270 --> 01:16:38.729
magazines of the time it's nicely designed it looks like
1277
01:16:38.750 --> 01:16:40.409
it can come out of if you told me this
1278
01:16:40.449 --> 01:16:45.149
was like egm at the time i absolutely absolutely looks
1279
01:16:45.170 --> 01:16:49.670
really good yeah um there's a bit more added info
1280
01:16:50.989 --> 01:16:54.390
like at the top, like publisher rating, all of that
1281
01:16:54.430 --> 01:16:59.069
kind of stuff. This is actually, I said two, this
1282
01:16:59.130 --> 01:17:02.149
is actually a four page review. Look at that. Oh, wow. Also,
1283
01:17:03.069 --> 01:17:07.510
we got, this is a gigantic byline. There is no
1284
01:17:07.689 --> 01:17:12.060
question who wrote this review. Jackson, both the Snape does
1285
01:17:12.109 --> 01:17:14.199
the splits. If you zip out of the next one,
1286
01:17:14.239 --> 01:17:16.859
Cam Shay gives never soft, soft and a minus on there,
1287
01:17:16.880 --> 01:17:21.260
but like, they're like, this is who wrote the review. That's, Huh?
1288
01:17:21.399 --> 01:17:23.439
That's bigger than any text besides the text of the
1289
01:17:23.479 --> 01:17:27.159
game itself. That's kind of cool to me. I don't know. Yeah. Interesting.
1290
01:17:29.619 --> 01:17:31.520
So at the end of the review, we have another
1291
01:17:31.579 --> 01:17:35.680
little like cutout sidebar with the pluses and minuses. So
1292
01:17:35.720 --> 01:17:37.880
like a sentence or two for the plus and minus.
1293
01:17:38.380 --> 01:17:41.859
Then we have the score broken down into three categories
1294
01:17:41.939 --> 01:17:47.060
and an overall score. So you have visuals, TimeSplitters got
1295
01:17:47.180 --> 01:17:50.779
a 91. Sound, it got an 80. And gameplay, it
1296
01:17:50.800 --> 01:17:54.920
also got a 91 and overall it got a 91. However,
1297
01:17:54.939 --> 01:17:59.050
that does not average out into 91. Nope. So the
1298
01:17:59.100 --> 01:18:01.470
overall score is not an average. And this is consistent
1299
01:18:01.489 --> 01:18:05.109
across like the reviews throughout the, the issue, uh, that
1300
01:18:05.170 --> 01:18:08.449
average is out to about 87.3. So 87. So I,
1301
01:18:10.750 --> 01:18:15.270
they were reviewing it granularly on a hundred point scale
1302
01:18:15.310 --> 01:18:17.529
in three categories, but then also just giving it a blanket,
1303
01:18:17.569 --> 01:18:22.020
like 91. So like granularity on a review scale makes
1304
01:18:22.090 --> 01:18:25.550
more sense if you're trying to average out scores. Uh,
1305
01:18:25.710 --> 01:18:27.810
it does not make sense if you are arbitrarily like
1306
01:18:27.829 --> 01:18:32.109
what's the difference between a 90 and 91 and a 92. Yeah. Yeah.
1307
01:18:32.430 --> 01:18:36.390
They're like, how do you, how do you quantify that? Um,
1308
01:18:37.010 --> 01:18:42.470
very strange. Um, I don't know. I don't know about it, but, um,
1309
01:18:43.189 --> 01:18:47.130
Tony Hawk pro skater 4 comes next also gets four
1310
01:18:47.170 --> 01:18:50.789
pages yeah overall score of 91 but with sub scores
1311
01:18:50.829 --> 01:18:55.399
of 92 84 87 yeah so that would bump it
1312
01:18:55.600 --> 01:18:58.739
that would bump it out of out of the 90s
1313
01:18:59.460 --> 01:19:03.649
the actual average yeah yeah Down to very good. This
1314
01:19:03.710 --> 01:19:08.850
is funny because I am now mentally both creating an
1315
01:19:08.970 --> 01:19:13.199
argument and then also a rebuttal for this as an
1316
01:19:13.239 --> 01:19:16.659
approach where you're going like, okay, well, hey, for Tony
1317
01:19:16.720 --> 01:19:20.020
Hawk at this point, if I'm buying Tony Hawk's Pro
1318
01:19:20.039 --> 01:19:22.779
Skater 4, what I want is the gameplay to take
1319
01:19:22.800 --> 01:19:27.859
a step forward. And multiple people in multiple little editorial asides,
1320
01:19:27.920 --> 01:19:29.880
just flipping through this, I've seen them mention, you can
1321
01:19:29.899 --> 01:19:33.229
do flatland tricks now. you can do tricks that aren't specifically,
1322
01:19:34.090 --> 01:19:37.649
excuse me. You can do tricks that aren't specifically off
1323
01:19:37.909 --> 01:19:40.760
an object. And that's a big step forward for this.
1324
01:19:40.779 --> 01:19:42.899
Cause of course skaters can do that for it to
1325
01:19:42.920 --> 01:19:45.000
get to the fourth one in the series. And like,
1326
01:19:45.340 --> 01:19:48.500
nobody can just do an Ollie. Yeah. Like that's well,
1327
01:19:48.539 --> 01:19:50.579
so that's a big step forward. Yeah. Like Rodney Mullen
1328
01:19:50.600 --> 01:19:53.779
was like the flatland King and he was in the
1329
01:19:53.859 --> 01:19:56.619
first or the second or both. Yeah. And like the
1330
01:19:56.659 --> 01:19:59.550
fact that he was like, you know, essentially like having
1331
01:19:59.569 --> 01:20:02.920
to do like rails and, Half pipes and stuff like
1332
01:20:02.939 --> 01:20:05.180
that is pretty funny. Uh, and it's wild that it
1333
01:20:05.199 --> 01:20:07.699
took until the fourth game. Yeah. So like, okay, so
1334
01:20:07.760 --> 01:20:11.159
that's a 92 overall 91, but then visuals 87 sound
1335
01:20:11.159 --> 01:20:15.199
84 in a franchise where like it, it sound was
1336
01:20:15.220 --> 01:20:17.770
like a big deal. It was kind of, okay. So
1337
01:20:17.779 --> 01:20:19.899
like I said, I can construct this argument where it's
1338
01:20:19.970 --> 01:20:21.449
dumb to do it this way. And then I can
1339
01:20:21.550 --> 01:20:24.829
also construct a argument. That's like, it's smart to do
1340
01:20:24.869 --> 01:20:26.770
it this way, because if you're interested in Tony Hawk
1341
01:20:26.829 --> 01:20:29.590
pro skater four, and this soundtrack isn't as iconic as
1342
01:20:29.649 --> 01:20:32.180
the first one, fine. but this is going to let
1343
01:20:32.199 --> 01:20:34.000
me do the skateboarding that I've been wanting to do
1344
01:20:34.039 --> 01:20:36.720
this whole time. I, I, yeah, I can see that,
1345
01:20:36.859 --> 01:20:39.760
I guess, but it still makes you go, okay, what,
1346
01:20:40.159 --> 01:20:43.590
what is the relationship between this? And we could, we could,
1347
01:20:44.010 --> 01:20:50.229
I could get more clarity on that. I would like that. Yeah. Uh, fair. Smackdown.
1348
01:20:50.430 --> 01:20:53.810
Shut your mouth. Another four page review. Sends it with
1349
01:20:54.029 --> 01:20:58.439
an 89. Uh, despite probably actually that, no, that would
1350
01:20:58.500 --> 01:21:04.090
actually be an average of 89. Best wrestling game ever. Okay.
1351
01:21:04.109 --> 01:21:06.770
Which is still not good enough to get into their
1352
01:21:06.899 --> 01:21:11.359
excellent tier, though. So the best wrestling that's ever been
1353
01:21:11.699 --> 01:21:14.579
is still like their A tier, not their S tier
1354
01:21:15.199 --> 01:21:20.020
game experience. Here's one for you. Kingdom Hearts, overall 70,
1355
01:21:20.020 --> 01:21:25.439
but it got a visuals 87, sound 82, gameplay 65. Whoa!
1356
01:21:25.890 --> 01:21:29.970
They're like, the math, I don't know. Wow! The math
1357
01:21:30.029 --> 01:21:36.220
is not mathing. Okay. Their one-line, like, yeah, two-line wrap-up is, quote,
1358
01:21:36.260 --> 01:21:41.100
Square really dropped the ball with this one. Disappointing. Horrid
1359
01:21:41.159 --> 01:21:48.810
looping music, mash-fest combat, dull levels. Wow. Yeah. Okay. All right.
