The Besties - Mario 3 & The Wizard Reboot

Episode Date: February 14, 2020

Plante ditches the rest of the gang, leaving them with an ancient game that came out around the dawn of time. (Thankfully it was pretty good.) The remaining gang try to reboot the 1989 film, The Wizard, for a new generation. 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!

So here's where I'm at right now. Okay. I woke up with an old man neck, and I've never had that before, and it seems like I've crossed the Rubicon into old man territory. Are you talking about pain? Are you talking about sort of just the gelatinousness?

It's an old man stiffness, like the kind of stiffness you'd get if there's like a storm a-brewin'. Sure. Well, is there? Did you check? So far, no, but who knows? I mean, if my neck is saying there is, there must be.

Here's what I know about you, Russ. I'm going to tie two things together. Like House Mood. You ever see that show, House Mood? It's about a doctor who solves crimes. I can't take this old shit. A mean doctor solves crimes is the Japanese title. Anyway, I want to solve this crime for you.

I know you beat the Witcherer on your switcher right you've been looking down on it you got switch neck or as i call it gamer neck me and some of the other game chiropractors that keep our esports uh esports teams in line uh i am of course the gamer's doctor. Dr. Justin McElroy. I help with gamer neck, gamer thumb, gamer butt and all the different gamer deformities. I'm not supposed to say deformities anymore. My secretary keeps telling me this. Sorry, administrative

assistant. Damn it, this is hard. This 2020 culture. I just want to fix gamer necks. You know what the biggest hazard of fixing gamer neck is? What, Dustin? Beard burn. Beard burn is the big thing you gotta

watch out for. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game 30 fucking years ago. I'm Griffin McElroy, and yep, it's happening. My name is Justin McElroy, and I love the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we discuss the latest and greatest in pop culture games. Games that have inspired us, helped us to grow as people, to become better parents, if I may be so bold. And the latest and greatest in gaming. This week, we are Sans Chris Plant. He is out on assignment.

He did fall into a big magic toy chest and get turned into a toy. And we're trying to fix it. Like, we're trying to figure it out. I have to say, he wasn't that far off to begin with. So, I don't think it was that much of a stretch. We are going to be talking about the video game Super Mario Brothers 3. Justin pointed out

this was pretty much Chris Plant's idea. Plant said, why don't you guys talk about this old-ass game and anyway, I won't be around, but I do enjoy playing and talking about this old, old video game. He was so enthusiastic about it oh yeah i mean

it's super it's a it's a very good game we were originally going to talk about dreams uh this week which we did not get as far as i know nobody's getting code to trying to get it was a bit of a nightmare yeah they've converted some of the beta players which i was not a beta player maybe i should have been oh i was see i didn't even check for that but yeah but that comes out on friday i still want to talk about that at some point because it's a really like what i played in the beta was so strange and the shit that i keep seeing like go viral on twitter of like look at this photo realistic cgi people have made like that that seems wild but for now let's talk about super Mario Bros. 3. So why are we talking about this? How old is it?

The 30th anniversary of this game, of its North American release. Yeah, that seems very Western-centric. The game actually came out in Japan in 1988, which is 32 years ago. But it came out in North America this week, February 9th, 1990. And that's certainly when I knew about it, because I didn't know about Japan back then. Do you know why there was a delay?

In that period in the late 80s, there was a ROM chip shortage. Like, getting enough games manufactured in that period, there was a worldwide shortage, so they held off. Is that because Rob the robot was eating all the rom chips he needed them for power it's such a strange uh story that i i was not aware of until sort of preparing for this episode i did not know about the rom chip shortage that seems like a really wild reason for a thing not to uh you know

a major video game from the biggest video game publisher on the planet to like not put out their shit in america for two whole years is a wild reason but also that it was like uh they saw the opportunity to make a fucking movie a movie all about super mario brothers 3 and the nintendo line of products and that is where the wizard sort of came from. I did not realize what was the chicken and what was the egg in that scenario. Which is to say, I did not realize that they were like,

hey Nintendo, was it Paramount or Universal went to Nintendo like, hey, so we think it'd be cool to make a movie about all your great video games and all the fun characters they're in. And Nintendo was like, ooh, this is a good opportunity for us to bring Super Mario Bros. 3 stateside. about all your great video games and all the fun characters they're in and nintendo was like ooh this is a good opportunity for us to bring super mario brothers 3 stateside it's like this is what

