Castle Super Beast - CSB 271: Woolie al Gaib

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

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["Sailor Moon Theme"] Excuse me. Hello. Welcome to the Castle Superbeast News Network. Your only source for the most trusted news about Combo Breaker. The most trusted news, yes. Reporting after a week abroad. Absolutely. Combo Breaker reporting on the events there.

How are you today, Mr. Madden? Yes, no. I mean, it could have been live on the scene, but I was too busy. You know what the funniest thing is hmm is I was I was streaming yesterday and Susie and Jean were in my chat and I was like, yeah, well, he went crazy when we called him a game journalist. It was it was wild and Jeans like he's at an FGC event right now. Yeah Reporting and he's gonna talk about it on the podcast. That's a report as a human interest story. Yes. Yeah, I know. I saw I saw the the that people were

saying you're an anchor is what that is or a reader, whatever. Like so it's interesting because like the takeaways have pretty much just been like as the week has gone by, that like, yeah, dude, you're nuts, and clearly you overthink, or you think too highly of what news actually is. And I think in reflection on that, I think what it is is that I definitely hesitate to call myself the news because of what I think news should be, I guess.

Oh, the platonic ideal. When I think of what I think news should be and what I take it for, I'm like, I don't want that, I don't expect that, and think that ought to be the, yes, you can have someone kind of giving their flavor on an editorial or so or something But it's like the idea of just whatever the fuck at random. I think hey, what's happening over there? I don't know maybe this and then I don't have the full story and did you hear about that?

I don't know. Here's maybe what I think about it. It might be wrong. Oh turns out it was wrong. Okay. What's that? Oh the the funniest part of all of that was you going like, but I don't even know about Kingdom Hearts on the Epic Game or whatever, right? Sure. And I saw a response that was like, does Willy think IGN is a person?

Yeah, yeah, and it's not that part of it as much as it is just like, I'm just at random, just will grab it. I saw someone say that it it's almost it's like The way I think about it is more of like a fan magazine and I'm like, yeah Yeah, I identify with that because there's no expectations of that. There's no Of that being done to any kind of standard or whatever it's just someone who is interested in these things grabbing those things and

It's just someone who is interested in these things, grabbing those things and giving their opinion on it. And it's like, hey, you want to follow this magazine about this fanzine about a metal and the death metal scene? Here's what's going on. Here's some fun bands that you might want to check out. I went to a concert. It was really cool. And you know, I just like that overall, like the vibe of the things you're interested in and then also

here's a bunch of shit about my life I guess in general to which there were some folks that were like yeah actually I stopped listening because they just talked about their lives and I want the news and I'm like exactly that I get that means you're a trusted source for news they're just getting past the fluff yes yes yes so I think we uphold high standards here on the podcast my personal standard for what comes out of my mouth Is that I believed it when I said that's that's what matters That's what matters the most you know so if I make a punchline about

The the titles of Kingdom Hearts games and Toho games and such being nonsense because of the words It's goofy shit. we're going off of, regardless of how accurate and super important those titles might be because of my assumptions. Feelings. I am actually going to take that specific point. Feelings. I'm going to take that specific point as an example because when you said that, you were like, these are some wacky names and they're

just like these wacky names isn't that so yeah I didn't play any of those yeah yeah and that doesn't like speak to you as good old-fashioned garms journalism right but when you said that and it had it took me a second to like find it in my head and by the time I did the podcast was over like there were people who wrote for like Forbes magazine and like newspapers like 10 years ago going, when are we going to be done with this archaic thing and video games called the boss fight? Right. Right. Right. Not any good. I don't understand. And that was treated like serious ass editorial shit, and it was garbage like all this is is

three to five hours of Me trying to get to a title like stop me from bearing your child Please don't bury my child like Like, that's all this is. This is like the news and the things that happen are incidental to me coming up with shit like Patchwitz. Alley in Resurrection, that's all I'm trying to get to here. I feel like there's two ways to go about somebody who doesn't feel, who's impostering themselves

out. You can go the first way, which is for positive, healthy people, which is, hey man, you do a great job and you, despite all the jokes, you genuinely reach out and try and get all your ducks in a row and you have done an excellent job over many years breaking down a wide variety of extremely complex topics particularly with a Occasionally insane and unreasonable co-host now that is the nice way to build somebody up, but that is not effective Instead let's go the other way wooly news has never been more garbage especially games journalism. It's trash.

It is so bad. It has never been worse. Right, right, right, right, right. The idea that you are standing there going, I don't know, man, is already putting you so high up there. William Al-Gaib, yes, yes, sure. It's not Al-Gaib. He's Yes, sure. Lisanne Al-Gaib! He does, he's the-

I don't know what that means, but okay. No. Is that that Dune shit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy in Dune where it's like, whenever Paul goes, I don't want this shit. I don't want it, he does that. He does the Jon Snow.

And then the guy who believes super hard is just like, of course he doesn't want it. That makes him it, even more so. Lisanne Al-Gaib, he's the chosen one. He's just great. But no, it's yeah, I think that's kind of what the deal is. It's just I'm like, okay, well, regardless of how garbage it might be,

I'm like, what I think it ought to be, it's in my brain because it's like, well then, if I think this is what it should be because this is how stupid this is, then if I call myself that, then you're almost a hypocrite for not being that. Does that, you know what I mean?

Like, if I think it's stupid, then the thing that I- I get it, but that is like a completely insane set of expectations. And take it it from me man with insane expectations it's that it's that if it is stupid the version of it that I think that the version of it that I think is good is something that I can't do and therefore you're like oh you're qualifying by just standing there. Cause the bar has never been lower is wild. Cause it's like, I guess man, but you know,

if I were to be like, I think it ought to be that. And then I'm going to call myself that, but I don't do the things I think it ought to be. Then yeah, I'm a hypocrite. You know, bully you sound... Oh my God, is this what it feels like? Oh my God, this is what it feels like. This is the inverted, Pat, you're doing art conversation. This is literally the same conversation in reverse, in which I'm going, but I can't take what's in my brain

and do it perfect in one try, and you're going, but I have to reach the mythical standard of the thing or else it doesn't count. It's not even like the opposite ends of the same thing. It's okay. Perhaps my thoughts towards a mythical standard, you might be thinking of as a pristine mountain on a hill with a journalist in the studio. It's not that. it's not that.

But it is like, it is, it's more than the bare minimum of research, which is what I think I do with what we talk about. Wully, I think you're gonna get lost in the weeds on this. I am, I am, I am. I am. No one's ever going to be like, because you have like an internal, not spiritual, but you have like a vibe based objection that you're having trouble getting into words. So you're going to mention a detail and someone's going to refute or discuss that detail and you're going to be like, but that's not 100%. It is vibe based. It is very right based. Yeah, it is and it's just like

Yeah Like like gene park friend of the show is a real ass reporter and still comes in war into our Really just some guy genocide mom of the year Annabelle. Mm-hmm Yes Comes into my infinite wealth stream like, Oh, this is where I used to buy drugs. I get it. And I think I think it's it's something that it's the it is totally vibes based, but it's a vibe that has like been reinforced from time to time when a humongous story that

I could not give less of a shit about. I just go, yeah, I have nothing to say about that. I don't care. Right. Seen that clip from Conan's show where he's talking to some old man. It's like makes a joke about Epstein Island. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, you're talking about Jeffrey. You mean, you mean, Jeff, Jeff Epstein, the financier. What happened? What? Yeah, I remember that guy. He's got a brown, he's got one of them brown stones and then you know got a nice place over there. Yeah, what's going on with him? Jeff?

Yes, exactly. Anyway, yeah, so no, that's kind of it. I suppose like I would be like, it would be a surprise to me if I again, opened the newspaper or turned on the news and there was like Yeah, there's a huge story of something of importance, but we don't care about it So we're just not really gonna go into that Actually and here's the thing granularity wise that is super real obviously, yeah, you know

But I mean I had to like I remember finding out about anything relating to Yemen was like, oh, that's entirely not in mainstream news things. So there's a bunch of major important things that don't come up anyways, regardless. But vibes based, like, oh, Cod Blob 6 is coming to Game Pass. I'm like, yeah, all right, man, um, um, cod blop six is coming to game pass. I'm like, yeah, all right, man. I got that. See, see, here's the thing.

This is where it's perfect because both of us have like, we have some major like overlap, but like, uh, I'm obsessed with following all this shit. So like, you don't need to actually know half of it, but I missed a ton of stuff. Like fucking nine 11 is going to be in the cod blops, wooly. You're not even if you don't hear about it now, you're definitely going to hear about it in a couple of fucking months.

Sure, I guess. I have minus one thought on anything relating to that. So I kind of walked away from the point I was making myself, but like getting trapped in the weeds, right? So the specific detail that I would point out is, Wooly says, doing more than the bare minimum of research. The bare minimum of research, this is something I tell Paige all the time, where she'll be like, well, it was the least I can do, right? It was, you know, she'll be, she'd be helping somebody out or getting them a pizza when she goes over to somebody's house, something like that. Right. She's like, well, it's the least I could do.

I'm like, no, the least you can do is literally nothing. So like the bare minimum level of research is grabbing a headline and that's it. Okay. Not even reading the fucking text. Okay. I accept your counter-vibes based proposal with one condition. Alright, let's see here. The next time you lean into the mic and you go, what do you mean, dude?

It's your job. You hold that same energy. I will, okay. Yeah, I don't, what's the last time I did that? Over, I don't know, over something, right? So you're like, what do you mean you don't know? Somebody's looking up. It's your job, right?

Like the next time that sentence is about to be uttered Keep the same energy for a sec and realize. I'm like yeah, I guess if I give a fuck But if I don't I don't know you know the chat points out the actual Lowest least you could do is to have a robot scrape other yes articles. It's just rewrite it yes Yes, true true, but that's yeah anything that that that pertains it was a Bethesda. Perhaps it was you know, but like it was oh, yeah Yeah, you hadn't played Skyrim or something like or stuff like that. So like whenever that comes about it's like yeah, man I'm giving you the vibes of what I think is kind of cool and that view that's about a Bad be like I don't know what this fighting game is, I've never heard of it, then I would be astonished.

Yes, sure. Eyebrow raised, absolutely. But yeah, the differing of like, you can't possibly know everything, but remember when like possibly 15 years ago you used to follow GameSpot and there'd be like the guy who reviewed fighting games and there'd be the guy who reviewed every sports game and racing game and the guy who did a horror and there was always like a different person specific to each particular genre. Like you are already multidisciplinary more than the journal of old. The correspondent again yes and the human interest story you know guys turns out kites are pretty

fun actually. They are fun. I'm here are fun I'm here on the street with some people flying kites. What do you think? Wow? Yeah Anyways, all right. Well Are you in the pocket of big kites? I would love to be if you've got a fucking kites sponsorship run that ship by me. I'm all ears Okay, so there's yeah, there's a bunch of shit to talk about. I will.

How was Combo Breaker? Yeah, well, even before that, I. Before that. I have received, yeah, first breaking news item today, I have received the crown jewel of my Ava merch. I've been building up an Ava merch collection somewhat. People who have seen me have seen me wearing my, you know, unit one shoes or the jacket or the bags.

I like the purple and green shit, you know, that's been a thing going. But Ava merch is cool. And after a long pre-order, it is my my pleasure to show and this might be a bit of a visual bit. Oh you finally got them. The boxers have arrived baby. You finally got the AT field boxer shorts. Absolute terror field boxer shorts and there is the the aura is blocking any any attacks from outside they will not penetrate but what your junk is defended but willy the absolute

terror field is actually the implicit like fear of human connection with another no so by putting that on your boxer shorts you're telling everyone no no human connection over here virginity protected Unless someone freaks out real hard and starts ripping through that shit like Or the knife or gets the knife out you know what can we know I think that I think I think you'd want to pass on that one

Yeah, and my favorite part about my 80 field boxers is that they're official That is official a very nice knockoffs years ago as a bit, but like no they're selling them for real All right, I'm back from Chicago But like, no, they're selling them for real. Alright. I'm back from Chicago. And... How's America? Well, fortunately, the tournament wasn't held in Oblok. It was held in Schaumburg, which is a bit out of the city actually and stuff. But it was fucking awesome.

Very cool. So no Malort this time because I did it in Texas. I already had my annual quota of Malort fuck off with that shit. But no, the deal with Coma Breaker for years had been like, yeah, I've been told you gotta go, you gotta go. And shout out to the best of bond who said, he's like, okay, if you go to two tournaments a year, go to Evo, go to combo breaker. If you can only go to one,

go to combo breaker. Really? And I was like, what? And he's like, but Evo's the fucking that's the world championship. What the fuck?, what the fuck, whoa. Damn's fighting words, that's crazy. And yeah, and the deal is that when you go and you see what's up, it makes perfect sense because Combo Breaker, I signed up for it in 2020 and then I actually planned to go then, that was gonna be my first one. Then it got canceled, so couldn't go.

Got the merch though, that was cool. So this is properly like a redo. It is what Evo was before Mandalay Bay. It is old Evo vibes. Oh! And that sentence implies that it's almost like, oh, before it got spoiled. And I don't want that to be the energy.

You get shot? Because Evo becoming a larger crazy thing, I'm like, whoa, holy shit, fighting games in this massive commercial space and becoming this large like e-sport product thing is wild. I didn't think that was possible. Seeing it in, going in and watching it in the round, I've talked about like that is a fucking nice

spiritual experience of like UFC arena, giant 12,000 people watching a main stage where people are fucking playing. It's insane, it's awesome, I love that. But this is the energy of when I walked in to Caesar's Palace, right, when they had it in previous venues. This is kind of like going back to the 2012, like EVO or even before, where as you get there, it's like very, very,

it's a dense space, it's a massive ballroom, and there's five screens on each of the four, of the far walls, and they're all streaming main games and other, and games that are not as popular and everything's getting attention. It's the only place where, and this is what it's known for, but if you're unfamiliar, Coma Breaker is known for being the tournament

that runs everything. Whatever game you like, no matter how obscure, everyone comes to it and everyone plays like and revitalizes old games, right? It's named after obviously Killer Instinct and that's the main thing it's about. But I was able to enter and participate in a Samurai Showdown tournament that had 70 people in it. That must be everyone. That's crazy. That is unheard of. That size bracket for a game like that is nuts.

And the same for all other small games, right? If you're a fan of, if you wanna play Darkstalkers, if you wanna play Cyberbots, DNF, like all these games that are just like obscured. Asko 120% going off in the corner and mystery game shit, incredible. It's just a really cool place where like, again, you actually have the biggest bracket you're gonna get

for any old games that you're a fan of. When they have their Third Strike setups, they've got them running on arcade hardware in a corner of the BYOC room. on arcade hardware in a corner of the BYOC room. It's just a really awesome vibe to see, yeah, you got your main stage Street Fighter 6, you got Tekken running, you got Strive, and then someone's running,

you got Ultra Street Fighter 4 brackets running, and that was on one of the big screens at the same time You know and then behind again, you're seeing like you're running your whatever at whatever anime game from the past bit It's like yeah, they're running strive, but they're running it but there's excerpt. There's plus R You know you got and just everything is is in there. So it is just really cool to experience that, you know, and the overall way that it runs to is insanely smooth and just well organized. And it's no wonder that Rick the Hadoo took over for EVO and runs EVO, but still runs

Combo Breaker as well because Because dude runs a tight ship, a smooth tournament experience, incredible. Everything just moves like no hiccups of any kind that I saw and also like some real fun and thoughtful consideration to the layout that I don't see at other events where the artists alley in a lot of cases is kind of pick a spot, they're all in there, and then you just plunk them down in the corner somewhere

and then that's what it is. Here what's happening is you've got the main room with all the main stages, you've got a side room with like bring your own console and side tournaments and other things going on. But throughout the hallways and the main room and the side room, you've got vendors and artists, allies lining the walls the whole way through. Oh, that's a cool way to do that.

So they're always around and they're always there no matter what room you're in, no matter what you're checking out. You're mixing in the games, the pools, the vendors, and the artists. That's extra good for the vendors, because that means they're guaranteed to have constant foot traffic. Everywhere. Even from people who aren't going to,

I want to go to the vendors. That's it. They're just like little streets in between the things people are going to anyway. All the main points of interest are like the journey to them and then at them is lined with people who have booths of Interesting stuff. Oh, that's good. That's really really good Yeah, and then they've got their arcade room and then in the arcade room as well

You have all the cabinets set up and then around at the top on the arc. You have the Some indie fighters set up there as well So the same place that you're going to play, anywhere that people are interested in doing the thing, there's also the tables going on. So it's really, really smart how that was set up. And I was very impressed. And not to mention, yeah, the cool art and the style and everything about the, I guess I kind of, you can tell. So finding out, it's like, oh yeah, Rick was an artist and he cares a lot about the aesthetic of that stuff. I was like, oh yeah, I guess I kind of, you can tell, so like finding out, it's like, oh yeah, Rick was like an artist and is like, he cares a lot about the aesthetic of that stuff.

I was like, oh yeah, I can see it, because you see like the awesome Cobble Bricker logo, they have a really nice little mural of like all the characters from like various games, obscure and or popular. And then the main slogan, no coasts, no kings, which is fucking fire. That's a good ass.

That's a good one. That's a good one, you know Yeah, it was it was a great like first experience with this and it's wild because I'm like as someone who's been You know FGC for so long like it's always like wait really you've never and it's like yeah, man Traveling from Canada. I got to pick my spots, you know, but Canada. I don't know if a lot of people are familiar with this spots you know but Canada I don't know if a lot of people are familiar with this Canada is farther away than it actually looks because America is bigger than it is wait don't you mean Canada is bigger than it is no because I mean most of the trip to Canada is actually within the US yeah you're going okay Montreal

to Chicago right okay yeah yeah so you're going to Montreal to Chicago, right? Okay. Yeah. So you're essentially doing like New York, right? Chicago plus a little bit. It's just also when I when I look at like an Atlas and I see North America and I'm like, Oh, that's a fucking triangle. And like we're the top thick part. But I've seen maps where when it's adjusted for the curvature of a globe, you think they're almost the same size, but they're really not. Anyway, shit takes time, and it's difficult,

and you gotta pick your spots. It's far, it's farther than you think it is. But yeah, it was, oh, I see, the convention center that it took place in was where DashCon ball pit took place as well. That's right, man. Good to know, good to know. And I had these weird flashes of deja vu because I'm also like, I feel like I've been to that

convention center before and I've also been to like the burger place that was nearby. So I'm like, I don't know, but it wasn't for like Frosty. So I'm like, I don't know what was going on. But in any case, really, really fucking sick event. And obviously as a major fighting game event, too That's where I'm just gonna spend the entire weekend running into my people. You know what I mean? So yo I was really cool to see a lot of you guys that were out there and you know in the context of like

You know some people are out there spectating I saw dash zero came through that was cool. You know I was like oh shit in the flesh That was awesome and a lot of always really strange when like long time chatter viewer etc becomes human yeah yeah and I have to tell them I because there's a lot of times where I've had the experience of someone coming up and like having a conversation I'm like okay cool alright we'll take it easy you know I think oh what was your name again and then like they flip the badge around and I'm like, what the fuck you've been around for years I know you can you open with that shit? Come on, you know, like I'm Jerry. I don't know any Jerry's

Multiple times I've had that where if someone just like I mean shit I told the quiet Viking story before already right where I had that work yeah quiet Viking is like we're at combo con like didn't didn't open with that talked for at least an hour or two like it was a while before it's like oh yeah by the way it's quite Viking like he's got a really really really common first name but it was but still just like there's a there's a shot if you've been around and a shot, if you've been around, and you've been around for a while, there's a pretty good shot, I know exactly what's up, and I'm like, hey, it's you, how you doing?

Put a name to the face. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly, there you are. So just open with that shit, y'all. Don't do that fucking last second, oh yeah, I'm out. And then it's like, I've literally had more conversations with you online than here in person, and you're just frontin'. So no, that was cool.

And what's also fun is seeing some folks that are just like, oh yo, what's up, hey? And you know, talking about getting into the fighting games in general, and bringing friends out and all that. And it's like, yeah, awesome, all right, well, you entering any stuff? And it's like, oh yeah, a couple things here and there. It's like, yeah, awesome, all right, well, are you entering any stuff? And it's like, oh yeah, a couple things here and there. It's like, all right, we'll have a good tournament, you know?

And then going and sitting down and looking up and seeing that same person winning DNF Duel and being like, oh shit, you're actually a god. And then multiple people. And then multiple people throughout the weekend being like, oh yeah, I saw them later and they have a medal around their neck. And I'm like, oh you didn't say that you were a fucking beast. Holy shit. So, I'm just gonna butt in for a little bit, because I had my Get Out of Fighting Game stream earlier this week. Which included primarily me playing against people from my chat and

people in my chat um Got what really a lot better? Over the year that Street Fighter 6 has been out. Hmm because that those two sets of streams Went very differently because the last one was you should stop playing fighting games and these were I should stop last one was you should stop playing fighting games and these were I should stop because I got my fucking ass pushed oh did the intro get role reversed were you in the middle of the ring beat me up they am the um nah man there's secret killers out there that are real humble and it's only by you know Sunday where you're just like

what the fuck like you're one of the best on the planet at this game I didn't you know the theme the entire time was the fucking the Shaq picture you know I owe you an apology I was not familiar with your game You know So anyway It was it was it was it was rad as shit. I'll come back to the actual event itself because I want to make note of what happened outside of the event I I got a list of Places to go eat food. I was like, I'm in Chicago.