1360
01:21:49.810 --> 01:21:54.029
Burnout 2 got a 92. Okay. Remember how I said,
1361
01:21:54.689 --> 01:21:58.260
remember TimeSplitters? Yes. Was their game of the month with
1362
01:21:58.340 --> 01:22:03.810
a 91? Uh-huh. yeah it's got a 92 none of
1363
01:22:03.859 --> 01:22:06.670
its subcategories got.
1364
01:22:05.930 --> 01:22:12.409
92 so wow got a 91 85 91 but overall
1365
01:22:12.409 --> 01:22:16.050
92 overall and still wasn't game of the month even
1366
01:22:16.069 --> 01:22:18.149
though it had the highest score of this issue all
1367
01:22:18.170 --> 01:22:21.609
right so consistency of these this ranking system is is
1368
01:22:22.750 --> 01:22:25.340
there's there is not there's no there's nothing happening here
1369
01:22:25.380 --> 01:22:30.520
it is as arbitrary as it gets um 75 75
1370
01:22:30.520 --> 01:22:35.170
90 overall summoner 2 gets an 85 i mean they're
1371
01:22:35.189 --> 01:22:38.149
not and like notably too like they're not using the
1372
01:22:38.210 --> 01:22:42.350
full scale like nothing here gets below 70s like yeah
1373
01:22:42.380 --> 01:22:44.939
so they know that like they've set themselves up with
1374
01:22:45.000 --> 01:22:48.939
a scale where anything below 70 is basically like garbo.
1375
01:22:49.060 --> 01:22:52.640
Yeah so they can't use it Yeah. And I, I,
1376
01:22:52.899 --> 01:22:57.300
it feels like there's just a strong lean towards gameplay, right? Yeah.
1377
01:22:57.420 --> 01:23:00.579
Like if it's whatever, whatever gameplay, that final score is
1378
01:23:00.600 --> 01:23:02.859
going to be way closer to gameplay, which, okay. But
1379
01:23:02.880 --> 01:23:05.170
then it's, but then it's still not, it's still not
1380
01:23:05.229 --> 01:23:08.890
consistent in that way. Right. So it's like, you're like
1381
01:23:09.810 --> 01:23:13.189
visually you're weighing each of them, them the same. I'd
1382
01:23:13.229 --> 01:23:15.850
also like, you know, like summoner two on the PlayStation
1383
01:23:15.890 --> 01:23:21.460
two got this huge double page write-up. But let's push
1384
01:23:21.520 --> 01:23:23.960
through a few of these, because we could keep talking
1385
01:23:23.979 --> 01:23:27.920
about this. But let's get to our review of this issue,
1386
01:23:28.039 --> 01:23:33.319
which is... Rollercoaster Tycoon 2! No, it's not. No, it's not.
1387
01:23:34.960 --> 01:23:39.100
Elder Scrolls 3. So Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind. Oh, wait.
1388
01:23:39.159 --> 01:23:42.260
One of the most beloved games of all time. Whoa.
1389
01:23:43.260 --> 01:23:48.020
Released on the Xbox, which introduced... The Elder Scrolls series
1390
01:23:48.039 --> 01:23:51.239
has so many people and blew that series up into
1391
01:23:51.279 --> 01:23:53.270
what it is now. Aiden. A series that doesn't get
1392
01:23:53.430 --> 01:23:59.090
a new game title in 15 years. Aiden. Yeah. What's
1393
01:23:59.149 --> 01:24:02.869
the name of the game next to Elder Scrolls III?
1394
01:24:02.909 --> 01:24:06.090
We'll get there. Okay. All right. We'll get there. I'm
1395
01:24:06.189 --> 01:24:12.779
just seeing it. Yes. So, after a bunch of four-page
1396
01:24:13.319 --> 01:24:17.029
feature reviews... Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind, one of the most
1397
01:24:17.069 --> 01:24:23.880
beloved games of all time. And biggest. Subjugated to a one-third, like,
1398
01:24:23.979 --> 01:24:27.239
not a capsule review, but much smaller than any of
1399
01:24:27.279 --> 01:24:31.760
the others. Sharing a page with Super Bustin' Move 2 and, quote,
1400
01:24:32.390 --> 01:24:38.010
Geo Geo's Bizarre Adventure. As the title may suggest, Geo
1401
01:24:38.149 --> 01:24:42.510
Geo's Bizarre Adventure is rather odd. I don't know what's
1402
01:24:42.529 --> 01:24:45.949
going on with that one. Based closely on part five
1403
01:24:45.989 --> 01:24:50.970
of the long-running manga by Hirohiko Araki. It's not called
1404
01:24:51.050 --> 01:24:54.210
Geo Geo's Bizarre Adventure. I don't know what to tell you.
1405
01:24:56.609 --> 01:24:58.600
One of them has the dude named Geo in it.
1406
01:24:58.649 --> 01:25:01.760
That's not... No. Okay. Anyway.
1407
01:25:01.810 --> 01:25:01.979
No.
1408
01:25:02.489 --> 01:25:07.140
It's like... Yeah. Anyway. Was there ever... Okay. It is
1409
01:25:07.239 --> 01:25:11.300
coming up on... I'm Googling this. This is live. No,
1410
01:25:11.439 --> 01:25:18.529
it was... Called G.O.G.O. 's Bizarre Adventure. The game was? Uh...
1411
01:25:19.869 --> 01:25:23.489
It's on Wikipedia as G.O.G.O. 's Bizarre Adventure. Known in
1412
01:25:23.529 --> 01:25:28.270
Japan as Jojo no Kimio na Boken Ogon no Kaze.
1413
01:25:28.750 --> 01:25:36.149
Did they localize? It is based on Golden Wind. I
1414
01:25:36.380 --> 01:25:39.260
guess they... Yeah, no, I'm looking at the cover. G.O.G.O.
1415
01:25:39.260 --> 01:25:44.590
's Bizarre Adventure. Yeah, it was localized as that. That's, yeah,
1416
01:25:45.470 --> 01:25:52.600
I'm astounded. But here we have, you know, the review
1417
01:25:52.619 --> 01:25:55.699
we're going to look at today, which is Morrowind. Okay, Aidan,
1418
01:25:55.720 --> 01:25:59.720
I'm sorry. I've derailed us enough. We've gone off the
1419
01:25:59.760 --> 01:26:11.680
rails enough. It's time to review the review. So, Ty. Yes. Morrowind.
1420
01:26:12.720 --> 01:26:15.439
Do you have experience with Elder Scrolls? Like where are
1421
01:26:15.479 --> 01:26:20.340
you at with this? Yeah. So this is tough because
1422
01:26:20.399 --> 01:26:22.159
as I kind of said, you know, like I didn't,
1423
01:26:23.180 --> 01:26:27.760
I didn't like hardcore PC gaming wasn't my background. And
1424
01:26:27.800 --> 01:26:30.239
then when I got into it, I mainly got into
1425
01:26:30.279 --> 01:26:33.810
a lot of the online stuff. I let, I loved RPGs,
1426
01:26:33.850 --> 01:26:39.569
but I love console RPGs. Yeah. And this kind of
1427
01:26:39.609 --> 01:26:41.760
style and, if you've heard me, I have a couple
1428
01:26:41.800 --> 01:26:44.579
of times on this podcast and others talked about like,
1429
01:26:45.600 --> 01:26:49.550
you know, the, the, the text on the box for
1430
01:26:50.109 --> 01:26:55.069
games of this nature where like, you know, 483,000, uh,
1431
01:26:56.449 --> 01:27:01.710
miles of infinitely generated Brown swamps, like 680 megabytes of,
1432
01:27:02.029 --> 01:27:06.020
you know, just like, you know, uh, uh, story.
1433
01:27:06.060 --> 01:27:06.220
Yeah.
1434
01:27:06.239 --> 01:27:09.149
There's a story in the manual, uh, You know, just
1435
01:27:09.170 --> 01:27:11.470
kind of thing of like, okay, like this is not,
1436
01:27:12.310 --> 01:27:17.050
you know, oh yeah, five million hours of repetitive dungeon crawling.
1437
01:27:17.069 --> 01:27:20.380
I'm just like, hey, this is not what's intriguing or
1438
01:27:20.409 --> 01:27:24.859
exciting to me. The like maximalism of, you know, the
1439
01:27:25.439 --> 01:27:29.960
most hardcore inventory management ever conceived. Like that's not what
1440
01:27:29.979 --> 01:27:35.640
I play RPGs for. And like for people who maybe
1441
01:27:35.659 --> 01:27:39.539
aren't familiar with like what Ty's talking about, Daggerfall, which
1442
01:27:39.600 --> 01:27:47.659
is the second Elder Scrolls game, has 15,000 cities, towns,
1443
01:27:47.699 --> 01:27:52.130
and dungeons. If you look at a map of the
1444
01:27:52.149 --> 01:27:56.050
Daggerfall world and overlay Skyrim over top of it, it's
1445
01:27:56.090 --> 01:28:00.989
like overlaying your city over top of your state. Skyrim
1446
01:28:01.029 --> 01:28:06.970
is your city and Daggerfall is your state. The size
1447
01:28:07.010 --> 01:28:12.189
of the world that Ty is talking about is incomprehensible
1448
01:28:12.909 --> 01:28:16.010
by today's standards. Something that we've talked about before when
1449
01:28:16.050 --> 01:28:21.359
discussing 90s JRPGs versus CRPGs, the term has meaning because
1450
01:28:23.100 --> 01:28:25.800
you're looking at Daggerfall and then you're looking at Chrono Trigger.
