The Besties - It Is, Once Again, Pizza Time with Shredder's Revenge

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

We're serving up game criticism on a half shell and trashing like a million Foot Clan conscripts as we discuss TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, Tribute's modern take on Konami's classic beat-em-up series.Also: Mailbag's full! Let's dump it on out. Also discussed: Fall Guys, Fortnite, Yakuza 0, Rogue Legacy 2, Pokemon Shield, Five Dates 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!

I feel like we should decide who is who in the TMNT universe. 100%. That was going to be my lead in, obviously. I think that the two easy ones. Russ's crank. Russ's crank. Oh, fuck. The bodiless brain.

Because I'm so smart? Yes. Yeah. It was either that or Baxter, for what it's worth. I want to be Casey Jones. No, no. Griffin, you're not cool enough it's worth. I want to be Casey Jones. No, no. Griffin, you're not cool enough. No, but I want to be Casey Jones.

Please? He's so fucking cool. How many shirts do you have where the sleeves are completely ripped off? I don't even have sleeves on any of my shirts anymore. Y'all, I've got to put some boundaries here. I think we have to pick between the turtles. I mean, there are four turtles turtles and there are four of us. Really limiting. I was going to go Yosagi Ojimbo.

But, okay. I would say, Russ, I would say is, oh, well, who's the Donatello? Let's start there. Because I think it's either Russ or Chris's the Donatello? Let's start there. Because I think it's either Russ or Chris is the Donatello, sort of the brainiac of the group. I think it's gotta be Chris Plant is Donatello.

I would say Chris is the Donatello. Because of his Criterion Collection fascination, which is basically like- Justin is the Michelangelo. Yeah, I'm the Michelangelo. This is really easy, guys, and you're kind of pissing me off. Okay.

Plant is Leonardo. Frustic is Donafael yeah i'm michelangelo like it's slam dunk can you explain yeah please what explain okay justin parties i party that's easy that's easy griffin does have a rude tune right like it doesn't come out all the time, but it's there. Yeah. Russ is kind of more erudite. A fucking dork, basically. And Plant is like a steady hand. And I have a lot of swords.

And he has two swords. And I'm like a big rabbit. What? So I'm also Yusagi Yojimbo. I feel like we could have, you know, two. Sure. Two of them. We got to all be second-hand.

Okay, okay. Can my second one be Baxter Stockman? The one that's just a fly? I was going to go Baxter, personally, because I wear a lot of sweater. Oh, yeah. You kind of look like Baxter. Yeah. Wait, does this make Spotify the ooze? My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know a really great game this week. My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best game of the week. Hello, and welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club, my friend. Just by listening, you are a member. I'm so happy to have you here with us. As we talk about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredder's Revenge.

This is, of course, an original IP. Where do they get these ideas? Forefighting Turtles? Come on. Now I've seen everything. Now, what is it, Chris? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredder's Revenge is the latest beat-em-up and a long lineage of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat-em-ups.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, originally an indie comic book that got turned into a TV show, now feels like one of those secret, low-key, massive properties that just never went away. But people are kind of like, hey, is that still a thing? And then you talk to any child and they're like, yeah, it's still a thing. It's 100% still very much a thing. We are going to talk about this new entry uh sort of a kiss of the past and a kiss of the present right as soon as we get a lot of kissing a lot of kissing in this one way more than you all right we'll be right back

before we get started on discussing the game itself can i clarify some lore aspects to the tmnt universe please i would love that i don't have the answer to these questions my understanding but plant and i were disagreeing oh we were playing multiplayer my understanding is that the ninja turtles tetra ninja turtles were turtles and they touched the ooze and then they became super powered turtles but they were never at any time human people correct yeah that's now yes we turn to splinter their fearless rat leader and trainer human yes in the in the intro um i guess credits of the cartoon that we're all familiar with from the eighties and nineties.

He was a human and he got transformed into a rat person. That is correct. Yes. You, the ooze. Okay. The ooze transform, canonically,

the ooze transforms you into whatever animal you had been most recently, or most, most notably in contact with shred Shredder had pet, or sorry, Splinter had pet rats and so he turned into a rat. The turtles had been owned by people so they turned into half people. Oh, interesting. I did not know that.

And Shredder had been like a cheese grater? Shredder is not a mutant. No. Please don't embarrass me. He just wears a mask. No, but wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He becomes a mutant later though, doesn't he? In the movies? The movies. He does wears a mask. No, but wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He becomes a mutant later, though, doesn't he? In the movies?

He does. That is true. Don't. Tell me what happens in the, I mean, you might as well look to, like, the pudding pies for, like, canonical information. Okay, clarified. Some lore for the game now, though. This was made by Tribute games who uh has done a lot of really great stuff mercenary kings wizorb uh the the like pixel work reminded me a lot of

paul robertson who did uh all the stuff for those games uh and that's because he is he is there at tribute games and also it reminded me of scott pilgrim versus the world and tribute games was formed out of a lot of people who well worked on that title uh which is one of the best i would say beat-em-ups in in the biz it's really this genre it's really interesting i was thinking about it because we have a uh like a barcade here in huntington and they have the, you know, they have a lot of these like classic wide four player beat them up things.

