The Besties - Fortnite Got Buckwild When We Weren't Looking

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

We like to think of ourselves as four cool dads who have their finger on the pulse of what's hip with young gamers. That's why, in the year of our lord 2022, we're spending a whole episode discussing Fortnite, a game that has gone COMPLETELY off the rails in the past few years. Other  media discussed include: Mario Paint, Illusion of Gaia, General Chaos, Haunting, Some Baby Mario Game Russ Can't Remember, How To With John Wilson, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, Keys and Kingdoms 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!

Can I take issue with a childhood, beloved childhood classic? Hmm. Um, I thought that was for later in the show. No, no, no. Later in the show, we're talking about video games. Today, we're going to be talking about books. Oh. Ugh.

Okay. I guess I always thought that Chris Plant bringing, like, smart movies to the show was a slippery slope toward books. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess if we... Yeah, I'd like to talk about the show was a slippery slope toward books yeah yeah but i guess if we i guess yeah i'd like to talk about the means to be low what was that all right let's hear it i'd like to talk about the means to be uh okay good night moon has like basically nothing to do with the fucking moon very little to do with it like 97 of that thing is stuff that's happening in the room

so it really should be good night room and various things within that room that's a good point i never thought about it that way but it is mostly like um is the person who wrote that book was literally just like shit i gotta write a book by by 4 p.m tomorrow let's just look around let's see i got some porridge i I hope that's not true. There's a red balloon. That's good. That's good. If that's true,

this person lives in the most psychotic David Lynch-style room imaginable. There's a red balloon, a telephone, some mush, a bunch of cats, a mouse. Some mice.

Yeah. This is not a healthy environment to raise a child. No. Who's the old woman whispering hush? Yeah, it's a fucking rabbit. There's like a grown lady rabbit who lives in the room with him. Yeah.

Is it bad that I didn't read this to my kid? Clearly not. I think you did a good job. I was busy reading. I read Moseley's favorite book is The Coal Protocol, but also he likes Broken Circle, Ghost of Onyx. Did you read any of these? You didn't read the entire Halo Chronicles to your children?

The Fall of Reach? I'm sorry. This is my son, John118. That's right. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best... The pretense of this introduction has been stretched to its breaking point. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the fort. Yeah, yeah, man. This is Griffin McElroyroy and it's fortnight time baby look at my hold on

let me do my dance that's the new fortnight dance i learned from playing fortnight in 2022 oh my name is christopher thomas planton i know a pretty good game this week my name is ross rochek and i know the best game of the week welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter game meant it is a game of the year show that goes all year long i used to say that and i wanted to say it one more time to remind you what i used to say but now i say it's a video game club and just by listening you you, my friend, I remember. Today, for reasons that honestly I still don't understand, but I am happy about, I'm not displeased, we're talking about Fortnite. Chris Plant, the camera smash zooms to you.

A microphone edges into frame as we hear from off screen. I can't wait. What is Fortnite? I played Fortnite for the first time in forever these past few days, and I still need Chris Plant to kind of walk me through. How come you haven't played with me, Griffin? Because I play...

Let's let Chris Plant do his business. I was trying to give him a few blessed seconds. It's the metaverse, baby. It's the metaverse, no blockchain required. That work? All right. No, we need more than that not even close uh okay it's it is a ripoff of pub g um people just don't think that it's gonna do people don't think

it's gonna be much of a thing you know like i mean how long has it taken for this game to come out five or six years and now you're telling me that like fortnight it's gonna be the the pub g killer good luck good luck good luck um yeah so anyway we'll talk more about fortnight after the break to set the tone of this episode can we assume that most of our listeners have not played fortnight in a while definitely in a while yeah I think that's a fair assumption. They haven't played in a while. At least in a while. Let me speak to my introduction

of how this episode even came about because I think it's probably my fault. 100% certainly. Definitely. Go on. Okay, so I was playing Halo Infinite multiplayer last year. I sort of hit a wall a little bit with it.

I still enjoy the game, but there is sort of a limit a limited amount of content in the game and i was looking for a new multiplayer game and a friend of mine was like hey me and a bunch of guys are playing uh fortnight are you interested and i was like well i have not played fortnight in about three years i played when it first came out like chapter one season like very early season three i you liked it before it was cool before it was cool i played then i haven't played in a while and i was like yeah sure why not i was immediately struck by like how nice it was to play a game that

is like a social multiplayer game that did not require me to like be leveled up or at their skill level or whatever um so i was able to just jump in and uh i was pretty blown away by how much fun i was having with it such that i actually um recommended it to the y'all and said like hey we we should give this a shot and and i know i could speak for justin and plan griffin i don't know how you feel it seemed like everyone else who has played it after taking a long break or never playing it is pretty immediately taken by it yeah it's wild i never played it you never played it once what never played it one time and i and i knew what it was right because i had played obviously a lot of pub g and stuff like that so like i knew

because you're alive yeah well see that's the interesting thing right you stopped here i lost track of what this thing was like i knew what it was when it started, but you hear these stories as it goes on where it's like, Ariana Grande is doing a concert in here. And sometimes the rocks around and Spider-Man's there. And it's like, I actually didn't know what it was anymore. I kind of assumed that it had gotten a lot less, like moved away from like the central battle Royale thing into something more metaversy than it is.

