The Besties - A Halloween video game treat [Resties]

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Happy Halloween! This week, The Resties celebrate the spooky season with World of Horror, the Japanese horror game inspired by retro text adventures and the artist Junji Ito. Plus, we shine the spotlight on Laika: Aged Through Blood, a game that's as gorey as it is cute. Find all the games discussed on the show by subscribing to our newsletter at besties.fan! Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

🎵 It is spooky season and my name is Christopher Thomas Plank. My name is Russ Froshtick, the ghost. And welcome to the Scary Rusties, where the spooky rest of the best discuss the terrifying best of the rest. Wow. This week, we're talking about the world of horror, which is a modern take on the text adventures of the 1980s. Hey, it blends Lovecraftian horror. It gets some Japanese folk horror.

It gets a little bit of Junji Ito. It's going to be great. But before we can get into that, you had something on this document that you wanted to talk about. Yeah, I have a bit of a pickle. A pickle? A bit of a pickle. I don't know how to teach my son to say thank you. Oh.

And I'm going to role play. Okay. So I guess you be me. Okay. And I'll be my son. Okay. And maybe hand something to me oh hey uh russ's son here is um a large knife i'm staring blankly at you okay and then how would you get me to say thank you

well have you even taken it i wouldn't want you to say thank you if you don't. I took the knife. Okay, you've taken that. Oh, and what do we say? You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. So, hmm. Hmm.

So we have a similar problem with our son, which is that he says please and thank you every time. I mean, that's pretty good. Yeah. So it's like please and thank you. Yeah, we just get your welcome. But it kind of sounds mockish. Just your welcome. How would I go about helping a child to not answer the opposite?

Hmm. That's really tough. Because maybe part of the problem is I'm saying, can you say thank you? And when I say that, he says, you're welcome. So you actually came up with a good solve at the jump, which I hadn't even considered, which was, what do we say? Yeah. a good solve at the jump which i hadn't even considered was which was what do we say yeah but how do i convey what we're supposed to say without saying thank you and then he'll say you're welcome it's a bit of a pickle maybe you could perform him this is straight up just parenting advice now but i love it but maybe you could perform him giving you something and then

you could show him how you say thank you but i also say you're welcome who yeah we're honestly we're screwed i i it's great how this started as maybe a bit and now is it was never a bit i'm genuinely i have no idea how to prevent my son from saying you're welcome when I hand him things. It was never a bit. We have no idea how to raise our children. And this is actually us reaching out to you, dear listener, for help. Leave some tips in the comments. If you know anything about like feeding, changing, any of those things.

And diapers can stay on for like a week, right? Yeah. That's fine. It's usual for your house to just be a feral, ghastly, shit-covered ground. Yeah. It has a Mad Max vibe to it at this point. It does. I forgot to tell people that because we both celebrated our birthdays this month, and I

was actually over at your house, and I thought we were going to have kind of like a little bit of a birthday thing. I did not expect to come in and find the walls covered in goat entrails and your child wearing a very intimidating bunny mask, bashing a stick, a very sharp carved stick at me and telling me you're welcome. Yeah. He hasn't even seen that Maui song. So it's honestly not even that. I thought maybe it was that. It's not. He hasn't seen it.

Anyway. Let's talk about a video game. Okay. We are back. And this week we are talking about World of Horror, a horror game that I am very excited to talk about. But, but, but, you have just started the episode, which means that you have a shot at getting a copy of this game for free. Do you want to explain how people can do that, Fresh Dick? Yes, it's very exciting.

And this is a cool game, so like, this is not, we don't do this for shitty games, so you should be excited. So like this is not, we don't do this for shitty games. So you should be excited. We are dropping in five codes into the besties.fan newsletter that is dropping today, which is Halloween, very appropriate. And in an interest of kind of defeating the bots that sometimes scrape these newsletters, we are going to be leaving the first letter or number of each of the codes blank. But good news, right now, we're going to tell you what they are. Please only take one code

because you're a nice member of the Besties community. But this is how you will fill in each of the codes in order. I'm going to give them to you in order. So the first missing letter of the first in order. I'm going to give them to you in order. So the first missing letter of the first code is Q. The second code missing letter is B. The third code missing letter is a number. It's actually eight. The fourth code missing letter is H. And the fifth code missing letter is Y. These are all steam codes. You know, you know how to redeem Steam codes. I'm sure you're very smart.

