Castle Super Beast - CSB 253: Slavery Is The Point

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Castle Super Beast Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/CSBshirts Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for a $1-per-month trial period. Strip Club Jesus The Palworld Situation New Game Plus Behind A Paywall Another Week, Another Round of Layoffs The Best Arcade Machines Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast What’s going on with Palworld? Palworld has sold over 6 million copies in only 4 days Nintendo appear to be copyright striking videos of Pokemon mods for Palworld, but dude was charging for access to the mod Riot Layoffs add to the pile. 530 fired, 11% of the company Netflix Acquires Streaming Rights to WWE Raw, deal valued at $5 billion dollars beginning in January 2025 Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth Removes New Game +, Puts It Behind a DLC Paywall New Halo season 2 poster shows Master Chief fighting to stop the Fall of Reach. Chief was never on Reach. T-Pain Confirms He's Working on GTA 6, Says He Can't Role-Play in GTA 5 Anymore as a Result - Rockstar also hired the RP server teams Take-Two has filed a trademark dispute saying that Remedy’s new logo is too similar to their Rockstar Games logo.  

Music Oh I love that shirt dude. Thank you. I love that. Thank you very much parts one through eight In all icon format. Oh fuck. I thought it was like an old lady Christmas sweater That's a I did not realize it was a Jojo thing peace ladybug Butterfly horseshoe You know, etc. Etc. All I got here is my I'm not allergic to peanuts novelty shirt Which is ironically enough Got peanut butter on it from me eating peanut butter earlier. Huh?

That that is that is the same font and style as a shirt. I also saw this weekend with race cars on it and Quite interesting That's a great fucking shirt. Certified racer racist even. I showed that that I showed that picture of you hanging out with that guy to page and she was like, Oh my God, why would he wear that shirt to a con? And I'm like, No, honey, it's a race car. We're having some sleep fun shirt to a con to be no, honey? It's a race car.

We're having some sleep fun over here to be to be fair and shout out, Sponk, that was that was a temporary reveal to then cover back up for the bit for that one. Oh, that's smart. That was a. All right, you're ready. OK, here we go. That's smart and back. Oh, yeah. Yeah

You ever just kind of wish you could like put like fucking the world on hold so that you can just like not have a lot to talk about while you're in recovery mode and really tired and a lot has happened on my end and then also and a lot has happened on my end and then also Fucking all pal world everything everywhere the same week and I don't want it I don't want a five-hour one. Sorry truckers. Fuck you. I don't want five hours today So it's so funny the way that we have dealt with this right because well the pat like over the weekend I did not sleep super great because little baby Pat junior was like wha help me give me kisses in the middle of the night You know he does the thing you know the babies do so I woke up this morning and

Page had to go run a errand So I was I was taking care of the baby and I was like listen listen listen did you know did you know that if your coffee machine? Does express those shots that you can just put like four of those in like a single cup of coffee and then have two of those in like 30 minutes and then you can go so fast. Okay. And that was my plan to deal with today's podcast because I was pretty tired. And now I, I was sitting here and I'm like, I, you know, like I'm sitting here and I'm tired. You can see, you'll see it on the way, on the waveform that we're,

you're doing the intro. I'm going, okay. And you're just like, oh man, I can't have a long one today. And like, I agree with you. We don't have to have a long podcast. We just have to have a lot of podcasts. Just condensed. Fast. Condense, condensed.

Okay, okay. Now, you're aware, I don't know, I always come back to the fact that every time you drink your energy, it's not giving you energy. It's just suppressing the thing that makes you feel tired, right? So... Sure. It's not juice you're getting. It's just your body is not feeling the burn it should be. No, no, no, no.

Willie, I think you're wrong. I think what it does, it's not making you energized. It's making time slower. Right, okay, okay. Futurama, each cup, slow it all down. Like so, yeah, I, okay, Futurama. Each cup, slow it all down until you hit 100. Yeah, I had a little bit of caffeine. Little bit.

And I learned very young that the time to stop drinking caffeine is that when your eyes start to vibrate, yes, that's when you stop. Yes, yeah, when you feel the twitch right now. I know that exact twitch. I'm not there yet, so I'm good. I'm good. I'm just like, I'm so ready.

I'm so ready for today's show, Willie. Okay, okay. All right. All right. Well, then let me take the baton because I wanted to, in the middle of all of this bullshit and such, just boot Power World and touch it. I couldn't. That's fine.

I tried to get it in there, but could not. That just means there's more Power World for Nexus. Yes. Well, I mean, in my case, probably tomorrow, really. Yeah. Because I gotta do it. But fine, fine. tomorrow really. Yeah, I gotta gotta gotta gotta do it. Um, but fine, fine. That will that will be you'll have to just break it

all down. Now, I've been doing the research. And and and to be fair, Gene has was simultaneously by covering that and IRL at the same time. And he told me chatting me, because we were chatting about Powell world late at night, and he was like, dude, I must look insane because I just ran up to Woolley in a crowd and started yelling about Powell world. He's on top of it. To be fair, G Park is fucking doing it.

He's doing his job while also living in the real world. Like he's running, like every, like if you're seeing, like you know, you look on someone like that's really busy online and you're like, oh shit, okay, that's what they're spending their time on. And he's like, no, no, no, he's multitasking. Both are happening. He's passing the puck in this Tuewi adventure.

So yeah, Magfest happened. How was Magfest? Magfest was really fun. I am back from that. And, you know, I mean, it's the Mac, MacFest is great and always fun to run into, like, yeah, the friendly faces and see folks that I don't get to see very often and meet some new people as well, very cool. And the, I guess the the highlights real is the best way to do it because again, like there's obviously a bunch that can go here. But yeah, this this

time around, I feel like Reggie got a really good vibe and enjoyed himself going into, well last year, he basically, he had a really bad beat because he got sick on the first day and just kind of felt really cold and shit. Oh that's bullshit. You want to get sick, you want to get sick when you're back and you go, well, I had good times.

Exactly, right, but he just got like, you know, like flued up and was like, okay, I'm just going to have to spend a lot of time like, you know, chilling at the room and stuff. And it was just really, you know, like it was, it was a rough go for the first time. So he needed a redo to experience that for reals. And this was, this was definitely that opportunity, you know. So

yeah, participated in the in the Street Fighter Tournament and then in the Strive Tournament and such. Usually, like I said, I don't like to do con tournaments because I'm not in that that mode. There's too much going on and I don't want to hold up a bracket. I don't want to be that person. You know, stuff's going on and I don't want to hold up a bracket. I don't want to be that person, you know stuff's going on but In this case, yeah, like he did really well at like a holiday Matsuri

So this time around he entered got second in Street Fighter did Hell yeah, I'm on all in that bracket. I Choked immediately to someone that made top eight because that's how that goes I choked immediately to someone that made top eight because that's how that goes. That's like you're the ninth, buddy. And then that means your ninth. That's how the math works. However the math works. And in Strive, we both want our first match and then had to face each other. And that's always amazing. I love the guy. Get out, get on a plane and fly to another country just to fight the same motherfucker As always so all right sure

You know and that but yeah, but it was very cool and it was nice to just kind of do that for a little bit And but at the same time I'm always just like ah There's 15 other things going on. There's there's shit. I want to check out and so on so yeah I just I definitely like I even though I'm like your fucking fighting game tournament promotion person I'm also like this is the last situation I kind of want to sit down and do this in because I want to focus and play It's kind of like like not be all over the place Do you want to fly all the way to Japan to go eat at McDonald's? A little bit of that. A little bit of that.

But you have fighting games at home. Literally, yes, exactly. But no, but kudos because like I mean, I get Regi had a fucking great run and killed it. A lot of fun there. In previous years, I've gotten like the, you know, the t-shirt and stuff like that. This time around, I was like, okay, let me fuck it. Let me just go in for like the collectible badge thing and You get all that stuff including like a fucking

always sunny Franklin Reynolds Ducky Makara like for you know like the wild like wild collectors items and stuff But in particular I wanted to call attention to the Swagg But in particular, I wanted to call attention to the Swagge, which is Swagge? It is a swag badge that you get. They've had, I've seen these in the past where it's like, you kind of, you get it and it like, it like lights up and is like, um, you know, like a kind of like a little badge that you can like put little lighting configurations on and it'll

glow and do stuff. And I'm like, oh, that's always cool and stuff. But the fucking thing, I never actually really took a second to look and figure out what this actually was besides just lights. And it's a little console. The controller console. There's a screen on it. And on this screen, there's a touchpad.

There's two buttons and a D pad start and select. And this this screen is displaying. you can you have literally like 13 or little different modes of games on it. You've got music. You've got like a chiptunes maker where you can just make chiptunes music on it. It's fucking crazy. It seems like a lot. It's incredible, right? For the and yeah, you get it. I think it was like, yeah, with the like the $100 badge tier or so. And it also has a USB port so that you can use it as a PC or switch controller. So it doubles as a gamepad. Where did you get that? Is that the badge from MagFest? It's the bag. It's the MagFest badge they give you when you when you get the the yeah, there's like the

the two there's like the basic tier and then there's the $100 and then there's the Magfest badge they give you when you get the, yeah, there's like the two, there's like the basic tier and then there's the $100 and then there's the crazy one. But it's like, yeah, you get it at that one. And it's like, it's literally a fucking controller. Can it run Doom? Yes, absolutely, 100%. Because like right now the games that it has

are like fake Metroid kind of things. Cause it's like, it's MagTroid. So you're running a like Wolfenstein or Doom-esque like first person shooter, but you're like also like Metroid priming it, and you can like shoot and lock on and do all that shit. So just, yeah, notable, fucking amazing piece of random merch

that you get with your shit. And now that I actually know what those glowing lights are in cities, that's super worth it. The, yeah, and then the other thing is of course, there's the Indies room, which has a bunch of cool stuff worth checking out that I'm always like, okay, let's take a time. Just like you have to go through the dealers,

you gotta go through the Indies, see what they got, see what's going on, you know? So I saw a couple things there that, yeah, I wanted to talk about. Okay, there's, up first is a game that was called Mindwave. It is straight up WarioWare on PC.

Okay. Nintendo is going to make WarioWare on PC. Okay. Nintendo is going to make WarioWare on every platform it can, and you will always be able to experience it with different controllers. You will never play WarioWare with a mouse and keyboard. Listen, Willie. Listen. Okay. Okay? Nintendo not making a game on PC is a great excuse to just rip off the core concept and put it on Steam.

So Mindwave is going all the way with that and they've created a very cute world in lore where like this um, you're diving into people's minds and whatever the case is the setting is. It's gorgeous, the animation is a lot of of fun and you're warrior wearing with WASD and keys and this looks crunchy as fuck too like this art is like all over the place stylistic a lot of fun just yeah definitely like a favorite of the of the indie room and and yeah this game looks like how a Sega Genesis sounds putting it on your radar mind where mind wave. Excuse me. Yeah, I didn't feel like putting the headphones on, so I missed out on some

some music otherwise, but just I wouldn't fucking do that. Yeah. So I wouldn't put on a fucking headphone set at any event ever. So yeah, there you go. But but definitely one I want people to know about that. And then there's always what's always fun to is they've got the like installation, half art game, half art installation, half game set ups. So the in previous events, I talked about like the the thousand button fighting game and all those wacky things

this time around, they had a game called a dough decimation, which is hard to type. It is a doughdecahedron with reflect with with mirrors inside and like a one way mirror facing all the way inside. So you can see from the outside and it's reflecting when you're looking inside. In between all the, if you've got your, you've got your surfaces and then you've got your splines in between.

There are two controllers hooked up that control lights that are traveling along those. And what you have to essentially do is battle each other to circle more polygons, if you would, to get more powerful and circle things faster, and you have to take over the whole shape. That seems incredibly complicated to visualize

when you're not looking at it. It's so simple in idea. It's like there's a shape, it's 3D, and you need to encircle every flat surface of it to win. But in execution you have to rotate and crouch and tilt up and it's how you physically rotate around the thing. That's the real gameplay. But it was like, yeah, it was a lot of fun and Dode Decimation is a fantastic name for a game. So shout outs to that.

Really, it looks cool as well in the dark, you know, just a shape on a pillar with controllers sitting next to it and it's all glowing and it's just fucking cool. A similar art installation in ass game was Haber Dasher, a giant hat humongous person, multiple person sized hat. It could fit on top of a car sized hat. And two people get underneath it and your goal is to use it as a controller because on the screen you are two aliens piloting a human body, almost men in black style.

And you have to use the hat to get up and be a normal human, walk down the street, and your goal is to get a newspaper, get some coffee, get your briefcase, and go to work. So this is incredibly complicated because there is an existing kart racing game called Haber Dashers, which is what comes up when I click on this. Well, that's not this. Yikes. Okay. But yeah, I guess the Octo Dad is a comparison point. Quap is a comparison point. You know, you are you are not a human being and walking forward seems pretty

simple. You just tilt and then but as you have to start navigating and getting your other things, it starts to fall apart and get much harder. So that was a little goofy fun thing and again, just giant hat control. There was, I talked about this actually a couple of weeks back, but Raw Metal is the game that was a sci-fi stealth and The surge slash seafood like in its combat system all dark and tech sort of visuals, but also top-down shooting no top-down

Stealthing and then when you get into stealthing top-down stealth game and when you get into combat, it then rotates over to Sifu slash. Oh, cool. Absolver mode. And yeah, so I saw the trailer for that. I brought it up a little week and then there was a demo. I was gonna play it on the channel before, but the demo was really short.

It was like 15 minutes or so. So I was like, okay, I guess I'll wait for something a little bit longer. But the style of the game is very cool and combat is, you know Like like I said, seafood absolver you sidestep you parry you, you know, you can launch you can combo you go in and Enemies surround you and you have to fight off the group and try to make it through It's a game where stealth is the goal and they basically the inception was like, oh, like what if it was fun when you got caught in one of these games? And I'm like, yeah, I don't want to do any stealth crawling at all actually just put me fun to fight after fight after fight but um, yeah pointing it out because yeah, the style is very very visually striking and combat looks like a lot of fun. So

Raw metal is that game. I walked by a game that I saw and I was like, hold on a minute. I think I've played this, but I don't recognize the name. The game was called Death of a Wish. And I was like, wait a minute, I pretty sure I know this art style. And it turns out I played it's a sequel to the game I did play called Luca Born from a Dream, which is a top down, you know, I guess like top down you can like you can say 2D souls ish in some ways, but

a lot of like hyper light drifter kind of style, quick combat movements and, you know, like difficulty and, and yeah, very striking again art style Like it looks like chalkboard drawings, very stylistic. And yeah, the original game was pretty cool. And I was, yeah, I feel like they have a very distinct style. So it's cool to hear that there's more of that coming. I think March or so is when they said there's going to be more of that. So you can you can go pretty fast and and shit can get it's all the every background is black.