1451
01:28:26.319 --> 01:28:29.680
To me, these are different games. You have a first-person
1452
01:28:30.180 --> 01:28:35.010
PC game that's all this giant proc-gen brown swamp field
1453
01:28:35.149 --> 01:28:38.689
territory and all this stuff is just completely different from
1454
01:28:38.729 --> 01:28:44.600
like a super tightly authored uh you know character driven
1455
01:28:44.859 --> 01:28:47.399
story that unfolds and pulls you through from start to
1456
01:28:47.439 --> 01:28:49.319
finish like a novel it's just it's just a completely
1457
01:28:49.340 --> 01:28:55.229
different thing and so morrowind didn't you know, didn't intrigue me.
1458
01:28:55.250 --> 01:28:57.810
You know, I didn't go seek this out as an experience.
1459
01:28:58.289 --> 01:29:00.909
And I was also, as much as I love deep
1460
01:29:00.970 --> 01:29:06.109
single player experiences, living in the dorms and having a
1461
01:29:06.229 --> 01:29:09.890
gaming PC and having just being stuffed full of people
1462
01:29:09.930 --> 01:29:14.250
my age all around me and partying and going to
1463
01:29:14.270 --> 01:29:18.029
class and doing all this other stuff, like more social experiences.
1464
01:29:18.529 --> 01:29:20.569
I did, you know, I tended to find more interesting.
1465
01:29:20.600 --> 01:29:22.380
I wanted to be able to share. I wanted me
1466
01:29:22.399 --> 01:29:23.579
and my roommate to be able to play the same
1467
01:29:23.600 --> 01:29:26.619
game at the same time or even, you know, like
1468
01:29:26.760 --> 01:29:30.010
parallel play in an interesting way. You know, the Sims,
1469
01:29:30.729 --> 01:29:34.989
me and my best friend, our girlfriends lived in the
1470
01:29:35.029 --> 01:29:37.649
same dorm in the other wing. And so like we,
1471
01:29:37.670 --> 01:29:38.729
like the four of us would hang out and like,
1472
01:29:38.750 --> 01:29:40.810
we'd all take turns on the Sims, right? We'd compare
1473
01:29:40.850 --> 01:29:44.119
our Sims worlds and stuff. So like, I just didn't
1474
01:29:44.159 --> 01:29:46.220
have time to lose myself in something like this. And
1475
01:29:46.460 --> 01:29:49.819
the people that I hung out with were not going, dude,
1476
01:29:49.840 --> 01:29:52.420
you have to buy this. And just like, say goodbye
1477
01:29:52.439 --> 01:29:54.779
to everything. Or the ones that were doing that were
1478
01:29:54.819 --> 01:29:58.260
playing EverQuest. And I was like, hey, no, because if
1479
01:29:58.340 --> 01:30:01.479
I do that, I know I really will say goodbye
1480
01:30:01.699 --> 01:30:04.539
to the social life that I've got. I mean, I
1481
01:30:04.560 --> 01:30:08.380
flunked out of school anyway, so I really would have
1482
01:30:08.399 --> 01:30:10.239
flunked out of school if I'd gotten into EverQuest or
1483
01:30:10.279 --> 01:30:14.819
possibly Morrowind. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I was playing
1484
01:30:14.899 --> 01:30:19.119
Asheron's Call at this time, probably. And so that was satisfying,
1485
01:30:19.199 --> 01:30:23.199
that aspect of it. Um, my story is similar to yours.
1486
01:30:23.220 --> 01:30:24.880
Like at this point in my life, I was like,
1487
01:30:25.060 --> 01:30:28.250
I was into console RPGs on PlayStation. And like I
1488
01:30:28.270 --> 01:30:31.689
said earlier, like my game boy, but also like, you know,
1489
01:30:31.989 --> 01:30:34.489
I was hanging out at my girlfriend's house a lot
1490
01:30:34.510 --> 01:30:36.850
and hanging out with her a lot too. And so
1491
01:30:36.949 --> 01:30:39.539
what I wasn't necessarily looking, like you say, for those
1492
01:30:39.579 --> 01:30:42.420
like big deep dive experiences, I also just didn't own
1493
01:30:42.460 --> 01:30:46.079
an Xbox. So like, it wasn't on my radar at all.
1494
01:30:46.100 --> 01:30:48.489
When I got an Xbox, it was for fable. And
1495
01:30:48.510 --> 01:30:50.449
then I bought Phantom Dust. I think those were the
1496
01:30:50.489 --> 01:30:52.689
only two games I ever bought for it. I did
1497
01:30:52.729 --> 01:30:54.470
play a lot of, I played a bit of Arena
1498
01:30:54.789 --> 01:30:56.270
way back in the day. I did play a fair
1499
01:30:56.310 --> 01:30:59.800
bit of Daggerfall. Um, but it was like Skyrim where
1500
01:30:59.859 --> 01:31:02.500
I really got into it. Like a lot of people. Right. Yeah.
1501
01:31:02.560 --> 01:31:06.319
And so, uh, we had just moved, um, to a
1502
01:31:06.319 --> 01:31:11.859
different city. I got fired from my job for a
1503
01:31:11.899 --> 01:31:15.710
variety of reasons. Um, And then I had an Xbox
1504
01:31:15.810 --> 01:31:19.609
and Skyrim came out. So I played a lot of Skyrim. Yeah. Um,
1505
01:31:20.289 --> 01:31:22.689
but Morrowind was all one I was always curious about
1506
01:31:22.729 --> 01:31:25.840
because it's strengths are so unique, which I think we'll
1507
01:31:25.859 --> 01:31:28.279
kind of get to in a second and we can
1508
01:31:28.319 --> 01:31:31.199
talk about that. But, um, Morrowind is one that I
1509
01:31:31.239 --> 01:31:34.960
think in hindsight too, uh, is the most interesting of
1510
01:31:35.000 --> 01:31:38.239
the Elder Scrolls games. Like Oblivion kind of leans back
1511
01:31:38.300 --> 01:31:42.590
into that very typical high fantasy. Yes. Uh, world whereas
1512
01:31:42.630 --> 01:31:45.750
Morrowind was defined by its weirdness and like weird RPGs
1513
01:31:45.789 --> 01:31:49.090
were sort of like and like weird worlds like with
1514
01:31:49.109 --> 01:31:53.850
Planescape Torment and stuff was like really people were trying
1515
01:31:53.869 --> 01:31:57.449
to look outside that sort of Tolkien-esque western fantasy and
1516
01:31:57.470 --> 01:32:02.109
I think that's what makes Morrowind really interesting right off
1517
01:32:02.210 --> 01:32:07.930
the bat in this review by Daniel Staines probably clocks
1518
01:32:07.949 --> 01:32:11.409
in at around 200 words He does sort of address
1519
01:32:11.430 --> 01:32:16.149
what he calls the love-it-or-hate-it nature of Morrowind. Can you
1520
01:32:16.300 --> 01:32:19.680
read the opening paragraph there for me, Ty? Yeah, sure.
1521
01:32:21.000 --> 01:32:23.220
For a game that's been touted as something one either
1522
01:32:23.319 --> 01:32:26.340
loves or hates with a passion, I find myself surprisingly
1523
01:32:26.380 --> 01:32:31.010
blasé about Morrowind. Several key defects, which are perhaps inherent...
1524
01:32:31.430 --> 01:32:34.029
in games of such a massive scale, cripple Bethesda's third
1525
01:32:34.149 --> 01:32:37.289
Elder Scrolls title quite significantly and relegate it to the
1526
01:32:37.510 --> 01:32:44.189
good-but-not-great category of ambitious video game milestones. So, like, during
1527
01:32:44.210 --> 01:32:47.930
this time, you're starting to see more, like, one-to-one ports
1528
01:32:47.989 --> 01:32:51.569
of PC games to computers. And I think that, like,
1529
01:32:51.590 --> 01:32:54.250
a lot of... I don't know what Stain's background was
1530
01:32:54.289 --> 01:32:57.090
at this point with, like, PC RPGs, like you and
1531
01:32:57.130 --> 01:33:02.899
I are talking about. But, like, From a critical perspective,
1532
01:33:02.920 --> 01:33:05.590
this creates a new angle for this review, which is
1533
01:33:05.899 --> 01:33:09.449
not Staines discovering something new and formulating an opinion, but
1534
01:33:10.390 --> 01:33:15.409
responding to the opinion that already exists. Staines knows what
1535
01:33:15.430 --> 01:33:17.350
people think of Morrowind. Yeah.