And I was playing actually the Simpsons of all things with my daughter. And I was thinking about how like a lot of those games do not hold up. And when you see a lot of these like retro, like wouldn't let's just make another classic, like, like that game used to be what you end up with is something that's like interesting but maybe not as like doesn't really stand up with like modern game mechanics or like it's very interesting that this genre this this like gameplay genre is just fun like it's fun now it's fun then like it's still fun to play a beat

them up with people like it it doesn't need a lot of modern touch-up. And this game does have some, we'll talk about it. But this formula just works. It just works. And it hasn't been a massive part, I think, of the modern gaming landscape. It just kind of worked from the jump. Yeah, I think that's true.

I think, I mean, to kind of get into this game, the Simpsons game that you played and the original Ninja Turtles arcade game were both made by Konami. And I think the thing that they got right, especially for arcades, is it's all about the vibe. So much animation. It looks like the cartoon that you're playing. The music's killer. They get the vibe right.

The actual combat in those games, not great. But kind of like, who cares? They get the vibe right. The actual combat in those games, not great. Right. But kind of like, who cares? You're hanging out with your friends, and you're just, you're really only there to see what happens next. And then I think there were other beat-em-ups that kind of went the opposite, where they had really interesting combat, but they didn't have, I guess, a great, like, licensee. Yeah. Or the vibe just wasn't there. What makes this game, I think, just perfect is it does both.

The vibe is right, and it just feels so good to fight in this game. Can I talk about sort of the evolution that exists in this game that I feel like makes it so? Let me start by saying I adore this game. I played it by myself on the Steam Deck on a flight, and then when i got home i bought it on switch so that me and henry could play it together and we played through like half the game yesterday it's really good i'm always looking for good games with kids this is a really

good one um those the the holy trinity of like arcade konami beat-em-ups of like x-men simpsons and tmnt uh are all very similar and all very like justin said like accessible and just fun from the start but they were arcade games first and foremost so defense was never the order of the day in those games right it was a good defense is your i mean an offense is the only defense that you had in those games where you just had to beat them up not enough for getting beaten them up by but but and and that is the only defense that you had in those games where you just had to punch them. It's a beat-em-up, not an avoid-getting-beaten-em-up. And that is by design because, you know, Nightcrawler gets knocked out. You put another quarter in the Nickelodeon and you keep on going.

It's a profit deal. It's a profit deal. adds a lot of i would say mechanical not complexity but just like opportunity for players who want to uh use that stuff there is a dodge button that is like huge and they have and it's not just a purely like get out of get out of the way of an attack button like it's a thing you can string together with combos uh i was a little worried at first because the game starts out by showing you this 21-step tutorial demo. If I may be so bold, the tutorial thing that they do,

they literally show you every move in the game in a long string with no content. I was really put off by that. I didn't see this because the way I started was playing with Frush. Oh, okay. And it skipped that for me it's like you just joined the experience yeah there's there's a lot more going on here than

than those old games like you can charge up an attack to break a shield or you can uh you can do a jumping attack you can do a double jumping attack you can do like a dodge cancel uh there's like a super meter that you charge up to like use a super strong attack or once you've leveled your character up enough they can like use it to go into like turbo ninja mode yeah but i would say like share health with each other there's a lot but i would also add before you get intimidated by this list like realistically if you play on the ultra hard difficulty setting yeah probably a lot of this stuff or all of it might be required. But if you play on normal or even easy, you know,

as Griffin can attest, like, a kid can play with you and have a really, really fun time just using the basic attacks and stuff like that. There's a punch button and a kick button. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you'll be fine. Yeah.

My four-year-old played with us and we did fine i mean fuck you can play with a joy-con like it that that should tell you everything you need to know uh but but i really enjoyed it because i've i adore those old beat-em-ups but also it's really it's really frustrating when you get combo womboed by uh you know a couple members of the foot clan and just like cannot get out of this like stun lock animation that just knocks you the hell out and in this game you have like you have lots of different ways of keeping it spicy which is good because beat-em-ups i think tend to get if they don't have you know uh like i would say like castle crashers has really great progression

hooks that kind of pull you through and if they don't if they don't have something like that they get really samey uh but this game i think evades that because you have like a lot of different ways to approach any any fight which is uh not something i knew i needed from this genre but this game i think provides it and the characters feel different they do yeah that helps too that there are like many characters to choose from including all four of your favorite turtles but then like casey jones april o'neill uh splinter like would have loved venus would have loved just for my own personal situation would have loved two female uh characters because uh the fight that ensued over april o'neill um uh not pleasant at my home yeah i guess irma could have been in there

she is in the game she is in there she is yeah it's like a yeah there's a lot in here for people who know a bunch of shit about teenage mutant turtles which i do not but like i opened up a door and some frog man popped out and it was like you unlock you can do missions for this frog man i was like i don't know is that battle toads what's yeah the great thing about the way they've done the pixel art is it's hard to distinguish between hey that's teenage mutant ninja turtle stuff when i was a kid and hey that's nickelodeon era teenage mutant ninja turtle stuff it all looks the same but then they also tie it back together with like the game so So there's like some, I would say Turtles in Time

is my favorite of the old beat-em-ups. And there are some like time travel elements. There's one part where one of the bosses comes out of an arcade machine and then summons bosses from, I think either TMNT or Manhattan Project. Was that one of the games? Anyway.