That's one of those cities where everyone's got their thing. It's got good food. It's a thing, right? So I'm like, all right, let's do it. And yeah, like Sheena had a list and some other people has recommended me some stuff. So I'm like, all right, let's go check these out, see what's going on and see if my preconceived notions about certain types of food would be met.

So for one, there we went to Portillo's or otherwise spelled or Portillo's but I think it's probably I think it's Portillo's. Okay. Reggie said portillo's and I'm like you speak multiple languages I trust you but that's a terrible like line of reasoning to you no no he every time he had we get a thing in a foreign language he pronounces it amazingly because he used to be a localization tester and like he actually reads off like um yeah but you're German and where they pronounce Spanish and Portuguese and like he's really good at like language pronunciation he's like legitimately

someone you can trust on that. But America. Anyways so their main thing was a hot dog, right? And I got one of the proper Portillo's hot dogs. And I guess in terms of just the sausage itself, it's like if I put my own toppings of preference on that, that would have been a pretty good dog. Right. I think the best dog I've ever had was a Toronto Street dog, not going to lie.

Years ago, it was just next level. I was like, why does this taste so good? It was great. But in this case, it was the main thing. And then it was kind of like they took it and it was a good sausage. And then it tasted like it was kind of dipped in vinegar and then there were pickled peppers put on top and then tomatoes put on top and then just more and then pick more vinegar and pickles and then some kind of coleslaw and then you get some mustard and some and it was just it was the most acidic fucking thing

I've put in my body in a very long time and I'm like, okay Maybe this could be that the guy who founded it just says like I want I like the taste of vinegar e shit And this is I'm making it for me. But as the default dog and like I'm Like Reggie was getting heartburn practically. It was a lot. It was just and I'm like, I don't even hate like spicy I'm that I love spicy actually. That's why I went so hard on the ghost pepper But like spicy with like a kick and like a good pepper like flavor to it is awesome Just vinegar is like just acid and I was like it's too much.

This sounds like, I'm gonna text her, but this sounds like it's explicitly to my wife's tastes. Because of the mustardy, like acidic. The brine vinegar mustard, just strong. Abrasive flavor possible. It was a lot. And the toppings were just piled on and overwhelming it. And I was like, okay, like I could have been, if I just went with like probably just like a simple chili dog or, you know, throw some cheese

and some basic toppings on that bitch, it would have been fine. But the default titular meal at the very least, I was like, this is too much. So, and I think too as well, like in a lot of places I could go and customize to get like what I would enjoy. Um, but I kind of want to taste like the, you know, the, the main attraction. Yeah. It's like, uh, assuming you don't have a hairstyle like yours, Willie, if you travel abroad and you have to get a

haircut, don't tell them what to do. Just ask for the usual. Yeah. The fuck you happen to be. Yeah. Yeah. there you go. You get surprised me So yes, the the the vinegar glizzy was a bit much and Did it hurt you it hurt later? It hurt Reggie. It didn't hurt me But he was not he was not his he was yeah his chest was He was feeling it. Man, when you talk about eating food

and you're like, oh, I took damage from that food, like traditionally, it's like your stomach or your asshole. You just said it hurt Reggie in his chest? It's that, because it's that heart burning fucking acid shit, man, you know? Like, um. That's wrong. Yeah, like you ever eat something really acidic

and then like right to the back of your throat you can almost feel the bubbling? Oh yeah, absolutely. You know? It's like kinda like that. Kinda like that, man. Gotta go get some Tums right after. So.

Okay. The other, the next place on the list. And I kind of tried to go with, I was like, okay, what's around the venue? But then I'm down to travel a bit further out depending on how much I wanna try the list. And I kind of tried to go with, I was like, okay, what's around the venue? But then I'm down to travel a bit further out, depending on how much I want to try the thing. What was also near the venue was Italian beef. I don't know if you know about Italian beef,

but that's another Chicago thing, it seems. Yes. I mean, Italians can make beef anywhere. But this is a specific kind of Italian beef. Also, from hot dog to Italian beef. So just everything we got on the list here is just giant, huge, sweaty penis joke. Let's go. Italian beef is...

It's essentially... Okay, let's ruffle some feathers. It's essentially a Philly cheesesteak but minus the cheese With a different kind of beef and more spicy Mm-hmm is what it is. It's a you're getting like a you know, like a Like a kind of like a hoagie or a sub type of thing and you're shoving in some different kind of beef and you're getting Some spice with it. But the deal is I was told in particular don't just go get one. We went it was to get one from yeah we went to Johnny's Italian beef and get it and make sure to ask for

a half and half, half pepper, half sweet and then get it dipped. So you got to dip it in the in the and then they take the whole sandwich they make it and then get it dipped. So you got to dip it in the in the and they take they take the whole sandwich. They make it and then they just dip that shit in gravy. And you're getting the wettest, the wettest sockiest. I'm out of this. Fuck that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So here's the thing. It's fucking delicious. It tastes great and As a fan of spice it was the good kind of spice not the heartburn spice the one where I'm like Oh that pepper has quality to it. There's there's it's adding to the flavor with the meat. It's and together with the bread It's doing it. It's great. You sop that shit up. The problem is the structural integrity of the sandwich is dogshit it fall you can't You can't The problem is the structural integrity of the sandwich is dog shit. It falls. You can't manipulate it.

And I'm trying to- Eventually you're just fucking grabbing the fucking thing off the plate. I was trying to not get a knife and fork. And I mean, by the end I did it and then what was left behind, Reggie just went and grabbed some forks. And I'm like, all right, all right, we're grabbing- Yeah, this is the solution. I just saw someone in the chat say Pat doesn't like spice I love spice, but if I grab food with my hands, and it's fucking wet. I'm gonna throw up that is awful It's a great. It's a great sandwich, but the bread is wet

like take that for exactly what it sounds like and wet. Like, take that for exactly what it sounds like. And it also just happens to be served like insanely piping hot temperature wise. There is a burn warning to like shoving that in your mouth like I'm going to give you because it's kind of like when I had Okonomiyaki or Takoyaki in Japan where they just serve it up and it's like if you put that in your mouth You're gonna die just so you know You unwrap it and you put it in your mouth And then you just die the top of the skin of your mouth burns off it gets all White and rigidity and shit, and then you're for the rest of the day. You can barely fucking enjoy anything

Yeah, don't you have to open it and let the heat hit the air for a minute and then pick your bites accordingly and when you do each bite you're taking is one of those like you're managing the temper it's so insanely hot but it was good it was good you know oh the dip cools it down I didn't get a dip to do it myself. They did the pre-dip. The whole thing was done. They dipped it? They pre-dipped the whole sandwich,

wrapped it up, dipped, and handed it to me, you know? But yeah, the taste was good. The texture was soggy bread, and the integrity was brutal. Oh, fuck, This sounds awful. Yeah, so I don't know where you lie on the texture versus taste like priority. So I'm going to say I'm mostly normal.

But a bad texture will have me spit something out of my mouth faster than bad taste. Okay, okay. Like some, a couple of textures, I'm just like, it's intolerable, like just, I can't. I have a high tolerance for texture because I'm all about taste. I am 80-20 on taste versus texture.

But the slimiest, goopiest taste of feel is the worst. That's going to kill me. And anything that like I like crunchy, but when it's crunchy to a to an inedible degree, I'm out as well on texture. But a very, very few things turn me off. I hate the texture of quinoa. I hate the texture of pomegranate. There's few things out there that hit me on that level.

I don't care for them, but I'm not like, ugh. But in most, the ones that do me in I'm just like no like certain like squid like squid is the one that I go to I'm not like yeah but I yeah I'm chewing it and I've chewed it for one too many times for me to enjoy it no it is it is I mean calamari when it's basically an onion ring, is doable, but it's still really chewy. But yes, no, slimy is just not what you want to be in the quality of your thing. And I say this as someone who has swallowed natto.

Okay, lest we forget. Yeah, you should have done that. Anyway, so that's what's going on. And then, oh yeah, so Kuma's Corner is a death metal themed burger place and it's, that's exactly what it sounds like on the tin. Everyone is dressed like death metal. There's metal occalips playing on the TV screen. Every burger is named after that. And that's great. Yeah. And it's a burger and you know burger spot had a burger it was heavy but it was it was it worked out it was solid nothing nothing much to say about it and I and again I'm like I've been here

before maybe I was at a different location when I went to Frosty's but either way it's it's it's I'm having weird deja vu on it but I do know that yes I know people have their Kuma's beef as well in terms of not the beef food, but as in like, you know, oh, fuck that place. Right. So I'm like, I don't know what the story is. But anyway, went there once. And then lastly, I was willing to go about half an hour out to get into Chicago proper to try out one of these them there deep dishes. Oh, you mean the lasagna? So that's the bit, right?

Have you ever had a deep dish pizza? Nah. Well, back when I was 10 years old, I had what Pizza Hut called a deep dish pizza, but even then I knew that that wasn't a deep dish pizza. Okay, okay. So I had something that called itself a deep dish pizza once, and it was an airport Sparrows.

Yeah. Which for anyone who doesn't know, it's just the most nothing Italian fucking baked. It's like Sonic's, the gas station food place except for like Italian food. And it's just, it's like God. Like, you know how like Chef Boyardee has the same sauce and you just cut it into different shapes That's basically what Samara's does with their with their food, you know, so absolute garbage

Whatever thick pizzas, you know, but either way looking at it from the outside And I get Reggie had the similar opinioners like I don't know if I'm down with this man like just that might be too much and And Reggie had a similar opinion. He was like, I don't know if I'm down with this, man. That might be too much. And depending on the thickness of the dough and what we're getting here, I'm not going in with the highest expectations on it. So I drove in, went to Pequod's Pizza, and yeah, sat there.

And basically, dude came up and was like, just so you know, it's gonna be about 45 minutes for the pizza, by the way. And I was like, you just casually, just like, yeah, you're probably gonna sit here for better part of an hour before it comes. And it's like, god damn. That's crazy. Well, we already drove here, so it is what it is.

And they're like, okay, here's the menu. And you're like, what size do you want? You got your sizes. And then I'm like, oh, there's no main types of pizzas to pick from as preset categories or whatever. It's like, no, not really. There's just a giant list of toppings. And I was like, okay, well, obviously when you put

too many toppings on a pizza, it becomes a goddamn mess, right? Right. Um, you're if you want to get a little if you want to get too much of all flavors You're kind of gonna ruin the thing you do get up getting so it's like I was like, yeah But how many of these can we go with before it starts to be a problem and the dudes like he's like, yeah I mean you can throw them in there, but you probably don't want to go over like 10 those like What? You can throw them in there, but you probably don't want to go over like 10. I was like, wait, what? Like, yeah, you'll probably be fine with anything. And I'm like, that's insane.

That's madness. That's already too much. That's already that is bad shit. He's like, yeah, don't probably don't go over 10 toppings. I wouldn't put more than three toppings on any pizza ever is the instinct that you would correctly have. But here it's like, nah, because it's a fucking bowl, you're gonna be fine. So I was like, yeah, okay.

So we went with like, I guess like five or so. And you know, and I mean, yeah, I went with like Italian beef some pepperoni some onion spinach and I think like maybe like one or two other things, you know, um and and Yes to my pleasant surprise. It's incredible. They bring it out It's it is a it is a it is a cheesecake Excepts replace the cheese on you. Yeah shaped like a pizza. It is a cheesecake except replace the cheese. It's a lasagna shaped like a pizza. It is not a pizza. It is, you cut a slice, you put it on your plate,

you eat it with a knife and fork, and you start eating the second slice and you're like, oh shit, I'm actually kinda good. Ever since we got internet video footage of the Chicago pizza in exhaustive detail and what it's like, and you hear people talk about having it, it just makes everyone in Chicago and everyone in New York City seem completely insane

that they're even bothering to argue about them at all. It is nonsense. They're completely fucking different. It is like apples and oranges. Literally, yes. This is not the same meal. You cannot have it under the same circumstances. I would never order a deep dish pizza for a party,

for a room, you know, people watching the game or whatever. Like, that's insane. You have to sit around with a knife and fork, and it demands, it confronts you and demands your full attention. You have to sit down and engage it on its own terms. You can take a slice from a box while walking around holding a beer in the other hand,

and chat and do whatever. You could ostensibly commit felonies while eating a New York pizza. A rat can grab a slice of New York pizza and drag it down the staircase. Maybe even the whole pizza if it really wants it. If it tried that shit with a deep dish, it would be crushed under the girth. It's wild, dude. It is a, yes, it is a pizza flavored like casserole slash cheesecake

Now what what I was worried about was I'm like now in that big fucking vertical length How much of that is dough how much of that is topping and cheese? Fortunately, it's like 75 25, you know so um you're getting a whole lot of cheese and a whole lot of meat and sauce and everything in there and every piece is like it looks like one of those teenage mutant ninja turtle slices where you get the full full drip of cheese on it um you got a wrap every fork. So I'm looking at pictures of a Pequod's Pizza and I'll tell you what in there and with the sauce and everything and just went Looks like the inside of a Mortal Kombat character It's what if you took a pizza and you did it go back there, you know

Essentially which it already fucking is but yes, but it tastes incredible, right? So this is another case of The the and you know what because the knife and fork are required But it tastes incredible, right? So this is another case of the, and you know what, because a knife and fork are required, structural integrity, not that big of a problem. Right. You know, you cut and then you wrap. You're gonna be wrapping that cheese around your fork for a while, as if it were spaghetti.

But when it gets in, it's good. And in particular, yeah, getting crumbles, big crumbles of Italian sausage that are like somewhat crispy because they've been like cooked and grilled individually is like fucking ace choice. So I don't know if that's a specific thing to Pequod's or not, but that was great. So yeah, it actually delivered. And I would say that I would say that deep dish I was probably the most hesitant about

you know just based on the threatening menacing energy of looking at photos of it. Like it's I don't think I ever want to have a Chicago deep dish pizza because if I don't like it I feel like I'll be killed. Well so here's the thing, right? Two slices and you're done. We tapped and went, took the box with and the next morning we're making our plans to like, okay, let's go get some breakfast and then head over because early pools, Reggie had like a 10 a.m. under night pool or so and it was like, oh, God damn it, okay. And waking up, it's just like, oh, yeah, he woke up full. You know, like overnight, it did not digest. It's just- Made no movement at all.

It is still in there and your body is like, nah, I'm good on breakfast actually. Just pour some coffee over the top of me and we'll get our day started. It was insane, dude. When it sits inside. Oh, man. Yeah. Um, I was able like I was okay. I was okay. I felt like I was able to digest but um, woof is it is it is it a it's a commitment. It forces you like I said to confront it. But yeah, I give

that a thumbs up. I would do it again. But I would do it under the proper circumstances as long as you know that you have no other plans that night. If you take a date out for deep dish, you're out of your fucking mind. That is, it is the, that I'm going to vote and rank that the number one worst date food I can ever imagine

Like worse than taco worse than max like you can't you can't do that to somebody You know stumbling down the street yeah Unless the plan is to like just okay in the uber back to, like you go your way, I'm going back my way, slash I'll be in the bathroom for the next hour. Nah, man, don't do it. Yeah, but that's the Chicago food review. You know, I have a bit of a food story of my own to cut in hmm Paige and I were at our local deli having sandwiches and the baby was being the adorable baby that he always is and

The owner comes over because we go there somewhat often. He's like I a cute little baby had never seen the baby before Right. He's ah you mind if I give him a pickle and we're like yeah fuck it okay so he gives him a spear of a pickle baby grip and we're like well pickles like you know it's vinegar it up it's fucking it's weird and baby mouth like tastes are super different from a stream, right? Yeah, so the baby puts the pickle in his mouth and then makes the funniest fucking face I've ever seen on a yeah Yes, I hold you correct and then puts the pickle back in his mouth and then puts the pickle back in his mouth. Oh, and then goes, and then puts the pickle back in his mouth. Oh, no, and starts breaking off little pieces and

we have to go. Oh shit. No, the pieces are like a weird size. You gotta they're chocable. Yeah. So then I'm like, I the baby's got a little pickle spear in his hand. And I'm like, okay, well, time to fight a child in a restaurant. And he's and he's like, this, this is the strongest grip he's ever had on anything in his life. I'm serious. And I pulled away from him. And he looks at me. And he was, and he opens his mouth. And he has his first tantrum ever as he loses his fucking mind that I will not give him the

pickle back. Wow, the muster gene unlocked. Oh shit. Just looking at the pickle, looking at me and just wow. In the DNA. Son of Paige, that is locked, that, like, yeah, okay, you created a new category in his brain. Damn.

Once the pickle was away from him for like a minute, he forgot that it existed, and immediately went back to hoo-hoo gaga's and smiling at everybody, but he was like Outraged I would take his pickle away mustard al-qaib Yeah, it's like yeah, it's it's so that's it like the proper reaction is the bitter face of oh what the fuck weird But then going back in It's like this is a ten-month-old. This is an extreme flavor

Especially because they're set their sense of taste is like I don't know how much stronger, but it's way stronger. Oh, man Yo, ha You got to keep an eye on that woman squirting a little bit of Heinz in the in the baby sauce mixing it up. Oh man, okay, okay, it's baked in. That's powerful. That was such a weird experience. Yeah, there's one other thing that we got to. Reggie got some Italian ice, do you know what that is?

It's like a shaved ice? Shaved ice, exactly. Depending on what part of America you were in, they might call it a water ice, specifically with that intonation to it. But yeah, it's essentially like, I kind of, just looking at, especially with the texture of it and stuff, it's really good.

It's the exact kind of, if you ever got the ice, yeah, the little lemon icy things from Disney World has them. They have them everywhere. They have the same pizza everywhere and they have the same little ice treat there. That's the first time I had it. I was like, oh yeah, it's that with the very, very, very smooth texture, smoother than like a sorbet or ice cream, smoother than a gelato, but with chunks of real lemon in it and to the point where you're even getting like seeds at some point. And yeah, yeah, that was I remember having a very pleasant time with that. But just as he's eating it gets a few spoons in, brain freeze. Like, oh shit, you okay? And it's like, ah.

It's our 30s, it's too late for brain freeze. Right, like, oh shit, yeah, okay, slow it down, hold up, you know, like, oh yeah, yeah. Keeps it going. Ah, ah, ah, oh, I'm like, dude, dude, dude. And he's like, ah, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. I'm like, okay, just, you know, that's not, stop. Just don't have it hit the roof of your mouth keeps it

going I'm like all right fuck that and we just and like we get we get up and walk out and he's like holding his head but still eating I'm like bro I'm not helping you you're on your fucking own god You know what I did a million years ago, because whenever I go down on Wendy's, I get a frosty and I used to get brain freeze? It's like if you're eating something that's thick enough and will stay on the spoon, just invert the fucking spoon before putting it in your mouth,

so that you're putting all the ice cream on the tongue first. You won't get brain freeze anymore. So for me, it's just eat it slower. Just slowing it down helps a lot, you know? Fuck, yeah, just, ugh. It's straight up like Bart with the cupcake energy. Anyway, yeah, there you go, that's that. So back at the actual venue.

So, yeah, real awesome time. I got to. Yeah, I entered what I entered. So I guess I entered Sam show. I did. DNF Duel, which was really cool because then, yeah, watching shout outs to the golden eye, one six one who won that watching DNF Duel and seeing like like, because then, yeah, watching, shout outs to thegoldeneye161, who won that, watching DNF Duel and seeing like, I was calling out in advance, I was like, months ago, I was like, I want Monk to come in this game, and then I talked about Monk the other day,

delivered, and then is crushing it also on main stage, doing really well, and I'm like, okay, I can see big Akihiko vibes off this character. I'm like, time to actually sit down and give this a proper minute, learn to play this character. Because Crusader has basically been taken away, but Monk has been delivered.

So the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. It's no problem, perfect. So I'm looking at that game a little bit more right now. Plus, of course, the dude's like, yeah, here's the Discord, jump in there. There's ranked nights, so if you're having a hard time getting games regularly, there's a night in particular where everybody plays and you can go play.

And apparently, so that's, yeah, because the netcode works and it's really solid. Whenever there's a game that like, you know, you don't have a lot of active players, they'll have coordinated nights where everybody's playing on ranked towards like, okay, if you play at this time, you know, you'll be, you'll be good for, for getting good matches

besides asking on Discord. Jumping in there. And yeah, it was of course just fun to, you know, play some Sam show, get back to that a bit. And I went and like some of the Montreal players as well, Dio Sama who runs the brackets here that like plays Darlis as well. And I was like, he's doing anything, you know, it's pretty solid. And I was like, okay, let me scroll through my notes.