1536
01:33:17.510 --> 01:33:21.630
So he's not reviewing it in a vacuum, but analyzing
1537
01:33:21.829 --> 01:33:24.409
existing opinions and what he calls a love it or
1538
01:33:24.430 --> 01:33:24.729
hate it.
1539
01:33:25.569 --> 01:33:28.560
Um, I don't think people really hate Morrowind. I think
1540
01:33:28.569 --> 01:33:31.640
there are people who bounce off Morrowind. Yeah. Uh, maybe
1541
01:33:31.680 --> 01:33:33.920
because it's weird, but it's also the one that I
1542
01:33:33.960 --> 01:33:37.760
would say is more like most like universally praised, um,
1543
01:33:37.899 --> 01:33:41.739
of the series and among like PC RPGs. Maybe that's like,
1544
01:33:43.920 --> 01:33:47.479
maybe his reputation has been like, you know, like laundered
1545
01:33:47.619 --> 01:33:51.369
over the last 20 years, but I don't think so. Like,
1546
01:33:51.390 --> 01:33:55.050
I think that like people like look fondly on Oblivion
1547
01:33:55.069 --> 01:33:58.500
and and Skyrim because it introduced them to Elder Scrolls.
1548
01:33:58.899 --> 01:34:01.880
And like, I love Skyrim, um, for that reason. But
1549
01:34:01.920 --> 01:34:05.680
like Morrowind, I think was always a standout because it's
1550
01:34:06.119 --> 01:34:08.659
so unique. And so he's, when he spends like the
1551
01:34:08.699 --> 01:34:12.159
second paragraph of this fairly short review explaining some of
1552
01:34:12.199 --> 01:34:16.399
like the game's quote unquote defects, um, I start to
1553
01:34:16.439 --> 01:34:21.880
wonder if he was just wanted, like, I don't know,
1554
01:34:22.060 --> 01:34:24.300
like was too caught up on what other people were thinking.
1555
01:34:24.340 --> 01:34:26.779
Cause he like, he talks about how much of the
1556
01:34:26.800 --> 01:34:30.539
game is spent talking to like quote unquote generic characters,
1557
01:34:31.319 --> 01:34:33.380
which like, yeah, like there are a lot of generic
1558
01:34:33.399 --> 01:34:36.159
characters in, in these big games, but like, why is
1559
01:34:36.199 --> 01:34:38.939
he spending all this time talking to random NPCs who
1560
01:34:38.979 --> 01:34:43.159
have nothing to say? Um, which is just weird. Like
1561
01:34:43.199 --> 01:34:45.600
that's not what the strength of the game is, but
1562
01:34:45.640 --> 01:34:47.640
if you're used to playing console RPGs where you're going
1563
01:34:47.659 --> 01:34:50.239
around talking to everybody in town and they have things
1564
01:34:50.300 --> 01:34:54.039
to say, then like you're trained to do that. But,
1565
01:34:54.649 --> 01:34:57.010
that's not really why you're playing Morrowind to begin with.
1566
01:34:57.189 --> 01:35:00.430
And he wraps up the second paragraph by saying these
1567
01:35:00.470 --> 01:35:04.319
conversations cause Morrowind to quote, lose a significant portion of
1568
01:35:04.380 --> 01:35:08.359
its role-playing luster, causing it to feel more like a
1569
01:35:08.460 --> 01:35:14.560
world exploration game than anything else. Morrowind's sterling reputation 25
1570
01:35:14.560 --> 01:35:17.319
years later is kind of specifically because of its unique
1571
01:35:17.359 --> 01:35:21.359
world and player freedom. And like, it just feels like
1572
01:35:21.399 --> 01:35:24.449
stains didn't quite get, what the game was despite his
1573
01:35:24.789 --> 01:35:28.130
apparent familiarity with the elder scroll series. Like I just,
1574
01:35:30.369 --> 01:35:33.260
like he's not touching on, he's touching on these like
1575
01:35:33.310 --> 01:35:39.159
arbitrary quote unquote defects without addressing any of the game's
1576
01:35:39.600 --> 01:35:44.340
strengths that have made it so popular. Yeah. Yeah. That's, Hmm.
1577
01:35:44.720 --> 01:35:44.859
Yeah.
1578
01:35:44.899 --> 01:35:48.310
That's interesting. I am also in my very, so far, uh,
1579
01:35:48.409 --> 01:35:55.159
PC gamer and the gamer.com, uh, And, uh, this thread
1580
01:35:55.220 --> 01:35:59.079
on r slash elder scrolls. And I think this YouTube channel, uh,
1581
01:35:59.960 --> 01:36:03.189
every everyone's coming up. Uh, we've, we ranked all the
1582
01:36:03.189 --> 01:36:05.630
15 elder scrolls games. We were called the 10 elder
1583
01:36:05.670 --> 01:36:07.789
scrolls game. We ranked all the mainline elder scrolls games,
1584
01:36:07.930 --> 01:36:11.770
Morrowind one, Morrowind one, Morrowind one, like across the board.
1585
01:36:11.829 --> 01:36:13.569
And these are all contemporary. These are all the last
1586
01:36:13.689 --> 01:36:14.890
couple of years, 2024, 2026, 2025. And I don't think
1587
01:36:14.909 --> 01:36:21.439
that's like revisionist history. My impression of Morrowind was always
1588
01:36:21.479 --> 01:36:23.220
that it was one of the best computer RPGs of
1589
01:36:23.279 --> 01:36:24.039
all time. Right.
1590
01:36:24.260 --> 01:36:27.140
Even not having been, like, familiar with, like, the Elder
1591
01:36:27.159 --> 01:36:27.920
Scrolls series.
1592
01:36:27.939 --> 01:36:30.039
And the thing that I'm seeing is, kind of as
1593
01:36:30.060 --> 01:36:33.920
you're saying in the PC Gamer Review, I'm trying to
1594
01:36:34.300 --> 01:36:38.260
pull up the quote here. Even on a good day,
1595
01:36:38.380 --> 01:36:40.880
I struggle to remember the difference between Talons and Oblivion.
1596
01:36:41.399 --> 01:36:44.739
Which one is Chorall and which one is Chaydenhall? But
1597
01:36:44.770 --> 01:36:47.510
I remember that all the fancy people in Morrowind's Aldroon
1598
01:36:47.550 --> 01:36:50.609
built their homes inside... the hollowed-out shell of a giant crab,
1599
01:36:50.989 --> 01:36:53.050
and that Vivex, a city of cantons built in a
1600
01:36:53.069 --> 01:36:55.310
bay with a stationary moon hanging just above it. I
1601
01:36:55.390 --> 01:36:59.359
even remember the ordinary fishing village of Klawad. Morrowind is
1602
01:36:59.380 --> 01:37:02.159
memorable even when it's not being architecturally outrageous because its
1603
01:37:02.199 --> 01:37:06.180
culture is as weird as its geography. So, like, it's
1604
01:37:06.239 --> 01:37:10.479
the opposite of generic, right? It's specific and ambitious in
1605
01:37:10.500 --> 01:37:12.619
a way that a lot of the Elder Scrolls games aren't.
1606
01:37:13.520 --> 01:37:17.449
And so, like, this first two-thirds of Stain's review does
1607
01:37:17.489 --> 01:37:21.550
not sound like he played the same game. Everybody else did. Yeah.
1608
01:37:21.569 --> 01:37:23.649
By the way, that's 40 paragraph. That's Jody. That's from
1609
01:37:23.670 --> 01:37:26.310
Jody McGregor at a PC gamer. Just since we're quoting.
1610
01:37:26.409 --> 01:37:26.609
Okay.