And then like you're looking at again, almost like colored chalk as the the the the the the sprites that you're looking at. So very cool death from a wish death of a wish. I briefly tried out a game called Scrap Seas, which is OK, cel shaded, almost like advanced wars style, but like you're in the water, you're controlling a boat or like a submarine and you have to lock onto other submarines and just kind of drift around them and shoot your cannons. So, you know, naval warfare kind of play.

And then you're moving around the map to like better than skull and bones. Probably probably still pretty early. And I only spent a little bit of time playing it for like a just touching it for a bit. But like stylistically, I thought it was pretty cool. And it seems like you can customize your ship a bit, maybe like dreadnought it for a bit. But like stylistically, I thought it was pretty cool. And it seems like you can customize your ship a bit, maybe like dreadnought it up a somewhat and, you know, like have all kinds of different builds and such. It seems like there would be room for that.

But yeah, cool stylistically. And I had some fun drifting around on the water with this exaggerated way. That was cool. Also, there was a game called Cypher Zero, and it was just a puzzle game that was very minimal, didn't give you much of the rules, and you had to just kind of like, it was, you know, very, very reminiscent of, I've talked about Black Box, which was a game on iOS where you like, use the volume knob or slide down the

pause, you know, screen or like pull up your window or your settings over here and that solves one of the puzzles in the game. Right. So this is kind of like that sort of visual style where it's, uh, there's a grid and some shapes and things and it's like, figure out the language, you know, just into it. And I like that kind of stuff. I enjoy like, like, like puzzles where you can just kind of like take a couple steps, figure out what's happening here. And then you're like, oh, there's a rule to follow that you kind of go through each world or each section with.

So Cypher zero is pretty cool. Very simple though. Gunmetal Gothic is, it's Bloodborne PSX as its own stand to load game. Yeah, it is Bloodborne PSX as its own standalone game. Yeah, it is Bloodborne PSX. I just, it's the name. Oh, fuck, it sure is, holy shit. It's the name, the levels, the style, the words that are used in the title imply

the exact visuals you're getting. More gun though. More gun, less sword and transformation trick weapon. But you are very much playing someone else doing a Bloodborne PSX style thing. I'm doing a Bloodborne, guys. Yeah, I thought it was okay. OK. You know, like I didn't. I think you just kind of, I only was able to like work with two weapons initially and I had some issues with like some lock on stuff, but it was cool. I walked by two that I didn't get a chance to play, but they seems pretty cool. Noise Starlight, but noise has a Z at the end.

So, NOISZ Starlight. It's an iPad rhythm game and bullet hell at the same time. So, Osu, but also bullet hell. Bunch of shit happening musically. And I like that. I like I like rhythm title actually written out might be the most complicated fake-ass spelling of anything I've ever seen it is way worse than you were describing noise noise starlight yeah but the G is like a fucked up V in its logo oh with with the yeah, yeah, there's

There's a couple of things going on Didn't yeah didn't get to didn't get to try it, but that that seemed cool at a distance and the other one was Deep mess which I was looking to see if I could Google it and the unfortunately the SEO for this game is really not good because it returned nothing and then typing in the folks that made it which was glass jury also returned nothing so then you I think you have to go to glassjury.com to actually see it but it isn't into the breach like and now that I've played a mobile suit, Baba, and there's a couple other games that are like, you know, kind of like into

the breach likes as a thing. I mean, as a huge fan of that game, I'm always interested for something else that's similar. In this case, you are a little like, it seems to be like your little army of like, like soldiers that are going inside of The body of God to lobotomize his brain cool Your goal on that your goal is to use your hammer and a nail to lobotomize God. So That's a setup right there. Quit it. Quit it right That's a setup right there. Quit it. Quit it. Right. And yeah, gameplay-wise, again, into the breach-like grid,

you know, set your movements, undo if you fuck up at least one turn, and pre-plan with perfect information. And then, yeah, there was a game called Unbeatable, which was also brought up before it is a Rhythm game where you are fighting the music as it comes at you So from all sides left and right you're standing in the middle and like with a very stylized stylish Hold on you have mentioned a couple of games lately and I'm doing the thing where I look them up on YouTube.

Unbeatable might have the worst SEO ever of anything because unbeatable brings up fucking just a billion fucking things that have nothing to do with it. So I type unbeatable game. Yeah. And get- oh it actually worked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, unbeatable. And then it says, let's see, white label. Yeah. That's the one. Wait, very stylish. Wait, no, is that correct? Is it D cell? Yep, that's the one. Okay. I got owned. Unbeatable and then white label in brackets.

Incredibly beautiful game, super fun style and you know, yeah, fucking cassette tape aesthetic. Your speech bubbles are sticking out in 3D in your characters or all that shit that I like. You know, some nice woolly bait visuals. This is what I would call a high stimulus trailer. And yeah, gameplay wise you are, everything's attacking you on rhythm tracks that are coming from left-right and you have to, you know, attack at the right height and on the beat and that's it. So you're kind of like rhythm combating your way through it. Very cool, stylish and fun, but I crashed it twice

in playing it during the tutorial, one of which involved them having to come over and hard reset that shit from the PC. So I was like, okay. Good job, Willie. QA field continues to activate. It was, yeah, it was literally just hitting a mid-note during one of the tutorials for hitting two buttons at once

and that thing just, it didn't like what I was trying to do. So I managed to beat Unbeatable in its demo. In some way, but still worth putting on the radar. Very, very stylish and cool-looking game So that was cool And so yeah Jean Park was in town. I mean he fucking lives there. So thank you. Thank you for hugging Jean for me I appreciate it. Yeah, and you know, it was it was great to to finally meet in person.

He is pretty tall, you know, really? He's yeah, well, I think he's yeah, he's you know, I was like, oh, shit, there, what's up? Yep. So I don't know what you were expecting or hoping for, but I wasn't actually expecting anything. I hadn't even thought of it even one second until you said it. But then I was like, huh?

Yeah. So, you know, we we shopped the shit and went, had some dinner, chilled out and, you know, just caught up and I heard about some of the the the origin stories of Guam life into into Hawaii and all the things that are, again, one to one experiences with what he's having in like a dragon you know an infinite wealth like it's it's kind of nuts how that game just drops itself right over his life. Well it shows that like they they they spent the time to make something that was like true to the living experience. Yeah, I mean, the anytime a game picks a location as it's like setting and that's like a point of the plot, you have to assume they're like, okay, we've gone out here, we've done our research.

You know, I'm thinking of when the team Kojima went out to all the research areas from MGS4 and shit. I'm thinking of when the people at Insomniac went down to New York and were like, man, everyone there loves the NYPD. Spider-Man would too. And you know what, there was a time too where it was like, wow, the Ubi team went down to Florence in Italy and actually got textures of the walls and they're going to tell they're going to build an accurate

world for Ezio to run around in. That's cool. And once upon a time when it was just that simple. But yeah, no, so that was a whole lot of fun. And then there's, and then there's, then there's just like, all right, then there's events that occur. Oh yes, yes. Oh, you got, you got wins?

You got wins? No, but you went to a convention. Yeah, yeah. And then there's events that occur like for the podcast. Yes. So, so Gene is like, hey, the word, you know, making plans or whatever. And he's like, hey, so, yeah, yeah, listen, we should we should go grab a bite

I know a place actually got invited to We can we should we can go check it out about an hour away. There's a strip club. Yeah Really good food That's how it is man, right? Apparently the food is great with how they keep you there But I'm like, you got to do it for the story. You got to do it for the story. Like, really? Are you dead serious? Like, yeah, no, dead serious, right?

This is the thing. You're like, OK, can we do this? Can we make it back while other things are happening? Like, how? Yeah, the timing could be a little iffy. The timing could be a little iffy. So, you know, you're like, OK, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. This is the thing. You're like, okay, can we do this? Can we make it back while other things are happening?

Like how? And the timing could be a little iffy. The timing can be a little iffy. So unfortunately, we weren't able to make that happen on the Friday or so, but we said, all right, fuck it. For the bit, Sunday we'll go, you know? Boy, I don't think you need to get decent food and look at titties for a bit.

I think a lot of people just do that. They certainly do. But again, especially like to drive an hour out for it. And it's just like, hey, first impression. Nice to meet you for reals and offline. I'm Gene. Want to go to a strip club? I hear they got great eats.

It's kind of wild. You know. No, That seems appropriate Cuz I'll be streaming and like I like it's the strangest fucking thing It's the weirdest thing I'll be streaming and it's like quiet and it's like normal and then like some toxic evil psycho woman Shows up and starts being all insane and doing insane female shit and then jeans just in my chat Just it just fucking appears. And goes, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

I can make her worse. And I go, where'd you come from? Where did you, you were here. Yeah, no, and again, as someone who's lived that infinite wealth life, you know, he's already had his like, again, he knows the deal with fucking grown up on the rough, the rough streets of Guam and, and, and

being baby sat in a strip club and, you know, and like all kinds of wild shit. So, yeah, so basically by by Sunday, it's like, all right, that'll be a little bit after things start to calm down. And we amass a little group. So with Ipatch Wolf, Little V, Foxcade, Oni and Jill and Punch Mom and stuff, we just, we head on down. And yeah, like the, you know, like Gene's like,

spoken to the dude in charge, the manager, whatever. He's like set up a table and everything and it's all like right in the front and, you know, like whatever, like priority seating and shit. Or just like, all right, fuck it, let's go. And so we light it up and- I knew a guy. Mm-hmm, yeah, he knew, and it, let's go. And so we light it up and I knew a guy. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

He knew. And yeah, there you go. Right. And so he came over and again, he had his I forgot his name, but like whatever it was like, oh, yeah, you're that guy. Cool. Nice. What's up? He's like, anything you guys need to do that. And, you know, we sit down, we do our thing. It just happens to lay out in a in a formation right in front of the pole, of the main stage, that is basically just the last supper.

And of course he's dead center, so Gene is now strip club Jesus, and leaning over talking whatever. And yeah, we order up, we do our thing and it's, you know. It was the food. You know what? It was pretty all right. It was a bet. Yeah.

It, I was expecting a bar like with, because, okay, when I think of strip club food, I think of like- Club food? I know, no, no. I think of what I've heard, which is like a buffet table and like a salad bar, right? And like I've like that's the type of imagery I get of like you walk around a little with your little tray and Scoop some stuff into your plate and go back and sit down that wild shit. And that's not

That's not what happened. You know, they brought out some like, you know proper plates Jean got like a personal pizza and they made it extra big because it was like hey, what's up? That's not what happened, you know? They brought out some like, you know, proper plates. Jean got like a personal pizza and they made it extra big because it was like, hey, what's up? Thank you for coming, yada yada. Yeah, like it was like, I was like, okay, this is solid. I half considered, I was looking at it,

I was like, I'm kind of, I saw a shrimp cocktail on the list and I was like, I'm kind of in the mood for a shrimp. I'm not gonna get a fucking shrimp cocktail. I think, let's keep it sane. If I get sick, I have no one to blame but me for getting seafood out in a fucking DC shrimp club in the wild. Right?

But I watched you eat old cake off of a fucking, like table, literally, literally a few hours like, table, literally, a fucking bureau. Literally a few hours, not a big deal. Hyper over exaggerated story for the bit. But, bully, there were like five other people in that room and they have all told that story the same. Hyper exaggerated. Nonetheless, in this case, I'm like, seafood is a dice roll. And I've had seafood, I've had a shrimp salad thing from like a food court that I liked

that got me fucked up for a couple days. So even under the best conditions, it's like, all right, you're still taking it. You're taking a chance. I'm just like, you know what? Let's just let's just keep it safe. Why tempt fate, especially when I'm not at home, right? Where worse comes to worse. I don't want to be fucking shitting my ass out in a hotel bathroom and then for the rest of this, you know, whatever it is part of the experience and then on a plane and then in trans etc etc like so you know I Got a nice mushroom Swiss burger. I can't complain. It was that sounds nice. It was it was quite nice

So like no surprise to anyone would it would it would you would you be surprised if I were to tell you that Like Reggie's a natural and just gets up and is in his element with a piece of slice tossing. You know? Tossing his bills out and doing it and it just looks like not missing a beat. Like, oh yeah, okay, regular. He knows what's going on. Just super well adjusted.

I'll tell you what, man. While the rest of us are- No Reggie that well? So I'm getting a lot via osmosis. So I'm going to just say no, I don't think there's almost anything you could possibly tell me about Reggie that would surprise me at all. I mean, I think you could rest assured that we were definitely

a bunch of like con attendees, you know, showing up to have fun. And again, in a large group of, you know, mixed company as well, it's not the same as like one or two dudes coming in on their own. So it's a, it's a party-ish atmosphere. But nonetheless, you know, again, dude just, just went up and was doing his thing. Oh yeah, okay, no, he's, he knows what he's doing.

He's got it. So you hit the bill breaker, you go in in we don't have they you we don't have $1 bills anymore in Canada, of course, but clearly in America that's that had $1 bills Since like fucking before I was born and we're also like like basically cashless at this point as well Like it's really yeah, a lot of Americans don't know that we are. We are the Canada has like given up on on money in your hand. It's very unusual for it to be used in most places. So all that to say like it's like, yeah,

no strip clubs keeping America with keeping those bills in rotation. You know, there's a reason for it. Yeah. And so, you know, like that was all smoothin'. At the end, you know, I guess we did our job and we patronized every, the place and we, you know, everyone that worked hard was compensated, it was a good time. Stimulated the local economy. There you go.

Amongst other things, apparently. And, you know, again, a bunch of a bunch of some gamers are shyer than others, but it was a good time. And you know what, we even at the end of the evening were brought some merch and we got some, we got some, some tukes. So shout outs to the Good Guys Club in Washington, DC as voted the best strip club multiple years in a row, apparently.

Well that's nice. Yeah, so, you know, again, like Gene, hell of a first impression. Well done, well nice. Yeah. So, you know, again, like Jean, hell of a first impression. Well done. Well done, sir. I applaud it, you know. Like he's in and it is he did say it's like it is a bit of a hail Mary to just be like, hey, Willie, what's up? So how about this, though? But you you you know enough to know that it's like, yeah, it's a lot of like,

hey, you look cool. Get in get on this story. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, when you're chatting and talking about, you know, whatever, love the Yakuza or just whatever game shit. And then like the air is punctuated with the sound of like an ass drop in low or like heels clicking and you're like, oh, hey, oh, wow, look at that. Incredible. Wow, they can do flips now. How times have changed?