you were waiting for i guess it was a different sort of gaming landscape back then but like holy shit guys they needed a news peg it was important yeah or you could just release super mario brothers 3 the sequel to you know the biggest video game on the planet but uh but but here we are wait are we talking about mario 2 as the biggest video game on the planet no we should also for listeners who aren't like aware of that also there's a sort of like wild like final fantasy 6 3 thing that happened with super what we Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels with Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan and Super Mario Bros. 2

in America was... Doki Doki Panic. Doki Doki Panic. Russ and I have a great video about this on YouTube. You should search Super Mario Bros. 2 history. It's fantastic. We are going to talk about The Wizard in the latter half of the show, but I do want talk specifically about super mario brothers 3 uh given the anniversary and

we talked a little bit about the rom shortage but i want to know did you guys know there's like a pretty weird ass plot going on in this game it never really occurred to me because you sort of just like take mario shit for granted like hey there's like weird toad creatures and their goombas are walking around like it's just weird by default right and they don't really present the story like there's very little like actual text in these games but that's that's less true in super mario brothers 3 i think like because you get like the little cut scene at the end of each world with toad like giving a little monologue sure but there there isn't like a setup really all you really get is the like the curtains opening up and you're sort of like thrown into it right well it's all in the manual right

you have to read the manual to get the story it is all in the manual um and i wanted to like read a little bit of the manual oh cool so this is directly from the manual the mushroom kingdom has been a peaceful place thanks to the brave deeds of mario from the manual the mushroom kingdom has been a peaceful place thanks to the brave deeds of mario and luigi the mushroom kingdom forms an entrance to the mushroom world where all is not well now this really blew my mind because okay so mushroom kingdom we we picture the mushroom kingdom everything in mario happens in theroom Kingdom right it's like a giant world of Mushroom Kingdom shit going on in there but no there's a world

this is suggesting that there is a sort of a whole sort of extended universe that the Mushroom Kingdom is like the doorway into yeah it's the Mushyverse it's the Mushyverse and the Mushroom Kingdom is like the wardrobe to Narnia.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Precisely right. Interesting. Interesting. So, yeah, that kind of blew my mind, and then we dive into the, like, plot that Bowser has, which is to send his seven children to make mischief by transforming all of the kings in this world into animals.

Right. And that's funny. Like, Bowser's got me busting up on this one because he this is just funny i see you sent your kids to turn the kings into dogs bowser you're fucking wild about this one um yeah it's just it's a strange but here's the thing after after uh doki doki panic which was super mario brothers 2 i think this is maybe one of the tamer plots which is that one is like a toad a big monster frog man has uh inception taken over your dreams and uh is causing nightmares except uh-oh super mario brothers 3 yeah is all a play. Oh, that's a good point, Justin. Super Mario Bros. 2 is framed as just a dream

to get around the fact that it's so buck wild. It's framed as just a dream. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a stage play. There's the curtain going up at the beginning. That's why the blocks look like they've been bolted on to the backgrounds. Why it looks like a exiting stage right at the end of each level is this headcanon or is this like no no no this is well

it was a fan theory for uh literally 30 years until or 25 years i guess until 2015 miyamoto confirmed that it was a play i mean that's the aesthetic that's why stuff is like hanging from wires a lot of time rather than just floating and and stuff like that it is a stage play that is the the the narrative of this so two is a dream three is a stage play the only canonical thing is super mario brothers one and then world it just jumps straight to world so you're following the main narrative that's why a a lot of the novels fill in these gaps between. That makes sense. That's why I haven't really followed it. I just haven't kept up.

Did they get the Halo guy to write those? They did, yeah. It's Super Mario Brothers. The Fall of Reach is one of my favorites. Juice, help me out here. is one of my favorites. I, just, help me out here, uh, my, I have, like, I have pretty bad, sort of, just, memory recall skills, uh, in general. I remember very clearly playing, we, we had an NES at our house, I remember very clearly playing Mario Brothers 1. I feel like I don't have as many, sort of, like, crystallized memories about us playing super mario brothers 3 like i know we had

it but i don't remember it being sort of the like staple like mondo important game in our house like the like super mario brothers 1 was am i misremembering that no it's weird actually um i think this is maybe in sort of an ebb in terms of like our gaming. Cause like the, the times I can remember playing Super Mario Brothers three, it's always at a friend's house. Yeah. Uh, and,

and I have like vivid memories of Super Mario Brothers three. And this is something like, I think we'll talk more about in emails, but, but if you ask people about Super Mario Brothers three, and I don't know why it's this one specifically, you know, there's probably some other old NES games that would get the same treatment, but people have vivid memories of... I asked Sydney,

who's not... My wife is not a big video game person, if she remembered playing Super Mario Brothers 3. And she immediately rattled off this story about growing up in Georgia, and there were kids across the street that had Super Mario Brothers brothers three and she and her sisters would go over and invite them out to play. And then 10 minutes into the playing outside would start complaining about getting hot and maybe they should do something indoors just as like a back door to get into super mario brothers three. Yeah.