And seeing that stuff, sure enough, was enough for me to be like, oh yeah, it's those guys. It's those guys. I know those guys. Yeah, well I think the movie villains show up too. Yes, they do, yeah. Man.

It looks so good. It looks amazing. It looks so great. And it is one of those, that is one of those things that somebody who's like recently just looking at some of these games, like it really does,

it's that thing of like, it looks, it doesn't look how it used to. It looks like you remember it looking. Like it has that amount of like color and depth and fluidity in the animations. And it's just like vibrant and looks great. Like it really, it really stands out and feels really good. I was going to say, and it looks like, and it great like it really it really stands out and feels really good i was

gonna say and it and it looks like and it feels like in the way that um shovel knight sort of captured that feel of a platforming game a mega man from the 80s and 90s but updated the gameplay the gameplay feels like it's evolved in that same way too where it feels authentic even though it really isn't it's a it's a pretty modern recreation of that gameplay and i think that whole ethos carries throughout where it's very consistent tonally but has been refined in such a way i i think from a tribute standpoint like i've played probably all of their games this is probably my favorite by like a good mile i think it unifies the thing they've always done great which is visuals um with like just incredibly strong gameplay and game design um they did a

really really good job yeah i think that sometimes their games like flint hook and mercenary kings weren't as enjoyable as the art effectively and then panzer paladin which was their most recent game i was weirdly kind of the opposite for me i think that game plays amazing and the look is kind of like an esd make that's it's nice anyway this game the one thing i wanted to say is talking about um making it feel like what you remember when you go back and play these old games it's kind of like watching old cartoons where it's like, oh, we're reusing a lot of assets because we just don't have that many

people or that much money to make it. It's wild here how it feels like every corner of the world that you walk around is new and original. Whether that is what's happening in the background or things the characters are doing or new enemy types showing up. there's just so much new that the only comparison i can think of is like this is what it

would feel like if a triple a publisher made a 2d pixel game which they just haven't done and to be clear this isn't a triple a publisher it's dot emu or dot emu who um they did uh streets of rage 4 but i mean they're like still a relatively young publisher in in this world um so pretty incredible their head the soundtrack is out of this world there is wu-tang clan yes so there's the i mean the general sort of like background music for every level has that, like, I have no way of describing, I do not possess the vocabulary to describe the music of those old Konami beat-em-ups, but they're very sort of crunchy and electronic. you hear a song with fucking ray kwan and ghostface killer on it uh that comes out of nowhere i think mega ran has a song on the soundtrack somewhere uh and it is really fucking great and just to be clear the wu-tang song is them rapping about the ninja turtles like yeah it's a straight up ninja rap it's like a movie closing credits rap and in the best way

it's so good um uh i, if we're talking about like, we've been very high on this game and I am too. So I just want to mention. Bring it down, Justin. Bring it down for us. No, no, no. It's not bring it down. It's, you know, notes for the future.

I do wish there's a lot of depth. It is not good. And I kind of alluded to this with like the list of moves. It's not great at like leading you towards something you may not be doing or something you may not have been utilizing if a new situation calls for it or like helping you to sort of like develop naturally with some of these like harder areas. Like there's in the bridge,

like the first sort of like moving level where you're on a skateboard or turtle port or whatever you know that kind of deal um there are enemies that like really it's hard to get them if you're not doing the double jump yes spin attack and like if you didn't know that was something like if that wasn't part of your repertoire you know if you miss that in the first scroll of moves um it's very frustrating until i was like okay there's got to be something i'm doing wrong because this can't be that annoying but like some sort of like hey try this or you know introducing those moves when it is appropriate for you to be trying them as a way to like walk you into this like fairly wide move set um it

would have been that would have been helpful as it is it's a little bit more trial and error than i'm yeah i do want to mention two big features that i was not expecting that i thought were tremendous thing a feature a if you play online with people yes there is online play um you can just jump right into the game without them they don't need to set up like a hey i'm playing online or whatever it oh it just like just like putting in a corner at the arcade like it it's literally like you see a list here's some dudes that are playing you want to play with these dudes like yeah sure i'll play with these guys and i'm pretty sure it's cross platform using egs but it's only dudes which is

really fucking weird i'm using gender neutral dudes uh i i i'm not crazy about the um like objectives that they lay out on each mission uh because in each mission there is there are usually just three objectives and i guess you get experience for your characters for i completing them i don't know because i didn't complete a lot of them. Because a lot of them are like don't get hit for the entire level. And it's like what sort of fucking cyber person is capable of doing that? So just the

result of that is you would just be playing and a foot soldier would throw a trash can at you and then a big red X appears on the screen and it's like don't get hit by trash cans it's like okay cool it's weird because it's like it's again that's sort of like a like they it's cool that it's in there if you want that sort of like you know ongoing challenge or whatever but like to make you feel like kind of a failure from the jump like is is kind of a weird do y'all remember