But hopefully this is a good method to allow people who are actually listening to the podcast to get the codes. And yay. Yes. And also, I am going to make sure that the newsletter publishes Tuesday morning

at noon Eastern. Oh, so after the episode has gone live. So after the episode has gone live. Okay. That way, you know, I don't want people like having to wake up early. No, that's smart. You know, I'm just trying to take care of you. Yeah, you're very wise.

Hey, do you want to talk about the video game now? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so World of Horror. This game has been in early access for a very long time i believe it entered early access at the exact same time or within like weeks of balder's gate and now here we are 2023 and two excellent games are here this is a considerably smaller game i believe it was made by maybe one or just a handful of people um and it's hard to describe what this is so i wanted to give you a shot oh try to do it first so this is actually not far off from a game we talked about recently um called moon ring and i say that the games are very very

different but from an era standpoint they are similar insofar as they're both inspired by computer rpgs that came out in like the 80s which is to say they rely heavily on um static like images and and uh artwork um and a lot of it is like combing through menus and it can look um a little bit intimidating when you first approach it because there's like a lot to digest about the ui but the idea is really like pretty true to a lot of rpgs which essentially you're exploring a world and trying to solve mysteries and leveling up your character and getting new perks and skills and new gear, new

equipment, and you have combat sequences and events and stuff like that. Yeah. I think what's going to be jarring for people who have not played a lot of much older games, I'm talking like pre-Mario, original Super Mario Bros. older games, I'm talking like pre Mario old original super Mario brothers, older games is this will look like a modern visual novel,

but it, it will play like an RPG. So you are, you are playing the game through static interfaces. Yeah. And like you, you have a a character even if you never see that character well you do see them in the bottom right you can see the character yeah i mean you see an avatar of the character but i mean this is not like rpg stuff yeah this is an rpg where

you're you know walking around it's not even like a turn-based rpg where you're moving around a map in that in that sense um yeah Yeah, it is a different beast. I don't even know exactly what the direct analog is, although I'm sure there is one. I know there was a Goonies game. Goonies 2 came out on the NES, and it had kind of this vibe, but that also had weird platforming sequences.

Anyway. I mean, yeah, its closest analog is the text based games of like the 1980s yeah i just wanted to call a game out and i honestly don't know what which one that would be quite honestly you did a better job than me i would have said remember that game in big which oh yeah i don't even watch big anymore yeah with the wizard it's like a wizard right it's like he turns big um sleep to that lady anyway the the i think the appeal for a lot of people the thing that's going to get people

into this despite it being a little bit challenging at first is the the environment that it's set in um it is it is a horror game yes and it is a somewhat Lovecraftian game, yes, but it is first and foremost a Japanese horror game. Yes. I think people will mention that it looks a lot like the work of Junji Ito, who did Uzumaki, which is about spirals, basically, Like a town obsessed with spirals. It's absolutely horrifying. There's a famous image of a young woman's face that has turned into a spiral with its eye basically getting sucked into it. It's like that. But it also is just like a lot of Japanese folklore horror.

Even if you've seen something like The ring this style will be yeah i've seen the grudge that it has that vibe to it no sarah michelle but otherwise so you saw the american version of the grudge yeah yeah um how did did the horror click for you do you find this sort of horror like scary or discomfort i find it disconcerting which i think is the goal um i'm not a horror guy in general we've talked about that i don't dislike it it just doesn't necessarily scratch the itch for me but what i really liked about it is that it it does feel very much like its own voice its own thing it doesn't feel like western horror at all um and it takes some very bizarre visual turns when it comes to like, the monsters you're facing, or the like challenges you're facing, feel very, feel very alien to me, which

again, I realized this is just like a different culture. And that's why it feels remote from what I'm used to. But I did, I dug that because I really didn't know what to expect from it. And it made the mysteries even more mysterious, I should say. Yeah, when it comes to cosmic horror, I honestly prefer Ito's work over like Lovecraft.