That's so good. Basically like, like if you ever seen the apple and onion episode where they, they hang out with hamburger to use his trampoline. Sure. Basically exactly like that. It's a lot like that. I mean, I remember sleepovers of us obsessing about,

and I think this is a factor of the world we were in that didn't have outside access to the world. Every little weird nook and cranny of this game, and there are many that just don't make, I mean like why why why sometimes there's a floating spade card with an n on it that you go into and there's a match game like why it seemed bizarre and not being able to like verify this stuff that other people will see this stuff online made all this stuff really magical and i like really codified it in my brain i remember being over at my neighbor courtney's house and the first time we got to world four which is giant land being like the game done

changed courtney everything's so fucking big everything's so much bigger than it should be yeah it's so strange because yeah i have memories like that. But like, I feel like Super Mario Brothers 3 occupies this strange place. And I think that I can sort of codify this by my experience with Super Mario Maker 1 and 2, which I played like a lot of. I love those games. But whenever I make levels, I tend not to favor Super Mario Brothers 3 like palette, right? Like, and I feel like that that's true of a lot of the

community just sort of anecdotally speaking looking at the slate of like most popular levels or the levels that are always in like the most played hot levels right now sort of playlist and this is you know there's other stuff affecting this right like Super Mario Brothers 1 palette has like the Zelda power-up so like in Super Mario Bros 3 doesn't have that there's like differences between who gets what but I feel like just just again anecdotally speaking like Super Mario Bros 3 doesn't have the heat necessarily on that specific platform where it's just then like a question of game feel and game mechanics and game aesthetic when you know yeah do you think it's because it's like a middle because obviously people love super mario world like the world palette right like right yeah levels well so my brother's world or super

mario world has like all of the tech right so yeah you can pick up p switches and do all kinds of like crazy shit with that which i do think though that part of it might be just this this element of it being kind of a weird middle ground between the two generations or Or like if you're trying to make like a true retro level, you would use Mario 1 graphics because that makes sense. And then if you're going to make like more of an X-Gen thing, you're going to leap right ahead to world. That middle ground with 3 does seem weird. And maybe that's what it is.

But I do still have a lot of fondness for it. The thing that always jumps in my mind, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of reader mouth talking about it, is that fucking white block. That white block, the fact that you could duck behind this white block and get behind the scenery to transfer yourself through the world without hitting anything, and that was designed. I don't know why it was designed that

way why it is still in the game well let's talk about sort of the spaghetti at the wall approach of super mario brothers 3 it does seem designed like i don't oh no no it's random it's not random like it's not unintentional it's like how you access in one four the like secret backstage level where you get the warp whistle like no it's it's it's it's obviously intentional i'm talking more about like uh is it level three oh yes you're right um which is weird by the way that i instantly almost muscle memory hopped up on that white block crouched down went and got my fucking whistle right i knew exactly where that was to read about the development of this game like it was very like uh open doors approach uh where miyamoto you know any ideas that people had like he was willing to entertain because his

like game development theory was like it takes a whole village to make a good video game and like reading about that now it starts to make sense why this game has just so much shit in it. Like, even compared to Super Mario World, which came out a generation later, like, you think about, you get the little cards at the end of each level, and if you match three, you get a bunch of extra one-ups. You get the little item palaces where you get to choose from the different treasure chests that have items in it, and you can use those items on the world map to start a level. From the beginning, you have the weird matching game you have the weird little mini boss fights

on the map you have just the world map alone the world map alone has like yeah locked doors and pipes that you can go in there's the whole sort of like p running mechanic like yeah like speed there's a fucking appealing mechanic the speed in your platforming game like what it's a there's like there's so many things like there's so many different sort of elements to this game and i think like i i love this game obviously like it feels silly to like talk about our feelings about super mario brothers 3 because it's obviously like as classic as a classic can get but it's those things aren't especially cohesive like it's not it does not come together to form well that's mario writ large though it's only cohesive because it's been like you've been subjective to it since you were a baby like i mean jumping on mushrooms is absolutely buck wild

i wish to god i could go back and just be an adult experience like watching my kids like are you jumping on living mushrooms what the fuck is happening go back to watching sesame street i kind of get tipper gore at that point all her games exactly they are dangerous you know it's weird and and this is more like i don't have a great point about this or anything but it is interesting um griffin talked about like a generation later right mario brothers 3 came out in north america as we said february 12th which is the day we're recording this 1990 right super mario brothers world came out in north america august 23rd, 1991. That's like 18 months later, basically.