that one assassin's creed game after every mission, it graded you and said that it was, like, sending it to the server? It reminded me of that, where it's like, wait, why am I being told I suck? Why am I bad? Just for playing the game, yeah. I'm also coming to this from fairly recently playing Castle Crashers,

and I played Scott Pilgrim with Henry for a bunch. I wish that the like characters were a little bit more or rather at all sort of customizable in a way and I know that's not that is the exception and not the rule for this genre you can level up the characters depending on like your performance in any given level you're just always sort of ranking them up and uh some rank ups give you like uh an extra health node or an extra bar of like the ninja meter you use for the super moves uh sometimes they will you know unlock new like actual moves that you can weave into your your moveset and that's all that's all very cool i just wish that there was a little bit more of a way to tweak them in the way

it also kind of de-incentivizes like switching up your characters that's new characters yeah i think that also is like just different inspirations i think for scott pilgrim it was a lot more like river city ransom type beat-em-up games and this is obviously going for that konami spirit but yeah that doesn't mean they shouldn't add it i just think that's probably why they didn't i i have one last thing i wanted to mention um when your buddy if you're playing a multiplayer goes down loses all their health you can revive them by holding a pizza up to them for a few seconds and it's fucking spectacular it's such a good yeah smart and you can also you can also if you have a lot of health and your pal has very little, you can press a high five button. And your high fiving drains your health a little bit and increases theirs.

You're kind of passing off some of your... Also, can I just give super quick credit to how many different ways they have of surfacing enemies on the screen in ways that are extremely funny god like oh you're constantly running like in the the park level you just run up and like just using that as an example at one point you run up and there's just like three foot kind of soldiers eating popsicles and you're like what's up guys i'm here to kill you like oh dang okay and and then later on there's one just like sleeping on a bench just like not even sleeping just like relaxing like enjoying a nice pleasant day and you just like sleeping on a bench. Just like not even sleeping, just like relaxing, like enjoying a nice, pleasant day. And you're like, hey, I'm going to fight you.

Okay, sure. Why not? And the first level takes place in a TV studio. Like you turn a corner. Well, you don't turn a corner because it's a completely linear horizontal level. But you walk into like a new room and there's just a bunch of foot soldiers like with mixing bowls and chef hats on just doing a cooking show. It's fantastic. At the end, when you go to fight Bebop at the end of the level, he's been wearing a suit this entire time.

And at the end of it, he rips off the suit in a way that seems to be like a grand reveal. Like, it's been me, the warthog man, the entire time. I'm not a business executive. I'm actually a been me the warthog man the entire time i'm not a business executive i'm a i'm actually a human-sized world so i guess i guess just to sort of wrap it up the question i would have for y'all is is there a game if someone wanted to play like a quote modern beat-em-up game my instinct is this is the one you play because i think it's the most welcoming uh the art is incredible and all the stuff we've just talked about i mean obviously there are great games castle crashers etc but this seems like the one that i would just instantly recommend to basically anyone that wants to play a beat-em-up i think alan could play this yeah i mean it feels like

a high watermark for sure um i don't know if it's the kind of game that like i'm gonna be playing for a long time but also i don't think it's uh you know obviously i prefer that type of game but the not every game has to be like this this is one that i doesn't and it doesn't like we should be clear this is a very good game it doesn't like it doesn't like transcend genre so like if it's not something that you would enjoy it's not like no you have you have to you know what i mean there's certain games like that that are part of a genre that even if you don't love it like you owe it to yourself to check it out i would not necessarily quantify that although if you're not 100 sure this is a very good entry point but it's not it doesn't necessarily like become a universal like everyone yeah it's it's an evolved form of the genre basically

yeah i would love to get six people together to play this in a room though i bet that is a fucking hoot and disaster i've seen video of it it is totally bonkers all right let's uh let's take a quick break and then come back and talk about more things just like that's me that's me. That's my position. That's where I'm at right now. Everybody, I have some news. The mailbag is at capacity. We need to empty some of the mailbag or else we can never get mail again. Oh, my God. I know. It's a real crisis.

How did you let it get to this point? Well, I got COVID. Well, that'll do it. And then it just kind of wait a minute i thought we had licked that it feels like that was kind of a wow you're still getting it's almost a little retro yeah yeah thank you thank you you know that's how i am i like to do it on my own time um so i'm gonna i'm gonna pop it open did you get it from your walkman i got it from my mini disc player getting covid watching tng ninja turtles is a real retro retro kind of thing okay i'm i'm i'm sliding up in the first envelope uh this one is from uh kyle star do you have any go-to palette cleanser games and or any go-to games you play when you want to play a video game

but can't seem to find the right one that's a great question i mean for me it's binding of isaac i've talked a lot about the game but i wouldn't necessarily recommend that to everyone but that is my go-to i don't know what else to play game um i tend to dip back into no man's sky for whatever reason like that is the one that i like to just kind of hop hop into and noodle around for a little while i would say the one that is probably the biggest for me just because it's on my phone and i can do it whenever i want to is slay the spire uh i can i can i if i have nothing else to play and I'm sitting somewhere with nothing to do and I have my phone on me, it's it's usually Slay the Spire. Yeah, I usually return to like some sort of run based thing. Monster Train is one that is like, you know, a lot of those run based games are really interesting with the patches and updates and stuff because they start to feel like much different. but you can still sort of like you know grok back onto it pretty easily so yeah

usually one of those like monster train or um i guess it's the main one i do i'll mess with or grift lands sometimes because it's kind of like a self-contained story um but yeah those run-based games i'll return to quite a bit and And every once in a while, I do reinstall You Must Build a Boat. Oh, yeah. And just go through it again. That's a good one. Mine's Everyday Shooter, which I think I've talked about before. Like 2D twin-stick style shooter game.