And I found my big competitive Darlis text file. And I passed the knowledge on, you know, I'm like, let, let me scroll through my notes and I found my big competitive Darlene text file and I passed the knowledge on. You know, I'm like, let the knowledge be shared. I made an extensive list of shit to know about the character from when competing in that game and it helped. It actually helped them in the brackets. So I'm glad to pass that on as well. Yeah, Tekken went in, played a bit. I had some fun doing some casual sets with a couple people. In bracket, just ate a Victor that just Victor'd the fuck out of me. And I'm like, God damn it. This Noctis ass weapon motherfucker is a character that's going to

be, you just, you have to learn how to deal with him. He's a little different from everybody else and that was it. And then I fought a really good Zofina that just fucking, like I have no issues, no notes outplayed. There's always a, you have to lose twice in bracket to be out of the tournament. There's always a loss that you're like, damn damn that dude just outplayed me incredibly Super sick. I have no nothing to say about that. You know That was I made every wrong decision and they made every right decision Yeah, every moment that any of us could have done anything a hundred percent and then there's the other match The one that the one that haunts you or you're like god damn it. I can do better than that What the fuck was like come on you hit the

Button and as you hit it you're like I shouldn't have hit that fuck. Nope. Nope. Nope. So yeah that lat feeling lives on for sure and There was a there was a moment in one of my matches where So I just We were sitting down and because of the way the setups are, you have a console, you've got the screen here, sometimes the person on player two side is sitting a little further away from the console. So oftentimes you'll try to reach over and someone will be like,

oh, I'll plug you in no problem or I'll plug you out, you know, and one player will do both. And I had a match where, again, I'm using a PS5 DualSense Elite Controller with a pretty, one of the big locked in super good USB wires. Had a match where one round I was moving it and the controller disconnected at the USB. And I was like, that's crazy, this has literally never happened even once. In fact, my controller has an extra lock on the USB

to make sure it doesn't budge from where it is. How is that possible? Only to then get up and after the set, the controller is not fully inserted properly. Right, okay. And I'm like, okay, man, that's likely a mistake. Probably the person just didn't plug it in properly and I'm not going to necessarily assume malice, but. You should assume malice. I'm going to, it's hard to say, but I'm like, oh, now I gotta worry

about plugging my own shit in. Yeah, plug your own shit in. You can't trust. You can't can't trust that shit, which sucks, because that's never been an issue. But after that, in that case, it super was. And it was weird. The interaction was weird. So again, I've raised an eyebrow at the way

that situation played out. But yeah, no, and literally, this is the first time anything like that has ever happened and I Still assume you're fine most of the time but in that instance The person did not plug my controller in properly and then that led to me losing around that I was you know I mean I guys still beat the guy I was it was going fine. It was no problem, but it was just like yeah Man, all right. I don't want to have to think about that And

Yeah the All right, I don't want to have to think about that. And yeah, it was pretty crazy too. I don't know, like when Tekken went to its finals as well, that amazing shot of just Arslan, Ash, and Spiro, where a dude pulls out a PS1 controller to play with it, and Arslan is just like baffled. He has the most guffawed expression because he's like I'm looking at he's like I'm like he's like what am I looking at is that it's older than him. I don't know if you've seen it. Here's a picture of it. It is incredible that facial expression. And then yeah it turns out Shaheen is pretty fucking good. I had no idea.

There was the people that were like kind of like going like, oh yeah, he's been nice, you know, maybe people haven't been talking about it, but that was good. I then, so despite all that talk about the DNF duel bracket, however, I didn't, I did have to drop out. I was not able to make it there. And that's a bummer. But the reason why is because I got a chance to get some proper hands-on time with 2XKO. So did you see Ultima Shadow also got time on 2XKO? No. Oh, you... Oh, that's...

So he went up and he played it and he played teams with a with another friend of another guy there And he said that his his teammate dropped the combo Turned to him to call him a slur Ran it up in the mid and then lost and then left. Oh my god Oh my god So the league experience has been preserved is what you're telling me yeah So how is your experience except it didn't take 45 minutes? Yeah except it didn't take 45 minutes. Oh Man, that is hilarious. Okay, so yeah, they didn't announce it. It was a secret unexpectedly. The 2XKO rolled up to Combo Breaker

and they had two cabinets that were in the arcade and people were just lining up and getting their games in. And yeah, I went and I spoke to the community manager and some of the folks there got to meet them. Very cool. They were kind enough to offer an opportunity to go play on a build and kind of get some time to check it out. And as someone who plays on pad, especially, I wanted to be able to like play with my controller. So that was really useful. And yeah, I and then so we went up and got some games in and shout out,

Super Noon, such a chill dude was there and basically like walked me through and we played some sets and kind of explained the game to me and everything while Esteban and Reggie were learning on a different machine and messing around. And yeah, like just getting that kind of introduction to the system and then touching it and everything Dude I

Can't stop thinking about the possibilities of what can but What you ask them if they were gonna ship it with that thing on your computer that bricks your PC. I did not as It was at Evo and I didn't get any chance to touch it there and I've been looking forward to it. I was kind of thinking like, oh man, the only other chance I'm going to get is at EVO. And thankfully this was a pleasant surprise. Yeah, obviously I don't know what the deal with the Riot packed in shit is.

I hope that that's not the case. That would suck, because I'm super looking forward to this. But if that is the case, then I guess I'll just play it on console. I guess that's the solution. Because that fucking sucks. But I have nothing else on that tech or what the ramifications will be but I can talk about the game and

Say that it's really fucking good I really like the feeling that I'm getting of This is kind of what Marvel infinite could have lived up to if not for everything that it was held back by the the the 2v2 aspects and lived up to, if not for everything that it was held back by. The 2v2 aspects and the systems in place are amazing. My brain, you said Marvel Infinite, and for some reason, halfway through your sentence,

when you said this is what it could have been if not for everything it was held back by, I thought you were talking about League of Legends oh if only League wasn't being held back by being a different genre entirely yes exactly no man I mean it's no secret like if you've seen footage of it at this point like everyone that everything's been released to you know you can see where the game is at but it's a fucking awesome fighting game, man. It's just really, it's like,

you take the building blocks of Rising Thunder and you carry that forward into a game where if that is a street fighter to, you know, the way that the game plays with like its special buttons and stuff, this is a Marvel infinite to that. Two characters, tagging is dynamic, hot tagging and mix ups and just like all these really fun ways to extend your combos, blow your opponent up, set up things, set up your assists.

There's a really, really fun interplay between the two characters that is, I would say currently the best thought out tag in any tag game that I've played So I'm looking at footage while you're while you're chatting and there's something that stands up to me that I don't think we talked about Like the versus problem that we have talked about in the past were like you you play Marvel you say hey You want to play Marvel 3 and then like somebody sits down. They don't even they can't even see it Like you got Virgil and Wesker going all over the screen, right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes the game. Yes So I can see I to XK. Oh, yes In fact, I would I would say that I played a couple games this weekend that like I had some issues with the legibility of

the amount of shit on screen. And it felt like, okay, I know what's, I see what this is, but you have to just get used to the clutter and then learn to filter out, your brain has to get used to filtering out what's not important from what is. And in this game, it did not, that was not the case. So that whole, you know how the branding of the logo is like, you see the text and then the big

Like is it like highlighter yellow kind of green like like stroke around it that kind of stroke and highlighting graphic design thing Applies to gameplay as well. Essentially. There's a lot of clarity with what's on screen and Where it's coming from and what's going on. I really was expecting. Yeah, I was like, okay I'm probably just gonna get overwhelmed with the visual information, but it is legible. You know what hit you, but having the reaction to not get hit by it is the real challenge. Like you're there and you're like,

oh God, brain hands do it. And you're like, nope, you're getting touched. It was, yeah, it was very cool. Can you're like, nope, you're getting touched. It was very cool. Can you name any of the characters, Willy? Yeah, so I played Yasuo and Illaoi. It also had Darius and... Ari, probably. Yeah, that was the build with Echo as well.

So just based on the obviously the vibes of the character and shit I like think Yasuo looks sick from the jump and I think Illaoi looks sick. So I'm like, regardless, I don't know what their moves are going to be. But I'm fucking down to just run them regardless. The the what was I saying? Okay, so the system in place is, yeah, it's the best interplay between two characters currently in a tag game because a lot of team-based fighters will kind of have like, you just, it's essentially like a one-on-one game until the next person jumps in and the interplay doesn't, you know, you can have, on one end of the spectrum, you can have like a king of fighters game

Where there's literally no interaction between team members then you can have like, you know Marvel on the other side is just team battle It's not a yeah, unless you're playing 11. Yeah, and and I would say that like up until this point The probably the best interplay between two characters. I think would have been BB tag The way and the amount of ways you can interact with your teammates in that game, like, blows most other tag games out of the water. Big claim, Wolves. Well, I mean, I can back it up with what I saw in the game. The way you...

Big if true. Yeah, like, BB Tag in particular having, you know, has Tag, and then it has, like, the ability to have both characters on screen at the same time, switching back and forth between the two. All of that is, like, wild, and there's a whole lot of variability to it. But what's awesome here is the way that it breaks up all of these team mechanics into the four grooves you can pick from. And you can choose essentially which of these you think is most valuable to have on your team.

So the basic one is when you're at 40% health or lower, you get a damage boost. And then you get the ability to get one cancel per character out of whatever you're doing. And it's a beginner mechanic. That's like, you don't have to think too hard about any of the faster, higher-paced convoluted aspects or the APM elements of it.

You can just go like, all right, I'll take a damage boost when I'm low health, and that'll be that. That's your comeback mechanic, if so. The other three are getting the ability to use two assists back to back. Right? Oh. So no cooldown after your first one is called out.

Oh, that's, oh. Right? That's a lot. Yep. And reminder that any time the assist is on screen, you can hot tag over to them. You can swap right over to that other character. So that creates a whole lot of crazy possibilities,

very nasty. Or you can do double tag, so double handshake tag, which is essentially switching control of your character to the opposite and then switching back again, right? Which lets your brain think of the possibilities of having two characters on screen doing shit at you. And suddenly, you have to pay attention to this one And now you've got to wait switch back to that one in them, you know while shit's going on

Incredible and then you have the other one which is a double down which is the Doing essentially a team hyper combo right or DHC in Marvel So you switch you do a super with one character and then switch to a second character and do their super behind that. Big damage. A nice way to switch out your characters if you need to. Those options are all pretty good ones, but like, yeah, like it's like what kind of brain melting mix up do you want to use on your opponent? And in this case, like, you know, I think like the double handshake feels like just it's so overwhelming to the opponent to force them to have to switch their point of attention, you know, while

already nasty mix ups and left rights are happening on screen. You know, like I was talking to like, so some of the people that are working on this and keeping it saucy, some of the players like Yehozy, Nerd Josh, Apology Man, Marlin Pie and stuff, they've all been doing awesome shit. And like, yeah, Yehozy was just talking about like the, how it's like, okay, you could only play so many games before your brain starts to get almost like kind of tired or you're just like, ooh, to focus playing it at like at peak. It asks a lot of you, you know.

But when it gets really wild is when you get into the TV two aspect where you're playing in with another person. So for people sitting there like you are. This is all like, yeah, but in that case, you didn't know. Like when I when you're playing, your partner has to burst for you when they're when you're getting hit. And your partner has to choose when to jump in and do an assist

to extend your combo. That's right. And like, you're relying on them and their timing and their intuition to know you know and then furthermore After your partner bursts to save you it doesn't automatically switch to them You the active player have to choose to hand over the reins and handshake them in So if you're feeling greedy you can be like nah I'm a stay in till I die.

And your partner's like, dude, what the fuck? Switch out so you can heal and I can take over. And that's a proper vector of salt that never existed in fighting games before. Stop, that staying in despite having, I assume you've recovered gray life when Yes off That's the equivalent of feeding Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like dude, just fucking pull back for a fucking second and if you're not you know tagging in like your partner might be like they might jump in to do an assist so that you'll

Switch to them and then you don't so now both characters are on screen and uh-oh, happy birthday. Both characters are getting hit and you can get wrecked in like one fell sweep with a bad timed assist and both people get killed off, you know? So yeah, your teammate is your lifeline. You have to rely on each other and you have to have a good read for synergy, you know, as you can both be on screen switching back and forth to mix people up. Having this included as like a primary mode is the most interesting thing about this game by far. And at the same time, I will probably play it. I mean, the wild part about it is like, especially when you're in the same, you know, room with the people you're playing

there, it's like, if you, you can just tell your partner what to do and they can tell you what to do the whole time. But if the other person knows you're about to do it, then what the fuck, right? That's like saying, okay, I'm going to do my level, do your level three, do your level three. They're going to wake up and they're going to block, like, you know, burst, burst, burst. Okay, well, I'm not going to, you know, eat that. You know, I need to do baseball signals man So you're not even baseball to say it's such a it's that's a high-action game and you're paying attention to the screen You have to feel each other's intuition out and you can kind of say things like okay. Yeah now try it out Whatever, but you can't be too explicit

You know, you got to get a really good synergy going you got to be drift compatible like Pacific Rim You know, and so whatever plate the two players are drift compatible is like, you got to be drift compatible like Pacific Rim, you know? And so whatever the two players are, drift compatible is like, you know, the bit. Like, it's there like, it's a whole other level of like fighting game just enjoyment because you're in sync with someone else, you're both, you have, you get a read on something and like, I don't have to tell you that I'm tagging to you, you know, to set that up and if you see an opening, you might even tag back to me, and we just organically played that out

and felt it and ran it, you know? That's brand new, that's awesome, that's a really cool thing. I imagine people who played Cruise in Smash probably got some of that level of fun you know wombo combo obviously is a moment I feel like you know how you oftentimes are fighting game you have to do like a performance check to make sure your your rig is good enough to play mm-hmm online I think that 2x ko should

ask you, hey, I can't detect any voice activity. Is your microphone connected? You can't start the game unless your microphone's on. You gotta turn your mic on, yeah, yeah. If your mic is not on, you can't play. Mm-hmm. I mean, man, queuing up with randoms.

For team up, for strategy. That sounds nightmarish. But what is fucking cool is the fact that this game supports 2v1. Oh really? You can have two people, humans that is, playing each character versus one player controlling both and it lets you match make just fine. I was totally worried about matchmaking being like, oh the 2v2 queue is going to be really long.

Like, oh no, you can just play alone. That's just, oh, oh. You can do whatever you want. It's an option to bring two people to the table. See, that's fantastic because like I can't even imagine which one it would actually be. Because like you're describing like the the reality of like, you know, the the second player has to time assists and time bursts. And obviously there's a communication deficit for that, right? But like two people going through the handshake motions of comboing on a standing blocking opponent

Yeah, they're gonna be able to do way more disgusting shit Yeah one person because the mental stack is half but make no mistake If you don't want to do this, then you just play the game solo and there's no problem That's great. The two-player thing I'm describing is optional if you feel like being a goddamn fiend. That's great. It brings extra stressors because you take control away, but it also brings extra ability because it's two working on one. So that is a fun element.

And so me and Reggie were playing against one of the devs and getting washed, but starting to feel it out a little bit. And the complication is we're going to have to wait and see is how the fuck is a site like StartGG going to handle two players on one side of a bracket and one player on the other side because You know if anyone can walk in and sign up to a tournament for 2x ko as a team or as a solo

Hopefully they can figure out the logistics on the back end, but you can have logistics But you ready mm-hmm sign up and then they put you wherever and you just team up with a oh, she's just fuck off Fuck off with that. But what's gonna be interesting is there will be setups there will be like Screens grand finals where two people in two chairs will sit on one side and one person will sit alone on the other side Right you have that you know the the whole it's almost like so skull girls Let you pick a team of three characters versus one character, now you have that IRL. Fuck. I think the actual solution is to have two different brackets.

No, you don't know, the game doesn't need it. It doesn't need it. It actually works to let you mix and match. That's, it's like, it's part of the design and the fact that they made it that way is I find infinitely fascinating Okay, but like for like combo breakers 2x ko tournaments. Yeah Like there should probably be two tournaments the team tournament and the the solo tournament. I disagree I think okay. I think the funnest thing is letting it be open and you sign up as a team as or as a solo

so if That does happen, I think that like fate will make that one kind of tournament or the other very quickly. I think that when you get to top eight and it's all solo players or all teams that it will functionally become one of those tournaments and that will probably be the way it goes. Because that becomes the optimized way to play. Yeah. Yeah.

But if what you're describing is just that, oh, the meta is better for one way or the other, then that'll just be part of the meta. But if someone comes along and does something interesting in the meta that upsets that, then that's a part of the story of the game. If the meta becomes, oh shit, two players are always better than one, how sick is that one player that's solo, that made it there?

It's just that can- Oh, I think it's gonna be the other way around. I think solo players are gonna totally dominate teams in that game. Then how sick is that duo gonna be when they sit together and crush it? It doesn't fail to escape pools. Well, no, my point is the team that actually is able to go far because the open

endedness, like I'm saying that restricting the tools is taking away the opportunity for cool shit to happen like that. I don't think this works for a major tournament because like let's assume solo players and team players are on even footing and there's pros and minuses. The difference is is that if you have a shot at winning you should probably win by yourself so you don't have to split your money halfway down. Okay well okay with the prize yeah I I guess that's an element of it. I mean, if somebody doesn't want to, if the money comes into play as a factor there, then yeah, that

would probably compromise it. But I can say that tournament wise, I think they're trying for this game to be a bracket that people can sign up with one or the other for, you know what, because that's the fun way to do it. I just saw a great response to that which is have the winning team fight each other for first and second place like double dragon. I mean yeah whatever the case is I just think like the side of fun is to let the bracket be as open ended as possible and that's how they're designing the game. They want it to be so that when you go online, you can play against one or two people. So, in person, they're gonna reflect the same thing.

You know, whatever the experiences you have when you boot it up, one mode, both possibilities, is gonna be probably the same in bracket. And again, it's super hype when it's asymmetrical, you know? One ratio for how Maru Slashing through a team of smaller characters is crazy as fuck and like now the actual equivalent of that on stage is like something We've never seen I'm very excited to see it. You know, but yeah But I can't speak to the money part of that though. Like yeah, I'm sure they'll have to figure that out

But anyway, it is designing, currently, that's what they're attempting to do. So we'll see how that shakes out. And- I think Riot's tournament will definitely like attempt to have the do fucking whatever energy. But like, I don't know, I see like logistical issues with random amounts of participants.

I see the potential for coordinated team pop-offs to be the greatest thing we've ever seen. Two people that both win at the same time getting up and doing like a team pop-off is the best shit ever and I want that more than anything. Oh, you know what you know what? Okay, here's an idea you and I go to 2x ko tournament and whatever we're gonna be a team and we're up against a solo player Just from the day we leave to the day of the tournament no showering

No, no bathing or cleanliness of any kind and then you sit on the left side and I sit on the right side and then we lean real close over top of them so that we just really just fuck them up with stink. Back to the stinky tech, that's how you do it for sure. Anyway, no, it's super fun that they're doing it this way. And again, outside of the logistics of the actual bracket software not being able to handle two players,

I can say that at home, it's gonna be whatever the fuck you want, however you wanna play it, go for it. I'm sure anybody running a proper tournament would be able to figure it out, and I also feel that the first person who does so is gonna have a really, really, really, really rough night trying to make a square peg fit in the round hole

of the Excelsior spreadsheet. Yeah, for sure. I mean, they're just gonna be sitting there going, fucking God damn it. I mean, you just, if anything, you just put a team name in the spot where two names would go. You know? Something else that was at Combo Breaker that's

a pretty fun event is the auctions. They have auction tournaments where I might get some of the rules on this wrong. But the way it was explained to me is everyone who wants to participate signs up and then before the tournament starts for a game, they hold an auction for every character and you have to auction and put money up to win that character and the higher you put the money, the higher the price rises, till eventually you say,

you win the going once, going twice, sold, you know? You get the character, and then that's how you get to play them in the bracket. And it is single elimination all the way up, and then the only prize is grand final grand finals winner walks away with a hundred percent Okay Bat shit right absolutely nuts, so you're like oh, oh you want your JP. Okay? How much you gonna pay for that? You know I'm not paying yeah, yeah, yeah, like what do you what do you what are you willing to what do you?