And, and like, it's kind of what happened with Minecraft. Like if you try to log into Minecraft now, it's really inscrutable. Like you can, you can piece it together, but like,

there's a lot going on in, in Minecraft with it. But like Fortnite is still very much built to be a fun video game. Like at the – and that is still what it is. I don't know how people are going to concerts and stuff. Good on them. I don't know where the concerts are. There's a Lady Gaga concert coming up probably.

Yeah, like I don't know where that happens. But it is like – so this is like a completely new experience for me playing fortnight i would and i'm sure a lot of this has been like uh you know sanded and honed to perfection over time but at every point fortnight which is like very briefest pitch battle royale like a bunch of people drop out of a flying bus and then try to kill each other. And they're forced into closer proximity by an oncoming storm. You can work solo or in teams. There's guns all over the map and you're trying to like get the guns and the cars to try to stay one step ahead and kill the other people.

Right? That's the base thing. Just like real life. Just like real life. I was shocked by how this game at every single turn makes like the funnest choice possible right like when you get into the water if you jump while you're in the water you start doing dolphin dives and you go really fast it's fun when you drive a car into the water do you know what happens what happens just? You just keep going.

It's great. Like, it doesn't stop. Why would it stop? That would be sucky if it stopped. Maybe it just goes on the water. It's fantastic. You want to be, and then the IP thing is the other thing. Like, I thought that it would be pretty cringy.

Like, some of these, like these different characters, different IP, that are just sort of dragged into Fortnite. But it's actually the opposite. I feel like it is treating these IP with the exact amount of respect they deserve, which is, broadly speaking, none. So it's like Boba Fett with a Spider-Man parachute, like hacky-sacking, which is something like you can do whatever and it's great it's like it's completely silly and idiotic and i really really really right now especially i'm

super duper enjoying it uh fresh should i give like a very quick history of this and then you can tell us where the game is now because sure we have a lot of listeners who don't play every game sure yeah okay so fortnight when it came out uh what four years ago is that right 2017 i want to say sure uh when it came out it originally was a survival action horror multiplayer game that had been in development for a very long time and seemed like it was kind of dead in the water it was not the game that had been in development for a very long time and seemed like it was kind of dead in the water it was not the game that we are playing right now whatsoever it was called like fortnite save the world and it's that still exists and it still exists um and then uh pub g uh player unknowns battlegrounds came out uh we all loved it and uh epic, the people who make Fortnite, were like, hey, nothing to lose here.

Let's shift our resources and do one of those. And I remember being in the newsroom at Polygon when that happened. And the general reaction being like, oh, okay. Who gives a shit? Yeah, right. Like, you know, like this game has such a bad reputation right now. Very hard to see how this will work and we kind of understood that you could you could build things so that was going to be the big difference

but there weren't like vehicles like pub g it didn't seem as like fleshed out as pub g it looked pretty basic and then we played it and it was like uh very cool the one thing that made it me fall off was uh it kind of was still i guess in beta ish but people got really good at building like really really good where when you watch done twitch it was hard to even see how they were building these massive towers and it became kind of impossible to play for me as someone who is a little more casual because i just couldn't i'd get to the end of the battle royale round and then uh i would have no hope of actually winning because i just wasn't a you know master builder yeah you're elite gamer who loves shooting and getting doing it when it hits their

head and you get extra points yeah yeah you're not playing i wasn't interested in playing the fucking this old house with bob vila simulator exactly you know you're not a doozer right right you build delicious structures for fraggles so then we out of touch olds fell off and then a trillion things happened and then i log on and i see like i don't know it's like do you want to play in the metaverse and that's fresh how about you explain that because honestly the options were a little intimidating you're talking about like creative mode or you're talking about everything when you yeah okay so where we are now so that that was more or less a summary of the old stuff yeah since then uh the big changes i would say are they added this creative mode that is sort of like

mini roblox if you will where people can make their own modes within the game. So if you want to make a, you know, sort of obstacle course a la Double Dare, you can do that within the tools of Fortnite. You can make your own areas. You can make little like scenes for yourself. That's fine. So that's creative mode. for yourself that's fine so that's creative mode and then for the main game over time and i'm not entirely sure why this happened it does seem like the building aspects have been de-emphasized it's possible they tuned it such that like oh building gets buildings get destroyed easier so it's not

as much of an advantage but you will see way less buildings so it kind of starts feeling more like a like a traditional battle royale game and over these four years they've consistently added just gobs of content to that system you know it started with vehicles and swimming and and basic stuff like that um just most recently with chapter three which they just launched they added sliding so if you're on any incline in the game and you start sliding you will just keep going forever until you hit a flat piece of land and that alone is kind of a game changer because it makes you feel you can move a lot faster while sliding but it also just makes you feel like you're in an actual environment like in the way that you feel when you're in an actual environment like in the way that you feel

when you're in breath of the wild and you jump on your shield so it feels kind of more involved with that oh actually it's inspired by a pc game called tribes uh okay thanks fine appreciate it and talk about locomotion y'all they put spider-man gloves in there yeah so so just to touch on the metaverse like franchisey stuff so uh they have started bringing in you know x-men and music stars that i've ever heard of as like playable characters and skins and they'll do themes around each season so in this case this season is very spider-man themed so you can unlock a spider-man skin but also you can get these gloves that let you shoot spider webs and just like shooting the spider webs feels amazing it just feels like