Just with some great music. This one is from Jackie. How did mobile game ads get the way they are they are i.e terrible and very rarely show anything that's actually in the game now there i think there are two types of ads that might come to mind there is the one from like 10 years ago where it's like some like fantasy thing and there's like a very sexy lady and then the game itself is like an rts but now there's the like tiktok ad where it's just endless runners where you keep collecting hundreds of people by using the power of math and then you get to a finish line but then the game isn't that no yeah this is an inner this is

i messed up my algorithm at some point i get get a lot of these on Facebook and usually sound sort of like Eastern European. And it's always about how much power that you got while you were not playing the game. And there's usually some sort of exclusive, like you're trying to get into a party because you have a 5 million power chrono dragon. And then somebody inevitably comes up who looks like just a regular Joe's like, I have 10 million power uh you know chrono dragon and then somebody inevitably comes up who looks like just a regular joe's like i have 10 million power blue dragon like how it's like because i'm playing this game and sometimes the audio is dubbed over because like the name of the game has changed or something and uh i'm playing this game it gives you bunch bunches of power while you're not even playing. Whole bunches.

Bunches of power. To answer the question, though, of how did mobile game ads get this way, unfortunately, they got this way because human beings click on those ads. I wish that that wasn't the case, but people would not be running ads that were not effective

for resulting in people clicking and then installing the game so humans are to blame in this scenario sorry i do love there's some there's some hey i don't know the name of it but there's some game and it's like one of those games where you have to like slide the bar out so that the gold falls onto the hero but doesn't hit the lava and the monster can't get free or else it'll kill it and i saw an ad for a game that was that and it was like are you tired of seeing ads for games like this but then when you download the game it's not like this at all well this game is exactly this i found the real one i found the real one of these games then you go to the reviews for the games and they're like

it is not this. It is an RTS. Please do not do this. I will say that there is a YouTube video that I saw where somebody tries to actually turn one of those fake game ads into a game. One of like, just keep multiplying your characters, endless runners.

And it's by a YouTube creator called Fat Dino. And the video is, I turn fake mobile game ad into a real game. I will say this, haven't watched everything on their channel. Same caveat I put for anything on YouTube. No idea. I neither endorse nor deny this person. But the video, I think, is pretty interesting.

Next question. This one is from Christian. Do you guys still aim for achievements, I think, is pretty interesting. Next question. This one is from Christian. Do you guys still aim for achievements, trophies, like folks did back in the mid-late aughts? How much effort will you put in for them, and what's the most time you've spent on one lately? Frush, you are the person that I'm curious about with this, because I think of you as an a an official achievement hunter but now you

also are a official dad that's true he's all he's unlocked the ultimate achievement indeed uh i have not specifically gone for achievements or trophies since becoming a father or really i was definitely winding down over the last five years or so uh i do it there's really only a few scenarios where i go for them usually it's like i beat the game i'll look at the trophy list or achievement list and see what's left and whether there are things that i think i could do and whether they'd be grinding grindy or fun or miserable and stuff like that and if it seems like something where if i play for like three or four hours and i enjoy myself doing those things i will probably go for it um but again i haven't done it uh i went on like a weird streak of platinum trophies like a year or two ago um and haven't since but i only for what it's worth do

it for games that i enjoy i've never done it for a game that's like naruto to shibu and that got terrible reviews but you can get the platinum in three minutes not for me there's a yeah i will only do it with games i really really like and typically it's like a from soft game yeah i'll do it for this million hours with anyway uh and if i if i beat the game and like there's just a handful of achievements left to unlock it gives me a reason to play the game which i already wanted to do that's like the only that is the only scenario in which i will do it otherwise i could not give yeah i i every once in a while there's a game that uses them interestingly um stanley

parable ultra deluxe recently has some that are that you know the game is actively commenting on um uh and that is very cool uh and and interesting but i do feel like the zeitgeist has kind of moved past i don't know i don't i don't yeah i haven't thought about an achievement since like 2009 like they stress me out used to used to be a thing though definitely definitely that score used to really prove the air game um to this next question this one's from drew what needs to be in the Dreamcast Classic? It's from Drew Davenport. Don't put shame on his name.

It's Drew Davenport. You can say his full name. Okay, okay, okay. At the Davenporter. Now you've doxxed him. Okay, what's Drew's question? What needs to be in the Dreamcast Classic? Deep cuts welcome.