I mean, it's like so close and it's so close to the release of the SNES. And you don't really see this anymore. Like this was designed as a grand farewell to the NES. Like this was going to be like the last big leave it all on the mat sort of thing. I do think you see that though. Like if you look at like PlayStation,

PlayStation 4, for example has like last of us 2 and uh ghost of tsushima are essentially like the last yeah that's true that's a good point actually and i think each generation does have that game that is like well they just literally yanked anything they could possibly yank out of this hardware i think god of war 2 came out and like the last gasp of the playstation 2 so like they really do but i think but what's wild to think about though is that this game comes out in 90 and then super mario brothers world comes out 18 months later now obviously there's some weirdness there because the japanese release was in 1990 uh of november uh and and

no no no the Super Mario Brothers world is 1990 in Japan and it's it's you know 88 in Japan so

Super Mario Brothers 3 that there could be that big of a gap between international releases is like that's yeah that's what's

I mean you look at the SNES release calendar internationally it's wild I mean it would never have like it's 90 in Japanapan november of 1990

in japan august of 91 in north america april of 92 in the uk uh and brazil gets it in august of 1993 it is absolutely like it would never ever ever happen this way and then you have and then you have fucking kirby's adventure on the nes that came out in 1993 a full three years after the snes this is an nes game and it came out three years after the after it came out after uh dreamland right which was yeah the game boy game that one came out first and i think like 91 or maybe even 1990 and kirby's adventure comes out in 1993 and they're like let's not put it on the new shit we put that on the old shit because everybody has the old shit it's it was a different way of doing business back then and and i think it's only strange looking at it through the lens of today but that's why like i think import sort of culture was a i don't know i it felt like a

bigger deal back then than it does yeah these days I played all of it. By which I mean, I did, I played one, one through one, three, and then the first castle. And then I played through world eight. No,

that's not true. I dipped in through, I made sure to hop into world four. Cause you know, it is a, but I did the same thing for my first run. And then went back and like, realize that I've been skipping a lot of these levels for many,

many years. So I'm going to go back and see some of them. That difficulty spike, though, if you are some smart-ass kid who's like, I'm just going to warp to level 8 and see what that's all about. All of a sudden, you're on a fucking pirate ship with cannons that's shooting fire

and dudes are throwing wrenches at you. You just went from gently sloping down hills and hitting red turtles into a fucking World War I of Super Mario games. Those airships, man. That was like the first time in a Mario game where I like it went from being like kind of representational, but like it was artistic, right? You didn't really get exactly what environment this was sort of representing. Like even the castles are like very simple in earlier games.

This was like I'm in the fucking sky like i'm flying yeah and like shit's getting real like this was the first time that i felt truly teleported into a game which again if you're a kid or didn't grow up with this stuff like it feels stupid to look at this and be like how could this be like you've got vr and pterodactyls flying past your head. But yeah, but it's like a huge step. It's not hard. I actually played this on the Switch, on the NES, like whatever it is, the Nintendo online subscription thing that you get that has all the NES games on it. Which I didn't have a virtual console. No, no, no.

I had not like fucked around with that before. It's cool as hell. It is a really cool way to play those games. I didn't realize this, but at any point you can hold down the triggers and it will let you rewind and like go back and play shit again, which is like a really, really neat way

of like handling save states in emulation. But like go back and play like, you know, games that came out before it on the NES and it is a remarkable leap from an aesthetic perspective from a design perspective like it is the the set pieces that they accomplish like the airship is like unlike it beats the ever-loving shit out of like everything that came before it it is it is really impressive i i think the reason why i would rather play super mario brothers one uh or world not two i don't i'm not a big fan

of two is that this game has a heavy dependence on side scrolling or auto scrollers uh like the airship levels uh yeah that's true world eight is just like there's there's a handful of not auto scrollers thrown in and then you get, like, the Bowser's Castle maze, and then, like, the, you know, the usual sort of Mario staple shit, but before that, it's, like, six autoscrolling levels, and it's not fun, like, that's not fun for me, like, I do not, and there's, obviously, they're scattered throughout the the rest of the game as well but like being told how fast i'm allowed to go in the mario game is like not not a an enjoyable experience for me and this game more than any other mario game it is just like non-stop how do you think mario conceptualizes an auto-scrolling level like as a man that's got to be a representation