Oh, the athleticism. Yo, there is a there is a reason why like pole dancing has become a massive workout like trend because that is a real thing that takes so much upper body strength. It's crazy. So yeah, any of the moves you see that they're pulling off are like well fucking earned. There is still the illusion being shattered somewhat though of like,

when you see the spinning on the pole in particular, the knowledge that the pole is actually two pieces, there's a rotating base. So when you grab it, the pole itself is locked in place, but it will spit, it'll rotate. You know, so that part of it is not actually them hands burning around. Dude, you're fucking shit with Chaffoff. It's insane. That part's not it. But for the actual like upper body strength and core and

upside down and shit and all that, that's just pure, that's pure muscle. So good times there. And I mean, fuck. I'd go back, you know, I'd get me a burger. Why not? That was, it was wild. And I guess overall too, I think I'd say that most of the time coming down to America

There's a little bit of that like oh you guys are from Canada dang well You know you you must be going through the real winter like this shit must be nothing to you But to be fair to the fucking I guess whatever that the water by the corner of Washington and and Virginia and Maryland that shit's Super freezing like that depends man. I've shoveled the my walkway twice this year. Mm-hmm and Virginia and Maryland. That shit's super freezing. Like that's what- Oh, it depends, man. I've shoveled my walkway twice this year.

That's it. Wow, okay, yeah. I would say like for us, it just snow piles up more. We get it like knee deep, you know, and sometimes worse, but in terms of just like how much the outside is trying to kill you, no, no.

If you live in some of those areas, especially waterfront areas during the winter, you're getting the brunt of it. You're getting damaged. America can get very cold. Yeah, definitely comparable to how Canada gets in some cases. So, yeah. That's pretty much the deal.

I am going to see if with the rest of this week, I want to just dive into Power World, so probably going to check that out tomorrow and then pick back up with Sacred and Terrible Air. So I want to get a little bit further into that as well. But obviously, since I didn't get to, well, so, Woolly vs. Satch on everything, go check that out. That's the thing that Woolly does, go to it.

Yeah, so, Pat, oh, what's- Woolly, before we get into POW world, we have to go through all the other stuff because POW world goes right into news. Okay, okay. We have to go through all the other stuff because POW world goes right into news. Okay, okay. Right? So first off, while you were out and about making friends and going to strip clubs, I went to my local infant circle for babies.

Studying the blade. What is an infant circle? An infant circle is a law, you go to a community center and a nice older lady who's had like ten kids says like hey, hey new moms and parents but 99% new moms. Let's talk about secure attachment and what are some good ways we can, we can, you know, make sure we have secure attachment with the baby and they do all that. And that's nice, particularly if there's like, they're also gonna have like a first aid course,

like with the firefighters come over. But most of it is so that moms can network with other moms and be like, I don't know what I'm fucking doing. Do you know what you're doing? And then some of them will be like, yeah. And also so that you can have, because babies can also socialize. Okay. Right?

Because you don't want to have your baby be like a total shut-in. You need your baby to be all sociable and shit. Yeah, that's important. So we went down to the infant circle and we met a couple of moms and their babies and we had a nice time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we sit down and we have our baby who is perfect, our tiny perfect me who is the best baby there ever was. And then you get to have the fun thing of like, okay, well, I know I have the best baby there ever was. And then you get to have the fun thing of like, Okay, well I know I have the best baby. But maybe some of these other babies will be better or worse at different baby tasks than my baby.

Right? And so in come two moms with their children. One of which is the biggest goddamn fucking baby I have ever seen in my fucking life. It was more than twice the size of my child, and it's the same age. Whoa. Like, I thought it was a fucking two year old toddler. It was a, it was a fucking six month old infant. In head and body. Wow, that's a, he's a big one.

And she's like, yeah, he is 99th percentile for size. The biggest damn baby ever. You crazy. I mean, you kind of immediately wonder like how the birth went. Hard. Probably. Gee, and then and then we look at across this slightly younger baby. He's a cute little guy.

And he spent the entire infant circle barfing as hard as he could on the floor. Oh man. Just like we noticed he came in with a bib, which is weird, because he had a bib walking in the door. Okay. And then right onto the boob,

just like right out the boob, just, ugh, like right out, like immediately, like immediately. Like, oh here, you hungry little guy? Ugh! Like every time, like I'm telling you, Willie, in an hour, more than 10 times. More. Okay.

Meanwhile, giant baby is here, and he sits up great. Like he's great. My little guy, he stands up amazing, but that Giant Baby could sit up like a pro. So like good for him. Super weird, super weird, like comparing your starter. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah sure sure sure okay, and then you walk away going like Those babies had some stuff, but But this one though Got this one's gonna go be a doctor Mm-hmm. You've got the you've got the s tier. Let's see what the other eight years are gonna. Yeah, let's see what let's see

What he's gonna be working with when he's older Let's see what he's gonna be working with when he's older. It's talking with other parents is weird. It's so fucking weird, Willie. Well, it was weird before the baby. It was weird before baby. But the assumption is that then suddenly it clicks in and then now it's supposed to be normal. Yeah.

And then just like, like you have this weird thing where you're chatting and they're like, hey, what are you doing for the child to help their development? And you're like afraid that you're gonna say something like, oh, we don't do that because we think that fucks the baby up. And then they go, oh, we do that, we love that. Oh. So that didn love that. Oh.

So that didn't happen. Yeah. But that's always kind of like, because everyone's got their different fucking style and you're afraid that you're like, oh, we would never, we would never give the iPad to the baby. And you're afraid that the person you're talking to

is like, oh, we give that little shit the iPad all day. So far so good. So far so good. Us, like, well, when we brought that up, it was like, I definitely knew, I'm like, oh yeah, people are gonna, like, that have used the iPad are gonna write in to be like, well, here's our context for it.

That's a very polarizing one in particular. It's highly polarizing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. But that was fun. And then there's all sorts of baby activities. Like there's a fucking read-along that I could go to. I don't think I'm gonna go to that one.

I'm gonna go to the infant circle, but I don't really wanna go to the song, Singin' One. And is there like a like, okay, like now every, all the babies kinda interacting with each other. So, this is the second one, Paige went to the first one and I tagged along to the second one. The first time there were many more babies, including like one year olds and two year olds.

And one year olds and two year olds, and one year olds and two year olds love babies. So they would come up to your baby and pet your baby, like it's a puppy. Yeah. Yeah, right, right. Which is weird. But they do, babies love babies. Or a small child will just come over to a nice adult

and just like sit on them and be like hello. And you have to converse with a non-verbal child. But so far no evil or mean babies. Good, good. This is all formative, you know? It is. Yeah. Let's see what else. So infant circles are cool. If you have a new child go to one of these

community events at the very least it'll make you feel less insane when you're dealing with parent stuff. Second of all, I have discovered a Windows feature I didn't know existed, which kicks ass. Did you know there's a virtual keyboard on Windows? You mean the thing that's open on every single computer in this house at all times? Yes. Oh man. Virtual keyboard is the best.

I use virtual keyboard on every single computer at all times, constantly. Why? What are you using it for? Because there are times when I like I have couch set up where keyboard is awkward and not ideal. Like I'm sitting at a desk right now for this but when I'm over there or when I'm downstairs is a bunch of times where I'm like I just want to type something in quickly. I just want a mouse for this setup. So I'm always using the virtual keyboard. So like for like the past two weeks like on nearly

every single message I've put on social media has been via a virtual keyboard because I'm bouncing my little man. He's good. He falls asleep. Yeah, and if he falls asleep I only got the one hand check out because I don't want to I don't want to wake him. He's so damn cute I can't can't Disturb him with the windows ease of access center the accessibility options when you log in or whatever and it's like make your computer easier to use and then like it goes down that list. There's a bunch of good shit that you can use but yeah definitely that always mandatory. Oh man.

Well, if you don't know what's there what's apparently everyone but me does. You should check it out. It's good. It's good when you only have one hand. Yeah. It's good for you only have one hand. Yeah, it's good for it There you go because before I figured that out Willie. I was I was like messaging people and Tweeting by scrolling through Twitter and copying words with copy paste

Yeah, like a serial killer making a fucking newspaper That's insanity. That's complete insanity. Well, it was not long-term viable. Jesus Christ. No, like even having a wireless keyboard nearby, which is also an option, there's times when it's still awkward, especially if I just want to type something really short and quick.

You know, where like, yeah, like, because the way it's set up is it's inside the little like foot stool kind of area right there. And I'm like, I just want to type in a website or whatever. I'm not trying to lead over and go grab this on the other side of the couch. Like fuck that, just, yeah man, absolutely necessary. Now, I know a lot of folks say, Pat, just type one handed. I can type one handed, but because I'm hanging out

in a rocking chair and I'm, you know know I'm rocking back and forth for sleepy time I don't want to put a fucking keyboard on top of my baby's chest so I can type mean it's super You did the physical thing it's awkward and you're putting it on your lap or where you but no no on screen keyboard mix It solves the yeah, it's great Be careful wonderful Moving on to games I played so this is a really great detail, talking about games that have weird moral conundrums associated with it.

I have almost beaten Prince of Persia, The Lost Crown. Nice. A game that I've seen almost no one talk about at all. Because Ubisoft is so evil, and right after the game came out and people started to talk nice about it, they're like, well people gotta fucking get used to not owning their fucking games.

You couldn't have a moment. You couldn't have a moment. Dude, it was like a day. It was like a fucking day. It was unbelievable. It might be like the best Metroid game ever made. It's legitimately unbelievable. It is an absolute high bar for quality in every way. It is immaculate, gorgeous, great soundtrack, interesting, good story,

incredible exploration. And when you load it up on Ubi Play because it's not on Steam, you get to the title screen and just in case you forgot it says Prince of Persia the lost crown a Ubisoft original as Part of the title screen. It's like huge They were very afraid that you would forget that Ubisoft made it so it's right there on the title screen You just know that like for every time that something like this goes down There's a team of people that were like can we make something really good from inside the belly of the beast? That's a team. Right?

It's like, okay, but like maybe if we hide it for long enough and just move it out of the vision, you know, just keep moving it out of the eye of Sauron and whatever, we can eventually, it's like, okay, we got it, here, it's good. And it's like, cool. And then seconds after it releases, you get that. Now take the brand!

You know, and then just, yeah, everyone just goes for the love of fucking God. We were there. We were almost there. It came out and it's good, but you had to fucking just say your stupid shit. Oh my God. All physical games going away,

you know, Xbox is getting rid of them. It's just it's yeah. Anyways, eight, eight, like I said, it looked fucking dope from from the first looks at the trailer and the combat seems really interesting and high speed. And there's a there seems to be a good mix of level traversal giant monster fighting and one V one small guy fighting. Yeah, it's it's fucking great. In particular, I got the final movement ability this morning.

They're all really good. They're all really good. And it's like there's obviously some sequence breaking that you can do with this because of multiple movement abilities kind of have the same thing. For sure. But the thing that one of the things the most impressive is something that games have been doing or Metroid games have been doing for a little while was that the fucking double jump is like. The fucking ass end of the game.

Just like you're going to get you're going to learn how to do all this shit and you're going to learn how to bullshit your way through platforming challenges without a fucking double jump. You don't need a double jump. And right when you're like, I don't need a double jump. Here's your fucking double jump. OK. And you just go, oh, I can do anything now. And that's like in, you know, obviously with a Metroid map game, like having movement

options is the most powerful thing because the whole game is right there loaded in. You know what I mean? Like if you're if you're it's not taking you on a forced line by line linear style thing, then traversal is the most powerful thing because it's more than just traversal. It's progression. Yeah. Yeah, no, super incredibly excellent. Can't say even one bad thing about it except for the gigantic evil logo of alleged sex pest defenders that shows up on the screen every time you turn it on, on the PC horrible fucking piece

of shit, Ubi play pile of fucking malware that sits on your computer to install it. Who couldn't shut the fuck up for 48 hours before saying something stupid about about your games and where they're going with it. Couldn't do it. But yeah, awesome. Prince of Persia. Yeah. Also, also what's nice is the idea of like

Assassin's Creed as the replacement Prince of Persia is now its own thing that's doing that stuff. And it's the same thing you can ignore. Yeah. And Prince of Persia, like with its traversal and stuff, it like it definitely is like it's not it's not 100 percent overlapping, obviously. But this is clearly super different from that. And like, you know, pop can exist as a separate thing completely with games like this.

So apparently the people who made this is the Rayman Legends people. Oh. Which you're like, oh, the team that is at Ubisoft that makes good games. Okay, okay. I see. Let's see, what else we got?

So this is kind of strange. But many people have many feelings about Seth MacFarlane because of the family guy and the American dad and the Orville. He is like hit or miss. You know that Ted TV show with the cartoon bear? With the bear? Yeah. Yeah.

Hey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen clips. Excellent. Yeah, I've seen clips of it. Yeah, I've seen I've seen clips of it. I mean, I heard that the movie was really funny, too. The TV show is absolutely excellent. But at the same time, it's really strange because it looks like it feels like you're teleporting back to season one of Family Guy.

But Seth has a rule in that he is not allowed to do cutaway gags So he just Does a cutaway gag where it doesn't cut away? Instead someone's just saying it okay, okay leaving your imagination To fill in the blanks Yeah, I saw the bit I said the bit I saw was like oh, yeah There used to be like an Indian kid in our class until they got him And then they're like wait, what do you mean they got him? It's like anyway

You share his dunkaroos. He was a really good kid. I liked him like what do you mean? They got him? What does that mean? Anyway, so moving on going around that's the first episode that is a really really good example of the the like what like just dig in comedy that that it's really fantastic. Yeah. Again, apparently the movie was similarly solid. Just, you know, never, never caught it. But yeah. And last but not least this week I played a tiny indie game from the tiniest sad little indie dev called POWWorld

and fucking four million four six now six Six now this morning four days number one everything all everyone ever wanted was Pokemon with guns so this is the most complicated game release discussion i think we have ever had on this show show because POW world is divisive. So it seems has touched on many,

many different topics for a wide multitude of reasons. So for starters, I think what seems to be of the general consensus I've seen, again, I'm just like, I'm airport scrolling to catch what I can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so goddamn much. But a lot of people are saying, yo, the loop of the game is pretty fun.

It's a fun game to play. And it works just at a base level of what it's. So let's actually start there. What it's about. We'll talk about the discourse on the second part. But let's actually describe the game first. So I've played the game for about 10 hours. I know Jean's played a good bit more

and I have a bunch of friends who are playing it. So the first thing that is of note is that the game is stable, run smooth, has minimal bugs and has controls that work accurately. For an early access game, it is coming out swinging. It is pretty solid right off the bat. I'm surprised to hear. Like from a purely technical perspective.