Is this a real thing or is this a fever dream? Probably a fever dream. probably a fever dream i believe that they're actually releasing the sega genesis mini 2 oh boy rather than releasing a dreamcast so i there was there was a lot of there was a lot of discussion probably what this is spinning off is there was like a lot of yay that this was going to be something that was going to be announced uh during the past e3 week um it did it did not i mean obvious obvious stuff soul caliber shin mu crazy taxi power stone to jet set radio those are those are like those are the obvious ones those are the obvious guys of arcadia and i think that's the guys mercadia would be dope as hell uh i'm i would be heartbroken if something

like this happened and it didn't include fantasy star online with some amount of of like online multiplayer that would be i would i would fucking love that sounds like you will be heartbroken that sounds wildly expensive to do i actually don't see man probably won't happen and that's my favorite dreamcast game. Which one? Seaman. I don't know. You could probably figure it out, but they're not going to put the work in. What if they did that and they released Seaman 2? Because that game is like

done, right? Didn't they make the mobile games? It came out in Japan. Wait, is it Seaman 3? I know that they made an iOS game that's like effectively complete and then just never got to release it. Seaboy. Seaboy.

The Sonic games, Space Channel 5 would be huge. I would say Choo Choo Rocket, but Choo Choo Rocket, I think there is an iOS Choo Choo Rocket game. There have been a lot of those. My deep cuts would be Zombie Revenge, Bang.io. Yeah, Choo Choovenge, Bang.io, yeah, Choo Choo Rocket, definitely. Project Justice, Ikaruga, I mean, like,

there's some great games that came out on other systems. Rez, uh... Was it Toy Soldier? Not Toy Soldier. Oh, yeah, yeah. Toy Commander? Toy Commander. Maybe that's what it was, yeah. I would also say my favorite Dreamcast yeah that was a cool

my favorite dreamcast deep cut was a uh sort of top-down space shooter called armada uh and it was a it was do you remember this it was like a it was a like an rpg twin stick shooter where you had a ship that you could upgrade, but you would explore the galaxy, and it had local multiplayer, and I played the shit out of that game. That was a cool game. It was a really good one. Man, what a great console.

There's so many Dreamcast games that I would love to get my hands on a tiny little system like this. Oh, and we didn't even talk about fishing. dreamcast games that i would love to i would love to get my hands on a little a little tiny little system like this and oh and and we didn't even talk about fishing take a bath fishing virtual tennis there's like so yeah genuinely good sort of sport sport games on there too um it's like the only sport games i ever really played much because the the online connectivity was sort of it is like very early stages with those 2k games like some of the earliest ones you could like play and play online with people it's just such a novelty to get

my ass handed to me by some from colorado marvel versus capcom 2 would be super dope but also i think that the i don't know that there's any way they can license all that shit again for a new tiny console. Yeah, Marvel's very chill about that. I'm sure it would all be okay. This one's from Ian. Do you use any app or list to keep track of your backlogs, or would that be too stress-inducing? That sounds like a Chris Plant thing. I do that on Letterboxd for movies just so I have an idea of what I want to watch

because it saves me from endlessly scrolling, right? But games, you play them for so much longer than a movie that like, I don't know, I guess I kind of have a backlog folder in Steam, but... It also helps that there's the backstop of Game of the Year discussion. So usually if there's anything backstop of game of the year discussion so usually if there's anything that like really made an impact we will get around to it because we kind of have to

sure so yeah yeah i do have a quick i i have gotten in the habit of wish listing stuff on steam yeah that if it's not out yet if it just like sounds interesting um and i have a little list of like when i hear about a passing thing that i like usually if it's on a podcast and i'm like walking around listening to it like that sounds cool i'll add it to this little list i have on my phone but i mean it's not something that i i don't know i don't fixate it on it too much i kind of feel like if it's something that'll really click with me it'll probably bubble back up or it won't and yeah for what it's worth that's what i do when i do karaoke and i hear someone else sing a song that gets a big crowd reaction i will write that down oh sure yeah you put in your i'm seeing this list that is in person i think i have too

yeah that's good um uh last question uh this is from Knight. Knight of the Woeful Countenance. Are you afraid that someone's going to see you? Hail Knight of the Woeful Countenance. Knight of the Woeful Countenance. What is the long shot pie in the sky dead franchise that you could revive with a magic wish on the modern platform of your choice? Okay, wait, wait, wait.

To clarify for ourselves is this it would do well or i just you just want it i just want it okay i mean my answer is both my answer is both and it is profound to me that this this series has not at least seen some sort of remaster or something but i would flip shit if they announced a dark cloud 3 dark cloud 1 and 2 are two of my favorite games of all time if you have you've never played them and you have a ps4 or ps5 i think you can get it on the on the playstation network store uh and those games are beautiful and have a really cool vibe and like a town building element and in Dark Cloud 2, you go through a dungeon

and then you beat it and then it turns into a golf course. It's the best fucking game that I cannot believe they have not done anything with, especially level five. Like level five is doing great and is making like a

bunch of really they're one of my favorite developers but like man level five you gotta bring it back man those games it's it's time man you know i was gonna say act razor but that just recently got remade and i really disliked the remake so so I am now really torn about it. It kind of spoiled it in my mouth a little bit. Split genre games like that, I really wish we had spent more time. What's the one, Griff, do you remember the one that was like half RTS, half first-person shooter?