they've been honing you know justin said sanding down the edges and that's what the last four years have been about where they're just constantly adding wild shit to the game and it feels really good just this week like two days ago as a hot fix not even as like a hugely promoted event they added fucking tornadoes to fortnite and these giant like f5 tornadoes like out of twister show up and you can run into them and they send you up into the air and everyone's fucking fly there's like sharks and shit flying in the air and that's just in a normal match now yeah it's i had one yesterday where it's like it was in a very small circle and it was close to the end and there was like four or five people left and we were all in the fucking tornado just like looking at each other

like man when we land it's gonna be on but right now let's just enjoy our time together yeah in this tornado yeah griffin i'm curious what your take is again as someone who took a long break and then came back to it yeah i've i've never been uh particularly good at like the core gameplay of fortnite uh the shooting part of the building or both uh honestly both the shooting has never felt right to me i think it's because it is the third third person yeah um and for whatever reason like that kind of messes me up um and so playing it now i am definitely having more fun um but i find that like when it comes time to get down and dirty and get down to the business of uh eliminating haters so i can take take home the the w i don't enjoy it as much so after a few

matches of attempting to like succeed at fortnight i eventually just started goofing off and i started to treat it more like a sort of just cause situation uh and that is a better way to play the game, in my opinion. Because it's, frankly, I also think that Fortnite is like too fast for me. Like the pace of it in general. I think I was better at PUBG because it was a lot more, you know, wait to shoot, you know, wait for the moment. And that is something that I am more capable of doing than like managing to land headshots on somebody who is sliding down a hill at 900 miles an hour um but like i i hear your point about it's refreshing to play a game where you're not just grinding to get some exotic weapon uh because you know i've definitely gotten burned out on destiny for that very reason but also like i enjoy playing fortnite without trying to win and that relieves

like this sort of um tremendous pressure that pubg kind of that i identify pubg with like that game was a scary game to play at times when you were down to the final 10 and you know trying to trying to squeeze out a win. And if I don't treat Fortnite like that, I think it's an absolute blast. I also think the additional game modes are great too. There's a prop hunt variant in there that is pretty good. And I very much like prop hunt as a game mode. But there's so much stuff.

I was overwhelmed just looking at the main menu because I was like, okay, let's see what the options are. I'm going to guess solo, duos, and group. And it's like, nah, nah, bud. There's a billion different ways to play the game right now. Yeah, I think keeping that in mind that the stakes are extremely low at all times even if you're down to the top 10 like you don't like it used to really emphasize winning as a way to like

level up and unlock stuff and whatever now it's just not at all the priority like it's more like oh i need to like explore this area or i need to jump off of you know through a flaming hoop five times or like it just gives you a lot of things to keep you busy that aren't just uh winning the game which i think helps a lot i also want to mention i like hesitate to mention this because it is sort of part of the way that they onboard people oh no you're going to ruin it for people just like you ruined it for me i think i should say it just from an honesty standpoint. I think it's important. It's better.

I'm glad that I know now. Since most people played, they have added bots to Fortnite. Now, the bots are not labeled. And unless you've played a bunch of Fortnite, you probably won't be able to tell which are bots and which are real players. But they added bots as a way to ease people in such that they feel like they do pretty well early on and sort of get the systems.

It almost feels like a tutorial to introduce you to the systems of Fortnite. As you play, as you level up, the bots will slowly move out, and you'll see fewer and fewer of them until eventually it's just players. I think it's a really smart way to do it. I actually really like them insofar as even though I've played a lot, having a bot there, I almost treat it like a mobile chest

where, oh, I know they're going to drop a bunch of loot, and that's kind of nice. And it keeps me on my toes, but not in the way that like oh this guy is sliding right at me and using every extreme skill he has to take me down um unfortunately now that i'm saying this i do realize that it does pop the bubble of people like justin and plant who thought that they won won their first five games just randomly because they're that good you don't realize this now. You realized this when you told us. And you just love popping bubbles. Yeah, it did.

I won my first game. The first time I played Fortnite, I won. And I was like, well, hold on. I started checking for a tattoo i've had since birth signified me as the chosen it's so sad believe it or not america's best fortnight player is a 40 a portly 41 year old you have a birthmark that looks like a big dumb goldfish man what is that it's i but uh i i appreciated it because it does make it less frustrating like when you're trying to figure stuff out and there's a lot to figure out it

can be very annoying to just get like sniped out of nowhere um you know but so it's nice to feel like you could actually like make a difference your first game but russ i think i think i'm doing it okay yeah you you and i think that's the point i think you did well no let's focus on me now before you i was gonna focus on you i think the point is you getting your feet wet understanding the systems using bots and stuff like that but as you play more and as you level up they get again get funneled out and you've got the basic skills such that now you do pretty well against normal players. Like I, I am impressed by your skillset. Um, there's even stuff that feels good

that I hate in other games. Like for, and I don't know what like weird magic they're using, but like I even like using sniper rifles and, and I don't know why, but it just like, it feels okay. Part of it is like, it looks great and you can like see bullet drop. Like you can watch it, like it feels okay part of it is like it looks great and you can like see bullet drop like you can watch it like see like actually physically see bullet drop uh which is very colorful which i think makes a big difference like obviously a lot of shooters like as much as we're all excited about games like stalker i really like color in my games and wait wait wait wait are you are you excited about stalker no not really okay yeah that was a royal we although i realize people are excited um i know i like color in my games and it's like a clean look it's why i like the halos are designed as well it's a very colorful

game and very clean so you can like make out enemies very clearly make out make out with enemies they also added every angle of it for your fan art. If the bot thing kind of puts you off a little bit, it's worth noting you can play, there's a mode called Arena, and there will be no bots in Arena, but it does use skill-based matchmaking. So you will play mostly newer players in that. It won't be as easy as bots, but just a heads up.