Surprised to hear minimal bugs because like it looks like it should be a Jankfest. It sure fucking does. It really does. So as comparison, the only game I can think of that I played in early access that was more stable was Hades. Oh, okay. Big praise. Um, like Baldur's Gate 3 retail release was way more fucked up than this thing's early access release. Way more fucked up than this thing's early access release. Hmm. Like it was it is well optimized

It is smooth there, you know, you'll see AI break on enemies or whatnot or some collision stuff But it's it's pretty solid on top of that It's pretty good. It is also not what people thought it was. So what people thought this was going to be was Pokemon, but you give Pikachu a gun. Right? I assume that is what you thought it was because that's what I fucking thought it was. That's what I thought it was from the first trailer and then the more they started to show stuff off and put footage out, the more it seemed like also actually you're running around in third person and it's an action game that you're participating in, but the theme of

the Pokemon thing is happening around this, you know, like you're fortnighting at some points, you know what I mean? So I'm going to use a lot of games as examples that I don't think you've had a lot of experience with. It is not Pokemon with guns. It is Ark or Factorio or Rimworld with fake-ass Pokemon. Okay. Like the actual like so catching fake Pokemon or pals, which I'll be calling them, is actually just a means to an end to get labor to

manufacture your base. Which sounds minecrafty. Yeah, pals as combat utility is secondary to pals as labor. So like, I'm going out and yes, I have a bow and arrow. I currently don't have a handgun or a rifle, but I have a bow and arrow. And I will shoot the depresso, a tiny little fake-ass Pokemon who is sad all the time and loves energy drinks and

I will then see that the depresso's life is low and I will throw a Palsphere at the depresso who will then magically go into the ball and then it'll go boop Boop boop and then it will capture and I'll get a little bit of experience And I will now have own a depresso and depresso it must capture and I'll get a little bit of experience and I will now own a depresso and depresso It must do what I say so The most important part of that is not that I caught a dark type Pal that will help me fight against ice types the most important thing is

depresso has the base attributes of Handiwork and Farmy. I don't know what Depressos are. I'm just using it. Handiwork and Gardening and Transporting. So when I put the Depresso in my base, Depresso will take lumber that the deer are chopping down and you bring them to the box that I have set up for lumber. And important distinction here, I guess, because what I was kind of wondering about is like,

from the trailers and such, I was like, I'm assuming there's an adventure going on, and while you're doing that, there is like a, you have a poem base thing, but that, I don't know, but like that base is actually the priority. The base is the thing. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. So I have, I have currently nine pals working in a base. They are doing the following. The grass types are planting berry seeds. The water types are watering those berries. And then the normal types are harvesting those berries and putting them into a food bin so that all of the pals when they get sad or hungry go to the food bin and eat it. When they get too stressed because I'm working the fuck out of them, I have a hot spring

that they can go into and relax. They need to relax because I have a mining depot and a lumber depot and a cooking station and a smelting station. Now anybody pretty much can work at the lumber yard or the mining pit. However, I need a fire type to run the smelter and I'm making a lot of ingots. So that Firefox called FoxSparks, he is just working 24 hours a day

on the bellows making ingots. And he gets mad. I'm working, he's like literally working 18 hours a day on the bellows making ingots and he gets mad. I'm working. He's like literally working 18 hours a day. Okay. So he gets pissed off. So he starts to slack off and I'll get the thing is Fox sparks is becoming a slacker.

He won't do any work. So what I do is I go catch nine more Fox sparks so that every time they start to get pissy and don't want to work anymore. I just fire them and put them back in the fucking box and take a new Fox Sparks app and now new Fox Sparks He's starting at a hundred. He's happy so he's gonna run the fucking Smithy He's gonna make my ingots that I need to make the better workbench and the fucking Metal pickaxe and the metal logging acts and the new PAL sphere station and the new PALSphere station, and the campfire, et cetera. But because these are the main goals, the issue,

I thought that the slavery was optional. No, the slavery is the point. See? The slavery is the draw. It's kind of, because it kind of, from the way it sounded initially, I think I thought it was, slavery was a choice. No. It's kind of, because it kind of, from the way it sounded initially, and I think I thought it was, slavery was a choice.

It sounded like slavery was. Listen, listen, listen, no. We'll leave, we'll leave, we'll leave, we'll leave. Listen, you are on a dangerous island with many dangerous pals and goons. Slavery was never a choice. Slavery was not a choice, are you sure? Okay, all right. It was never a choice. Slavery was not a choice? Are you sure? Okay, all right.

It was never a choice. The choice was kind slavery. Okay. Or fast slavery. Okay. Okay. You can build a bunch of comfy beds. You can feed them good food.

You can make sure that they're not working too hard by not doing too many tasks or helping them with their tasks. You can give them tasks that they really like to do, like the sheep and the chicken, like to do ranching, for example, because they just chill out on the ranch and lay eggs or make wool, etc. So the kindest or. You can just work these fucks until they're about to give up and then go get the butcher knife unlock and then turn them into food. Oh, yeah.

Cloud Atlas, let's go. OK, I. Yeah. So that's it. You're just like, there's no version of ash here here that isn't at least kind of either softly cracking the whip. You know, or like there's there's you cannot you can pretend we're all friends and you're feeding them and you're taking care of them. But you're managing their sanity. It's a fucking bar that goes down is not stress, it's sanity.

Sanity. Okay. And you are, listen, so part of this thing is like, why am I building up all these resources, right? Well, you're catching pals not just to have labor, but you're doing it to level up so that you can unlock technology. And the technology is walls or a smelter or a water wheel or you know, that kind of thing.

So I'm like standing around at the fucking convention and like again, like just scrolling sometimes, you know, to while this one of those bits were just in person. There was a moment of like scroll, scroll. Guys, guys, you, you can catch humans. Oh yeah, you can catch humans you can catch humans in power that's right yeah what the fuck is going what the fuck is going on in this game like yeah no you I have humans in my fucking base right now oh my god no here's the thing and they have the same then they have the same metrics and and absolutely oh here's the things he pals back in the day they

were they were humans and at some point there was an evolutionary split, which is why the palsphere that works on pals also works on people. I see. But also, once you put a human into the palsphere, they are yours. You own them, they will do whatever you tell them. Clearly. Until they get uppity. So Gene also explained that like, beyond the like onboarding process, there's a like a little onboarding

story sequence you go through. Yeah, and then they'll give you like goals in the upper right. It's like maybe build a base. But there's no real continuing like plot per se. You're just dropped into the setting. You're building it up. And there's these towers that have bosses and there's some big, super strong monsters around. It's very free form, it's very, very open. So any commentary that you would derive

from the mechanics of this game is self-derived. And there's nothing to, there's no character, there's no cut scenes or specific goals you work towards. Yeah, no, all, it's like, listen, the game is about fake-ass Pokemon. And the question is, would it be really funny if you had fake Pikachu with an AK-47, but then you put him to work in the mines and gave him, quote, suspicious liquid so that he works faster

at the cost of his sanity. And then when he's exhausted, you butcher him for his friends to eat and just go get a new fake Pikachu. Okay, all right, so yeah. Upity was the word used on the board here. Yes, yeah, I would say that's accurate. That's one descriptive bucket. Cause like, I get the fuck,

so Willie, I'll have, right now my bane is Fox Sparks, because Fox Sparks, all the ones I caught, aren't good workers, so they'll just breathe fire, and they'll light up the campfire, and they'll light up the torches, and then they, then I get that red slacker prompt, and then I just kill them and feed them to the rest and New new Fox Spark do Eddie on the board Do they ever try to get away and do you ever have to go? No, no, they're basically brainwashed

They're in they go in that fucking sphere. Okay. Okay. Are they have no free will anymore? Okay Are there those there are those that work the fields and then there are yes Yes, currently the water and grass types and the normal types work the fields. Yes, it's called a plantation. Willie not the Berry plantation one of the first upgrades that you get It is a berry plantation Okay, all right Okay, all right. Oh, listen, listen, you could put the you could put their beds anywhere, but you don't want to put them in your house. So you don't want to put the crafting stuff inside your house because you don't want any of the pals getting their disgusting pal juice on your fucking nice floor.

I am being defeated because I'm trying to use my powers to place things in the awkward place They should go in doesn't work on this only to turn and find that you're already there Yeah, we're already there man. It's all it's all in here Awkward like the rest of us actually called the plantation. Oh, yeah, it's a baby plantation Jesus Christ tutorial It's part of the tutorial Well fuck alright people in the chatter saying there's no subtext to this game It is all text it is text it is straight-up text. Yeah, I can't I have no I have no powers here So like yeah, dude building your base and and getting pals as labor is actually way more important

than them as fight. So yeah, you go out there and there's roaming big pals or there's bosses that you fight that you have their own pals or like bunch of wild pals and herds, right? That you would fight. And that you would want strong pals to help you with, right? Leveled up pals that have all three of their skills and maybe, you know, you can also get a,

every pal has an upgrade that you can get that you can build for them via the crafting, which is stuff like the little green monkey guy gets an AK and he'll fight, he'll shoot, or there's the deer that gets a saddle and that unlocks like horse, like deer-, like combat and like really fast movement speed. Oh, for like you, for you, yourself fly. Yeah.

And it also totally stole a breath of the wilds glider. Oh, yeah. And just caused to jet grappling hook and glider combination. Okay. You remember, I don't know if you remember that. Just cause. Yes. You, you, yeah, yeah.

You grapple the floor and then hit the parachute Yeah, that's your okay, but you're using pals to make those abilities. Yeah like most of the time when I'm trying to go get pals Or go do something I don't even have my pal out because they'll kill the pals. I'm trying to capture. Oh Jesus, okay, right? Yeah, so I want I wanted his labor and the part about the game that I feel relatively few people are talking about because of the absolutely absurd nature of its concept and all the drama is that the reason why people are so attached to this game is that the the base building is simple clear interesting and

Works really really well. When you have like the nine or 10 and they all have different specialities and you just put them on your base, they actually start to do all the tasks that they're good at and you don't really have to manage it. Like the ones that are good at chopping lumber will go chop lumber and then the ones that are good at chopping lumber will go chop lumber,

and then the ones that are good at transporting will take the lumber to your boxes for you. So you have all the time in the world to go vanquish sliding around the map. Yeah. Apparently. Yes. Wild, okay.

And it really, really genuinely works. I'm not familiar with ARC. However, I have been told that Palworld launched with more content in a more stable form than ARC has ever had, despite being out for multiple years. Like it is very, very impressive. And that would, a lot of that would also be, I guess,

well, okay, I would assume that it's like, oh, well they must have built up their experience from the previous game. Mm. Is what you would assume, what was it called? Craftopia. Craftopia, right? Only to then find out via bullet points things

such as we did not know what a rig was. So now we get, so yes, the starting point, the whole context has to be under is the game's pretty good. It costs $25. And it has sold 6 million copies. So every variation of this discussion has to be within the context of like it's it's too late to even have the discussion at all. Oh, like the power world has won regardless of its evil or not.

But the discussion is still fascinating so step one is The company that makes power world also made is called pocket pair and they have released two other games one is called craftopia, which is an astonishing astonishing Lake Lee correct creatively bankrupt breath of the Wild clone with a lot of crafting. And some of that stuff actually carries over into Power World.

Someone says that interview is fake. If that's the case, site your source. I didn't hear that show. Well, it's not an interview. That's the main thing. It's translated. It's a translated article that they put up from the CEO on their website. Okay.

Well, so like... If accusations that that is not real are a thing, then cite your sources, because I didn't hear anyone else say that. Like, it's one of those things that's like, this is guy telling you how it is, it is up to you to determine whether or not that is your, how much benefit of the doubt

you wanna give, right? But Craftopia is like hilarious ripoff. It looks like Breath of the Wild from a distance. They also put out a game called AI Art Imposter, which is a mogus clone in which they use AI image generation. The thing that everyone is freaking out about because it's a plagiarism machine, to generate fake images,

and you have to spot the fake one, which is funny, but also they are actually totally using, like, I don't know what library it is, but they are absolutely using like a data scraping, like bad AI machine. You know, like one of the bad ones that's like unethical and steals people's shit. using like a data scraping like bad AI machine. Right, okay. One of the bad ones that's like unethical and steals people's shit.

Sourcing from large databases and building libraries. So the sequence of events as best that I can drum it up is, and I'll try and cite everything that I can remember, is Power World is coming out. And then if you go to the Power World website or the PocketPair website, you can find the CEO talking about the development of Power World. They taught, and this is grain of salt because it's the CEO's own mouth, right? Like if you believe they're lying, then ignore all this. They basically describe that they are maybe the most incompetently run game

developed company ever and they are very forward about it. Craftopia was made entirely with store bought assets, entirely store bought animation. Literally had no they were literally plugging fucking store bought Legos together. Unity asset flip in order to make the game And then they tried really hard to make it a cool thing and they did have some ideas with the way the crafting work but like that it that is a that is a a

Lego which like that is put the blocks together learning that makes the Brazenness ofness of their style like makes so much more sense. Cause like usually it like most things that are that wild about like their content, like don't make it to that level of like through the revision process. They also described how they didn't understand what a rig is.

That's crazy. And they didn't know what a rig is. That's crazy. And they didn't know what version control was. So they would just put versions of the game onto USB drives and just buy tons of USB drives to walk them around the office. I saw something would say like a part timer that was a student like was responsible for a number of like the models or something like that. So then they go into the things that led them is responsible for a number of like the models or something like that that we're not just purchased.

So then they go into the things that led them to make POW world, which is, they wanted, they had the core idea and then they added guns because they wanted it to be globally successful and Americans like shooting guns. So if we put guns on the POW pals, then Americans will like it, which is the funniest fucking thing in the world because they're completely right.

They're completely right. They're completely right. But then they ran into a situation in which they didn't know how to make gun animations and they didn't know how to find somebody to make gun animations and they didn't have any money to hire anybody to make gun animations.

So they found a teenager who was working at a convenience store part-time that their hobby was to make fake gun animations for YouTube. So they were like, do you want to make fake gun animations for our fake Pokemon game? And they were like, yeah, sure. Someone said it's a dojin circle. That's what it is. This is a garage kit fucking company.

This is exactly what this sounds like. They also, they found an artist that had apparently was very good but took forever and had a really bad time in the job market. And it goes on and goes on. And basically the long and short of it is that the people making this game are not professionals They are barely amateurs

like they This is if you believe the CEO right and the real kicker the one that really kicks that gets me is the one that feels the truest is That the CEO described how to determine when the release date was which was described how to determine when the release date was, which was how instead of being like how long does each model take to make and how long does it take to do these features, they instead went how long until we go bankrupt with this amount of staff. And then we will we will we will figure that out and we will do that. And then like a couple of weeks before we go bankrupt, we'll release the game. Did you notice that Power World got a release date like two weeks before it came out?