of his own will right i mean his will is the only thing pushing him forward even when he physically doesn't want to his like will to succeed is driving him onward or yes the poop interesting the what yeah so anyway griffin just fucking killed super mario brothers 3 this is our segment on site where griffin takes down a classic just blows him right out of the water uh i guess if you're looking for something to play on the on the the switch nes store fucking cristales just came out cristales now let's talk cristales now let's talk about cristales that game fucking beats ass how have we not gotten a reboot of cristales it's it's wild to me we get

all the like uh the the mana series like the the the secret of mana like all those games crystallis is like obviously such a fucking blood predecessor to that shit and it gets no respect it's a good game hey and what about mdk shiny makes this fucking great game you're a guy with a coil suit and also in the second one, you could be a scientist and a dog. And Mr. Mosquito. Like, where's Mr. Mosquito? Thank you. Irritating stick. Irritating bit more like. Anyway, we'll be right back.

Chris Plant would never let us talk about Mr. Mosquito. Hey, it's me. Hey, I'm a character. Hey, I'm a character. Anybody want to say yes? Yes. Engage me. Yes.

Engage my character. Yeah. What's going on, character? My name is Ricky Mofo. Oh, Ricky. Ricky Mofo. I'm a Hollywood big shot, okay? No kidding.

Good. Yeah, I got licensed properties out the wazoo. What do you got? I'm bringing them back. Yeah, I got licensed properties out the wazoo. What do you got? I'm bringing them back. What do I got? Yeah, what's on the menu? What do I got? You ever heard of a little game called Mortal Kombat?

I have a very similar property, Eternal Champions. I'm bringing that to the big screen. That's going to be huge. I don't even need to tell you. It's amazing. Hey, is this our most inaccessible episode yet, do you think, to a younger audience? Listen.

Ricky, what else you got? The kids are gonna love this. Well, I got one that I want you boys to work on. What is it? Well, let me tell ya. Thank you, Justin. Well, I want you boys to make a new version of

The Wizard. You seen this movie about a special little boy who's great at video games and Fred Savage takes him halfway across the country to compete in Video Armageddon. Video Armageddon.

And that's the competition at the end and we're going to have a new unreleased game. Ricky, how did you secure the rights to The Wizard? I'm surprised, because it is such a well-known and loved property. Nobody wanted it. Everybody's too obsessed with Quibi. Nobody wants something feature-linked anymore. Everybody says, Ricky Malfoy, bring me a Quibi.

I'm not making a Quibi. I make big pictures for big stars and big boys in the seats. You know what I mean? So my challenge for you. Thank you. Please get to it. My challenge for you is to make me a new wizard. You got all the money in the world.

You can cast anybody you want to and we'll get an equivalent star. If not that original star, an equivalent level talent. And I want to hear the big ideas, boys. Ricky Bafo. Okay. Just fax it to my fax it to my man and he'll get it to me, alright? Because I gotta go do

a thing for a guy with a thing. Okay, we'll work on it, Ricky. See you, Ricky. Wow, challenge accepted. Yes. We have to remake The Wizard, which, when did this movie come out? I mean, 1989.

1989, the world had not even seen Super Mario Bros. 3. Right. Well, I guess Japan had. This was... Yeah, this was like... The world. This was holidays 1989 is when this came out so a

couple months before mario 3 dropped in america yeah i saw it in the movie theaters um i was given a collectible card which i think has to be a crucial element of the re-release so we need to give something some sort of collectible uh things so let's start unpacking it we got jimmy woods if you haven't seen the film uh he could he could come back james james woods is a little political dodgy yeah a little controversial but you know he'll bring that fire he'll bring that social fire he's just asking questions jimmy woods is uh a a video game wunderkind his sister died and he has ptsd and like he gets kidnapped i guess by fred savage and uh kidnapped he wants to go just by like reiterating the plot you are creating a very dark dark film to re-envision the wizard as. Are we talking about a sequel or a reboot?

I think it's a reboot. I think we gotta go reboot. Here's what I would do. Reboot but subtle easter eggs indicating that this existed in the same universe. You gotta get Fred Savage to host Video Armageddon. Oh, excuse me. You gotta get Fred Savage to host it.

I actually, ooh, Justin just i just got a letter from the lawyers and if we cast anybody other than will arnett in that role we all go to jail so he's making it busy with lego masters yeah um i fuck with that show by the way anyway it ain't bad it ain't bad so we gotta have little child who's good as hell at video games and then two slightly older children who do take that child on a madcap sort of adventure across the country in a light kidnapping spree. At some point, they do need to interact with the bad guy. And the bad guy has to have, in this film, it was Lucas who had the power glove. And that made the children afraid. This Nintendo gaming

peripheral made these three children extremely afraid. This Nintendo gaming peripheral made these three children extremely afraid, and so we gotta find a way to recapture that juice, and then it all has to be sort of brought to you by Nintendo or, I mean, let's be honest, boys, Epic Games would front a chunk of change for this one. I mean, is it Fortnite?