I find Lovecraft, I mean, he himself was a racist. And his work, while not always about that, is about isolation and and is a it has some his personal views can be seen in his work yeah um and ito i find much more about like community and how community responds to these issues and i think this is i think this is really loyal to that that work because now we can kind of get into how the game works.

But you are on this – in this small town, and the bulk of the game is solving these mysteries by going from location to location in the town via its map and just looking around and meeting people and investigating environments, kind of like a detective game almost. Yeah. around and meeting people and investigating environments kind of like a detective game almost yeah um and it feels much more about like being in a shared space than it does than i would say most lovecraft does which honestly feels like very true to japanese culture in general because so much of it i mean in my limited experience of visiting and and uh just knowing people from japan is about this like community onus this connection that you have with the people around you i think most recently probably publicized by uh first errand uh the the netflix series i guess what was it called in america oh what is this the little chill with the little the little children go on. Oh, yes. First, Aaron.

Oh, yeah. I know what you're talking about. It's a show where, like, three-year-olds have to go and, like, shop at a store. Yes. It's called Old Enough in America. But that is pretty representative. It's like everyone kind of knows everyone in these small towns and kind of works, I guess, arguably for the betterment of everyone. But obviously there's like a dark layer to that that isn't always super great. And it just it's, you know, I've lived in New York and this is so different from what I'm used to.

So, again, it's just feels like a very different vibe that I dug a lot. Yeah. So let's talk about why it's kind of hard to get into the game yeah because i think we both had a similar reaction to the tutorial of this game tutorial is even that seems like a funny thing to call it well it's weird because there is a tutorial this is like a pro tip more than anything when you start up the game they say hey you should start with this very simple mystery. It involves like a woman with like a scissor cut face or something, something to do with scissors.

And they're like, start here. And so I started there and then spent the next like 30 minutes, like stumbling my way through the UI, not having any idea what to do or how to even equip items or anything like that. So do not take the game's advice. I hope this gets patched just for clarity's sake. not having any idea what to do or how to even equip items or anything like that. So do not take the game's advice. I hope this gets patched just for clarity's sake. Instead, you should play the one below the scissors one.

And I forget what it's called, but it's basically just right below that one in the menu. And if you play that one, they will give you a full on tutorial where they like put circles around UI elements. And they'll literally explain what this button does when you should hit this button when you should explore things it like is a genuine tutorial. And that helped me really get way more of my sea legs about the game. Yeah, yeah, I think that is very good advice. I don't think they're going to patch out this first mission just because I remember playing this mission, I feel like, from the beginning. Yeah.

I feel like it's just kind of, you know, been hanging around. I think it just needs to be de-emphasized and just, like, encourage people to start with, like, a genuine run because you really don't get a sense from this, like, mini mission that you do. The game, structurally, the way the game works because you can choose between a number of different mysteries in a normal run you have a lot of opportunity to like you know visit your house or talk to your neighbor or stuff like that but this mission that they recommend as like a jumping off point has none of that it's just like you're just thrown into like a haunted school and it didn't really grab me in the way that like the main main game grabbed me yeah and it's

especially focused on combat which is kind of the wrong lesson to learn yeah um it's weird to talk about this game is almost like to talk about just tips for how to play this game um because i i i found it very challenging without watching a few youtube videos to get a start i think i'm curious about actually how you feel about this because you are a person who loves like learning the systems and failing over and over and over again as you like figure out what the systems actually are. And this game offers a ton of that. It does. But is that pleasurable for you with a game like this? So not necessarily with a game like this

because the systems that I like learning have a lot to do with Twitch controls and a Super Meat Boy with platforming or stuff like that or other like hands-on roguelike spelunky for example um this is pretty opaque and because it is like a lot of like just choosing between different options um it can be a little intimidating without having any guidance whatsoever i think once as you said once you've watched like a youtube explainer of how to play and stuff like that it will make a lot more sense but you do need to be willing and i think this is like deep into the game's dna you need to be