It was just trailers and unknown until then. Yeah, they were they they were like, well, we're going to go bankrupt. So it's time to put the game out. Pocket Pear is not a video game company. It's three kids in a trench coat That is how it was probably made okay, then The game comes out and something very strange happens so

People started to get really really angry at it being like just a rip-, because it is, it's a parody that's like, like changed my homework. So it looks different, right? With the Pokemon, like they look so fucking Pokemon, it's so fucking fake Mon shit, it's hilarious. So this is where like, like, you know, Gene comes over and legit asks the question and it's like, hey, so the fucking wildness of the,

yeah, of that shit and the Pokemon rips and all of that. What is the difference between that and fucking not Bayonetta and Feyonetta on the vampire survivors? And I'm looking at him like, Jean, I don't know. So we'll get there, there's so much, Willie. I had to read so much and talk to so many people. So the first thing that happened is the confusion

over it had already sold two million copies by the time people started to get really mad, right? That was like a straight rip off, right? And the reason why, because usually when a game comes out and you think the game is immoral or a movie's coming out and you think the director's a fucking piece of shit Right you build up to it right like oh it's coming out

Fucking stay away from that piece of shit that thing's evil right, but that didn't happen It had already sold fucking millions of copies before people even started to complain and I Got the feeling that the reason why is because people, it had been known for three years, right? People knew about Power World on and off. Pokemon with guns was a gag, yeah. People didn't think it was gonna come out. People thought it was fake.

People thought it was like a scam. And so when it came out and people were playing it and telling other people to play it because it's real. Suddenly this hilarious fake scam shit. Oh, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Wait, is this actually fake plagiarist scam shit? And thus starts the process. So step one was the CEO in the past has put out a game that uses generative immoral AI that scrapes people's data

and is unethical. Two, has talked about how in the future, AI would be super sick and get around all sorts of copyright laws, and human artists can be a subdivision of artists. Three, loves NFTs, and four is the founder of a crypto coin. Okay. So this starts the discourse that this game was made with AI or stole shit or is secretly crypto. And that gained a huge amount of traction. As it would.

And we then run into the issue of, do you remember, I think I brought it up on the podcast like a month ago, do you remember when I described people are looking at movie trailers that look like shit and saying that's AI Because AI has become a synonym for trashy fake it for things that look bad. Yeah, okay We are now at the part where it's actually become kind of a problem

Because people go this fucking game was made with AI and people go what really? Yeah How do you know that? Vibes. And I say vibes because I can quote, there is a last of us two artists who went on to social media and went, this game was nefariously made I just know it it's stealing something somewhere just dev vibes now the fact that the game came out and obliterated last of us to remastered release plans not withstanding like it's actually based off of feel. And I understand because you look at something and you go, that looks like a fucking ripoff.

And you can, and the guy loves AI. And there's precedence based on what you were just describing. It just feels like, yeah, okay. But there's no actual- Smoking gun. feels like, yeah, okay. But there's no actual- Smoking gun. There's no actual proof that there's AI used to make it at all.

As of January 23rd, 2024 podcast listener who's listening to the SMP3 file. Okay, there's currently no proof of that. All right. But also one of the issues that- Fucking podcast. People have been talking about is that it is a genuine disservice.

So first of all, if you're an artist, I want to make this extremely clear. I don't approve of generative AI that steals people's work. I don't approve of anything that steals people's work. This AI craze with Midgard or whatever fuck these things are called. It's all plagiarism machines. They're all bullshit. They're all a bunch of techno scams coming from the NFT crypto. Yeah, you can see the list of artists that they

Unconsumptingly grabbed in glaze your art and nightshade your art so you can poison that shit Nightshade's a new one. It fucks up the categorization. It's really really interesting But it is of is of no use to anyone and it harms artists by pointing at things and to anyone and it harms artists by pointing at things and accusing them of being AI or some other scam when it may not be because and now I'll move over the you know, did you watch the game awards with the blade reveal? Yeah. So you remember that Fred that tall cool French black guy who's the creative lead at Leon may be working on blade and he was using full Blade cosplay.

Yeah, yeah. So his name is Dinka. I forget his last name, but because Dinka just hits. That is easy to remember. He made this really, really long thread, basically describing. That people who look at Power World and go, I made this have lost their fucking minds because game dev is really hard. and go, AI made this, have lost their fucking minds because Game Dev is really hard.

And the idea that AI could make all of this shit means that we're done, that it's fucking over. Like the battle has been lost. And it also does remove, and he talks a lot about the systems and that the systems systems the way they interact is really impressive From a game dev perspective. Okay, and he uses an example that is really just perfect where he goes Is it derivative? Of course, it's derivative because it's parody. It's Pokemon but they do drugs and shoot guns and he used the example of

Spaceballs has to look like fucking Star Wars. Because it's Star Wars but fucking stupid. And that led to a legal challenge from Lucasfilm back in the day. I don't know if you're aware of that, Willie. Lucasfilm saw spaceballs and went, you are not putting this fucking movie out, This is fucking bullshit. And Mel Brooks made a deal with them that spaceballs could come out as long as there was no merchandise. That's why you've never seen a spaceballs toy and you've never seen a spaceball shirt

because that was part of the criteria for getting released into theaters. They had theaters go all merch. And that's why in the middle of spaceballs, when you meet yogurt, he goes on this big spiel about merchandising, merchandising where the real money from the movie is made. And he shows off the fucking Spaceballs flamethrower and the Spaceballs shirts that they're not allowed to make because of their deal with Lucasfilm.

Okay. Okay. Okay, so it doesn't appear currently as of January 23rd that AI was used to generate any significant or any amount of the game's assets. We now move on to while it's so derivative it's a it's plagiarist to which point it the Bloomberg goes and has a bunch of lawyers sit down and play power world for a fucking afternoon And a bunch of copyright lawyers Play power world and go. Yeah Now you should chill and then that was not gonna do anything. It's parody because the law is conservative

And you would kind of have to put fucking Pikachu in the game for it to be that infringing Right, okay, okay for it to be that infringing, right? Okay, okay. So, I mean, well, at least as far as this step goes, don't just use that's AI as an accusation when you're trying to- Like seeing something fake or derivative or lazy?

Is not the same as AI. As saying it was actually AI generated, yes. Because the other thing is like, okay, let's say you go, Power World's a fucking AI video game, it's immoral. Okay, let's say it is. You have just increased the value of these fucking things to everyone, because people are playing Power World and liking it.

And average dickhead AI crypto fuck is gonna hear, hear wow you can fucking make a game like Power World and make a hundred million dollars in a Weekend if I use AI fucking sick. I better get all in on it like it doesn't like you are making it look cool It is like when cops in the States started to tell you if you touched Fentanyl you would just die? Mm-hmm. People went, wow, Fentanyl must be really strong. I should get some of that fucking Fentanyl. The wild part is definitely that like the CEO is not someone that would be opposed to that hypothetical.

Oh, totally. Would if this were the world that we existed, where that was possible. And here's where it gets really complicated. But so far it does not appear to be the case then. You have to kind of assume the worst of people because Power World is getting like a really strong reaction. And a lot of that reaction is on the assumption

that it is doing bad things. And then you go, well, the CEO is a fucking piece of shit and the CEO loves this shit. And I'm like, I have not, but like, so it's like even if Powell world doesn't have AI, well, the company loves AI. And so they're gonna do AI stuff in the future with Powell world money is like the argument.

And so they're gonna do a stuff in the future with power old money is like the argument Who's excited for dragons dogma and FF7 rebirth Companies that have fucking CEOs that love that shit How many how many street fighter NFTs Prince of Paris that was just the prior topic Prince of Persia Who be soft we literally had multiple discussions about their Tom Clancy fucking Crypto guns or whatever the fuck those things were that they that they refused to back down from at least multiple quarters ago Yeah, like obviously

Obviously saying well everyone's evil. It doesn't matter. It's like weak ass nihilistic defeatist shit that helps no one. Cause like there's no ethical consumption under capitalism is not a self is not a form of self-defense where you just get to masturbate into anything that you fucking want because well, there's there's no ethical consumption. So I'm just going to eat this baby deer coated in Belute or whatever the fuck, right? In front of it, you know. Nice pull.

Listen, the Irish orphan modest proposal thing went through, it's legal, there's no consumption under capitalism, give me a Guinness, I'm gonna eat this, oh Mali. It's a fucking, it's weak, right? But at the same time the level of of of scrutiny that power world is getting compared to Games that are like releasing within like a month like here's a really good example Square Enix is putting out foam stars and saying

Foam stars uses AI image generation for its assets. Outright. Mm-hmm. They said that last week. I haven't seen a single fucking person in the world go, well, I'm not playing FF7 Rebirth then. I can't support that company. If I may, the thing from, again, glancing from the outside as well,

that also seems to be a massively exacerbating factor is that the energy of a game that appears to be a scathing critique of consumerism, such as Pow World and wild slavery fucking takes and shit like that going on, you would assume that type of company would also be very much at their core against all this shit, right? And it's not.

It's literally like the most cynical thing in the world. It's like, do you think it's funny? Do you think Americans would think it was funny to have a Pikachu with a gun? The unexpected straight punch, right? You're thinking it's a hook, you're thinking it's coming from the left, you're thinking there's an angle to this

when there really isn't. It's exactly what it appears to be. Like it is as straightforward as possible, there's no critique and there's no message. It's do you think it would be funny to get high with Vulpix and then beat his ass and eat him? And it's so wild because when you see a fucking sweatshop, slave factory at work with like a budget

Has created this scene for this trailer for this video game you can purchase you just you're like oh there They must be making a point here and no, and that's not the case like so some of so I bet you a bunch of that energy is Assuming that that's what the intention was. You know? How the world is legitimately an unironic Kermit the Frog with Katana smoking a blunt. Right. Right. It is the exact same energy as, man, what if, let me fucking tell you this, what if Sonic the Hedgehog, drove a car,

and shot guns. No, I am not giving them too much credit. I am saying people who see that and assume that the game that has the slavery and fucking, again, consumerism, assume it's a critique of that would also assume they would be critical of things like this that we're discussing

that are part of these accusations. I'm saying these two mindsets, you're gonna load one thought in and assume the other. You're gonna make that leap based on what this game's content is so far. That's what I'm saying. I got to point out by the way, guys, that me using Sonic the Hedgehog driving a car and shooting a gun and you guys in the chat going, you mean shadow? Yes, I mean fucking shadow the hedgehog. That is the point that I am fucking making is that Sega went Sega did it first Sega actually went what if our cute animal mascot shot guns and drove cars?

That happened on a shadow the head you think it's a meme, but it's not. We really gave him a gun. Yeah. We were- It cocks an MP5, which is like the weirdest thing in the fucking world, but that's totally different. So we're now moving past- You don't have to open up Photoshop. Just take screenshots from the actual thing.

So we're now moving past. Did it use AI? Probably not. Is it? Is it? Oh, fuck, I'm sorry. But that's OK. Even though the CEO loves it, probably not. Even if they had another game that used it, but this one doesn't.

This is a somewhat unfair level of scrutiny given to it compared to Square Enix, let's say. Then we move on to the next part of this, which is, let's rip the fucking models! Let's just tear the fucking models out of the game and compare them to Pokemon, because boy, they really, really, really do look similar. They look like the same goddamn fucking thing. They look like they pulled the head off of a fucking snivy and jammed it on a lapras. Right. Polygon counting, yeah. Let's do some polygon counting and what do we find? We find holy shit they really are insanely close. They are wildly close.

Like you overlap these models and like a lot of them are like really fucking cool. Did they rip them? Are they actually ripped? And then we look closer and closer and I talk to the 3D modelists and I talk to art people and it appears that they didn't rip them. It appears the pre-lead is used them as heavy reference

and essentially traced over parts of them so that they could get them close, but not too close. And Woolly, Woolly, I brought this instance up and a lot of people don't know this. As people that put out wrestling videos that had an audio engineer take WWF songs and tweak the fucking sounds on them just enough that YouTube's copyright wouldn't pick them up. It's, it's, it's literally, it was changing just enough! Paint bucket, fill, white, bayonetta, hair, blonde, pixelate, paste. Well here's where it gets really crazy.

Oh my god. The big thing against vampire survivors isn't traced over bayonetta or traced over castlevania stripes. Oh really? over Castlevania Strikes. Oh really? Not Castlevania sprites? Okay. No, it is the fact that its entire core concept gameplay and menus are taken from an Android game that came out before it. There's a bullet heaven game that it that in that it's inspired. The three days Vampire Survivors. Vampire Survivors did something that the Android game didn't do which was give it a crazy gimmick like being a slot machine That caused it to blow up and

It launched at a cheap price. So everyone was willing to give it a chance power world Is a ripoff not of Pokemon but of survival games not of Pokemon, but of survival games. But it gave it a weird crazy gimmick. And legally. That's kind of great, but not really. Bottles and. And launched at a cheap price. So people were willing to give it a shot.

The the the comparison to vampire survivors is very apt. OK, OK, sidebar. So as far as Pokemon clones go, we've got cassette beasts. We've got Temtem. We've got wasn't there a third one in there or maybe I'm this. Did you want? OK, let's not. That's a let's not that's a war.

I'm not pretty jump. You can die on that hill if you want. But you'll kind of watch. Sure. The two of go watch. Sure. The two of the two, you know, the two recent ones there in particular, are there any. All right. All right.

Digimon fans will rise up and war Gremon battle you over over that. But the rest, perhaps whatever the case is, are there any where the it's that close but the rest perhaps. Whatever the case is, are there any where the, it's that close with the characters? No, this is definitely flying as close to the sun as anyone has ever done, ever in the history of Fox. Because the side by side monster comparison with Dragon Quest monsters is really fucking up in there too,

right? It's funny, yeah. There is a monster for monster, one for the other comparison sheet they have. But Power World is the most like. Power World is easily the closest like. Your Honor, you can't prove it. Okay, so here, so this is fun because I've been talking to people about this

and every stream I've done since Power World came out, I have had like an hour of Power World discourse and it has gone to all sorts of places including like the state of like Japanese manufacturing in the 60s. But I will use an example that people who did not grow up in the 90s can't know because they weren't there. Dragon Quest Monsters came first, yeah. Pow World is as close to Pokemon as Art of Fighting was Street Fighter. A million, I didn't like the obvious when it comes to sprite tracing is to talk about everything copying Street Fighter.