Oh. Savage? Was it called Savage? Savage. I think it was called Savage like one person would be doing commanding like would be commanding the forces and you would see the orders on your hud come up like yeah it was called it was called savage battle for that was a battle for new earth that's not the one that i would bring back, but it was a cool – it was a really cool idea. That was a very cool game. Black and White.

Mine would probably be – Ooh, Black and White. Actually, that's weird. I was just thinking about that. That one's so fun. You should explain what that game is because I think – Justin, do you want to do it? 90 – yeah.

No, I want you to do it. It's Peter Molyneux, like, God game. At his best. Yeah. At his best yeah yeah at his best but it was like a sort of whimsical take on the god game if i remember correctly you had like your avatar in the world was like a big like a baby monster like a giant ape or a giant you know you could pick i think a giant sheep something like that and it would sort of do so if you like fed a bunch of people it would watch you feeding people and then it would start feeding people but if you were addicted to people and like threw them over the

mountains it would also do that and think that was funny so you were kind of raising this baby monster to be yourself god it was a wild a wild... It was a wild... I mean, there were two of them, and they were both fucking wild, but it's basically been dormant and dead for 20 years at this point. I would... Much like Peter Molyneux himself.

I would play that game for very long stretches where all I would do is pick people up with my god hand and throw them. And the animation was very satisfying every time to watch a rag doll sorry is godhand the game that you're picking yeah yeah um mine mine would be uh power stone i was gonna say uh bushido blade that that feels even too niche even by my needs because nobody would want to play it with me at this point. But Power Stone, I can't believe that that series is not alive and well,

because it feels like with how popular Smash Brothers is, I know they're very different games, but it feels like it would have an audience. It would have a huge audience, man. I really don't get why that series is not out there. And so much of that game is like, I mean, at the time it was called like open world fighting. Now that would seem very quaint. don't get why that that that series is not out there and so much of that game is like i mean at the time it was called like open world fighting now that would seem very quaint but these like huge open 3d environments that would be so interesting with what like modern consoles

can actually pull off i haven't played it but there is a game a free-to-play game called rumbleverse which i don't think is out yet but does seem to have a similar energy to it with like kind of dash of fortnight yeah i would say i would say it is fortnight with a dash of power stuff yeah yeah yeah um i don't know if you okay my dragon's dogma would be my answer but it's not necessarily a franchise because there was only one of them. Wait, Justin, did you not see the news? The sequel's in production. Whatever. I'm not actually going to go down that road with y'all again. It's not happening. They just announced

it like two days ago. Yeah, I'm just definitely coming out. I'll definitely... Just like Deep Down, right? Mine would be uh the legacy of kane franchise oh sure good good mailbag chris plant well done thank you thank you uh you want to do some honorable mentions oh man i have so many pressure so many games there's too

many games i've been playing two uh service living games free to play. One of them is Fall Guys, which I've talked about quite a bit. It is now officially free to play. So if you have a Switch, an Xbox, a PlayStation, a PC, any of those, it will run. I traditionally put it on PC over Steam. You can't buy it on Steam anymore. It is on EGS, but it's free.

But I played it last night on Switch, and even though it is obviously a downgrade from a visual standpoint it's still extremely playable uh and fun and it kind of fits perfectly with the tone of fall guys which is like light 10 minute rounds fuck around have a good time good stuff so if you've never played fall guys um just uh check it. It is basically that ABC TV show knockout. Is that what it's called? Wipeout.

Wipeout. It's basically Wipeout, and you bounce around. And you can make, like, custom games with friends, and so, you know, you get the right maps and all that stuff. I think they've done a really good job with that game. I've also been playing a ton of Fortnite. What else is new? It's been a very good season.

They just added the grapple glove, which is basically like Spider-Man swinging his back again. Darth Vader. You exactly called that to me, by the way, hilariously. You 100% called that exactly that would happen to me

several months back. Oh yeah, unquestionably. And they'll put a, when it disappeared, you were like, oh yeah, they'll put in like a grapple glove. Like something like that like you really 100 yeah uh fucking darth vader lands on the on the island now and you can like go up to him and have like a little darth vader battle with him like such a weird crazy game uh but it's been fun uh i am uh still playing through yakuza zero i have made it to the goro majima section which

is still quite early in the game but since i'm just enjoying it at a slow pace feels good to play a game that is not out this year and not like a game of the year contender and just something just playing it because i like it what is goro maj Majima? I don't know what that is. That is the dude with the eye patch. Yeah. Oh. You've probably seen him in the art. Yeah. He's a great character.

He has a baseball bat. The other thing that I will mention is Neon White, which is maybe the most Chris Plant game of the year. But we're going to talk about it. Yeah, we're going to talk about that on the rest of you next. Okay. I saw you playing that on whatever platform you were playing it and then i was like what is that game because i've heard some people talk about it and i googled it and i was like oh it's a chris plant game yeah it's a chris plant game for chris plants all the chris plants out there we will do a full

deep dive in what that is exactly on tuesday um i've been playing through pokemon shield with henry uh and really really uh getting getting into it i played through sword when i first uh experienced it and you know it's the same game but it's been a while since that came out and it's getting me excited for the new uh the new ones that are coming out this year supposedly but the one i've really been playing is uh rogue legacy 2 uh i got my steam deck a couple weeks ago and we just went on tour and I was really excited and I downloaded like all these games to play on the plane on my Steam Deck.