willing to fail a lot and you need to be okay with it because the game is constantly putting you in situations where you are on like the verge of death. You've got like no health. You're going crazy. And there's a giant space god lowering down and fucking up your life. So you need to be okay with experimenting and doing that stuff. And if those sorts of games stress you out i'll give another example is like darkest dungeon for example is very similar where you constantly are losing people in your party and it's just the nature of it um you know that's that is the game that you're playing um which

you need to be cool with but yeah i i mean honestly because the vibe is so cool because the art style the art design which is my understanding done entirely in MS Paint. I read that somewhere. Really? Yeah, I read that. Yeah, almost all the art was done in MS Paint, which is amazing. Because the art style is so cool and so different and the vibe is so different from anything I played. That was what was carrying me through it.

Yeah, yeah, I think I think that's right. And the vibe is so different from anything I played. That was what was carrying me through it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. And I think as you, it's so tricky because a game like this, it is built on you being uncomfortable and you not fully knowing what's going on. But there still has to be just enough enjoyment, pleasure, fun, whatever you want to call it, to like make you want to be there. I mean, this is tied to a thing that we talked about on Besties from a really good listener email question about, you know, does the game always have to be fun? And the reality is there has to be something here that can maintain your attention. Yeah. An example I like to give is like even Pulitzer Prize winning books still have chapters.

Not every time, but they can. They're doing things to make it digestible for you. And I think at the beginning of this game that it is the least digestible it will ever be. That's why, honestly, my number one tip

before you play this game is to watch like two or three YouTube tutorials on how to get into the game. I've watched a few of these, and I will assure you there is so much to explain in this game that if you watch a 10-minute tutorial, you are not going to have even a fraction of this game spoiled. All you're going to, like, have spoiled for you is, like, how not to die within the first five minutes of your first run. Yeah. Which, that's the real goal. And that is what this, I think, has in common with games that both of us love, like Spelunky, is the number one goal above all else is to just stay alive to learn more about how to play the game.

And I think like that was the mistake I made probably my first couple hours of this game is combat would happen and I just went along with it. And once I started thinking about it as Spelunky, it's like, oh, if I can avoid that, of course I will. It's like, oh, if I can avoid that, of course I will. You know, like unless I'm playing a run where I'm trying to get lots of gold or whatever, of course I would skip something that could potentially, you know, take my precious health away. And the same thing is here. We're like the number one thing is survival and not getting distracted by everything else. Also, take a shower in the game. That's my other pro tip. Yeah, yeah, very helpful.

Always take a shower. I got a great perk that enhances my shower-taking abilities. Really? Yeah, it healed me more when I took a shower. That rules. Yeah, just one other thing in terms of explaining the game itself, and I feel like we've kind of done this in reverse order, but it's a hard game to talk about. For people who are going to dig into it, terms of explaining the game itself and i feel like we've kind of done this in reverse order but

it's it's a hard game to talk about for people who are going to dig into it the core game is i believe it's you have to solve five mysteries yes and then there's like a an additional thing after that and the great thing is it is not the same five mysteries every time. There are a ton of different mysteries and events in this game. And the mysteries have different ways of culminating. Yeah, I guess that's what I mean. There's so many different ways to experience this. You are not going to play this game three or four times and then feel like you've seen everything which

is really impressive again because as a story game i i was expecting it to get repetitive which it did not in the time that i played it yeah it's very cool i would also i would also add i played it on a macbook air oh yeah it's on a number of platforms. We are only providing free Steam codes, but it is on consoles now that it is 1.0. But it also supports Mac. And because it is such a light, you know, visually light, it's not a 3D exploration or whatever, it can run on basically anything.