1611
01:37:26.909 --> 01:37:31.949
Yeah. Excellent. Um, the fourth paragraph, like stain starts to
1612
01:37:31.989 --> 01:37:35.020
like kind of glaze over some of the games pros, uh,
1613
01:37:35.039 --> 01:37:39.060
not pros, like speaking pros and cons. Um, but with
1614
01:37:39.079 --> 01:37:42.319
like far less depth than he gave to talking to
1615
01:37:42.359 --> 01:37:48.270
random NPCs. Um, And there's just like, there's just very little,
1616
01:37:48.289 --> 01:37:50.890
like he doesn't talk at all about the unique world
1617
01:37:51.270 --> 01:37:54.649
of like where you have this world that doesn't feel
1618
01:37:54.689 --> 01:38:00.149
like it's drawing from kind of stayed tired tropes. It's
1619
01:38:00.229 --> 01:38:03.449
trying to create something new. And like, I don't know
1620
01:38:03.489 --> 01:38:05.010
how you can go through the game and be like, Hey,
1621
01:38:05.050 --> 01:38:07.949
this game's really boring. It's just about exploration. Not talk
1622
01:38:07.989 --> 01:38:10.960
about what you're exploring into, like what is drawing you
1623
01:38:11.000 --> 01:38:15.300
towards the world exploration over the role playing. Um, It's
1624
01:38:15.319 --> 01:38:19.060
just weird to me. Um, and like, he kind of
1625
01:38:19.140 --> 01:38:24.829
gets into like, you know, here, he says, um, given
1626
01:38:24.869 --> 01:38:26.770
that it's a quote, given that it's a direct port
1627
01:38:26.810 --> 01:38:28.789
of the PC original, it's no surprise that the Xbox
1628
01:38:28.810 --> 01:38:33.930
version of Morrowind delivers some. decidedly tasty audiovisual treats. The
1629
01:38:33.970 --> 01:38:36.689
game's monsters, for example, are impressive in the way they
1630
01:38:36.729 --> 01:38:41.699
reproduce age-old fantasy paradigms with an attractive sheen of artistic creativity.
1631
01:38:42.279 --> 01:38:44.819
Ditto for the sound. It's all cliché, but it's cliché
1632
01:38:44.840 --> 01:38:49.710
done well. That is just not a description of Morrowind
1633
01:38:49.750 --> 01:38:50.829
to me at all.
1634
01:38:51.189 --> 01:38:51.369
Yeah.
1635
01:38:51.390 --> 01:38:56.720
That's a description of Oblivion, but that is not, to me,
1636
01:38:56.770 --> 01:38:59.779
what makes Morrowind. I should say I have played not
1637
01:38:59.819 --> 01:39:02.000
a lot of Morrowind, but I have played Morrowind since.
1638
01:39:04.140 --> 01:39:05.600
Back in the day. And so, like, you know, I
1639
01:39:05.659 --> 01:39:08.960
can say from personal experience also, like, that's not Morrowind.
1640
01:39:09.350 --> 01:39:12.430
It's not just a bunch of cliches done well. It's
1641
01:39:12.470 --> 01:39:16.210
the opposite of that. Yeah. I checked to see, according
1642
01:39:16.229 --> 01:39:21.029
to Wikipedia, the release date in North America on PC
1643
01:39:21.069 --> 01:39:25.069
was May 1st, 2002 and on Xbox, June 7th. So
1644
01:39:25.090 --> 01:39:29.409
like less than five full weeks apart. In the EU,
1645
01:39:29.449 --> 01:39:32.529
it was May 2nd, 2002 and then November 22nd, 2002.
1646
01:39:32.520 --> 01:39:36.579
So I'm guessing this would have lined up with that. Okay.
1647
01:39:36.619 --> 01:39:40.850
So we're talking a port. In Australia, on a six-month delay,
1648
01:39:41.350 --> 01:39:45.050
this sounds like the SNES Doom port. Where it's like,
1649
01:39:45.170 --> 01:39:49.869
oh yeah, this is Morrowind. You know, Morrowind. I mean,
1650
01:39:49.949 --> 01:39:53.229
it's a good port. It does the Morrowind things, I guess.
1651
01:39:53.520 --> 01:39:56.399
All the stuff you come to expect from when you
1652
01:39:56.420 --> 01:39:59.520
play Morrowind. This is a six-month-old game. It's not like...
1653
01:40:00.560 --> 01:40:04.460
It's a brand new thing. It's not something that... It's
1654
01:40:04.500 --> 01:40:08.449
not a game that most gamers... have played with a
1655
01:40:08.470 --> 01:40:11.550
bunch of times on other platforms and gotten sick of, or,
1656
01:40:11.810 --> 01:40:15.210
you know, like I, this, yeah, it's, it's really strange how,
1657
01:40:15.590 --> 01:40:21.229
how disconnected this review seems from, from its, you know,
1658
01:40:21.270 --> 01:40:24.569
reception everywhere else. Especially from a guy who in his
1659
01:40:24.630 --> 01:40:27.220
editorial at the beginning of the review section is like, Hey,
1660
01:40:27.560 --> 01:40:30.140
I'm far more interested in like game design than I
1661
01:40:30.229 --> 01:40:34.699
am in game technology. And his basic, like, you know,
1662
01:40:34.739 --> 01:40:37.220
his basic takeaway in this review of Morrowind is like, Hey,
1663
01:40:37.670 --> 01:40:40.130
It's like a one-to-one port of a PC game on Xbox.
1664
01:40:40.170 --> 01:40:46.489
It looks beautiful. But ignoring everything the game does well
1665
01:40:46.770 --> 01:40:49.300
and everything that has made it like a modern classic.
1666
01:40:49.739 --> 01:40:52.760
So it all just feels very reductive and flat for
1667
01:40:53.000 --> 01:40:56.439
a remarkable game. And like you said, the biggest of
1668
01:40:56.479 --> 01:40:59.920
these key defects is the long talking to generic NPCs
1669
01:40:59.939 --> 01:41:02.560
about generic topics. This, as you can probably imagine, makes
1670
01:41:02.619 --> 01:41:05.460
for a lot of repetitive click-through conversations that do little
1671
01:41:05.479 --> 01:41:08.529
but consume time and make the player inclined to ignore
1672
01:41:08.689 --> 01:41:14.229
everything NPCs say. It seems to me like he is
1673
01:41:14.289 --> 01:41:19.899
role-playing and not acknowledging that he's choosing to be somebody
1674
01:41:19.979 --> 01:41:23.479
who is not engaged in this foreign world. To me,
1675
01:41:23.680 --> 01:41:25.920
the thing about Morrowind is you're in this weird place.
1676
01:41:25.960 --> 01:41:29.119
How are you going to find your way? Yeah. you know,
1677
01:41:29.140 --> 01:41:30.300
what are you going to do with it? It feels
1678
01:41:30.319 --> 01:41:32.909
like it's just, well, I don't like, I don't like RPGs.
1679
01:41:32.970 --> 01:41:34.409
It's really what it comes down to. You're like, oh yeah,
1680
01:41:34.810 --> 01:41:37.869
I really want to see like an exploration of game design. Like,
1681
01:41:37.890 --> 01:41:39.829
you know, what's the cutting edge of like game design,
1682
01:41:39.850 --> 01:41:42.050
game theory. Okay, cool. I like that. But if you're like,
1683
01:41:42.189 --> 01:41:46.119
I'm playing this CRPG and I'm just walking around talking
1684
01:41:46.140 --> 01:41:48.850
to people, it's like, I, I don't want to tell you.
1685
01:41:49.130 --> 01:41:51.489
That's what it is. That's, that's what the game is.
1686
01:41:51.529 --> 01:41:54.369
And it does it really well. You know, you're like, well,
1687
01:41:54.550 --> 01:41:57.350
all I'm doing is just clicking on units and then
1688
01:41:57.390 --> 01:42:00.060
they go fight other units. What, what is even that?
1689
01:42:00.109 --> 01:42:02.119
It's so boring. Like, okay, I'm sorry. Stop playing command
1690
01:42:02.140 --> 01:42:07.680
and conquer. Like, well, I don't know what finishes with
1691
01:42:08.039 --> 01:42:10.140
fans of the genre would definitely do well to check
1692
01:42:10.180 --> 01:42:12.899
it out. And given everything that comes before it kind
1693
01:42:12.939 --> 01:42:17.159
of implies you're not a fan of the genre, which, okay.
1694
01:42:17.930 --> 01:42:20.170
But again, then, like, okay, then why are you the...
1695
01:42:20.449 --> 01:42:21.939
I don't want to say that, like, you can't review
1696
01:42:21.960 --> 01:42:23.520
things you're not a fan of. It's just, like, it
1697
01:42:23.600 --> 01:42:27.479
feels like this just isn't... This is not being fair.
1698
01:42:28.720 --> 01:42:30.680
It's just incurious. Yeah. I don't think you have to
1699
01:42:30.699 --> 01:42:33.000
be a fan of a genre to review a game.
1700
01:42:34.100 --> 01:42:38.090
But I think you have to inject curiosity in place
1701
01:42:38.130 --> 01:42:40.989
of experience, if that makes sense. Yeah, and you have to...
1702
01:42:41.250 --> 01:42:44.590
If you're going to say, this is just talking to, like,
1703
01:42:44.609 --> 01:42:50.529
generic NPCs, in a game that every other fan and critic,
1704
01:42:50.869 --> 01:42:53.569
you know, who's familiar with this genre is like, I, this,
1705
01:42:53.710 --> 01:42:57.630
this one was indelibly unique to me. I remember how
1706
01:42:57.770 --> 01:43:00.840
cool and interesting all this stuff was. Then like, I
1707
01:43:00.880 --> 01:43:03.609
think you have to acknowledge either a, you don't have
1708
01:43:03.649 --> 01:43:07.439
enough experience with this genre to, to speak to that,
1709
01:43:07.560 --> 01:43:09.819
or you have a bias coming in where you're like,
1710
01:43:10.000 --> 01:43:12.329
this is not my type of game. I don't find NPC,
1711
01:43:12.579 --> 01:43:15.699
you know, or, or even go, I would like to see,
1712
01:43:15.720 --> 01:43:18.979
you know, because they're, there's procedural generation for the world.