How you about how much you willing to shut the You know to shell out for your main you know So you just put you and then someone else who wants that main you're getting into a bidding war and you just fucking go So there's yeah, like only one person can win the character you know And then I don't even play Virgil, but I know you play Virgil right so that's it So here's here's where it gets interesting in but I know you play Virgil. Right, so here's where it gets interesting. In addition to that already wild setup, for games like Marvel, what they started doing

was they're like, okay, so you know, and I know that we, exactly, you want Virgil? To deny me my Virgil, right? And obviously whoever, pay any price, get Virgil, win. Doesn't matter, that money's coming back to my pocket, right? So what they did apparently was like, they're like, okay, we'll do, because it's a team of three as well,

it gets confusing and there's gonna be overlap, they had preset teams. So they had a team that was like team swords. And you're like, oh, what does that mean? Is that team zero may cry? is that Dante Virgil zero? Maybe maybe not is it? firebrands Like fucking taskmaster and Deadpool Yeah, who knows right

Yeah, who knows right? Or Arthur rather so just like yeah, you have no idea But there's a team name called team swords put the money down or don't and so it's just a wild fucking shenanigans ass tournament Fun real fun concept there Yeah, so then anyway, so yeah all that to I well, to XKO and to just wrap up is awesome. What I liked in particular was there's some cool shit I learned about like with allowee is like able to put down these tentacles and then she can fight as a big heavy and then use the tentacles to grab you or hit you as little background like you know ads

Almost oh, yeah, that's that's her game plan right? What's super sick is again the team interaction element where if you switch allowie out? But she left a tentacle down if the partner lands a normal grab The tentacle gets activated and then hits the opponent after the grab and allows them to get a pickup and That makes sense. That's what she does Well, her tentacles can stick stick around regardless of whoever's you know Throwing down the lane. Hmm That's super cool. So you can actually like yeah and like it's this whole fucking thing just zooming in to mid

like So you can actually like, yeah, and like, it's this whole fucking thing just zooming in to mid. Like, it's just going down to mid and then panning the camera down. Sure. Something about the jungle even. I don't I don't I don't know. But I mean, it is a jungling. Wully, come on. You've got to be a jungler. Yeah, it's no, that that type of stuff is real fun. When you block bursts, you don't even have to steal a soul because the process of blocking a burst means the burster gets blown off the wall

and just bounces back to you for an insane combo. So if you just guess right and call it out, your reward is to just fucking wreck the opponent. And yeah, I love little things like that. your reward is to just fucking wreck the opponent. And yeah, I just I love little things like that. I like how Echo can obviously in a lot of his footage, you see him putting out the grenade and then like like he's able to like rewind time. Fuck with the mix ups left, right, do insane bad. It's it's it's incredible.

So yeah, I like how much. I just looked something up just for I can't wait for league and moba terminology to infect fighting game terminology with its awfulness Because you just started to talk about bursting And i'm like I can just imagine some guy in voice chat screaming at you to peel And you're like, I don't know what that is. Oh God. Jesus Christ.

It's the act of proactively or reactively protecting an ally for any amount of time. So bursting would be peeling. If someone tells me to use my Q, I think I might rage quit. Or whatever the key is for your alt. That'd be R. R? Do they do that in chat? Because you know like sometimes in like Overwatch,

they'll be like, oh use your Q or your E or whatever the button was. You know, okay your R, yeah, yeah, yeah. God damn it. Man. If you say alt, then sure, that's totally fine. Yeah, everybody knows what that is. Man. If you say alt, then sure. That's totally fine. Yeah, everybody knows what that is.

Okay, but if you say a god damn keyboard key, I'm leaving. Oh shit, what was I gonna say? There was another element about it that was dope. But anyway, yeah, the game's real fun. It's just real cool, man. Any idea on release or? No idea, you know? Didn't, didn't, not much about that.

Just, if anything, I was just kind of like being like, let me catch up to all the cool shit I saw footage of and kind of figure out what that actually was and stuff. But yeah, I assume we're gonna just see it popping up at majors for a while, revealing characters slowly. And then at some point, it's just going to drop in our laps. And again, if they do the thing where it's like, yo,

this game's free and it's got real fun characters and you recognize the ones that are dropping and they've got the amount of tech that they have and stuff, it's going to be a force to be reckoned with, man. Like I said, I love Marvel Infinite's gameplay. I love the 2v2 tagging system and a lot of the the intricacy of like how you played with your Back and forth in that game was great. It's just a lot of other shit wasn't and this like is the best of that and then some so

I feel like we've seen like a roster was it like six people It's like echo Darius Ari Jinx Illaoi and Yasuo. Yeah, but Jinx wasn't in this the yeah, but like that's the the current roster that we've seen or so yeah, yeah, and I'm like No tag games ever gonna come out with six people. Oh No tag games ever gonna come out with six people. Oh, no, god no, right? And plus this whole franchise is built on

and then a massive list. On shit tons of characters. Yeah, I think they're just gonna take their time and throw shit at it forever really, I imagine. I wouldn't be surprised if, well hold on, does League do seasons or do they just go, is it just a forever season that just keeps happening? What are you referring to?

They patch it quite regularly. Are there moments, are there denoted moments of time where something ends and a new thing begins? I believe so. Okay. But I don't think that's related to characters. I think that's like right. Oh, okay. Because with a lot of fighting game releases, a season of five or four characters

will be an indicator of like, here's the first year or whatever. And then after that comes a big change, patch, et cetera, and then a whole new round of content or so. I'm just looking at that list. I'm just like, man, if Timo and Nautilus aren't in that game, then do I even want to play it? I mean, I imagine anyone who is very popular or a shoe-in as a fighting game character has a good chance. I also imagine anyone that is pushed in branding or in arcane or elsewhere and would be a huge like get for people that are like outside to come check the game and would be a huge get for people that are outside to come check the

game out would be probably a shoo in. Got to have Timo, man. Yeah, probably. Big annoying bombs and shit, sure. He's so small. He would be smaller than Yoda on the screen. As long as when I do a punch, it hits him even if he's shorter than the punch. No For like we we've dealt with this and the fix has been very clear with

fucking Whatever Neko arc and shit like that It's like when I punch the air above your stupid gremlin head it better hit you rocket raccoon and Marvel Yeah, I'm pretty sure rocket Raccoon has a hitbox the size of the rest of the roster. Really? I think so.

You're a small body, but you're still considered hittable by people's normals. When we're talking about normals that just whiff. Because the problem with Yoda, obviously, is like, if my button doesn't touch you, what the fuck are we talking about? Like, I literally can't do a move to you. Many of them, actually.

So, yes, Charlotte has a crown, and you hit the crown, and Charlotte gets hit. You gotta do it. Oh, is that how it works with her? Yes. Oh, that's cute. I have no problem, like, make characters as small and as goofy as you want, but as long

as I can make sure you have to block a hit, then the game still works. Qua Nautilus in there so bad, dude. Nautilus would be the size of like an Abigail or an Aganos, like touching the fucking life bar. Kind of like big ass fucking character. I mean, shit, big bodies is a thing, you know? You get overheaded easily and Kasari Ghetto in in samurai showdown is that insane giant red monster? You know that's just a screen obstacle, but yeah

I Remember when it was like yo can you jump over abigail in Street Fighter 5? Well, I kid you is that even if it's like yeah, you can you can throw them you know, but yeah It's just gonna look kind of weird Anyway, so just yeah to speed this up on move along a little bit here Street Fighter 6, you know good stuff. I The traditional is is every time I'm gonna I know my place and I know Where I go I get to the end of the pool and I and I and I know where I go. I get to the end of the pool and I stop there.

Reggie got his Chipotle Champ card, made it out of pools. Oh, congrats, Reggie, I didn't know that. Yeah, and then he fought on stream. And yeah, very good set. Against actually a vast end, a player from Toronto that like he changed his name, but we actually recognized that dude. And yeah, that is a that is that is the the gap between us is like the ability the ability to to make it out or to drown in pools essentially and like it's not that

far because again, we can have our sets going back and forth and like I can when I'm on a good day, I can really I can I can be consistent but those good days are when I'm on a good day, I can be consistent. But those good days are when I'm fully warmed up and ready to go and not when I'm flying into an event. So I know my limits. Reggie's still playing Ryu? No, no, no, he's Chun-Li. He's Chun-Li? Yeah, although Ryu's incredible now, right?

Yeah, I was about to be like, oh, because if he's playing Ryu, Ryu's eating good now. It's like, oh, I'm glad he switched over to Chun-Li, who did get hit with nerfs. Yes, she walks back slower now and a couple other things, but she's still incredible because she still has an amazing toolkit. But yeah. So, and we're not gonna go through all the changes of the Street Fighter 6 patch because that's stupid and ridiculous.

That patch is really good. You're eating good. You're eating good. You're eating good. So like every character that I play got buffed into the stratosphere. I mean I saw, so I saw there was some metrics on like win rates and things like that. Zangief currently has the most wins above 1600 MR master rate and the most wins of like against higher other characters, most wins against Akuma. He's coming up. And like every metric is just Zangief on the rise with a bullet.

He's incredible. Yep. They gave him so much amazing shit. And it's very simple stuff. It's really simple. It's like more damage, more drive damage, and a better button to link from a bunch of his normals. Builds more meter on everything he does

so he gets his level three threat faster. Very, very fast. It's super scary. When he lands crouching fierce he can do a full insane conversion combo off of that now as a punish counter. He gets to do, yeah better frame advantage on the hop knee, on the head butt, you can go head butt to head butt.. And the chops still not perfect. They don't connect perfectly every time from the edge, but they're better.

They connect more consistently. Yeah, the new combos he has, the ability to do the drop kick or not drop kick, the flip kick into a ground bounce. I like that they took ground bounce and said, let's use this more because it's only in one or two places. They made it like a more present mechanic. So that makes sense to just kind of have it show up more often. Yeah, goddamn Zangief is eating well. And he was given like the system changes of parry timing, tap parrying, lasting longer. Yeah, lasts longer but also bigger. Lasts longer but it's also more punishable. So what they've done is it's interesting

because it's like they made parries more accessible. They've like parry timing has become easier to use, but also to punish. They've widened it in both ways. And the wake up drive reversal helps GEEF a lot. He gets a reversal, yep, 100%. And then you've got the... Shit, what was the other one?

Other character? No, no, no. I feel like there's one other change with Gif that was solid, but overall, yeah. Drive damage, drive reversal, his headbutt now combos into his hellstab which means you can go from headbutt into hellstab into anything you fucking want yeah he can also super cancel out of like ex lariat okay right yeah yeah yeah couldn't do before right yeah so you got that I mean honestly just thinking at the looking at the damage. She does in general as well It's like yeah

No fucking wonder like Akuma is not that big an issue for him and apparently it's like Akuma dies into it's a two mistakes Yeah, it's it's one of his worst matchups because it's like Akuma's got all the tools in the world and no life Which is as to be expected so you fuck up twice on Gif and that's the round. I mean, shit, the fact that Akuma has his demon flip or his jump fireball shit that he wants to be in the air and Gif can be like, I love when you're in the air. Eat this crouching fierce and or this borscht dynamite. The fuck, you know?

So yeah, yeah man good stuff akki is so much better that i don't know what is happening when i'm fighting her anymore fuck your fireball she is diving through it she has extended links extensions incredible incredible buffs overall eating really well on her better buttons. Yeah, Aki fixed and then some, Ryu fixed and then some, the ability to do some of those Ken looking combos now, comboing off of Standing Fierce. Yeah, just I mean a lot of characters, you know, just getting glazed up. Marisa is interesting because she got berfs, she got a couple things up, a couple things down.

The two best things for her have been, one, now you can do target combo knee knee into level two super. And also the timing on the move has changed so that you can do like safe jumps mid screen, which is really nice as well. It's led to some really good like trade punishes that you can set up and things. If people are mashing jab on you, she can really destroy them. The timing on her OD Superman punch

is now plus four, which is also like the right magic number to allow her to set up. If you start mashing jab, she can blow you up really nice for that. But what sucks and what they took away is that her counter stance, the scutum, it breaks armor. So before before it didn't, and what would happen is, she would do, someone did like a drive impact, and even if I was in burnout, I could still do Scutum and like absorb it, and then do a full combo to punish you afterwards. Oh, this is one of those buffs that secretly nerf.

Exactly. Now I break your armor, and I can't get a full combo on you because you're just recovering from the tap of a hit instead of your big committal drive impact block. So yeah, by making it an armor break, it's not a buff. It's a nerf completely. It sucks because it's just like, I really, really liked that ability. She was able to kind of fight back in Burnout, you know, better than others could with that, but there you go. And Jamie, Jamie got Jamie fucking finally something. Holy God.

I'm so happy. So fucking happy. Quite an extended list, right? Yeah. And I mean, the most obvious one for Jamie is they fixed his fucking dive kicks to not be dog shit. Okay. Yeah, because again, there's still a bunch of the full list I have to go over, but just checking out the stuff I was seeing and looking out for it.

Obviously, one that came relevant is Lily got a much better- Wins. Got a much better standing light kick. Lily winning a tournament. You know what's awesome about that? So, I forgot which channel it was, but someone was keeping track of the amount of characters that have won majors. Of all the launch characters back before Capcom Cup or so, the only two that didn't win a major

were Zankief and Lily. And then Snake Eyes won a qualifier and he won that, and then now Lily has won as well. So the distribution of tournament victories is literally the entire launch cast. Now obviously there's new characters, so you've got more to consider. I'm sure Akuma will find a tournament to win.

But that never happened, you know? You don't often ever see the whole roster takes home gold in majors, you know? Usually there are some very extremely defined haves and have nots for the whole length of the game's life. Yeah, and I do think that a lot of these things too, there's something to understand here where these are adjustments that affect micro exchanges. If you are concerned about, well, again, what you can do after you land a punish counter with Gif, or the ability for him to burn you out, or how to set up a plus four frame trap with Marissa,

then this makes a huge difference there. If you're looking at JP throwing ghosts at you, and you're still just like, how do I fucking deal with these? The character is still annoying. You're not going to, Oh yeah. No, I fought a JP this morning. Yeah. Still really annoying. So the overall thing to understand here is that like at a casual to mid level of like proficiency, the arc of the trajectory trajectory of these characters is still what it is.

And annoying characters are still going to be annoying to fight. You know, I buy fucking a modern Honda fucking got my ass, you know, um, still what it is. And annoying characters are still going to be annoying to fight. A modern Honda fucking got my ass, because it's Honda. So these are just specific smaller exchanges that matter in these smaller moments that affect higher level gameplay and or once I'd say intermediate and above. But seeing, yeah know seeing a yeah like oh like Blanka got nerfed or like JP got nerfed and stuff it's like yeah but if you have a hard time fighting these characters you're still gonna have a hard time with the basics. Yeah so like I fought I played Zengief and I fought JP this morning and it was a mess because

he's JP and he's a direct counter to my whole game plan but when I got in because of the changes to his normals, he didn't get to push me all the way out for free. Yeah. Yeah, I got to do my stuff. And it was like a back and forth. Yeah. So that's it. Balance changes are never, you know, we're rarely ever like, like, completely changing the entire scale. It's like putting a little here, taking a little off and seeing it teeter-totter, you know, so

DJ got fucked though and fuck him. Oh Okay, yeah, I haven't seen the or rather like I haven't I haven't gone over his list They they changed some of his combo timings, but the main thing was a system change was like they made it so that Drive rush cancelling shit like adds like mandatory scaling to everything. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah scaling. So him him drive rushing in with a jab to start like everything means that it's doing like 20% or even less damage characters characters with incredible buttons that would just fucking be insane party starters that you couldn't challenge now have those combos

Scaling the damage down by a lot Luke had the same thing happen to him as well Yeah, it's like if you're if you're doing all those combos that are like Normal normal normal meter. Sorry a drive-rush normal normal normal drive-rush like until you're done Yeah, are now each one is multiplying the scaling on it and by the end you're doing basically nothing They fixed dad's shitty jabs, you know Yeah, yeah that explains a lot cuz I've never fought an ed before this patch and I was like I thought you guys were telling me his jabs were bad, but oh they seem good. Mm-hmm. And Yeah, Akuma gets like to he gets the world as long as he doesn't get touched.

He gets to do anything he wants and have every solution, every moment, and every tool, but don't make any mistakes at any point or dock. Everyone is calling for it, and I certainly do hope it comes true that we get an Akuma mirror on stream one day where both Akumas sit down and eat the fucking rice ball. You know? Because, god damn it, he has a taunt that he sits down, he eats, and if you let the full slow thing play out, he gets buffed into Shin Akuma and he gets access to two more supers. He can do... But fuck that, he gets access to his double air fireball. I'm way more interested in that.

Okay, I heard that and I saw that tweeted, but I don't know how, I didn't, I wasn't able to actually do it in game. So what's the actual input on that? Because- Oh, I don't know, but I've seen video of it happening. Because I've seen, I know that the CPU version of him gets access to all that shit,

and then you get the chop super, and then you get the chop super, and then you get the other tracking chop. But I couldn't actually do the, I was trying to do it in game, and I didn't actually see anything, yeah. Oh, it's a half circle input? Oh. Maybe it's EX only.

Is that, okay, is it, that's confirmed, and it's EX only? Okay, okay. In Demon Flip, well that's why, yeah, you're not gonna do it. Okay, so the the PC the the CPU sir. Nakuma version can do it just normally jumping around so Yeah, that makes okay, and hey Street Fighter 6 just saying hey what Street Fighter soundtrack do you want for this game? Yo Here you go. Yeah I do not want to hear the home hardware fucking theme for Marissa when you pick her well now

Turn her playlist into third strike I've just took I just took every character that I play and set all of their music to every third strike track awesome Hell yeah, there's some non-Third Strike music that's incredible. I love. I would like the Alpha 3 soundtrack as well. Alpha 3, Alpha 2 has some great music. The Cami theme from Super Turbo. They have the new, the, what is it? Ultra Street Fighter 2 Turbo, the port with violent Ken they have music from that even it's crazy Or yes the actual good jury theme So that's that's a really awesome quality of life. Finally. That's in there as well

Anyway, so good stuff good stuff to that. We're Street Fighter 4 and 5 Not good Games yeah No, that's like I'm glad she wanted six That's don't that's and it's it's so great and then I think back to like oh man Oh my good three fighters, okay in three days Okay Our is life allowed to have any nuance or does it have to be black and white? Does it have to be coin flip and we clone flip takes all day? Because nuance, if there's no nuance, then

yeah, everything's trash. Whatever. If we're allowed to have some nuance, then Street Fighter 4 saved fucking fighting games, came along and Street Fighter 5 launched terribly but ended better. you know? Like if we can, but if hyperbole glass is on, go nuts, whatever. I think Street Fighter V when the current directors of Street Fighter, that six took over five, things were improved and got a lot better towards the end there. But I know one thing for sure is whenever I see four, if there's ever, that's one of those things where I'm like, man, I feel, anytime I go to a tournament for a game,

I'm like, let me enter Tekken, why not? But I'm like, I don't really have this fresh in my brain. I don't have enough Steve to feel super confident going into this, and I didn't practice, et cetera. Four is just burnt in. It's burnt in forever. It can never be deleted. Oh, yeah.

And I think a lot of people have that too. Like, I know Reggie's the same way. You're just like, yeah, Four requires no warm ups. It's just locked in because we all played so much of it. I am, yeah, overall happy with this patch. And they also came out to say that they're not going to be once a year. They came out to say that, so we're going to see perhaps a little bit more, but not too much. It'll probably be per character, right?

Per character? Micro-balanced patches, yeah. Micro- is micro patches is usually the way. And of course, so, you know, one of the things about like, oh shit, it's a random ass bracket that allows Akuma on day one. You know, that's just embracing chaos. All right, let's go for it. The one of the things I did say though, was like, if there are bugs and things that are busted in the patch that's gonna be fucked you know and none of it thankfully it was saved in time but the initial patch that rolled out was actually busted there were so was it there were several issues that had to be hot fixed with a quick update on the 24th. Well, what was one of the issues? So Blankescan, Blankescan. Blankachan had a damage scaling nerf that was supposed to be like any combo that involves

Blankachan, takes scales by 20% less. That was not there in the patch. That was missing. Jury could do Feng Shui engine target combo into her super and there was issues with that activation. Also, I think her install, when she adds extra effects to her super, that was not working. There was a problem with Blank is crouching strong, Jamie's super level one. There was some issues with Manon's inputs. There's a couple of... Oh, hold on a minute.

You have frozen up. That's fine. All right. Are you back? No? We'll see here. All right. Yeah, there was a bunch of those things and then there was an issue with Manon's quarter circle back heavy kick pushing you in a weird

way that was not intended as well. So all of these things, they hot fixed. And then the tournament setups had to go quickly the fucking Friday or whatever, Thursday morning or so, go download everything again because it rolled out and then wasn't ready. That's always an issue. All right, here, let's try to fix your camera. Oh, no.

It still hasn't come back yet, huh? Okay. Yeah, BRB. Okay. Couple other small things. How do you feel about popcorn? It's fine. I don't feel any particular strong emotions about popcorn whatsoever. Do you have that thing where you're like, I don't care about it, but if I'm in a movie theater, I must have some and it must be buttery.

No, not even just like if there's popcorn in front of me and someone offers me popcorn, I'll go, oh yeah, I could go for some popcorn, but I will never seek out popcorn. Okay. I'm kind of similar in that I'm like, it's okay. I've had nice popcorn, but exactly. I'm not really like super drawn out towards it. But it's fine. Oh, yeah, your volume is. Apparently I'm loud as fuck. It's changed for some reason.

I moved you up earlier because you were too loud, but I'm gonna move you back down. So that's what happens when you give me upies, Willy. That's what happens with the upies. Then you get louder. Also, shout outs to the quality of those Photoshop's by the way. That's a... Yeah, that's...

Those aren't Photoshop's. Okay, okay, yes. The attention to detail on the lighting is noted. That's a friend of mine I play FFXIV with. Oh, okay, I'm like... He's the guy who does all my layouts, Justinian Knight. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, he's incredible.

That's more effort than just a paste. We took photos specifically for the Photoshop to get the lighting right. To get the lighting right, that's good. Okay, okay, yeah. I'm like, that looks way too on point. So what I've been hearing for years is that Combo Breaker is also known for the fucking popcorn and I'm like, okay, what?