So I put it on a MacBook Air and it was great. I think the experience is much, much better with a mouse and keyboard than it would be with a controller, unless they vastly changed on consoles, which i don't think they did um there's just like a lot of like choosing between a lot of complicated menus and i think it'd just be better with a mouse but yes yeah i it will run on your shitty pc don't worry about it i strongly recommend playing on your shitty pc or your mac yeah i initially tried it on steam deck and that

was not the right move yeah that was rough yeah um which i mean it's just like a lot of mouse movement yeah i thought like maybe this game could even be great on ipad but the the ui is so dense and small ipad would be good yeah you think yeah if it's a big enough screen i don't know how you do it on like an iphone because it'd be too tight. But with a big screen, I think that'd be really cool. Hey, one other thing. Wrapping up this game, which is great, and you should play it. And hey, if you're one of those people who gets

the codes, let us know what you think. You should tell us in the comments. Yeah, drop in the comments. I'm very curious. But one other quick horror thing for the season that I wanted to shout out. I have been picking out a new book from Bitmap Books, who makes a lot of very cool video game books. This sounds like an Audible mentions mention.

Is it? You want me to save it? Kind of. Okay. No, you know what? You know what? Hey, this is just a little amuse-bouche. We're going to talk about a special horror book at the end and right now we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna come back and

we're gonna talk about motorcycles metroidvanias and guns that doesn't start with the m but the game looks sick and and you've been playing it and i want to hear more so let's take a break and uh and we'll talk about Laika right after this. Chris Plant, I don't know if you know this, but I am a fan of Metroidvanias. No shit? Yeah. What about Metroidvanias with motorcycles? How do you feel about those?

Apparently I like them as well, though it never even occurred to me that that was an option. And yet here we are great. A Metroidvania with a motorcycle. The game we're talking about is called Laika aged through blood. And it basically features animal characters. You play as a coyote who is riding around on a motorcycle through a, you know, Wild West style wasteland looking thing. And that is the way you explore the world. You use the, it's all 2D, but you're exploring on this motorcycle.

And the closest analog I can make is imagine a metroidvania but with like trials hd style controls um you are constantly trying to maintain your balance if you land upside down you will crash and reset to the previous checkpoint and you basically survive in this very harsh very mature despite being animal characters this is not a game for kids let me underline that and highlight it a million times and say holy cow this game does not hold back um but yeah that's that is the general premise of it and and i'm gonna go deeper but not a game for kids the look of it reminds me of a clay game. Oh, yeah, yeah, clay entertainment.

Yeah, they make Don't Starve. And what was the game where you just stabbed a lot? I have no idea what you're talking about. What was that called? Oh, man. A stabby game. I don't know. It'll come to me.

Don't worry. Shank. Shank. Oh, yeah, Shank. Oh, yeah, that was that oh yeah that was them right yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm getting you know notes of of that i mentioned the the maturity of the game within the first like three minutes you see another animal character who has been crucified with their own entrails. Yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting. Happy Halloween!

Yeah, very appropriate for Halloween. So once you sort of accept the fact that this is like the very harsh world, I mentioned Mad Max earlier in the show, it is not far off from the world of Mad Max. You can sort of adapt your brain to it and be cool with it. Your quest as a coyote, you're a mama coyote. You've got a little kid coyote that hangs out mostly in town, thank God. Hopefully nothing happens to the kid.

I haven't beaten the game yet. But your quest involves fighting against these birds that have sort of taken over large chunks of the map. And the way you do that is, again, you're riding your motorcycle, but you've also got guns. Surprise, surprise. And the game has a very cool systems that allow you to aim and fire your guns while you're in midair doing motorcycle spins and stuff like that. There's like a bullet time system when you aim your gun and everything will slow down, but your guns have very limited ammo before you have to reload. And to reload, you actually literally have to do a backflip on your motorcycle and that'll reload. A large chunk of the game is

focused on, okay, how am i going to get through these three guys i've only got two bullets and i've got to jump off this jump shoot two of them do a backflip and then shoot the third one before i land and make sure i land safely to like get to the next checkpoint so unlike a lot of metroidvanias there is a ton of trial and error in this game in particular so you need to be willing to like kind of see it at its own terms uh again very similar to trials hd in that way would you say that there's some trials hd and error yes i would say that okay yes cool to make sure no i appreciate it you know you wrote we're uh we're i'm looking at the rundown here, and you wrote whether I would ever get tired of this genre, the Metroidvania genre.