1713
01:43:19.399 --> 01:43:22.159
Why can't there be procedural generation for the dialogue? You know,
1714
01:43:22.199 --> 01:43:26.539
like there were some games that were experimenting. What was it? Uh, uh, uh, uh,
1715
01:43:26.600 --> 01:43:32.300
the syndicate, uh, not syndicate. Um, um, it was like
1716
01:43:32.319 --> 01:43:37.970
on PlayStation. Um, it was like a space mystery, you know,
1717
01:43:37.979 --> 01:43:41.250
like bottle mystery murder thing, I think. And you had
1718
01:43:41.289 --> 01:43:43.569
like branching dialogue and some of it, I think was,
1719
01:43:43.789 --> 01:43:46.569
was supposed to be like proc gen in real time.
1720
01:43:47.060 --> 01:43:49.760
And so like, okay. You know, I can see if
1721
01:43:49.800 --> 01:43:54.449
you're like, I, I wish the role playing or conversational
1722
01:43:54.489 --> 01:43:59.369
element of this was as ambitious as the graphical or, or,
1723
01:43:59.449 --> 01:44:03.189
you know, fantasy world element. Okay. I guess, but that's
1724
01:44:03.220 --> 01:44:06.319
just not, that's just not what he's saying. And it
1725
01:44:06.359 --> 01:44:08.899
doesn't seem in line with any of the other contemporary
1726
01:44:08.939 --> 01:44:13.579
criticism or, or current. Remember, you know, looking back. Yeah.
1727
01:44:13.640 --> 01:44:17.050
It doesn't, doesn't match up with anything anybody else was saying, but,
1728
01:44:17.090 --> 01:44:19.369
and not in like a contrarian, like, Hey, like I
1729
01:44:19.390 --> 01:44:23.619
had this personal experience, um, you know, that I can
1730
01:44:23.659 --> 01:44:25.659
kind of back up with like, Hey, from a game
1731
01:44:25.680 --> 01:44:28.239
design perspective, I think this is bad or this didn't
1732
01:44:28.300 --> 01:44:30.619
click with me, even though I like or dislike this
1733
01:44:30.680 --> 01:44:34.420
genre already. You know, like there's just nothing there to,
1734
01:44:34.960 --> 01:44:40.350
to justify. Like I just, the line quote, it's all cliche,
1735
01:44:40.369 --> 01:44:43.619
but it's cliche done well. It's just, blowing my mind
1736
01:44:43.760 --> 01:44:50.859
for a Morrowind review. Yeah. Stains ultimately gives Morrowind a
1737
01:44:50.899 --> 01:44:54.899
clean 80, with scores of 85, 85, and 80, respectively,
1738
01:44:54.939 --> 01:44:58.949
for visual sound and gameplay, which, again, averages out to 83.3,
1739
01:44:58.949 --> 01:45:01.489
but at least in this instance, it doesn't knock it
1740
01:45:01.529 --> 01:45:05.750
down a bracket, but also goes to show why having
1741
01:45:05.770 --> 01:45:08.430
a 100-point scale, but really having a 6-point scale, but
1742
01:45:08.670 --> 01:45:10.930
it's kind of actually really just a 4-point scale, is
1743
01:45:12.170 --> 01:45:16.000
not great. um what do you think ty where you
1744
01:45:16.100 --> 01:45:19.500
at i'm obviously what's your score i'm with you in
1745
01:45:19.560 --> 01:45:24.819
not loving this yeah um and i'm i'm trying not
1746
01:45:24.939 --> 01:45:31.689
to over penalize but like again all of these other
1747
01:45:31.729 --> 01:45:35.010
reviews you know roller coaster tycoon 2 just for two
1748
01:45:35.069 --> 01:45:38.380
pages is gigantic with a ton of beautiful screenshots A
1749
01:45:38.420 --> 01:45:41.859
bunch of these other games got four-page reviews that have, again,
1750
01:45:41.920 --> 01:45:48.899
a gorgeous layout, ton of screenshots, ton of text, pullouts.
1751
01:45:48.960 --> 01:45:52.250
All this stuff looks great, would immediately slot into, like
1752
01:45:52.270 --> 01:45:56.770
you said, an EGM or even a next-gen outside of
1753
01:45:56.810 --> 01:46:02.510
the scoring system. There's just Lord of the Rings, Fellowship
1754
01:46:02.550 --> 01:46:05.760
of the Ring, Comic-Con, all these things. And then you
1755
01:46:05.779 --> 01:46:10.390
give Morrowind this little, little slice here. And then, yeah,
1756
01:46:10.810 --> 01:46:13.909
the critique just doesn't match up. And, you know, audio
1757
01:46:13.930 --> 01:46:17.689
visual tasty treats gets an 85 and 85 in video
1758
01:46:17.750 --> 01:46:21.909
and sound. Like is, is Morrowind that much worse than
1759
01:46:21.989 --> 01:46:27.250
unreal tournament, which got a 93 graphics, 70 or visuals, right?
1760
01:46:28.890 --> 01:46:30.609
Lord of the Rings, fellowship of the ring, 85 and visuals,
1761
01:46:30.609 --> 01:46:38.060
88 and sound 70 gameplay. Like, was that that much
1762
01:46:38.109 --> 01:46:41.279
worse than where, you know, that was one-to-one with Morrowind,
1763
01:46:41.319 --> 01:46:44.619
except for gameplay, which you still didn't like. I don't know. I'm,
1764
01:46:44.880 --> 01:46:48.199
I'm really, I'm really taken aback by this. I'm, I'm
1765
01:46:48.239 --> 01:46:56.229
going to give this. How many, uh, boring NPCs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
1766
01:46:57.270 --> 01:47:00.590
and again, I'm, I'm hesitant to, but I think I'm
1767
01:47:00.630 --> 01:47:03.619
going to punish a little bit for opening this review
1768
01:47:03.680 --> 01:47:08.369
section and, talking about like yeah my thing is i'm
1769
01:47:08.409 --> 01:47:11.949
the reviews editor who really cares about game design and
1770
01:47:11.989 --> 01:47:14.189
then looking at morrowind a game that like you know
1771
01:47:14.840 --> 01:47:17.359
again love it or hate it to use those words
1772
01:47:17.739 --> 01:47:20.739
nobody's doing it like bethesda right now nobody's doing it
1773
01:47:20.779 --> 01:47:24.619
like morrowind this is a big swing in game design
1774
01:47:24.680 --> 01:47:26.779
and you've got nothing to say you're like this is
1775
01:47:27.479 --> 01:47:29.729
absolutely wrote by the numbers cliche and i just think
1776
01:47:29.770 --> 01:47:33.569
that's not true i'm gonna give this three generic npcs
1777
01:47:33.630 --> 01:47:36.550
out of ten Yeah, I'm right there with you. This
1778
01:47:36.590 --> 01:47:40.760
is a three generic boring NPCs out of 10. Or
1779
01:47:40.819 --> 01:47:46.710
out of 100. So, what, 30 boring NPCs. Yeah. Out
1780
01:47:46.750 --> 01:47:51.369
of 100 for me. Same thing, it's just like, he
1781
01:47:51.390 --> 01:47:53.390
doesn't seem to have anything to say about one of
1782
01:47:53.409 --> 01:47:57.729
the most impressive, groundbreaking games of all time. And I
1783
01:47:57.770 --> 01:48:00.470
think that this should have got a bigger review so
1784
01:48:00.489 --> 01:48:02.779
that you could dig into some of these. Like Morrowind,
1785
01:48:03.000 --> 01:48:05.239
just like every Elder Scrolls game, it is a flawed game.
1786
01:48:05.420 --> 01:48:08.220
It's not perfect. Like there's a lot of rough edges
1787
01:48:08.279 --> 01:48:11.079
in these games. But the fact that it overcomes those
1788
01:48:11.119 --> 01:48:14.510
is what makes it interesting and makes the series so compelling.
1789
01:48:15.250 --> 01:48:19.170
Address that. Dig into that. Figure out why this game
1790
01:48:19.310 --> 01:48:24.579
is getting such glowing reviews elsewhere you know despite all
1791
01:48:24.600 --> 01:48:27.859
of the flaws right um but you just get none
1792
01:48:27.880 --> 01:48:30.100
of that it's just there's nothing here to say it's
1793
01:48:30.119 --> 01:48:33.779
very flat uh so yeah i agree three three uh
1794
01:48:33.859 --> 01:48:36.510
three boring npcs out of ten for me dang Yeah,
1795
01:48:36.550 --> 01:48:39.170
and I scroll a little further, and I will acknowledge Jason.