And yeah, you get there and it turns out there's a... So someone that was a player, I believe, competitor has gone on to become the popcorn Baron and what that means is there is a I'm gonna say 5% maybe 10 5% of the hall dedicated to a giant table with 30 40 different flavors of popcorn?

Am I even? Is that even accurate? I don't know, but I took a photo and I just went, Min, pick a flavor, because I don't know if you know this, I think you might remember, Min fucking is orgasmically addicted to popcorn. I remember. That dude loves his popcorn. Lo addicted to popcorn. I remember that dude loves his popcorn loves his popcorn So yeah, there's just a giant menu of

Okay here. Let me see. That's five ten at least twelve over there Times three there's only one flavor of popcorn. It's Butter. Yeah, there are fifty or so flavors on this on this this menu and they're all giant containers. They roll in and you get artisanal popcorn is the deal and I was like what the **** does that mean? And that means you can get anything from like regular **** you know like barbecue flavors to apple birthday cake caramel gingerbread white chocolate cheesecake you know my favorite flavor of popcorn is mm-hmm corn uh-huh guess what guess what kettle corn is there

you're good you're covered and if you're covered. And if you're not down with the sweet that I just mentioned, then on the savory side, you've got your bacon cheddar, you've got your butter chicken, you've got your salsa pizza, you've got your teriyaki ranch white cheddar garlic bread, Cajun, like everything, like various kinds of spicy barbecue,

habanero, if you wanna go rough, you know, they have so many fucking types of flavors. And so I was like, all right, let me just, let me go in and giant line the entire time too. Like the lineup, the lineup for popcorn baron was longer than 2XKO. There were more people in line for popcorn than to play the League of Legends fighting game

at Combo Breaker. It was crazy, right? And the lineup for Project L was very, very long. So I got me some mid-wanted Cajun. So I got that. And I got bacon cheddar, apple, and root beer. And between too savory and too sweet, I can definitely say that this is the best popcorn I've had.

I mean, you have to think back and go like, wait, what's the best I've ever? And I'm like, oh yeah, no, no, no, this is it for sure. It just stands out. That wouldn't be too hard for me. I think the only popcorn I've ever had is some shit-ass Orville Redenbacher's or the theater shit.

Yeah, so theater shit with all the butter and stuff can be nice, but you, but like you're not thinking about it as like, again, I'm like, I'm not gonna go out of my way, right? This is good enough to warrant that. And every flavor is like, you know, you know how would you think of like any popcorn flavor you're thinking of, it's popcorn with a bit of the flavor

of that powder sprinkled on. This is not that. This is the flavor of the thing in popcorn shape. I don't understand what you're telling me. So when you eat the apple one, you're getting a really potent, but not too potent, Jolly Rancher apple-like nice taste. All right, that sounds like like bullshit and awful,

but I'm going to assume from the way you just described it as nice. It's nice. That it's not. Yes, like it like, I mean, a jelly bean will, will like have a, a, a, the flavor that it takes on of the thing. It's not a mild like powder of the flavor sprinkled

over the popcorn. It's a, it's a fairly potent like strong piece it's almost like if you eat like um Like when you eat a piece of cereal that has like a flavor to it, you know, right? You're like, oh, I'm crunching in and like it tastes like whatever that flavor. The thing is is like it's not a mild thing It's not subtle. Everything here is very overt very strong actually So but like thankfully not overpowering. I was worried if anything actually. But thankfully, not overpowering. I was worried, if anything, but it wasn't overpowering.

The apple is a nice kind of sweet, Jolly Rancher-like apple flavor. The root beer is crazy, because not only does it taste like root beer, but it fizzes in your mouth. Oh, shut up. Because there's like a Pop Rocks-like texture on the root beer flavor.

So it does a fizzle while you're eating it. It's crazy, right? And like- Don't understand. To actually get, like like your Attention to detail it to make the root beer flavor like hit that way is like oh, that's what they mean by like artisanal They're trying to make each thing like a big deal. You know it's sorcery. It absolutely is Now again, I assure you like well I mean everyone's tastes are different, but I, as

someone who had my eyebrow raised at a lot of these names and I'm like, that sounds disgusting, was pleasantly surprised. I didn't taste any bad ones. If you're not into spicy, you're not going to like Cajun because it's spicy. But if you are, the flavor is there, you know? The butter, not butter, the cheddar bacon is actually like pretty reminiscent of other cheddar bacon flavors, but just stronger, you know? And that's probably the most recognizable kind of flavor

of the bunch I've gotten. But yeah, popcorn baron, I get it. I get the hype. It's great. I like the sweet ones way more, if anything, if I get back and get them. But I would endorse that and say anyone stand in line and try a flavor that you think sounds interesting to you.

They do have small sized bags and then big ones as well. And I was feeling kind of nuts. So I grabbed a little bit of all flavors and shoved them in my mouth at the same time. And that was regret, don't do that. mouth at the same time. And that was regret. Don't do that. I got to play a little bit of Rivals 2, aka Rivals of Aether 2. Awesome. How's that? Loving it. Super looking forward to the final release of that. It's probably my favorite

of the platform fighters. I loved Rivals ofether especially with like you know you have like multiverses coming back and then you've got like Nick All-Star which had characters or I'm like I don't even know who that is and that sucks because I'm like I liked the slap city devs a lot and what they did with slap city was great but man am I just like what is even happening over here? Like, I'm so checked out. But Rivals of Aether was a lot of fun. And now the second one, just building off of that, is really, really dope. What's particularly awesome, two things are, one,

when you're grabbing onto a ledge, you can do a special off the ledge, which is like a unique special while you're grabbing it, which is cool. That's cool. Yeah, just another place to have a unique thing. And then yeah, parries, you know, like you have parries that are deflect any projectile that comes back at you. So Smash could do that with the bubble pop and stuff. But also like melee attacks to like when you parry it a melee attack, the other character gets stunned and like opened for a big combo. So like, if you're feeling stylish, you can go for it and do some really cool shit.

Krag in particular, I was the big beetle guy that I used to play and like he's really fun. You can do the big tower. His up B is like summoning a big pile of rocks underneath him instead of being a jump, you know, and then picking up blocks and throwing them and stuff like, yeah, really, really cool. So that's coming along nicely. A quick shout out to Tough Love Tag. The devs behind Tough Love Arena are making a new 3v3 fighter as well that's called Tough Love Tag, which is actually like new sprites, new characters.

There's only like one playable in the demo I played so far, but it's interesting and definitely has some of the feel of Tough Love Arena with like the way kind of jumps worked in some of that. But yeah, that was a really great tough love arena was the browser based fighting game that like you could play on your phone or on anything, anywhere, anytime. And it had rollback and like good matches against other players. And, you know, just kind of represented like, oh, shit, you can actually play in a browser and get a good fighting game out of that.

And it was really particularly nice to be able to tell people, wherever you are, you can just play on your phone or any screen around you and it'll be good. So yeah, believe it or not, it actually worked on your phone. And then there was Heavenly Parasite, which is a game that was like three, that's like a, it meant to be like a send up to like old

MS-DOS style fighters, you know, like old, like almost like MS Paint style sprites or like a little bit of one must fall back in the day type shit. And yeah, you, you have a bunch of monsters that are taken over by parasites and doing crazy ass, like everyone's like a Modok style monster freak with other monster freaks behind them that are like filling the screen with shit and doing assists all the time you can do you can call assists while you're getting hit it's bad shit it's wild but that's a very gonna look at this this shit it's crazy but yeah it's it's trying some real some real unique shit and there's some fun stuff in there for sure. I want to see how it comes along. But yeah, MS-

Oh yeah, I see what you mean. MS-DOS, MS-DOS fighter is the vibe, you know? I had a, I ran into Keats, shout out to Keats, had a really good chat with him. So cool. Cause like, yeah, obviously, KI got patched and that's running. It's nice that that game can still be supported even in such a slight way after all this time. I was so fucking confused. They put out the new trailer for Killer Instinct Anniversary. They're like, new trailer? And I'm like, oh, okay. I'll go type that in a Steam.

Oh, I've owned it for more than a year? What the fuck is this? I'm so confused. It's the same game just with an overhaul patch that like- But the patch is a year old. No, no, the new patch was more recent. Oh, it's a patch, because like when it says anniversary edition, I am I looked I'm like I have anniversary edition. I've had it since 2023. Yeah, no, there's a new patch that is essentially it updates the online servers so that they'll continue working on the

current and then you net, and then a balance patch across the past as well. So yeah, if that naming convention is a little confusing, there's an update and when you update and get the latest version of the game, it's going to be balance patch plus online good. And yeah, it's dope to see that. I love that that game is, you know, just like not completely by the wayside. So yeah. Listen, I keep wanting to call it Kingdom's Instinct. Killer Instinct may be a really cool game and it may have a new patch coming out that

fixes all the cross-play stuff and makes it really good and that's great, but we should really not actually get too excited or talk about Killer Instinct at all so that people don't think we're making a fucking sequel. That would be bad to do. God damn it. Okay. Shout out Sajam. You know, I mean, God bless. He's a champ and ran an event that then apparently was told after it was a KI promotional event,

turn it back in the day, lockout. And then they didn't do it again because yeah, they're like, we don't want people to get the idea that there might be a sequel coming or some bullshit like that. Yeah, by the way, the event that you hosted cost like $3,000 and successfully met every metric we asked of you and was a massive success. I mean, no, don't do it. As an outside observer looking at what this game's like, what's going on with the announcements and with things with this game, It almost feels as if there are, it almost feels as if there's a struggle between people that are interested in more KI and people that are actively against the idea fighting.

It's like this tiny microcosm of what we saw with Tango, which is like, well, we want Killer Instinct to get us more money and more stuff But we don't want anyone to ask us about a sequel yeah Yeah, because making a sequel would cost money so because we'd have to make something so the quality of life that you could get Here is is like we as long as people don't get the wrong impression by making the game better that like oh We're that interested or whatever. It's a real stupid fucking thing. It's so weird because like, this is another story from Microsoft of like Microsoft wants you to pay them,

but they don't wanna make anything. They don't wanna make anything. It's so fucking weird. Yeah, so we can't have nice things in the meantime. Anyway, so whenever something nice does happen, it's a fucking miracle really. And it's nice that that can happen under those circumstances given, yeah, that whole thing about there being a direct fucking antagonistic interest in this game, getting shit that would make the player base happy. But it could always be worse.

It could. It could always be them's fighting hurts. I read this story and I don't understand what happened in it. I'm so sad, because this fucking game just can't get a break. It's so cursed to be a fan if you're into them fighting herds. Man, it's so cursed. This is while we were there.

And I think as I ran into some of the folks, too, that I read that worked on the game and stuff. And there were cool people, said what's up, you know, all that. You know, the main six devs, you know, were, yeah, they were let go. And basically the the short version is that we talked about when the DLC characters that came out for them fighting herds were busted as fuck because they were rushed out and main six was being let go. And they weren't given the time to

finish off the characters that were supposed to close out the season. They just were like, nope, get out. Fuck you. Too bad. And then just shove these busted characters that literally had infinites crash the game like just insane, like completely unacceptable DLC. So there was then a patch that was put out to fix that and it was a rushed patch but it was just to make it not so completely unplayably busted but still just like unbalanced. Like the characters are, you know what I mean, like especially like they're not fair now but the game will run and if the TOs are going to ban the characters or so, then you can kind of avoid the worst of it, of the broken shit. But that was put out beforehand, and that came with some system changes as well and

some other little tweaks to other characters. What was fucking confusing and baffling was that at Combo Breaker, there were a bunch of changes from the final patch that were supposed to fix those DLC characters that were missing from the one that they were playing in tournament. And then, you know, they like armor break was something that was added to deal with Texas, one of the characters. And that was, you know, there was other bugs that people were noticing were there, but then some things that were buffed in the final version were missing.

So there was a 5.0 version that was the busted one with the DLC. And then there's a 5.1 where they had all these fixes, system changes, and making the most busted shit about the two characters you know more manageable, but they're still not like fair at all and There were changes that were on neither here. So people are like what version of the game is this? It's not that it's not updated And it's true And it seems as if they basically were able to players are able to figure out that this is a version of the game that

Was never publicly released that was that was version of the game that was never publicly released That was that was in between the fix and the final but and the original final busted one So now the tournament is being run on a build that no one that played the game could have had a chance to play on Features are missing Aspects of certain characters combos are just like randomized so they had to like it just fucked up everything you know game has been like actively killed and The to had no idea the person who owned the console had no idea like it just doesn't make any sense How this unknown build was the one that was running in the bracket. But holy shit, man, what a fucking cursed ass way to go. Where does somebody even get an unknown build?

It sucks, it sucks that like, it's already in a state, you know, like it is, they're dealing with that bullshit. And I think everybody that like plays it would have been happy to just be like, okay, they're not getting any more updates after these last two characters. Let them be good, fair, fun additions to the roster and then we'll close out the game on that. But no, like it can't get a nice little period walk off into the sunset moment. It has to be this fucking bullshit the whole way through.

And CB, Combo Breaker is the place, again, any game should be able to get its best racket, its best tournament going, but not for this one. So it fucking sucks, man. Yeah, I feel bad for the players on that one, dude. Anyway, so that's pretty much it. I mean the you know, it was nice to then go back and have some drinks at the bar with everybody and kind of like Walk by some folks are playing not like us and I'm like, okay I'm a walk over and be like pull up Mike and I got my passport and I'm like as a Canadian

We do not fuck with Drake We don't claim it everyone's like I got my passport and I'm like, as a Canadian, we do not fuck with Drake. We don't claim it. Everyone's like, yeah. And I'm like, exactly. I'm like, I can speak on behalf of my country. You know, fuck that, dude. So, you know, that was fun. And, you know, even just little things were like I was talking at one point

about how, like, one of my favorite things I've ever seen, one of my favorite photos ever, is this moment at The Last Evil where Angry Bird won. I was talking about how sick the venue is and everything. When he wins, he kneels to do a prayer. As he's doing it, you see it's a photo of him from the back with his hands out doing it as he did the bow and then back up. And then the crowd from bottom of the frame to the top, all with their phones doing the light to kind of almost like a star-like scape in front of him.

It was amazing. Such a good photo, the coolest one ever. And I was talking to a bunch of people about how sick that photo was. And then Esteban's like, oh yeah, the guy who took that photo is standing right over there. Like, ow, oh shit.

So moments like that are really nice. Or yeah, I ran into Red Rapper, who did a bunch of the amazing fucking, the fighting game raps you guys might have heard over the years, or even the Maximilian epic rap battles of history, Doom versus Wesker rap as well. Just fun stuff. It's a vibe that I understand now.

Combo Breaker is super dope. I'm glad that something has the spirit of old EVO, which is just the big major that is still got the grassroots element to it. of old Evo, which is just the big major that is like, still got the grassroots element to it. And it makes sense that the guy who could come in and save Evo ran the fucking tightest ship here. So incredible job to Rick and everybody for that. Yeah, I'm super gonna be passing by Chicago,

I think from now on. I mean, if it's not too fucked in my schedule, the timing is awkward usually because this is when travel shit starts to get busy. But if I can make it, I'm gonna be at Combo Breaker because yeah, I had a fucking great time then. All right, that was a lot. So let me just say I will be streaming Yakuza

tomorrow. I will be taking a quick look at Megaton Musashi, the super robot looking ass amazing fucking cool looking thing. And then I'm going to check out Akuma. So come hang out at Woolly Versus this week should be fun. be fun. Of note for me, baby loves Pickles. Street Fighter, I'm playing a lot of Street Fighter. I'm playing Ghost of Tsushima again on the PC. PC version.

Man, that game just has the best fucking vibes of anything. Just like, yeah, I don't need to sprint the horse. I can just have the horse walk down this path I don't even give a shit. I mean when your combat is gonna give me a a Samurai Kirby minigame every time it starts You're gonna be in my heart in a special place. I don't do that minigame half the time. I want to I want to ghost it special place forever. I don't do that mini game half the time. I want to ghost it. I want to stab people in the neck. I love the quick draw too much. It's my favorite shit. Yeah, it's fun, but that game story is so funny because your uncle's just like, stop being so fucking cool. No. No, I want to do cool ghost shit, uncle! With all your tools and tack and shit. No, poison is awesome, uncle.

I wanna use my poison. It's great, actually. It's fucking awesome. And I'm plugging away at FF7 Rebirth, which is a fucking huge game, man! It's so fucking big! I don't know if you're playing FF7 rebirth at all you said you were gonna touch it off-camera But I don't know where you would be at or if you've gotten started not yet not yet

But the the game so you remember ff7 remake It took you know moments like wall market and we're like this was like an hour. Yeah, right This is you know, and it Wall Market and we're like, this was like an hour. Yeah. Right. This, this, you know, and it, and it expanded them out in whole sequences. FF7 Rebirth is doing that with like areas. And I talked about Junon, for example, like, you know, the parade mini game was like this massive thing. Yeah. I hit, I hit the, the point where it has almost jumped the shark on how expanded it has been. Oh, no. I would say it has almost jumped the shark on how expanded it has been. I would say it has jumped the shark on how expanded the area is. Oh, that's a bad thing.

Half of it is good, half of it is bad, so it's a little more complicated than that. So you got like the Calm area, the Junon area, the Correll prison, the Costa del Sol. These are all like bespoke open world zones, right? Do you remember Gungaga, the town that Zach lives in? I don't. From original FF7? The name I recognize, but I can't think of the actual location. So you probably remember the name because of the meme of Zach going, Me? Gungaga.

That people post around. Okay. So in FF7 original, Gungaga was a dirt path screen, a single screen town, and a reactor you could walk up to screen that you could get the Titan materia out of. I think it was Titan. And that was it. It was a three screen town. This is expanded to be a full open world area with like a six hour, no, it was like a three and a half hour dungeon in it. The dungeon rules. The story stuff that happens there

and the story developments and the actual set piece dungeon thing, awesome. The open world area of Gunga Gaga, not awesome. It is like everything in the game so far is these nice open rolling plains or like maybe mountainy areas. Gunghaga is the most confusing area to navigate since Kingdom Hearts 1's Tarzan jungle. Oh shit, I actually played that. I remember that one and it sounds like Tarzan's jungle and it looks like Tarzan's jungle because it's a jungle. The mechanic is you're using your Chocobo to hop on mushrooms and they'll like launch you to different like elevations, but how far the mushroom launches you is unknown and like the area has like 10 different

points of elevation and you're bird riding on it's a fucking mess. It's a fucking mess. And this is talking about like the desert area around the town or like the town itself. The town isn't like the South American rainforest. Okay, but but but I mean like, are you walking into the town and then like that's where what you're describing is happening, or is it the area approaching the town? The way that it were, the town's in the dead center and the open world area is surrounding

it. It's enormous. It has tons and tons and tons and tons of level of of of um uh verticality. It is visually confusing. Figuring out the path straight forward is often impossible. Um side quests in the area too? Yeah. Um okay. The the one of the side quest is just awful. Uh it's it's like hitting a brick wall. Did you you played Monster Hunter World, right? Yeah.

You remember the jungle there? Yeah. Okay, imagine no scout flies. Mmmmm. And the vegetation is like three times as thick. Mmmmm. Okay, okay. It's a mess!

Like when you- It is a mess! Like when you go to the fucking, fucking the swamps in ff9 oh It's been a little too long for me the last time I played ff9 was when he came out Yeah, well, so I mean this sounds almost as if like they took an area of the game that was underdeveloped And I guess used it as a new content platform right they massively developed it Like you remember the frog forest in FF7? That very small frog forest?

Yeah, I think so, yeah. They combined that with Gung Gaga into a new jungle area. And it's in between Cosmo Canyon and the Corell Prison, which are both, like, had incredible visibility for every direction as far as I can see. You can't see more than like 20 or 30 feet in front of you in the GoGaga area. It's a weird like black mark on the game's otherwise totally impeccable experience.

So you're slogging. Yeah and I did it! I did every single fucking thing in it and it took me twice as long as a comparable area just because I did it. I did every single fucking thing in it. And it took me twice as long as a comparable area just because I got lost. It's the only area in the entire game I had to look up how to find things on YouTube because I looked up text guides and they weren't good enough.

I couldn't find them. I had to look up YouTube videos going from the town, run this way, this this way this way go up hit the mushroom go left go left go left go right oh there it is like oh my in the style of remake I'm assuming that if you are like I'm fed up with this area I'm just gonna mainline it to the objective marker you totally so so this is the part where I mainlined the objective marker when I got there because you don't earn the Chocobo until you're done all the story in that area. So usually for these open world segments in FF7 Rebirth, one of the first side quests

is go get the Chocobo. It has the navigation ability that you need. And then the side quests will go a lot faster, yeah. Right, in Gunga Gaga, the Chocobo is part of the major story, you get it after the dungeon. So yeah, you just beeline the main story and then you do it. And then it's like, do you wanna leave or do you wanna do the side quest content? And it's like the only one that's built that way.