And it's not all bots, right right like well early on you might have i i played a match with you and it was definitely matchmaking off of your level of experience because it was like the third or fourth game you played i do not think we saw a single living player in that game uh it's gotten better yeah yeah the last game we played was definitely real players and it i don't know i feel did i mention the spider-man gloves because i really i want to take a second spider-man swinging is like a mechanic that i've i've talked and written about extensively for many many years it is it is actually one of like the best funnest like spider-man swinging mechanics that has been in a video game, and they're just,

like, there, like, you can go by the Daily Bugle, and, like, Spider-Man has, like, webbed up backpacks on the building, they're on other buildings, but they're, like, it's, it's basically guaranteed at the Daily Bugle, from what I found, and you grab these gloves, and then you just, like, and then it's just an item that you have uh and you can swing around and then like it lets you swing for a very long time you traverse huge areas like extremely quickly faster than any vehicle i found um you can just sort of fly through and it makes like getting away from enemies a lot more fun and it it feels like cheating in a way that like is is i don't know they just kind of threw it in because like i don't know it's fun the first time i encountered him by the way the person who had them was wearing

the spider-man skin and i thought well that's fucking yeah justin brought it up to me he's like that's not fair it's not fair spider-man can swing around like that it's like okay this is an item anybody can get it so then i got to have boba fett swing around while he sw's like okay this is an item anybody can get it so then i got to have boba fett swing around while he swung like with his friend rick and morty it is it is the most like i realize roblox is probably even further down this road but because of the official franchises that they've sort of integrated into fortnite it's the most metaversy thing that i play on a regular basis they've integrated them and then they've abandoned them so it's just like it's not like because it's been going on for so long right it's not like i had any awareness of

the things that have happened before like and they're not in the world and there's not storylines about them. It's just, you get shot and Rick is teabagging you. Like, you know, John Wick is in the toilet exploding it. It's, it's, it's also like not to discount, we talked about building,

but it also makes getting around the world a lot more fun when you can like destroy basically everything, like anything that you want to go to um it's fun making the calculus when you're getting shot at like would it be quicker for me to just knock this wall down and hide behind it or should i you know run around the building yeah put plant what what is your like is this something that you think you would stick with or is it just like oh i'm glad i played this now that I know? Well, I don't stick with anything because I don't have time. I don't have time for a game like this in my life or else I wouldn't play other things.

But I feel like this is, I don't know, maybe like once every week or so, I could see myself hopping in here and just seeing what's up. I am curious about it in a way that i wasn't before and i can see how people feel like they're getting a new game every month right like it changes so much i i just think the best decision they made was to stop worrying about esports because esports ruin games like this in my opinion for for the majority of players. For the esports players, whatever. I'm sure that's not the case.

But I look at, like, have you seen the stuff with Halo right now? Where there's kind of, like, a divide between the esports players who want them to, like, nerf certain guns and the people who play because video games are fun. Who are like, why would you take away the things that we like? And I wonder if at the beginning of Fortnite, they were like very into the esports thing. And I remember, you know, fresh, I think we went to some of those championships. Yeah.

And now it feels like, especially once the pandemic started and everybody was just hanging out inside, they were like, whatever, we don't care about balance. We're just going to throw in fun stuff over and over and over and like it's better to keep 90 of the fans happy than like the 10 who we think are good for marketing yep um it's also good for like it's perfectly timed this little infatuation because there ain't no game. Can everybody share their favorite character? Oh, like

who we main as? Well, I mean, I don't I haven't been playing for a few years, so I can't just Who do you main as, Plant? I want to main as Paul. Paul from Dune. Oh, oh, oh. I thought you meant Paul from that movie, Paul. No, well, I just

like that Paul is like a main character in anything. And Paul from Dune seems, he seems very chill. He is in there. I'm frustrated by the ones that I missed. I'm looking back at like the John Wick skin and things like that that I really wish I had. Well, the John Wick skin might come back. Is Marshmallow a playable character in this? He is, yes.

Are you recording as Marshmallow? Yes, you can play as Marshmallow. I would probably be him, so my son would like me more. Yeah, reasonable. I like Bush Ranger. He's a bush, and he runs around. And you can hide in a bush, which does seem like cheating, but it works. Russ has this thing where he gets mad at me for making noise,

he gets mad at me for making noise and then he will wear a fucking like a living dia de los muertos like display like with like fireworks shooting off of it he's like shh be quiet we're sneaking up on them meanwhile he looks like like fucking tina turner cosplaying as Rick and Morty. Yeah. I do have a desire to pick the most ridiculous skin possible because when I do

win, which doesn't happen frequently, but when I do, I want the other person to feel really bad about themselves. The aesthetics of, I should also mention,

I should be, to be fair, the aesthetics of all the characters that are not licensed characters are repellent. Oh, not true. I don't like be fair, the aesthetics of all the characters that are not licensed characters are repellent. Oh, not true. I don't like a lot of the aesthetics.