1796
01:48:39.189 --> 01:48:43.010
He was like, how are we ignoring the awesome initial
1797
01:48:43.050 --> 01:48:47.210
D arcade game? It's cool. But, like, you scroll just
1798
01:48:47.310 --> 01:48:50.880
one more page. Okay, like, Turok Evolution and Duke Nukem
1799
01:48:50.939 --> 01:48:55.520
Advance for Game Boy Advance both get half-page reviews with
1800
01:48:55.659 --> 01:48:59.720
four screenshots each. Yeah. And you're like, that's so much
1801
01:48:59.800 --> 01:49:06.199
more attention than you gave Morrowind, right? Yeah. that's that's
1802
01:49:06.479 --> 01:49:13.439
that's dude nukum advance got a higher gameplay score than
1803
01:49:13.479 --> 01:49:17.930
moral i mean yeah obviously different different standards all the
1804
01:49:17.979 --> 01:49:20.170
way across the you know none of these are one
1805
01:49:20.189 --> 01:49:22.470
to one but still like come on man that's just
1806
01:49:22.529 --> 01:49:24.449
not yeah it doesn't make sense at the time and
1807
01:49:24.470 --> 01:49:27.449
it definitely doesn't make sense now um yeah okay before
1808
01:49:27.489 --> 01:49:29.069
we wrap up could you put it back on the
1809
01:49:29.210 --> 01:49:36.149
uh roller coaster tycoon to review up a Um, this game,
1810
01:49:36.170 --> 01:49:38.670
I love this game. I was playing it a little
1811
01:49:38.770 --> 01:49:39.979
after I was, I was playing a ton of it,
1812
01:49:40.010 --> 01:49:44.359
especially in like 2003 and on my coffee table in
1813
01:49:44.500 --> 01:49:48.319
front of my TV PC convergence setup, I actually had
1814
01:49:48.340 --> 01:49:51.500
a super high end monitor. My mom has worked in
1815
01:49:51.560 --> 01:49:55.100
advertising or worked in advertising most of her career. And
1816
01:49:55.119 --> 01:49:59.100
I was at her office and, you know, ad agency
1817
01:49:59.149 --> 01:50:01.310
graphic design people. Right. So they had like top of
1818
01:50:01.329 --> 01:50:06.420
the line stuff. And they had this ancient, not ancient,
1819
01:50:06.439 --> 01:50:12.359
it's ancient now, but they had this true flat screen CRT.
1820
01:50:12.380 --> 01:50:17.729
I don't, I don't think it was a Trinitron, but
1821
01:50:17.770 --> 01:50:22.569
it was like 26 inch, I want to say. It
1822
01:50:22.590 --> 01:50:27.850
was pretty big and had RGB inputs, the really, really,
1823
01:50:27.890 --> 01:50:32.029
really high end studio monitor, basically. And the thing was
1824
01:50:32.069 --> 01:50:35.930
that the blue gun was broken. Uh, so they just
1825
01:50:35.949 --> 01:50:37.970
like had it sitting there and like, yeah, we got
1826
01:50:37.989 --> 01:50:41.189
to take this to the dump. And I'm like, no, no,
1827
01:50:41.270 --> 01:50:44.569
I'll take it. And I'm like, it's broken. I'm like,
1828
01:50:45.149 --> 01:50:47.869
I can fix her. Like, please, you know, like, um,
1829
01:50:48.710 --> 01:50:52.279
and I did, I did fix me. Yeah, exactly. And
1830
01:50:52.399 --> 01:50:55.359
so it was like this weird thing. So, um, for
1831
01:50:55.420 --> 01:50:57.640
a lot of just regular, you know, I'm, I'm writing,
1832
01:50:57.659 --> 01:51:00.890
I'm browsing the internet. It's fine. for some stuff it
1833
01:51:01.010 --> 01:51:03.029
still kind of sort of worked you know it was
1834
01:51:03.069 --> 01:51:04.909
it was really pretty even without any blue in it
1835
01:51:04.930 --> 01:51:08.989
oh yeah um and so i played roller coaster tycoon
1836
01:51:09.050 --> 01:51:13.090
with this and there was one day it was a
1837
01:51:13.149 --> 01:51:14.750
saturday i kind of like got up you know i
1838
01:51:14.750 --> 01:51:17.829
ate breakfast like something like 10 o'clock i just sat
1839
01:51:17.869 --> 01:51:19.630
down and started playing roller coaster too and because it
1840
01:51:19.649 --> 01:51:22.489
was on my coffee table so like actually sat down
1841
01:51:22.590 --> 01:51:26.109
legs underneath the coffee table and got like way up
1842
01:51:26.130 --> 01:51:28.369
to this like super high And I just completely lost
1843
01:51:28.430 --> 01:51:32.829
myself in Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 for hours. And my
1844
01:51:32.869 --> 01:51:35.189
legs had fallen asleep and everything else. In just like
1845
01:51:35.220 --> 01:51:40.460
red and green. That's right. Which famously combine nicely. So
1846
01:51:43.539 --> 01:51:47.340
I'm like, oh man, I'm hungry. I haven't eaten in forever.
1847
01:51:47.399 --> 01:51:49.779
I played right through lunch. I gotta eat. I gotta eat.
1848
01:51:50.520 --> 01:51:57.380
I stand up and I hallucinate. waves of violet like
1849
01:51:57.520 --> 01:52:00.779
indigo like super intense oh yeah because your eyes are
1850
01:52:00.800 --> 01:52:04.250
adjusted yeah i literally i'm just getting like my brain
1851
01:52:04.329 --> 01:52:08.710
is just seeing literal visual like squigglies Of like the
1852
01:52:08.789 --> 01:52:12.449
world being so intensely violet. Because you start looking, you know,
1853
01:52:12.470 --> 01:52:14.329
like the water up here at the top right, right?
1854
01:52:14.409 --> 01:52:18.229
Like you just start where it's darker and black. You're
1855
01:52:18.350 --> 01:52:20.060
getting the reds and greens in there, but then you're
1856
01:52:20.069 --> 01:52:22.439
not getting the blue. So your brain just kind of
1857
01:52:22.520 --> 01:52:25.539
interpolates the blue after a while. 100%. And then you
1858
01:52:25.600 --> 01:52:29.279
actually see the blue light. It's like when you're wearing...
1859
01:52:30.140 --> 01:52:33.439
sunglasses tinted sunglasses right like yeah after a minute or
1860
01:52:33.479 --> 01:52:35.479
two like you see the color because your brains are
1861
01:52:35.500 --> 01:52:39.119
good at compensating for that when it's there yes uh
1862
01:52:39.340 --> 01:52:41.729
but suitably too like if you look at a few
1863
01:52:41.739 --> 01:52:44.710
of the captions here for the uh the screenshots we
1864
01:52:44.729 --> 01:52:48.770
have time to clean the toilets sigh oh look it's
1865
01:52:48.869 --> 01:52:53.090
jurassic barf mommy buy me a barf burger the magic
1866
01:52:53.130 --> 01:52:56.090
barf 2000 a gem So you were just having that
1867
01:52:56.170 --> 01:52:59.729
authentic rollercoaster tycoon 2 experience. Yeah, cleaning up the barf
1868
01:52:59.930 --> 01:53:04.220
was an actual mechanic in the game. I guess janitorially,
1869
01:53:04.260 --> 01:53:06.739
your trash cans would get full and people would puke.