Like all the other ones are chocobo first, explore to your heart's content, beeline the story if you want. And Gungaga is like, hey man, no, go do the story. You'll get the chocobo out of the story. And then part of that is, do you wanna leave? And it feels like they knew. It feels like they were like, yeah,

well let's just give you the opportunity to leave this. This is like the Shittiest zone in the game. It's awful. How willing are you to like Just walk away from some of that side content though. I did it all Yeah, I did every single icon on that map Yeah, cuz I'm like you're describing the part where I would be like, nope, funds not being had. I don't need completion here. You know, I did it all. People in my chat are like, Pat, you don't have to do all of it. And I say, I'm sorry, I have a disease. I see. I need the icons have to be grayed out. Oh, they have to be grayed out. They you can't move forward unless the icons are grayed out. Sorry. That's against the law

I just fucked up my volume for a second Hold on shit Do I sound normal do I sound normal sound normal to me, okay? I Think the recording volume might have gotten fucked. All right. That's fine. All right. Um Yeah, I'll fix it later! I'm, um... Yeah, I'm just... I-I-I like when I see that coming a mile away, unless there's like some wild shit where

I'll then find out, oh no, an amazing sword, summon, materia, whatever, some shit you super duper duper want is there. Then I'll load back an old save that I rotated from, but fuck that. The other thing is that I'm deep enough into the game where they've started to very heavily remix the events of the original game in ways that I find to be really interesting. And I'm very happy with it so far. I'm bad. I can't talk with the changes. Yeah, the changes. Yeah, there's a couple big changes and I'm I think these

are good changes. They're very very interesting changes. Cool. Well, with any luck. We'll see what happens in the third game with no obstructions to that whatsoever. I actually don't know what you're referencing. Oh, well, I guess we'll talk about it in the news then. Oh, right. Okay. So this week I'm going to be playing more Street Fighter. I'm gonna be playing more FF7 rebirth it'll be Cosmo Canyon stuff, and I'm also gonna be checking out

Crow country tomorrow. That's what it was called I was like what the fuck is that game that I saw a trailer for that looks kind of cool, but I was like Oh, what's happening? Yeah, Crow country. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's like hey, man What if I made what if I'm an indie dev and I made a Resident Evil game? But also it looked like the old timey ff7 I've heard nothing but rave reviews about it. So tomorrow at 2 p.m Pacific over twitch.tv slash Pat stares at you can go down and I'll be playing crow country I actually saw that via the like most Like normal I actually saw that via the like most

like normal Marketing means which is I booted up steam and saw like an ad for it and then clicked on it and saw the videos Like oh that looks interesting. Huh? Okay, and then I think I heard like it meant it get mentioned or so like once or twice after that I was like, oh, yeah that thing cool. Oh the only other thing of note for me to say is that I finally finished getting my save file ready for Shadow of the Urd Tree. Ah, you got huge, huge. On PC.

I managed to, the last thing I was missing was that glove, ghost glove bell bearing in the HALIG tree. Fuck. And I just pushed through the HALIG tree to get that last upgrade material. Your first run was on PS5? Yeah. And I didn't want to do the DLC on PS5. So to force myself, I deleted that file.

For performance reasons or for... Yeah, I was very unhappy with the PS5 version overall. Okay. So I ended up playing, and I've been playing it on PC since. Well, because I got a new computer in that interim. I mean, added benefit, you'll be able to enjoy whatever crazy mod shit starts happening over. Oh, I already have. I fucked around with the randomizer a little while ago. Yeah. There you go. No, it pays to go there. Yeah. Playing Elden Ring by beelining to the upgrade materials is a fucking bizarre experience. It is it is strange

as shit to follow that game's critical path Just weird I mean I imagine Challenges are not gonna be balanced for where you're at by beelining it But at the same time people do bird deprived runs of every soul game, right? Oh my characters level hun 248 mm-hmm. I Just I just hit every fucking stat to the soft caps because I want to go into the DLC and be able to pick up and use every single item. Is it just weird because like there's no through line for any of the activities if you're just ignoring all the- No, it's just weird because like going in a straight line through an Elden Ring area is fucking strange. Okay.

It's just so weird because you're like what's down there no ignore it Like that's it's fucking weird although Couldn't you all could could it be argued that like at the same time it? Resembles an old souls game the most because you're just Dungeons legacy dungeon legacy dungeon legacy dungeon, so it just feels like the old game levels, right? Yeah. Yeah With some little horsey bits in the middle Yeah, that's that's it for me so I'm all ready for the shadow of the earth tree Have you seen um the the the leaks about our tree? I have not looked at any leaks. No

The leaks about our tree. I have not looked at any leaks Apparently it has I'm not sure where these came from but I had a bunch of people from different places come to me with them which was It has it has 30 pieces of unique music Whereas Elden Ring has 62. Oh was Lance. Oh fuck And supposedly it is Approximately the size of limb grave Kaleid and Leonea all together Awesome what did what did what did he say 20 hours or yeah, so my something like that cool

Yeah, all right. No lies detected sounds good Lance said they were fake. Oh, I don't even care anymore Never mind me then I'll just shut up. I mean, I'm just I don't almost just like whatever the answer is bigger than I expect or or Prop possibly want um and that'll be that you know And you can always, I'm sure, whatever, like write it again and get, yeah. Like, actually, what, we still don't know what the unique quote unquote leveling system means, right?

We're just guessing. No, we probably won't know until the day comes. Okay, all right, all right. All right. Oh, reporting with the day. Yeah, okay. All right. All right All right. Oh Reporting with no conformed sources. Yeah, that's right. What happened to a second source was my butt. Oh, no Cue the Aaron Sorkin music What's new in the world this week sponsors, I love those This week, the podcast is sponsored by a loading screen.

Oh. Followed by... My favorite. Spotify. Excuse me. Sorry. Excuse me. Sorry. Clean take. Delete all that. Ignore what I said.

Pause. Remove that from your brains. Strike the record. Let's take a quick word from our sponsors. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Shopify. Oh, I love Shopify. I mean, I've said before that when we started doing podcast and video game on YouTube, we had no idea what or how that would

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your business. No matter what stage you're in Shopify.com slash superbeast. Cha-ching is the sound of a sale on Shopify. Thank you Shopify. Thanks Shopify. All right. So perfect opportunity as we go into the news here that is being read as a casual observer of the events occurring in the industry to, I suppose, give a responsible take on how we feel things are shaken. As informed fans, boopity boop boop boop, Castle Super News, here we go. You saw that fucking thread, I'm sure.

In response to us talking, to everyone finding out about how Squeenix has declared that Final Fantasy VII remake was not profitable. You mean rebirth? Rebirth, excuse me, did not meet expectations. 16 did not meet expectations. The world, rightfully so, went Square, what the fuck are your expectations? Every time. Square and Capcom are the worst at this, but it's every time.

It's every single time. Square and Capcom are the worst at this, but it's every time. It's every single time. And so we had no idea because it's always been pretty insane. And we've had, we have, you know, memories that go back to, yeah, talking about things like Devil May Cry 4 where it's like, oh, you made a number that made no sense and then held it to that standard as opposed to it outperforming itself or its last game by like a two to one fucking margin. That's not good enough. Okay, cool. I think Capcom talking about how Dragon's Dogma was going to sell five million copies

is my favorite because it sold a million at launch, which is pretty good. And they were like, this is a massive disappointment. But then like over its life cycle, it sold like 8 million copies. So it actually crushed it, but it was listed as a disappointment because it didn't do those 5 million on day one. Right. So that's been that's been the tail of the tape so far. And we've also been doing so in addition to reporting on multiple studios getting acquired, multiple studios shutting down, multiple people getting fired, multiple decisions that more or less leave the video games industry in a very bad shape.

So the Square one in particular was like, but everyone really enjoyed actually those games, what the fuck? And we thought they were selling quite well. They were all that everyone was talking about, at least for the period of time in the launch windows, which is not dissimilar to whenever another AAA game takes over the new cycle for that period of time in the launch windows, which is not dissimilar to whenever another AAA game takes over the new cycle for that period of time.

This is where a thread popped up by Jay Navak on Twitter. That's Jacob Navak, who is the CEO of Genvid, which is the company that you might know as the ones behind Silent Hill Ascension. Formerly worked at Square Enix Holdings and reported to the CEO, who at the time was Yoichi Wada, who was the dude in charge when I was there, up before Matsuda took over. So he is reflecting on what it was like back in the pre-2016 era or so. And it's interesting because reading it, he basically is talking about,

he wrote a thread called a thread on recent Square Enix news regarding Final Fantasy sales and numbers and expectations. A withering here, impossible. It is interesting because as we've been talking about how rough and shitty things have been and how little sense a lot of the decisions tend to make, especially when it comes to triple and quadruple A,

news and announcements and games in the industry. Well, here comes a businessman to tell you actually here's how they used to crunch their numbers. Now, as someone who is, again, I'm just a fucking dude that plays these games and likes them and has, you know, I did work in the QA department. I have some perspective on how games, you know, kind of came to be in a little bit, but I still have an extremely limited perspective when it comes how games kind of came to be in a little bit. But I still have an extremely limited perspective when it comes to business. Yeah, you're not a noted business man. When it comes to the economics, I did not get promoted to the C-suite and I do not have

a perspective on how to handle publicly traded companies and what the best way to return on investment is each quarter. What I can say is that I guess I'm going to look at a thread like this and realize what I'm like, hey, there are elements to this where I'm like, regardless of what this person's opinion is on it, if this is just an information reveal of like, this is what the thought process is. This is how the system works that is very informative And I'm thankful that we have that because this head scratching for a mo for a brief moment You can stop and go oh, I understand. It's still stupid, but I can see the process of how we how we get there

I also see a bunch of Conundrums in which he presented as such that lead to an extremely dire outlook for at least one major aspect of the video games industry, which is the massive AAA publisher field. So when I look at something like this and I go through these points, which I'll get into in a second, and I see them like, oh, I'm out of my depth in terms of like, I see the problems as to why these games are considered failures. I see the issues as to where the struggles are financially to consider, to hit the bar that they consider success.

And I have no idea how you fix that because I'm looking at something that I think fundamentally is destructive and probably bad for the entire industry, right? And I see what to me reads as a series of hurdles you have to jump over when your target goals are infinite growth as opposed to sustainability. But again, I'm not a fucking specialist in this. I can't say. You've seen it, I'm sure. So to get into the thread in particular, I'm not going to read it word for word, but what I am going to say is basically what he describes is that he reported to two CEOs for Square Enix for the better part of a decade

and everything he's saying is not confidential. So everything was basically revealed in public calls and reports and such. The first thing is when a high sales requirement comes into play for a project, the main thing you need to keep in mind is that the example given is let's say there's a game that is going to cost about $100 million to make and it's going to cost five years. The first metric they need to climb and hurdle they need to make it over is if you're getting investors to invest in your game and your company, the game needs to at least make enough money to be more profitable than if

said investors just invested straight into the stock market and got the very basic S&P 500 ass level growth and left their money alone. Which you know what? That actually makes sense. Yes. growth and left their money alone. Which you know what, that actually makes sense. Yes, there is a simple and trusted basic place where I, with all my money, can go put it here and nothing surprising will ever happen to it. It will slowly grow and if you're trying to get me to invest in your company, you're taking it away from a slow, secure growth and putting it into something riskier.

So you better be doing things that I trust you're going to make my money grow because every company that is publicly traded has a fiduciary responsibility to its investors and shareholders, et cetera. So they have to make the decisions to make that money grow. So one, your game from the jump is annual. You take that budget, you break it up by year and you go, what's the return they would have gotten for that year in the stock market? Here, we got to beat that. And he gives a conservative example, but like the realistically it has to be cleared by a much larger margin. That's step one to attracting an investor from the outside to even give a fuck, regardless. Of course, step one right there is somebody

who probably has zero interest in possibly the industry whatsoever, but regardless, that's gonna be what's affecting their decisions. It's the reality of a publicly traded company where you gotta get investor money. Yes. Second, that doesn't take into account marketing platform fees and discounts

and other factors that might affect the cost. So every game that's sold on a Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo platform has a solid chunk of that 30% or so that leaves to go to the hardware manufacturer that the developer or publisher does not get. so that creates an even steeper margin because you know less is In the hand of the developer making the game. Yeah, a hundred percent. It's actually seventy percent. Yeah And of course this is all and there's a he brings up as well that like, you know More PC platforms come in and they have lower things here and then Epic is like, you know in for the good fight as they have lower platform fees and stuff and it's like yeah you don't sell anything okay well right but but the the point being that and it's notorious

Nintendo is notorious for this for just like yep they take their giant cut and that's what it is if you want to release on their console you're losing 30% of whatever it is so that makes it so that your game the bar that it has to clear to be considered a success, profitable, is to be put even higher. Marketing as well can be comparable to a massive size of the budget. So, you know, whatever your marketing amount is gonna be is also one that, like, if you do a little bit of marketing and you have

a game that is successful via word of mouth or so, that's always nice. If you're an example of a small game like a developer like Bellatro where you're one person and you've made a couple million dollars, that's life changing. But if you're a giant team with hundreds of people splitting that money, then suddenly that money is not as significant and it becomes a lot harder as the type to team size grows and grows So this is pretty normal shit. Yeah, you gotta make the money. They take the money You gotta make more money than you spent now he's also discussing things from the point of view of like now when you're talking about these team sizes that are with

hundreds of Members and spread across different countries, et cetera, like the things they're making and what they're considering is primarily games that will be a breakout hit on the mainstream market that people will buy casually, not just looking at independent breakout hits that are word of mouth traveling, right? They're looking for things that keep up with what's considered the graphic standard of the time, the performance standard of the time, that will be, you know, again, the conversation for the months that

it comes out. Yeah. And Final Fantasy, specifically Final Fantasy, not even Square Enix Final Fantasy, is kind of in a rough spot where it's like, marketed itself for like 25 fucking years as the most expensive looking shit you've ever seen in your life. Yeah. And people that don't pay attention to other things will tune in for that because that's holy shit.

Oh my God, have you seen it? It looks amazing, et cetera, right? So you're kind of locked into this expensive, ever-growing need to chase the tech on delivering triple and quadruple A titles, right? And the cost, of course, of all this stuff, as things get more expensive and as you look at, like we talk about remake and like, expanding all these areas to be massive, well-written, every aspect of the game has to be like a nearly flawless experience, top to bottom thing, you're chasing this over

time and performance issues, all these things that people, all these things become less and less acceptable even to a mainstream audience as we go forward in time. Right. OK, so all that's normal. Now, that was fairly representative of how you would go about planning what your game's target number should be. And this was the pre 2015 and earlier era where what would typically happen is someone would a game would be announced, the game would come out, everyone would buy it that was interested, play it, it would have that that, you know, initial, whatever month or two month pop, and then fade off. getting and depending on who the audience was, someone might be able to afford to buy another game after that once they were done with the first one.

Or they might have to wait till later in the year to maybe buy like two games or something. But either way, they would buy the game, have the experience, and then move on and then pick up another game that comes out in perhaps next quarter or something. So for the most part, when you're planning your releases for the year or such, you can always expect that you can push up a marketing cycle, kind of come up and then people can

jump on this one and if they don't jump on this one, then perhaps they can jump on the next one. In many cases, there were, in Hollywood, you'll have a studio green light, a bunch of movies, the big blockbuster will pay for all the failures. It's not dissimilar in video games as well. What changed was that games like Fortnite, games like Warzone, and games like Roblox are these free, ever ongoing, live service games that people can play, enjoy, get addicted to, that are regularly updated, that they can play with their friends, and these have taken the place of instead of jumping to the next game, these are now the default that you are playing whenever

and nothing else is going on. You go play the free game that has new shit that's like, oh, Star Wars is in it, Attack on Titan, great. My friends are queued up, let's go play. And again, it costs you nothing to get started on that. And it's addictive and fun and people are jumping in and fully enjoying themselves. To get someone to now come and buy a full-priced game, they have to not just only get their attention

from it being impressive, looking like something they wanna play and the graphics, all that shit. It also has to pull their attention from it being impressive, looking like something they want to play in the graphics, all that shit. It also has to pull their attention away from the current gas game they're playing, which is again, free, fun with your friends, and constantly updating and delivering more. So whatever you're currently playing, the game you just bought, while you're playing that you're probably going to get an update in Fortnite with some crazy new shit that you're probably gonna be pulled back towards playing.

So the cost of pulling people's attention away from Fortnite and other gas games has gotten so steep, if not impossible, and that has made it even harder to just release a game that is impressive, meets all the other expectations and criteria I've previously listed, but just isn't as cool as what's going on in Fortnite that month, slash the price point is too high. It's actually a really good...

The smartest thing Cliffy B ever said was like there's room for like one or two things in a particular genre, right? When Lawbreakers was coming out, because at the time there was like Overwatch and Siege and all that stuff. And it's like your new thing doesn't just have to pull interest away from its direct contemporaries, your new box product has to pull attention away from Fortnite or Rocket League or Roblox or whatever

long-term infinity game the audience is playing. Yes. Whatever you're putting out and if you're in the AAA publishing space, you're not competing against other installments of games that are similar in your genre. You're competing against every free to play online game that is regularly updating with new content and like FF7 Rebirth is competing against like Honkai Star Wheel. Yes. And as its direct competitor and over time those games are also getting more robust. They're getting overhauls and the Fortnite that used to be the fucking gentrify the neighborhood

game that was not even the main mode Has since become a completely different insane platform that has gotten better looking over time and such and I'm sure the MiHoYo games as well have gone through this right the the beginning characters versus the most recent ones There must be a quality shift that you can be feet that you can feel I'm guessing Would you say that's accurate? Perhaps, I don't know. Yeah, that's accurate. Sure.

Yeah. So, you know, I mean, shit, fucking guitar hero with the is it in Fortnite now with all the music and some like, I wanted to get my guitar out. Hey, look at that. There's a place for it, etc. So, yeah, and I say this is, you know, more or less like steel matting the discussion that Jacob is giving here. So when you put all that together, you just have a perpetually failing, impossible to

climb hurdle that is the fucking stock market return on investment average that I'm gonna put my money into to get a consistent return. And then all these other factors add up. There's, yeah, basically what he argues is that there's no place for this to go, which of course leads to studio closures, people getting fired, IPs failing, brand recognition is the only thing that kind of matters,

new IPs barely have a chance to survive, et cetera, and something has to give. And so we've seen all the other aspects in the industry give so far, and the only thing really left that's probably going to happen in the near future is the cost of games going up even further. So games costing well over $100 on the regular in order to make up for the deficiency that all these hurdles are as they continue to try to make games in

the same way. Or if they can convince hardware manufacturers to give up some of that 30% and return that back to the developer so that each game can, while being the same in development production cycle, be more profitable and increase the dotted line, the bottom line for them right off the bat. Which tough titty because that shit's been locked in place for decades now. They probably aren't going to do that. But either way, something has to give and that's essentially the basis of what he's described.

So there's four takeaways that you can take away from this as a non-business person, right? One of the takeaways that I thought up was Square Enix's takeaway. So in Square Enix's expectations blah blah blah nonsense thing. They describe that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's exclusivity to the PlayStation 5 significantly affected its ability to sell copies, aka everybody who wants that game on PS5 probably bought it already. There's people on Xboxes or PC that would probably want to buy it, but they can't because it's not out there. You could have sold more copies if you'd sell to more people. A point that was made there is that when exclusivity factors into the cost as well, the hardware

manufacturer will take their cut back from the whatever amount they bought first before handing over for forking over the rest. So they'll recoup their damages initially. So that can affect and take away even more depending on. So like, hey, if you want to spend the money to make the most expensive fucking thing that you've ever made, you should probably try and sell it to as many people as you can.

Right, that just, that's why so many more games are multi-platform now because they're expensive. You put them out on everything. Right? Yep. That makes sense. And I don't think Square Enix is crazy for noticing that that was one of the things that made their expectations, you know, disappointing. The second one is maybe don't make the most expensive thing you have ever made every single time you make something. Right. And that's like Final Fantasy's problem. And so in the follow up thread, he goes on to talk about how essentially what FF is and generally represents is a spectacular 100 plus hour AAA journey. And you can go for other things that are cheaper, shorter, and or lower quality, but you need

to use a different brand. They tried that with things like Octopath, which were good, but nowhere near as much revenue as Final Fantasy, and things that failed like Battle and Wonderworld, and things that were in the middle like Foam Stars. However, you can't try to make something that is shorter, lower, or cheaper, but still use the brand Final Fantasy given what it represents and what the IP is. So that's the response given there. So to me, I look at that and I go,

okay, I see that there's a problem and then it's money. And to overcome it, there's a wall in place that like, yeah, it just doesn't make any sense. And to open with it, it's like, yeah, I need to get people who are holding money in a safe growth over time portfolio to pull that money out and give it to me for something much higher risk that's dependent on trends at the time and other fickle things that I as an investor don't understand because I'm not particularly interested in this world or so. With all of these insane, as we're talking about costs and everything like that, you

build up in size and scope and you hire more people. Now we are looking at what happens on the other side of that with tons of again, shuttings and closings and firings across the board, especially if deals for acquisition like Saudi Arabia shit goes down and yada, yada, yada. The only thing I can see here as again, the casual observer is that there is something fundamentally and probably permanently fucked with the entire concept of a publicly traded AAA game publisher. I think... I'm gonna raise up my hand to stop you there.