Is that what Video Armageddon is? No, they don't need to push fortnite right like this push super mario brothers 3 this could just be like the epic game store and they would give us 500 trillion dollars to just like and the challenge is like navigating it it's being an international customer and trying to buy one fucking game on the epic game store what is the white block reveal of the epic game store there needs to be an easter egg it would be some sort of like you can use shekels some sort of usability sort of uh component to it so yeah and then we gotta have the video armageddon at the end

so what's the what's okay so i think billy eilish is popping off right now and given that we're on spotify that's good it's like and that's a one-to- one that's a one-to-one jenny lewis substitution i feel like jenny lewis uh extremely talented musician uh former uh front person for rilo kylie uh just just an incredible turn in that film really great yeah uh fred savage cameo seems essential if we can't get him we'll get ben don't worry about it sure so for the kid for like the expert i wanted to ask what is alf up to these days i don't think alf could be in it why yeah yeah alf i don't think he's gonna be in this one i don't think it's just an age thing or you think he's too big for it well alf is has already guaranteed we've given him certain assurances

that he will be playing beau bridge's part um of jimmy's dad i thought he i thought he could do young like i thought he could pull off like a 13 14 well no he can't he's out so he will be playing beau bridge's part um christian slater's a little too fucking hot to trot right now yeah i don't know if we get him back we gotta dial that down as the cool older brother that movie's so wild do you remember in that movie how beau bridges and christian slater repair their relationship as father and son through the magic of the nintendo entertainment system that they play while staying in hotel rooms while searching for their kidnapped family member this movie beats ass we need the hook what's the let's start at the end and work our way backwards okay i would like that what's the game in the what is the video

armageddon like a game what are we talking about esports is too easy yeah esports is too easy i think it's too on the nose um i don't think we can do like anything too retro because we don't want to alienate people no but i do think there is like a pretty popular game that hasn't gotten enough shine what's that and that is candy crush that would be i mean king still got that that king money um yeah yeah but i but at this point i don't think it's getting enough media attention you know it'll be a fun challenge for us three as filmmakers what all of the like most profitable games the biggest games the hottest games on twitch these days i think we can all agree are all universally super fucking boring and so what would be cool is if it

was like auto chess and we had to make that just sort of the hot, exciting, thrilling conclusion. And then, like, you know, Fred Savage can be in the audience, and, like, Jimmy's up there, and he's, like, getting his ass beat by the boy with the Steel Battalion controller. Like, what's the hot name for that? The Steel Battalion controller. That's a hot new. Yeah, well, it's for the new Steel Battalion.

And so, like, he's like, oh, no. But then he pulls the Death Knight troop that merges into his other ones. Again, none of us, nobody actually knows how auto chess works. Let me dial this back a little bit because I do think we are going to alienate some of the audience

because you can't watch auto chess because it's the most boring thing ever. Right. That's the challenge as filmmakers. Sure, understood. Let me dial it back and suggest chess. Huh. Just chess.

Okay. But I think you can do it with the Steel Battalion controller with a series of intricate pulleys and levers moving the pieces. And then we can bring Laurence Fishburne in to teach Jimmy how to play. You found the searching for Bobby Fisher reference that made the last millennial fucking turn off the podcast for good.

They're unfollowing on Spotify as we speak. Please don't do that. Let me think. This is all shit so far. It's all fucking shit and it's all garbage. Who's the wizard? Could it be Billy Eilish? Who's the wizard? I mean, could it be Billie Eilish? It can't also be Billie Eilish.

She can't play all the roles in the film. Guys, hey, lots of people play two roles in movies. It happens all the time. Adaptation. So before you come at me, there's all kinds of people. What if you can't meet Jaden?