I wasn't even going to go there, but it's that's the obvious point. There are dozens of games that just ripped Street Fighter 2. And Art of Fighting, when you see the full breadth of the ripoffs of Street Fighter, it's crazy. Art of Fighting actually moves further and further away because like the bullshit that is Rio is still an original sprite. Like when you go back to fucking the super fight or to best of best, you start seeing actual tracing occurring. Yes. Right?

It's more than just a fucking reference build or design. We, it feels, it feels like in the past 20 years, we haven't gotten the clone situation like we used to. Back in the 90s, a fucking doom came out get the fuck ready For doom clones there was a whole genre convention About when does a game stop being a clone and start being its own thing? Right, and we haven't had that in a while. Vampire survivors that happened too. And they became bullet heaven, but like, dude, almost every game that came out after vampire

survivors is a vampire survivor's clone. Like it's crazy. And then we started to get more original ones, like 20 minutes still dawn or bone razor minions or hollow cure or whatever. Like somebody pointed out and I talked about it yesterday, there was a fucking Doom clone made by Chex Serial, and it was pretty good! Pat, this is literally the entirety of the medium of video games. There's a point you zoom out to here

where someone makes a thing, and that thing is very good and influential and inspires an entire genre to then exist, some of which are literally just, we're copying or your homework and changing it, others which take it in another direction. And at the end of the day, it always becomes, well, is it any good? And how many of these? How close did they trace it? If you like, you don't want to call it a smash clone, fine.

You call it a platform fighter, but like, is it fun? What are we doing here? What's going they trace it? If you, like you don't want to call it a smash clone, fine. You call it a platform fighter, but like, is it fun? What are we doing here? What's going on in it? Yeah. So, well, We're in this situation where POW world looks like it hasn't done anything that is actually morally or ethically wrong, gross or creatively bankrupt or laughably derivative?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But wrong or immoral or illegal? We have a new story today. I don't know if you put it on there. There was a guy who put up a fucking mod of Power World on his Patreon. Oh, that's absolutely him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who got fucking slapped this morning. Yes, and the story came out as Nintendo is already copyright striking, already striking down Power World

shit, and it's like, oh, well, this is a Power World mod that puts Pokemon into the game and actually muses them. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, he was charging for it. He was charging money. He was charging money. Like, no fucking shit. Duh. Next story. And so now we're at the point of moving on. Well, Nintendo, Nintendo was a big company and they can obviously defend themselves as we have talked about many times on this podcast in which Nintendo is very litigious and is very easy to throw out DMCA takedowns. And a lot of the really outrageous copy fake mon were in that trailer from three years ago. And Power World made it all the way through its development and came out.

And I don't think Nintendo is going to do anything. There's a tweet here from last year, March, where the, yeah, the CEO, that it's being translated through auto translate. So it might not be the most accurate, the CEO, it's being translated through auto translate, so it might not be the most accurate, but it says, pocket pair, the result of introducing AI to improve business efficiency led to employees handing their work over to AI, but the quality was so high that they were disappointed.

That doesn't even make any sense. I don't understand what the I don't know Like I read that earlier and I couldn't make heads or tails of it feels like I'm not getting a good translation Does that mean we tried it out and the results were higher quality than we wanted so we stopped using it? Is that I don't know I don't know what that's ironically enough We're using a fucking AI to machine translate this thing and we can't fucking make heads or tails of it I using a fucking AI to machine translate this thing and we can't fucking make heads or tails of it. I don't get it. All right. But like, I think art of fighting and I think like, I think Rio, the guy who's Ryu

with the orange guy might be the best example of how fucked this whole thing is. Because like there were lawsuits about games that were ripping off Street Fighter and some of those companies lost. Yes, not all of them won. But SNK won. They got to have their fake ass street fighter characters Mm-hmm, and then they and then Capcom got to have their fake ass SNK characters

When they started stealing back from them in retaliation and thus creates Dan Hibiki Absolutely, and then we get to see SNK Expanding to King of Fighters and then we get to see King of Fighters come out and do a bunch of bunch of fucking games, and then we get to see Saudi Arabian murderers allegedly buy up King of Fighters. And now we get to worry about whether or not the people who own the game companies that make the games that you want to play are murderers or just pedophiles. Can we put the allegedly and allegedly quotations?

Allegedly. Allegedly. The quotation allegedly, allegedly. Yeah, all right. Exactly. And again, and that is one instance that, again, you brought up the fighting game parallels obvious with the history of that shit, but you can go into a ton of examples throughout video games that are like just that, right?

a ton of examples throughout video games that are like just that, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is, I didn't catch the bit where there were other others that looked at this, or other devs that looked at this and kind of went like, the amount of work that went in here. Yeah, the guy from Arcane Leon, Diga. There's no way this could have been done.

Yeah, that's an interesting one. Diga Bakaba has a very big thread about it and basically describes like, you guys don't know how hard game dev is and the fact that power world systems all work with each other really well is astonishing to him as a developer. Like a robot would not have been able to make all that shit work. It's actually really, really impressive. But but I but again, I just, the vibes of like,

this is the shit that the pocket pair CEO has covered before and stuff, there's a bit of that fucking, if I did it, OJ book. Oh yeah, yeah, there it is, yeah. Just a photo of him on the cover, like did it if if if up here, you know Okay, um, and but it's it's just it's it looks sketch. It looks sketch. It does look sketch Right. Come on. Yeah, and so people go that thing like, you know that thing so sketch I bet it did it and then people get upset and it's like, but did it.

And and and and rewinding full circle then. The game was pretty fun that you played ten hours of it. It's great. OK. Yes. OK. It's it's really good. This is not a scraping defense of. But I really want to play it because it's good though despite what's going on It's like it may not be to your taste, but like it it it does cool shit

Okay Because you know game good therefore Defense is it but like yeah well here It's listen like I I went back and forth I did hours and hours and hours of this on my show which and God bless someone like sure We're all familiar with we're all familiar with just how absolutely fucking infuriating the following defenses are Yeah, well, it's really good. Therefore. I'll defend this one It's the thing that I know for my childhoods. I'll defend this one. It's the thing that I know from my childhood,

so I'll defend this one. Or, well, nothing matters, everything is evil, so I'm just gonna never gonna think about this ever again. Shut up, stop talking to me, you're ruining my vibes. These are all annoying. These are all upsetting. The fact that you even had to had a thought to have this conversation at all Is a is a thumbs up Like did you like that the core purpose of these types of discussions is so that people? Just engage with something critically instead of completely uncritically and the frustrating thing about just going that fucking things a pile of shit. It's thievery uncritically, is just as damaging to these types of conversations

as mindlessly defending it. Also, dude, people are in, like people have fucking tattooed this shit on their balls. I have never, like, part of the reason this got so, like, huffed up, is that people will die for POW World now for some fucking reason. It's crazy. No, that kind of...

That happens when this becomes that divisive. The more divisive it gets, the more you cement where you're at and the more the fucking crowd you're on. Like, it's either like, like, Spurned Pokemon fans or just like haters or some shit, but they're like fucking fucking Ride or die for fucking power. Just absolutely insane insane

psycho behavior. I Mean, did you did you see the like fucking? Hogwarts legacy personal army that developed. Yeah, I did yeah Hogwarts legacy personal army that developed. Yeah, I did. Yeah. Look, I saw fucking Jesus Christ. I was I was describing how absolutely unhinged a subdivision of power all fans are To which I someone responded to me that they even plagiarized Pokemon fan base Which is really funny to me. That's pretty good because they are in fact acting like Pokemon fans. That's that's that's how they're fucking

minds. My God. Well, it's it's the it's the fucking it's the number one video game. It is. It is the it is. It's also the most interesting video game to talk about. Holy shit. It's it's so it's so interesting. I wonder if it wasn't like ripping off Pokemon.

If any of this would be nearly as intense. No, no, no, no, no, no, I think a lot of it is that right. Yeah, like it's it's such a staple of the industry. It's everyone loves Pokemon and like a lot of people have done Pokemon at home. A lot of people have done what if we try to fix the mistakes of Pokemon, but there hasn't been like fully taking the piss out of it. And and then again, and then again, it turns out actually if that all failed because we're taking the piss out of Pokemon

and we're doing all these slavery things and here's the guns, but the game is actually shit. It's a bug ridden mess. You can't play it and all of that falls apart. Then this is a joke that lasts like a week and then we move on. Right. But the fact that apparently it's this solid and actually really fun to play and affordable as well makes it a much bigger deal.

I am. I saw somebody say, I don't know why anyone gives a shit about this. It's just a flavor of the week game. And that that is probably accurate, but if most games don't get to be flavor of the week And if it is games die in obscurity And if it is the flavor of the week six million off the fucking dome in that week ain't bad Like that's pretty solid for what for that one week of that 15 minutes of fame so I Would like to use an example to close this out because I really do think it is

I really do think it is hey, hey Excellent job, dude. Good shit. Oh Well, I'll gene help we mean Jean have been been talking about this for hours and hours and hours. Being him, we're chatting the other night and just being like, I could we could talk about Power World all fucking day. This is like the most interesting thing to fucking happen to video games forever. And part of me is like. Like some of this, this criticism is so fucking weak.

Like the CEO said he liked this thing. I'm like, I'm sorry. You know what we need to do? Like some of this criticism is so fucking weak. Like the CEO said he liked this thing. I'm like, I'm sorry, you know what we need to do? We need to have a big expensive game come out that is $170 fucking dollars because you wanna have New Game Plus. And we need to have that game's story be about how sex trafficking violent murderous criminals are really good people deep down.

Who's ready for infinite wealth at the end of the week, everybody? Like the double standards is so outrageous all over the place. Were any little sisters kidnapped into the making of Pow World? Probably not. So I have been, I would like you to watch a trailer to cap this off.

Woolly. This is a trailer that came, first of all, shout out to Dad Astina for finding this for me while we're talking. This is a trailer of a game that PocketPair announced eight months ago called Never Grave, The Wish and the Curse, which I don't know if I heard anyone talk about it even once. Oh my God, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, actually, actually. Okay, Never Grave, The Wish and the Curse.

Yeah, fucking, actually. Okay, never grave the wish and the curse. Yeah. Fucking just like hollow night. But Bolo night. Hollow witch night. Cog. Bolo night, though. Um, I mean the backgrounds, the sprites, like the main character is a witch and it's a four player game,

but everything else happening, like I can't. Well, except for the part, and this is the funny thing, if you look at the trailer deep enough, there's a village that has base building, and crafting, and management parts to it. They seem to love that shit. Oh my God. They put it in every game. And this is eight months ago, so this was in the era of silk song never

yeah, and This is this is a hilarious hilarious obvious ripoff of Hollow Knight that also looks really solid and Looks more this is my favorite part. This looks more different to Hollow Knight than Crow Sworn does. Does it? Interesting. It does!

Okay. Because if I just saw this trailer without any context, I would just go like, is this kind of like China doing Hollow Knight at home, you know? Kind of like a... No, it's Japan! And it's not. And that's the funniest thing! Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is a Japanese company. Everyone immediately thinks China because China doesn't give a fuck about IP law. Exactly, yeah. And you get a lot of low grade, poorly manufactured shit out of China. And then, so this discussion is how I ended up talking about the electronic spoon in the 1950s Tokyo

because of the inability to make high quality products. So Made in Japan was a marker of low quality in the 50s and 60s until they got their industry up and running and then it became like the premier place for electronics. Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. But yeah, no, this is, we are watching like on the assumption that they are not using actual theft here January 23rd They're just really doing it. It looks like we are watching snk being born again Where every game is horribly derivative But they also look pretty good And each one is slightly less derivative

than the last one. I mean, is the like, would it be funny to shoot a match up in the face? Is that not, hey, check it out. When you beat your Uri and King, hey, look, their shirts blow open. Look, it wouldn't be funny. Look, there's some sprite titties ha ha yeah

Like SNK was actually that How about this are you ready? Are you ready for this one? Okay? What if we made the game control like shit and We don't have any sprite artists, so we'll just take photos of people and then we'll put the dizzy at the end of the round Uh-huh and have it be really violent. Oh my god, and we'll call it mortal combat Okay, but you can't have the exact same number of buttons though. That's way too easy. No. Oh well We do we can't have six how many five is five okay? Okay? All right, but then what's the fifth because we need to even out punch it as a kick

So it's the fifth. It's fine. Okay. Okay. All right. But then what's the fifth because we need to even out punch it as a kick So it's the fifth. It's got to be different Lou. We got a you got block just block block for a button be blocked Fine. Yeah, sure. Done We can get in we can get into a million different conversations about a million different unethical things in games and I have a I have a question for people at home to think about Is pow world about a million different unethical things in games. And I have a question for people at home to think about. Is POW world may be tracing over some Pokemon to make them that's close to legally distinct as possible as immoral as the hearing damage that I sustained to this day for playing Mortal Kombat 3 in an arcade.

Because Boone and Midway made those fucking arcade machines unsafe to use. Yes, but also we are also a generation that goes in front of the speaker at the concert to feel the vibrations because you got to get in there man. You got to let the music go through you. You got to have an eargasm and a bassgasm. So that's all it was. We're the same generation. Fuck your tinnitus. That being said, like I think everyone should actually

keep their eye on Powell world and I think the people digging through the models and all that are actually doing a genuine service because if it did steal or rip off or plagiarize thing or a generator thing, people should know. But it, so far it's a lot of it's a lot of a lot of swinging a miss. This story is just getting started. And and that that much is very clear. And at the same time, there's like, I guess, I mean, there's nothing

like the off fuck podcast tomorrow. Oh yeah. Get scraped through. What can we, yeah, gotta have something ready to go, you know, but I... I also... Mm-hmm. Somebody in the chat says, all smoke, no fire, and I think that's a good way to describe it. Now, there may be fire, and the reason I say that is because there is so much smoke. Mm-hmm. Like, it might be the most smoke I have ever seen for a new release.

Well, until... But no one has found the fire yet. Until then, bayonetters, stand down. It looks like this might be one of those nothing burgers the Americans like. It might even be a nothing gate or a burger. All right. That is not as good as time to break as any. What are you doing this week and what's going on?

I am not doing anything tomorrow because I'm busy. Thursday, I have a sponsored stream from Capcom. They want me to tell you that Apollo Justice Games are good. They are. So that stream is going to be real easy. And then Friday is Infinite Wealth Day. OK. And then Saturday is Infinite Wealth Day.

OK. Because because we need to learn how how criminals have hearts of gold, but also that Hawaii is very nice. Yeah, so I forgot to mention earlier, yeah, Saturday gonna try to do a guest stream with Test Your Luck if possible for Guilty Gear Strive stuff. If not, then again, we'll just do something else, again, to fighting games related.