And I think what's so cool, and this is certainly a representation of that, and I think Rusted Moss, a game we played earlier this year, is another representation of this. The Metroidvania genre is so relatively vague. The requirements of it are pretty limited. So relatively vague. The requirements of it are pretty limited. You need an open map that has some like backtracking. And that's kind of it. And it's a Metroidvania.

Like there aren't a lot more requirements. Wouldn't you say you still need to get like skills gate levels? Like that's what I think of when I think Metroidvania. Is that you have to get certain abilities that are going to make it so you can backtrack to new areas. Somewhat. I mean, you know, most of Rusted Moss, which we've talked about, has very little skill gear gating. Like it's very limited. There is some of it, but for the most part, like it's about exploring a large open world. And I mean, even in this game, this game mostly gear gates based on quests. So they'll be like,

hey, you should go here because we need to find this seed at this mystical tree. And they'll like send you to a spot. It's not necessarily, hey, you have a double jump. You do get more skills later on, but I do think the core of Metroidvanias

is more about this freedom of exploration. And because of that, there is a lot of ways you can approach it. And I think more and more as a way to differentiate themselves from the pack, games are finding very cool new approaches to the genre. And this is certainly one of them using a motorcycle. I the type of combat you're talking about i love and i wish there was a better name for it it reminds me of um samurai films were like in a in a great classic samurai film it's not just like raw sword fighting all the time it's like two people stand off and and same with westerns borrow from this heavily and you see them like planning

the action and then the action happens and it's actually quite quick yeah a lot of the fight happened in like in the brains before you know a sword was even drawn and i think you get that in games where you have really clear limitations of what you can do in any combat instance. One of my favorite examples of this, and we both adore this game, is Towerfall, where you know exactly how much jump and dash you have, and you know that once you fire your arrows, you're going to have to go collect them. So it creates these combat moments

where you are really being thoughtful about how you're going to move around the thoughtful about how you're going to move around the world, how you're going to attack, whether you're going to be offensive or defensive, even if they happen in a flash in your brain, it is this extra step of thought before the combat. And then you immediately, it's like a little experiment. You perform it, and then you see if it works. And then you rush and get your arrows, and then you try it again then you see if it works and then you rush and get your arrows and then you try it again and it sounds similar here where it's like yeah you you you go about the way that you wanted to kill these enemies and if it doesn't work you have to kind of go back and do the reload backflip and try it all over yeah i think hotline miami is another game that does this well or even

another maddie thorson game i think celeste where you're deciding oh when am i going to use my one air dash to get through this sequence and and I find that really rewarding, because they are like mini challenges that you're constantly coming up against and then defeating. And so you have this constant pull of, can I make it to the next checkpoint? Whereas sometimes a lot of these games, like if you're playing Skyrim for three hours, it might just be like, well, I'm just going to march through here. And you know know you don't necessarily have those mini moments that um feel like that like loop that is carrying you through yeah yeah yeah it it's a very cool game it can i'm gonna reiterate it's very hard very mature but but also just like you will die a lot

and you need to kind of be cool with that. I think people know whether they have a tolerance for that sort of game and whether that appeals to you or not. But I've been pretty into it. You had one tip for me to like make sure that you don't die as much. Yeah. Right on top.

So for the most part, landing safely, at least early in the game, is not too hard. Actually, the physics are pretty generous, even more generous than like Trials HD, where you won't necessarily like flip on your back by accident too much. But as you're progressing through the game, you will come upon a few boss fights. And generally with boss fights, the camera will zoom out to sort of encompass these like enormous beasts that you're fighting. out to sort of encompass these like enormous beasts that you're fighting. And when the camera zooms out, your bike becomes very, very small. And for a while, I was like, I have no idea if I'm

gonna land on my two wheels or not, because the bike is so small. I was playing on a Steam Deck, which again, you're dealing with what is an H 800 P screen. So there was very little like of a visual indicator. But what I learned in reading the Steam forums and stuff like that, is the game is actually very clear about where you're facing, because when you aim, there's actually an arrow around your aiming radical that will tell you whether you're pointing up, left, right, sideways, etc. So you can use that as a very clear representation of whether you're going to land on two wheels, etc. So you can use that as a very clear representation of whether you're going to land on two wheels, which is a very smart design