It's not true that they're repellent to me? Not all of them. Oh, to you, fine. I don't think all of them are repellent. I think you just have, you've, I would say 90% of them are repellent to me. But I think there might be a few you like. See, I was, I was onboarded to that. I'm level 100.

I own all the skins available in this chapter. I don't like any of them. Yeah. Russ, you have to listen to me. Okay, so you did hear. I did. You just decided to ignore. I love Spider-Man!

How dare you? I love Spider-Man. And I love that he can have a big stupid metal umbrella and swing a hammer made of bubble gum. I will agree that the bubble gum man is maybe the worst thing I've ever laid my eyes on. The one with the bubble gum machine? It scares me.

I like that. But that's the thing about Fortnite, is that it really does, because there's so many fucking skins, there's always going to be something. So for me, I pick the big, cute, furry guys. That's like my preference many fucking skins. There's always going to be something. So for me, I picked the big, cute, furry guys.

That's like my preference for Fortnite skins. And in general, bears. Yeah, I love the bears. For Griffin, he loves Gumball Guy. For Justin,

I don't know, whatever, John Wick. I only play as licensed characters. I always play as Boba Fett or Spider-Man. Because if I could be Boba Fett or Spider-Man, I i'm not gonna be like some gen x samurai or whatever come on i'm gonna be spider-man and that's the thing about this game existing for four years and constantly adding new shit is that there is something for everyone and it's weird because it is that and that they all exist in the same

universe so i'll be able to be The Rock soon, and once I can be The Rock, I don't know how I'd go back from that. Only not The Rock, right? Like an in-fiction character played by The Rock, yes? True, yes. Yeah? But that's even, you understand that's even wilder.

He doesn't have his driver's license and social security card and say like, yes, it's me, Dwayne Johnson. Whoa, this is a game changer. Frush and I have a bet that Tom Cruise will be in Fortnite, but Tom Cruise won't be in Fortnite. A character that was played by Tom Cruise. Ethan Hunt. Wayne's basement will be in Fortnite, but that's not Wayne's basement. Isn't that weird?

All right, let's not talk about Fortnite anymore. Yeah, it's a weird ass i can't stop talking about fortnite it's all i think about i i should no i wish i was playing for right now let's take a quick break and uh we'll delve deep into the pools of memory hey we got an idea from uh one of our listeners on twitter who I don't know their name. Their Twitter is GL, so hello. I can tell that they're a Steelers fan based off their icon. Congratulations to them. They made the playoffs this weekend

because the Raiders decided to kick an unnecessary field goal. It was wonderful. Anyway, their request was that we share some gems from our childhood video game time. Frushdick actually modified this slightly to say, let's make these hidden gems. We don't want to be out here just saying, go play that Mario 3. Because people here know that our listeners are smart. They don't need that help.

So, childhood deep cuts. Fr cuts fresh do you have one i do what i see here is not a deep cut no it is it is trust me you and i can't actually i'm offended you and justin both brought games with the biggest character in video game history no no and you're gonna tell me mine is a deep cut mine is a deep cut justin's maybe not but mine definitely is okay mine is a deep cut because i have no idea what this game is called and i need help from our listeners to sleuth this out i have done research on this i cannot find this game for the life of me okay story time when i was a kid my neighbor uh who had like named jason who had all the like dope shit the turbo graphics fucking nomad the like whatever all the modern stuff that i didn't have

so i would go over there and i played games on his system one of the games that I played while I was there, in my memory, was a Mario game. And it starred Baby Mario. I want to say this was like SNES era or late NES era. It starred Baby Mario. It was a platforming game. And for the bulk of the platforming, you would crawl as Baby Mario around these levels, these 2D traditional Mario-style levels. You'd crawl as Baby Mario around these levels, these 2D traditional Mario-style levels. You'd crawl as Baby Mario,

but instead, when you got a star, you would run around. That was suddenly the moment where Baby Mario learned to walk, and you could actually walk like a normal Mario game, and you'd play through levels like that. I have very strong memories of this but every time i've done research to try to find this game i have not found it i don't know if it was a hacked like knockoff mario game i don't know if it was official baby mario game like the first appearance of baby mario before yoshi's island i do not know and if anyone has

any insight into this i would greatly greatly appreciate it all the only thing i'll add to that is there was a level where you played on the ceiling where the baby would crawl on the ceiling like train spotting so if that helps at all just uh use that as research i i'm probably wrong but my my my best guess is little nemo and slumberland i don't think it was that because I have very clear memories of what that game is. I loved it. You ride on a mouse.

You were in like jammies. It was great. It wasn't that. Okay. Well, that's a deep cut that's utterly useless to our listeners. Did you ever have like a very bad fever as a child, Russ? Did you ever get bit by a tick or something and get a really bad fever? There was a time where I was locked in the room for like three or four weeks.

So it's possible that's what was going on, but. Okay, okay. Yeah, that's might be what we're dealing with here. Justin, Justin. Yeah. You also brought a Mario game. No, I didn't. What did you bring?

I brought the Mario Paint Nintendo Player's Guide. I'm going to text you guys. I'm going to Slack you guys a link, actually. And please peruse this while I am talking about it. Because just looking at it again fucking really sent me. Oh, my God. I remember this. This was in our bathroom was in our our bathroom

reading basket for a long time how do you need so if you don't how do you need a guide to make art though no but like look through if only you had the pdf directly in front of you okay good then just look at it for a second it's if you don't know mario paint which is possible we have as many young folks in the audience it was a snes title where it came with a mouse right and so you would it had different functions of where you could create your own pixel art you could score your own music that would use like in-game sounds. Like it was basically a synthesizer where the different sounds were represented by like Mario style icons.