Is he a little too old? I think he's too old too. What if it's Jaden and Will Smith is the one his dad and his dad is the one that kidnaps him and then it's like really challenging

now we're doing this sort of pursuit of happiness but he's 25 at this point so it's like 35 years old I mean I don't want to just get Jacob Tremblay I was going to say what's that kid from Room doing? Jacobob trembley i can't just get jacob that's like the most boring like who cares what about me like fucking timothy chalamet yes timothy chalamet will use the frodo technology to make him seem much smaller that's that's that's done we're gonna irishman

we're gonna irishman timmy chalamet don't about that. Timmy Chalamet is in the picture. He is 10 years old. And he is also using the same Irishman technology, aged, to be his own older brother. That's double the Timmy. And under the credits, it will say Timothy Chalamet as the older brother. Lil Timmy Chalamet as the wizard. The titular wizard. With Billie Eilish as

jenny lewis this is all fucking great we got alphys bow bridges guys the picture's cast the picture's cast all we got to figure out is what's the fucking final what's the final game what's the final confrontation maybe it's super mario brothers 4 they haven't done that one yet they haven't done super mario brothers 4 and barring that if nintendo won't let us do that, we just get one of those super fucking funny, super violent Newgrounds Flash games with Mario in it where he kills a Yoshi. And there's all the butts. Yeah.

Anyway. Let me ask you. So if Mario 2 was a dream, Mario 3 was a play, what would be the setup for Mario 4 to really set itself apart? Now we have to design Mario 4. Okay. That's hard. I mean, we may be putting too much work into this right because super super porn parody it's a porn parody super mario brothers 4 is a video game in the mario brothers universe but it

is the framed as a porn parody of Super Mario Brothers. So, like, the gameplay is still good. The same. Oh, it's the same as Super Mario Brothers 3? It hasn't changed. Exactly. It's a tile swap, baby. It's 2020. We gotta make our ducats somehow. So, the pipes are just dicks.

This is gonna... Hey, guys. We're gonna get in trouble if we do that. With the Motion Picture Association. You think? Listen, we've cracked this, right? We've got it. Let's move on to anything else. We asked you for your most beloved Super Mario Brothers memories.

In general, Chase says the first Mario Brother game that I really remember playing in earnest was Super Mario World on SNES never mind too young stop listening you're not listening actually we clarified this you're no longer there Charlie Bo Bridges

Charlie says I'm sending this email right after listening to your last episode because the timing of what just happened to me was perfect as soon as I heard you guys were going to be talking about Super Mario Brothers 3 I happened to pick up my bean juice mug okay you're just talking about Charlie has a Super Mario Brothers 3 coaster

that's the anecdote that prompted Charlie to write in thank you Alec my earliest Mario memory I remember waking up Chris this morning and being led from the living room to downstairs with a piece of string. There on the big TV we had, there was Super Mario Brothers 64.

That's your earliest? Next, email from a grownup. James says, my first Super Mario Brothers memory is the invention of the fibro brain or a fever dream but I swear I remember a friend's older brother getting to Bowser on 8-4 in the original SMB

and he was the size of the screen burning red and tossing hammers everywhere fantastic Cookie says 92 I babysat for these kids that would play it and crush me and they mock me for my bad jump after jump i still can't really do the platformers to this day the music and one two is pure anxiety fuel to me quick side anecdote from you two i'm curious about this do you guys have a very like uh like firmed up memory of like a babysitting

game like a game that you played when you were being babysat or i guess yeah i guess that's it when you were young and you were being babysat and then there's like a game that you played then for whatever reason like i have a little nemo like oh i remember that and i think it's because we played it over like several uh i used to be babysat with my friend patrick we would go over to his house and and have the same babysitter and we just play little nemo like for for like many many sessions and that is just like crystallized that's the babysitting game in my mind and i didn't know if that those two things were like necessarily tied together or not the only only thing that jumps to mind was not so much babysitting as visiting my grandparents in California.

And to bond with me, they would get us a computer game while we were there for the weeks that my brother and I could play. And we played Wolfenstein 3D, which they made us drop the volume on because their cleaning lady was German. And she would hear all the very violent German screams. Really? I was, I was very young. Yeah. It was not an appropriate piece of content for me.

Yeah. It's yeah. They didn't really try. My parents would always rent a game from Cummings Rent-A-Center or the Farmore when they were like going on a date, we were being left with a babysitter. And the one that I have the clearest memory of playing

was Rescue the Embassy Mission. Y'all ever fire that one on? What? Rescue the Embassy Mission. It's an NES game. Fucking go play it. It's wild. It's a tactical shooter where you start off like

side scrolling and you're like hi there's uh searchlights looking out for you and you're like hiding in door jams and ducking behind shit and then after that there's a um like sniper view of you like looking through windows trying to take out bad guys in the embassy and then you flash back to like yet a third mode that's sort of like friday the 13th if you remember that one you're going room to room looking for uh terrorists and hopefully your sniper buddy has eliminated some of them and trying to rescue people from the embassy it's fucking it was also called hostages in europe because everyone wants to buy a game called hostages the fucking box art of this game is has sent me on a complete like memory dive of like this guy smashing in through