And for those wondering, yeah, the next versus wolves, sometime before the end of the month, we know that we have the time limit. There is a, there is a, an element of that, that is there's a part two, John strip club element that he wants to talk about. That'll be mentioned there, but for the most part, yeah, that's what's going on.

So I'll just post a schedule on Twitter to see what's going on this week. All right, BRB. All right, quick word from our sponsors. I hope you don't mind, but I'm gonna take a little break. I got all my words out. Oh yeah, absolutely. No, listen, hey.

You cooked and you ate Both I love sponsors you cooked and then you ate very important that I serve you served After you cooked and then you ate and Pat you left no crumbs Okay, cool. That's what they say. That's what's up. All right. Quick word from our sponsors.

This week, the podcast is sponsored by Shopify. Cha-ching is the sound of a sale on Shopify. Yeah. So we've talked about them before, mainly because when we started doing podcasting and when we started doing Let's Plays and various YouTube shit, we never thought about like selling things an online store.

We didn't know what that would involve or how that would work. But this is the type of thing that Shopify is a perfect thing to help you with and it's helping us with our merch certainly. Basically it is the global commerce platform that helps you at every stage of your business. So if you're trying to launch an online shop or if you have a real IRL store and it's your first time doing any of this and eventually if you, you know, go from that beginning stage to the, did we just hit a million order stage?

Shopify is there to help you grow. Doesn't matter what you're selling. Doesn't matter what you are selling, doesn't matter what you are trying to grow with, they can help you sell everywhere. They have an in-person POS system for whatever you're selling. They've got you covered. They can help you with, yeah, they've got the best converting checkout numbers numbers 36% better than average compared to other leading commerce platform platforms for turning browsers into buyers. And yeah, like the ability to give you all the metrics on how things are going when you're, you know, again, for us, it's a t-shirt or something like that. It's all the metrics you could use for how that's going. You can have their award-winning support as well to help you figure out where to go next, what to do, and how to keep your business growing.

They're helping millions of entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. It is a huge step for your business. So definitely want to consider that if you're trying to figure out how to grow your business and get your shop to the next level. So you can sign up for a $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash SuperBeast, all lower case. That's Shopify.com slash SuperBeast. Now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in

Shopify comm slash Super Beast Chachin is the sound again. Thank you Shopify Right Yeah, so we covered you have I do have one more thing to say about power Damn from the refractory voice, which is We covered- I do have one more thing to say about Powerl. Damn. From the refractory voice. Which is, uh- Oh, fuck that.

That sucks so bad. Jesus Christ. The wad has been blown. Oh, fuck off. That's terrible. So I was engaging with this the whole weekend. And I genuinely think that engaging in this discussion was way more fun than the game because I don't think any game could compete. But there was a like a background element of like, almost gallows humor, where you

would see going like it's the destruction of all art forever and then like the next post on social media was like sold another million right sold another million yeah yeah third most popular game on steam ever it was it was at two when I heard it and when I asked Gene about it it had hit four and by the time I got back to Montreal it was at six so it was just it was just like there's a there's a fucking quote. I don't know about. I don't know what artist it was, but they're describing music in opposition to the Vietnam

War, in which they say the collective force of every global artist was against the Vietnam War and we had the effect of a wet fart on the impact of the of the conflict and that's what this fucking felt like where it's like you can't it's bad and it's like and the result was just people going what are everybody yelling about what's pal world oh that looks cool you can give Pikachu drugs yeah well I mean like you could also like you can drop Fortune at Sun over the actual war movies to fucking Undercurrent your point even though it's against it. Um, yeah, but I'm just I'm I'm picturing and loving the idea that

Somewhere in an a boardroom that somewhere in a boardroom in Nintendo headquarters, there is at least a couple people sitting around looking at the numbers and on the whiteboard is just guns? Question mark? Yeah. Yeah, I like it. They're just tapping that, go, mm.

Oh, hey, Dalmick found the quote in the chat. It's from Kurt Vonnegut. Just tapping that, high. God. Yeah. It like... You know, from just... You can peer through the binoculars at the fucking Kyoto office and just again on the board. Just slavery? I think that's funny, but I think the the I think what might be the funniest conceivable outcome is

Like game freak gentlemen at next interview being asked so what do you think of power world and they go what the fuck is power? They don't like that you keep bringing this up they They don't know what this word means. It's very confusing God, what was the what was the fucking one? What was the first one where they're like they don't know it was the online infrastructure for for Xbox live on the Wii? Oh structure for Xbox Live on the Wii. Please stop talking about Xbox Live or PlayStation Network. Our developers don't know what those are. Oh, fuck. Yeah. OK. Well,

you know, who said the fun and games has to stop there because we can just roll right in through to the next bit of news. I mean, certainly, Pal where was the top of that. But hey, we can just say, how about how about we want to write into a solid 11% of riot getting laid off, 530 people. We are halfway to last year's layoffs. We are January, so let's go leaderboard. So let's go.

There's a really incredibly obvious reason this is happening. really incredibly obvious numbers go up this is happening and it's because we were all we were all held at gunpoint in our homes for a couple years. So we played a lot of video games and spent a lot of money on video games and every fucking like head of every tech company went man this line is gonna keep going up forever. Holy shit It's not like people are in fucking jail I Mean I think I think the writing on the wall for triple-a game development has been there like it like forever the idea that this is

Just the other shoe dropping while that has been pretty much just an insane an insane way of making games for the longest while. Yeah. Oh. It's insanely predictable. People in the chat also point out there's a second reason, which is particularly in the United States. There is no longer zero percent interest on like business loans. What this meant is that for the past couple of years, money was cheap. So you didn't actually have to make money,

you could just borrow more because the interest rate was so low that it was no big deal. But now money is no longer cheap. Now you can't just expand forever and go, well, we'll figure out how to make money later. Interesting. Yeah, okay. So it's also interesting how, so this is this is certainly going down and when it comes to, you know, future fucking updates to like the layoff leaderboard that continues as swaths are cut into every company going forward, you have to wonder if when deciding who to let go and what and where, if any anyone that might have whispered anything

about a union at some point like now has plausible deniability to just completely axe and release. In particular, the details with this riot one are so well what they what they came out and basically said was that their first as far as severance goes, they're doing a massive severance package where there's six months of severance pay, 100% of their annual performance bonus access to a laptop and a number of other resources and things that are. And you're like, wow, that's really generous.

It's almost like the state of California legally mandates that amount. The, is that, is that in fact what that was? Yeah, that was mandate. That's what they phrased it is like, look how good we are. We're giving everybody this amount of severance. It's like almost like your company lives in California and you have to. Incredible. All right. I Incredible all right you

Will continue to see the numbers go up as Yeah, there has been I want to say an unbeaten combo of Layoff stories every week in the air so far. Every single fucking week? There's also a gamer oriented part to the story. If you, oh, you gamers out there. Oh, am I incorrect? It's possible that I'm incorrect, that they are being more generous,

but I don't really trust Riot, so I did not give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I should have. I see. So if you want some gamer news legend of rune terra the card game that Right puts out is Disproportionately affected by these layoffs

They actually talk pretty bluntly that They have never made a fucking dime on runeterra It has literally always cost more to maintain and develop than it has ever made back And it is kind of crazy Because I've played a bunch of runeterra. I know you dipped your toe. I tip my tip my toe. Did you do a week of unlocks? Did you unlock your boxes at the end of the week? I don't even, I did a couple days, I think, tops. Okay, so here's the thing about Rune Terror

and the reason why it was so easy to recommend. It was a pretty good card game. And you could buy card packs, but nobody did because the weeklies and the dailies that you would do to get more cards at the end of the week and like, you know, any random cards, but also, you know, tokens to get whatever card you want was very generous. It was very generous.

Right. I remember you could get almost everything. It was so generous. I can't find anybody who's bought cards in that game. It's so generous that it doesn't make any money. It's proof you kind of can't sell a not-scummy card game because it can't even support itself

because it's not scummy enough. Hmm... Even... not scummy enough. Hmm. Even. Well, no, if you're selling the game, that you need to add new packs, it can't be free and also legit. Yeah, it needs to be. It needs to be free and scummy or paid and chill. And you can't have it be free,

but then have rates that are earnable, but the, like convenience purchases, where the free rate is basically like next to nothing, where it's disgusting. You need to hit a point at some point in progression, in which you're like, oh, I'm losing because I didn't spend any money. And Runeterra never, ever, ever felt that way.

Dude, so I wanted to go back into Runeterra last week and I talked about the confusion there and the confusion was about what cards are available. It was not as to whether or not I could get them. I had so much currency saved up over playing like off and on for a couple of months. I could have just purchased with the tokens and currency they had, just like two or three

completely brand new decks of cards that I have nothing for and just got right back in there and started playing again for free. Third option, B and IP that you've cared about since childhood, yes, correct Asuna, that's the other way that can work too. So when you said disproportionately affects Rune Terror, I assumed it was because that 11% was that team.

No, it's not entirely that team, but it got gutted like that. They are only gonna work on the single player version of Rune Terror going forward. So people, yeah, I was gonna say, Yu-Gi-Oh seems to be doing quite well and people seem to be pretty happy with it. What are they doing that is, you know, working? Is Yu-Gi-Oh the base game free

and then you're buying booster packs in the same way, or is there like a, you know, maybe is there a... I don't know anything about God damn Yu-Gi-Oh. I'm now looking, I'm pointing my- No. Okay, I saw someone in the chat go, Yu-Gi-Oh is scum as fuck. Oh my god, never mind.

Because I've had- I've had- The rates blow, they are very unhappy. LOL, no it sucks. I've had two people in real life go like, yo, Yu-Gi-Oh's pretty chill actually. You should really consider checking it out to be over the last month or so.

And I was like, huh, I wonder what's up with that. Okay. Well, there you go. There it is. There it is. Instant. All right, perfect. It's really like the digital or collectible card game

racket is so wild because the game that I'm like, oh man, I really like playing that card game. And that's the only thing I ever heard about it. Mm-hmm dead But the one that everyone in our chat is like that game scum is fuck. I'm so mad it'll live forever How's that Marvel snap doing oh fuck Marvel snaps really smart because You get tons and tons and tons and tons of cards for a long time and then you hit a fucking brick wall and you're you are like it goes

like every single day you unlock a new card for like 90 days and then it's like maybe you'll get one new card this week maybe But the money is going into the cosmetic shit as well right with those like no no The you you buy fucking you can buy fucking cards the card skins and shit this you were describing was okay. Yeah Yeah, so that's that's going on there But hey You know, there's there's always there's always ways to recoup costs, for example. Oh, wait, hold on.

I saw someone in the chat. Marvel Snap is also really bad right now. They nerf the new cards as soon as they can be attained by the free-to-play players. So they're only good in the blood of a cat. Oh, wow. Actual privilege. Actual paid privilege. And you can just say, no, it's a balance change.

What's the big deal? That's what they do say. Fuck off! I didn't realize that was happening. Oh, that's so disgusting. Now they'll be like, well, well the cards going out into the meta It's gonna be more widely available. So you really Pass that's so scummy

Yeah, just a you know had to make some adjustments. Yeah, you know The help of the game Well anyway all this to say that yeah, well you got to figure out how to recoup costs wherever you can Anyway, all this to say that, yeah, you gotta figure out how to recoup costs wherever you can. My suggestion, personally, is how about you grab that New Game Plus and just gut that shit right out of the base product and fucking drop it on the other side, DLC that some bitch. It's kind of incredible because as a life long life long well the life of the series length a fan of the Yakuza slash like a dragon series this is really fascinating

because this is actually proof that the series is now popular in North America. Because this bullshit has been the case the whole time in Japan. Features released as bullshit fucking DLC crap. It's to pay extra for. Just the translated version. And they would roll it into the American releases or it came out alongside it. Wow. Now that these games are coming out out day and date

in English. Hey, guess what? Infinite wealth. You guys can get you can get that shitty DLC to infinite wealth That's high. That's business practices right there. Good shit Sega Sell new game plus so for those who don't know of course the story is like a dragon infinite wealth has removed new game plus and Put it behind the DLC paywall Huh and this was happening in Japan on release previously for other for all the other titles Didn't catch that aspect of it people are asking for an example, right? I have a great example for you folks This was four years ago Here is a push square comm article

Says Yakuza like a dragon new game that be Yakuza 7 new game plus mode is paid DLC in Japan after being included for free and past titles same thing with the hard difficulty was post game DLC that you paid for in Japan. Oh, oh, when the we got the patch here that added that shit for free That's because they didn't think North Americans would buy it So so like a dragon that was a soft launch of this idea that's right and specifically and then this is a okay hard launch Internationally okay, there you go. Yeah, they tested the waters beforehand and also lost judgment had a fucking DLC fighting style. Oh my God.

Well, yeah, okay. Because that that is not even remotely surprising because now Johnny's is getting a cut, right? So you're getting into all kinds of like actual like further like there's the Yakuza and then there's the Johnny's fucking thugs that need to get their pay too. Wow. Well, okay.

Okay, yeah, it comes with other shit. But who cares? It's the strangest story, it's like, hey, this is a big pile of bullshit, but now it's fair globally. Now everyone from all regions can enjoy the same bullshit. So I guess just fucking beat game and lose progress and like is the new game stuff that here's the like is the new game plus content so unique that it could even be considered worth it in some world?

Like, is there ever a version of this where there's a lot includes new quests and new Sujima on, which is also a fake Pokemon game and new content for the Animal Crossing game that is hidden inside it. And it has extra story and it has extra touches so yeah yeah it is actually so if it was just if it was just extra content in and of itself in a thing that you install and it's like go to this location and you can access all that content that would just be DLC yeah but new game plus is an assumed core feature. Why would they why why not anyway? All right. Like you don't have to intertwine those two things if you've actually got new content. Don't. There's no reason to make it infinite. Well,

all right. All right. All right. Like, like all that tells me is there wasn't out and Saga has chosen to not use it. All right. Fan fucking cast it. Anyway, yeah, something right as we were starting up to was announced as well. Netflix has acquired the streaming rights to raw a WWE deal valued at $5 billion beginning in January 2025.