that probably could use a little more signposting. But if you're struggling with the game, specifically landing during some of the bigger boss fights, that is one pro tip that I would recommend. Cool. I'm going to check this out. I feel like this might be something I enjoy. And I think we're about to actually get into the slow season. Yeah, we're not quite there yet,

but we are closing in on a slightly less intense schedule. Yeah, yeah. I would also mention, again, I i played on steam deck it worked well on steam deck i was very happy with it um it's also on ps4 ps5 and it's coming to um xbox one and xbox series x later this year okay what do we have for honorable mentions so i have a bit of a weird one i have a youtube video recommendation for you. I am not a big esports person. I've never really found it super engaging. Nothing against it, but it's just not necessarily for me. And yet I found myself watching an hour long esports documentary on a YouTube channel

called Asumsaus, A-S-U-M-S-A-U-S is the name of the channel. And the video was about a esports person named Amsa. A-M-S-A is his handle. And he is known for being one of the world's best players of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Now, Super Smash Bros. Melee, if you'll recall, was the Smash Brothers game that came out on the GameCube many moons ago and has remained a staple of the esports community. There's a huge following behind it.

People love that game. And what's so fascinating about this is Amsa, the player that we're talking about, decided that he would play as Yoshi in all of the tournaments that he competed in. It's interesting because Yoshi, when he started playing, was like a D-rank player. And just to back up for people that aren't like big esports people, the rankings, the tier rankings for the different characters makes a lot of difference because people generally agree, oh, this character is much stronger because they've got this move set or whatever. You know, no game is going to be perfectly, perfectly balanced. There'll be weak characters and strong characters. And when AMSA started playing as Yoshi,oshi was d rank and one of the least

popular characters in the game no one thought that yoshi had a shot at competing at any of these tournaments uh you would have tournaments where no one played as yoshi like the entire cast was like a mix of like pikachus and foxes and falcos but yoshi was like never appearing but amsa apparently a huge yoshi fan from birth was like no i'm gonna play as yoshi so it's the story of amsa trying to make yoshi a viable character on the esports scene and it is this like amazing rocky story i'm not gonna spoil the ending but uh i was like completely engaged and my engagement like with with smash brothers goes back a long way i've loved smash brothers i played it as a kid uh i still love it but i had never really gotten super deep into the esports scene of um melee or or any of the

smash brothers games and i found this video to be a great introduction to that scene while attaching itself to a really interesting character, just interesting person in AMSA. So I really, really strongly recommend it. We'll put the link in the newsletter. But the video is called AMSA, The Only Yoshi Who Could Do It. And don't get me wrong. This documentary sounds very interesting.

You told me who made it before. Can you tell me their name again? Yeah. Asimsaeus? Uh-huh. Turn the saeus into, how would you pronounce sausage? Asimsaeus? Oh, it's like awesome sauce?

There we go. There we go. Awesome sauce. Okay, sure. Fair enough. I'm thinking like Dr. Z we go. Awesome Sauce. Okay, sure. Fair enough. I'm thinking like Dr. Zaius. Dr. Zaius? Awesome Sauce.

Yeah, very good. You know, I'm always on the lookout for like, you know, I like those H-Bomber guy long, long deep dive videos. And it seems like a lot of people are sort of following in that model. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great. For me, I have that book that I cut you off on earlier. I'll dig into that in just one second. I do also just want to say because it is Halloween

and it's kind of getting into just like deep fall, spooky fall. The Exorcist and the Wicker Man are both celebrating their 50th anniversaries this year now i thought the wicker man came out like 10 or 12 years ago i see you are confused as a fan of neil labute um yeah it's you know uncontroversial playwright uh i can see why you thought that was true um well it turns out it's based off a much older movie and a much better movie, even though the recent one did give us some good memes. Do they both have bees in them? It's apples in the original. Also, Christopher Lee is in the original Wicker Man, which is a great reason to check it out.