a window and this dude in a red balaclava looking at him like he's a fucking ghost like he's a mummy that has just smashed through the wall like what a good game y'all been played anything else uh yeah so i've been i know griffin mentioned it uh a few weeks ago but i jumped into blood stand on switch which is really terrific you know i wish it ran a little bit better but it's very playable it's leaps and bounds above where it was when it first launched yeah yeah if you if you got bumped off of it when it first launched because it was a mess super playable uh totally tapping into that like gba ds era castlevania game for me because it's made by the same dude and uh i've just been like super super hooked on it and can't seem to put it down i was up until like 1am last night doing dumb shit in that game so it's it's highly recommended

uh mine's embarrassing but uh i saw like a post on reddit or something about the dragonborn dlc for uh skyrim and i realized as much as i've played skyrim and it's a lot uh i never really played the dlc i never really played don guard or dragonborn and i hadn't really like played a ton on switch either so i like picked it back up i've been enjoying it i just i've nearly done with the uh with the don guard dlc and it's neat it's neat i think like i play that game for the memes like so much that actually playing it like a game game is a oh yeah is a unique experience uh but don guard's not in my memory not super great but it's not it hasn't been it hasn't been very good but i'm excited i've heard really good stuff about dragon board so i am uh i am excited to get going and i just i like the build that i'm playing this it's been a while since i've like actually given skyrim

the old college try and uh it's nearly 10 years old which is fucked up crazy yeah that's nuts yeah juice you play anything you know what i? Charlie and I just finished Later Alligator, which is like a very, I'm always looking for stuff that will engage kids, but is not contemptible. Later Alligator is great. It's just you, if you're not familiar, it's basically like a very light, very light adventure game. Even an adventure game is stretching the bounds of that, but you're in a city of alligators.

You're hired by an alligator that worries his family is going to kill him, and you start traveling around the town talking to the different alligators, trying to find out more about the event. Wait, he's like children? No, he's the sort of runt of the family, and he's worried they're going to kill him because

he's extremely skittish. Uh, and it becomes almost immediately apparent that they're planning a birthday party for him. So it's just you traveling around town, asking other alligators for hints about the event as it's called. Uh, and before they'll give you the hint,

you have to play a little mini game for them. And it's all very like cute and fun and sweet and it's got a great aesthetic and really great music um i think giant bomb had it on their like best soundtracks or top three anyway um it's it's really fun uh especially if you like to do uh fun voices for all the different alligators uh it's really cute and has a great sense of humor and um it's it's really sweet oh we're what platforms it on uh i played it on steam so there so we have to go see sonic hedgehog we have to go see sonic hedgehog for our job yep our job is to go see sonic hedgehog we have to see that every fiber of my

being was praying i got a screening invite to this movie just so I wouldn't have to fork over the 1250. I think I'm going to go at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday. So when I take Henry to movies, I do it with the understanding that I may have to just like walk out of that movie at any point and just kind of go with God with that. Like we saw Detective Pikachu and we saw Toy Story 4 and he's been pretty fucking ride or die for all the movies we've taken him to.

But I have to go into Sonic with that. I'm going to take him because I can't do it alone. And Rachel's not going to do it with me. Yeah, I don't have a choice. So I'm facing a reality where I get, fuck guys, 70 minutes into Sonic Hedgehog. And then my son freaks out and we have to leave. And then I have to go see it again yeah pay for it twice but that that will be next week if you want to email us I don't want to

hear about your relationship with Sonic the Hedgehog I like this is the only human mind I have and I can't open myself up to that but I would like to hear your reviews of the Sonic Hedgehog movie when you go see it I don't want any emails from people who didn't go see Sonic Hedgehog. No, we're a family, and family in this case means people who've seen the Sonic Hedgehog movie. So please email us. That's mail at besties.fan. Besties.fan is also

where you can listen to our show and share it with other people. We would love it if you would do that. Also, if you would be kind enough to follow us on spotify that would be uh just just peaches yeah there's a little button at the top of the spotify page click that follow button and you're golden at the very least it'll uh put a new episodes of the besties on your home page when they drop on fridays not quite a push subscription

but we're working for it. We're working on it. Follow us on Twitter, The Besties Pod. We put out little clip videos of each episode. If you share those, it's like a huge help for us. Yeah.

Yeah. And we appreciate y'all. That is going to do it for us, folks. So until next time, be sure to join us again next week for The Besties. Because shouldn't the world's because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games The Besties is a Spotify original podcast

in association with Vox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter. And our theme song is by Ian Dorff. Besties!