And I just wanted to play Rogue Legacy 2. I beat it. And the way that this game handles New Game Plus is like diabolical where you can, basically every time you beat the game, you like toss these modifiers onto the pile to start over in New Game Plus. Like you can increase, like it's so granular,

like increase enemy projectile speed or increase the chance that an enemy will spawn in like a commander super strong mode or increase the size of the maps. And so you sort of like build your own new game plus and then hop into it and there's like new gear that you can only find in like certain new game plus layers um but man once you once you like reach a point where you have like a good build and you have like the armor that you really like uh and you

feel like you can beat a whole run in like a single character that game is very very hard to put down and i was not expecting to like enjoy it more well after beating it uh than i was even on my on my first run through yeah that was for me the first one was similar where like once the i had like a build figured out it like really felt very satisfying it feels like this one gives you way more options and tools like how to make that build i also didn't realize that you could eventually unlock the ability to lock one of the slots in your airs so like of the characters you pick before each round to a specific class and even what their magic is so you'll still have to deal with traits and and very like

colorblindness whatever but um it feels like it gives you a lot more control over the like beat by beat and take some of the randomness out but there's still obviously random level generation and enemies and all that stuff it's it's fantastic it is it is climbing the list of my favorite games of of the year um yeah it's definitely surprising just because i was i was very cool on it when it was in early access um but i i think it kicks ass and it's perfect for for steam deck it is like the one i would recommend to everybody as soon as they get theirs yes i've been playing a lot of rogue legacy 2 as well um it's a very good game um but i played something kind of interesting on ipad and like everybody's gonna roll their eyes but um i think it's kind of cool uh it's calledates, and it is a FMV dating game, if you will.

But it's set in a COVID era, right? So it's very almost sort of diegetic. You're in the lockdown, and people talk about that and like you're video dating you're a guy who's gonna start trying to video date um to to meet people and to alleviate the boredom of of whatever um but you talk you like choose the people that you want to go on dates with and then it plays out in a in a format that is not that revolutionary for an fmv game like this it's basically like branching dialogue. Like someone asks you a question or you ask the other person a question.

It's very typical like date type stuff. But what is interesting about it is that there is not – it is not like you're not trying to win. It's not a like say the right things and the person will like you, right? Like it is very much more of an – it feels much more like an interactive film in that regard where it's like this is how I've chosen to respond to this question and you see how the person like responds to it. And it's – you're not getting points. You're not like, oh, they'll remember that or they'll like you more. It's very much just like how the conversation plays out. So the only incentive for answering anything other than honesty is like, you know, there's no reason to answer anything other than like what you, you know, you want to see what the other person is going to say or how they would feel about a certain thing or whatever um so you're not trying to win as much as just like you just have these interesting conversations it's very very well performed it's very naturalistic like it feels like you're watching two people have a very natural conversation um you have a friend that

you like check in with between dates to tell them how you think it's going and how it went. From that perspective, it's very interesting. It wouldn't be good if the performances weren't good and the writing wasn't good because there's not a lot of quote-unquote gameplay here. But it actually also goes to interesting places. Characters ask you about your,

if you've ever experimented with your sexuality or one person one of the characters has a panic attack and you have to like decide how you're going to respond to that um and if you want to continue like how you continue that relationship etc but it's a really interesting thing it's also by it's even it's whales interactive which has done a lot of these sort of interesting FMV experiments. But it's on iPad, so you can just play it on your iPad. I think it's like $5. Yeah, it's on Steam as well, yeah.

Usual channels. You know right now if you would like this or not. But there's no fast-forward button for dialogue or anything like that, and I wasn't really looking for one because the interactions are very convincing and and charming and i don't know it's just it was it was a very interesting little thing cool i think that about does it lots of games were discussed i wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties just a toad dutch of class fat for all and good vibes j thank you for writing reviews for the Besties on Apple Podcasts. Thank you to everyone else who has talked about the show

or written reviews or, you know, spread the good word of the Besties and its club of video games. We appreciate it. This week we talked about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder's Revenge. We talked, I mean, we answered a ton of questions and mentioned a lot of Dreamcast games. Fresh brought Fall Guys. Like every episode of Dreamcast games. Fresh brought Fall Guys.

Like every episode of the series. Fresh brought Fall Guys and Fortnite. I brought Yakuza 0 and Neon White. Griffin bought Rogue Legacy 2 and Pokemon Shield. And Justin brought Five Dates. It's true. Next week, we're going to talk about The Quarry. Yeah, The Quarry, which is a super massive game.

So if you like story, check out The Quarry. Yeah, The Quarry, which is a super massive game. So if you like story, check out The Quarry. You won't be sorry. Oh boy. That is going to do it for us this week. Until next time, my name is Justin McElroy. Be sure to join us again next week

for The Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Best games. Besties!