And there was also like some limited animation that you could create. It was a very, very like forward thinking and I think sort of like before it's time sort of tool that I think was very, very, very cool. And it was one that you could playstakingly create by and show you like it shows you the grid shows you the exact colors for each dot of the grid where you could like piece by piece just like recreate these sprites that you'd seen there was also like a lot of sheet music in there um

where to show you how to do like theme from star wars or whatever you know like popular music there's a bart how you can create pixel art bart uh just like he looks on the nes um and it would just be like it to me it was it is i was thinking about it and it was it is the number one memory i have from like childhood childhood gaming because i'll never have the time again to sit in front of my nintendo and painstakingly like transpose little brown jug yeah into a you know i'll never be i'll never sit there for a half hour making the atlanta falcons logo out of seven different sprites um that, that, that has come and gone that time in my life where that would be. But I remember it being so soothing,

systematically creating things. And then Nintendo players guide. It's great for kids that don't have like a real artistic bit. Cause it, it just dials into that part of you is like, it's okay. Just recreate this. Exactly.

Methodically. This guide is what I want to do an entire episode just on this guide because there's a page on just the history of music from 1960 to 1990 i'm looking at that exact page right now and you don't think most of our forms jones and for the velvet underground and nico that you don't think that There's a box here that just says music history, 1960 and 1990. 1967, Velvet Underground and Nico. 1984, Bruce Springsteen. 1988, John Lennon. 1991, Guns N' Roses. That's pretty comprehensive right there.

1988, John Lennon? I don't think that was the peak of that show. He died a month after I was born. It's certainly not correct. I think that's the release of the Imagine album. Not like... That would be like putting 1996 or whatever, the Beatles anthology.

But they have pages and pages of full helmets. Here, you can create a Cincinnati Bengals helmet. You just need nine different stamps. I can't believe the copyright stuff here. There's an entire page dedicated to recreating Disney characters.

Yeah. Yeah. This is fantastic. Yeah. It's wild. If you search for it, you'll find a PDF of it immediately. I'm going to look on eBay to see if I can find it. We'll drop it on Twitter so people can check it out.

Yeah. There's also like a Mario Paint gallery that doesn't show you how to make it. And it's just like, check it out. Check it out yeah there's a there's there's also like a mario paint gallery that doesn't show you how to make it and it's just like check it out oh god there's one called stevie's wonders that's just like jaws and et and indiana in one in one piece of art finally fantastic uh we're just i can't remember if this was in our childhood or not but i remember buying a second hand copy of mario paint long after we had you know the zeitgeist had died down that somebody had carved into the the gray plastic of the cartridge watch my video and then do you remember this or was this uh yeah and then it you then you uh if you didn't watch it

you died no it was exactly this is a real this is a real thing that happened i bought it secondhand i think at some used game shop without realizing somebody had defaced it and i was like oh okay and then i clicked in to watch my video and it was like a three frame animation using a coloring book page of yoshi like mario on yoshi's back so they didn't even draw it what what they did add was a three-frame animation of brown spray coming out of Yoshi's butt, and it's like, damn, I can't even imagine. What if I had deleted this without even seeing it?

Thanks for the heads up by defacing the cartridge. That's my kind of humor. It's really good. There's also a lot of hidden stuff in Mario. I just really do we have any other deep cuts i mean the the successor to that was game boy camera which i could bring but i don't think that's a deep cut at all uh because game boy camera had the same sort of playfulness and like extreme weirdness about it and i played that game a lot mostly

because i traded in like 15 super nintendo games that i am kicking myself for uh divesting um so yeah i played quite a bit of game boy camera i wanted to bring illusion of gaia that was a game i played maybe like five or six times all the way through like before middle school uh did you guys ever play that one? No. I don't. Okay, so Illusion of Gaia was from, it was one of the Quintet games.

And Quintet is one of the more fascinating developers from that era, published by Enix. Quintet made ActRaiser, then they made SoulBlazer, then they made ActRaiser 2, and in the same year they released illusion of gaia they also did robo trek and terra enigma which are both also like i think could qualify for this list uh but illusion of gaia was like a top-down action rpg i guess sort of in the vein of zelda uh where you played a boy named will who had like telekinetic powers, but it was all about the wonders of the world.

It like fantasy RPGized like ruins of like actual earth civilizations and the great wall of China and the great pyramid. They were all like playable levels. And you like were able to commune with like the voice of the planet who lets you transform into like different types of heroes it looks good wow yeah remember this uh and like it was a wild fucking game like you start out in this village and you and your friends like go on this this journey around the world uh and some wild shit happens like one of the kids

gets eaten by the way by a whale and then like fuses with them and talks to you about like how death isn't all that bad and it's like what the fuck illusion of gaia uh it like it it tells this extremely like mature story it has some really, really great puzzles and great music. And it is a wild, unforgettable game for me. It is the one that I always recommend to people to seek out if they think that they have played all of the classics from the SNES era. Because this one definitely stands out in my memory. Plant, what about you? I brought, remember when EA made really weird games