They're also becoming the exclusive content home of WWE shit outside the US. So are you saying I can actually watch wrestling? So Netflix has bought the ability to stream live event wrestling, including WrestleMania and basically all the shit that was on the network. Yeah. Wild. I can watch wrestling if I want now. So it seems I can become the most intolerable

Smark well that I could ever be from Canada. I work my mark-ass mark Self into a fucking shoot brother Into a you can work you can work your your your smark Self into I gotta get the fucking tweet. God, it's so fucking stupid. Into a- Yes, into a shoot. That's correct. The, the, uh,

yeah, the, the weird part too, in particular, is that like, they're emphasizing the live elements. So I guess after the, the Chris Rock special that they did live or so, like, they're trying to go that direction more. So like, yeah, they're going to have like actual things that you tune in on a particular time and date like WrestleMania and so on. Not to mention, I think the WWE Network stuff was always like literally just not available outside of the US anyway.

So yeah, well, there you go. There's there's that. I'll fucking sit down and watch an eye to wrestling. Well, it's just wild because it's like all of these things are making it just like, OK, so like we are kind of just returning to legacy TV in every single shape and and LA. I it's like triple H knew that I had a baby and he was like That baby needs to be able to watch wrestling So he can grow up into a nice well-adjusted man like his papa. I

Mean before I got into the attitude era on my own my parents watched wrestling when I was a kid and that was, that was formative. It's in there. Yeah, good stuff. It was for you. This was done for you. Is that man a wizard? Yes. Ha ha ha.

My dad told me wrestling was fake early and I was like, shut up, you don't know that. You don't know, it's so, like, it wasn't like I learned that wrestling was fake and then like, I was like, oh, I was like Santa Claus. I was like, I fought it. I fought it for a long time. Oh man, no, my parents super believed it.

Oh yeah, well, if they were. Your parents believe a lot of things. It would have been the first time. You know anyway, huh? Hey hey Take two has filed a trademark dispute because the remedies new logo is too similar to the Rockstar logo So like Sam like came out and was like this shit as old as fuck. We already squashed this like six months ago Oh, is that the case? That's not actually a thing. Okay. It's just an R. It doesn't look anything like it and the

Looking at that. It's like shit. I Just saw someone say nothing pasta. No, you can't you have to stop You can't you can't keep doing this. Okay, so not even remotely Because all I just saw that I'm like, okay, so like does Does rare get to fucking get in on this because they have a big R as well Yeah, hold on. We're gonna serve papers to this fucking skeleton This very even exist anymore Nothing passed oh Like what does Rare even exist anymore? Uh-huh.

Nothing passed, uh-huh. Alright. Um, well, and yeah, I mean the only other thing was just, uh, it seems as if, um, speaking of Rockstar, T-Pain was doing some RP server stuff while he was streaming in the GTA 5 community and he's had to stop because he's apparently in six working on stuff but in doing that he can't do RP anymore. That makes sense. Because it's like, hey, you're now a product that is an appeal for the thing.

So if you're going to then give it away for free over here, then you can't be over there into whatever. Right. And so like he tells that part of it. And then he's like, yeah, he's like, and then so I stopped and then they went and like basically bought out all the modders anyway. And so like they hired the team that was doing RP server stuff and just ended up, they all became internal anyways. So, well that's cool. Yeah, apparently that though it's not clear that that indicates whether or not the actual stuff will resemble the RP mod team content because they've done similar things that suggest a matter.

Apparently they've done things like this where they've bought out mod creators and stuff, but they don't have them making any content that resembles the stuff they did. It's more of just like, okay, we want to get all eyeballs on the new thing, you know. So. This is like not super on topic. But like, I recently saw some videos of T-Pain singing without his autotune. Oh, you just saw those? Yeah, just now. Why the fuck did he ever use autotune in the first place?

Yeah, no. He's amazing. He's incredible. He's fucking like, he's incredible. That was the, that, yeah. This moment has happened to many people, many times, with many T-Pain performances. He's really good. He was just going for a particular sound. He was using it like not the way that everyone derivative actually ends up using it to correct mistakes, but he was using it as a distinct thing

for some of it knows how to fucking sing. It's just wild. Yeah, he wanted to. He felt like he felt like creating a unique sound, but you know, he never did it. It's like a guy who wears a Gimp mask all day taking it off and being the most handsome man in the world. And you're like, what the fuck were you wearing it for?

Well, like you learn when you go to fucking art school and shit, like you actually, one of the things they teach you about is like, hey, if you're gonna break the rules, you have to learn them first and then you break them, you know, so you have a foundation to what you're doing and then you can make a better overall thing because you still understand what makes this good. You know, so yeah, absolutely.

I mean, fucking Ozzy just went like, yo, you thank like your cover of war. Best version of war pigs I've ever seen. Yeah, you know, and that's then that's again. There's a fucking feather in your fucking cap. Mm-hmm. Like, oh. Cool. Yeah. You know I might have had too much coffee.

That's all right. I'm gonna be real with you. I'm having, I might have had a few too many cups much coffee. That's alright. I'm gonna be real with you. I'm having a... I might have had a few too many cups of coffee. It's possible. That's okay. Let's take some emails. Hey, if you want to send an email, send it in to CastleSuperBeastmail.com. That castle super beast mail gmail.com when we're done with these emails i'm gonna go make a baby jail you ever bought a baby jail on amazon it's hilarious okay baby will net that's all machine translated chinese nonsense okay a real because there's also baby jail is in for them you know

they can get sent to baby jail too so you you mean a real physical IRL baby jail. I mean, I mean, I mean a physical baby jail. Okay. Like gay baby jail. Yeah, like gay baby jail, correct. Yeah, and it's like they can't escape. And so it's like a box, but it's made out of soft materials. Cause all the Amazon descriptions

are machine translated Chinese of like the baby will never be able to escape. And they are very safe and cannot be harmed inside the box It's just really really fucking funny fantastic All right, we got one coming in here From Lost Planet 2 guy says beasties of lands beyond recently I discovered enter the gungeon the arcade machine at a convention and it's unreal how good it is Yeah, it's really good. It sucks that you can't play it somewhere else

What is the controls like is it is it just sticking button or like I haven't seen that that's pretty I can't even fuck remember all I can remember is seeing it and going wow that looks good and then brain You cannot replicate anything like this at home and it makes me all the more excited for discovering It at an arcade at a new place with all the Machines that I used to love in pretty good condition. Hold on. I got to look this up. I'm gonna look it up right now. Yeah That's a fucking light gun game. It's a light gun game. Oh fuck dude. Oh I want to play this so fucking bad. I fucking love like gun games And you know, there's like 50 of? Like if you're lucky, maybe even 10.

There's no way that's like a widespread thing. Enter the gungeon, house of the gun dead. Oh, it's actually called house of the gun dead. Okay, all right. Oh my god, I would. I would. They're doing a full-on house of the dead parody. And it's first person, okay.

It looks really good. Yeah, it is house of the Dead style. Okay, it's actually not enter the gungeon at all in anything but branding it seems. Man, House of the Dead 2 hurts my soul because it's my favorite arcade game of all time and it's the least durable machine that's ever been made. But also like dust so affordable that it pops up

in all kinds of wild places yeah and you're yeah i'm gonna go through the process of getting a fucking arcade machine put behind me in this fucking spot and then it's gonna last three days before the fucking triggers on those guns snap off yet for some weird reason area 51 lasts forever and cruising usa lasts forever right because you buy it as a fucking piece of art. You don't actually play those pieces shit every truck stop from here to fucking Florida Anyway, so yeah, how am I supposed to replicate the kick and time crisis 3's handgun with a mouse and keyboard?

That's impossible. So what's your favorite arcade machine and to that? The arcade machine unique experience. We just had the emails conversation just now. There you go. Like, dude, like gun shooters are incredible, but yeah, they they fly to pieces. Special mention to as far as like gun shooters go, bone eater, because Silitscope Bone Eater is a unique machine that has that extra screen layer

that like you, that I, yeah, you can't really replicate at home in any way, shape, or form. Killer Queen is the shit. That's obviously the fucking 5v5 insane size cabinet that you can just play. Like it's like the X-Men cabinet, but like super super extended and you can have a real fun like versus game on that That thing has become a staple at like cons that have it Gunslinger strato so I used to big up back in the day because

Cool third-person like shooter with the gun combinations and you physically position the guns to change your equipment and yeah, I mean for me the, the, like, all-timer, it was just virtual world, like, sitting inside of a Mecca cockpit and using foot throttles and a steel battalion before steel battalion inside of an enclosure, you know? Those are my favorite cabs. I remember when I was a little kid, I got into the goddamn afterburner machine and I remember being in the fucking mind.

It would spin like 270 fucking degrees. You would be almost damn upside down. Afterburner Climax at fucking 2000 on St. Catherine. That machine dude, holy, what a sick arcade. That was all I mean, the game was fine. Blow your hair back. Yeah, in thrill house. The game was self was pretty good.

But the fact that you're in a jet like, oh, man, that was sick. And it was like two dollars a game. It was really, it was really so worth it. Oh, fuck. Um, really, it was really bad. It was so worth it. Oh, fuck. Um, okay, let's see. All right. Here's one coming in from, uh, Nikonin just says, hello, Sparxter and Rocket Knight. That's pretty good, I like that.

I can live with that. Okay. Oh, CJ from Michigan here, excuse me. Do you think that full dive VR, like in anime where your consciousness gets put into the computer, et cetera, would replace existing genres? And for the sake of our argument,

let's assume that it's a successful platform, widely adopted, unlike current VR VR which is still niche. I could see first person games getting entirely replaced but do you think other genres would be so significantly affected by full dive like racing or games where you become the fighting characters etc? I mean if you asked me this question 18 months ago I'd tell you to strap me in and let me die. asked me this question 18 months ago, I'd tell you to strap me in and let me die. I thought to have a human child to take care of. There you go.

There you go. Right. Things things change. No, absolutely not. And the reason why is is pretty obvious, I would say that just because a game is first person, that doesn't matter. That's just describing where the camera is, whether that's first person using a real gun in your hand, like a light gun, as we just described, or a mouse and keyboard, or any other interface material or VR handsets, that makes a completely different style of games. So the camera placement is only one element, right? Yeah, but what if it was full dive VR and you went to a different world and in that different world you could not?

I mean it would replace all other genres if only because it's time to give up and let go right That we have we have achieved our final state But barring that I it's yeah, it's pretty clear that connecting the brain directly to it is just all right, it's another interfacing medium. But what are the controls and how does that work? Because that's a huge difference. Oh, fuck, I knew as soon as I said this, I'd see the word

glop. Stop it. Oh, yeah. How much glop? How much time? You know what? You know what this makes me think of? A full year's worth? Like the person, the person who's like like changing Kirito's fucking saline bag because he's in a coma and he just charts Boston just oh fuck. Oh my god. He's fucking MMO freaks. Gross. Henry asks, dear Poo and Woo, what's your favorite instances in media of a moment that has great

significance but is purposely underplayed? For example, I would vote Frodo in Lord of the Rings and Fellowship, picking up the one ring for the first time in the background of the shot with zero fanfare and In a piece of woolly bait, there's the famous Moment in attack on Titan second season. Hey, Aaron. Can I talk to you for a sec? Yeah, so I'm like that's good I mean like extremely high up on my, if not at the very top is multiple moments in Attack on Titan for just playing the most wild shit in the most subdued manner.

And it's like, did you, did that, like that is, I've never seen another thing master that as well as it does. It's the fucking best. Not like barring that part of it from the conversation. I would say it's also why I really love the movie Children of Men because of how it plays a bunch of shit like that. In the opening minutes of the movie, a fucking bomb goes off in the background of the scene

and like just a terrorist attack occurs. And there's just kind of just very like almost like, hey, did you blase little pan past someone walking out of the blast holding their own severed arm? And it's so like, what, where are we looking? What's going on? And it's just, it's like barely even noticeable, you know, and it's just it's fucking insanity happening.

That is like, yeah, okay, that's over there. Anyway, moving to the next scene. Insane. And it does wonders for actually like making that movie hit, in my opinion. I was a big fan of the direction on the phrase doesn't look like anything to me. direction on the phrase doesn't look like anything to me. From the eighth, sixth or seventh episode of Westworld. Mmm. That's a good one. That's a good one because it's, it's played totally flat. Yeah. I don't think it even has a music stinger.

I think it's all in your head. We've come very far from the movies that we grew up with in our childhoods, like having your sixth sense moments, right? Holy fuck, the twist to the twist is now the expected and played. If it's played sincerely, like depends on what the moment is. But like there's an appreciation we can have for that, but like going over the top with, did you notice the twist is why like Shyamalan has become kind of a parody

of himself in a way. Oh yeah. You know, these things, it's just, it's too expectably. Swing away. And our brains. Swing away. Our brains are conditioned to trying to preempt the twist while we're watching the thing the entire time, our brains are conditioned to trying to preempt the twist

while we're watching the thing the entire time, which is also why 13 Sentinels is such an insane journey because it knows what you're trying to do and it's heading you off at the pass like over and over and over again. So when you decide to like again, just do the complete opposite and have it be a nonsense, casual background thing that is super missable if you're not actively paying attention.

That ends up being more impactful than building up a bunch of music, cutting to some silence and then, huh, inception horn, you know, like it's it's way more fucking impactful to just have it be subdued. You know, this is somewhat, this is not really the exact same thing, but this discussions for some reason reminds me of a historical tidbit I just learned about MGS2. In that part of the game story came off weird in English, but it doesn't in Japanese. Um, because Accio Otsuka and MGS2 voices Snake and Solidus. Oh, so when Solidus is on the bridge going, it's me solid Snake.

It's, it sounds like fucking Snake. Oh, he voices Solidus too. Yeah, I didn't know that, weird. But in English it's two different voice actors, so you're like, well that's off of Lisa now, fuckin' snake. Yeah, that never, yeah that doesn't work at all. Oh, weird. I wonder why they didn't carry-

There was also some little development tidbit where the tanker portion of MGS2 was supposed to be only available for, I think people who chose I played MGS1 in the, like, there would be like, did you play MGS1? In the beginning options, yeah. And you would, and you would go, no, I didn't play MGS1, and then it would start right at, right in section, which is why you get tutorialized twice.

Oh, that's weird. But then they thought that was fucking stupid. It is that is fucking Jesus god fucking Christ rain them in Rain them in apparently death stranding two is called death stranding two on the beach Shut up I Saw that I don't know if that's real or not Do you know what I saw I saw a photo of Junji Ito hanging out with Kojima and the mo and the fucking mo cab.

Oh, shit. Oh, yeah. No, but OD is absolutely just PT again. OD. Oh my God. All right. Well, it's not. I mean, just because we just because Guillermo got to be in Death Stranding doesn't mean that the affair is over. So he needs to show up.

They can still kiss. He needs to show up too. We need to see, we need Totoro sign in the room before it's real. Okay, all right, good, that'll do it. Good, good show. Hey, hey, good business, good job, good, well done. Thank you.

I'm gonna go build a gay baby jail. Excuse me