1870
01:53:07.159 --> 01:53:12.680
And if you put an ice cream stand next to
1871
01:53:12.699 --> 01:53:16.779
the exit gate for your tallest rollercoaster, that sidewalk would
1872
01:53:16.800 --> 01:53:21.149
just get barfed all over. Yeah, that's so good. Um,
1873
01:53:21.250 --> 01:53:23.510
that's great. I will, uh, put this in the video
1874
01:53:23.550 --> 01:53:25.390
review and a link in the show notes, but, um,
1875
01:53:25.710 --> 01:53:27.850
I think it was rollercoaster tycoon. There's like a creator
1876
01:53:27.890 --> 01:53:32.300
on YouTube who does like creates rollercoasters that like go
1877
01:53:32.399 --> 01:53:36.279
to like the rhythm of like music. So there's like
1878
01:53:36.300 --> 01:53:38.859
all these wicked songs where it's like rollercoaster tycoon. I
1879
01:53:38.899 --> 01:53:41.699
watched one and I was like, Brought to tears. I
1880
01:53:41.720 --> 01:53:44.020
was like, why it was for like gravity. And I
1881
01:53:44.020 --> 01:53:46.659
was like, what is happening? Why is this like rollercoaster
1882
01:53:46.680 --> 01:53:50.739
tycoon game making me want to cry? Um, so we'll
1883
01:53:50.770 --> 01:53:52.890
link to that in the show notes. But before we go,
1884
01:53:53.010 --> 01:53:55.609
speaking of high end, uh, monitors, I do just want
1885
01:53:55.630 --> 01:53:59.550
to say a big thank you to the fun factor community. Um,
1886
01:53:59.930 --> 01:54:02.609
if you've been following me on blue sky, my PVM monitor,
1887
01:54:02.630 --> 01:54:04.449
which I take a lot of photos of, which, which
1888
01:54:04.560 --> 01:54:07.779
people really like was dying. And I tried to get
1889
01:54:07.819 --> 01:54:12.800
it fixed locally. the guy made it worse. Uh, but
1890
01:54:12.819 --> 01:54:14.600
I did find somebody through a friend, like a friend
1891
01:54:14.619 --> 01:54:18.510
of a friend, uh, who has experienced fixing monitors. The
1892
01:54:18.520 --> 01:54:21.069
fun factor community really came together to help me afford
1893
01:54:21.090 --> 01:54:22.949
to be able to do it. It was not cheap.
1894
01:54:23.010 --> 01:54:25.949
It was very expensive. It's like more to repair than
1895
01:54:25.970 --> 01:54:29.250
I paid for the PVM originally. Uh, but it got
1896
01:54:29.289 --> 01:54:32.130
repaired and it is beautiful. And that's thanks to our
1897
01:54:32.210 --> 01:54:35.710
listeners who donated money so generously. And I just wanted
1898
01:54:35.750 --> 01:54:38.279
to say thank you on air. uh, to everybody who,
1899
01:54:38.420 --> 01:54:40.640
who gave, uh, you know, whether it was a little bit,
1900
01:54:40.800 --> 01:54:43.930
a lot of bit in the middle, every little bit helped. And, uh,
1901
01:54:44.029 --> 01:54:45.890
and I really appreciate it. And I'm going to try
1902
01:54:45.930 --> 01:54:48.770
to continue to put more and more, uh, effort just
1903
01:54:48.789 --> 01:54:51.189
back into the community that helps us make this show
1904
01:54:51.289 --> 01:54:54.090
helps us make the cool stuff that we make. So yeah. Yes.
1905
01:54:54.189 --> 01:54:56.680
Thanks everybody. It means a ton. Um, you know, the
1906
01:54:56.739 --> 01:55:01.300
community that we've built is, uh, uh, not huge, but
1907
01:55:01.340 --> 01:55:04.970
it's absolutely mighty. And it keeps growing. And it's because
1908
01:55:05.029 --> 01:55:07.210
you people are awesome people and you love the stuff
1909
01:55:07.229 --> 01:55:09.130
that we love and you love to think about it
1910
01:55:09.149 --> 01:55:10.800
the way we love to think about it. And that
1911
01:55:10.909 --> 01:55:15.079
is the most rewarding part of all of this. So, yeah, again,
1912
01:55:15.399 --> 01:55:17.539
if you are not already a Fun Factor Ultra member,
1913
01:55:17.800 --> 01:55:20.960
if you have not already subscribed to us on your
1914
01:55:21.180 --> 01:55:25.199
favorite media platform, whatever that might be, please do. Please
1915
01:55:25.220 --> 01:55:27.119
help share and spread the word because I think we're
1916
01:55:27.140 --> 01:55:31.409
doing something special here. And everybody who's listening and watching
1917
01:55:31.430 --> 01:55:33.529
right now is a huge part of that. And we
1918
01:55:33.569 --> 01:55:36.119
are super, super grateful to be a part of what
1919
01:55:36.159 --> 01:55:40.340
you are a part of. So that's our review of
1920
01:55:40.479 --> 01:55:44.270
Piper's review of Morrowind. Did we get it right? Did
1921
01:55:44.279 --> 01:55:46.529
we not? Leave our review review at Apple Podcasts. Post
1922
01:55:46.569 --> 01:55:48.229
it on YouTube. We will read the best ones on
1923
01:55:48.250 --> 01:55:51.250
the air. Special thanks go to Millennium Falc for our
1924
01:55:51.430 --> 01:55:56.149
amazing original music. Check out his work at millenniumfalc.com. And
1925
01:55:56.210 --> 01:55:58.210
unlike these old magazines, you won't have to wait a
1926
01:55:58.229 --> 01:56:00.529
whole month for your next installment. We drop new episodes
1927
01:56:00.869 --> 01:56:04.350
every two weeks. Also, Fun Factor Ultra members, we know
1928
01:56:04.420 --> 01:56:08.779
we are behind on bonus episodes. We are lining up interviews.
1929
01:56:08.819 --> 01:56:11.720
We are lining up guests. We're fishing around for people.
1930
01:56:11.840 --> 01:56:14.289
You know, we... We like to make these special and
1931
01:56:14.310 --> 01:56:16.130
we like to get people who can speak directly to
1932
01:56:16.149 --> 01:56:18.149
the kinds of experiences and topics that we want to.
1933
01:56:18.189 --> 01:56:21.850
So we are efforting. We will catch up. So go
1934
01:56:21.890 --> 01:56:25.939
to funfactorpod.com, follow the show, and I promise you cannot
1935
01:56:25.960 --> 01:56:28.659
miss the sign-up widget on our homepage. If you do,
1936
01:56:28.699 --> 01:56:51.140
you and we will have a maximum score in Fun Factory. Two, three, clap.
1937
01:56:51.979 --> 01:56:53.260
You said clap on clap. How do you know if
1938
01:56:53.319 --> 01:56:55.140
it matters that we're synced up? I just need to
1939
01:56:55.180 --> 01:56:56.479
see the wave lines. You said clap on clap and
1940
01:56:56.500 --> 01:57:04.149
you were like, clap. Yeah, I know. Whatever. You know, it's...
1941
01:57:07.409 --> 01:57:10.010
We are back on... Oh wait, just let me... Oh yeah, sure.
1942
01:57:10.369 --> 01:57:17.529
Before we throw, just let me get my screen share going. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Hey, thanks, Jason.
1943
01:57:17.560 --> 01:57:22.039
Appreciate it. Great discussion so far. Yeah, I was really good.
1944
01:57:22.060 --> 01:57:27.000
You know, sometimes the opening discussion is like only tangentially
1945
01:57:27.060 --> 01:57:28.920
related to the thing we're going to talk about. Or,
1946
01:57:28.939 --> 01:57:30.520
you know, we're kind of like, oh, what could we
1947
01:57:30.579 --> 01:57:32.300
actually talk about? But I think we both had a
1948
01:57:32.319 --> 01:57:33.819
lot to say on this and we'll have a lot
1949
01:57:33.850 --> 01:57:36.449
to say on it. Yeah. Which is cool. Yeah, I
1950
01:57:36.449 --> 01:57:39.630
was pretty happy to pull this together. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
1951
01:57:42.670 --> 01:57:45.569
Ghost was that chance to be like, okay, we're going
1952
01:57:45.590 --> 01:57:48.760
to bring our series to consoles with a game experience.
1953
01:57:48.770 --> 01:57:50.239
Did I just... That plays well on consoles. Did I
1954
01:57:50.239 --> 01:57:53.579
just lose you? I think that's interesting. Sorry. You froze
1955
01:57:53.600 --> 01:57:58.840
for a second. But Ghost was that... Shoot. It's asking...
1956
01:57:58.640 --> 01:58:01.859
Ghost was... Yeah. I just then, as soon as I
1957
01:58:01.899 --> 01:58:04.609
said Ghost was that, it went like, oh, you're trying
1958
01:58:04.630 --> 01:58:10.920
to reconnect. So anyway, Ghost was that... I was just... Also,
1959
01:58:10.939 --> 01:58:13.720
do we have reviews before I even do the throw?
1960
01:58:14.880 --> 01:58:17.180
Not that I've noticed. And I forgot to ask for
1961
01:58:17.279 --> 01:58:22.029
reader mail. Yeah. We're running pretty long, too. That's fair enough. Okay,
1962
01:58:22.050 --> 01:58:30.359
we can just axe it. Okay. Okay. aiden what kind
1963
01:58:30.600 --> 01:58:35.060
of let's do breakdown for me okay hold on let
1964
01:58:35.100 --> 01:58:37.329
me just say this so we can edit this in
1965
01:58:37.350 --> 01:58:39.250
because sometimes we roll into it and i do we
1966
01:58:39.289 --> 01:58:41.710
do have the sound drop for it so oh yeah
1967
01:58:41.770 --> 01:58:45.239
okay yeah no yeah let's pause um you can yeah
1968
01:58:45.380 --> 01:58:47.560
we'll do it on we'll edit it properly you're right