instead of just making the same four games over and over again? I brought that era, basically, and two games in particular. Did you all play General Chaos or Haunting on Sega Genesis? I didn't play much on Sega Genesis genesis i was uh yeah i forgot you both had nice childhoods i was stuck with sonic um so general chaos i can make quick but it was this like tactical war game where it was isometric and you could play it multiplayer and you would just have your team of like i think it was like four or five characters or you could have like two super characters and you would just like shoot and throw grenades back and forth at each other um it was one of the first multiplayer games that

really devoured my neighborhood's time like it was one of the times where, you know, pre Nintendo 64, where I was like, oh, wow, we could just lose weekends doing this, which I hadn't really had before. And then haunting is a wild, wild game. Basically, the way it worked was you would go into a house and there would be a family in the house. And you played this like puckish ghost who could. and you played this like puckish ghost who could um i i i i looked it up you you you collect frightums and frightums uh are are different items around the house that either you can set as traps or you can actually inhabit to scare um the people in the house so it's like goofy poltergeist the video game um and it's wild yeah the animation on it is super cool it's almost one of those games now that is better to go back and just watch on youtube um because playing either of these games is a little tricky but yeah i just

i really liked this era where ea was it felt like they were just like i don't know a game where you get to be a ghost seems cool and they did this for like 20 years like they partnered with like i think timothy leary to make a game about psychedelic therapy in the early 90s like they had this like streak for for quite a while and then they hit on madden and it seems like uh the rest is history baby the jocks took over jacks well i think we've proved our street cred at this point that we're cool yeah we'll know we're legit deep shit uh anything for for readers that they've suggested? You know, memories that they have?

Yeah. Let me pull that up. You know, I didn't put it in our sheet, but I just want to shout out all the people who recommended Beetle Adventure Racing and Mystical Ninja Guemon for Nintendo 64. I didn't know if that was a deep cut either, but I adored that game.

Those games rule. They are fantastic. I didn't know if that was a deep cut either, but I adored that game. Those games rule. They are fantastic. Some deep cuts that we have here from Brenna on Twitter. I played Space Station Silicon Valley nonstop. You play as a microchip and have to jump in and out of numerous mechanical animals, each with their own set of unique abilities. It's ridiculous insanity and so fun. Yeah, that game rules. And a game that we will be talking about next week,

I think borrows a lot from this game. Like a lot, a lot from this game. So kind of weird coincidence. What game is that? Yeah, we're going to be talking about Nobody Saves the World. Whether or not we've actually played it or just talking about a trailer, who knows? The next one from Rai, Lost Kingdoms, a From Software game.

Did either of you play this? No. I believe it was on GameCube. The history of From Software before Demon's Souls is a very interesting one. And that's one of those things where I wish I had all the time in the world and I could go back and play some of those games. And then one more from CW, the NES port of Rygar, a completely broken translation made an already mysterious world seem even more alien and intriguing to me. It's the epitome of Conan-style sword and sorcery gaming with RPG elements.

I played it recently on Switch's NES library, and it holds way up. Love anything like this that is on the Switch NES library that I have not made time for. I can go give it a try. I always think that's great. It's an inscrutable game. Yeah? Sweet, sweet right.

Yeah, it's a fucking wild one hey remember when capcom just made like disney games and they were yeah man and they were fantastic oh that that i should have brought that that is that a deep cut to say chip and dale rescue rangers on nes not a deep cut okay oh no not at our age anything you remember is not is a deep cut uh should we do honorable mentions yeah let's do it uh i want to call out a tv show called how to with john wilson that's on hbo max or hbo if you prefer the old version um it is a first person documentary set in new york and each episode is like a how-to like how to buy real estate or how to make friends but ends up being like a hilarious and creative and surprisingly moving

analysis on like the human psyche um i think it's also the best tv show or movie ever made about new york it is an incredibly authentic portrayal of new york because he's walking around getting footage it's so good um i have been playing there i have this weird oversight in my uh like zelda experience uh that is that i never really played much of oracle of ages and oracle of seasons for the game boy color these were um i forget exactly when they came out i feel like it was pretty late in the game boy color life lifetime yeah i think that's right um but they were paired zelda games that uh were completely different right it wasn't like a Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Red situation. The games were totally different with different dungeons

and different items and all that jazz. And in one of them, the main mechanic is that you can switch the world between four seasons at will, and each season kind of like changes the environment. So like in winter winter you can freeze water so that you can walk on it and in summer vines grow uh and then in oracle of ages you can switch between the present and the past and like solve puzzles using that mechanic also uh and like i've been desperate to you know find more stuff to play on the analog pocket and so i've been

playing oracle of seasons i'm about halfway through it it's fucking fantastic it's really really really good it's some of the best like like 2d dungeon design i feel like i've ever seen in a zelda game before and made by capcom and made by capcom yeah it's a wild uh there's like a wild sort of uh gosh upon mechanic where you collect rings that like give you these permanent bonuses while you're wearing them. Like there's a lot of stuff that that game does that no other Zelda game really did. And I'm really, really enjoying it. Of course, it helps that like Game Boy Color games look so fucking good on the pocket. Like better even than Game Boy Advance games just because the aspect ratio is kind of correct for the pocket like better even than um game boy advanced games just because the

aspect ratio is kind of correct for the pocket screen so yeah i've been you know i haven't had a lot of time to game out but uh when i when i as we say as one says um but when i have been gaming out i've been doing i've been doing that and it's great y'all i've been doing that. It's great. Y'all, I've been watching that Neon Genesis Evangelion. Is this your first time? So, have you had... I'm curious if y'all have had this experience as, you know, 90s kids. When you go back and watch

anime that you watched as a kid that you kind of pieced together from Friends VHS tapes because it cost a fortune or was illegal i thought i had seen all of this show i definitely had not seen all of this show like at all um so it is a trip going back and watching something that i'm like yeah i'm pretty sure i saw this and that just not being the case um And watching it like in high def and it just, you know,

streaming whenever I want it. The kids have it easy these days with their funimations and their crunchy rolls, you know? But wow, this show is sad, you know? How far into it are you? About eight episodes. It's pretty sad.