The Wicker man also uh kind of a musical there is a ton of of music in this movie uh the exorcist maybe the scariest movie ever made um both deeply upsetting and both worth checking out but you're right i do have a book and i want to i want to open it up really quick. Bitmap Books sent this over. It's called From Ants to Zombies. It is six decades of horror games. It is dense. There are 130 games in it across 70 pieces of hardware.

And I just wanted to, I thought, as a little example of what I'll share, there are 650 pages. And I thought you could give me any number between 1 and 650 and we could see what it recommends people play today for Halloween. That's exciting.

I am surprised about the mention of ants. I'll just say that from the top. Because ants don't immediately scream horror to me, but that is interesting. I'm going to tell you, the book explains why. Okay. You know? I'm going to go with 231. 231.

Let's see. I'm flipping past things like Relentless Pursuers, Halloween the Video Game, which was not good. 231. 3D Monster 1982 by developer malcolm evans for the zx81 you might think 3d monster maze never heard of it can't be that cool right um they gave this game four pages including a two-page single visual spread from a zx81 video game uh that is the level of dedication uh i am looking at screenshots of 3d monster maze first of all great box art amazing it's like a t-rex but like no neck on the T-Rex. And yeah, the graphics are like very simple. It looks like baseball. And I love it.

Yeah, it's something I love about bitmaps. I mean, one, the books are just like feel nice. I mean, this is a chunky feels great tome of a book. The pixel art looks stunning. And I don't know what their trick is. I mean, i'm sure emulation and they're maybe capturing off that but they have a way of making pixel art and classic games look so good which is a legitimate challenge um and something i think both of us have had to mess with in the course of our careers um it especially back in the day this is one of those silly old man yells at cloud things but people for classic video game

magazines literally took photographs of video games on their tv screens and that's how we got screenshots um so things are a little different now I would also mention if you're looking to play 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81, it's important that you know that you need, very important, you need the 16 kilobyte memory expansion. It will not run without the 16 kilobyte memory expansion. important those 16 kilobytes make all the difference in the world and if you think 16 kilobytes sounds like a lot you should know that the image of the box art on wikipedia for 3d monster rays is 32 kilobytes so you could fit two versions of the game in this one screenshot on wikipedia well done old game developers i'm very impressed by you. How did they do that? I don't know, man. Magic. It really feels like it. Hey, that's been another

episode of the Resties. Be sure to check out besties.fan. In the time that you've listened to this episode, I'm going to guess that those codes have been taken. It's possible. But you never know. You should go check just in case. And you should listen to the besties later this week because we're going to be talking about Alan Wake 2, a game that I have played a little bit of.

And holy moly. What a game. I don't want to know anything. I'm not going to. I'm even angry that you've played a little bit of it quite honestly that anchors i'm not saying anything else i just wanted to say enough to make you jealous and you don't even know how the last one ended you're not an alan wake fan you don't know i like remedy games i like control you know you don't yeah fair um the ultimate fan

here i don't want to gatekeep but you didn't even know he was a writer you don't know how how do you know how it ends at all the first one what's going on yeah yeah he's in he's in the cabin he's in the dark place twist uh uh you figure that out pretty quick in this game you know they do a good job of making sure i think they kind of assumed most people who are going to play this game have not played making sure i think they kind of assumed most people who are going to play this game have not played the original i think that's fair to say it's 16 copies yes and it came out a long time ago yeah um anyway the game is sick i cannot wait to talk with y'all about it and uh and that's it if you want to know more about any of the things that

we mentioned in this week's episode you you can always find that, again, at our newsletter at bestusedoutfan. Otherwise, I'm Christopher Thomas Plant. You are. I'm Russ Froshtick. That's who you are. And we are the Resties. We are the rest of the best. Discuss the best of the rest.

How do I keep messing this up? You want to take that clean? You want to do it clean? the best of the rest. How do I keep messing this up? You want to take that clean? You want to do it clean? And it's been another episode of the Spooky Resties

where the scary rest of the horrifying best discuss the terrifying best of the icky, icky, icky rest. Goodbye Resties!