Okay. Because you just walked right into something I was about to say. Sure thing. Which was the third thing, the third takeaway is take your company off the stock market. Yeah. the stock market so that you can make Steam or Baldur's Gate and just ignore half of the conversation we just had. Okay, now, again, if I'm going to Devil's Advocate for the person who is here, they're like, but the cost of these games and the market we're trying to attract and the size

that we're trying to reach is the size that we're trying to reach is the mainstream full-on games market. We're not talking about small indie successes. We're talking about the big, full, this is what video games are, landmark releases, right? And to that I go, okay, well then I guess we keep doing it this way and then it all burns down. Because like, I understand that like, as a, my personal interest is I do not give a shit about these titles and these sizes.

I almost exclusively, and this is probably not true, I'm sure I can be called out specifically on titles. Oh sure, you like a big game here and there, but you like the medium or the small ones. Independent developers that like not to just like, yes, the meme, right? shorter games made by, you know, people that are paid more blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck that. Independent developers like Larian, I understand what they did. And it makes sense to me that the way they did it then leads to them not having to answer

to not performing or outperforming the S&P 500. Therefore, they can continue to work on the thing that they believe will work. And if their independent studio released a shitty game and then Baldur's Gate sucked and that would, they would be hit by that in the same way that a restaurant that was owned by an owner, if they put out shitty food, they'd probably shut her down.

But at the very least, you're dealing with a scope and size that is a direct reflection of the team that you're working with, the investors and or whatever they've made off of the last release they made that was successful. And you're not answering to a giant group of people who have no interest or fucks to give about the thing you're making,

who do not want it to, they don't care about the sustainability aspect of it, they just want that investment to double. And you have a direct competing interest from that person who you have to answer them, right? We all talk about the Iwata saying, please understand, et cetera, yada, yada, but this, I don't see how you can be publicly traded, have to answer to people that are

the majority here that are directly like forcing you to develop the game in a way that is counterproductive at every single step that we've just covered. And obviously, when they don't like the outcome, then they take their ball, they go home, and then it all collapses, the whole thing falls apart. I don't care about those releases. I'm not, like I can only see myself giving a fuck really about developing that doesn't have to answer to that shit

because I see no way out here. Like it feels like this is a stuck, rigged, fucked situation and there's no way out except for the person who makes Fortnite, who makes Warzone, or who makes Roblox. Is that wrong? Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense.

So leaving being public is like impossible because you gotta buy out people's shares and like maybe you don't even have the money on hand to buy out people shares. So like that boat has sailed. But so like of privately owned video game companies that come into my head right now, there's Valve. And the reason why they never went public is because they didn't want to lose control over their store and have to abide by shareholders and Now they're making like some bullshit like 13 billion dollars a year. I don't know the valves a fucking money factory We have Larian who managed to make one of the biggest games for me in boulders gate 3

Now granted they did almost go bankrupt a bunch. Larian has bounced up and down in their fortunes a bunch and that company has almost gone under which somebody in the chat correctly pointed out which is a great thing to point out when we're talking about Square which as we all know has never almost gone completely bankrupt as a publicly traded company. Oh wait, that totally happened after they released Final Fantasy The Spirits Within

and they were so broke they had to merge with Enix. That's hilarious because I thought you were going to talk about when they released Final Fantasy 1. Hence the final. But you know what else else I looked it up while we were talking Do you know what else what company is not publicly traded on the stock market? me hoyo Interesting me hoyo is owned by the founders and its original investors interesting and is pulling in Billions of Chinese gotcha money. Yeah year. So one of the-

Power World can't get it in the bank fast enough, they don't know what to do. One of the sets of like forever games that Square Enix is competing with is one that they don't care about the shareholder talking to them at all. Also a point that Larian did say, that Larian when they talked about them

and being independently owned they still are owned What is it like like? Is forty something percent by there was an aspect of them that is partially owned by a group. That's It's not public. It wasn't publicly traded, but investors a major investor that but but they're still creative and right total control Yeah, 60% or whatever. So they do have investors, but they don't have to answer to them because it's not traded in the same way

that these publishers are. The fourth takeaway that I talked about, that I wanted to get to, is Square Enix has this thing that they want to do. They want to have the next big viral hit, and they will take money from things that make money and they will put them into shit that people can see bomb from announcement Foam stars was listed in this fucking thing. I don't think Foam stars made a fucking dime and they worked on that for years. Because when you're flailing and you're looking at the future and you're going, oh my god, it's all Fortnite, it's all Warzone.

We have to get in there. You know what, Woolly? You're completely right and this is a specific point only viable for Square Enix. You're right, there are long-term live service games with recurrent monetization that people are obsessed with and play primarily and only swap off to new games. If only Square Enix had a game that they had a dedicated monthly recurrent spending amount for tens of millions of people that they could invest in, but no, they would rather take the profits off of that and throw them into Foam Stars or a bunch of mobile games that die. For some reason all Square Enix's

mobile games just die after a year. Well, sure, Pat. 14 is successful and has reinvented itself to become the go-to definitive MMO. However, that being successful and profitable and holding it down and making up for the losses of the other things is not going to consistently double the stock market and make it make enough for the investors to always see the line go up. The amount that it will make over time is certainly sustainable for FF14. It's a massive success, but that's not helping the trajectory we need to cover when we're talking about outside investors and the previous hurdles we established. It's not enough.

If FF14 was just allowed to put its money into the bank instead of burn it like Foam Stars as it comes in, it would be doing crazy numbers. I mean, shit, man. When you pay your sub, it would be sick if you could see it going straight from your card into foam starts or into Nas goth, you know what I mean? So like watch the dollar split up as Somebody who plays ff14 has a lot of friends who play ff14 Like since like 2.5 every goddamn year Square Enix announces the thing that is taking away patch and expansion money from the game that is doing crazy good ass

numbers and puts it out and it bombs. Like every year, like it's legit nuts. Every single time there's an expansion and they're like, well, we have limited resources, so we're going to do the best we can. And you look over at Square putting out some bullshit and then announcing, yeah, it sold like four copies. Babylon's Fall. Babylon's Fall was like a full expansions worth of content for 14 that just got fed to a garbage pit. Now, something that I'm extremely aware of as we're talking about this is that we regularly are like, yo, who's getting fired from where today? How fucking dire is the industry? How bad is it? Right? It's bad.

Talking about that and how it's shitty that those things are happening and that they shouldn't be happening. And then you have the hand in hand of I'm actively disinterested in these massive scaled publishing projects. I actively want and care about things that are smaller means that there's a whole lot of people that are hired working in these situations that I guess I'm like, yeah, I don't know what to say except like this growth was built on a house of cards. And I don't want anyone to be fired. That sucks. I don't want that to be, you know, the idea that the industry is now downsizing in this way and leading to people and places shutting down is all just the insane bad decision making

of again, the people that he was reporting to, right? This is Square Enix making no sense with how they expand these businesses. And I'm sure that goes into everything along the lines with Embracer and whatever, every story we've covered. But I just all that to say is just like, I don't know the answer to how you employ and hire and have people work and feel safe in their job security while also having this fucking

throw a dart roulette wheel ass roller coaster that is publicly traded and investors are the only thing we answer to. This determines every decision we make and whether or not a project will be a success because everyone working internally that works on a game like FF7, when that game launches and does what it does, probably thinks, holy shit, that was awesome. It took a long time, but we made a good game and it was successful and it was well received and I was happy to make it.

And everything else about that looked like a good thing happened, right? And I can tell you as someone who was at Square Enix, when a lot of this, the switch over was happening. And I was there when a lot of these meetings where they were like, we're gonna talk about gas games now and forever. There was a meeting day that was like gas, gas, gas bros,

gas, gas, gas, you have no idea. Now with this perspective of like, oh, what was happening in the C-suite? It was, they saw this switch over 2015, gas, gas, gas, you have no idea. Now with this perspective of like, oh, what was happening in the C-suite? It was they saw this switch over 2015, 2016, they saw this going on, whatever. They looked at the situation changing from a mile away from other service games making a ton of money and were like panic buttoning and turning every project they had into one of these, whether or not it started as one of those to begin with. So yeah, I don't know what people that are working with a company that has to answer to this with this type of profile can say.

Like, how do you offer them job security? You fucking can't. Oh, you can't. So we're headed towards a triple-A video game crash in that there'll be more and more costs and less and less delivered until it all just kind of falls apart. With Nintendo and Steam and the people that are making their margins and being reasonable are going to be fine. Which is why, by the way, when you take account of all the things listed previously, you're

like, oh yeah, that's why Nintendo's not dropping the prices, putting shit on sale, or ever, ever giving you a break on the cost of any of their new games. They're going to release the new thing that's the old thing that you already knew for the new generation, and they're going to sell you the same fucking Super Nintendo games again because that's how they stay afloat when you're talking about that level of fucking caustic industry and investing and people to answer to behind the scenes. Of course they're going to be this way about it. It's Square Enix spent a shit-zillion dollars on FF7 Rebirth and it feels like the most

expensive game they've ever made. You can feel it. You can appreciate it every second. As I'm playing it, I'm like, if all I wonder how much money they would have to add to even this to sell as good as the worst selling and shittiest Mario Party game that Nintendo ever made for $25. You look you ever see the fucking list of Mario Party game sales and how the lowest is crushing like 15 million Yep, and they make those games for what two sandwiches and a Two liter of coke and so this is where you just refer back to you know that part of the fucking thread of like Yeah, well, we're talking about if you're talking about lower quality things, then you got to make a new lower quality brand. But

if you're talking about final fantasy, it can never be anything but unsustainable, unsustainable, unsustainable, unsustainable. What is the fucking new song? We're gonna drop the second law for a minute. What are we doing? Here's the mistake that God made in 1996 when they made FF7 to be the most expensive RPG ever. Right? It was already too late by then. So Nintendo's thing is not the Nintendo games are the fucking fanciest or prettiest or whatever.

Nintendo is like old blizzard. They're obsessed with quality. Like their low bar for quality is really, really high. I think Super Mario Sunshine is like the only game that people would even go like, that one's kind of mid, for like the entirety of like the first party Nintendo catalog, right?

If it has a Nintendo thing on it, it's probably a pretty good game. In fact, just sidebar, the Nintendo seal of quality existed because of the era when the Atari crash happened when there were so many shitty stupid Garbage games that people paid money for popped in and weren't even fucking working that Nintendo coming along and going hey We guarantee you this game works was actually something that meant You could play this fucking game back when they first started doing it in the 90s. Go on. A lot of people who like sunshine in here, that's worrying. I like sunshine. I'm one of the few that was out there, you know, in the, amongst the crowd holding the defense down. But I remember when everyone was like, yeah,

nah. I was like, all right, well, you know. But regardless of your particular likes and dislikes, Nintendo games are generally fairly high quality in general. Right? That's specifically Mario and Zelda, et cetera. Right? Final Fantasy didn't build itself on quality because even by the time we got to seven, two exists. Two fucking sucks ass. So FF's like core is money. Is that it's the money-est of RPGs. The fact that it shifts genres to the money over time as well is telling of that. The identity can be the name, but what else it delivers is allowed to evolve with time as long as it evolves towards the more impressive the more spectacle the more expensive

And then you have the ps1 games are very money And then you have a Final Fantasy 10 which I think is responsible for kick I would put ff10 as the game that is responsible for kicking video games into the money dimension Ff10 with its fucking squareoft level from CGI and full voice acting. Yeah. No, 6 to 7 and 9 to 10 are fucking a violent rip towards quality increase. And it was all 10 was also the game that put their cutscenes on the map next to Blizzard, right? Yeah

Yeah, but like Ted there were people that were like you gotta see this game. Yeah Yeah, and so that's what to continue that effect in the modern day That's what he's talking about triple quadruple a production. Well, the reality is everybody that's not sustainable No, you just can't do it can't be sustained and and as those Like you know, it's like those are if you believe that the right way forward is outside investment Then those are understandable Reasonable concerns someone who doesn't care about games is going to put their money in and want answers to, you know? Yeah, so make it a multiplat.

I think we're going to see if Square Enix games become like defecto multiplat. Yeah, I don't think, but bro, like multiplat, the fucking hardware manufacturer cut dropping significantly. I don't think any exclusivity deals shifting heavily in favor of devs. These are padding the damage and putting a bandaid over the fucking bullet hole to quote tasteway. You're like, listen, Willie, I've shot you. I've taken a gun and I've shot you during an argument and you have a bullet inside you

right now, right? Okay. here's something you can do you can put a bandage on and go to the hospital here's something you can't you can't unshoot yourself or pull the bullet out yourself not quite so so when i say when i say yeah i think we're gonna see square enix games go multi-plat. I think that's something they can do. I don't think they can buy back their fucking shares and reinvent the entire company. I don't think they have the capacity to not throw their money in the trash on weird gambits and pieces of shit like Foam Stars and Babylon's Fall.

Yeah, look, man, I think no matter what happens, the fire rises. But perhaps in the moments before the purge wipes everything away, the industry might return to the old yesteryear, your days, when Sega would have actual Y yakuzas kidnapped developer sisters To force devs to come work for them. We might return to some of that there might be some mad maxing happening Right before the end between devs. I think especially when the publishers of quadruple a size turn on each other I I don't know man. I don't think that's to happen. I don't know what this looks like except for UD Throne, one of the current cheap platform gas games that will live forever that is nothing but the main thing kids are playing. Oh, and there's also an example given there too

of like if a Zelda game comes apart, comes at once every five years or so, someone who's five who turns 10 and then sees their next one or plays it at their formative year or whatever, like that person has also had like all that in between time like firmly invested heavily in your Fortnite game and such.

There's an element of the recognition of the thing popping up once in a while is no longer going to be near as strong as the brand that never went away. I think Final Fantasy has been dramatically damaged by the reality of time. And just to finish that too as well, I would say that not only is the recognition never gone away, you've also got a massive investment in your time and money and collection of skins and everything you've put into that platform. Where, well, god damn it, even if that game

that you just came out with is fucking incredible. I have my entire collection You know, I don't want to let that go for anything. So you can never really pull me away Because now it's sunk cost fallacy you know, so I Think time has really hurt Final Fantasy and I think you describing like if somebody played Zelda when they were five really really brought it to the forefront because I was born and

played 12 Final Fantasy no I played one Three played one four five six Seven eight nine ten twelve so I don't know like eight Final Fancy games Before I left high school right That's crazy. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot of time for a six-year period

right plus um Plus tactics wait. What am I talking about Montreal Montreal, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. You're graduating in five years. That's five year period. Wait, no, I'm talking since I was a child. Oh, sorry, sorry. I thought you meant high school. Because I was born. I was born in 1986. Okay, okay. Yes.

Yeah, so, yeah, no, I got to play like 10, 11 Final Fantasy games and like spin-offs like Vagrant Story. By your teenage years. In that time period. I got to build up like a huge amount of like early video game time as a baby playing Final Fantasy games. If you were 15 right now, the first game you could have reasonably played in 2020, it'd be 2000, you'd been born in 2009 and at four years old we're talking 2013, 2014, so you would have gotten to play like what when FF 15 come

out. I got I mean. I don't know if it's been released when current 15 year olds were eight. Yeah, so we're talking 1516 and the sevens. So I can give you the Zelda math on this if you were a kid and you played breath of the wild as your first Zelda game in 2017 2023 was when you got tears of the kingdom. Hell. Yeah. Oh my god. I love so when I was a baby But like but like just my point is is like Final Fantasy used to be a thing that came out often enough That if you were a kid that like Final Fantasy you you were just drowning in Final Fantasy. And now it's like, we run into like, I think I called it like the silk song problem.

It's like you shouldn't be able to get through the entirety of high school between like hearing about a game in elementary school and then playing it in college. Yeah, no. And that's like 50% of your fucking life. That's ridiculous. And it's not always to imply that this is the best solution, but I remember when KOF 99 got patched, it was called KOF 2000.

I don't think that's the best solution. No, no it's not. But I mean the point is that from 98 to 2003, there was one of those fuckers every single goddamn year to its detriment, that was too many. But yeah, once every five for the AAA titles means you have no attachment to that. And in those time, in those years, you have all the attachment to the one game, because that game is now all games because it's a platform, you know? You know what game does fucking crazy good in the RPG space. Also a game from Japan and it's also a big budget RPG. Like a Dragon comes out more than once a year.

Spin-offs included. That's my favorite factoid about it, is that it doesn't come out, the Sega put out a thing saying, oh we wanna make Like a Dragon annual. And you do the math, it's more than annual. There have been like fucking 22 games that have come out in 17 years.

The games actually come out like every nine months. That's Muso logic. When you start counting up the Dynasty Warriors games from the first year they came out, it doesn't make any sense on the calendar. Yeah, 100%. There are so many like a Dragon games and like they're all pretty good and they all look exactly the same and most of them use the same assets. There are animations in infinite

wealth that I recognize from cut scenes in Yakuza 1. The Rock is a one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all of that to say, your appeal with these massive tentpole titles is pretty much to us boomers, and then a generation that was around right at the tail end of regular releases, but the actual kids in high school around the age when we were playing the shit at the time, give infinitely less fucks about all of these things. I mean, I wouldn't be so... How much

of the legacy of a lot of these titles is just younger generations inheriting us talking about them in hollowed ways? I mean, that's a lot of things, like film is like that. Music, right? Every band from the generation before us that we were not around for, that is like, oh my God, right, of course it's the fucking Stones, yeah, yada yada.

Hey dad, what movie is that? Oh, Bridge on a River Kwai, what's that about? No idea. I wasn't gonna naturally encounter Bridge on the River Kwai. No, but when you did encounter it I'm sure you watched it on your phone I Mean the other movie that guy made Lawrence of Arabia is perfect for the phone isn't it alright? Yeah, alright

Hey, what's up? Anyway well I yeah Furiosa's doing bad and they're like, oh do people not like movies anymore? It's like well one it's too expensive and two I can't understand the dialogue in anything without Subtitles anymore because audio mixing is so shit now And I was like, oh maybe that's just me until I scrolled like an hour ago and saw people going, yeah, I can't hear Chris Hemsworth in, oh, in Furiosa. I can't understand what he's saying.

We'll get to the movie shit in a second, but I do want to put a bookend on this talk about the, um, the state of AAA essentially, because, um, yeah, I just, I look at every one of these arguments to, to, to summarize here and I understand them. I agree with them. I say if I was in this position and I had to answer to these people, I would absolutely have to make these stupid decisions as well. I get it.

But there's no path here that leads forward at all that isn't just buying back your fucking IP or studio and or being independent and not having to answer. And if you do- The only way forward is to die and split up. And it's not that the entire concept of investors as a whole makes it so that it's impossible to work because the stakeholders being people that you have to answer to in the same way because it's a publicly traded company makes a massive difference here. As we said earlier, 10 cent owning 30% of Larian is a factor, but when they went up and talked about it,

they're like, yeah, we make our decisions based on what we think is best for the game we wanna release. As long as you can say that about the thing you're making, then we can probably avoid this issue and not have a bunch of arbitrary garbage that, again, the House of C cards that you built your studio on Eventually collapsing because yeah this this

Quarter this stock market was actually a better return. So I'm pulling out and just putting it over there. Fuck you Oh, I bet I bet square would make like I bet the math on it works out that if square make like I bet the math on it works out that if Square literally just became the Final Fantasy 14 company and stopped doing anything but literally just keeping all of those numbers the same and then just keeping the money instead of reinvesting it into Babylon's fall they would probably be more profitable like percentage wise than they are right now. Are you saying that Square should split up

into three or four companies so that CBU3 can be one of them and then the other can be the one that takes all the sins? Yes, actually, I think I'm saying that. And I think the companies should split up into Square as CB unit one up into square as CB unit one Enix a CB unit two and CB unit three and I think square should eat all the debt no cuz Dragon Quest does gangbusters no poor Enix needs to eat all the debt

because they were originally a rival and when they split back apart square needs to put them in their place for all the shit they took from them. They saved them from death! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha of Babylon's fall, Enix holds all the Nazgoths, all the Sleeping Dogs Chinatown wars, all of it. Dude, talking about like- Murdered soul suspects? That wasn't us, that was Enix.

Talking about Square Enix business decisions is wild because it's one of the oldest of like the traditional video game companies and it has almost killed itself the most out of all of them. That still remains to be alive. Like every two or three years since like 86, there has been like, wow, we shouldn't have done that. Almost went bankrupt. Oh, this movie will turn things around though. Yeah. You know, and this also makes me wonder like how the messaging of like the whatever they tell and announce publicly, whatever they do their quarterly reports and shit.

Like everything when you look at something you go like, Hey, wow, look at that Street Fighter six. Pretty awesome. It's like, is it like actually guys this was pretty horrendous internally. This did not meet anywhere near what we were hoping it would despite being a breakout success and a fucking savior for the genre and for the brand. But hey, as long as we keep punching the clock in, we'll eventually get to profitable at this rate. rate will slowly get there But for now, it's still way way way in the red, you know, like I the I like the idea that you just can't really know Where that invisible line is for anything that you're currently looking at and considering successful? Just throws me for a loop because I'm like, I don't know what a success looks like anymore

Neither did anyone working on ff7 remake. I we do we simply don't know to quote, you know, I said it as a tweet from a couple weeks back, but You will no longer Be kept safe in the industry by making a good game a profitable game a, a viral game, a big publisher, a small publisher, a big team, a small team, a rich parent company, an ethical parent company, experience, long hours or sacrifice. Shoutouts, Macy, oh, Dorchait. Dorchait.