Okay. You know, so far, Shinji, pretty sad. He seems really unhappy, and I have a feeling it's not going to get better for him. That's just a guess from me. Oh, no, man. It all comes together. Yeah, yeah. He figures it out.

That's encouraging. Yeah, it's got big rom-com energy. Yeah, I mean, my decision right now is I'm going to- Yeah, I think you and I are maybe the only people- Yeah, I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'm going to watch all of it, and then I'm going to watch the movie. So I'll be talking about this every week, Justin. Don't worry.

That's perfect. That's perfect. That's good B-room time for me. Sometimes I need a B-room break when we get to this point in the episode. I real quick wanted to talk about Keys and Kingdoms, which is a game that i got for uh charlie for christmas and i just randomly kind of saw it at uh best buy when i was like looking for for stuff for the holiday but it turned out to be really really neat it's a so in the box there is a um usb keyboard and a lightning adapter, so you can plug it into a computer or a phone or an iPad or whatever. And there is a game that you download that is an open-world RPG, sort of.

sort of um but the like spells the way you cast spells the way you defend even though you move around the world um are all conducted through playing on the keyboard so it's all controlled via the the keyboard so if you want to you know uh defend against an attack then you and well to do an attack you have to play like a sequence of notes in rhythm right um which is what's really cool about it is one like you're you're learning stuff and getting more comfortable with like the mechanics of using a keyboard sorry sorry sorry typing keyboard a musical keyboard oh yeah like a musical keyboard sorry yeah i should have clarified so you're playing songs basically to do the spells um but they've thought it through this mechanic in a lot of really cool ways. So like if an enemy is attacking you to represent that, you don't know all the notes that are being played and you kind of have to think like, okay, that's probably one step up. When you craft an item, you can play – you basically compose a song that you then have to play through. And that's how you like craft items is through the keyboard and making music like that.

And it's got a lot of like mechanics that you would expect in something like this. Like there's different levels of items and those items do you know have different effects and armor and customer customization like the game itself divorced from the keyboard mechanics would not be anything worth worth noting but um like when charlie plays like she's actually like motivated to play more and get better at it, and it's been a very cool way to spend some time. It also weirdly sends me a report card via email that tells me how her practice is coming and how she's improving and getting better at it. But it's really cool. It was like $80, I think, and you can find a lot of them on eBay for like $35 or $40.

Is the evil emperor that you're trying to topple played by Billy Joel? Billy Joel. Billy Joel, yeah. It's Billy Joel. So you've played it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But they call him Jilly Ball.

Yeah. To make it more sinister, I guess? I don't actually get it. I'm the piano man, Drake. That's good. I like that. I want to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. We have Gary Oaks Balls, which I assume is Pokeballs.

Whack Island, Dane Stevens, Mikers90, Lauren W. Dickey. Thank you for writing reviews on Apple. God, the greatest usernames on our people. Yeah, they're great. Just fantastic. Love them. And thanks to everyone else who has written reviews on there. I see them all, so we really, really appreciate it.

Here is what we talked about this week. We talked about Fortnite in the year of our Lord 2022. We talked about some of our hidden gems of our childhood griffin brought a illusion of gaia i brought general chaos and haunting russ brought a game that looks like your baby mario and we need your help to figure out what it was i am positive somebody is going to know like we're gonna get 15

minutes after this episode exactly is gonna get um uh and hoops brought uh mario paint nintendo players guide uh good luck getting any of those games make sure you tweet that pdf out for oh yeah peruse yeah yeah are we gonna get sued for that guns and roses might sue us because their entire album is in there he can sue me but he can't see the sweet child of mine um russ brought how to with john wilson as a recommendation which is on hbo hbmx i brought neon genesis evangelion which is on netflix griffin brought oracle of ages and seasons which is on the game Boy Color, and Justin Brought Keys and Kingdoms, which is on a PC, I guess. That's the best way to play that, right?

You could, I mean, you could definitely, no, no, I choose to play that on iPad. Oh. But you could even, I think you could download it and play without the keyboard even. There's an on-screen keyboard, but like, I don't think that would be the best way of doing it. Interesting. Next week, y'all, we will be talking about Nobody Saves the World, the latest game

from very, very, very long-time favorite of the podcast, Drinkbox Studios. I actually think in our first episode, we discuss a Drinkbox game. No, no. It was Alien. Mutant Blob from

Outer Space. I'm pretty sure that's in our first episode. This is a nice No, it was Alien. Mutant Blob from... Mutant Blobs. Oh, Mutant Blobs. It's an outer space. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm pretty sure that's in our first episode. So this is a nice... We are almost exactly at 10 years from that episode. What kismet right here? Thank you so much for listening to the show. We hope you enjoyed yourself. We hope you'll join us again next time for the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends get the world's best games Besties!