The safest you are is making reasonable, well-received games under budget at a small company that you're friends with the owner. And if anyone decides to angel invest or support your studio, they do so with no controlling interest or ability to force you to include NFTs or whatever the fuck is trending that moment because you think your son's games need to be the games that everyone else is making at all times and That is video game industry news now be right back Alrighty We have

To get moving on some of the other things so other stories We have to get moving on some of the other things. Other stories besides the big one. Call of Duty is coming to Game Pass. We're going to see if Microsoft bankrupts themselves with this shit. It'll be funny. So we hinted at it a little second ago. But yeah, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos admits in a new interview that he says, Barbenheimer, the Barbie and Oppenheimer double feature of last summer, would have done just as well if they released on Netflix rather than in theaters.

And he would know because his son is a film editor and he watched Lawrence of Arabia for the first time on his phone. It's really funny because often like let's just throw away all the normal reasons it's stupid. Oppenheimer is specifically defined by a studio like a theater shatteringly loud, insanely booming noise of the bomb going off that rocks nearby theaters when it gets to that point in the movie. No, it can't. So just hard cut to Ted in his bed at night and suddenly around him stands David Lynch, Chris Nolan, and Martin Scorsese, eyes glowing red in the darkness just looking down on him. Also, I don't know if you're familiar with Lawrence of Arabia, have you seen it? I haven't seen it, but I do know that the hilariousness of this is because, so I haven't seen it, but I do know that the hilariousness of this because I so I haven't seen it

But I do know that that is considered a four-hour master class in cinematography So here's here's the part. I don't believe That his son watched it on his phone Because your most phones don't have the battery Watch Lawrence of Arabia on them. It's four hours and 12 minutes long. Yeah, it is a super old movie, and it only comes up in three contexts.

It's when you're describing super long movies, super beautiful cinematography, amazing camera work and planning and overall just technical marvels and all that and or white actors cosplaying Arabic dudes. That's basically what it's known for. It's crazy. It's crazy for them to say that because here's the thing. Like he could have said there's an art you can actually argue like, hey, TVs at home are big enough and if you have the right surround sound tech, you can have a theatrical experience

that is comparable, therefore I think some of these big blockbusters people could have enjoyed from home. You can watch that shit on anything. You can watch Oppenheimer via fucking 480 linked TikTok videos where you have to go to the comments to get part two, part three, part four and you watch it in vertical. Movies are just things that happen and you see pictures sometime right? That's all a movie is? Watch Lawrence of Arabia on the screen attached to your pregnancy test. There's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a Chinese lady in the bottom right that doesn't say anything

even once for the whole **** TikTok and there's the the Roadrunner game at the top of the screen. Hey man, attention's hard. We gotta show you us reacting. Look, it's just there was a half argument you could make if it was just about home TV, Netflix popularity versus theatrical releases because theaters are dying. That is true. Not as many things are getting the audiences to come out. You know, it has to be a big huge theatrical release Whereas beforehand it was like, oh, yeah, what's playing? Let's go to the theater and pick something that doesn't happen

You or if you wanted to take your family of four? To the movies to see Barbie you could have just bought the kids a copy of Street Fighter 6 instead It's the same price like the kids a copy of Street Fighter 6 instead. It's the same price. Like, it's it's it's ridiculous. And just as an aside, I don't know what kind of serial killer watches a full feature-length film on the phone, but I want nothing to do with you or your ilk. I want to be so clear. Do you know when somebody tells you a story and you have that feeling in your gut? You know what that feeling is?

That feeling is, yeah, that didn't happen. Right. That's not real. That's bullshit. That's just a thing you said. I mean. It's where my brain says the phrase, you're just saying words.

He grabbed the movie that is the longest movie you could think of that is a cinematic like big deal and threw that out there in the most ridiculous context. Yeah, anyway, so that's that's good shit. All right. That aside, there were rumors floating around about Resident Evil Zero and Code Veronica remakes and IGN has now corroborated those rumors Listen, I don't need IGN to corroborate those cuz dusk golem said that it was happening and that's good enough Dusk golem is a guy that has been talking about Capcom ship for since before we were born Okay, and they're pretty much

always right. Never lies. Yeah. Pretty much always dead on. We need honestly we need a list of the names because every time a rumor story pops up because I don't like usually okay before early on in and podcast wise I grabbed some stories that were rumors and then they were like nonsense and I was like oh I should probably stop grabbing anything that's just you can go to dusk Olam and Mary's Twitter accounts and just report on Those like they're real But yeah, on a six will be in Paris and it will be green

But all this to say that like since the friend cast days I've basically been like I'm not just gonna grab anything that's a rumor story unless there is a oh This is a rumor that has been backed by somebody who's been solid at this for 20 fucking years or whatever the case is. So wait, are you telling me that you're doing due diligence before reporting on the podcast? God damn it. That sounds like due diligence. Wait for a second source.

Well, yeah, here's the fun part. In video games, you don't get a second source ever, right? Every source of everyone I have ever known in this entire business is a guy I know told me and they're legit. Okay, so that's not true in the sense that I do get a second source. However, I cannot confirm or talk about it in front of the microphone. All the stuff that comes in and it's like super for real The person telling you is like you don't know this by the way shut the fuck up. I know what I

Want you to keep telling me things. Yep I guess I'm just gonna pretend like I don't know what's going on man If you like there could be a secret light that goes off on your desk or on mine every time There's a thing that is like, oh, we're talking about this, but by the way, I privately know that this is 100% confirmed, locked in. A lot of hmms and haws.

And we're just moving along, because we're talking about it, but like. A lot of, man, it would be cool if. That's my favorite, that's my favorite. It'd be so cool if we did this thing. How sick would it be though? Oh, it'd be so sick! You know what's sick? You see that fucking Slayer gameplay?

Yeah. He looks awesome. Looks really cool. I'm legit excited for a character that Galactica phantoms his way out of his clothes. So the Slayer Guilty Gear Strive gameplay breakdown video came out. And yeah, he's got everything you want him to. If you're an old Slayer fan, he's got the Dandy Step. He's based around that. He's got the Dandy Step that's crossing you up from behind.

He can do multiple enders as you'd expect. It's a real straightforward kind of character in that he's either gonna like fuck you up with the damage and or mix ups left and right with his dandy or do the bite. And when he bites you, blood sucking universe, you know, Naggo needs to bite you to survive. Here he bites you so that he can get a free giant crazy counter hit that yells, universe. And I love the idea baked in that it's like, okay, well, now that he bit me, I have to be afraid of the next hit. So I'm going to try to block all of the strikes that are coming in because I don't want to get blown up. Great. You're blocking more time to bite you

again. Yeah, it's it's a perfect little cycle. you do all of that until eventually you build a hundred tension and he's the first character in the game that uses Both super bars to basically do a giant 100 tension super that does like some 70 fucking percent and just melts you immediately So the game chip at which point you'll just die. There you go So the game plan has never been more clear. Bite to make them afraid of getting touched. Bite again when they block more to not get touched. And then touch them. And then once your universe touch them, do your level to or your 100 tension and then

take the round. It's awesome. Fucking cool character. Also we saw a trailer for Prime Minister Lidia Sobieska. She's cool. Of Poland in Tekken. And she's doing the katas and the stances and the blocks and being rad.

Karate lady. She's awesome. Yeah, she's doing it for Poland. I love Lidia. She's very, very cool. The most Polish word ever, os. Yeah, of course. Oh man.

Harada walked by at Cobble Brick or two. I saw that dude. I'm like, damn, there he is. With the shades on and the entourage. Does he ever walk into anything, in an indoor space, you think, because of the shades? No. I think his entourage Keeps him protected from they just kind of goals. They do the semicircle around him like a Roomba. Mm-hmm That's a short king right there, man So weird when I saw him cuz he was like me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

Shit damn dude. He's very small. By the way if anybody wants their character to be adjusted and or fixed in Tekken I suggest you find Murray and you ask him in a particularly polite way to fix Kazuya nigger. Is that the polite way? That's the polite way. Yeah, yeah, that happened. Then he's like, hey, I'm quoting. I will not fix any characters if you ask me to do it in this way. That's just rude. And I'm just like, god damn it, son of a bitch, I swear to god, if the dude who said that had a funny boat in his body, he would quote tweet that tweet and write, fix Kizuya nigga. Alive and well. Alive and well in the year 2024. Thuggery lives on.

That was cool. And then, yeah, beyond that, just a quick shout out to some indie games that look fucking sick. You might be interested in Nightmare Operator. It's on the wishlist. An action horror game that is basically, I would describe what I saw as this is the RE4 to Signalis's RE1. It has a very similar art style and a very similar aesthetic thing going on, but it's

doing it with like Tokyo Yokai more than kind of like tech, you know, machines falling apart, but the but it's doing over the shoulder, you know, Leon Kennedy camera. So looks fucking awesome. Be sure to go check out Nightmare Operator. We've got, what's it, we've got Nightmare Operator, we've got Crow Country, and we've got Hollow Body. And it's like the time for fake ass, and signalous, like fake ass PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 survival horror games

is now like all of those games are just trading in a light. You like pixels like old style 3D models. I do. Yeah. And I mean, again, I like signalus enough to certainly look at this and see. You know what I saw? I saw a sidestep past like a bullet pattern that flew at the screen and I was like, ooh, okay.

Yeah, it's not what I expected for the rest of the trailer. That's different. That's pretty interesting. Hey, man, I got nothing to say about Beatrix in Grand Blue Fantasy versus Rising. I literally- She pulls the cake out of her ass. I got nothing to say about Beatrix in Grand Blue Fantasy versus rising. I literally pulls the cake out of her ass I got nothing to say about that. That's the one I got Harry Journalism on If you want to check out another cool game check out

They announced park it garage rally circuit Which is an arcade rally racing game in parking garages designed to look and feel like a Sega Saturn racing game Huh, that's cool It's so specific yeah If you want a Saturn energy racing game am2 style taking place in a parking garage This is for you. Good shit. Oh taking place in a parking garage. This is for you. Good shit.

Oh, she's Seoul White Girl? Okay, that's cool. I'll check the trailer out later. Anyway, cool stuff. And that's, yeah, yeah. There's only one thing that I'd like to add, which is that the release date for Zenless Zone Zero is real now.

It is gonna be on July 4th for America. And also the other game made by Not Mihoyo called Wuthering Waves came out. Wuthering Waves. And that thing is on fire. A Wuthering waves. And that thing is on fire. A Wuthering? Here? That thing is fucking falling apart.

Like everything that could possibly have gone wrong with that has gone wrong. Like there is no region protection. So people were switching their regions to like Brazil to buy out like like tens of thousands of rolls. Oh shit, okay. People could datamine shit out of the game with like nothing stopping them. It's it's it it it docks us people! I didn't even know that!

What? How does it docks you? Oh no. Didn't we laugh at this name back when you did your gacha run a couple weeks ago? What? Docs you oh no Didn't we laugh at this name back when you did your gacha run a couple weeks fucking terrible. Yeah, okay awful name oh Jesus fucking Christ Yeah, running Genshin next to it makes it run better Why okay that doesn't even? What are you talking about?

They coded in an automatic doxxer all right. I don't I don't know I'm gonna type it in and we're gonna read the first thing that comes up withering waves docks a Ton of CN player no, that's our fantasy Okay, all right, um, how look if you change the hour of your system you can you can access future content before it's unlocked Okay, I Will take the money that I did not spend on on the the the gacha in this and I will instead buy me a Bottle of near-automata wine on the gacha in this, and I will instead buy me a bottle of Nier Automata wine, aged in an oak barrel forced to listen to the OST.

Is that what the wine is doing? Do they actually do that? There are two flavors, there's a 2B and a 9S flavor of wine, and they each are forced to listen to different songs on the OST. That's so fucking funny. They cost, yeah, you can get for, what is that, yeah, 12 grand a yen, so about 80 bucks you can get yourself a wine bottle that has listened to the correct playlist. I can confirm both bottles have listened to Way to the World.

So I think the funniest thing is that whenever these themed foods come out for video games, there's only two possible situations. One is, wow, it's actually really good. It's a lot better than I thought. Or, this is poison. I've never seen an in-between. Isn't potion just disgusting? Oh the the the potion and the World of Warcraft mana potion are like revolting. Yep. Street fighter sonic boom energy drink and sure you can punch. Terrible. Like there's yeah no one absolutely. Nuka Cola dark it It was awful the rum from fallout 76 was god-awful See just tie yourself in with an existing thing that that that we know that's good Don't don't try that's the easiest thing yeah

I got my chick razor with me casa holding the chick blade to cut my to shave with if need be holding the shick blade to shave with if need be. Anyway. You can get Final Fantasy 14 Doritos now, guess what? Oh, hell yeah. No, sorry, Mountain Dew. Limited edition Doritos, same thing. Same thing. Whatever, Mountain Dew and Doritos are the same.

Okay, but actually. They're the same food. Actually the same food though, that's what I was about to say. Like, all kidding aside actually Mountain Dew or drink a Dorito you are eating you are consuming the same food yes they are they are one of the same they both spring forth from the Jeff Keely all right let's take some letters all right if you want to send a letter send it to CastleSuperBeastmail.com to castlesuperbeastmail.com. That's castlesuperbeastmail.com. Hold on, before we go, I got a quote from a super bro in the chat.

Quote, based on the comment in the video, it seems like Genshin and Honkai Star Rail will clear all accumulated memory slash cache in your graphics card, even if not played from the games, while the game is being played every time the player opens the map to avoid max usage So if you have Genshin open while playing withering waves, it'll help clear withering waves as well So the game has such a bad memory leak that having Genshin open will clear Jesus fucking that is a mess that is I've never heard of that ever that is embarrassing that is the most embarrassing thing I've heard Open a competitor's game to make your game better yours good

All right um We got one coming in somebody just said Genshin drinks the leak. Eww. Alex from Texas says, greetings short host to normal host. Oh, I mean, Jesus. For the jugular. Is there a specific scene from a movie or a game you saw a long time ago, but the nature of the scene is too niche to find via search results?

For example, about 22-ish years ago, my dad forced me to watch a scene from a movie where a guy throws a syringe at another guy's head. He swells up like a giant raspberry and explodes. It would become a core memory for me. But that's Blaine. But no combination of keywords or phrases has led me to find the movie with the exact scene again. That's the ending of Blaine. Um, oh, against Lamagra?

Yeah! I was thinking of Rickio. I assumed he was talking about Rickio, because the giant purple head, the giant raspberry head, sounds like a Rickio kill. Yeah, no, that's the end of Blade 1, where he hits him with the... But he kicks him! He kicks them at him! Yeah! And then he goes, some motherfucker's always trying to ice skate uphill. And he blows up in a big pile of blood. Deacon Frost.

Yeah, OK, there you go. Solved it for you. I didn't think that's how that email was going to go. Nice. I have one, but it's more about music. And it's I mean, it's real simple in that, like, I think the answer is it doesn't exist. I've I remember specifically on the Matrix 1 DVD, there's a menu theme that plays while you see Neo's doing the flip and stuff through the shootout scene.

And it's a remix of an Enigma track that's in the movie, but it's a remix that's not on the soundtrack anywhere, and I don't think it's been released in any specific capacity It's only on the DVD menus and it sounds fucking awesome But you just can't find it all you can find are Variations that are pitched in different ways that are not the exact same track and it sucks And a lot of I can't think of anything. And it's anything and nothing.

And before anyone jumps on it, there's versions that sound close to it, but are not that exact one, just so you know. Yeah. All right. Well, anyway. That guy's 22 years ago? Yeah, Blade came out in 98. That movie would have been four years old when your dad showed it to you.

Fair enough. Yeah, it's totally Blade. All right. Harmonixer and Cowie, how you doin'? Dear King of Iron, Fist Aspirant, and a significantly better parent than Nina Williams, or was or ever will be. That's true. Isn't will be. That's true.

Isn't that everyone? That's true. I mean, as long as you don't try to shoot the kid, you are a better parent. I attended my first Combo Breaker this weekend and it reignited my slowly dwindling Amber of fighting game passion. I had met some of my sparring partners here for the first time at this perfect place. Can't think of a better way to spend the weekend. To my surprise, I saw Willie and Reggie were walking by, didn't have the courage to go over, say hi. Didn't want to bother people in the middle of something.

But then on Saturday night in the casual section, saw a face of determination sitting there with the same passion I had. So describes how he basically was nervous to come over but then plopped down and instead of saying anything just kind of challenged me to a game and I do recall this, we did play a set and mentioned using Victor and the sound of disgust in my voice. It was fine. I simply lost to a Victor in pools. I do hate that character, but it's not you personal. And yes, and then it was a good time. And then we had a good set.

And yeah, I rocked some Steve and had some fun. I guess. Have you ever had a spaghetti spill style moment of similar ilk? Well first of all you didn't spill spaghetti so you're fine dude. It was okay. It was a very normal interaction. I had to put my ass on the line for a friend and would do it again but how far would you go?

Yeah it's true, your friend jumped in and beat my ass right afterwards so that was a good run back. I mean, in most cases, if I see somebody I recognize and I like their shit, I will specifically like lay in the cut. And if I do walk up, I'll just be like, hey, man, love your shit. That's great. And keep it moving. You know, I try to keep it minimal because I'm like, I just, ah, I don't know.

I don't want to have that exact thing happen. But I admittedly did tell the story of like, David Hayter was awesome. And as soon as I get a moment of like, oh shit, you're cool. We can talk. It's not, I'm not going to cringe my out of my skin. Then I'll get in there and be like, hey, what's up? Yeah.

What did you send me a picture of? What am I looking at? Okay, so I sent you a picture of Deacon Frost getting killed at the end of Blade. Oh, yes. Okay, Lamar. Where he blows up and will be raspberry. Yes, yes. True, true, true.

Okay, there you go. Yeah, ever since my social anxiety stopped happening, I haven't had any spaghetti moments. I don't give a shit. That was a really strange moment in my life where I went from being like terrified of all normal social interactions to all of a sudden being like, yeah, I don't give a fuck anymore. I just don't give a shit. Fair enough. So all my spaghetti moments are me as a teenager, and they're every interaction for my whole life. All of them. Last quick one, SoggySnakes says, hey Pat Wily, I finished A Realm Reborn on stream a while back, and I was disappointed upon starting the next expansion, heavens work, to find out the entire voice cast had been replaced

between expansions. By no means- Oh, don't worry. You're actually going to appreciate that a lot. By no means are the new voices bad, but it did suck finding out that one of our villains was no longer being voiced by Cam Clark. So has there ever been a recasting in media for you that was not necessarily bad, but still just an aw man kind of feeling?

Rest in peace to the original voice actor for Pippin, who shows up at the end of A Realm Reborn, has like five lines and then is replaced in the next expansion. Yeah, there's some like, there's some good voice actors in that original cast, but like overall it's like a much, much, much better casting overall. The guy who played Sid in the original is really bad. I have one that I can stand on to this day and say that when Terrence Howard got replaced by Don Cheadle as Rhodey in Iron Man, I was like, ah, man, I'd liked his I liked Iron Man ones

Take on it and then Don Cheadle did amazing and now Terrence Howard is out of his fucking mind, but Remember when like the Terrence Howard like I don't think he's gonna be back for the next one came out I remember saying they should replace him with Don Cheadle. Okay. Yeah, I was like I'm like I I'm like, I don't hate Don Cheadle at all. I love what he did and it was great. I liked the other version too. I thought there was two good readings on what the character could be, but then Terrence Howard, just Terrence Howard did, himself into that situation, out of that situation, and now into whatever math, one times one equals two.

So yeah. I'm going to say that the most common experience that I have with a voice actor being replaced, being a bummer is because the original actor is fucking dead. Yes, there was a character in the new Fallout show that the new guy does a great job, but I wish it was the old guy, but the old guy's been dead for years. So what are you going to do? Yeah, and Takehito Koyasu took over Zato-1, but the original voice actor for Zato passed away before he took over. That's one of like, Takehito Koyasu is a goddamn fucking prolific voice acting genius. He's incredible at whatever he's doing. It's distracting to the point when you hear his voice

He's like a Nolan North style like oh that guy. Yeah, but The original voice actor did pass away and so that was a recasting with like a really prolific dude. So it's like ah Somebody in the in the chat pointed out Peter Dinklage as the ghost in destiny 2 getting replaced by Nolan North I I pointed out Peter Dinklage as the ghost in Destiny 2 getting replaced by Nolan North. I like Dinklage a lot better than North, but at the same time, what the fuck were they thinking? The ghost is the single most vocal character in the entire game, and they were going to get Dinklage back in every fucking three months to do another 100 lines of dialogue you know well now

they've got Keith David don't they as the ghost I don't know no no but like they I saw a trailer worked Heath David is in destiny no oh good he can fuck that game I couldn't even fucking get it together. Bit, calculating bit, calculating bit. I just gave up. Bit failed. Boo! Fart. Don't even give a shit. Fuck that game. Thanks for watching!